I fear that Anet is abandoning Guild Wars.

Even so, they can't add everything people want. Some events that we would like to see probably aren't do-able. And I haven't seen many people offer suggestions for events. I have just seen people complain Anet isn't coming up with new events.

That's called monthly updates. That is no proof that they are abandoning GWs. Just shows they don't have many developers working on GW1 right now. Just because updates are a month apart doesn't mean they are abandoning it. You are just making an assumption based on information that just shows they don't have as many people working on GW1 at the moment.

Once again it's difficult to do those things in ways that will make many people happy.

Eh God.

There were a lot of suggestions. AND player-made events, like Pink Day. I dunno, A.Net could as well make so all people in LA, Kamadan and KC have their armors dyed pink automatically, as long as they are in those cities. And monsters having pink accents on their meshes.

Oh, and NORMAL people see that spammable deep wound and bleeding AoE or AoE Blind every few seconds + ability to send that blind over large range OR incredible damage from conjures + armor ignoring from SoH is imbalanced. That's why community manager should notice, who is normal, check his opinion based on posts, find another normal person, check and judge which skill should be changed.

While i would enjoy like a 'pink day' there would possible be people pissed with it. Who knows what they have planned right now. I mean they did say that they were working on projects they wanted to implement for a long time but didn't have the time. Who knows, we could see some more fun things in the future.

Well yeah most people see that as imbalanced, but there also comes a problem with how to deal with it to please everyone. One way or another they are going to piss someone off depending on how they nerf it. Who knows. The August update is coming up, they said they were working on a problem to the ursan problem. All I can say is give them time.

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Now back on topic, Anet isn't abandoning GWs just because their updates are a month apart.

It isn't just about updates. It's also about lack of community relations, bad decisions, not giving crap about people upset because of lags, not giving a damn about ANOTHER HB weekend in this year. And not giving a duck about dead pve and dying pvp.

Personally, I just think they should have finished Utopia and then made GW:EotN. That way EotN would probably have been more refined. At least in the area of dungeons.

I actually think the way they transformed the Destroyers into what we see now was done quite well. The Dwarves are suddenly-all-knowing because it's been a few years in game time since we last saw them. They've had years to study the Tome of the Rubicon recovered from Sorrow's Furnace, which actually details things about the Great Destroyer. Which, of course, would probably include its minions.

You've kind of lost me on this part.

I sort of agree. I wish they would've had more quests with details on the Norn. The quests we have now just make them look like bumbling alcoholic brutes. And while they are that somewhat..There's still more to them. The Charr..I sort of agree. I think the Ecology of the Charr did a much better job at providing insight into them.

While I do agree that putting the main emphasis on the Krytan region of Tyria is disappointing..I think it provides an excellent place to access the rest of Tyria. You have the ability to go into the Shiverpeaks or the Maguuma, cross into the Giant's Basin, and even get into the Crystal Desert if you follow the foot of the Shiverpeaks. Cantha, however, is pretty much completely impossible for us to access from Tyria.

It might be to allow a sort of global campaign the likes of which we've never seen. Or it might simply be for future expansions. Either way it is a bother.

I gave my opinion on this above. Anyway, I doubt they would miss such an opportunity. In fact, we'll probably see some interesting assimilation of cultures as Divinity Reach is pretty much the big refugee camp of Tyria. Elonians, Canthans, and Ascalonians have all come there and I suspect we may even see some Angchu Tengu.

Completely agree, although it would have to be fitted for 250 centuries in the future.

Edit:

Out of curiosity, what was your view of Gaile? No need to reply here, mind you, you can just PM me if you like.

And is there any point?

Everyone who is still playing has grayed out friend lists with maybe friend or two online and is in guild where majority people are 2+ weeks offline.

There are no "hot incoming changes!" which they want to hype us about and nothing normal to tell us either.

THE bad decidions were made about year or two ago (kill utopia, rape pve). Its not like it was anything recent.

PvP people that mattered were quitiing all the time in past three years.

GW was gorededed for one year. What is so hard to understand about fact that Anet finally got message and did exactly what players already did: abandon GW.

Because we knew everything there was to know about Utopia. Oh wait, the game never came out and not much info was given due to that fact. I could have been the same as GWEN, it could have not. You don't know.

She didn't do that much, but she at least tried. She appeared in towns very often along with the Frog, talked to AND WITH players, posted on forums pretty often and, all in all, reached out to the community.

