The majority of the community sucks (or does it?)

It was a caricaturist answer to the exaggerated scenario.

It is like when in this thread we talk about a god mode, creating an exaggeration, and then to trying to point that PvE-only skills and consumables are the same.


A guy in my alliance, very annoying one, comes on and start chatting. Nobody answers to him. So he says people don't talk anymore, don't play together, that he miss the old days of no heroes when people play together.

He does that pretty much every time.

The curious thing is most of the time I'm in a team with like 3-5 other people and chatting on teamspeak. Also, when we invite people on the alliance chat to do something like a dungeon, a vanquish, fow, etc, he never wants to come. He just ask for help to do missions or early quests.

My point is, exaggerations and analogies can be useful, but only to a certain extent. They aren't the exact same thing. If we read to much into them we can pretty much say whatever we want, spinning it the way it serves us better, but get further and further from the reality in question.

So yes, while nine rings isn't a good way to play gw, nothing would say that those people would be playing the game at that time. They might be sleeping, they might be spending time with friends in real life, or they might be chatting with people while standing there.

Nine rings isn't exactly the cause of the GW problems. Neither are PvE-only skills or consumables. Nor is PvE the cause for the PvP problems.

A year ago, I bet a large number of people was saying Ursan blessing was the main problem of GW PvE. While UB was stupid, its removal don't seem to have improved GW situation.

Anet can remove PvE-only skills. Anet can remove consumables. Anet can even remove titles and heroes.

In a year time, the few that are left, will keep saying GW is dead, people don't PuG, PvP is stale without the infusion of new blood, cursing the "community" and so on.

And all we have accomplished is reducing options, narrowing the game to a very ways of play it.

All I see in threads like these, even if it wasn't the OP intention and if this thread escaped his control and went beyond his objective, is "reducing".

What, in my point of view, people should be demanding is that skills that were changed because of PvP concerns were reverted for PvE play, that "normal" 8 team play style is as profitable as farming, that monsters get better builds, especially as a team and so on.

I want more. More options. Overwhelm us with options. Take away the need for speed (I don't care about it but some people do and seem affected if other people achieve their objectives in much less time, even if in a less fun and enjoyable, to themselves, way).

After that, if anything is still blatantly overpowered, take care of it.

That's not what we're saying (at least not what I'm saying...)

We're pointing out that the same argument allowing for the usage of overpowered tools (what's commonly referred to as the "don't like;don't use" argument) can be used for any single silly/inconsistent/overpowered facet you can think of. It doesn't matter if you use the newly introduced Hello Kitty set of in-game armor, it's existence is concerning enough.

Balancing the overpowered facets is the first step of many. A few underpowered skills against a few balanced skills is different vs. a underpowered, balanced, and overpowered skills/tools.

When you have the former you have a more limited selection of options for your choosing, but you're going through the areas in a much less imbalanced fashion. Having a few overpowered also limits your options but causes the game to be more mindless.

That's why nerfing UB didn't solve all the problems, people tend to become jaded with a certain core issue. Balancing it was only a first sequence of a larger order of events.

you should take your own advice. imbalanced skills cause reduction. the problem with your viewpoint is that you think there is no such thing as "too powerful." powerful imba skills are just as bad for the game as useless weak skills. they only give you the illusion of choice, but really you only picked it because it was powerful imba. wouldn't it be great if instead of 10 viable builds, we had 100 viable builds to choose from? this is what balance does--increase options, whether buff or nerf.


regarding soloing vs grouping:
sure, if you remove the ability to solo farm rewards, people might leave. but the people that are leaving are those that only care about rewards and playing by themselves. so what is the community left with? people who care bout the game and playing it with others. doesn't sound like such a bad place to me.

to clarify: the game facilitates solo play to the point that people who have to make a choice between the two will more likely choose solo play rather than multiplayer. so its not that all the people that enjoy both but currently play solo will leave, but rather they will choose to do multiplayer instead.


edit: i'm not saying that solo play should be removed completely either. i enjoy solo play once in a while. we should keep solo missions, solo quests, solo dungeons, etc. however, the fact that nearly every single area is solo-able, including so-called "multiplayer" areas, is not good for the game.

