How Disposable are Guild Wars Players?

The way I see it, in the eyes of the company, we're primarily a financial statistic. "We've sold this many copies of the game to this many people!"

Secondarily, we're a community with issues to be addressed. If we find something too hard/too easy in the game as a community and not just as one or two people, then it becomes the attention and concern of Arenanet. And believe me, I've played games where the company outright REFUSES to listen to their own customers/player base. Arenanet at least create some sort of balance of what we want and their vision.

Recently, that balance was swayed. But even more recently, the balance is slowly being restored. The buff of dungeon and hero books, for example.

Just because your paranoid, does't mean nobody out to get you

Yeah..thats apparent in the current state of pvp.

I agree with Soti in a way. Anybody who has every played a community created mod or game knows how there is a different attitude in a game with around 300-1000 members compared to one with a community of 3 million.

Why would ANET banish people for no reason? There has to be something that would bring that about, not just in the course of progress. A company that doesn't keep it's customers happy will not be around for long. I also ask what are you forcing yourself not to do that is so painful to you and might get you banished?

It also doesn't mean someone is. But for the most part,it's not a reasonable reaction.

The fact is: you can't please everyone all the time. Ok, let's start there.
The next question is: Does the forum accurately reflect the whole of the customer opinion? And does Anet have a better method for determining customer opinion by monitoring/recording player activity IN GAME. (not watching every move, but looking at what towns/missions/quests/armor/weapons/mods are popular, The true rate a which people make money, how many hrs the average person plays, what holidays get the most repeat players, what skill/builds/weapons/armor are the most/least effective etc...)

If you are one of the minority who isn't pleased, what should you expect should happen?
If you ARE pleased, should you expect to become displeased for the minority?
People need to get a realistic perspective before they get to the assumption that Anet does not care.

Hopefully you also noticed how some people are very missing from such communities.

Corporate stance is: everyone is welcome except those that aren't.
Private stance is: nobody is welcome, except for those that are

Yes, the difference comes from known size of human social circle, which is 150 people. In such games, everyone knows everyone.

If you look at EQ-esque sharded games - they have 3000-5000 players per server (concurrent). The reason isn't only in technical limitations, but also in the fact that this is perfect size. It allows a handful of communities to form, yet does not create anonymous community. It's a perfect balance for those who want anonymity, and those who want large social spheres.

GW in this respect is different, since it has double anonymous community. First the One Server, which houses hundreds of thousands of players. And secondly, with many characters per player.

GW is more the: you are anonymous, unless you choose not to be.

And as such, the happiness of the anonymous is the important one. Yet, it's never heard in open, but is noticed by Anet. On the contrary, the non-anonymous people are extremely vocal, yet have little weight - they are the few.

What do you mean all those levels as GW has always been at level 20 even back in beta?It was never going to be highier than 20 ifyou read everything right.

Actually, the level cap has changed in development. There was a period where it was going to be 15...

Personally, I think the level cap is irrelevant anyway - the principle behind the game was that you'd reach it reasonably fast, and you did. Increasing it to 25 would only have meant that the power curve is a little smoother and maybe that it took a few hours more to get there - it wouldn't have made one bit of difference once you got there if the cap was 20, 25, or 125.

Plus there's the fact that ANet IS looking to sell us more product. No company will be looking to release a finite number of products then spend the rest of it's (likely to be short) existence sitting on their laurels counting the money from those products - they're always going to be looking to make more in order to keep the revenue coming.

well this is an interesting topic. Arenanet has stated they never anticipated a player to stay in the game the entire time with the veracity they have out of their loyalty... They expected a campaign to gather people in and play for a few weeks here and there, maybe a month or two, and be able to casually walk away from it and come back to it later Either on a new campaign expansion or for a holiday event without penalty...

Or be able to return to the game after a hiatus and start a whole new adventure experimenting with a new class... IE Campaign characters... Or whatever you have not played yet with regularity. For me that is Eles and Paragons. I just made new characters for each recently on my last return to the game.

