Enough is enough.

Thing is ... title were shifted from being reward to being achievement.

Its like:

Goal: Explore Tyria
Reward: Title

to

Goal: Grind reputation titles
Reward: Some imba power.

while correct and "in spirit of GW" would be:

Goal: ?
Reward: Reputation title.

The playerbase has changed. It changed from casual adults with a job to no-life kids, students, unemployed, housewives. With lot of time but no money (thus why they play GW instead of WoW: low cost MMORPG).
They are pleasing their playerbase.
Thus they enhance and reward grind. At least for PVE.

Good natured people don't usually have to think twice about what they have to say if they're good natured.

That made me laugh so damn hard I almost spit up my drink. You're taking a simple comparison of a game far too radical/dramatic here. I get what you're trying to say, but LOL.

Now you shoot yourself in the foot really bad here. Final Fantasy is indeed a niche RPG franchise but they have changed it in some iterations, the entire foundation of the series, to a more severe extent then you seem to claim Guild Wars has done. You even acknowledge this, but claim the "core" of the series has remained the same. The catch-22 is the exact same thing can be said about Guild Wars.

Guild Wars has changed relatively little from it's beginnings. You cite titles as the ruin of the game, but titles from their conception in Factions were never required for anything. They've always been optional. Titles serve no purpose in EoTN other then getting optional title blessings, elite armor, unique weapon skins, PVE only skills, and consumables. None of these things are needed for anything other then self-gratification or further ease of the PVE side of the game exclusively.

This applies not only to EoTN, but to the entire game. You're free to partake in a grind-free game, anytime you sit down to grind for a title for any reason is of your own desire alone for one of the stated optionals that certain titles bring with them. Not any single thing tied to a title is necessary to progress through the game or is needed to beat the game. I just want to add though that the main titles in EoTN especially are stupid easy to get, and you can achieve rank 5 in a day of casual playing. But it's entirely optional what you pursue in Guild Wars, and if you want a grind-free game that option has always been there from the beginning and it's never went away.

Honestly when GW2 comes around the trinkets that GW2 characters can inherit from GW1, if GW1 is any indication of the kind of balance that will be used, won't be anything more then a pretty version of something you can get in the game without a HoM. I do believe that's been said somewhere.

Really though the OP astounds me with their great disdain of the /report system, yet makes really insightful and thought out opinions on the anti-social c-type personalities that linger about. You can't tell people in any format to be good without there being a consequence to doing bad. The community isn't dead, but there are these people who do ruin it for some. There are a bit of them too, but that's the burden that a no monthly fee game carries. The community has to look at itself and it is to blame, that much I agree with you on. Some people are real pricks. Now with the /report system the community can probably fix itself. The results in PVP, AB, and CM were staggering. It's a couple years late, but welcome none the less.

Now you can report the racist/sexist/ect pig sounding off in all chat, the clever fella who got rape, incest, and infant death into their character name and all the ever-loving bots that plague certain areas of the game. To name a few. This isn't a bad thing and with the few bad apples who will abuse it, many more will use it for the benefit of the community. Quite frankly I don't give a damn if Nervous Jim is going through pre-depression anxiety over being reported in game. There's a right way to act in a social setting and a wrong way. A /report happy 12 year old is just as likely to report Nervous Jim 50 times as he is me, so Jim needs to get over himself. Have a little confidence. Let's see what happens first.

PVP on an equal footing still doesn't require any grind.
But i never cared about grinding, the only thing that got me into this game was the no fees aspect. That i could only be level 20 was a bit of a dissapointment initially, but it's not a big deal.

They better leave out the level cap in GW2 or i get bored.

Huge wall of text, let me summarize some of the things that I personally feel felt wrong - they might get lost in your very long posting.

1. Titles
Not a bad thing per se, it now encourages a title grind style of play. Why: Titles are now connected to the effectiviness of skills. Even if some scale very flat. It also encourages focus on one char only. The solution would be more account-based titles, which is a good idea for GW2 if they REALLY want to keep this system. This criticism can be expanded to the char-based Hall of Monuments.

2. PvE skills
I wanted them initially. Some were very nice additions, I like Necrosis for Necros e.g.. But now we have a slew of skills that are either imbalanced or useless. PvE needs balance, too. Solution: More specialized PvE skills like Light of Deldrimor and less cross- profession skills like in EOTN - and less PvE skills in general. This also applies to PvP. Quality > Quantity. Better a few meaningful than a lot of weak and a few imba skills.

3. Consumables
Your personal cheat button to compensate for mistakes and bad builds. Essence of Celerity make IAS stances superfluos, Powerstones DP a liability and HARD MODE infinitely easier, you will never DP out. Solution: NO consumables in Hard Mode! They should not even exist for EZ/normal mode IMO.

4. Heroes
Curse and Blessing at the same time. I like the restriction to 3 heroes. There needs to be a little incentive to group with other players, GW already has a low level of social interaction due to the instanced nature.