@zwei - if you agree GW is dead, why you said my not-true-name? I said that if that's not abandoned, then my name is Elvis Jagger etc., not if it is.

Do I think they are abandoning GW? Yes and no. We still get updates, events and other stuff but it's not like it used to be. I'm also very aware of the fact that GW2 is their main focus right now. All of us gamers should understand this. We don't have to like it but that's RL.

Eventually, GW is going to go dead and as much as I don't want that to happen, I know it to be true. My hope is that all this effort going into GW2 will be worth it. And who's to say it won't be. Most of us posting here care about this game and like to play it...in whatever format we like (PvE, PvP, etc...) and there is no reason, as of yet, that it won't turn out to be a better game with more appeal.

I say we all get in game and play to our heart's content. Enjoy it while we have it and keep giving input to the devs so that GW2 is something we all can like (most of us anyway).

All the software companies that I have been in require a nondisclosure agreement. I am guessing that ANET probably has the same requirement. What information can and can not be given by any employee is determined by the company. When information was available to be given out it was usually done by someone in advertisement. I don’t see the community relations as a good source of info on upcoming products, the most likely venue will be game rags or a general game site.

What I do see a community relations person doing is working with an existing community to solve issues on the current game, interacting with the community to help the game grow. I am sorry to say but the current community relations person is not doing that and this comment has me saying, "DANG!!!"

Why the heck is a community relations person doing something QA or (FREE) BT should be doing!!!! This one comment should have resulted in a private meeting discussing career moves and if she feels that there is not enough to do in her current job role.

I'm not her biggest fan (as my other posts suggest) but here I have to say that we have to stop looking at each and every move she makes as a reason to bash her (and I know quite a lot about bashing as a French... ). Because then, we're going to jump on every blog entry, start looking at her LotR characters, her ethical positions, etc. If she was doing this, she surely did it on orders. Then we can discuss the new CR policy at Anet and the role she plays in it.

Oh and about NDAs, yes all alpha/early-beta testers signed them and Anet staff would fire themselves in the foot if they broke the ones in their contracts. But it's difficult to imagine why there's such a blackout of information on GW2, at least it'd be nice to have an idea of WHY information is delayed (like the open beta).

As usual...
/agree

For those of you imploring to be charged with some kind of fee to get new content, you are forgetting one of the main rules that made this game what it is: no monthly fee.

ANet has not abandoned the game, they said they will continue giving support, and even if they are repetitive, almost every weekend they set events.

I could play any other game, but nothing is like GW (I even tried WoW and dumped it after two months, because its kind of bitch and unbalanced, i mean, mods and all that), and I have high expectancy with GW2 so they are better off with one or two guys on GW1 and have the same team they had on GW1 to develop GW2, I mean, they already said they "learned" what we really wanted and they are taking that to GW2.

In the mean time, I suggest you to work on your tittles, that is the most important thing right now, at least for me. Once GW2 is out, we will see what happens.

I only play on weekends, my career is important for me, I got things to distract with in real life so time is flying for me, good.

I know alot of ppl that disliked gaile, but now that we have regina I see alot of ppl going back on what they said and turning it onto regina.

Seriously, you got what you paid for so you have no reason to complain.

The little bit about her beta testing ursan sounds like anet thinks she knows what changes to ursan would be OK with the community. However, since I feel she distances herself, she is just another anet employee doing a skill test. I'm not complaining in any way, but it's a matter-of-fact sort of thing.

And by the way, the original design for anet was to allow ppl to take a break and lead other lives. So really you can instead think anet is going back to their original plan. :P

I was mostly sarcastic about everything, sorry that it is was not so obvious :].

Look, there are about 3 people working on GW1 left. Its summer, vacation time, one of them being out stales development. I estimate up to 8-9 mandays per one new thing implemented even if everyone is actually there (if they don't go rogue about procedures and QA). There is no announced release date or anything other than this thread pressuring them. It's not like it is priority for their bosses to be behind their backs and to whip them to update releasing frenzy either.

Abandoned - no way.
Low priority - yep.

What do we honestly have to complain about? You pay once to play the game then get updates after 3 years, added elite missions (those are few and far between, but Sorrow's Furnace and Domain of Anguish were never originally there), and the extra armor sets anet added. I think they anet has definitely kept up with such a demanding crowd. There not making nearly as much as World of Warcraft, but Guild Wars still rocks.

