A letter to Anet and everyone else: Guild Wars is dying in my eyes.

What is happening to Guild Wars?! The beauty of this game for me was the fact that people COULDN'T mod it or tweak it in any way unless the devs implemented something themselves.

This game is going to hell... 1st the dupers.. Now the modders... What the hell is going on? Modding GW is not cool. 1st reason is because it gives an unfair advantage to some. Now you can interrupt more easily, heal better, and do a host of other things that weren't intended to be available to a player.

Second reason, is when you can have any skin and any graphic on your character, you WILL quickly get bored with this game. The cool items and gfx were indeed a part of what made this game great. It is the grinding for items and farming that makes games like this interesting for many.(despite all those who deny it) Take all that away, and you have a dull game left, stripped of a big part of it's beauty. No more *unique* armors or items. You can have anything you want!

I've been saving for a long time to get myself a Tormented shield. Part of the appeal was that once I would get it, there would still be about 70% of GW players that don't have it. Well lucky me.. In between dupers and modders that's all negated now.

If I could mod skins right now, I can see myself quickly getting bored with this game. I'm perfectly aware it's just on the client side, but that is all I really need. After getting myself every rare skin and playing around with them, there's hardly anything left aside from me PvPing, since I beat all of PvE. Nothing to strive for. Nothing to desire.

Someone might say - No one is MAKING you mod stuff. Well when something is there, one cant help but try it. The very idea of me playing casually, while others are turning this game inside out makes me sick. Not because I cant to the same, but because of the "fact" itself.

Why would I even want to buy GWEN now? I wanted it so much.. Partially because of the new cool items, and skins. But now... What is left? Just new quests and games? Forget that... All that was cool when together with the rest. By itself, it's not enough.

The downfall of this game already begun when purple items became worthless and golds became so common some were/are worth 3-5k. Why are purples even still in the game I ask you? Especially the noninscriptable ones?

I hope you are reading this, Gaile, because I am one less customer you will have unless you get rid of the dupers, modders, and everyone else ruining this game once and for all. Before it's too late... DO A COMPLETE ROLLBACK. LOCK THE Gw.dat file so people cant do anything with it. Save this game.

I know many will say: You don't like what's going on? To hell with ye!
Well fine... I'll go pay another game then, instead of GW. And to think that GW was THE ONLY game I was playing and was going to play for a long time to come...


EDIT/Update:

1)I don't know why so many of you thought that I am planning to QUIT Guild Wars. I never said that. I said I'm having second thoughts about buying GWEN. If people cant read, it is not my fault. My last sentence says I'll go play another game.... Does it say I'll quit GW? I'll be honest with you. I wanted to sound as upset as possible to get Anet to realize that some players(at least me) feel very negatively about the recent events.

2)I never said I was playing this game just for the graphics. I said nice graphics was one of the things that made this game awesome, and if that is taken away(not necessarily "directly"), the game is not the same. I always put gameplay above gfx, but when rare skins become worthless it is big problem IMO.

3) I sold my Tormented Shield in game for 20k less then I bought it for. That 350k fiasco has NOTHING to do with why I made this thread. It was simply ONE of the things that upset me, and I made sure the devs know it by posting in many threads.

4)My main desire was to get people's attention and Anet's attention. Whatever you may think of me at this point, I sure got your attention didn't I? Maybe I'm not as dumb as you think I am after all.
Too bad I didn't get Anet's attention.

5)I sound too emotional? Maybe that's because I truly love this game and I don't want it destroyed?

6)I stand by what I said about modders. They ruined Soldier of Fortune for everyone, they ruined DOOM experience for those that used the mods, and they will ruiln this game "PvP wise"

7)I promised not to reply to this thread anymore so I wrote an EDIT. I hope all the flamers and lamers read this, so that they don't have to waste their time writing short replies of the "To hell with ye, we wont miss ya" nature. But.. If that is what floats your bubble, go ahead and keep on flaming me. I appreciate that, because that gets yet even more attention.

QFT.........