I've got a somewhat funny question to all of you (it's not an innocent question); you say "the game" does this and that, or this is good or bad for "the game". Who is this "game" you talk about that can do stuff or to which absolute properties can be attached? What is this notion that exists by itself, that is apparently understood and used and used by you, but not others?

(no, this is not a question about English or your master of it, everyone makes mistakes, including me, this is about what you really mean behind this word...)

EDIT: GW's god mode?

is that some sort of "guns don't kill, people do" question?

you build a single player game, people will likely play it as single player.
you build a door, people will likely open it.
you build a killing machine, people will likely kill with it.

sure, you can argue that the current gw is what they want the game to be now, but thats not what it was originally claimed (or intended) to be, and not what it originally was at first either--and that upsets some of the original fans.

Thing is that in GW you can only choose a minimum of skills. That means skills are competing between themselves.

You and I both agree with that.

So, when you have skills that do the same thing, some will just never be used.

Look for example at [[resurrect]. It is just a bad skill that lose to pretty much every other rez available, except you get it for free and opposed to [[Resurrection Signet] is reusable without morale boost.


So lets remove consumables.

What happens?

Some builds, mostly farming builds, might disappear. Other will become slower.

55's and 600's are still out there. No problem.

Remove PvE only skills.

Cryway disappears. Imbagon too.

For general game play, including HM, they aren't really needed.

Sabway is still there, so is Discordway.

A portion of the population won't be able to complete regular game though, get pissed and move on.

So what about elite areas?

The original prophecies came with skills like [[Life barrier], [[life bond], [[Defy pain], [[Obsidian flesh], [[Spell breaker].

[[Spiteful spirit], despite being slow still kills. [[Protective Spirit] and [[enfeebling blood] are quite strong. Paras can chain [[Defensive anthem (PvE)]. Wards are still out there.

The main problem will be HM elementalists with the lack of decent +armor party wide skills, but [[maelstrom] and [[earth shaker] are out there too.

If you want nukes you still have [[Feast of Corruption] and [[Ray of judgment].

So congratulations - you have tank-and-spank.

And if this game didn't have a PvP area you wouldn't be bothered.

But since it has, you will still be bothered because in PvP tanking fail and in PvE doesn't, and it will probably be the fastest method in PvE.

I'm separating this in two different parts, PvE and PvP.
When talking about 'the game' in PvP it's mainly about the game mechanics and how certain skills interact with it.
In esssence, GW is a resource game. You have limited resources, health and energy. To take health away from opponents you use energy (or adrenaline, but that's a form of build up energy instead of an existing pool). When health is taken away you restore it by converting energy to health.
To achieve this each player has 8 skills and a team has a maximum of 8 players, giving a total of 64 skills on each side.
When health drops to 0 people can restore the energy and skill pool by a so-called resurrection skill, bringing skills and energy back. Or wait for a certain amount of time in some forms of play.

When we are talking about good and bad in PvP perspective, we are in essention talking about the understanding of resource management.
Even spiking is resource management, it's taking 8 skills and an energy pool form the opposing team away.
So when types of play emerge that allow people to play without considering resource management, it's bad for the game. One of the examples was the pre-nerf discord GvG team. It used heroes for quick spikes and heals and abused Soul Reaping for energy management. I'm not familiar enough with the current meta to say anything about it.

When talking about PvE the same mechanics also apply. Again it's a game of resource management. Only the human players know this and the IA doesn't. So they waste all energy on a single heavy protected target while being drained of life by others they are not attacking. That's the essence of tanking. This is an essential difference between PvE and PvP.
Still, resource management is 'the game' in PvE.
There are some other mechanics that are present in PvE and not in PvP, for example a gold/hour rate when farming, which influences certain types of play.

When talking about stuff that is bad for 'the game' we are talking about stuff that takes away the need for resource management.
My first target has always been consumables, because this is the prime example of broken resource management. Next was Ursan, also an example where resource management was not needed anymore, specially when combined with consumables.

After that we get into 'broken mechanics'. Perma-sin and similar builds are bad for the game because they allow for unbalanced teams. A lot of defensive and healing resources are bundled around two players (when a monk is taken to heal up when aggro is lost), allowing six players to use only offensive skills.
What this teaches players is that resource management doesn't really matter, you only need some specific skills to get things done.


