The Changing Face of GW's Player Base

Beating the game and being into the game are two different things. Granted, I have taken longer than most to get to where I am because there is always a quest I cannot "beat" by myself, and I haven't logged in for a long time, but when I do I am in no rush to "beat" the game.

Finding people is the hard part. At one point I found a group of roleplayers but they were so far out into areas that I could not get to that they had to run me across the map so that I could interact. They had gone thorugh all the content and had little interest in doing it again, so I was back to Square One.

Our stories are somewhat similar... and indeed, I have moved on to other MMOs.

I suspect ANet understand this, which is why they really don't care about PvE balance when making changes for PvP. My guess is that ANet figures their only way to hold on to customers while working on GW2 is to keep the PvP community going, which takes much less effort than designing new content for PvE.

And no, HM is not new content; it's a retread of the same game, which they have made artificially difficult (limiting # of heroes, for example) in order to extend its lifespan. They can now say "Hey, don;t complain about PvE unless you've got all the titles!"

The vast majority of titles are simple time wasters - drinking, eating, dying over and over. That isn't content, it's make-work to keep us doing something until GW:EN and GW2 get here.

I've come to believe that a monthly fee is necessary for solid PvE gameplay. Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) is excellent for PvE, and it even has a fun (but largely disconnected) PvP mode. They just realesed a huge new expansion and have a half-dozne mroe in planning... the characters have depth, too, including titles and lineages and trades and... and unlike WoW, the literary nature of LOTRO keeps the nake-elf kiddies away.

But I digress.

GW, by virtue of being free, attracts a significant crowd of riff-raff who have nothign better to do than spam and dance "naked." Once you've played the campaigns, there really isn't anything to do, unless you want to farm or play PvP.

So I suggest finding another game. It's hard to leave something you've enjoyed -- heck, I stopped playing GW, but I'm still watching the forums in the vain hope it will improve. If you want a deep PvE experience, look elsewhere.

Games evolve, how the game is played evolves too. Its quite logic and every game has it (at least online games, since those are dynamic).

And the fun part about GW, you can play it in multiple ways to enjoy the game. Once you completed everything or done everything you wanted, get bored, you probably move on to another game, nothing lasts forever, especially not with games. (woo, sounds so emo ^^)

Guild Wars has several forms of play. I have played every core class there is all the way to Hell's Precipice. Because no one wanted a Mesmer until Hell's I henched the Fire Islands with my Mesmer.

I do not know that PUGs have changed at all. I still see the same lack of development all the way through the game. Tanks (or anyone else really) who bring pets into Hell's have not figured much out. Rangers who get to Hell's and can't draw or wont consider equiping winter are equally amusing. It took me 12 days to go from Ascalon thru Ascension to Hell's, and another week to get a group where every player was competant enough to go through Hell's. That group had 4 people in it: 2 Wa/Mos, 1 E/Mo, and 1 N/Mo; plus Dunkoro, Dunkoro, Talkura, and Eve. As the Ele I took a water build I call Hell's Solace that I designed for times when no one had Winter.

I used to be able to say a major reason for not PvPing was the behavior of the players. I am simply not willing to put up with the name calling, the braggadocio, the machismo, and the self-centeredness. I do note however, that PUGs are not doing much better. It is a fact that people would rather talk about someone's mother and scream NOOB than to offer advice, be patiant, helpful, courteous, etc. If anything at all has changed, it is that the level of decent manners has gone down overall.

As to this being a PvP game, if it were I would not play. I know little about the PvP side of the game and the changes ANet has made trying to force it have instead forced me the other way. Had Alliance been something where individuals could come together as friends and play against other alliances or guilds I would have considered it. Because Factions was done to destroy single player creativity and expression and to eliminate small, family, and single guilds I have never been interested and quit paly at all for many months.

In an environment where people become only something you use to get things and places for a score, you promote a self-centeredness based solely on machismo, braggadocio, superiority against others, etc. Before the release of Factions that was not the case, and yes, I see the systemic structure of Factions as the downfall to decent player training, the push for pugnacious, rude, and malignant treatment of those who do not get masters on the first try, and the assault on individuals who saught to play together while expressing themselves outside of Mega Faction Farming Cooperatives. I liked much of the art in Factions, skills, the story line base, etc. Systemically, it was a set back to PvE and a discouragement to include more individuals in PvP.