5. Wurms, Devourers and similar "mounts"
They need to add anti-tank mines and bazookas if they introduce stuff like that. Sorry, being able to get an unlimited number of Devourers makes Sacnoth boring easy and causes degenerate gameplay. Same for Wurms. These concepts are cool, but need a lot of tweaking!

6. Community/Social behavior ingame
GW always had a touch of a single player game. The instanced nature is to blame. Then everyone can play GW. No fee, parents not seeing monthly fees cannot keep their children in check, big drama. Solution: Maybe the larger instances of GW2 will solve this. Also, the report feature might become useful after some tweaking, at the moment I fear a slew of reports that might be too much for the support to check properly.

Wow! What an incredibly astute post!

I knew something had changed, but I could not put it into words. Your post has put it into words for me.

Probably the best example of this was Tyrian Grand Master Cartographer. Even before titles came to be, I enjoyed exploring. When the title was introduced, I was suprised to see that I had only uncovered about 86%. Having the title tell me what % I still needed to do was great. I doubt that I would have found all the missing areas without it. However, my aim was to explore Tyria fully and getting the title was because I explored it, - if that makes any sense.

Now, as you say, the PVE buffs are given because you grind the titles. This is totally a reverse of the original situation.

Thanks again for the post.

Rahja, please take this as a friendly word of advice, but I think you're due for a vacation from Guild Wars. I think you are overthinking it. You probably feel the community's lack of cohesion more than most, given your penchant for organizing events, but it's still only a video game.

[QUOTE=sindex]

Take for instance what happened after Nightfall came out; one of the developers (interview^1) talked about how everyone actually loved the new title grind and PvE only skills. However we as a community talked about it time and time again, how we despised the grind but did enjoy the PvE only skills. The community begged and pleaded on these forums not to pull the same stunt again in EotN, for that was the majorities fear.

QUOTE]

It is always amusing to read posts like this. When I compare this site and GWO they are pretty much the same in attitude. And, fgor some reason they think they speak for "most" of the GW community when in reality put together they are less than 1% of the community. When I compare them to the forums for my guild and alliance they are as different as night and day. For some reason things are a lot more negative here??? I guess it has just gravitated to where a certain type of player are drawn to each other???
Hmmm? That's scary!! What am I doing here....

No, he said that the grind for the real, performance influencing effects of the skills tied to the titles goes against the original vision that GW was built on. We saw the shades of things to come when the PUGS first called for "LB rank 5 or higher only" when entering the endgame realms of NF.

Until they tied the effectiveness of new (PvE only) skills to them.

Precisely - skills. And here is where Rahja says the essence of the vision to be an MMO where it is "grind free to play effectively" has gone off-track.

GW is about "self-gratification", so is every other game on the market - whether it is about the self-gratification of working through the story line for the self-gratification of finishing a leisure task, or about the self-gratification of gaining shiny baubles for your virtual character, or the self-gratification of doing something with online friends. So this argument, which is used to counter any and all complaints about GW, is actually spurious to the discussion at hand.

mmmmm, do I hear the hint of a PvP player who has no time for the "boring, easy" PvE side of the game.

Please... add the rider "FOR ME" to that and then you are at least trying to be impartial in your views.

I agree on most of the other things you mentioned, by the way

Fight Well
Friday

QFT. I think it is hard for them to grasp that their standard reply of "PvE players are not in competition" is wrong.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

QFT.

I know what you're saying Rah, but I still find the game fun. Like Macabre, I play with my partner most of the time and as long as we're having a great time on it, I dont see anything wrong with the game.

I'm not saying that you're wrong though. If they buff up the factions reward for the side quests from a crappy 100 points here and there, to 1000-2000k that would make the side quest worth doing. The skills and sometime green items reward is already a great idea. But if the the faction rewards are better people would only need to do all of the quests to get to R5. 70 points for Charr's battle plan mission is a joke.

As for the communities, let face it, it's getting worst all the time. Most of the old players are just staying in the close circle of guilds and alliances, again I don't see anything wrong with that.

Blunt but it's a very valid point. Take a break, Rahja. Drink some beers, take your girl out for some sushi, play halo 3 and watch Heroes series 2.

I have to agree about the titles.

I'm made to feel inferior for not adhering to this 'personal grading system' which is not so much a reflection of personal strengths. Titles like the skill hunter, cartographer and vanquisher are more indicative of your time spent playing than skill. Furthermore, if you're a warrior, the skill hunter title encourages you to cap Spell Breaker and Ether Prism and if you're a monk they want you to cap Devastating Hammer. Most titles are extreme gold-sinks which we feel obliged to carry-out otherwise we'll be deemed inferior players - they must have a good psychologist in their offices.

During Prophecies, earning that feeling of completion was a goal that is difficult to achieve although still attainable. It was possible to complete the game, buy fancy armour sets and farma a deer, wolf or tiger if you felt the need to but now there are so many titles that do require grind (and there's no arguing against that) which undermines the fundamentals of the Prophecies at the time of release. I do feel somewhat cheated about that.

