GW2 coming in 2010/2011

Again agreed. Going back to the beta, when it became evident towards the end of last year that there wasn't going to be a public beta started before 2009 began Anet should have just owned up to it and said no public beta. They could have said it was delayed and maybe offered us something to tide us over. Instead we have a CM that can't tell us anything and a bunch of devs that won't tell us anything. They could have also used that to clear some things up, respond to the community in general or a few specific areas (like tell us why having over 9000 levels is better than 20) and actually act like a company that is creating an MMO. Right now they aren't doing that.

If they announced GW2 too early, sucks to be them, now it is time to own up to the fact that they dropped the ball. The fact that they are pretending like they didn't drop the ball is making things even worse.

Now all we have is some vague TBA announcement that is telling us nothing and even worse it isn't coming through the proper channels for an MMO developer (you know like spreading the message directly to the community) and it isn't and probably won't be properly followed up in the near future.

Their most recent track record goes as follows: one cancel, one disappointment, and one MIA.

That isn't anything to brag about and it certainly isn't encouraging to us fans.


I know that a dev can't release everything all at once, but they also can't release nothing and get away with it forever.

"Going back to the beta, when it became evident towards the end of last year that there wasn't going to be a public beta started before 2009 began Anet should have just owned up to it and said no public beta."

http://www.guildwars.com/products/guildwars2/gw2faq/

Okay, they quietly edited their FAQ at some point. Big deal. What else have they done?

That FAQ has not changed since it was put up.

You guys really want to be teased with crap for 3+ years? Seriously time to find a new game, you'll be bored of it by the time GW2 hits. There's a billion games on the horizon now, game companies are not going to ratchet up the hype until a year from release, so people still remember WTF your game is when it finally comes out. (Duke Nukem What?)

yay another regina reply! ^__^

disclaimer: the following post contains lots of speculation 0__o

i may not have a good grasp of the gaming business
but if i would have to take a guess...pax 2010 before we get to see any screenies/footage?
i really get the impression that they want to plan sumptin big, not jus a small tidbit of info here and there
no better way than a gaming convention

pax 2010 because pax 2009 mite be pushin too close to d3 release
and of course dun want to conflict wit ncsoft's own aion
(could be another gaming convention earlier in the year...but not too familiar wit many others)


waitin until next year august is quite a long time for info T___T
however, if we do get something on a smaller scale...
i would think that no time is better than sometime from now until summer

wotlk is still pretty hot
it will slightly cool down soon hopefully (but dun count on it o__o)
and d3 will prolly be at its quietest during that time up until the official release date announcement


so if i dun see anything by summertime...
i'll jus assume not to expect anything until middle of next year o___o

also, if pax 2010 is at least somewhat correct...
then that means we prolly cant expect gw2 beta until q3 2010 either
which likely rules out a q4 2010 release date .___.


still...i'll be buyin gw2 regardless

You could it would just be unfineshed product that is very buggy and would need several patches.This is what Acitivison does only they have one patch policey.

People sure do seem to have developed a rather absurd sense of entitlement. You aren't owed anything.

Very well said. /agree completely.

im with ya, brother. Im actually waiting for GW2 CE to come out, so ill probably be waiting longer for mine.

But lets face the music, when GW2 was announced, rumor was that a beta was possible late 2008 early 2009, it wasnt denied or confirmed by the development team. Later one, well before Q4 2008, it was annouced by the development team that a beta wasnt possible until closer to the release of the game but rumor was the games release would be around Q2 2010 making a beta possible by late 2009 early 2010. Now with this new information i have no doubt in my mind that a beta wont be possible until late 2010 and a release date of Spring or Summer 2011.

I like the fact they Chris Chung said that we had a great idea and mindset in store for GW2 originally, but now we feel we can do much more and expand it even greater. This brings encouragement to me, as i feel that maybe some of the suggestions that have been put in for GW2 have a greater chance to be realized.

Truthfully i think that if we dont see any new content coming soon to Guild Wars, many more players are going to drop the game and play something else until one day they are strolling along in the store and just happen to see GW2 sitting on the shelves and say "oh wow, they finally released it."

btw: Yawgmoth jinxed it! he said release date of 2013! He jinxed it!

