To the vaporware people...

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.