Beyond that they were happy with that situation, as they figured they had loyal players that kept buying their campaigns and other content like expansions, so all was fine.

But they also had another market. the cheaters. While they didn't approve of them, it could not be denied that they often return because the buy an new game again and continue where they left off. Figure that is a good 18% of their market share right there. Call it undesirable repeat revenue. Then you get teh reseller loss of revenue, from those that play for a while and dump the account either on Ebay or in game to a friend. Figure that represents 2% of players at the least.

And you have the really bad scammers that not only sell the account on ebay but Retain the master account so they can reclaim it later and loot it. This is the Scammers trifecta. First they prob dint get eh account legally to be gin with, then they sell the account to some poor unsuspecting slob and lets them use it for a month or 2, then they reclaim the account using the master account password to lock the victim out of their account and lot their character, and start the entire cycle all over again. I expect this is a bigger number but lets just say that represents 5%.

Finally you have the cheaters. Gold sellers and buyers... And people that hack the game to get unfair advantage in instances... IE always +10 regen hacks, that kind of thing... these people exploit the game for real life monetary gain. Sweat shops, Bots, Scripts, hacks, farming abuse whatever.
These people are in violation of the EULA just as the others are, but often are harder to catch without significant proof of incrimination. These people often use 3rd party tools to conduct transactions like MSN, or xfire, or webpage voice chat, whatever. Then the transaction happens in weird ways I'm sure to make it even harder to track. IDK I have never seen it done, but I have heard the stories. ;( This easily constitutes 25% of all players in the game. People who feel they are justified to cheat as long as its just for them and they are not hurting anyone by getting a million in game gold in a matter of seconds so they can continue to drive the economy into the stratosphere with unjust inflation. Indeed proof that most things are not selling for the ridiculous 100K +X ecto is encouraging that this part of the community has been significantly snuffed out, for the time being cause gold prices are so high its not very affordable to do it as it once was.


So using those estimates. 32% undesirable, with 18% leaving and returning later... thats about 14% annual acceptable losses in players...

Seeing as they have been having a 130% to 230% growth margin, its not a very significant number that Anet is considering a loss at this time. Even if you say a good 30% has left from PvP changes or whatever and may never return... But they could too. its a hard line there... But lets say that number is a fair estimate from that kind of thing... so 45% total loss of players... thats still 85% growth for the game population Minimum with their sales numbers. that means for every player that does not get a campaign or expansion cause they quit or were banned, 1.5 to 2 players have started playing the game new, and has the potential to buy more campaigns they do not have yet. Thats a pretty good market share.

Basically I am using time in along with number of campaigns and # of units sold over time... 1 million to 2.5million ... then the 3million to 4 million marks within 1 year... its a hard thing to calculate without knowing for sure what the ban numbers are. we only can have a general idea from announcement from anet over time... And some of the other figure I consider estimations from attitude online in fan forums on some issues, and ect... there is no hard way to tell if this holds true in game or not. But one would assume my estimation is on the HIGH side on the unfavorable... So even still Thats a huge market share for Anet... My personal opinion is its much much higher then I estimate in numbers lost to numbers gained... more like for every 1 lost like 20 gained. but I know if I said that It would be snuffed as exaggerated, which I fully can accept. these are all just laymen estimates...

Just curious: how did you get these estimates? It baffles me that one can estimate this from outside Anet. Do you interpolate local results? If so what's your basic population? (and I thought that these "bad guys" would tend to lay low and keep invisible since they can be banned ... though there's stil still "truth about GW" thing, but it looks to me like BS)

Absolute power? Really? If they want to ban people for complaining on the forums, you would be okay with it??? If banning people would be against the law, they should still be allowed to do that??? Is ANet above the law for you????

