To the vaporware people...

I'm somewhat confused. If Aion is being produced by NCsoft, why should that make a difference for Anet releasing GW2 information? NCsoft isn't Anet, as far as I remember. (Someone tell me if I'm wrong please, I never pay attention to this kind of things)

NCSoft is the publisher who financially backs A.net.

age of conan

Yes, I can see them sitting around on it. You would have to be absolutly mad to release a MMO or RPG around the same time as Diablo 3. You will not see a more hyped, highly anticipated game as Diablo 3 until they announce WoW part 2.

Competing with Diablo 3 would be stupid at best. Starcraft 2......well, I'm not holding out much hope that it will be released anytime soon.

You can have developers working on a game and still have the game fall into the ether. Duke Nukem Forever has been "in development" since the 90's. They still claim it will come out. It just happens to have gone 10 years past its original release date without making it to market.

I'm not saying GW2 is vaporware. I'm just saying I think Duke Nukem Forever will come out first.

If its not vaporware, then why is anet covering their asses just in case?

If GW2 was a sure thing, "if" would not be heard regarding GW2. This is perhaps a major development on gw2 news.

Yeah man, what do you want me to say man? I'm in fokking shock

Technically, she only said "if" regarding a Guild Wars 2 beta, not Guild Wars 2. Don't panic.

buy a giant size fan, one that creates thunder storms in movie, switch it on and blow away all the Vapor.

I'm not on the vapourware bandwagon, but on the original topic: SC2 and D3 are looking interesting, as is Majesty 2. Dawn of War 2 I'm... ambivalent about.

However, any and all other games I get I'd probably get regardless of whether and when GW2 comes out and whether or not I buy it anyway.

1 lead to the requirement of 2 and 3. Because they had to explain why they weren't continuing with the chapter model, they announced GW2 a lot earlier in the development cycle than games are typically announced.

If they hadn't had the chapter model in the first place, or if they'd managed to find some way to work on GW2 while continuing with the chapter releases, we probably wouldn't even know about GW2 at this stage. Diablo 3 had a lot on release, yes, but that was after a year or so of rumours that Blizzard was working on something else beside Starcraft 2, and Blizzard knows how much time before that when the rumours hadn't even come out yet.

None of this changes the fact that the vapourware label can in fact be applied - but as has been pointed out, vapourware DOESN'T mean it will never be released.

IMO, this is why NCSoft is in financial trouble in the first place. By flooding the market with pay-to-play niche MMOs, they'd essentially been competing against themselves... fiercely.

I'm waiting to see how the gameplay of GW2 works out before deciding whether to buy it, for similar reasons as expressed by Shadowmoon. I bought EOTN for more GW1 - any transfer that it may allow to GW2 is an added bonus that I may or may not care about.

I'm going to play Sims 3 when it comes out and wait for GW2 :3

While its true that not all games have betas, Anet going from "beta Q4 2008" to "not at all" doesn't bode well in any situation.

There could be a GW2 without a beta, as many games do not have open beta, but this entire 360 degree turn seems to be the beginning of things to come, and those things to come may be the lack of GW2 at all.

The huge turn in GW2 Beta kinda scared me too. I'm hoping for the best and that the whole undercover project works out fine. We don't want another case of Super Smash Bros Brawl where the game didn't really feel that new and the characters didn't have that shock factor due to the blog revealing updates in the game.

I'd be nice to get some info though.. just basic ideas and mechanics. Concept arts too, please?

I've played MANY MMOs over the years, and they frequently turn out to be personal fads. WoW clocked in the longest at 7 months, then Burning Crusade destroyed everything I worked for. Spore was fun, until the Space Stage. Ragnarok Online just got too grindy, as was LOTR Online, 9 Dragons, Tabula Rasa, Hellgate: London, Urban Rivals, Billy VS Snakeman... Sorry, getting slightly ridiculous. XD

Most recently, I've been playing Runes of Magic (Beta), and it's just the same tired old WoW-clone formula of pointless grinding, doubled because it brazenly boasts of it's Dual-Class system. There is no changing of your Secondary to any other that you want like Guild Wars, but you CAN flip your Primary and Secondary, so you have to slog through the levels TWICE, ideally through two different areas. Laughably, there is no over-arching plot, just individual petty concerns that feed into instances, so you can have the 'best gear' for doing it over again at the next Tier of levels. Wash, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum.