Plan A: make GW2 a simple sequel with upgraded technology, Beta in 2008, some Hype through a gaming magazine article, some hints in EotN

this plan is dead, they changed their minds and are now on..
(after NCSoft decided to fire the Garriott Brothers who are responsible for many failures ..coincidence? )

Plan B: make GW2 a much bigger game with new technology and a whole lot more content, some novels bridging the lore coming

The old beta announcement is void. I hope some of the planned lore we know from the magazine article is getting changed. Hell, i hope everything they originally planned for the Hall of Monuments is getting axed.

I always tried to keep myself as interested as possible in Guild Wars 1, so that I could keep playing it untill GW2. But I can't hold it for more than half a year I think...unless they release some new content that's able to be played alot (like new elite areas for Dwayna, Melandru and Lyssa, or something like that). Luckely I have a really small but very fun guild that keeps me busy, but some of the people are already dropping Guild Wars, or just playing it 30 minutes a day. Luckely there's my fun Guild Leader to always keep me laughing and have fun, but still. My whole guild is kinda done with the game, unless I return to PvP with some good friends, which is really hard to get into now...

I always thought late 2009 would be very realistic for Guild Wars 2 to come out....not then. Never wanted to believe it, but I guess I'll have to quit playing Guild Wars in a few months, and play another free MMORPG, untill beta comes out. Guild Wars 1 will be very dead by 2010...

Feb 12th 2009 - Guild Wars 2 development won’t be affected by the changes at NCsoft West.

Feb 13th 2009 - Guild Wars 2 is expected to be announced in 2010/2011.

Anyone smell that?

LOL, yes actually very contrary :P.
-- "Nono, we can do everything on our own, NCSoft doesn't affect us at all, we make our own plans"
-- NCSoft says Guild Wars 2 won't be released before 2010/2011

Lol, bad communication between ANet and NCSoft I think :P.

cause and effect?

Sectors outside development are getting minimized until there is a new product?

We need to stop analysing each line of every document all over the world, looking for the smallest, atomic clue about one or two pixel of what GW2 looks like. This level of desperation is slightly annoying (I'm not complaining, you have the right to do so!), but at least we're past the point where people were saying "give me info or I'm leaving" (they now probably left!). Maybe something will change if the number of players drop (not something what we can see, only Anet can) significantly, but since people are still buying units, it seems it's not happening.

IMHO, this is the mistake many people are making w.r.t. GW2: don't have "hopes", just do what you want and you'll see what happens in 1-2 years time. I agree that the handling of GW2 info was a source of concern, but we're now long past the point where people should get angry. Make a decision but stop constantly trying to get your hopes high or low. You either enjoy playing GW1 or not, but it's impossible, and even dangerous, to ask Anet to correct their mistakes. When GW2 is out, only then we'll be able to say whether this silence was a good or bad decision.

I do have high hopes for GW2, but it's in my pocket for the moment. I'll keep enjoying GW1 for the years to come. People angry at Anet's PR should move on to another game, Runes of Magic, Darkfall, Aion, D3, SC2 (when they're out) or whatever.

It's sometimes amasing that this argument is purely theoretical, and people want to be "right" or "wrong". Even if Regina came here and said in a very lengthy post "yes we were wrong to put all these info on GW2 so early, yes we should have made clearer our roadmap and explained in a lot of details what we think is a good marketing decision, and no it's not vaporware", people would have still fought for their "interpretation" to be right.

Here is a calm interpretation of the situation, which doesn't put expectations first. Of course the mention here of the team making a "bigger" GW2 is going to call a lot more speculations (what more? bigger HoM? more races? more missions? more story? more pixels? more more more more???? blablabla)

In the end it's about trust that players have in Anet (and Regina), and there's a long history of bad "trust events" (but much shorter than the history of good "trust events", you know the saying, people only see the trains that are late, not the ones on time). It's subjective so there's no right or wrong. But people should stop quoting the "community" on this matter, not even the Guru community (polls are useless), defend your own point of view (which you may share with friends and guildies) but stop attempting to make it look like the point of view of a majority. The majority of people without hopes for GW2 probably moved on, and they may or may not come back in 1-2 years.

well, if i am not mistaken in thinking this will include Guild Wars, then we are going to have ingame voice chat for GW2. weeee

http://www.vivox.com/pressreleases_detail.php?id=33

don't care actually, when the game comes out, but this is for sure, I want a preorder copy ! and all its goodie!

i dont know, i think im gonna go play The Witcher, maybe pick up Warhammer until it dissappoints me, and choose a new hobby until GW2 comes out. 2 years to wait is just too long to sit in GW1 and wait.