We all thank you ANet for Sorrow's Furnace (one of the best "endgame" areas added to GW, before they went nuts with the power creep) but I would like to remind you that DoA was advertised and supposed to come with Nightfall. So it's something they owed us, not a gift.

Because they've also been buggering the game and what it used to mean (skill > time) and some of us resent that, because Guild Wars is the only MMO that used to do skill > time. Now they're changing that, even though the skill > time Guild Wars was a lot better than the ultra-easy but spend-a-lot-of-time Grind Wars.

Listen, ArenaNet. You don't need to add grind. There's no monthly fee, it's fine if we don't spend ages on playing the game. Keep it challenging. Lots of easy enemies/areas with gameplay based around easy, mindless grind is not a challenge. Very tough enemies that the player must beat on their own skill is challenging and it's what makes a fun game in the first place. Many developers seem to be forgetting that.

Do you do it because you want to help the casual players? Seems to me it's the other way around. Just because someone plays casually does not mean they suck; just that they don't spend a lot of time on the game. Giving lots of easy enemies and lots of grinding is not appealing to the casual gamer. All it's doing is insulting their intelligence and turning them off due to all the grind. You're also helping the unskilled players who just spend ages grinding Ursan without ever becoming good at this game.

If people play Guild Wars, have a fun time, and then stop playing, chances are when they see a new Guild Wars game they will remember the good times they had and buy it. Trying to keep people grinding is not the answer because all it does is drive out the original player base; only a monthly fee would be an understandable reason for excessive grind.

So I do wonder what ArenaNet is thinking and who they're targeting. I think they must be targeting the hardcore noob audience, so to speak; players who are terribly unskilled but spend many hours grinding. They're certainly not targeting casuals any more. They used to - Guild Wars was very appealing to casual gamers because you could pick it up and be on even footing with everyone else. Now you have titles. Title discrimination. Gameplay that's so easy you no longer need humans to succeed.

ArenaNet, do you want people to play with humans? I'll explain how you do that. Make the game hard. Make it challenging. Make it hard enough that a team of all heroes/henchmen is very difficult to do (and I don't mean just ruining their AI, I mean improving the enemies). That way players of skill will make it past early areas and into advanced areas, it will become better to play with skilled, coordinated humans, and so people will group up. Right now there's no reason to play with humans because unskilled players can get anywhere they want and the gameplay is so easy that heroes/henchmen are just fine for it. Please think on this.

/agree

Although that was said few weeks ago in Open Letter. WHICH HAD NO RESPONSE. Way. To. Go.

Oh, I don't count Regina's bullplap as a response. It was just sweet talk ,,you are right, something is wrong, someone is doing something to make something something go out and play and leave us alone''.


Well, people play with humans for Ursan. That's THE ONLY reason why anyone plays with people anymore. Not counting guilds.

It's impossible to make the game more challenging to players who already played the game.
About the part that skillful players should advance through the game with other people if they are skilled , that just falls apart at the character creation screen , if you choose the wrong profession you'll spend more time trying to get a group than playing the game. A.net thinks that if a profession is good in pvp it would do good in pve. Maybe that worked in proph where monster fights were watered down pvp , and not stupid power creep like in NF and factions. At least h/h allows those unfavored by A.net to advance through the game.


A.net didn't abandon Guild Wars , but it definitely doesn't give it much attention as it used to.

They need to add purchasable instanced missions. Dungeons, towers, catacombs, caves, whatever.


Charge anywhere from $1.99 to $10.99 for them, affordable to all but still adds up for them. At the end would be custom skinned items or armor crafters. Only place in the game to get them. The more sought after items would be a higher priced instanced area. It would give you a week of access and only one person in the party would need to have purchased the add-on.

If people will pay $5.99 or whatever to rent a game for a week from the local video rental store why wouldn't you pay the same to rent game play for a week, and get something out of it that stays with your character?


If it's been suggested before I haven't read it so please don't start a 20 post flame.

If you have every class through all campains and all elite missions done once you should just take a vacation and play something else for a few months.

If you come back most of GW is fun to play again.

If you compare the time spent on GW compared to other (non online) games its impressive ow long i didn't get bored with the game anyway...

Even though, i have my complaints about guild wars, i think they could of made some things better than they are and new events would be a great thing blah blah blah.