Guys...the grind is there yes, but you do not need to do it.

The rewards you get for topping out those titles are negligible, you do not need those rewards to play and be successful at the game. It is completely optional.

Didn't get the rainbow phoenix? It's meant to be a reward for people who attained a certain level. It's the same thing as FOW armor, it is a lot of work to obtain, should this also not be in the game because it's a punishment against people who don't want to work that hard for armor? Again, you don't need either thing to be successful at this game.

Rank 5 to get armor? Do you think that all armor should be available to you on the character creation page?

The good old days? When rangers were routinely shunned, when MM's were unwanted, when you'd be stuck for weeks at missions because henchies and Pugs just couldn't handle it. Where the holy trinity (Wammo/Monk/Ele) was deemed the "ONLY" professions worth playing. The good old days weren't always good, people tend to forget the bad things and just remember the good.

The game has held your attention for 2+years, is it really fair to expect it to hold your attention indefinately?

Anet never lied to us. The no grind you all refer to is about leveling your character. You do not need to grind to get to the highest level in the game. You do not need to grind to get a max weapon or max armor, there are collectors you can go to, there are drops you can use. Max armor can be purchased for less than 10k with zero grind.

Anet has always said they want you to play the way you want to, and it is not a game that you need to constantly play to be good at. You can leave for awhile, then come back and not really have lost anything.

Not really seeing the lies here...you still see em? Point em out, lets discuss...

I have to say that after reading all this i must say HUMMM....


I have played GW since it launched i have played alot (maintaned a job lol) have alot of titles maxed out, i never pvp just dont like it at all , but i do like the grind of working towards a title for myself nothing more. I play this game for me my money , my grind lol.


As far as needing norn points and which ever yea you need them but if you just play the game through then your level 2-3 on all areas and there isnt much a of a diff in skill level with those points Anet did a great job there i must say. But anything after that is totaly optional and yes it is a grind but that is the fun in it (to me atleast) except for all the purps i keep getting lol

Welcome to my world. I really only have the time to play as my Ranger, because she is the most developed character. As it stands I don't plan to bring any other character to EotN due to it being so annoying doing title grind over and over again.

How anyone has more then 1 character I'll never know. Besides my Ranger I sometimes rarely use my Pre-Searing Mesmer character. That is about it.

Title grind is a joke, and its not just EotN...:

• Sunspear
• Lightbringer
• Luxon/Kurzick Friend Title (10 million the max! what are they thinking???)
• 3 Race titles of EotN

And since all the above titles are character base, I just see no reason to focus on other anyothers.

Most my other PvE characters have been reduced to mules for my Ranger... its a shame really.

Personaly I think the Veteran players are as divided on these issues as the new players are.

Time spent playing has always been a factor in determining what skills you had availible for your chars and how much info you had on monsters/misson/map locations.

Skill is still the determining factor in completeing the storyline and in PvP.

The time spent aspect is related to what players who have already completed the storyline are able to do with there max lvl 20 chars. Rather then just force players to redo what they have already done, with no rewards, they have added a reward for doing things more than once. Explore and get a title, clear a map for vanquished title and/or reputation points.

As for the PvE skills, they are rewared in quests/dungeons that also reward points for there title line. When you aquire most all of the PvE skills they are effective, right whenyou get them at any lvl of the title. The fact that they become stronger as you progress is just a fantastic reward for completing quests/dungeons.

Imagine a war skill that dealt +1 dmg for every 5 foes defeated on a map, would you complain that it forced you to kill more to improve the effectiveness of the skill or that you were being rewarded as you progressed doing what you needed to do anyway.

rahja, excellent post man. you have summed up exactly how this game has been falling and falling since the release of prophecies. They effectively split up the community in factions, and even made more so with heros. Prophecies as a BAD ASS game. Perfect content, astounding graphics, the works. Hell, you couldnt even have 8 man parties until near the end!

Then they started to nerf all the things people did for fun that had already beaten the game. They nerfed the first 105 monk build. Sure, it probably hurt the botters more than any, but alot of people did this for fun. They then nerfed Griffon farming. Ok, another stab in the back. But the nerfs just kept coming and kept coming, and made it unfun to do stuff after you beat the game. I have done what I can with the current system. I don't have the patience for doing HM with heros and henchies...I have cleared a few zones, but it quickly became unfun to see my team reach -60. Its just not fun.

Halloween, while I am looking forward to it (BIG TIME!!), I know it will be disappointing. I remember the first Halloween, and how fun it was with the new surroundings, the quests, the candy corn henchies! But then the 2nd year just had the same surroundings.....wow. Couldnt even design a new moon face eh? So this year, I am sure everything will be the same.

Anet, if you could, please just roll the game back to the beginning of prophecies. Your players were actually happy because you stood by your principle: Play how you want, when you want.

