Enough is enough.

I'd say that the lack of perspective is also the cause of great trouble. You can compare one campaign or EN in terms of price to buying, say, half life 2 episode 2 (not an accurate comparison but you get the idea). How often is this latter game updated? How often do you get FREE new content for this game? As Vinraith said, Anet is providing an exceptional level of support, given that their business model is nothing like, say, WoW's monthly fees. (Anet could easily go for a different model and make more money, but yet they're sticking to their principles)

I think that the support for GW is so good, that people completely got carried away and forgot how good it is, wanting more all the time, expecting more every day. Of course some people are more PvE, some more PvP, some more role-playing, some more most-titles-best-weapons-most-armors, etc. but in the end we all have potential access to a vast amount of fun stuff with no monthly fee!

no, i compare GW to CS and CS S.

how many times does that get updated? and is it free-to-play?

some people may demand too much yes, but game support is nothing new.

Does it get several Holiday events a year? New significant content each year? What about these monthly updated bringing us new commands (minor features)? In the worst case, it can't be worse than CS(S) right? Anyway, it's pointless to start a comparison, as there are so many sides to it. (not trying to escape the debate here, but I know from experience than the "support for this is better than for that" is not as simple as it seems)

Well the experience of support for MMO is different than for non-MMO. I'm not saying that the nature has changed, simply its expression in the Internet world. It's a bit like spam, spam is nothing new, but the net has transformed it into a new form (even a business).

Online, people are expecting fast response (and sometimes loose the perspective, they become mad or speculate simply because there's no immediate response). In a "free" (as in almost-free, no-monthly-fee) game, people are expecting their point of view to be considered in the hundreds of thousands of voices of players who got the game (for the majority because it was almost-free).

If only people could take an "electronic" deep breath

Indeed, perhaps a quest book for Lightbringer and Sunspear? Code is already in place, just change variables and add to existing NPCs. Whispers informant and maybe princes of vabbi or some such npc.

Yea most points agreed in Concession. I am pretty disgusted with the reskinning of Vanguard armour for a Luxon KNock-off. Someone decided to Half/ass that. Hmm not going to go down well with players and designers alike. Anet should of at least took a look at the Fan/Art forum.

As a employee of one of the biggest International Australian/American Combined companies. I've been able to create graphics and models in very high res. I should at least think the American and Euro counter parts should be able to create something half-decent instead of gettin bored and leavin nothin to the imagination..

Anyway... Whoever said "paragons" are a dyin profession...Well let's see. They have an Elite that lasts for 2seconds....hmm and oh lets see a defensive shout that uses 15nrgy and only lasts for about 9seconds. To addition onto that. I've divised to contact ArenaNet about recent Video and Audio issues. As well as Connectivity and Security Concerns.

So there will be a few more changes yet.
Game's gettin better. Just need Farming to go back to what it used to be, (No monsters runnin away) That was the biggest nerf i've ever seen. So fix that and more people will come back. mmm more server activity...Looks promising.

Okay peace all.

I like the Vanguard armor :] First set in GWEN that I got. Go figure.

Drop that in Sardelac and I'll cheerfully sign it. What'd be really great is if it was tied to the non-main plot quests, thus incentivizing side questing.

Doesn't anybody enjoy a challenge any more, or does everything have to be a mindless loot pinata now?

I'm coming a bit late to the discussion, but I agree wholeheartedly. I remember during WPE-Beta the GW community was very friendly. PUGing was one of the greatest parts of GW. Now its all about finding 1 other person and grabbing 6 heroes and heading out. I also agree with the grind, grind has been discussed a billion times. Anet will not remove grind, they simply wont do it. It's very rare to find a company that will change/remove huge elements of a game that they made. So whats the point of even posting then? Well hopefully they will learn for future products but that probably wont happen. So whats the real reason for posting? There isn't one besides just venting anger.

This game aint got grind, THIS is what a classic grinding game is all about:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/come...rst-mmorpg.php

That was good. I felt sorry for the stickman though.

If only there was time to explain each and everything that went wrong with GW. See this post as a complaint, or see it as it was intended to be, and that is to show what happens when the focus from the game shifts from a to z.