I realise that you can not please everyone! it is pretty much impossible. So you will always have people to complain about the game, no matter what they do or do not do. That is life and no were can escape that fact.
Everyone needs to be able to compromise, in order to be satisifed otherwise you will be arguing forever and you will just continue to be dissapointed.

The way i see it is this, I buy say silent hill for the ps2. I complete it, i enjoyed playing through it. I do not go and complain about how they could of made it longer, or expand it, or demand bug fixes and monster balancing so i can play it again and again (usually a harder mode unlocks so you can play it once more and thats it).

Guild wars, i make a one off payment, i play through the game it keeps me entertained. they add new stuff and fix things, brilliant ^_^. Special events happen, weekend events happen woot. More fixes, expansions are created.
They want to work on a gw2, fair enough. They keep a few people on to maintain gw1 a little while gw2 is being made (generous of them).
They are not obligated to update the game, they could get away with just releasing the game and leaving it be, after all we only paid for the game not the updates. Oh and a hard mode was made for guild wars aswell, like a lot one off payment games.

Lord of the rings online, pay to play game. They do monthly updates, skill balances and of course new quests, areas and so on. However people pay for those updates so they are expected.

Hellgate London, they do some fixing updates, but for the people who do not pay to play, well they get nothing, for the people who pay to play they get the all new stone henge expansion. Even something as simple as making a guild is only open to people who pay to play.

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There is the other way of looking at things, in order to keep players happy with you, you need to give them what they want (or try to). I admit they are not giving out enough info for gw2, i personally think they announced it too early because it is not going to be released for another 1 or even 2 years.

They started playing about with skills, to re-balance them. made a few people happy and made a few people mad so now they are doing skill updates every 2 months to make sure nothing too drastic happens to the market and are trying to make majority happy.

After all it is just business, I am sure the people who work on gw would love to do all these wonderful things to make it better, but it boils down to money.

Then go play single player games. This is online game.

Yeah, that's why Hellgate is NOT popular (I mean, buy AND pay to be better at game? wtf) and it's developers are almost broke.

Yeah, they could leave. But then who would buy next game.

Diablo 2 was released in 2000 and last patch was in 2008. 8 years of support. GW won't see this much, as it's already a dying game.

Old content + more grind + harder =/= new content.

Same rules apply for online games lol.

As for Hellgate, yeah they made a bad move, either make it pay to play or not....they shouldnt of made it both.

There will always be people to buy the next game, no matter how badly they treat gw1. Granted it will not be as many perhaps.

I think Anet expected gw2 to be out sooner than they thought, Diablo 3 is only just going to come out (cant wait ^^ )
Hats off to them though, for keeping the updates as long as they did.

The point is gw still are doing updates and continuing weekend events, and also for now the holiday events (even if some of you hate them, there is always loads of people who look forward to them)
Like i said cant please everyone.

Someone posted earlier, that they even got some new things in store for us yet.

You can't expect to have no grind in a game, there will always be a point in any online game were you run out of things to do, or you need to grind a bit to succeed further.

It would of been nice for them to continue gw1 and put out more expansions/campaigns. I guess the ideas that they want and what people want can not be done in gw, so they will go to a more advance system in gw2 to put them in.

Grind a bit is good. Grind YOUR FING MIND OUT FOR TITLES is bad. Grinding YOUR FIND MIND OUT FOR TITLES IN A VERY BORING WAY is a megafail.

Besides, I bought the game for no-grind philosophy, so I can feel ripped off. Look at your Prophecies box and you will feel ripped off too.

who cares? they released the orignal game 3 years ago, and they have been working on it until they came up with the idea of gw2 , and even then they are updating the game every month what more do you want?


We don't pay monthly fees for the game, so we shouldn't expect the same treatment as other mmo because we made a one-time payment , so we are actually lucky to get any attention at all, because compared to other games we get loads, most one-time-payment games the developers stop working at it once the game is released

yes but that is OPTIONAL, unlike other games, the grind in this game is OPTIONAL

other games get you to grind alot just to level up, this game allows you to grind OPTIONAL titles if you choose to, if not, then you don't.

Stuart, I would call you very, very not nice. But I would get banned.

Try going to UW/FoW/DoA with a pug without r7-10 Norn and, for the latter, r4-8 lightbringer. JUST TRY AND WHEN YOU FAIL COME BACK.

