To the vaporware people...

This was post #106 on page 6 and I'm up-ing it so that everyone can think about it. I'm in agreement with this view and hope Anet doesn't cave in so that GW2 can have the marketing edge it needs to succeed.

They are working on something, but that doesn't mean it gw2. Izzy's interview in Germany never said gw2, only future products. And even then there is no evidence that whatever they are working on will go to market or not.
I suspect they are there to mislead us from thinking that major development delay are happening. The moving of the beta and the lack of fruition any of Gaile's resolutions make me believe this. I believe they mislead us with an idea of a 08 beta, which many people saw as an 09 release, heck look at these forums, people still think it is coming out in 09.
For all we know, gw2 might end up like Ghost Busters, end up in limbo until a new publisher comes along.

I have heard of conspiracy theories that are much less complicated than what you are stating. I can see the people at ANET coming to Guru when ever they need a good laugh. If I am wrong about GW2 I will be the first to admit it, but as things are right now I see no reason to believe I will have to.

another conspiracy theory:

summer'08
NCSoft Korea: Hey Anet, we are kicking out the Garriot Brothers and make some of your founders bosses of our new formed NCSoft West, because we like your quality work and trust you guys
Anet: Thx, btw. here is our GW 1.5 prototype NC Interactive forced us to produce in short time...we don't like it and can do better with more time.
NCSoft Korea: Forget it and make GW2 a real AAA title. Take all the time you need..
Anet: \o/

If Abedeus's figure of Diablo 3 having been developed for three years before launch is to be believed, two years into Diablo 3's development, all that was known was some rumours that Blizzard was working on some secret project that might be Diablo 3.

GW2 is likely in roughly the same state Diablo 3 was in a year before it was announced. The difference is that ANet was put in a position that they had to announce what they were working on years before it was ready to be presented. They have another year before they can be negatively compared to Blizzard on grounds of time taken before information is released... let alone DNF. (Two, at most two and a half or so years... well within a period of development where some companies that could be mentioned might not even admit that they're making a game at all... verses over ten years not just from announcement but from the first announced release date, which is needless to say well outside the bounds of a normal development cycle? No comparison. Come back in eight years... heck, I'll even be generous and give you half that, and if GW2 hasn't been released, then you can compare it to DNF.)

feel free to read my post...
i never mentioned anything bout a hoax either
it was -your- word, and will stay -your- word


you have taken this out of context
even still...
anet (gaile) originally announced 2008 beta
if there were no problems...then we'd be playin beta rite now
whether it was because of a poorly estimated date, or they're slackin off, or wutever else the reason may be...
its still a problem


and speculation is always bad?
i didnt come to this conclusion randomly
anet is likely to exhibit similar behaviour on gw2 with that they exhibited on gw1

Well after much digging, I managed to find a screenshot of gw2. In a pretty bold move, it looks like they're going for the retro look!

Preordered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBS620H12HA

Further proves it isn't a good idea to show a game til' it is presentable.

Dude do you ever stick your nose outside of GW world?
I've been playing RPG (computer and paper) for more than 10 years, GW is full of character names taken from Forgotten Realms, not mentioning guild names. That excludes your theory of "narrow field of MMO"
I'm also involved in Unreal/Unreal Tournament community which is completely different type of game. For your information people over there are perfectly aware what GW is. They were fighting over 10hrs trial keys when I had few spare ones
Couple months ago I had a guy at my house trying to sell me new windows. He sat in my living room looked at my screen and said "Is that Guild Wars? I never played it but looks like Guild Wars"

I think you missed the point, that "screenshot" is actually an alpha screenshot of gw1, because they do appear to have many similarity. Possibly if someone who was involved with the closed alpha of gw1 was around they could enlighten me if it is or isn't, or its a photoshop job.

I believe that he knows that was an alpha screenshot of GW1. He's using it as an example as to when GW1 was showed in it's alpha stage looking awful. The same thing would happen if GW2 was showed at this moment.