Compliments to Rahja on this great thread... though I must say and I'm certain many people would agree, he mentioned not even half of the problems that actually exist in gw, most likely due to the fact that he only wanted to point out the most important problems (and even that took essay of nearly 2,000 words to write)

I just feel like adding what I think is one of my main concerns. The concern being that really no-one cares about the story of gw anymore. I only started playing gw about 2 weeks after the release of factions, but man, i followed the storyline like i was living it myself. I just couldnt wait for the next cinematic or the next plot twist, because it was awesome. I got goosebumps when Shiro killed Master Togo, as I'm sure many players got goosebumps when they first saw they would have to battle an undead Rurik. It was like watching a movie which lasted hours and hours (horrible voice acting though, but thats not the point ), always exciting and keeping you on your toes. Players werent rushing through the game just so they could get an ammy or access hm, which later came to be the case. Players skipping cut scenes were in the minority.

This game has come to be a one-dimensional grind. Getting max titles and getting rich is really all the game is about now, with the odd 1 or 2 players just going out to have fun, experiencing the game as im sure it was originally intended to be. And truth be told no-one really cares what title you have, youll get an applause from someone every now and then because they dont know all it took was hours and hours of repetitive gameplay from your side.

I remember what a great feeling it was on becoming only a canthan explorer, my first title achieved and it meant something to me. Later achieving canthan protector and gmc was like a gw dream come true, i could now go out and enjoy my life in the world of cantha and tyria. Now when i get a max title i smile briefly then continue to the next repetitive action needed to complete something utterly worthless. I now use my character wearing either no title or 'Slayer of All' since it sounds really awesome .

My other main concern is the attribute and interchangeable 2ndary profession system, where after an update you could change ur 2ndary prof within a second with a click of a button, which is where cookie-cutting came in place, which was probably the worst and most annoying thing ever, second only to loot scaling. There is now absolutely no strategizing according to what the players builds are focused on, before a mission or a difficult quest (which hardly ever happens due to many reasons including players never playing together anymore). Though this cookie-cutting subject can be explained to death, i will not since anyone who knows anything, knows what a major mess-up it is.

I assume by this time you have figured out the point im making, if not, this is it...

This is no longer a rpg based on dedication (and by dedication i dont mean endless grinding) and skill, its a grinding bore-fest with hardly any worth as an Role-playing game

I didn't read every single post but I got the jist of them as well as the OP's meaning. But, what everyone has to realize is that even as the old leave a new generation of players that enjoy grind and other things about GW since Nightfall will take their places. The overall market shows that GRIND is popular. The non-grinders had their game for awhile, but, Anet/NCsoft is moving in the direction to bring in more of the grind type players and those that enjoy the carrot in front of their faces, only this time without a monthly fee. There's more MONEY in the grind mmo/mmorpg and that's where these people who are building the game and those that have stock in the game want it to go. Without totally making it into a WoW or EQ or the rest. There's still going to be simple fun in GW2 I have no doubt, but, there's also going to be more of what you've seen in Nightfall and now GWEN I have no doubt. With the mention of higher levels and perhaps no cap at all, well you just have to accept it's not going to be like GW1. Even if the vets don't buy into GW2, others will to replace them. This has been this way for a long time now, out with the old and in with the new. You either accept it or move on these people are in the business to make money not care about every tom richard or harry and their whinning because of it. There's not enough of you to make that much difference.

For me guild wars WAS a tactical MMO that I NEEDED tactics to survive such as different skill combinations but now that almost everything is nerfed I don't feel that same kind of tactical needs. When nightfall came out I tought that not that little grind can hurt the game but then when the freaking hard mode came out I just realized that this is where the grinding starts. I all so DID like to farm but I just don't feel like farming anymoe cause of loot scaling. So yes the doomsday of guild wars IS NEAR!

So what you're saying is, the game is now suddenly worthless crap because we ourselves started playing it differently? Uhh... sure.

Unfortunately, thats only half of it. ANet changed a few things, we start 'playing differently' (as Gli stated it), Anet changed a few other things to adapt to our new 'style'... repeat

Now what we have is no longer an rpg, it's an endless cycle of repetitive actions with absolutely no value or meaning except pleasing ourselves thinking that other people care.