You say - I don't need HM/titles, pugs need them. But it's almost like having to grind to level up - aren't you getting better/faster/stronger if you grind more?

yes but 1) PUGGING is not needed to do the main game, (story missions and quests), 2) if you want to do one of thoser areas so badly, FIND a guild who does it the old way before Ursan, don't give me crap saying no guilds are like that because thats a lie.

there is still quite a few guilds who do elite areas without ursan.

Have you tried getting a pug in an elite area as a mesmer , no guild mates , no friends list , only people in the outpost?

I don't defend ursan in any way , but discrimination in elite areas will exist until people stop being narrow minded , good luck with that.


The grind in GW is minimal compared to other online games, which is good. The skill>time concept was only advertised in proph , and they kept their promise. They threw the concept away after factions.

1) Main story is a crap. It's like 40% of PvE, maybe less. More like 25%.
2) Guild isn't always there.
3) I am in such a guild, but it's summer. People don't play that much. PuGs do. But I can't enter those without ursan.

And think about people that can't get into those groups. Maybe they play too short and that's their only problem?

That's a fact - to get into PuG, you MUST grind. And to do elite area, you need pug or guild, but then it's forcing people to do it not how they like it.

1) OPINION
2) get a better guild, if you don't want to, then you can't complain
3) wait til after Summer

PUGs are optional, Elite Areas are optional

no one is forcing you to grind or do elite areas or PUG except YOU

For those of you that think A-net has abandoned GW, I have one simple question for you.

How can you possibly think that with our new CR Regina Buenaobra being so active in the GW1 community? She's always around talking about GWs this and GWs that and how they have exciting new things for us and such.

oh wait....

I can sum this post with ,,You paid for the game, now GTFO or change your playstyle''.

1) 60% of the game is option?

Say you buy newest Final Fantasy. You enjoy playing your characters. In 2/5 of the game, you meet a boss. He rapes your team. You go against him again, he rapes you again. Then you go to forums to ask ,,wtf'' and people respond ,,oh that's simple, you need 50 more levels, but that's optional, as you probably can kill him with some luck on your level, or you can use cheats, right?''. Same here - I get to 2/5th of the game to find out that I MUST get high norn/lightbringer to get the 3/5 that is unaccessible to me. And who cares I don't want to grind - I don't want to grind, I don't play half the game I paid for.

2)You know a guild where members are 24/7 FOR YOU and ALWAYS doing things just to please you? Wow, I want that hooch.
3)Yay, didn't know I paid for a game I can use 3/4 of the year.

And I thought idiots using ,,don't like - don't use'' argument died already. Oh well, guess you were in a deep coma.

1) option? I SAID OPINION, as for the Final Fantasy thing. I actually know how to play Final Fantasy, I know that you sometimes need to level up more and other times you need to use some strategy.
2) I don't know one but i am sure there is one that has people on 24/7.
3) so you're saying that you can't do ANYTHING without PUGS/elite areas PUGS which require ursan? WOW *rolls eyes*

Eight years of support? How many years were between 1.11 and the lastest patch that is just a cd check remove which Blizzard had to do to prepare the game for their download shop?

Uhm. No. I can't do DoA without pug or guild, which isn't always accessible. Never said about needing pugs everywhere. Read plas.

That Final Fantasy was just an example. I could use example with GTA, where half way in the game you must buy super-expensive bazooka to blast door to the bank, or else you won't get further into the game. And who cares it costs 250k. Farm or use cheats.

I'm sure there is a shop giving out free plasma TVs for each battery you buy.

They still supported game. Sure, not by maaany patches or updates, but it's due to nature of Diablo 2 - old game that requires downloading something every time there is an update.

And during those 8 years there aren't many things to fix - most of the bugs are fixed, classes are balanced. Same why we don't get many Star Craft updates. Game is 10 years old, and yeah, last patch was in 2008. And patch before in 2007.

It's just that guild wars REQUIRES those updates, Diablo 2 or Starcraft don't.

hmmmm *goes out to look for one*

It's always funny to see how many people praise Blizzard for their long term support. Maybe i'm too old, but i remember Blizzard letting the original Diablo rot and fall into the hands of cheaters without any support, because they were too busy producing their upcoming games.
Well, that was the last millennium, when Blizzard had limited resources in both categories money and developers. Anet is in a similar situation now. They had a single hit game and NCSoft isn't in the financial condition to throw heaps of money at them.
Compare Anet to that Blizzard and the judgement who does the better support isn't in favour of Blizzard.