Then why did he present it as a gw2 screen shot then? Even though it is an alpha build, you can see many concept that made it the final product. Most of the skills are very close to the same, except dark bond. It was limited to only 8 skills to the bar. But only in hindsight you know what all though things mean. Who would know what the > on the bars mean without playing the game.

Probably for kicks knowing that someone, or even a few would fall for it. I'm sure some already have. But you'd just have to ask him about why he presented it as GW2.

Reality is it's not GW2. You can image google Guild Wars Alpha and pull quite a few screens of it. Most dated 2003.

Its a joke!!! Can you really not see that?

No. GW2 news is serious business.

This is pretty much my take on it.

I've been in the software business for quite a number of years - GW2 is not yet vaporware. For such a project to slip by a good 6 months is more normal than not and we are still realistically not 6 months out of "late 2008". Now, mid 2009 rolls around and no beta and, well, assuming that the huge amount of information we have now being pretty much the same and I will start to agree with the term, until then not a big deal.

Though I do also agree with the "big silence" thing probably being a bad idea. As of right now I do not see how they can make people happy. I've been playing Lord of the Rings Online and it seems about as perfect a blend of GW has to a real 100% MMO and, well, if that is the best they can do then as of now I can't say I will be anything more than neutral. The announcements followed by dead silence raise expectations (especially when the official reason is that they are spending too much time in development).

At this point too many are going to expect a true master piece. I recall an older game called "Strike Commander" that did something quite similar in marketing along with a VERY delayed release from their original promise It, well, failed quite miserably (in fact, had we not had the decade+ long running joke of Duke Nukem 3-D it would have filled its place). It was actually a decent game, on par with most average games released that year - yet after the announcement of how wonderful it would be, years of dead silence, and then a release an "average" game it failed miserably instead of doing average.

I truly hope GW2 does well, I've been here since about 2 months after release and still play - if I had not have tried LOTRO in the last two months I would have still spent those hours here. Indeed, I would say once I hit 60 there, most of my deeds, and a decent legendary I will most likely split my time between the two. Anet has disappointed me since a little after EOTN in some of their changes in direction, yet they are still one of the better companies out there.

I'll wait and see, I think they tried the whole fairly transparent thing and had issues with it and are now trying the whole silent thing - I suspect that the silent thing will work out worse in the end, though they have pretty much backed themselves into a corner now (suddenly becoming verbose will be seen as trying to overcome failure and more silence will only raise the bar higher).

No.... Anet said themselves that there was so much they wanted to do with Utopia, they just couldn't fit it all into a single campaign. They wanted to add a Z-axis (jumping, climbing, etc.), dual-wielding weapons, more two-handed weapons, new professions ("Chronomancer") and new playable races. That's when they decided that it was too much for one chapter, and trashed the idea for EoTN and started making plans to incorporate a lot of it into GW2. Obviously, that's not directly quoted, but I'm 99.99999% sure that if you do a little bit of hunting, you'll find the spot where they talk about it.

Even if Utopia were something totally different (different themes are NOT the same as entirely different concepts), don't you think it'd be kind of silly of them to not use what they came up with (may I remind you, we were never really intended to see that concept art) when making GW2? Come on, man. They're not THAT stupid. I don't think even they would take concept art that far without intending to do something with it.

I'm well aware that none of this rules out the idea of GW2 being sort of "accidental" vaporware (I'm fully convinced that Anet WANTED to make this game when they announced it. The idea of it being nothing more than an eleborate marketing ploy is clever, but absurd). Whether they're actually making it now is anyone's call, but the fact that Regina used the word "if" in one of her quotes is hardly a reason to believe they aren't.

I have do disagree with you.

First, there is no drm issues with GW products, and I assume it will be the same for GW2.

Second, the poster you quote assumes that less information would have led to less concern about Spore's drm issues which, at least in the States, is completely false! People here are getting sick & tired of jumping through hoops & having software auto-install that causes problems with your machine. More & more people are voting against drm with their dollar.