Im not saying this game isnt fun anymore, its just not a proper rpg anymore as it was meant to be.

I was quite moved by your first post here, and must admit it made a stonger point that the one before on this thread. But here I have to say that I disagree, you can still enjoy GW:EN as an rpg, even if leavind the grind means you won't have access to everything. I found the 3-arcs story of GW:EN very entertaining, from a purely RPG point of view (btw, having played real-life RPGs, I know how different they can be, meaning that they can be VERY different even if they share the "love of the story"). I was surprised last week on the way to a quest to discover by surprise Killroooooyyyyyyyyyy .

I can easily imagine how the game has changed for you (which makes me regret I wasn't in an RPG guild or haven't PUGed enough with "right" guys), but sometimes one keep too melancholic and I sometimes feel that the old players (I mean that in the most respectable sense) strongly reject that Anet introduced a new element to the game. A bit like saying "this game has stopped being pure, we want our game back". Honestly, I'd personaly support your opinion, GW is at its best when the story is helped by the game mechanics. But I also see from my experience that if you forget about the part of the game that is about grind, the game still has a lot to show. The art is still truly amazing (I'm so much looking forward to the bonus pack for that matter), there's a story tying a lot of stuff in the GW universe (though it seems short).

CS was a mod. The game was good to begin with, most FPS games get updates to just get rid of a few bugs. The game doesn't promise updates. I think GW does.

Only thing CS needs now is cheat protection, as for CS: S. Eh, it was buggy as hell but cs: s pro-mod is coming out.

Ok so after some time to think, and recent updates I have seriously reversed my opinion on this.

Now you can complete the game normally (EotN) and will be given a full hero hand book which can be traded for 20,000 points which will get you any armour you want. No more grind needed. Awesome and a great update on Anets behalf.

As for armour, yeah OK so there are reskins. But look at some of them; they are awesome. I spend alot of time scoffing at warrior armour reskins because yes, they are all undoubtedly pathetic (bar Silver Eagle) but all the others are pretty awesome. Norn in particular is a very well done reskin (in some cases, almost impossible to find the original) and time and effort at least has been put in.

I am starting to get sick of whiners. Anet have removed the NEED to grind, and yet people continue to complain about "We have to grind to get the armour we don't even like". Why not just go play something ELSE if you're sick of it? I'm sure WoW has less of a grind getting to level 80 :}

If you want a Phoenix, yes you have to grind titles. But as Gaile said, "if everyone had one, it wouldn't be special" (although she was referring to Ferrari's and Diamonds if I remember correctly).

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

Norn is not a reskin, it just looks very similar to Ascalon armor.

People say the same with Silver Eagle, but it too has a similar shape to Luxon Warrior armor.

I do realize that the essense of GW appears to be lost. I miss the days of PUGs actually being an option. In fact, my opinion is that Heroes severely messed up the whole concept of grouping. The fact that you can get a hero that can exceed the abilites of some players, then get lots of them seemed to ruin the game for me. Because my favourite thing to do was get into a PUG, pwn/get pwned, and meet some nice people who I could know and become friends with. Now, everyone just loads up their select heroes, fills it in with Henchies (...and don't take this quite the same way, I like the improved henchies) and goes off and masters all the missions. It just isn't a, well, GROUP game anymore. In fact, it's starting to feel like WoW (which I quit so I could play more GW).

Heroes definitely killed a lot of GW socializing, but not having heroes ressulted in bottleneck missions where you'd get stuck for a long time until you'd find a decent PUG, and the near impossibility of playing through campaigns as certain professions (mesmers and sins, I'm looking at you) because no one would take you in their PUG. In the end, I'll reluctantly take the reduced socializing in exchange for having a way around the bottlenecks and bad PUGs (I will go through my monitor at the next incident of radar pictures).

And I do get in decent PUGs from time to time, even if overall PUGs are harder to find. Plus, heroes are just more fun, allowing you to assure the right synergies in your team build, etc. I agree about the title grind criticism, but I think heroes is one area where you have to cut anet slack, because something had to be done about PUG dependence IMO.