But I'll always come back to GW, because here, the grinding is TOLERABLE. I can actually SEE progress in my titles, and it's always as a result of something I want to do ANYWAY. I can choose to skip a title, if that's not what I want to do. And most amazingly, my personal game experience is NOT PENALIZED for that decision.

That concept of "let the player do what they best like to do, then reward them for doing it" is lost upon most MMOs. Instead, it's replaced by pointless grinding. The other closest you'll see of this ideal is Xbox Live Achievements, but the Achievements themselves don't give you any benefit to your gameplay because of it. The individual game unlocks whatever it is, or not. GW does. And I love it for that.

Above statement is pure speculation. It may be a logical speculation, but a speculation none the less. As far as you know, the beta might not come out until 2010. And as far as you know the game might not hit the shelves until the world ends in 2012. As i stated once before, ANet dangled the GW2 carrot in front of our noses back in 2007. And now in 2009, that carrot has all but completely rotted away. It seems that the majority of the public is merely asking for a fresh carrot.

As for myself, i have lost interest in the whole GW2 theory. Vaporware is a very accurate definition of the whole project simply because we have no new carrot to keep us enticed and it has been over 2 years since they teased us with the first carrot.
(sorry for all the carrot analogies)

On a side note, Has anybody had a chance to try out Fable II. Im looking for an excuse to dust off the 360 and i believe ANet will provide the motivation for me to do so. Is Fable II worth the money?

I think the point is, IF it does come out, will the GW community have already moved on to greener pastures? You may be willing to wait half a decade for a release or at least another teaser, but what about the rest of the public?

completely off-topic
but i heard fable2 was underwhelming
due to the fact that its incredibly easy
ppl criticize how gw pve can be easy even in hm
well...fable2 is like having a full 8man team of lvl20 ursans pre-nerf....against a pre-searing area of lvl 4 mobs

Ya, but you can be evil.

it's fun. not really challenging but there's a ton to do in the game and it's just fun to play and absolutely gorgeous. the male prostitutes following you around gets sort of weird, but hey you can kill anyone and do all kinds of crazy stuff.

You say I am pure speculating yet you claim the world will end in 2012 like it is a fact? Whether the beta would come out by 2010 is also a speculation in itself.

GW2 is not made ONLY for GW1 players. They are not that dumb.

And there is no such thing as moving to greener pastures because your GW1 accounts would remain active. You have already bought GW1 and it is not like you are paying them any subscription. Even many players who have left GW years ago came back after playing other games. There are only active and non-active GW players.

ANet would coax GW1 players to move to GW2 of course. But GW1 players dont have to buy GW2, if GW2 sucks. GW2 is its own game when it comes out and still has to compete with existing titles whichever way you look at it.

If you say, because you waited too long for GW2 beta, so you are going to play another game, it would sound like an empty threat because people are already doing that! GW1 is almost a 4 years old game and its content is getting stale, so expect that many people would seek out other games for entertainment and evaluate if they should buy GW2 when it comes out. Seriously, I have not heard anyone says he is deterred from buying/playing game X, even if it is the utmost BEST new game in the world, because he is still waiting for the GW2 beta.

Even if GW2 is released right this moment and it sucks, would you really buy GW2 right now? On the other hand, if GW2 is released as late as 2012 and it is better than all the existing titles then, people would still buy it.

Check out the two Web jobs here and the Artist - Digital Painter/Illustrator job - http://www.plaync.com/us/jobs/jobs_arenanet.php

Well at least we know there is a GW2 website coming, obviously doesn't mean there's going to be a game, they just like hiring professionals to create stuff for the fun of it.

Meh, i never said anything about it being fact. I was speculating as well.

Obvious statement is obvious, because ANet is doing a great job of keeping GW1 players enticed. /not

Not really, I along with many other of my acquaintances have lost enthusiasm for GW1 ever since the first word of GW2. Now our patience is hanging by a thread and neither GW1 or GW2 has much appeal anymore. Greener pastures means exactly what it sounds like. A more modern MMo or a MMMMo.

If GW2 does end up sucking, i will lose all respect for ANet and GW1 and probably leave never look back. Mostly because they canceled Utopia just to Hype up GW2 with EotN. Kinda anti-climatic.