An example of resource management.
I've played monk a lot the last half year. Both PvE and PvP. In basic it's converting energy to health. Considering equally skilled teams, whenever I have a hard time keeping up with energy the team isn't either having enough offensive power to kill opponents while being pressured or the team is lacking defense.
Whenever I'm always high on energy the team is having too much defensive power, it could be more powerfull when some energy was converted to offense instead of defense.

I think this is something that forms one of the basics of Guild wars and to which absolute properties can be attached.

Which is why you don't have them do the same thing.

Part of my opinion is that ANet implemented a wee (i.e. far) too many skills to their game, something I feel as a bad effect on both sides of the game. While it may be hard to differentiate them between each other, an effort needs to be made regardless.

...What, so we're just leaving it at that?

I've already said, repeatedly (and in fact in that one post you just quoted!) that balancing - not removing, which I realize is a bad idea - PvE skills and consumables is just the first step of many, just like balancing Ursan didn't help as much as people assumed.

So cool, we're down to Tank and Spank. Now we have to fix that, decide what to do what Sabway, feed the monkeys, set fire to places etc. etc.

Balancing PvE skills and consumables isn't going to solve the game, it's just going to help it.

Sabway is perfectly fine. A human team will never use sabway or discordway because it isn't good enough. It is just good enough for AI heroes that are as just dumb as the enemy.

Tank and spank requires a few things - complete rework of AI and then change builds of mobs and their levels and bonuses they get from HM and stuff. Unfortunately wont happen.

I know snaek thinks I'm the one keeping Anet from acting (), but sadly I'm not.

Anet won't take that effort because GW can't generate more money.

What do you want now? Another expansion with more dungeons, armors titles? Another campaign with another 2 professions, another noob island and 10 more of the same missions?

The main problem is, that although AI doesn't know what is happening, AI has more resources.

Going toe to toe vs AI in resources battles is quite nice, but when AI just have too many of those is just easier to exploit the fact they are code.

If that's what's "preventing" a developer to do certain changes, then they've already lost complete touch with the playerbase.

That's somewhat contradicting, because they don't have the capability to either use/use properly all of those resources.

To some. I expect them to lose most of the players that were interested in PvP in GW2 unless they come with 2 nice GW2 games.



On the other hand you can't just make them stop being AI to test how it would be if they could use those.

What we know, is that if you give 300+ damage attacks, with +20 armor and +health, human parties will trash AI parties. Ursan proved that.

If the AI was better programmed and had better builds, I don't see what would stop them to do the same to human parties.


I know you and others just want to make the game more interesting. I want that too. The game can still be interesting and loads of stuff to try and mess about, though, unless someone is just concerned in the utmost efficiency and titles/skins.

But lets be realistic - this mess called GW is beyond repair or it actually needs so much revamp Anet decided they might as well make GW2 instead.

I oppose clearly to any form of PvE competition and ranking between players, but I wouldn't mind smarter enemies with smarter builds.

But at this point messing around will, in my opinion, just cause more harm then good.

What I can tell you though, is that GW2 will be much more of a traditional RPG than GW is. People that play RPGs want to collect stuff, want to see their character grow in power over time.

I can also tell you, that nothing anyone can do will make people more skillful or force them to be more skillful and at this point, big changes in this EoL game, where most people are either PvE veterans grinding stuff, players that just like to do something with friends or newbies that are far from all these imbalanced builds, wont make the game better.

GW during prophecies time wasn't any better, really. People just didn't knew the game at that time. If the game reverted to what prophecies used to be, people would just trash it in no time. The all new sensation just masked the problems.

I find it humorous that everybody said everything was wonderful until me and Bryant entered this thread. I'm glad we are all on the same page now.

Titles? More impressive looking gear?

Somebody actually made an interesting post earlier. Wouldn't you be better off with a single player offline version of Guild Wars where you can do whatever you want with no impact on anybody else?

No, it was better back then. I explained why pretty well in an earlier post. The game today requires less skill than before to the detriment of the community...there is almost no doubt about it.