Fact: I used to play almost purely with hench in Prophecies and factions. Exept in missions, in wich i always pugged.

Ever since NF, i do quests and exploring with heroes and hench, but i still pug in the missions IF a party is available.

So basically, i still play exactly the same as before, only now i can customize my party more wich is great.

If you want to do everything with players, the solution of your problem is finding a guild wich shares your interest. That is maybe the biggest flaw of GW: Finding a guild you like takes a lot of time and talking.

Really, all these complaints have so little merit. All that was added to the game was more freedom, and less forcing.

Freedom = good

Yup. There are always going to be people, though, that want others to be forced to play with them. They're a minority, but a profoundly vocal one.

Actually, it's not just limited to that. They also include skill balances, and fixing broken things outside the scope of skills or faults in coding, or exploitable mechanics in tournaments and maintaining the playerbase for their game. Their "cut-and-run" attitude isn't winning them any new fans, I can assure you that. Remedial support for the existing game, dev resources to the future project just makes the community feel unimportant.

Oh yay, more blanket statements about the "community" and new fans.

I'd be happy if the PvE-only skills reached their cap in effectiveness at Rank 6 (Rank 6 would make the most sense, seeing as you "unlock" access to things in numerical Rank order; Rank 3 = Consumables, Rank 4 = Weaponsmith, Rank 5 = Armor, and adding a new Rank 6 = Max Skill Effectiveness) but still let players grind up to Rank 10 for a max title contributing towards KoaBD.
I'm not trying to make it easy-mode for everyone, I just don't like the idea of having to grind each title to 10 for all 8 of my characters. Requiring only Rank 6 to use these skills to their highest effectiveness would make it more reasonable to play multiple characters and classes. Lets face it, bringing a low-level Title-based skill with the current system is like running a Fire Elementalist with only 8 points into Fire Magic. Didn't need to grind skill points to get the most out of our skills, why are we forced to grind titles to get the most out of other skills?

Yeh, but even r10 isn't hard to get now. The books really alleviated a TON of issues. Seriously, I turned in a finished NM heroes handbook and an incomplete NM dungeon book, took me from r3 vanguard to r6... Granted r10 is quite a bit more, but if you were r0 norn with NO points, and you turned in 2 HM dungeon books to the Norn guy, you would be auto r10... and you get all those nice rewards for doing the dungeons. The books are a blessing, and I am extremely happy with the update, so much so that I decided to try for a complete HoM on my monk now. This is going to take awhile....

It still takes a LOT of time to get a maxed HoM for eight characters, but if you think back to the old school GW, you can see that you were supposed to have just one roleplaying character anyway. The rest of your slots were for PvP. It wasn't actually said by Anet, but you could feel it wile reading between the lines in the manual.

I wasn't referring to the Warrior one I was referring to as a WHOLE, the Norn armor. The Dervish is based off a mix; Mila and I found it (since she has every Derv set to play with)

Rahja the Thief, everything you said in your first post is exactly how i feel about the game right now thank you for expressing it!

I do agree with the OP with regard to the introduction of grind and the deterioration of PUG's, grinding shoudl never have been introduced, but in that sense most titles should never have been introduced, due to them being purely based on grinding something.

They are a nice reward for those that did do them beforehand. I myself was uncovering all the map before the cartographer title came out, and love having legendary cartograper for continuing to do it. However, with the introduction of the HoM these titles seem necessary to grind in order to achieve more benfits, and some titles are essential to gameplay, Kurzick/Luxon, Sunspear, Lightbringer, and all the Reputation ones.

Heroes destroyed what was left of the PUG, though they declined as chapters came out

I still enjoy playing, as i love the game, and while i go out with my parter and our 6 heroes in most areas i do enjoy that, I wonder how I am meant to do any mission or area that is hard without a decent PUG. Being a mesmer when i started I couldn't get a decent PUG before the introduction of Factions, and certainly can't now with heroes available. heroes are a blessign and a curse, for me it allows me to play in areas i would have found nigh on impossible, but it alos limits the ability to play them, Heroes don;t work as well as real players, they dont talk or have fun with you. This is a MMO, not a single player game. However I seem to be stuck now playign it alone or with my partner.