Somebody call the WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAMBULANCE!!!


The key to enjoying this game, is not amassing wealth, posing or modding, it's playing it. Try new builds, do things differently, play with other people.


And if you're really bored, take a break and come back in a fortnight when GWEN comes out, you'll be back wanting for more.


Best of luck to you.

Will this one less customer leave quietly and not go on a rampage while rage quitting? Because I can live with that. Really. I can.

... Can I have your stuff?

Like you said, no one else even sees the mods 'cept for the modders themselves. I don't see what the big fuss is about.

What's next?

People playing with non-default desktop backgrounds? Someone renaming GW shortcut?

Who cares what they have on their computer - nobody else can see it. Of all the reasons quoted for rage-quitting, this one is by far the most unfounded.

Try WoW. No modding there

You have to remember that modding your client only affects you.
If you choose to have a terror shield well good for you but noone else will see it .... so there is still value to having the "real thing"

Let people do whatever they want in this game as long as it's within Anet's guidelines - Gaile has said that benign clientside modding such as skin mods are perfectly ok.

PS - don't let the door hit you too hard on the way out
PPS - can I have your stuff??

My God! Get a grip old boy!

No one is forcing you to play, why rant? Just leave. If you hate it bye bye!

*No one is forcing your to mod
*Dupers didn't come first modders did, and Modders are harmless.
*Dupers suck but I'm sure they hardly killed the game for you.

Now the nasty stuff your crying about things you hardly understand, Dupers didn't ruin anything for you, it your own personal view and opinion that did that.

Dat files, lmao, it IMPOSSIBLE to make one that completely locked, where there is a will there is a way.

And the only thing that will kill Guild wars for sure is your single suggestion, A complete roll back?! Even the jedi would feel the thousands of players crying out over that action. Not to mention the rage quitting and the Law suites brought against Anet.

Baselss rant for the lose, nice cry session but. I'll keep you entertained for a bit; here is a puzzle

Ass...hit...don't...your...door...let...way...on.. ..out...the. Its a jumbled clue.

Yeah, I let what other people are doing decide how much fun I'm having with the game, too. It's a good practice.

tl;dr

whoru?

I agree with all the posters so far (except OP), so no need to repeat what's already been said. However, to add to it:

Even if they wanted to do something about modding, this wouldn't do crap. Texmod doesn't touch the gw.dat file, or any other file for that matter. They could lock it down with military-grade encryption and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. Texmod deals with DirectX and what's displayed via your video card, not the program that's displaying it.

You have cataracts.

Even if all of what you say constitutes a real, significant problem (which I don't think it does), to say that Guild Wars is dying is a bit melodramatic, no?

Can I have your stuff when you leave??

Seriously though, if you think owing a Torment Weapon puts you on the '1337' list, I'd be disappointed. I own a Tormented focus and I got it because I loved style of the skin with it's cool shimmer/pulse effect. I didn't get it for status.

Oh a return of the real arcanemacabre!! with his passport photo

Guild Wars Is Dying In My Nuts.

Pretty much all that is needed to be said. This guy keeps screaming roll back, when the effects were minimal. But wouldn't it be a great idea to roll back months just to satisfy the little whiner who is depressed about buying a tormented item. I'm sure we all shed a tear for your loss....

Different people play the game for different reasons. The game might be dying in your eyes, but to me it's still as lovely as ever. Take a break from the game, you clearly are in the need for it.

The recent duping really hasn't affected me, since I play the game for actual gameplay and rarely ever buy anything from other players. I play the game, get money that way (I don't even farm) and then buy all the armor that I want. Sometimes I draw people's characters and get a little extra money that way. Other people can do all the high-end trading and nerf-whining, I'm just enjoying the game for what it is.

Also, modding doesn't automatically get you the skins you want. Each armor and item in the game has a base that is not made with purely textures, and no amount of modding is going to change that base. For example, you cannot suddenly turn your ranger's Shing Jea armor into a monk's Labyrinthine armor, no matter how hard you mod. All you can do with modding is change the armor colour and possible textures on the existing armor base, once you've bought it for yourself the normal way. So yeah, modders are not destroying the game, they're simply changing the look of existing items they own to suit however they'd like them to look WHILE still maintaining the original SHAPE of that object.