A big reason im even hanging around GW1 is because i dont feel like im finished with it yet, but i am to the end of the rope. And as i have been toying with other games, i refuse to get locked into another MMO. I was waiting to give GW2 a chance, but once again, Meh.

If GW2 is released right now i may buy it but ill probably wait for a friend to buy it and then check it out from him.
That is a lot of "ifs" but regardless
If it is released in 2012 then ill most likely be into another game. So the chances of me buying it will be even more slim.

I already moved to WoW (private server) as my primary MMO at the moment, because I'm kinda done with developing my GW character. (Including titles etc.) I have a full HoM waiting for GW2.

If there will be no GW2 (which I do not expect) I'll just stay with any other MMO that does not require a paying subscription.

Anyone who plays 16 characters needs a life not a new game.

At any rate I'm just hanging around waiting on Diablo 3. When that comes out who cares about GW1 or GW2 because it will be the best game to play for awhile after its release bar none.

Does anyone live near the office in Belleveu? I'm wondering if much activity is still going on there, or that just a dozen of people show up every morning to maintain the servers and the live team.

There should be over 100 employees at least.

Reminds me we didn't have a community day in 2008 nor seasonal greeting cards.

The list of employees is removed from the arenanet site, it just says the team is working on GW2.

If/when GW2 arrives, I'll give it a shot, until then, I'll happily explore other gaming experiences (currently Sacred 2) and continue to log in to GW from time to time.

There was gaming life before GW and there will be after

I don't know whether Anet's radio-silence-until-the-big-bang-reveal strategy is the right one, but the constant-hype-machine strategy used by some developers has backfired spectacularly. Look at Spore. In many ways, this was an incredibly original game. Each stage of the game follows the evolution of your created race but also mimics the "evolution" of video and computer games themselves. Content can be shared, and the character creation model is one of the most flexible ever created.

The hype machine communicated these and other features constantly to those who were paying any attention, and by the time the game came out, the details were so fully understood, any gee whiz factor was gone. Instead, people focused on the DRM issues which were in no way unique to Spore. But because the studio over-hyped their product, gamers decided to make an example of them.

If this game had been released with no details until close to the release date, the DRM issues would have been ignored and the reaction to the novelty of the game would have been much better. And all that money and time they spent doing interviews with journalists could have been spent, you know, making a better game.

Also, let's say Anet was trickling out screenshots and details. The people on this forum would be ripping apart every little detail. They just announced they're giving us more storage account-wise and character-wise, and the reaction on this forum has been 90% negative to 10% positive. Free, additional storage! Who could possibly be against that? And yet, that is taken as an opportunity to launch attack after attack on Anet. There is frankly extremely little upside to developers giving interviews. It takes them away from, you know, developing the game and provides opportunities for "fan" grief.

I'm convinced that most people posting in this thread don't really believe GW2 is a giant hoax and will never be released. What I think they are hoping is that this tactic will force Anet to reveal details. "No one willl buy your game unless you give us details" they whine. It's possible Anet will cave and start to show their hand a bit. If they do, they will be duly punished.

The greeting cards were talked about in an incgamers thread. Yes, they sent them.

As for your first statement, ok, I seriously can't believe that nobody thought to check NCSoft quarterly reports: http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

Just get the Q3-2008 zip file, unpack, and open the IR_Factsheet spreadsheet. All sorts of juicy bits inside. Let me post some, currency conversion courtesy of google (the numbers are a bit off those in the sheet, because it seems that Korean Won went down compared to dollars):

Anet sales, 2008: Q1 3,312 M$, Q2 1.081 M$, Q3 0.837 M$
Anet gain/loss, 2008: Q1 +0.826M$, Q2 -1.826 M$, Q3 -2.317 M$

So they lost over $2mil over sales of a bit under $1M, meaning they've spent about $3M in a quarter, or about $1M/month. Somehow I doubt they're growing daisies with that kind of cash.

Oh, and another fun tidbit from Key Metrics tab in the same spreadsheet (I'm sure you all didn't know that this is public):

Guild Wars, US/Europe, # of accounts activated:

Sep, 2006 +2,447,000
Dec, 2006 +3,122,000
Mar, 2007 +3,555,000
June, 2007 +3,917,000
Sep, 2007 +4,500,000
Dec, 2007 +4,878,000
Mar, 2008 +5,159,000
June, 2008 +5,377,000
Sep, 2008 +5,589,000

@Shillo: tx for the info!

