Solo, Groups. Casual, Hardcore. Can Anet cater to the best of both worlds?

After reading mutliple threads where people are either complaining that Guild Wars is not elite enough or it's too elite already, I've come to the conclusion that Anet must have reached some kind of balance.

You can't please everyone, however, I think Guild Wars seems to offer something for everyone: Grind for those who want lots of titles, quick missions and quests for those who just have 30 minutes to play, repeatable dungeons for those who have longer, and plenty of ways to obtain armors and weapons for those who care about such things.

IMO, GWEN armor is neither too hard (especially with the recent updates), nor too easy to get.

Wouldn't solve the problem a simple Alt+F4 and relogin would still work :P

Or simply clicking the little "X" in the top right corner of the screen

On Topic: I believe that ANET has really tried to catter to both sides, people are going to complain about anything they can, as long as there is someone to hear, just a fact of life. I thank ANET for giving me 2 FREE years of playing and I will continue until the game gets boring for me, but that will not be for a long time! Then GW2 comes to get me right back into it...hopefully

To the op:
The idea of catering to both the hardcore and casual player is possible but the casual gamer will always want what the hardcore gamers use/have. This is up to the player not the game designer, as the player is given the choice of what they want to do. If you choose to neglect your real life for a virtual 1 be prepared for the real life problems. But the choice is yours to make.....


To those talking about the use of heroes by the antisocial in a social game:

Fact:
Computers are designed to bring information and people together, the irony is that nothing isolates an individual more than a computer. ergo, all computer users are socially lacking in 1 way or another and are antisocial by nature.....

Disclaimer:
(this is a generalization and not a definition per say, every rule will be broken and/or exceptions found)


Reality:
The implementation of 7 heroes is imminent, with the populace being spread further and further. I am not discussing this but stating a fact, that after the release of gw2 the player base in gw1 will be so horribly crippled that it will only be reasonable to implement the 7 heroes request, altho I do not see this happening before it is truly needed, as some people need other real human interaction and feel threatened by those of us that don't want to interact with the general public or have not for many months. This is not saying that I do not interact with other players, I do but only those in my guild as we are all like minded in game play, style and moral standings. I am antisocial, and anti-immature, offensive ,spoiled , spamming, hold my hand I am bored............

Unlike most Online games, Guild Wars's strength is the game is instanced: Each party gets their private copy of their own adventure.

With instancing at your disposal, why even try to cater to multigroups and then ended up not pleasing anyone at the end?
Why not take full advantage of this instancing and let each party customize their own instance according to their own wishes?
- Someone who want to kill time can turn on the cruise mode
- Someone who want to have challenge can turn on the hard mode
- Someone who want to solo can turn on the solo-farming mode
- Someone who want to hardcore can turn on the title grind rep grind mode...

Whatever you like don't force it upon others. Whatever others like don't have it forced it upon you. Why not put instancing to better use.

Very true. And I would add the best option: try a little bit of everything. It's like PvE and PvP, there's probably one you can enjoy, even both! But no one forces you into doing one or the other, still you pay (only once!) and have both!

But as zamial very rightly says, just before your message, it is up to the community to make things like PUGing and groups in general (guilds, forums, etc.) a success. If there's too much "annoyance" (or your personal threshold is very low), you can always turn to GW-solo.

Still, I'm very saddened as a quite casual GW player to read messages about very knowledgeable people who had so many bad experiences that they are stopping to help, or quitting GW altogether. The guild is really the nexus of the social part of GW, and this is still something I'm undecided about as it is difficult to find the "best" option.