A call for more transparency

There are a grand total of 3 people working on GW1.

GW2 has 140+ (as of Jeff Strain's 2007 speech, and he said they'd be hiring more) working on it. I doubt the latter are just sitting around all day doing nothing, and if they had all been fired because GW2 was canceled, you'd have heard about it already.

Jeff Strain's article says any new MMO needs to be "overwhelmingly superior" to the competition, because you need to break apart the established community in the competition and get them to switch to your game. Remember the twin epic failures of Age of Conan and Warhammer? Much hype which the games failed to live up to, because they weren't even remotely polished enough when they were released.

There's also no reason to let your competitors know anything just to satisfy a bunch of noisy people on game forums. The vast majority of mmo players don't visit their game's forums and certainly aren't sitting around hitting F5 on their google search for "guild wars 2 infos" and then posting doom and gloom threads on guru when nothing new comes up.

Exactly, WoW has already stolen the concept of pvp toons and titles from GW. That Hellgate game even had mini pets. If GW releases any information the big boys will copy the concepts and beat Anet to market.

I normally hate quote corrections, but I thought it appropriate.]

As for GW2, I'm not worried. It'll get here when it gets here. There used to be a time when we didn't have to see hundreds of screenshots and dev interviews in order to be excited for a game. I think a lot of us old-school gamers still retain that level of patience--or at least I hope this is the case. Yes, the competition has drastically changed because gaming is hip these days, but I think a little mystery can be quite valuable.

/signed on the dev blog idea.

i really like the idea of having at least some info on it, even, the smallest tidbit.

although i think one of these days (albeit probably after storage update) we're gonna get smacked in the face with a ton of information. at least thats what i'm hoping for.

forcing whats not ready to come out = failed
knowing what's happening with GW2 and giving too much unwanted side track ideas = failed.

wanders if tabula rasa adopt GW's non monthly fees business model, would that revive the game. example of another game came out before its ready, however if its been in production for 6 years... but just wandering. the screenshots look so pretty. can anyone resurrect it?!

Let us not forget the world.suks lawsuit. Not only will this cost money, even when anet wins (they will), the lawsuit itself makes it next to impossible for NCsoft to allow any release of information regarding future mmo plans. I have been thinking about this and have come to the conclusion that if I were in their legal dept. I would slap a gag order on anyone involved with an mmo in my company so hard their children would feel it. Yes information would help ANET's marketing, Yes information would make us all feel better but in light of the lawsuit I hope they keep their mouths shut for awhile. BTW anyone have any info on world.com and their personal info I would love to have it

I believe that the reason that they're not going to do such a thing was already previously addressed. What it would boil down to is a blog of so many developers talking about things they may have worked on in a very general sense with vague terms, and very likely no screenshots, coding, concept art, hard declaration of anything that would be in-game on release, etc. It'd basically be a waste of the developers' and our time.

-Guild Wars 2 does not exist. It was a rumor started for the sole reason of giving players something to look forward to.

-Guild Wars 2 was planned, but developement suddenly halted for whatever reason. If it IS ever completed, by that time players would have migrated to WoW and Diablo 3.

-Developement of Guild Wars 2 is moving along smoothly. They can not mention ANYTHING about the game, because it is so amazingly awesome every player's head would explode upon seeing a sneak-peak screenshot.

^any of those highly unlikely conspiricy theories could possibly be true (but probably not)


But seriously...a shred of info would be spiffy...

/notsigned

Even if a blog did appear then it would just add fuel to fire for QQing before the game even sees the light of day.

As for loyal customers... I'd argue that making a one-off payment for a product does not strictly make you loyal. You bought GW and you enjoyed it enough to buy the next installment. That's not you being loyal, that's ANet making a good product. If by loyalty you mean you have played it for a long time, then again, that's because it's a good product and you may not have found a better replacement. This game is free to play so you are not compelled to play because otherwise you're wasting your cash, no, you play because you feel it is still worth loading up.

(If you bought Prophecies, and hated it but still bought all the rest, and hated them... then I might call you loyal. But foolish).

We're just customers, not ANet employees, so calling for greater transparency is just plain crazy.

I understand you feel ignored but at the end of the day if Guild Wars 2, should it make the shelves, is a good enough game then it will sell regardless of whether the current players with their loyalty hang-ups buy it or not. You had nothing to judge GW1 by, and ANet set the bar high for their next offering. They will need time. I am happy for them to take all the time they need.

There have been many comments concerning the fact that if anet were to talk about gw2 more, it would let competitors in on their ideas. However, CONCEPT ART, and basic things such as what the OP talked about are not elaborated on. I seriously doubt that a complete game mechanic can be extracted from concept art and vague ideas.

The OP's concern has been raised numerous times, and Regina and others in the team have expressed their desire to show some gw2 stuff, but the higher ups won't allow it. The main reason cited for this is to make a "big splash" with gw2, which I interpret to mean releasing all their info at once, probably at the same time as beta.

There were many goals for anet in '08, such as a whole new GW2 site, beta, etc... NONE of that happened, and I believe that this is why such a stink has been raised. It would be understandable if anet came out and said "the gw2 site we mentioned about a year ago and all that gw2 stuff, yeah its been delayed a few months." Instead they are tightlipped and saying only what they have to, and only said that the beta would be "much closer to release" without giving any definitive date.