That restores my faith again somewhat, if it's the truth ofcourse.

I don't care about screenshots and stuff and I can wait, but I just wanne know the truth you know. Cause this game rox and I would like to see a successor within 'standard' mmo developing time if possible. And if that's not gonna happen or not at all, it would be nice to tell us.

Wasn't there a quote from Regina that she actually saw the game?

Wow, I wish all those people who keep saying "Guild Wars is dying" would take the time to do their homework and see this. It looks to me that it is GROWING. Just because your favorite thing got nerfed and that thing is dead/dying, doesnt mean that the whole game is dying.

Granted, Anet has a few things to learn about how to build demand for their new game, and also needs to understand that the maturity level of its average client is in the low teens so if you keep promising christmas, and delaying it, temper tantrums and accusations of "its never coming" will shortly ensue.

Clealry Anet thinks they are clever in creating such a level of secrecy for GW2, but all they are doing is taking away the hope/faith of a majority of their client base, and yes I am sure everytime someone loses hope for GW2 they will go to another MMO and find a home there and GW1 will be something they might poke their head into from time to time if at all. Anet also knows that once the reviews for GW2 hit all the Magazines and Websites, people will come regardless of how long it took to build. It is just a shame that they are losing the players trust in the process.

Anet - you do owe us something for all the promises you have made

Players - you need to relax and realize that GW 2 will come when its ready and business is an unpredictable beast.

Cmon let's be realistic GW2 won't take another 5 years to develop. Promising something that shows up 5-6 years late is a ridiculous move for every company, and what are they going to keep tell us in the meanwhile for something that should have been finished years ago?

For me, I'll wait as long as it takes, if the game is worth it. Daesu said I'll I could say really, whenever the game comes out it's not just for GW1 players, even though we're all here if the game turns out to be good, the respective media will acknowladge that and give it good ratings and people looking for an experiencie that GW2 offers will buy it.

In fact it's a safer bet for anet than GW1 was when it was first launched, they had nothing at the time. Now, they have the reputation GW1 left and a playerbase that most likely will buy it. With all of that, they have the new players they can attract, again if, the game turns out to be good. It's not only us browsing through this forum that will buy it and that's what a lot of people imply.

So, yeah... Whenever it comes out, I'll certainly be playing something else if I've lost interest in GW1 by then, that doesn't mean I won't pick up GW2 for it's own right.

And don't stress people, theres other games in the same situation as GW. I've been an Half-Life player for a hell of a long time, and I'm waiting on HL2: Episode 3, wich was supposed to first come out in 2008, later Valve admited they would only be releasing game info by the end of 2008, and they didn't. And most players here might not know, but there's even less information available regarding EP3 than there is with GW2. But if you browse the steam foruns you wouldn't be seeing anyone shouting VAPORWARE! in panic because its unthinkable Valve killing the probably most successful game ever existed in PC gaming, both sales and on what the game offers.

Same goes (well to some lenght) for Guild Wars and Anet, since that's the only title Anet has to work on and it's where their revenue comes from. Seriously, this has been said plenty of times before but I'll say it once more cause a lot of people don't seem to get it in their heads. If anet isn't developing GW2, and it's all an enourmes lie to keep people buying Guild Wars (and to promote EOTN sales when it came out), what the hell do you think the people who work there are getting paid for? Doing nothing? Permanent vacations? Thumb tweedling? Screw google, working for Anet wins the pot.

Except that first time such harsh DRM were put on a casual game whom target consumer was everyone. It also lead to it being one of the most pirated games of all times. The only other game game similar to spores DRM was mass effect for PC, which had much less consumers so far less outcry. But there was an outcry. I'm afraid you are comparing apples to oranges to be honest. MMO do not have DRM, don't need by definition because of the account structure. The only thing what that would be similar to what happened to spore is if last minute gw2 took up hellgate:london's fail f2p/p2p hybrid model.

Hi hallomik,

Your posts are most of the time brilliant (no I'm not going to ask you a favor ;P ) but I believe this one is on top of everything that's been said here (well a few people said similar things). Everyone, I mean everyone, should read it carefully and ponder on the consequences of vaporwar-ing GW2 and pushing for more to be released. According to Regina's last posts, she's relaying these "concerns" (or attempts to get more info) to the devs quite often. Just imagine for one second that this impatience could cost Anet and GW2 a little bit of momentum, or distract potential buyers, or create false expectations that will disappoint people not because GW2 is not cool but because it doesn't correspond to what they said or showed. And all that for? A pic? Something more thant "we're making progress"? A detail on GW2?