Its fun, but not as fun as it should be

this is probably my 8th post saying this in various threads because this topic has been beaten to death but....

titles are optional! the spiffy expensive armor is optional! stop whining that you have to grind to get them! YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET ANY OF IT!!!!

Well, Rank 6 to Rank 10 is four times more points.
Not quite, you'd still need 40,000 more points (equal to one NM Dungeon Master Guide) but still, completing every Dungeon 8 times on HM and 4 times on NM still seems like a lot of work for one character. I agree the books are a blessing, but still, reducing the requirement for max effectiveness (even if it was Rank 8) would alleviate the stress of trying to keep 8 characters at their highest abilities.
Haha, no. Three slots for PvP when you can quickly re-roll? And now its even easier to reroll a PvP character. I don't think anyone has three characters dedicated to PvP, unless they are using them for mules possibly.
And this is probably the umpteenth post saying the whole game is optional! You have to have these PvE-linked skill titles maxed, or its like playing a Pure Axe Warrior with only 8 Axe Mastery and 8 Strength when everyone else has 13 Axe and 13 Strength simply because they spent 20 hours repeating the same quests. That rewards Time>Skill, which the game wasn't based on.

One must understand the reasons why it was important for A.Net to introduce heroes in the first place. I mean I joined the Guild Wars universe about 1.5 years after Proph was released and to be honest it was a real problem even finding pUGs let alone joining one.
I could not get any players to join me since I started out with the easiest class to play with i.e. a warrior.
Now I believe the reason for this was that as the expansions increased the outposts and towns increased and the number of people started spreading out more and more. Now since they wanted to prevent people running to the higher level areas they have to give some options to the lower level players to counter the areas where they start off without other players helping them.
So I don't really believe its Anets falut. The way they have designed this game i.e completely instanced areas causes people to split up and hence the anti-social element to it.
I know that I was attracted to this game by the free play and Anet tells me their design decisions were keeping that fact in mind.
Also I believe the majority of people are casual in nature and thus have incompatible schedules at least in my guild.I think blaming ANet for the consumers i.e the peoples choices is a bit unfair.
I will however give you that Gw:EN is not everything it could have been. I for one am really really disappointed the way they recycled the dungeon maps making it modular and just joining seemingly random pieces together and everyone agrees the HoM just plain sucks.
I however see the changes you talk about and I really think they will try to correct the mistakes of making too many instanced areas(i think they already will) and fix some other problems but lets be honest for people who want to play all the time they have to give some time chewers and ANets version is titles and I dont blame those people expecting some kind of game changing reward for the work they put in. There will be a balance and I dont think its possible to get just one or the other however way a group might want.

Do you find repeating tiresome schoolyard level arguments rewarding?

In case you're slow on the uptake, I will explain - it was the point where our "options" became bound together that some of us became rather annoyed.

I can't go for armour, without going for a title - FACT, even after the update.

And this optional rubbish could have applied during some rather unpleasent times in human history - don't like the back? Well you don't have ride the bus.

I like that the OP is now refuting his own first post, thanks to the book update, yet somehow everyone is still whining.

And what exactly are you being discriminated for here? Regardless of the fact that it's easy to get the armor, you still find your complaint valid? All I'm hearing is "Woe is me, there's a TITLE attached even though I'm gaining it as I play through all the primary missions!"

Maybe I am slow on the uptake myself, as you're rather willing to throw out, but I'd love to understand your stance. Unfortunately however, it's rather beyond me at this point.

Not true - you don't get the rank "as you play", you get it afterwards. Please explain to me what you think the point in making all armours accessible at the end of the *final* part of GW1 is? Armours in GW:EN purely for HoM display?

Woah there, I never set "get the rank as you play." I wrote, "I'm gaining it as I play [...]", which is quite the difference.

Did you complain just as hard about the Nightfall endgame armor? Clearly it had no purpose once that campaign was finished until something new came along. What do you do once you finish a campaign, anyway? I'm pretty sure you don't throw GW into a dark corner of your computer and forget about it - you continue playing, keeping yourself busy with this and that as you see fit. Why can't people have some new armor sets to keep themselves busy in?