This isn't the fault of the people who made the games grind completely optional, but the community who is demanding this of you. This is like demanding a rank 9 party to take you as a no-rank in HA. Just won't happen. A friends list or a guild is usually the answer, but it's a community issue who is unaccepting of anyone they deem inexperienced and many PUGS or strangers in general won't take the time to show you the ropes. Many will tell you so. In mean ways. </3 community? I agreed with him on this point. :P

By the way, the end game NF areas went from easy to stupid easy in normal mode these days. Give them a try. They don't even have enviroment effects anymore.

You're missing my point entirely. PVE skills are a nice little addition; not needed. You can go on without them. You don't need fancy armor, or fancy weapons to win at this game. If you want these things, you do the grind for them. You can't have your cake and pie and eat it. No ones forcing this method on anyone (save for maybe other players..), it's merely an option. People strongly against grind can choose the no grind plan. If you don't want to grind for fancy armor, then don't. You are not at any disadvantage if you do not do so, as someone said... PVE isn't a competition. Right?

Self-gratification doesn't mean elite armors, fancy weapons, and PVE skills to some people. Some people think getting their set of 1.5K armor is gratifying, or pwning that noob heroway team in HA is self-satisfying. It's a question of personal preference, but it's subjective to whoever you ask. But yeah.. thanks for pointing out that all games do that to an extent. I kind of figured. That's wasn't my point though.

To the OP: Well stated. I agree with the points you made also.

I've played guild wars since they had the first demo at E3 long ago. I played in the betas and got each new preorder and campaign as soon as it was available. There are many things I still love about the game; the scenery, the quests, the humor, and much else.

Unfortunately, the game as it is now encourages people to play alone, develop one character, or at the most two, and achieve titles. If that appeals to you, great, you are happy. If it doesn't too bad, cause that's just the way it is.

I used to play on several characters regularly. I stopped and now only play on my ranger. Why? Too many titles are character based. I don't want to do the grind or in some cases spend the money to get the titles on all my characters. With each campaign I stopped playing a couple of characters. Now I only have one that’s been thru everything. The end result of that is, I've lost most of my interest in playing. I like variety, playing only one profession all the time is boring to me. So I'm playing less. Where I used to just switch to another character and continue playing, now I just go play another game.

I'm sure the titles were to reward people for what they achieved. Unfortunately, for most it’s more of a task that has become irksome.

And the community, yeah. I leave local chat off. I don't like the unfriendliness, the put downs, the arrogance, the just plain meanness that is around so much. There are really nice people out there playing still, they just keep to themselves avoiding the ugliness around them as best they can.
It just encourages you to become more and more isolated. It definitely isn't community building.

Well thought out and well written post. I remember when it was fun to create different characters and just "have fun". Now, it's better just to have one character and acquire titles on them almost exclusively.

I agree with most of your post especially this part
"Guild Wars players are, in general, the least helpful and most reserved online gaming community"
There are still helpful people in Guild Wars you just have to search for them
but they are there in the shadows now but not as many as there once were.

Event's that you yourself hosted bring them out.

I disagree about needing the pve only skills or having to rely on consumables. I went through Eotn with either pug or Hero/hench, or with guildmates and my skill bar / majority of the skill bar was with pve (pvp legal skills). I see consumables as anets way "speeding" harder area's up.

I do agree that titles did introduce optional grind. Eotn is not meant to be a chapter, or campaign. It's a stuff to do while we wait for 2 years without any new content. That is the reason I feel they have the "grind" feel to it. The Norn/Asura/Dwarf/Ebonguard armor are all "prestige" armor.

I do agree about the community, I think the experiment to the report command is in response to this. I also think that hero's do more good then harm. I admit, I can hero/hench just about all 3 games now. The problem is before hero/hench there were already zones that you could not find enough players to get a pug at certain times, and it was just getting worse.

I do admit how Hall of Monuments and unlocks have made me focus on a single character only. But at the same time, doing HM Vanquisher/mapping (something I've never really done before) has proven to be very rewarding.

yea, I remember more ppl PUG than hench a mission in faction. For example, 5 districts of Raisu Palace.

hehe... LethalHands - I think we are saying the same thing in two different versions...

When it comes to "TEH COMMUNITY"... just -.-

And, yes, I suppose I should re-visit the end-game NF areas, but after having to struggle through it pre-NM-nerf with H&H, hating the LB point grind imposed by said "community", hating the snotty PUGS there, having to wait for Guildies to get there.... I just haven't bothered since.

On a side note:
GW is supposed to be a fun leisure activity, and when I find myself frustrated and angry - I give it a break... It's not keeping the roof over my head, it's not keeping food on the table, it's not a matter of real life and death, it's "supposed" to be "escapism". Which, if you are not out supporting yourself and still have your folks looking after your worldly needs, will mean nothing to you. Thats the part of "TEH COMMUNITY" that tries to impose it's elitism on the other part that play GW for what it was originally intended to be.

Meh, whatever...