IMHO your post is very important, it should be stickied in all GW2 threads and people should think that if they indeed care about the game, they'll let these professionals take care of it. Having an opinion is OK, although Guru shows that they're not often informed, but that the sum of opinions leads to a worse situation is not cool. Yes Anet left an empty void of information between the PCgamer very cool magazine and the next announcement (books about the 250 years gap between GW1 and GW2, plus very small details on the general gameplay). As I said before, quite a lot of the vaporwar-ators care about this game, so now is the opportunity to ponder on how your actions of vaporwar-ing impact the future of the franchise.

It may well be the "truth", but it's just words. If vaporware means "Anet disappointed me" for you, get over it. If it means "I don't want another DNF", get over it. All in all, expectations create more expectations, anger creates more anger (it's too strong a word but I hope it'll resonate in people's mind), and you have to try to break the circle at one point, which does not mean change what you think, but rather change how you behave. Be patient, be reasonable, play GW1 (it's not to say who is or isn't patient and reasonable, only to say you have to ask yourself whether you're doing the right thing).

Ty hallomik.

I think it right to call it vaporware, not to force information, but that how i feel that what it was being used as. It was hype b4 gwen, it was hyped right after Winterday 07 in Gaile's new years resolution, and now a year latter it was slipped into nothingness. Even if Gaile's word were small, in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. We understand that the beta was pushed back, but everything else was as well. Hell i think a good portion of the gw2 beta scams would end if they had an official gw2 website with only gw2 information, not gw2 info hidden in the gw1 site. Most of the other game in development already have sites up, why hasn't this one?

Too bad A.Net announced many tiles 5,5mln PURCHASED CHAPTERS, not activated accounts.

That is to be expected right? As I have said, GW1 is a 4 years old game. Nobody expects you to "hold out" for years while GW2 is under development and not play other games, that would be silly.

Everyone is free to explore other games if he is sick of GW1. I am sure ANet expects that, even as their Live team tries their best to keep GW1 "fresh" as much as they can.

So even if GW2 is released soon, it still has to compete with existing new MMOs at the time of its release. One can argue that you can be playing game X now and by 2012 you maybe sick of game X, then when GW2 is released and proven good, players may even return.

The important point is GW2 must have good game quality, otherwise it would fail. The fact that people want to SEE GW2 screenshots, info, and beta NOW NOW NOW, is merely because they want to satisfy their own curiosity. It is not like they have some special loyalty to ANet so much so that even if GW2 is crappy, as long as the beta is released now, they would close their eyes and buy it.

The usual threats of players, "..if ANet doesn't do this, we are moving on to other games..." is empty in this case because releasing GW2 beta now (even though it is not ready), would just give a negative first impression to gamers and hurt their sales in the end. Releasing a bad quality GW2 beta right now would be terrible, if the game is not ready yet.

Exactly, one Tabula Rasa fiasco is more than enough and Anet can't aford that.

Im not sad enough to go threw all 6 pages, but if you guys dont know, there is an Aussie game website with Guild Wars 2 being shipped in on 7Th september, 2009... If you did know this and think its bullshit, well good for you.

FYI AION FTW!!!!1111!!!!! Open Beta in 5 days!

Well, to answer the OP (tl:dr), I am not going to play GW2 at all (since what little info we have makes it sound more and more like a wannabe WoW clone.

I AM waiting for Dragon Age to come out though. That's going to be one hell of a game, and it'll keep me tied over till the KOTOR MMO comes out..after which, well, I'm gonna be a happy camper!

Wait I thought Guild Wars was dead? OMG all these numbers must mean that dead people or bots are activating the accounts!!! IT'S ZOMBIE ROBOTS RUN FOR IT!!! But before you run for it all those people who think GW is dead and GW2 is vapor; please leave me all your zkeys/ectos/gold/leet items and uber minis before you go. If I missed anything else of value just feel free to include it also.

Thanks in advance I really appreciate it....

Copy-pasted from the official spreadsheet. I'm sure NCSoft's manager who assembled it, as well as whoever presumably translated the whole thing from Korean, will appreciate your deep interest in fine details of semantics. Feel free to share your fine feedback with them.