Call it a estimate, from time in game and drops in populations that is noticing over time, and reaction in fan forums. I been in the game for over 3 years. in that time its done nothing but grow. Spread out some yes, but growing none the less. Even when 1000s of accounts are banned and announcements of such events have happened in the past, as well as others less notable...

If you just go by populations in this forums that consider significant EULA violations their right as a player to do any time they feel like it. Well, You just had to be here for all the issues and see how they played out is all I can say.

Are there significant EULA violators still in game? Absolutely there are. Are they the majority? Not likely. If they were, Anet would significantly change the system to prevent it. As in removing the ability to trade gold to each other and possibility removal of the trade button all together. But that would cause more problems from scammers then it would be worth in my opinion.

I still think the 14% number is conservative, but the actual number that can be CAUGHT for doing this is probably lower then that. Thats why I said these were estimated numbers in my post. I fully agree these are not based on any fact, just estimations based on community reaction, Population growth over time, and knowledge of past operations to take down these violators that are done quietly, but none the less mentioned on occasion to assure the game populous. Even Galie says she would Love to release the actual numbers, but that would be a violation of privacy on their part on some of these issues. But that the number banned over all this time is significant, but not overly so. So in my mind that should be anywhere from 10 to 20 %. I guesstimated it around 14%.

So there you go... Ingy is admitting he is pulling some of these out of the air. I never presented it as fact, I said it was a conservative estimate based on time in game and trends seen both in public view and behind the scenes in more private discussions.

Oh using the sales numbers and trend in game. IE districts for each area and regions. I would say we aver something like 2 million players still in game across the world. Not all at once but over the year I would say that prob an good ave number. Out of the 4million units sold thats around 50% right? So my estimation that 45% may be lost total over time from Undesirables, bans, or just people that just do not play anymore (retiring), is still holding true with that number... But if early next year (jan 08) they suddenly see a 5 million units sold announcement, then the growth figure is STILL chugging away... and I think it will be. As there still seems to be significant #s of new players coming to the game every week.

By the time GW2 comes out I am betting GW1 will be at 6 to 7 million units sold. Just from people either buying more campaigns that are new now, or people coming from other less attractive MMOs cause the free to play opportunity is just to hard to ignore. The over all game population however will likely stay around a static 2 million. That also seems to hold true for WoW BTW. They have said as much over the years themselves, and they boast a 9 million units sold figure over 3 years. But annual subscriber base is around 2 to 3 million subscribers maintaining their accounts. GW is harder to track as they do not publish number like that as there is no subscription to base it off of. But one would assume the numbers are similar.

GW however has had 3 campaigns and 1 expansion. WoW had 1 campaign and 2 expansions. Each has had holiday events and special events, and free updates as well, but GW has never charged for those with a subscription either.

Now GW2 is coming. There is not a WoW 2 Expected, planned or even rumored...

If only 50% come to GW2 by that time, Expect a 3million user base right away for that. Overnight GW2 will be the Grand successor, and Have a very strong and hard to ignore step on the market share. Just saying. Anet has a bright future if they keep things going during this downtime with development. Trust me the another 25% will come with the hype over the projected success after the fact. Its just going to be HUGE. thats all we can say. GW1? I honestly do not know. I don't think it will die, as I honestly think Anet will try to keep both franchises going as one, with annual expansions for both over time. GW1 lore building for expansion in GW2. If they do that it will continue to grow BOTH games in 1 franchise. Potentually doubling their market share over time and surpassing WoWs success.

It isn't a matter of "no reason" so much as very little reason.
The bigger and more anonymous the community, the less the misdemeanour required to get banned.
As such... as the community grows... the banning borderline spreads inwards... past my threshold first.... and eventually past the thresholds of normal players... until people don't know why they're being banned at all.

Why bring all these up anyway? Have you been banned in game? Are you just paranoid? Or you're just stoned?

Option B.

Paranoid.

But then when you've been banned from as many things (with no reason given) as I have, paranoia is a natural reaction.