Good luck with your next game, and please check out the facts before proclaiming doom on everyone.

Soon Modding will destroy the internetz! OHNOEZ!

I doubt ANET cares about "one less customer" when MANY more would leave if a "COMPLETE ROLLBACK" took place (which it won't).

It's been a pretty awful lately for rit lovers like us. The class got shat on and duping shafted you out of 350k; just take a break.

[QUOTE]right on.

i dont want it because i really like it nooooooo

i want it because most of the others cant afford it

you will still be one of the few proud small clutter of owners as Anet has/is still clearing out the stacks of them by closing accounts with heaps and stacks of them.

or............bye bye do you really think Anet/ NCsoft /any of us will miss you?

That may be true for you, and that may be your values and your priorities and your choices. That may be true for me and my values and my priorities and my choices... but it's not true for everyone.

Whatever Ibex333 chooses to get out of the game is just as valid as what you or I choose to get out of the game.

To each his own.

Different strokes for different folks.

A chacun son goute.

k. bye. have fun elseware. it was nice not knowing who you are. :\

Complete Roll Back to the Griffon farming days! KTHNXBAI!

LOL...Call the cops! Someone has been duping God's suit. There are no less than 20 people in this thread alone wearing a God suit... and they're all dupes and way too big for the people wearing them.

Ehhhh? How can texture modding make you interrupt faster and heal better?One can only change textures of 3d models, not the 3d models them self. So not reallyNo blame to the modders, the dupers can burn in hell though. Farmed half the gems and payed 180k for the rest for my ambrace a few days ago >.> Not cool Only texture no 3d models,try modding yourself before you flip out at what could be possible :Don't think about it My max req 9 purple fell blade inscr does the trick for me. Can remember selling a 14^50 req 9 purple stormbow for 27k . Though this was before hm releaseApperently you haven't tried modding, because the program uses the textures in memory through dx 9, not gw it self. FAIL

Why would you want a rollback? Ok, there was the ambrace issue, but that has been fixed, but it hasn't affected enough people to cause a rollback.

A rollback would only be necessary for a serious economic crisis such as what happened in the past when for some reason ecto and superior rune prices dropped to the lowest so everyone bought some

Dear OP
You make me giggle

Yours truly
Sli Ander
___________

Seriously, listen to everyone's advice on the modding. As to the duping, we'll all soon see exactly how hard Anet is stomping on the dupers. I, too, would suggest you take a break. For most players (I presume) it is about the journey and the pride of having earned the weapon/armor/whatever yourself that matters most, not its rarity. But if we wait a little while, I'm sure the market will settle out enough to satisfy even the players that desire nothing more than the rarity, rather than treasuring the tale behind it.

But that's just my two cents

You can change skill animations to glare out at you even more than they do now, so you can make it so that a big red circle appears over someone's head when they're using a key skill to interrupt or a skill that gives away a spike.

Wow.. so much flame... *most of it because people don't even bother to read what I wrote*

It's funny how everyone who replied is completely blind to the negative effects the modding has on the game. If you even took one minute to really THINK about it instead of flaming me, you might have understood what I'm saying.

How can a modder interrupt faster or heal better? Change the gfx of the skill to say INTERRUPT ME with big red letters.. Put markers on the health bar for 50% 75% 90%. Make skins brighter.. Do I need to go on and on? If you choose to remain blind to this, there's no point for me to even bother explaining.



People are talking about MINIMAL effect? What minimal effect? The effect is massive. I cant see how the game will recover from the harm that was done any time soon. The economy is destroyed. This game is like Diablo2 now. That's the reason why I quit Diablo2 after playing it for almost 6 years. At least I could sell my account there without anyone telling me if I can do that or not. Blizz simply didn't care. (probably because they knew and admitted to the fact that their game has gone to hell) I think it's only fair that I'm allowed to get my money back if I'm not really getting what I ORIGINALLY paid for.