Well, yes and no.
Discordway abuses several game mechanics.
First of all it makes use of the almost unlimited pool of energy necro's have when stuff keeps dropping (friends and foes).
Second, it does what AI does best. Reacting. Put a hex and a condition on a foe and all of a sudden the heroes will cast discord when they are not casting other skills. The same for the healer, it's good for keeping red bars up, not that good for pre-prots. But then, a wall of minions takes most damage, no need to prot those.

AI might have more resources, but they have several disadvantages.
First of all, it's AI with a fixed programming. They react, they don't act by themselfs. The first time a foe walks forward to pull a group of players into a trap will be hillarious (for example, move forward and shadow step back to the group, causing overextention of the human players).
Second, because of their programming they will use their energy pool till it's empty. Why heal up someone who's not under attack? Natural regen will take care of that.
Third, their groups don't have any balance. Most groups lack a healer and the groups that do have a crap healer. On top of that players will attack the healer first. So to be of any 'challenge' foes have to rely on other things, harder hitting skills, more healing, monster skills, the number of foes and stuff like that.

Still, it remains a resources battle. You make sure foes don't have any way to regain health (kill monk first). You make sure they can't hurt you (daze on overpowered caster bosses or pre-protting for exampe) and after that you make their red bars go down. Whenever you kill a foe that doesn't get up again you disabled some resources.

This is one of the reasons many players have a hard time at dungeons like Slaver's.
Those foes have a res (some hard) with which they bring resources back. Combined with the size of the groups this is what makes them hard to beat for an unorganised team that doesn't rely on abuse of AI (mainly tanking and use of FS).

It might be that you've been playing so long you just find it easier? Seriously tho?

Theres only a finite number of valid strategies in any game.. Adding bazillions of skills wont change that fact

PS on a second read, Im not sure whether you mean pve or pvp

This has been discussed to death and I'm almost certain its wrong. There has been a major power creep in the game...everybody should be able to see it.

I am talking about PvE of course (when it comes to skill requirements being lower). PvP has similar problems with the power creep in terms of balance, but that isn't what we are focusing on in this thread.

I have to agree with the power creep thing, especially when you look at the elites. Think about what you see most fire eles running: Savannah Heat. Searing Flames. Mind Blast. They're all Nightfall skills. Once they came out, any fire ele without NF was pretty much at a heavy disadvantage in terms of nuking - and I've seen someone who came into GW late suddenly find Prophecies much easier because of the NF skills - and his ability to kill in Prophecies skyrocketed when he finally got his hands on Nightfall.

And, well. Light of Deliverance had its share of the limelight before it got nerfed, and it was from Nightfall. Healer's Boon, the ever-popular 'foolproof' monk bar of many a PvE PUG group, is also from Nightfall.

I'm not a PvP player, but that's what it seems like to me from a PvE perspective. Speaking for PvE, yes there has been a power creep, and it's very obvious.

Of course, you have to have played for a certain amount of time to realise that, and it's not exactly fair to call a newbie player bad for having to use what you might consider overpowered skills. He never had to make do with less, and there is no reason for him to gimp himself just because older players can pull out the "When I first did THAT mission..." line.

Ah, sorry I understood you wrong then.

But yeah, pve has been changed (simplified? dunno) a lot. Is this necessarily a bad thing? If the rules of the game change and the players adapt to the new situation, hence making their gameplay style more efficient, how does this lead to a lower "quality" of those players? It might just mean that the quality of the developers went down, but thats that . Subjectively, the players have become generally a bit better imo - I just started playing a bit recently again after a 1 year+ pause and I can say that in my eyes people know what they are doing in the game.
I think the same about PvP, the general level has definitely improved. I cant say of the higher-level PvP, never had much of a taste for things that require much dedication in GW

Indeed. The more widespread all this gets, the better chance we have of actually fixing anything currently in-game.

At this point yeah, we have no clue if ANet will change anything. But that doesn't mean we must ignore all of these insignificant to glaring problems.

Guild Wars PvE is still unique, but went to being very mediocre.

I'm confused at how implementing more balance and downgrading those facets that are imbalanced will not make for a better game?

No PvE skills, no bullshit consumables, no strengthening your character artificially (via titles) through "time".