As for the individual that said anet has hired over 140 ppl... Do you have access to their billing records? They may say they have, but again, other than anet's word, i've seen more intricate HOAXES than gw2. I have a great amount of skepticism, but what is most ironic in my mind is that regina has been quoted as saying "it is much more frustrating to us, because we have seen THE GAME."

Anet shot themselves in the foot when they did the whole "campaign every 6 months" idea. It taught us to expect things sooner than need be.

Though 20 months is a long time for no information. I think anet would have waited longer to announce Guild Wars 2, but because of the "campaign every 6 months", they knew we were expecting something, so they had to give something. If they had never set up the new campaign idea, they wouldn't have had to announce Guild Wars 2 in its infant stage.

bah, should have an expected release date at the least by now after 20 monthes of knowing GW2 will be made

There is no way to answer your question. So why are your jumping on the offensive?

And so what if there are better games when GW2 comes out. It's up to the gamer, not the company, on what they play. If they want to play something else, let them. Don't tell them "there's going to be something better, so they need to give us info on why we should stay."

And...what do you think ANet's been doing for the past ~2 years? No matter how angsty you want to get about the job they've done with GW, the fact is that they are a game company, and the people in charge would not allow their entire company to just sit on their hands for 2 years without doing crap. Yeah, they've clearly experienced delays far beyond what they planned (beta in late 2008, heh), but that's a far cry from suggesting that they've just been playing nerf football in the hallways since before GW:EN's release.

Vaporware until proven otherwize
Plus the whole wow stealing ideas from concept art and they must be working on something arguments i find bogus. Wonder what revolutionary idea can be stolen from concept art or lore. And just because they are working on something doesn't mean it will be released, Blizzard worked on startcraft:ghost for years, or they could be like 3d realms and working on another product all together and not gw2.

During crisis, market for entertainment grows. People want escapism.

NCSoft indeed believes in GW2 and it is real. Anet still exists, you don't need more evidence.

"Ideas are cheap. Execution ain't". Most gamers can chuck out wild, cool, ideas for games at astounding speed. Seriously. Read up about new MMOs and you are guaranteed to remember that you thought about this and that years ago.

What is in game basically depends on what devs want there (and can manage to put there), not about what they managed to come up with. Seriously. Read up suggestion forums.

Last think they are probably afraid of is someone taking their ideas and transplating em to some other game (because that is insane thing to do for thief - sure way to make game suck)

Anet is silent because they want anything they release to have maximum impact. They want to make it to covers of magazines. Feature articles. Blog posts. Exciting stuff.

Releasing tidbits of information is sure way to make it boring, gets you no articles and lets community nitpick on everything.

Yes they're not afraid of theft, that's why gw1 is open source and you can download the code at NCsoft for free.

I'm just curious out of interest. Do you have stats on that? Because just recently the American porn industry asked their government for support as the crisis is killing them. The pron industry is somewhat the biggest industry in the entertainment sector.

I think Joe needs the money to pay the bills at the end of the month. One of the industries that do benefit is the beer and alcohol sector. Cheap beer and alike is what a lot of people choose for escapism.



One last thing, gw alpha looked like WoW a bit and it was ugly. It was until we saw the beta that we had an idea how the game really would look like. We also know they want to organise the beta of GW2 close to release. This is because the dressing up of the game is one of the final stages in game development according to dev forums out there. Engine, game mechanics and bug removals go first and it's logical.


The vaporware guys can either move on or stay like someone posted earlier. Time will tell. Nothing more to say at this point is there? Anet won't give in until they can or feel ready and if gw2 is a good game you'll buy it anyway Mr. Vaporware. GW1 was unknown to the masses, but it became a succes anyway and they didn't have the marketing budget like Blizzard.

/close thread

3D Realms still exists, you don't need any evidence for Duke Nukem Forever.

Yeeeaaaaaah. Riiiiight. And God is waiting to WOW us by sending out the Heavenly Troops aand... Are you high?

It already is boring. Tidbits of informations would at least let people know GW2 is somewhere out there.

And what magazine will get an unknown game on their cover? Do people still put Duke Nukem Forever screenshots in their magazines? NO.

Being silent for 2 ways is an excellent, EXCELLENT method of making people forget about you. If that's what A.Net tried to do, they managed to succeed.

Even if GW2 is released, without any info, videos, screenshots or even game informations, it will sneak behind the back door and nobody will notice it came out.

Except for fanboys that are currently in Bellevue, spying on A.Net's headquarters.

I've read analysis on how Great Depression was key in making Hollywood into actual big business as it is now and how it relates to game biz nowadays, can't supply link thou, forgot where i read it.

Nowadays, games are superior choice. Even cheapest booze costs lot of money (daily usage) compared to MMO subscription.

Except, 3D Realms they had other (successful) projects in meantime to keep em going and no investors behind their backs.

Anet has nothing visible. What would NCSoft actually do with company that costs, what, half a million dollars a month to keep running? Lets em do nothing and have no future? They are not ministry of welfare.

That's a shame, nevertheless the great depression was another century but I believe what you say there.

Yes but you need a 'decent' computer and an internet connection. You're German right, so you know the store 'Aldi'? You can buy lots of booze there for almost no money. Cheap vodka is another example You can buy one bottle a day and at the end of the month the cost is still lower than the cost of the internet connection + mmo fee. On top they need to like games.

Anyway, I'm not really disagreeing with you cause we don't have all the facts or stats on the population of a whole country or on a global scale. For you and me, games are superior to booze. It's just interesting stuff to talk about even if it's a bit off topic.

I do agree with your view on NCsoft and that they're not a wellfare project.