I agree with Fril, i like the words more more more, and i can wait for it to come by putting faith in the development team to blow my mind with new additions. sidenote : i do think the world of Tyria is ALOT larger than it appears in GW1. But with that aside, i just dont see myself playing GW1 at its CURRENT state for the next 2 years, no one can deny that GW1 has taken a slump over the past year, and i believe it will continue with the lack of new content, i think there will be little spikes of activity as time goes on for the typical events, such as St. Patty's day, Easter, 4th Birthday's with new minipets, 2009 New Weapon Contest (dont they hold this every year?), Dragon Festival and so on.

So how is this any different from World of Warcraft being announced in 2001, having VERY little information released until late 2003/2004 when beta came out, then coming out in late 2004? Really, GW2 was announced in 2007, we'll MOST LIKELY get info in 2009, it'll probably come out in 2010.

They can't announce info. That'd be the stupidest thing they could do at this point. The industry, while flourishing in a bad economy, is still infantile to the point where it is actually fairly bad off and it is still possible for the whole industry to crash for a second time like it did back in '83. People are stuck doing sequels, and having a hard time innovating anything new because it is too risky. One innovative product that just doesn't sell could bankrupt most companies that aren't Blizzard, Valve, or EA. There's a lot of untapped potential in the industry and nobody tapping it. Most people really just copy ideas and try to revamp those. If ArenaNet posted anything of real worth (Because a screenshot means nothing bro, look at Duke Nukem: Forever, it had videos and screenshots posted and people still didn't care.) detailing the game, they open it up for other people to attempt to copy those ideas before their product ships and then their game won't be so unique then.

Look at WAR, it really didn't detail much of its hidden underlying PvP systems until very close to beta (queueing from anywhere in a Battleground, etc.), and now you have WoW copying that idea in 3.1/3.2/whenever the hell Blizzard decides to care about PvP alongside the idea of getting XP from completing Battlegrounds, etc.

As a fan who still likes the game I obviously want them to release stuff too, but at this point they would only be opening themselves up to other companies to take their ideas and actually enhance them in some way and that would make their game look worse in comparison. Plus a lot of this stuff could change between now and then, and then their CR (not just Regina) would have to focus lots of time and energy they currently spends for other important stuff on answering stuff related to that. It's really too risky, especially with what they are obviously trying to do by announcing a later date. Which imo, is a clear sign they are going to actually try to compete with World of Warcraft. They're spending extra time making the game sexy so that it doesn't have a buggy laggy launch, and that's about the only way you can compete with WoW right now - you need a super stable (something WAR really wasn't so much), fun, not buggy (ditto for WAR) game.

Question is: how keep the masses entertained for a whole year without a new expansion or major content update?

You really don't know the answer?

Because WoW did not have a player-base in a prequel prior to release of the sort that GW2 does at the moment from GW players. If it doesn't keep us interested, we're off. If we find something interesting to keep us going fewer of us will return for GW2. Also, if we leave and the community shrinks less new players will want to buy a game when they hear hardly anyone plays it anymore.

I think ANet have handled things terribly so far. They started a game which had follow-on campaigns that were a tad linear but still enjoyable and people bought. They then decided that they'd suddenly stop the campaigns and try to tide us over with a single expansion (plus some tiny content updates) until a whole new game came out.

Now I have to ask myself, did they honestly think we'd wait all that time for GW2, did they think they could have got it done faster, or they didn't care? I doubt the last for the reasons I gave in my second paragraph. If the first or second they were very foolish.

It would have been so much better to keep developing GW1 with proper releases and not stop development until they could see when a beta for GW2 would have been realistic - yes that would have delayed GW2, but who cares about a game we don't know will even be released? What they've done is to burn their bridges by stopping the campaigns and expansions for GW without having anything coming up in the near-future for the series. How stupid!

not possible.