Yeah, Proph wasn't different at all.

If it changes for the worse then yes, it can have a pretty bad effect on the game.

When you lower the skill threshold, the less you have to do to become an efficient player. You're not encouraged to learn a whole lot of depth, and depth is a very happy thing.

Largely, what you have now is not only what could be players becoming better but that we now also have access to more powerful tools.

Infinite minions, no soul reaping cap, pets leaving exploitable bodies, watch yourselves, no scatter from AoE ...

Yeah no problems at all...

Discordway is a good build for heroes. If you have humans you will never run it.

By that definition anything that works is imbalanced.



No, groups with good builds are hard. Groups with good builds and bigger stats are harder.

They can have bigger stats because they are dumb and you can abuse them.

If there was 2 humans teams, at least semi decent one, fighting each other, one with 8 lvl 20 the other with 8 lvl 28 with hm bonuses, who you think will win?

lol almost everyone is arguing in this thread, calling people noobs, etc etc... so does the community suck? apparently haha. I think if GW was made into a single player game lots of people would leave just because they wouldn't be able to show off their titles :P.

Problems that were largely addressed. The problems caused by PvE skills, consumables, titles, and more are very intentional and not overlooked problems.

Humans...because they're humans. But that's not how player vs. environment games are balanced.

By that same following of logic, every shooter that pits you up against monsters is horribly unbalanced. Why don't we see more - if any - players complaining about it?

Protective Spirit is a problem and it is very intentional.

Soon after consumables and PvE skills being taking care of, people will be crying for Ether Renewal protectors to be nerfed.

I meant 2 teams of humans.

Shooters have auto-saves, quick saves, check points. You die you reload. Even if its a 50-50 chance to win (or 1 in 100), you just save when you win and load when you lose till you finish the game.

Now try finish a shooter game in the top difficulty with no saves.

Improvavel you haven't answered my question. Wouldn't you be happier if Guild Wars was a single player offline game where you could do whatever you wanted with no impact on anybody else and nobody else impacting you?

I wouldn't be happier because I use if to play with my girl and some other friends, but if it could be played in lan or TCP/IP, yes I wouldn't have any problems.

As I already said...

Now, GW could easily be off line single player. It isn't because the Anet people know that you need to add value to a game to prevent piracy - some of them were involved in B.net creation after all.

If I wanted to play a real MMORPG I would be playing WoW. I don't play GW instead of WoW because of no fee or something. I would only play WoW if I had several real life friends interested on playing it together.

Earlier on you came back again with that titles and gear exist to differentiate players.

Well I'm happy that most of the stuff people consider beautiful and desirable I consider it ugly (exception of tormented shields and spears, voltaic spears, and obsidian armor for rits/paras/necros).

I can actually differentiate myself and feel unique in a sea of obsidian armors using chaos gloves and blindfolds clones.

Quite possibly mankind's greatest literary contribution in this new millennium.
This thread sets new precedent in our species oldest and most profound attempts at guildwars analysis.

Until Sk8erBoi007 weighs in on the current viability of Flesh Golem in AB this debate has yet to begin in full.

...Intentionally left alone, and one I'm not disregarding in the evergoing list of problems.

There's no reason to leave PvE imbalanced.

Resurrection points and spells. Definitely not the same thing, but far from nothing

Emphasis: no good reason. Valve went full-steam ahead (ick, horribly unintended pun) with Left 4 Dead and advancing on other endeavors, but that's not stopping them from updating TF2 and, though not as much, DoD:S.

ANet can either have one quality game in their catalog or two. Or none, time will tell.

Then that is what you need...an offline game that can be played on lan or TCP/IP. Guild Wars clearly isn't your game.

You are playing a real MMORPG...its called Guild Wars. Lets suggest god mode and 10 billion damage in WoW and see what happens with that community lol.

Why the need to feel unique? I thought you don't care about anybody else...

I hear this a lot and it is really stupid every time I hear it. "Anet is working on GW2 thus GW1 is allowed to go into the shitter because their resources are elsewhere". Do you think because Blizzard is working on SC2 they will let WoW and every other game they made go down the shitter? Do you think any other good company would allow that? Anet has TWO games to their name and they are allowed to let one go down the shitter in favor of the other?