Well at least everyone is on the same server so there is still a lot of variety.

You mean, back when GW was a new game, and everyone was trying to explore every little crevice - because of it's freshness? That's what people do with any game. When it's new, they explore, they want to see it all. When they finally see it all, they either stop playing (adventurers that leave), or they find other things to occupy their time in the game (pursuit of more and more things, or competition with others - both are "new" experiences every step of the way).

First of all, I am 95%+ PvE. The only PvP I play is AB, and the occasional RA - almost exclusively to get Balthazar Faction. I don't like the PvP in this game. My reasons are my own, and I'm not going to yell at other PvPers that like it, forcing my opinion of dislike of PvP on them. If people like to play any game, no matter what it is, I say let them. Who are you, or anyone else, to tell them they are wrong? In your opinion, it may be wrong, but that's your opinion, which like I said, is like... well you read it.

How does my pointing out your blatant forcing your opinions on others hypocritical? I'm not forcing my opinion on you. In fact, I clearly said "I respect [this persons] opinion just as much as the next guy's." I do, it's true. I respect everyone's opinion, like yours and the avid, ruthless PvPer, no matter if I agree with it or not. That's not hypocritical at all. I just disagree with your approach of applying it to everyone like it's a universal value, rather than opinion.

What? You have got to be kidding me. You know what the leading cause of death is, right? Life.

because they are losing pvp players with their updates and changes or lack thereof

Fort Aspenwood is a terrible example to use when talking about PvP in general.

I'm still a real player...
I actually hate PvP xd
(not really normal cause PvE is supposed to unlock items to use in PvP)
People only play PvP because they want to get fame...
And when you are famous in Guildwars, you can say that you are famous for very much other people everywhere else in the world.
But that's sux, cause I only know one ''famous'' player in Guildwars and that's tha guy who makes that funny damn good movies about gw... ( and his friend ofcourse) bet you did heared of '' Zack'' before...
And he didn't really got famous because of PvP ...

So I think players are falling in this whole after completing tha storyline.
They did all the missions, all the quests... They tried every little combination of professions, got all the Elite skills, titels, wethever...
And it's not really motivating people to go further with PvE, start allover again with another character, Doing áll the missions and quests just over once again...
Just not fun anymore.

Maybe you can see the adventure in PvP then...
You can die or not, and if you don't, you become famous
(yeh right )

They can 't possibly fix this problem.
They should bring out other missions each day.
(or at least a quest)
and that is not practicly possible...

So... :-/ I should get used to the '' PvP- rage''...

I'm not clear on what exactly the OP point is. Are you not happy because you wish things were like when you first played through GW on the very first character that you played? Are you not happy because probably a fair amount of people that used to play the game with you moved on? Are you not happy because you believe the overall caliber and quantity of players has declined?

I get the sense that you may be looking for a certain amount of "newness" to come into your gaming experience that just isn't going to happen after you have been playing the same game for many months. But how many other games have you played pretty much on a continuous basis for over six months or over a year or over two years? I'd love to know the names so that when I ultimately get bored with GW I'll be looking for something to hold my interest and there has never been a game over my past 25+ years of gaming that has held my interest for as long as this game has.

The great thing about this game is that there are so many things to do that my only complaint is that the basic PvE storyline in all 3 chapters normally feels like a hindrance to all the other things there are to do in the game and I hope that in GW2 ANET does a better job of making the base PvE content feel more important to the overall enjoyment of the game.

In the meantime I've got more titles to go work on and after that I'll probably do some PvP or maybe create a new character since I haven't done that in forever. In any event I've still got plenty to do.

[QUOTE=Ari]is that hard to figure out ? low lvl cap -> people have completed everything -> they have nothing to do -> people start farming

This is so untrue. I really wish people would stop generalizing all PvPers as the same egotistical 'omg noob l2p' people and grouping all forms of PvP under the same net. There are many a PvPer like myself that couldn't care less about fame and play simply for the challange and enjoyment of actually playing against another human.