Nope ur not the only one This is excellent news *mr.Barns hand rub* For those of us who came to the game later or though titles were a waste of time this gives us that changed our minds time to achive some of those lofty titles. I am worried about the ingame ecnomoy though.....but hey they will feed us tidbits of new stuff to keep us entertained i am sure. *Casue You Dont Really Love me, You Just Keep Me Hanging On*

Sia

quick question because im not a guru of pop culture references, but who exactly is mr. barns and why is his hand rub famous?

How many people are not going to buy Diablo3, because there were no reasonable patches for its predecessors for several years?
As for developing GW2 parallel to GW1: Anet doesn't have the manpower to do that and it would've resulted in campaigns even worse than EotN.

There's useally 3 years between announcement and actual release with any game, so it's very much plausible.

an at this stage i think i will safely say we are going to see duke nukem forever before gw2. i brought this up because some mentioned the game earlier. an for your information if you wanna be a bitch its bene in development since about 2002 because they changed the engine quite a bit

these are in no order of posting they are from George's twitter who is the head of 3drealms http://twitter.com/georgeb3dr?page=1

I have no idea. But D2 was a game you could play by yourself even if you didn't have an internet connection - I guess D3 will be the same. GW is an online game that is very difficult to play by yourself - for the more elite areas anyway. Thus maintaining a community is very important for GW in a way it isn't for Diablo.

You know ANet's employee structure, do you?

What we do know is that they had two teams at one point - they could have put one team on to GW2.

The harder difficulty levels are usually played online and groups are necessary for the boss encounters.


I know that the quality of EotN was not as good as Anet can deliver, when they can completely concentrate on the product.

Bingo. I don't understand all the bellyaching about how they'll never be able to entertain the whiners for another 1-2 years on the same game they already paid for 2 or more years ago already, and that somehow this will spell the end of GW.

When Diablo 3 ships, I'll buy it day one assuming my computer rig will play it even though I haven't touched a Diablo game since around 2004. When Starcraft 2 ships, I'll buy it day one assuming my computer rig will play it even though I haven't touched a Starcraft game since around 1999. If the Max Payne developers ever make a non-console sequel, I'd be there even though it's been something like 3 years since I touched either Max Payne 1 or 2.

With the *rare* exception of something like Everquest to Everquest 2, there are no game franchises that live or die on being capable of not disappointing the attention deficited generation. It's usually at least a year of downtime between game sequels, often more. Even something as presumably in permanent vapor ware status as Duke Nukem Forever would still find plenty of people willing to buy it if it ever shipped.

It's for damn sure I'll be there to pay for Guild Wars 2 even it doesn't ship until 2015. I've never gotten so many hours of gameplay for so little. I'm up to $140 dropped on the game - that would buy me, maybe 150 hours of gaming with my DS2, mabye 200-300 hours with typical PC titles, but with GW it's well over 1000 hours and counting.

Guild Wars development timeline:

March 2000: Triforge formed
~Q4 2000: Guild Wars development begins in earnest
December 2002: NCsoft Acquires ArenaNet
April 2003: Guild Wars announced
Q4 2004 - Q1 2005: World Preview Events
April 2005: Launch
(Dates taken from http://www.arenanet.com/press/)

5 years between the founding of ArenaNet and the launch of Guild Wars. Giving them up to a year to lay the foundations of their company, GW development could have begun in earnest as late as March 2001. A safe estimate would be that GW development took ~4.5 years (Q4 2000 - April 2005).

Here is a timeline for GW2 with the same development schedule as GW1 (except for the date it was announced):

April - Q4 2006: ArenaNet working on Chapter 4
Q4 2006: Chapter 4 cancelled/revised to EotN. GW2 development begins
March 2007: GW2 + EotN announced
August 2007: EotN released
Q3/Q4 2008: Originally projected GW2 beta
Q4 2006 + 4yrs = Q4 2010: GW2 beta
Q4 2006 + 4.5yrs = Q2 2011: GW2 launch

Now a few things to remember:

1. ANet was smaller during GW1 development
2. GW2 is most likely a larger, more ambitious project than GW1
3. With GW1 they were working pretty much from scratch, whereas GW2 has GW1 to work from.

1 and 2 cancel each other, so left with 3, we might assume that the GW2 development period will be slightly less than that of GW1. With this in mind, a 2010 release seems reasonable.