Money and the definition of PvE.



In the current format. If Anet implemented all of your ideas and made AI smarter, neutralizing some of the human advantages, things would be quite quite different.

Shooters and other games can be a lot harder because of saves. Imagine if in Far Cry I didn't have saves and had to kill that stupid mutant with only 6 (or was it 3) rounds in my weapon. And if I failed to get to get 1 or 2 of those dead center in that thing brain in the 1 second while it is in the air jumping at me I had to play the entire game to that point? Without making a mistake.

With saves I just reload till I get lucky.

Freedom of will say otherwise, especially because you are the one complaining about the game, while I'm still having fun.



First it was you that said it is in there already with PvE and consumables. It isn't.

Second, knowing there was cheats in this game (or other games like diablo ii) never made me cheat or knowing people were duping never affected directly my game experience. If someone is cheating in a PvP game, like a 1vs1 warcraft 3 game, that affects my experience.

But I'm a somewhat balanced and disciplined person. You are a person that compares the nuking of a human population to the disaster of god mode and instant kill in a game.

And don't even realize the non-sense that argument is...

I care about some persons, the ones I love. I don't need to feel unique - I'm unique as I think with my own brain, right or wrong, not needing to use the same everyone else to have the sense of accomplishing or feel good.

I use what I feel looks better in my character. If for you what looks better is what is rarest and then get pissed when every other sheep wants the same and gets it and then cry it has no value anymore it is you problem, not mine.



WoW pays for itself. Blizzard is also much bigger and has much more money than Anet.

But real considerations as money probably don't cross your mind.

The only thing stopping ANet from giving more resources to GW1 is themselves. That's it. They themselves, and they alone, are not going to fix what they left in GW1.

Quality also gets you money. I'm not sure if this was realized or not. Next, what would have to be *your* definition of PvE?

Just because things may have the chance to be more difficult? Wha?

Yes money grows in tree and games fix themselves.



More difficult isn't equal to balanced. Either you want it more difficult and you want it so you get a ranking of players in pve and feel especiall by doing stuff other people can't , because whatever you say you can give the dumb AI more chances in your copiy of the game, or you want it more balanced and that isn't equal to more difficult.

If you wanted balance, you would be talking of the aspects that aren't related to players but affect game too.

Sarcasm detector failing on this end. Are you outright saying "no, quality doesn't make you successful"? And I'm still waiting for the game to release it's "automatic balance update".

Hold up, how does any of this relate to resurrection shrines and skills?

So let me get this straight...even though GW has been touted as a success and has the sales numbers to prove it (not neccessarily the player count but definately the sales numbers)...it somehow doesn't pay for itself and Anet has no resources whatsoever to fix its problems. There are a lot more companies other than Blizzard that don't let that happen to this extent.

Heres a more likely answer...Anet has given up. It is either that or they think everything is fine, which is even worse.

I'm glad you're having fun...until it is at the expense of others which many of your suggestions would be.

It is only nonsense because you didn't get the point of it.

Translation: If they get bombed its their problem not mine.

@you, good sir:

They are choosing to put all of their resources into GW2.
They are choosing to neglect GW1 and keep it in a such a state of disarray.

Unless, of course, they were somehow forced at gunpoint to *not* put anymore effort into GW1.

Oh guys come on, no non-PvP game can be really hard :X. It can only be hard if the designers fecked up and a certain part is unpassable / unsolvable. Thats about it

And of course Anet dont have that much spare money to keep adding FREE content to this game :X. Who's gonna pay the bills? Its not just staff payrolls you know

PS Tormented shields and voltaic spears are amongst the fugliest items I know of in this game

Noone is willing to work for free full-time mate.
But really, "state of disarray"?

Good games don't. Quality doesn't. These things leave an impression, a footprint. They don't go away, at least not in an easy sense.

But bad games do. Bad games will come and go, carelessness will help carry tem along, degrading features will kick them out the door - all those things Guild Wars now has.

And ANet is just letting it wash down the drain.

No sane developer should want that to happen to their game, especially when what they had was a pure gem.

Disregard for the PvP community, abandonment of "skill>time" in PvE, general abandonment of "skill" altogether, etc.