Third, not everyone is asking for specific details. An updated timeline would be nice (and it can be an estimate, not set in stone). How about some work on a GW2 website with concept art? We get this flood of juicy information before the release of GW:EN with promises of certain milemarkers to come, then nothing.

Last, I personally have never thought GW2 was a hoax, but the longer I wait for some information, the more I'm convinced GW2 is dead. I hope and pray it's not! I'm enough of a fanboy of this franchise that I will buy GW2 WHENEVER it comes out! I hope to be invited to the beta if it ever happens, but I'm losing hope. And based on the popularity of these type of threads, I am nowhere near the only one.

P.S. To Anet c/o Regina. If you guys have hit a snag, and GW2 won't be out for a few years, just tell us. It's the lack of any timetable that has us all worried.

It was being developed for three years before they announced it, actually. It still hasn't launched. When they unveiled it, though, they had a fully functioning game. The only things that have really changed since then are some of the graphics and some general tweaking. They unvieled a fully functioning game after three years of development, including the break where it switched studios, and ANET can't even show a screenshot from a non-playable demo build? They can't even tell us anything about it that they haven't already stated?

Nobody (reasonably) expects it to be done, or even necessarily that close to being done, but when you announce a game and then say nothing at all for 2 years, normal people get a little suspicious.

If you want a more relevant comparison, Blizzard started working on WoW in mid 2000 and by E3 2002 they had a non-playable demo. The next year, they had a playable demo. In the interim, they actually released info about the game - classes, races, basic backstory, etc.

ANET's two years in, and they can't even say anything they didn't say back when they announced it? Fishy.

No, it doesn't. I don't know what you think you're talking about, but Guild Wars competes with MMOs, not 15 year old D&D games. What the naming conventions of the game's characters has to do with its marketing situation, I have no idea.

In fact, I have no idea what your post was supposed to be about because half of it's wrong, half of it is just stuff you say happened to you, and none of it seems to have anything to do with the illegitimate comparison someone made between GW and GTA IV, which is what my post - which you quoted - was about.

How long is Blizzard's unannounced MMO in development? 3-5years... how much information have they released so far? nothing except "we are working on an unanounced title".

The bold part made me laugh .

I knew I wasn't normal!

Seriously, people need to get over it, buy more patience, or move on and stop looking obsessively at the past.

What, the one they started hiring for less than a year and a half ago?

"they" didn't release anything. The game has never officially been acknowledged, a mod on the WoW forums claims they're working on it and a bunch of people noticed some telling job listings on the Blizzard website back October '07. Contrast that with ANET's official announcement of Guild Wars 2 nearly 2 years ago, with nothing since.

Even if this were comparable, Blizzard can get away with that kind of hush hush secrecy anyway. They're much bigger, have much more notable and well-known games, and have a much more established track record in the industry.

I have serious doubts about the reality of that game too though. Starcraft: Ghost anyone?

Or accept that it's highly unusual to publicly announce a product and then refuse to talk about it for 2 years...

Hey, maybe ArenaNet could release all their new ideas before they can properly show them off. I'm sure Blizzard would love to implement as much of it as they could in their next WoW expansion. Warhammer Online, anyone?

I think the most important part there is the "they're much bigger" part. They don't have to explain that they're not working on game X because they're working on game Y because they're big enough to have teams working on each. ANet only has one full team, therefor when that team turns to work on GW2, they either have to let people know or leave people hanging.

ANet being quiet about Guild Wars 2 is just like Blizzard being quiet about Diablo 3 until they felt they were ready for an extended presentation. The only difference is that Blizzard could afford to keep it completely hushed-up, while ANet needed to explain why they weren't making campaigns any more.

Maybe being completely silent about it after the cat is out of the bag isn't the best option - but presumably they have their reasons, and we can't really say for sure that it isn't the best option for them without knowing those reasons. However, I certainly don't see anything sinister about it - it seems far more likely that they're waiting until they can do a D3-style release rather than potentially lose some of the impact by releasing dribs and drabs in the meantime.

