What Brought About The Downfall of Guild Wars

I think it was ANet that brought the downfall of GW

There are many things that Skyy High says that I have never liked, however the 6 month chapters were always the business model. In fact, there were some fairly large threads for - oh the first 6-8 months (until we finally figured out every 6 months wasn't going to be a reality) that it was actually *more* expensive to play GW than WoW or other P2P game.

The only thing that killed GW is time - it kills pretty much everything. GW was never really intended to be a "long term" game in the sense that you had two or three expansions and played them all the time - how could it? The community was never as strong as in other MMO's (and that is what holds them together) and, while it has a fairly decent story line, how many times can you play through that? PvP games rarely make it as long as GW has without some major changes and there is no real way to do so in GW - too much effect on PvE.

GW was "doomed" to what it is today from the beginning - Too many people see only how to save their little bit of the world and can not think outside of that. Save PvP? Sure but kill PvE entirely and the servers would be currently gone. There was a huge amount of potential there for a mainly PvP game, but contrary to what many want to argue (and given the changes made to the game I'm correct) Anet saw PvP and PvE as equals. Those changes, and potential, were never going to be realize because GW was not a PvP game.

Same thing for what most of the PvE'ers want to "save" GW. The game *could* have been much much more towards them. However it would have killed PvP to the level it is in most other MMO's. Which, again, Anet sees them as equals and isn't going to kill one for the other.

Sadly, if I had to point to anything, it is this divide that killed GW more than anything. Each thought they were the only ones keeping GW alive, the only ones that count (and had from the beginning), and they took their ball home unless they got their way. They made a good PvE and a good PvP game instead of a great PvE or a great PvP game and the two communities were (and are) too selfish to have anything but their whims fulfilled and be damned everyone else. GW still can not live without both communities and both communities still seem to have utter contempt for the other.

By any other metric but WoW it is an unmitigated success, but then pretty much all other games are failures beside WoW (Starcraft, Diablo, and Civilization come close). I suspect that GW2 will be the same, though a somewhat stronger community may keep the PvE parts highly populated for a longer period of time. But even then if it "only" does as good as GW did then it will have made a significant amount of money and be one of the top successes in the gaming industry.

You are the one that brought up the statement to begin with...you have to prove its right I don't have to prove its wrong. I personally do not remember them announcing the 6 month model until at least Sorrow's Furnace, which was closer to Factions than the beginning of Prophecies. It took them a year to release Factions, so their 6 month model obviously didn't work even if it WAS the plan.

Actually looking back, I think the PvP game could have survived with Prophecies/Factions. The meta was actually good after the first series of balances and the Factions championship was arguably more exciting than the Prophecies one. Nightfall was the killer.

Great post strcpy! I only highlighted this bit which sums up pretty much the core of the message, but the whole is good and wise. Ty for the nice minute reading it .

Whoa Whoa Whoa...I just read your post and you are definately wrong here. First of all...you don't kill PvE completely. Nobody ever said that. And although Anet might have saw PvE and PvP as equals, GW started as a PvP based game. It is pretty clear at this point what their intentions were, and that their intentions changed over time.

Yeah, because going to Wiki or Guru and copying the build template is SO much harder the having to complete GWEN and grind the hell out of the Norn title!
Oh, and last I heard - GW has 10 classes. So having only 5 or so absurd builds might actually be part of the issue.

For what it's worth, /agreed on pretty much everything you said there.

Dreamwind, I'm not forum-diving for quotes for you. I have collaboration now from strcpy; you can choose to agree with me, disagree with me, or go look for the quote yourself, but I feel no need or desire to prove it any further to you.

One could argue that any perceived grind inherent in UB is inherent in the other absurd builds, as they all involved PvE skills. But really, if you can't see why it's better to have a bunch of powerful team builds now that encourage experimentation with one or two key skills per area, compared to UB outright giving you your entire build, I can't help you. Oh, and stuff like imbagons and Earthshaker wars can at least be shut down by hexes and blind which the monks have to mop up; Ursans just plowed through everything regardless of whatever horrid hex stacks they had on them. I'm not saying it's hard, but it certainly requires more skill from all players involved; monks, for example, can't just stay out of aggro range and spam HP.

I'm talking about team builds, a la the "Curbstomp" build that was posted last week I think (and locked from flaming...). I don't think there's any profession that can't fit into one of those builds. Rangers probably would have the toughest time, now that I think about it; they're not casters, so they can't spam PvE skills as much, they don't have the damage of wars, the tanking power of sins, or the support of paragons. They're used in farming builds, but no HM-dominating team build that I know of.

Nothing.
There is no downfall, just an evolution, and a chance for the skilled to adapt.
If you can't part with that 'Uber L33T bar' that you have had since you installed the game.....
your gonna have some problems.
________________
And a Wallow shall lead them.

I agree with upier.
Builds like the imbagon or SF sin are equally bad as ursan. The "it requires more skill and you can change you bar" argument is bs. The only thing you need to watch out is an aggro bubble in the imbagon's case or press 3 buttons in order for the sin and turn HM in VEM(very easy mode). Ursan left you with 7 skill slots to use to enhance the effect of UB amongst other things , that's plenty more than these two builds. You needed 4+ people to make any good use of UB , how many people do you need for the imbagon or SF sin?
ANet listening to the wrong people and not caring about general balance is one the things that will cause it's downfall.

I did.

Hi Trub. Wallow bashin'!!!

omg.
yes,yes you did!
Malice Black did it:

1.) He ruined the 'economy'.
2.) He promoted nekid GvG tourneys.
3.) His necr0 assaulted anything that moved.
4.) He called Racthoh 'That screaming faggot with wings.'
5.) He made baby jeebus cry.

I still have the Order of Protection against you....wallow harasser!!

_________________
And a Wallow shall lead them.

BBQ TEH WALLOWS

That's what brought GW down

You down, homie?

Eh, yay, now elites are spamming this thread.

*intelligently insulted some people while boosting his ego by claiming he's elite*

But...we wubou?

It could be worse yanno....Faer....lolcats..../facepalm pics....Tender Wolf quotes....heh.

________________
And a Wallow shall lead them.

Ractoe is a faggot. Only those that bat for the wrong team have long hair.

Please close thread. As we are having plenty of posts that are adding nothing to the debate. Elite or not, they are only making themselves look stupid.

My posts have been in your regards (and many others) claming ANet killed the grouping and multiplayer in PvE, when the overwhelmingly largest contributer was just general aging of the game.

I don't blame "what ANet's done" to the game has caused such a strain on the multiplayer in PvE, but I do blame them for making such a strained party system in the first place. The only way it could've been largely successful would be to have the entire gameworld fully populated, up and down, left to right - and quite frankly this is near impossible, a realization ANet discovered in developing GW2.

question has been answered thoroughly at least 3 times in this thread and many more times in other threads before it, should have been closed 1st page tbh

IMO changing favor from PvP based to PvE based started the downfall. It connected the PvP and PvE players together and there was not as much complete division between the two styles of players. not to mention with UW and FoW open 24/7, shard and ecto prices plummeted making the market even worse, so those who were mad rich were only half as madly rich. FoW armor became insanely common and people who worked for it cause it was still "special" felt mainstream. it was bound to happen sometime and that time happened to be the turning point. besides that, NF also harried the ending by adding heroes.

I kinda thought my old thread covered most of this stuff. Seems not enough!

We're done.