Actually farming bores me to tears, so i reactivated my City of Heroes/Villains account from 3 years ago til Eye of the North is released

oh, alongside playing Eve Online

I started role playing 30 years ago. When presented with 6 options to role play I set out to RP all of them. I discovered there is no RP in GW, and even if characters wanted to RP, trade spam would prevent it. I just left my character in Maguuma Stade because there was no point in being in Lion's Arch. There was no point in attempting to arrange anything in Lion's Arch or help someone, or have a discussion about quests, or anything else because of the toilet paper selling on the All Channel. The entire game is infected with people who are only interested in their achievement and things to show off, at any cost. That is from promoting grind rather than good play (and good play is not button mashing while screaming Go we have to make masters).

The OP had a hard time finding pugs or helpful guilds for HM missions, and so concluded it was because most people are now only interested in PvP, title grinding or farming.

I can only agree on the point that, if you depend on pugs for anything in GW, the game will continue to get worse for you.

if you depend on PuG's to play the game, why not just find a damn guild?

I've been playing for over 2 years, and my playing habits have changed quite a lot in that time.

I started out by pugging in PvE, just exploring and enjoying the story and the scenery and making my toon look pretty. Every so often I'd go PvP in RA, TA or HoH.

Now I explore, aiming for Legendary Cartographer, but I do it for its own sake rather than the title - the title just tells me when I'm done I've been going everywhere with heroes and henchies rather than pugs because it's the most convenient for exploring the nooks and crannies of the world. I still take quests if it suits me and it adds a little spice to exploring.

If I farm, it's because I want some new armour or something rather than to "get rich". I don't have to do it much but it's quite relaxing. It's quite challenging in small doses too as long as the challenge is kept fresh and the area and method changed frequently enough.

My PvP now consists of AB (on my own or with friends), FA (I like the occasional UT-style assault map ) or sometimes casual GvG. I like PvP games and balanced PvP is one of the main reasons I came to Guild Wars in the first place from Dark Age of Camelot, which was hideously imbalanced after Trials of Atlantis came out.... and while the 3-way Realm versus Realm was a great concept, the spirit of it was totally destroyed by Realm Points.

RPs promoted "8 man", a well organised guild group of tricked out characters that hoarded player kills and therefore RPs. It was bad for RvR (killed it as I knew it) because it was bad for co-operation within the realm, but it essentially gave birth to GvG within DAoC, and GvG became the focus of high-end players. There was some great GvG in DAoC by all accounts... Google "dh-high.avi" (a Dem Hibbies vid) if you want to see what I mean (especially if you're an old DAoC hand and want a bit of nostalgia ) From my old server (I played for Hibernia on the euro server Excalibur), I remember some of the players left to form Esoteric Warriors but I'm not sure what guilds they were from before... maybe Vengeance, Celtic Fist or Dem Hibbies or maybe they pooled from a bunch of Hib/Mid/Alb guilds - but that was like... waaay back. I was in Clan Bearhawk anyway, which was a bit more PvE/casual PvP centric rather than hardcore PvP - they cleared off to WoW (boo!), and I came here and joined Amazon Basin (who I knew from Diablo 2)

I'd say my PvP time has changed from maybe 1% in the beginning of Guild Wars to about 20-25% of my time now anyway.

Farming is not the same as redoing missions over and over. Redoing missions can be a pain in the @$$, takes alot of time and is often done with other people. Also, if you die and your drop still lies on the ground, you're screwed.

I at the moment have 3K in my storage, and the only rare skin I have is a req 9 un-perfect Sephis Axe. I farm because I have to. How else am I gonna buy skills for my new characters?

And I don't PvP so I don't kill computer generated characters... But my guess is that people do it because... they enjoy it.


And once more, you can't play the game without cash. Sure, you can do the story with starter armor and basic skills, but what's the fun in that? People want cash cause without cash GW sucks. And that is why people farm, scam for money etc.