(Idly, to nitpick: I sincerely doubt that D3 has only had graphical tweaks and the like since announcement. They have a functional game, yes, but I'd guess at the time they probably only had a couple of areas, probably haven't had all five classes implemented let alone with full skill trees, probably haven't implemented most of the enemies they intend to put in the game, and certainly have a lot of balancing to do!)

I can feel the burning passion people on this thread have with GW. Sadly some people are just too blind to see through all the vapor that there's nothing behind it. NOTHING.

And what's with people taking Regina's words for granted anyway? Haven't you LEARNED anything from the whole Gaile and CM breakdown hotmess we had not long ago, when the game was still cared by MANY people (me included)?

As some people suggested, the only reason why Anet had to announce GW2 when they did because they wanted to promote EotN. Without saying that EotN is a bridge that would carry (somehow) whatever you have in GW to the new game (GW2), EotN would've looked like a savaged product from a failed standalone-expansion (which is what it actually is) to a failed game that has reached its expiration date a little prematurely (which is what GW is).

I sorta wonder how could blizzard make another WoW expansion, they are running out of WC3 lore to deficate on.

I'm guessing the next part of the story in WoW once they finally kill Arthas off will involve the Old Gods. Some of the quests in WoTLK kinda hints at it.

That, or the Emerald Dream. Hell, they can even create new lore material in WoW itself without relying on the old WC games. Most of the WotLK stuff came from the RPG books, too, AFAIK.

But this is offtopic. And BTW, saying that they don't release info because other company might copy it is just LAME.

You do realize how competitive the gaming business is, right? Especially when it comes to MMOs all trying to woo people to their respective games. Guild Wars 1 tried some ideas that nobody has before. I figure ArenaNet still has a few more intresting tricks up their sleeves. The last thing any company would want is to have their competitors use their ideas before they are even done and effectively "steal their thunder". It may sound "lame" to you but that is business.

While this may be true that they want to safeguard their ideas, concept art is not an idea. Furthermore, the reason they simply won't release concept art by itself, is because they want a big bang.

The whole thing is ironic though, considering that many SUPPOSED elements of GW2 are simply WoW ripoffs, ideas not unique to gw. Some are high level cap, jumping/swimming (mounts?), large scale world pvp, and large scale dungeon-like raids.

World of Warcraft didn't create a single one of those ideas.
Those ideas were already announced to be in Guild Wars 2 due to the fact they aren't new ideas. That doesn't represent all of what Guild Wars 2 will add to the table.

Stop acting like anet is revolutionary in every business aspect. Those may not be NEW ideas, but they were SUCCESSFUL IDEAS under WoW. You must admit that anet would not be taking GW2 in this direction if WoW hadn't grown so popular and made so much $$$ under these very ideas.

Are people so narrow minded they think Warcraft is the only MMO?

Are people so retarded they think Anet can come up with unique idea nobody can think of and everyone wants to steal it?

GW1 being something completely unique, I'm not surprised at all. Anet hasn't got the resources of Blizzard Activision and surely is not stupid. You can believe in them or not, believe Regina's word or not (she's definitely not like Gaile), believe the words of NCsoft bosses or not, believe that the announcement of Umbra being licensed is a smoke-screen or not, but in the end these are pieces of evidence that the game is indeed in development. You can draw all the comparisons you want, with DNF, SC:Ghost, or WoW, or whatever else, GW1 still remains in a category of its own and my guess is that GW2 is and will be exactly the same. You can try to defend the fact that this situation of not releasing any information after PCgamer May'07 amounts to vaporware, but this is an "academic" debate, not a real debate about GW2. The point is moot and this thread is more about how people cope or don't cope with this situation rather than GW2. Until people accept Anet's policy on that (and I guess a lot of people hope that Regina will continue to press them to change their policy, which is more unlikely everyday that passes), we're not going to make any progress. This thread is just going in circles since page 1.

But arguing is fun! Keep us busy til GW2 comes out.

I'm not sure if I can keep on arguing forever.