Hm I should really stop posting, dont feel im adding anything worthwhile to this discussion, but still :
Every marketed game has a limited developers life - the period in which it gets updates, bugs get removed, etc. There isnt a single exception to that. Gun Pierson said it, the industry moves on. Thats life. Might be harsh, but thats all we got so we might as well adapt to it.

Every "legendary" game (meaning any extremely old game that still has a big community playing it) lives on not thru updates from the original developer - this same developer has always moved on to newer titles, which is what moves the whole damn industry forward. The game lives from the countless fans which love it and ADD stuff to it.
Take Quake 3 for example. The game is 10 years old and easily one of the biggest titles in all gaming history. Is this because of ID software continuously updating it? Nope.
Why is it still so much loved and played? Because countless fans made it a hobby to develop mods. These mods add new gameplay styles, change the game physics, improve the competitive aspects and so on..

Is ID software insane, as they let their game go? Dunno, they happen to be one of the most innovative studio, John Carmack is nothing short of a genius. But life is like that. Someone has to pay the bills, and an old game, especially one without monthly fees is hard to milk. What if ID decided to keep on fixing their old games? What if Blizzard, Westwood, Epic, Crytek and everyone else decided to do that? I wouldn't want to live in that world

I'd rather have Anet make GW2 all that which GW1 simply cannot be, than have them spend time fixing something which is already quite limited (then again, in my eyes GW is good enough the way it is, there are no perfect things in life either). GW1 tends to the needs of such a huge playerbase, everyone with different ideas and requirements, it's pretty much a Jack of all trades.. And you know how it goes, master of nothing.

What devs need to do nowadays is sell, even more today because of the events of the last few months. Devs and Anet are not altruistic entities, they don't live to be remembered, they're here to make money. The kind of games you defend and want GW1 to be does not sell well, certainly not with a community like the one we have and to the point where you can make a sequel.

Yes, gogo ANet for completely trashing the depth of their PvE, their core philosophies of "skill>time", and what was the faithful standing of the PvP community. Bravo.

No, ANet are doing it, horribly, horribly wrong. Please reread the thread and tell me all of what's listed aren't problems. Just because they're not going to touch the majority of players does not excuse them, because the needs of the majority are always going to be easy to meet.

That's why I'm not going to put GW up there in that list. Blizzard didn't ruin the longevity, didn't cater solely to the cash (although the similar problem may be starting to arise in WoW right now, hence why those players are pissed), didn't cater solely to whining communities that did not have the game's interest at heart, and did not go the complete wrong way of fixing that which was broken. They did not subside the trust of the players who are knowledgeable and devoted to the game.

ANet did, and they're continuing onto GW2 to escape the sinking ship. Guild Wars is and will continue to be a success because it has the words "free to play" on it, but it's went to being a "fun game" from a "great game".

We'll wait and see what the April update brings, but I assume it's going to be the pattern they've been following in the recent updates: ignoring all these problems. I can't honestly believe you can tell me that that's all and good.

Doom didn't sell well? Mass Effect didn't sell well? WoW didn't sell well? Starcraft didn't sell well?

Good games don't sell well???

When I think of 'great games' for myself I think of the few games I still play once in a while nowadays.
Mainly some FPS and RTS titles.

But, there are only a very few of those that are single player and keep my interest. The rest are interesting because I can play with or against other people. That's because single player is always limited and has a finite number of options. That's also why new content is important in PvE.

However, when looking at the current PvE content it's still a great game I think. The content didn't change that much (though Prophecies and Factions got a lot easier with NF and PvE skills). But each and every chapter viewed by itself is about just as good as it used to be.

For example, I played UT a lot.
After a couple of years play, both offline (including limited LAN parties) and online I got bored with it.
It doesn't mean it's not a great game anymore. It still is. I just got bored with it. Not because of the lack of content or the lack of new opponents, I just wanted to play something else.
It's not strange for that to happen after a few 1000's of hours of play.
Now it feels like just a 'fun' game that I start up once in a while to play with some friends. But I know it's more than that, it's still a great game even though it doesn't feel like that anymore.

Maybe I changed more than the game did (true for both GW and UT I'd say)...