One has to be completely brain dead to pay more than 1k for anything these days. Whatever you are buying.. it might have been duped.. 250 diamonds? - duped. Perfect crystalline - duped. 1000 ecto? - might have been duped too...

If I only wanted to PvP and juggle my skills around to beat my opponent, I could have played Magic the Gathering. I chose GW because it used to offer so much more. That is no longer the case.

Heh... there are thousands of armbraces in people's hands, and people are talking about MINIMAL effect...




Well ask yourself why you even took that journey in the first place... Either way, even if it is about the journey, which it probably is, even that factor is now gone. Why take the journey when you can have whatever you want instantly now?

Who would lift weights if they could instantly have muscles all over their body? Who would work if money was falling from the sky? Who would strive for anything if it was already there in their hands?


Yes that is EXACTLY what I will do. That's the only thing I can do. Except for ranting off course.

you want to roll back yeah? roll back to before you started your saving and workign for it again?, while thousands of others are annoyed..pretty selfish is you ask me.

everyone lost a bit, ectos traders lost hugly. there losss is in maybe 1000s of k.

general inflation mayde everything cheeper, also stopped hundreds of people for ecto farming.

but thats how the real econemy may work some things.... ( not in same example but it changes, maybe counerfit money, would be a nice example).

but if there was a rollback everything normal peopel struggled for saving,buying,selling,would all be pointless, 2 months the majority of summer wasted and alot of wasted time.

anet did the right thing...trust em and see how it works out

Hi,

You're mixing modding with bug exploit without understanding any of them (any SW developer knows how difficult it is to stop modding, locking gw.dat would not help one bit! regarding bugs, this also is typical from SW, I guess Anet worked like hell to close the Armbrace exploit).

Your rant looks like selfishness when you want to be part of the 30% elite with Blabla shield (I wonder how you can really realise you're part of 30% of hundreds of thousands of players...), and it looks like paranoia when you over-emphasize the effect a la Diablo2 (there will always be duppers in a successful game). You may "feel" cheated, but it's more a matter of point of view (pay no more than 1k? have everything instantly? that's not the case in my GW...) than a cause and effect phenomenon.

I agree that allowed modding (and even with guides from developers) can harm competitive things. Like ibex333 said, someone can:

• place percentage marks on health bars and mana bars
• color skill icons as he wishes (like color all skills that need to be interrupted with glaring red, or place distinctive marks on icons)
• retexture player armors, so all monks will "glow" with bright blue color, eles red and so on...

Use your imagination and think about what other things may be done "with just harmless clientside retexturing"...

Why to roll backwards when you can roll forward?

If you play game for just graphics, take break or something to regain interest.

Now I was hoping for some interesting reasoning on why GW is dying.
Now I read just:
- Dupers: A-net seems to be solving that problem right now
- Modding client for advantage: well, for unexperienced players perhaps, but not the experienced ones.
- Modding client for better looks: This is only client side and has nothing to do with obtaining the real thing. You might mod your plain sword to look like a crystalline, but it's not.
- Worthless items: Well, my heroes are happy with those items and if not, the merchant. Or I just take them to some starter area and give them away.

I have some trouble understanding your reasoning.
I do understand how the duper-issue affects players.
But other than that, it's about the experience of playing a game and that has very little to do with the value of things or manipulated views on the client side.

Now let me tell you what in my opinion is the worst problem with guild wars.
It's teaming up with people. GW is an online game to be played in a human team. Now there are various reasons why people don't do that (anymore) or only with specific people.

The first one was already present in Prophecies.
It's because it's hard to find out if players are able to get the job done.
PuGs in prophecies was always a bit of a gamble, you might find an excelent team or a very bad one.

Related to this is that a lot of people are in guilds and play with people there.
The most experienced people in my guild, with a few exceptions, only play in guild teams or with people on their friends list (PvE).