Just for the record the people I know that have been banned either

1: Was in violation of the EULA and was either buying or selling gold openly.

2: Was scamming people and getting away with it for a long time and had NUMEROUS Warnings that if they did not stop they would be banned for it.

3: Were hacking the game to do things its not designed to do in order to make farming easier. IE Bot farming with 3rd party software. And Anet caught them.

or finally 4: Didn't own the account they were using. IE buying it illegally from someone other then Anet or worse stealing it using a key generator. Thus unfairly punishing someone that purchased the game and became victimized by their actions. Indeed this one is a bad one for everyone involved.

Just do not buy used accounts from ebay people. trust me if you want another account go get a cheap one from retail, they are out there.. I recently saw Factions for 29.99 at EBgames in the store. the CE was 39.99. pretty good deal for a extra account for the kids or friends or whatever... I use my extra account for guild storage and beta testing (It still has my beta character from Nightfall on it thats unaccessable atm Reserving a Name cause NF is not on that account. lol.) Yes that too is against the EULA as we are sharing that account, but we are also not scamming people on it either and we all have other Primary accounts we purchased... But generally we do not try to log into it unless we are sure no one is on it first. However If it got banned for being shared it would hurt yes, but the justification would be there for it rightly...

We know this is a gamble, but the convenience is to hard to not use it in that way. If we only had an easy way to share Guild storage as a Service. Hint hint!! I digress. The spirit of the EULA is preserved in the use of the account in this way, if not to the letter. As all parties also own their own copies as well. IDK its a tough judgment call... I would be working with Anet support if it ever became an issue on a way to allow it eventually, or attain a service to make the need for it moot. Which is what happened when they offered character slots for many people the need for extra accounts vanished overnight. And indeed in some cases were given to friends as gifts. Again technically Against the EULA... as it has the potential for very very bad things to happen with master account abuse. But ultimately, it was an added player to the game instead of just a trashed one. And since then they have added other campaigns to the account on their own. So thats a good thing at least. As far as I know, This has not resulted in any bans when done in such a way. But technically speaking it Could as your in violation of the EULA. So its a big big gamble to take. Then again, its just a game. IDK that one obviously is Anets call. As is everything in the game ultimately. If they let it happen they are generally OK with it. As long as its not a common occurrence. IE people buying 100s of accounts to resell them on Ebay for a profit as the accounts are preloaded with goods, which is another Virgoods Profit making venture that Anet frowns on.

The only other thing that is recent is the dishonor hex, but thats a temporary thing. Its not a ban, it goes away IF you play the game correctly once its lifted. And even with it on does not mean you are not allowed to play other things, its just you need a little social engineering on the do's and dont's of PvP.. thats all...

I've been trying to think of a good way to respond to this since I've read it.

I still don't think I've come up with anything that I can post to assuage Soti's fears but I'll give it a shot.

I'm not a regular around this forum, and in fact until very recently, rarely posted. However, I am known in a specific area of net community, namely dealing with online Roleplaying (D&D, Whitewolf etc)... And I've ran a few online chats, as well as helped on several until burn out hit an all time maximum and I stepped back from it.

While the community base for each individual chat is much smaller than Guildwars, the precedence stayed the same.

To begin to ban and punish all willy nilly, will not bring in new clientele, and will drive the loyaltists away, causing a schism within the gaming world as a whole, they become branded as jerkfaces (nicer term than I would use but don't want to get into trouble) and within a manner of months, they would have to totally re-work their business model, and begin charging monthly fees - due in part to loosing a large clientele base, and thus loosing even MORE customers due in part to the fact they're now a monthly fee game.

Here's an example.

I worked as an administrator of a chat (much like Gaile I was doing PR work for the most part.. Dealing with people, issues, and just welcoming folks to the chat) The head admin and owner of the chat began to ban people out of the simple basis of "not liking them" those people told other people so on and so forth, and the chat became a ghost town within a month. And here's the kicker, we WERE a free chat, everything that was done for the chat was paid out of pocket by the staff and the owner of the chat. The chat closed down.