The GW in the past also had farming. The only difference is that it was so EASY to make cash back then, nobody really had problems. (1 Griffon run and you had yourself cash for 1 skill, gg)

The skill balances suck, though. A-net should realize that they can NOT make the SAME skills work in 2 totally DIFFERENT forms of gameplay. And they prefer PvP over PvE, so they only change for PvP. Only skills changes PvE'rs get are farm nerfs.

My point exactly. That, or start using h/h like many have been doing for a long time.

GW is an old game and any old game has the same changes in the player base:

-Old players who stay are the ones who often suffer some form of elitism; they find themselves particulary skilled and often reply in a sarcastic way when others don't agree with them. There is no difference whether its games like LOD, WC, WOW, or GW. In the end players act all the same: best items, most skilled, big ego's...
-New players who buy the game cheap at the local discount centre are often younger. They expect to get everything fast and almost for free. They tend to spam then things are going too slow.

Those who left? Mostly the ones who completed the game and did not find anything else to do. Often players who like to grind but found out it was getting too timeconsuming, and since they only did it for sports to complete an armor set or max out in runes, they quit.

well said box, that's what exactly what i thought too

Well, personally I've played this game on and off almost since release. I enjoy all parts of the game, and I don't feel that the vibe has changed much since the start. At the beginning, nobody had experienced the content before, so of course they were more excited about it than they are now. If you're still excited about it, great. You can find other people who think the way you do. But what I really had to address is this:

This statement is silly on just so many levels. People play to compete, not to "kill legally"..the game would be equally as popular if, when reduced to 0 health, you simply got knocked unconscious and then woke up at your res shrine. And in fact, that is how many games do handle death!

What about the board game Risk? Have you ever played that? Each piece represents thousands of human soldiers. Oh the bloodlust I feel as the pink triangle is crushed by my roll of double 6's. I can hear the lonely widows crying as I wipe out my opponent's forces in Indonesia, ready to occupy and rape and pillage the native people. Mwahahahaha! Give me a break.

And to be honest with you, the people who only play violent video games like Half-Life to beat up on computer opponents are more troubling, because they're just killing for the sake of killing, not for the sake of competition. That's the type of behavior that may lead to insensitivity to violence. But multiplayer games teach healthy competition, socializing, teamwork, strategy and quick thinking. They teach you that "killing" someone or getting "killed" has consequences, unlike clearing a map full of NPCs using henchmen. PvPing makes you a better person!

(Quick side note: You can still technically win Hero Battles without killing a human opponent! Or just heal, and curse out your guildmates on vent when they slay an opponent.)

Bottomline is that GW has had PVP from the very beginning. If you have issues with Players killing other Players (which is silly) then you shouldnt have bought the game in the first place.

You complain that the playerbase's goals have changes (in which you're right about) but you yourself are also trying to bring change just by stating your objection to killing other people in a game.

Maybe you really should think about playing a different online game. There are a few that dont have PVP in it at all. I think EQ2 is one of them... Or games that have dedicated servers with no PVP at all.

I sure won't try to change your opinion on the "morality" of PVP but you shouldnt be complaining about PVP in a game that you knew full well included that gameplay.

I have a personal identity. I do not and never shall exist to sublimate my identity to others. While I hold a multitude of heritages, one of them says: Everyman's a king between his cow and the next tree over. Those who feel they must be in charge of my life, my recreation, and determine how whom they choose are wrong. Those who determine what emblems best represent my character and my characters are wrong. I have served one guild and one guild only, the United States Army. It is the only guild to which I would serve, and then and only then, if it returned to promoting the values by which I live and believe. Hence, I will never belong so some "DAMN GUILD" I will continue to be who and what I am: an American who expects egality of opportunity (without exclusion by caste, race, creed, sex, or disability), respect for life on the other side of the avatar, and liberty to play my personal expression.

The coercive elements seeking to destroy small and single man theme expressions of role play within the game are unappreciated, no matter what faction they feel they represent in or outside of the game.

To paraphrase for others:

"Amerca iz my guild.. and tehy liek to snipe on CS aswell. j00 shoudl chek out my servre some times,, pal."

Guild Wars doesn't have a changing face. It's been the same old campsite for awhile if you just have Prophecies.