And ,No, I was not referring to you LethalHands in the above paragraph

Fight Well
Friday

I agree....with most of your post. I simply think we were all conned into buying the expansion when all of us really didn't need to (yet). The hype that was out there for the expansion was so high that it seemed awesome. The ranks for the most part were ok if you beat the game, did a couple dungeons, THEN started farming, but the impatient self that I am, I took roughly 8 hours to farm the vanguard points I needed (before I beat the game). However, near the end, I noticed I was already r3 in norn, asura, and dwarven. Not saying that I don't need to do grind, but not as much as vanguard. As I said, the hype for GWEN (and essentially GW2) was overstated. I almost rather that they released GWEN later if it meant better content. It is this hype that I am wary about GW2, but lucky for us there will be a free beta to test it out.

Woah woah, hold up.

I've got 3 sets of FoW, and I farmed UW day in and day out for all of them, My account has 13,000 hours... most afk, but none the less. I am entitled my right to feel this way by all means, I have the legendary skill hunter title too (sure its not great but it took a lot of effort from me, so i like it).

I dunno. There's all these titles and items you can get, but their effect is negligible and their cost in terms of time and money is huge, SO I JUST DON'T GET THEM.

In the interests of giving everyone something to do, GW has been made a little too big for one person to do everything. The vast majority of players - the casual ones that don't post on forums - are pretty happy with that. They don't expect to be able to do everything. Those of us who play extensively, on the other hand, eventually run out of activities designed in the original spirit of the game, and face an unrelieved grindfest in all directions.

We have a few options at this point. The first is to grind for things we don't really want. The second is to make new characters with drastically different playstyles and experience the game anew. The third is to join an active guild and play only to help other players. The fourth is to get into PvP, accepting that you're going to suck big time until you learn the ropes. The fifth . . . is to decide that you've pretty much done all you want to do in GW, and move on to something else.

I've cycled through these options 3 times: once when I got into GW just as Factions came out, once when Nightfall came out, and now again. I'm still in the "new characters" phase for EotN. (I should admit I've never stuck around in PvP long enough to be any good.)

EDIT: I forgot to add one other option - grinding for a few things we do really want. I am damn proud of my monk's Vabbian armor and Guardian of Tyria title. It might be nice to have Legendary Guardian and FoW armor with spectacles and chaos gloves, but for me the lure is not strong enough to face the hours required.

Totally brilliant post and replies to this thread and not one response from the ANET PR crew, says it all really.

Aye GW has changed since the first chapter and not for the better, to much grinding and to many nerfs have taken the fun out of the game, they (anet) want balance, errrrr fun=balance in my books.

No doubt like managers at any place of work they won't listen and they'll eventually burn.

Best post so far imo. gg

The OP has many good points, and I agree with most of what he said. To be honest, the problem appears to be the game engine itself.

Originally, Guild Wars was designed to merge PvE players into the PvP community. This makes sense if you think about it, because if you think about it, the problem is the end-game content. There were a lot of players that asked, "Where do we go from here?"

If you think about it, if you have an extremely low-level cap, a handful of useful elite skills per profession, and more-or-less easy to obtain max armor and max damage weapons, then it makes you wonder just how do you define any achievement in a RPG. I don't think that World of Warcraft would be the same game if everybody could be Level 60 in only a few weeks, and getting Tier 5 armor only required you to go into a town and buying it for a ton of money.

The hope was that PvEers would just migrate into PvP and start playing in the competitive environment where nobody has a clear advantage from the get-go is extremely important. But it turned out the community went in the other direction and people that liked the PvE elements rarely wanted to do the PvP portions. Guild Wars: Factions, if you really look at the history of it, was a not-so-subtle method of trying to get PvEers into PvP by implementing casual PvP arenas like Fort Aspenwood, The Jade Quarry, and Alliance Battle. They even put in quests to basically escort you directly to several of those areas, and they made Faction have all kinds of effects for PvE play. Still, it didn't quite encourage PvE players to get into PvP as people had hoped. If anything, it sort of annoyed a lot of people.

Originally, Prophecies let you get a ton of money but you had almost nothing to buy. As a result, the "end-game" turned into hoarding rare and expensive armors and collecting weapons with rare skins. ANet picked up on this and they quickly turned a lot of the game into a serious farming game as a result. Titles just came afterwards and it was a huge success: People didn't really care that the titles didn't mean anything (at least, at first they didn't), but the idea that they somehow implied achievement was a huge psychological boost. Finally, ANet decided that grind was the way to go, so titles began to have positive effects in-game; this was all that anybody needed to go grind away for hours for a title.

I'm not sure if Guild Wars 2 is really going to go back to the "skill over time played" model for PvE. If anything, it sounds like ArenaNet is learning from their mistakes and realizing that PvE and PvP are separate things, and the two sides bicker frequently with each other. Also, it appears that while "player skill over time spent" is a great idea for PvP, that's not what the MMORPG community wants. I don't know of any other online RPG out there where key features include a low level cap and easily obtained max-damage weapons.