Sooo.... I'm going to quote here

This won't happen. A-Net would have to be moronic boobs for several reasons. One of them including the fact we are FREE advertising for them, we tell our friends, we give our buddy keys away, we keep coming back. Another reason? We are a wealth of intelligence, ideas, and creative notions that in turn - turn each one of us a muse for the A-Net teams to get ideas. They tap into the vein to get ideas on how to make things better (And no this isn't the "we as a community rock", this is solid truth - as seen as the changes that have come to several things to date that the community has wanted)

Plus I don't think they're that apathetic (We'll leave that to the gamers :P) nor megolmanical enough for it.

We won't ever become disposable, because while some may believe we're not thought of after we pay our money, it's not true. So I honestly believe with the things you've said you have absolutely no worry... As someone else said.. It depends on what type of apple you are.

Hah verbose waffling at 4 am... Go me

Well said. my friend. Anet is receptive to us, and will let us do some things that tend to bend the RoC and EULA at times... But they do have a limit... Thats why they give people warnings and 2nd chances, and so on...

Its not to necessarily protect their bottom line. its more to protect the players...

They value both our input and our presence. And really do try to do the common good for everyone. SOMETIMES they go too far, other times not far enough... its a hard line to walk.

They want you to be able to play, and want to keep your business. it has to be pretty egregious for them to go so far as a perm ban. Indeed sometimes all they want is for you to contact support and talk to them so they can explain WHY the ban happened and how to prevent it happening again. IE a warning.

If you continue to do something that is blatantly against the EULA or RoC and a warning has been issued, they are not going to be as nice the 2nd time for sure. so its in your best interest to just go with it at that point. The average player will never see a ban on their account. It really does take a lot to merit such attention as I understand it. People that have had false positives from false reports and such has often been cleared with a conversation with support and a review of logs of said reports. It really takes a lot to get flagged. It just does not happen as often as people think to a normal player...

I found this from another site I visit I think it sums it up pretty well our positions nowadays as compared to the beginning:

Sure, that's what companies with official forums do.

Break the rules on forums, bye bye game account. Permanently, no refund.

Make a WoW account, then make a whiny post on official forums. Come back here, and tell us how much fun it was. If you buy online, it should only take about 3 hours, they have much faster response rates there.

Club Penguin, the multi-million subscription game sold to Disney recently. It's MMO for pre-teens. Go in there, say RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO in general chat, and you're gone in a matter of seconds. Literally.

Arenanet never said you would be able to get above level 25. Ever.

Guild Wars still has plenty to offer, I literally went out and bought a brand new computer THIS SUMMER just to play it AND picked up all the chapters + GW;EN.

If there was no effort there'dve been no hook for me, and I'm more than certain I'm not the only newb in the world.

Do I care if people all up and f*ck off when GW2 comes out or before hand? Hell no, I really just play with my girlfriend now as it is anyways, and a couple of my close real friends. (Though I'll join pretty much any idiot-free PUGs now and then.)

Do I expect the creators to lay awake at nights wondering if I'm going to cry if the servers close down and I'd blown $90-$120 on some temporary gameplay? Again; f*ck no.

Do I expect new content everyweek to keep me enthralled? f*ck no, it's ALL new content to me because this is literally my first time through ANY of the campaigns. Events are nice. Meeting new people is nice, when I get bored of pve, there's pvp titles and well, real life.
Even then, I'd still put them above BLIZZARD, who to this day; still 'update' Diablo 2 with more and more bogus runewords that literally make every item before them useless and 'world events' which are pointless to anyone who doesn't bot. They also waited HOW LONG to even THINK about Starcraft 2? The reason being? people kept playing Starcraft and Broodwar, they weren't pressured into making it.
Guild wars is apparently losing a lot of it's steam, is it any wonder why suddenly there's a sequel coming out for a game a FRACTION as old as say Starcraft? Dont blame their 'lack of trying' Like you said, they've got your money, they actually dont have to. They dont have to make a GW2 Either. They're going to though.