Then Factions was released. Many people moved there, but this caused two problems: People are now in two games. And people have a split storyline.
This made even less chance to form a PuG in reasonable time (specially Gyala, Unwaking and Eternal Grove).

Now the thirth problem arises, Nightfall.
Again, more people spread over 3 continents now.
Well, A-net made one very good solution for that: Heroes.
You can now team up with 3 self-configured, always playing and non-complaining idiots.
And you add some hench, go-go-go in 2 minutes time. Let's own the game!

Now we introduce an other area of gameplay: Hard Mode.
All those people that are spread on 3 continents can now play the missions in 2 ways: NM and HM. Even less people to team up with.
And there is this nice vanquishing thing, also consuming people.
And with all the titles lying around, people are even more spread.
Who wants go get the Carto-title in teams? Takes way to long to set up for just that purpose.

When you are lucky and have a decent guild/alliance, you can team up with other humans, adding some fun to the game (and sometimes annoying things, like guildie going afk for a few minutes, to return 30 minutes later. Well, we know that now and have introduce the term 'Doing a Boris' for that kind of behaviour, which makes it fun again).
But also there, when we team up we fill gaps with heroes or friends about 90% of the time.
We hardly ever PuG, except when we are having a fun-run and some spaces left.

This all combined made Guild Wars to an almost single player experience for a lot of people.
There is little reward (ingame goals) for teaming up with people and a lot to lose. H&H take the builds you want, don't rush, don't ragequit, don't complain.

I know a lot of people keep playing because guild activity and a lot quit playing because they were bored by solo-playing and teaming up with noob-PuGs in high-end areas.

Duping was an unintentional exploit in one of the best features anet added to GW. They're correcting the problem, and most accounts with duped items have been banned.

Any possible advantage to modding is minimal. People who were competative already roughly knew exactly what the new mods show people. You're not being forced to use a mod, and you don't need to worry about it, since you're a PvE player. Also, mods don't allow you to interrupt or heal better than before.

I have all the skins I possibly want, and that's not what makes me bored of the game. People who use mods have the ability to go above and beyond anything GW has, and that makes some people desire to play even more. Nobody is forcing you to use a mod or stop your mindless grinding. I'd be more concerned that you don't do jack shit with your guild when you log on, not the people having harmless fun.

Most armbraces are gone, and the price of tormented items hasn't changed all that much yet. If you want an ugly, purplish shield, go for it. Modders aren't throwing the tormented skin on other shields, they're just changing its color.

You clearly failed at knowing what GW was originally about. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. I'm sure I could be persuaded to remove you from the roster, if you actually want to quit the game. I'm just glad you don't talk to the guild very often; you're acting like a drama queen. >.>

Assertion w/o evidence = FAIL.

You claim the economy is destroyed, prove it. I've seen no effects whatsoever in any way shape or form regarding the economy and me.

Let's see... accounts with thousands of armbraces --- banned. Thousands out there... nope. Besides, let's say a thousand went to individuals one at a time and these folks don't get banned. So freakin' what? Another thousand in a sea of milltions?

A rollback (which has already be verified by Gaile as NOT going to take place) would harm basically everyone in the game that's played since whenever the rollback would take place. I, for one, would lose about 70 elite captures, give or take. Why should the many have to suffer so the few can believe their Tormented E-peens are worth another 10 ectos?

I predict this thread will get rolled-back long before the game does.

This has been discussed before and the effects are very minimal.

-Placing percentage marks SHOULD be on every client. Its AWESOME. Anet needs to add this in their new update soon.
-The game tells you which skills need interruption. They already have distinct skill icons and activation sounds and effects.
-If you pvp and cant tell a monk from an ele....theres something wrong with you.

No amount of texture editing is gonna make you a good player.

No one is stopping you from doing those things if you feel you need it. Since everyone is equal in the fact that Anet is indifferent to them modding, ITS NOT IMBALANCED.

MACROS or BOTTING SCRIPTS are what are not allowed because of they give you instant reaction and lessen the work required by the player.

This is significantly different from redrawing your armor texture to be a color you cant dye.