=====

One last thing: I don't understand all this complaining about consumables. If anything, consumables are only good in times where you screwed up and now there's so much DP spread throughout the team that you can't really kill the end boss anymore.

I've played in many PUGs, and the ones that kick off a consumable (like an Armor of Salvation) right away often do worse or no better than the ones that don't.

Consumables aren't blessings. They are more like maintained enchants that can't be stripped by enemies. As a result, if you die, then the effects immediately disappear anyway, with the sole exception of the ones that affect your Death Penalty/Morale Boost. So if you act reckless, have a lousy build, or have no teamwork, then no consumable is going to prevent you from dying again in the next five minutes anyway.

As a result, if ANet wants to use put them in game, fine. Anybody that wants to waste 250gp + materials on an item that can only be used one time, and the effects expire on player death or a zone... well, who cares?

By that time GW1 will be at least 3 years old, if it stays around with decent numbers of players until then I'd say Anet has done a great job, wouldnt you say?

Every game goes to 'game heaven' sooner or later, its neither wrong nor in any way odd and 3 years nowadays for a game is a very very long time, most games can only wish they can hold their players for that long.
I for one can only point to GW as a game I played 2 years ago that I still play today.

Has it changed? Sure, quite a bit even, some things they've added have failed, others have been great just like the 'original' game has strengths and shortcomings but all in all I think its been a great ride and for me it definitely hasnt ended yet.

Anyone who has had enough, fair enough, although I do feel there's too much "Anet ruined X, I quit!" around nowadays, almost all of the 'big' complaints are either minor, non-issues (like having to farm for points) or highly personal play style issues imho.

Great topic. Thanks Sojar. You've about summed it up generally for me, but rather than quote you, I'll quote a few replies that rung true for what I've felt and experienced, and where I am at with the game.

I've been through this three times now myself, each time retiring for some months, coming back to play the game from a different angle. The first time I retired I had tired of the first approach, pursuing the accumulation of wealth for all these things I desired. When I returned a couple months after Factions came out I returned to my roots and simply played multiple characters through Factions and loved it, but:

This is what did me in and I retired for the second time. Too many characters and not much to do in the end game but pursue titles, which was fine, until I began to feel too much like arcanemacabre says above. I simply didnt wish to log in anymore as it felt like a chore to do anything in game.

I returned a couple months after Nightfall having decided to retire all my characters except my monk. I had already started to play this way just before I retired the second time. Felt like fun to play again but:

I more and more began to get a bit bitter about feeling like I was forced to retire all my other characters. Its not true, of course, I had the option, but it was far too much unnecessary work for me to play more than one character, so they all became storage mules sadly, and they all got quickly too full to play them even if I wanted to. Certainly not bitter about that anymore, but still a bit sad. It took away some of the variety from the game.

Still, I was back and having fun with heroes. My previous beloved guild I was in since the beginning of the game had more or less closed. Spent my time largely playing alone with heroes until I met another player, the leader of my current guild, and we went through and completed Legendary Guardian, which I had started trying to do on my own. Some of the best times I have had in Guild Wars, at least since Factions' peak and Prophecies. The problem for me is:

It just got boring. It moved from tedious with the multiple characters and titles to boring. Play became hero-centric. Even in a guild it was a struggle to find someone working on the same things as you, then you both went out with your heroes and did whatever that was. The fun associated with that lasted for a good amount of time, but heroes are more or less predictable. It became a tactical game.

It was additionally tedious now that heroes were not account based as well as titles. While I feel heroes are the cause of major change, at least in part, I do not want to invoke a discussion of heroes specifically in this topic, because:

There are many reasons PUGs and more social play died. Whatever the reasons, that fact was the nail in the coffin for me. Do I want to log in and gather up heroes, see if a friend is on, and then gather up henchmen if not and go to work on more titles? No, not so much. Especially when its all I do and have no reason to do anything else.

I'd love to log on and join PUGs as in the height of Factions and Prophecies prior and simply help groups through any random thing, play random missions, normal mode or hard. Those days are gone though. I completed Protector titles on all my characters in Factions (and a few went back and did it in Prophecies as well) simply through PUG play with very little trouble. Some repeat missions sure, a few I did myself, but it was largely PUGs and greatly successful. TONS of fun. PUGs going around now are a ghost of days past.

Probably true. I hope they view this topic as healthy criticism and not useless irrelevant whining. Most if not all posters in this topic love this game I am sure, and I know a few of them.