Furthermore, there are much more important people in the world that we actually mean nothing to, and I'm more worried about THEM.

I think Anet got sick of PvP players treating them like shit (who could have instead influenced the game towards proper pvp balance if they actually articulated their opinions instead of being flaming trolls), hence the alpha purge, and then the current state of PvP, ie: disenchantment and less interest but more direct input from more players (instead of just select pvp alpha players). Anet got burned.

Or you might just not care anymore, like me. Three (edit, four) bans and counting.

Actually I do remember this, they mused on it vary briefly when they first started putting out info on GWEN, but it was dropped and never spoken of again so I don't see how he could come to the conclusion it was finalized.

Stop acting like such a victim?

Also, your [Disclaimer: not a complaint thread] at the top of your complaint isn't fooling anyone.

Answer: Everyone acting like Arenanet has personally killed their puppy is disposable.

Everyone else is not.

I wish you would explain your threshold. Maybe that way we would all know what we have to be careful about. I myself have played for over 2 years and don't think I have come close to anything I could get banned for, so anything you might enlighten with would be helpful.

Anet does a great job, and this is a great game. however Everything isnt for Everyone. So if its not for you. MOVE on there are thousands of games out there begging to be played. less QQ please. I personally believe anet loves the game and the ideals behind the game.

I NEVER heard that before. Please stop spreading rumors around as facts.

Read your first and last sentence. the 'no doubt' tends to make one think you're complaining. Just because you like to put on a fancy show and act like you are not complaining, doesn't make you cool or anything. Just gutless =D.

Anyway, if you want to know how much something is worth, try buying it. If you want to know how much something can sell for, try selling it.

Also, they have future games to be sold and keeping a customer happy might be in their interest. Pissing off one customer will piss off another with a similar personality.

Paranoia was brought up, and it is not the right way to go. You have no reason to be paranoiac if there is nothing you can do to prevent being banned (if it's as random as claimed). Shut up and play, you'll be fine. If you think you'll get banned... Fine, wait for it and I'll personally win a court case for you :]. Random banning's won't happen in this game, unless by accident.

But banning people is not against the law, so other than, and I'm inferring here, as an attempt to sidetrack and inflame, your hypo is entirely moot.

I know what I'm doing with my Saturday night

If this were true then there wouldn't be a NEXT time for most customers. Your customers can't be a liability or they no longer are your customers.

Lets see.... adding more content is enticing and bad at the same time? If you had a product and never attempted to improve it do you think you would be in business long?

This is so crazy i just had to laugh. You actually think that Anet wants to DRIVE everyone away from GW1 so they will buy GW2? If you get pissed off enough to leave a product do you actually think you are going to buy another from the same company? How by doing this are they going to get anymore of your money? No they are going to try to keep the majority of the people as happy as they can.

This whole post just smacks of someone that doesn't like some of the changes that have been implemented. Now is the majority of players felt the same way you can bet that Anet would change them. Its in their best interest.

I know this is a wall of text but I just couldn't see this posted without a reply. I'm not a huge Anet fan simply a mostly satisfied customer that feels like he has gotten what he as paid for so far. And when I feel differently, I will move onto something else. If Anet satisfies me enough then I will probably buy GW2. But if they DRIVE me away then i certainly won't.

Oh so very very very very true.

Don't you think you are taking this too far? If you or whoever you know has been banned, then it is simply because you have done something wrong.

Complaining about Anet (i honestly dont think your disclaimer is true) "not caring" is ridiculous.

Just please let it be, this Topic is not doing you justice.

Agreed. 100%.

It is actually, if it doesn't go by the EULA.