OP you hit it on the nose!

as an 'old timer', but not 'since beta' player (and yes unemployed housewife and yes my hubby plays as well, just not as much). I enjoyed most of the game up to nightfall. I have lots of characters (5 tyrian, 5 canthan and 3 elonian I am playing still) and have spent 4000+ hours playing them, however; when nf came out I became discouraged---not sure if it was the longer starter isle (factions' one seemed to short, nf's too long) or the addition of the grind for titles (or the nerf of my paragon). I am still working some of my characters thru nf and running them back thru the other 2 chapters as well, however; with the addition of eye I dont think they will all go there---I hate grinding (only one has gotten level 5 of any of the new titles for armor and that took me about 7 hours of grinding after completing all the quests)...its mind numbing! After the initial 'WOW newness' of gwen wore off (about 2 hours) I became bored....I have gotten only 4 characters into it and dont feel like finishing it at all (one has the last 3 quest/missions to do). Not sure why, though I am sure grind is part of it (and another maybe the rehash of dungeons etc). But since there will not be any new chapters for gw I feel that I have plenty of time to complete what I want to with each toon (some are title mongers while others are not, others are armor hogs some have only the set on their backs). I feel no rush to finish eye, not even a bit to complete it once.

I will not be getting gw2 for many reasons, and anet already has my moneys from gw so they have no reason to even look my way or listen to my opinions any longer. I feel that not much will be done to save gw, and I hope anet can keep its stuff together long enough to even get gw2 up and running! (and keep the servers for gw up and running so I can play what I want to when I want).

Compare this game with others game I played with so far.This is the online game that have the 2nd longest playtime. The 1st was half-life 1 and mods that come around later which I quited after hacks are around.

I like this game because of the grind is not required.And it still just like that after a year and a half for me.I viewed those title based benefit as a bonus not the core of this game but with people who concern with it,This make the game unhealthy.Agree that make all title account based would reduce those concern.

I still enjoy Fort Aspenwood due to randomness nature of this misson(excpet,leech and grief).And find that Factions is the best chapters that merge PvP play style with PvE very well if players have the interest to go through contents.

I wish that people would stop using the "well, special armor shouldn't be given to everybody" argument. From what I can tell, the three things that have annoyed fans about the armor system in Eye of the North are:

1) Grinding for a reputation title so you can buy armor is almost the same as doing raids in WoW for a chance at getting some rare gear. You're using a repetitive action as a gate to some premium loot. But for some reason, GW fans tolerate it despite that WoW players list it as a weakness in the system.

2) No other area in the game requires you to get a certain rank in any title to buy an armor. You complete the quest chains, then get to a specific location, and finally you just buy it. The cost and materials are the gates.

3) Even if you ignore the first two things, the armor in Eye of the North isn't even that special in the first place, and I think that makes people the most upset of them all. Even better, the most desired pieces, like the rare gloves or unique headgear, can't be added to Hall of Monuments anyway.

First of all, I'd like to know how anybody could be "stuck" at any mission in Prophecies. A character can just grind out levels, and then with a little practice and a little strategy, you can beat virtually any mission or primary quest using nothing but henchmen. You may not get the BONUS objective, but you weren't talking about bonus objectives. All you really need is a monk secondary so you can Rebirth any fallen allies, and you can keep going. The only one that will give you trouble is Thunderhead Keep because the mobs can overwhelm your group if you're not smart. Still, I found random PUGs that could do the mission, and it wasn't like I was stuck there for "weeks".

Back to your other argument... You're just talking about the metagame and you can't complain about how a metagame works.

Yes, in the beginning, the "holy trinity" (which still works even today, actually) is Tank, Nuker, and Healer. Nobody could get into any other group because what else did you need? Everybody overlooked the support professions, not realizing that in Guild Wars, the support professions tend to be the most overpowered when used right.

It took several weeks before people figured out just how insanely powerful mesmers were. In the first release of Guild Wars, mesmers were the masters of e-denial, but nobody knew how to play them. They could shut down any caster, anywhere. Even boss monsters could just run out of energy with a mesmer locked on them and they would be rendered helpless. Once people figured this out, this metagame got shutdown so fast. It wasn't so much from the PvE side (as they still had a lot of stigma, as they can "only" attack one target), but because it was destroying PvP.

Later, somebody finally figured out that minion masters could just crush anybody in the game. With infinite minions and tons of energy from Soul Reaping, you could just punish so much of the game with a necromancer. It was around this time when ANet changed the game so minions got limited to 10. The Soul Reaping fix wasn't until much later, after people were exploiting them with Ritualists.

This trend has continued even more recently--that is, ignoring support characters over "less complicated" professions. In Factions, people disliked the Ritualist and many people played with the Assassin. In Nightfall, people ignored the Paragon and looked at the Dervish. Ritualists and Paragons were designed to be support characters, and who wants to play that? Then somebody figured out that Ritualists could spirit spam and Paragons could use non-stop shouts, and both cases made the whole team virtually invulnerable. It took weeks for this metagame to appear, and soon everybody was going crazy with these builds in PvP. That's how the Ritualists and Paragons got nerfed.

I been feeling less inclined to play lately.

Everything requires grind nowadays if you want something nice.

Anet screwed us over on the chests at the beginning of GW:EN, oh how many lockpicks I used and was furious about the incredibly horrible drops. Why are we facing level 28 foes and the chests drop something for an area with something that have foes in the mid teens? They should just add the darn 600 gold keys because that is how much they are worth.

Yeah sure some of you it only took 2 hours to farm.... took me an entire week. You think I liked it? HECK NO! Doing snowman's over and over again for dwarven armor is a pain... and the set isn't even complete and you can't put it into HoM! Some people say anet wanted armor mix-n-match but you COULD ALREADY DO THAT ANYWAYS!

PvP is a dream unless you have a good computer. On my comp it the game many times will be 30-50 seconds already started into a match by the time everything loads and by that time we are already dead. So if you have a lower end computer, pvp isn't for you. This is why after 2.5 years of playing guild wars I have 4 fame and never won HoH.

I'm just so so tired of GW now... the only reason I play it now is to hang out with this girl I used to date but still love her dearly >.O good girls that like gaming are hard to find around where i live.

@OP - comparing player friendliness between a game with 4M owners and a beta is apples and oranges. The community during GW beta was friendlier, I'm sure.

As to the grind for the EOTN armor, that prevents richer players from being the first to get the armor. The rank requirement means that you have to put in some game time instead of just flashing a big gold account.

It is not simply the grind that is bothersome. Nor is it just the community. It is lack of effort on Arena Net's part to fix the broken mechanics of the game.

Eye of the North was not received well for many reasons. However, one of the biggest issues seems to be a rehash of various things. The dungeons typically have the SAME rooms, despite being totally different locales. Granted, this probably saved the development team a lot of time, but I am not paying 40 USD to save them any time, I am paying that money to make them work long hard hours to make the game worth that money. The reskinned armors are another great example of this.

What this comes to be seen as is "Milking the series" Arena Net figures they can cut a lot of corners and satisfy 75% of the fanbase with these, to put it bluntly "half assed" creations and still get 95% of their player base to buy the product. The PvE skills are oh so tempting to have, and all the story line that it was supposed to sum up and all the questions it was supposed to answer. Is it just me, or did the Eye of the North story line really not answer that many of our questions? For God's sake, they showed a tree and said "Birth of the Sylvari".... ummm, ok... Essentially, Eye of the North can be summed up with one word, "Laziness."

The fact that Arena Net could so betray their fanbase and release a FINAL expansion that consist of 50% reskins and reused content is appalling, and is quite the low blow to the players that have supported their efforts these past years. To actually believe that a company that claims to be devoted to its fanbase and to really care about their game would do such a thing is disgusting. Everyone is mad at Arena Net for this and that, but no one seems to be mad at them for the broadest picture... a slap in the face to the players they originally promised would have a game to call their own free of grind to increase skill effectiveness and grind to make your character more powerful then another.

While some of you argue that the grind is not required, I assure you it is. It may not be required to continue in the story line, but it is required to enjoy 100% of the content being offered. And with EotN having so little content for its rather large price tag of 40 USD, I would expect all of the content to be accessible to ALL. There is enough grind associated with acquiring the materials and gold needed to craft armor; adding a r5 requirement PER FACTION is over the top and displaces the scales in favor of Time>Skill, away from the original founding principle of the game.

Shame on Arena Net for charging 40 USD for an "expansion" that required little development and setup a system designed to keep players "amused" until Guild Wars 2 can come save the day. The REAL reason Guild Wars 2 is coming out, and people need to face up to this, is because Arena Net knows how much they failed with Guild Wars 1 at this point. They saw how they were restricted by their own design, how their design was fundamentally flawed. The game engine doesn't allow for better trading methods, it doesn't allow for this and that... but it does allow for innovation. Somewhere along the lines, Arena Net forgot that, and innovation went the same path as Guild Wars 1 has... into a tedious grind. Arena Net found being innovative to be a grind for their minds, when they could simply reuse areas of the other games that were successful and make more money. The dollar signs clouded their judgment so much, but knowing they needed to hold their player base, they created the grind machine for their "adored" fans.

So here we are, today, with our beloved Guild Wars. The balance of the game still hanging by a thread, lots of added grind for meaningless rewards that everyone feels they need to have, and more vanity. To what end? Guild Wars 2? I didn't invest in Guild Wars 2, I invested in the idea of Guild Wars 1 and a little company named Arena Net who had a new view for the gaming industry... a new vision, a refreshing creative objective from the mundane grindfest that all other MMOs had ever been. And 2 years later, that little company I once came to care about like it was my own has grown up, only to say "Hey dad, I am adult now, I don't need you anymore." How betrayed do I feel by the company I put my trust into? Where is that feeling of loyalty between Arena Net and the player? It has all but faded as the winds of the Crystal Desert blow innovation into oblivion.

Very good post, exactly my thoughts.

This is a very good post, it sums up the thought of lots of players. I can't agree more about 'The birth of the Syvari', they showed us a tree for 5 seconds, I wouldn't of even knew what that was unless I had read around on sites.