Nice speculating, but for all we know GW2 could of been in development even farther back.

I said this in another thread and I'll say it again, and I quote:

Wow that is the most posts by Regina I have seen in any thread on Guru so far.

On topic: GW2's release date is ludicrous, and Anet is losing prospective buyers day by day, based on the falling levels of interest brought on by an interminable development process.

Get it out already! Otherwise, atleast give us screenshots, concept art, something!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkNecrid So how is this any different from World of Warcraft being announced in 2001, having VERY little information released until late 2003/2004 when beta came out, then coming out in late 2004?

Blizzard didn't leave their customers playing a single flawed game for years until they got a better one out (as has been proven over time, many Guild Wars players play the game as much as you would expect them to play a Pay2Play game, which was not what ArenaNet originally thought would happen, but has begun updating the game to attempt to accommodate). They had Diablo, Diablo 2, StarCraft, and Warcraft II/III (which all, even after many years, have strong player communities to this very day) for people to play and jump between while waiting for their new product. ArenaNet has Guild Wars, and as they have said themselves, they are not planning on releasing any more major content updates for the game. Online RPGs need major content updates to remain playable by anyone who doesn't have autism for more than a few years.

That is what makes this different. ArenaNet seems to expect people to wait patiently for GW2 based on their opinions of GW1. I don't see this plan working out too well. At this point, because they can not go back in time and unsay everything they have said, it might be in their best interest to just not say anything more about their mystery project, lest they make another mistake.

You folks do understand that this is a video game, not a relationship, right?

Anet has brand recognition, money, and time. In a few years, most of you will have either grown up or moved on from GW1, meaning less competition with their earlier product, and less short term ill will. GW2 will be a blockbuster.

In the mean time, try to refrain from cutting yourselves because you're all angsty about GW2 not being released RIGHT NOW. Soothe your deformed minds with Adderall or something.

Pretty sure that was a typo for "Mr Burns" a well known Simpson's character.

"Excellent"

Edit: On topic. Don't give me this bull about how "they are losing customers by not keeping us informed." BS. You all know you are going to buy the game anyway when it gets released. You are all dedicated enough to visit a fan forum all the time. You will buy the game, and so will thousands of people who have never even heard of guru.

Stop... threatening (for lack of a better word) Regina to try to get her to release information. A.net's marketting department likely has a very tight control over everything she says, and they aren't going to change a long term business strategy just to please a bunch of people threatening to go on a hunger strike or whatever on a forum.

Well we have to wait, GW2 isn't the only videogame being produced in the world atm.
If I get tired of GW, I'll switch to something else.

But 'll buy with my eyes closed GW2 when it will be released, no matter if it is 2010, 2011, or 2020.

I liked GW a lot, so if GW2 has a tenth of the qualities of GW, I will still be more than satisfied with it.

Answer: you don't because you don't need to.

The masses do not generate additional revenue and, while it gets said again and again, apparently it needs repeating: there is more than enough content in the existing game to justify the cost. While this was true even if you purchased them at full price, this is particularly true now that new buyers can get all three full games for $50 or less via the new Trilogy edition. If you can make an argument that a new player won't get $50 worth of good playing the existing content then you either have never played any other games or should seek psychiatric help. This game only makes money through new sales, ergo, Anet's interest is in moving copies of the Trilogy edition for the next year and, ideally, let the grumpy whiner player base go somewhere else so they are not cutting into their profits. Anet's only goal with the existing customer base is to leave them feeling they got their money's worth so they will come back for GW2, nothing more. If the little bits of additional content, e.g. the EoTN Wintersday stuff this year, aren't rocking your world, go do something else.

It's not nearly as complicated as people make it out to be: if you have a game that has no subscription fee, the designers' interest is NOT to keep you playing 24/7, 365 days a year. Their goal will never be more than leaving you happy enough to buy a new expansion or sequel over or in addition to the competition. It's not inconceivable that many of the changes introduced the past year that anger so many old timers because they make things arguably easier are there to speed up the "get done and get out" for people still looking to hit GWAMM or whatever - "Psst, here's a bone to make the game more accessible to the new players we want to buy the game and turn their friends onto and, by the way, it will let you finish your legendary vanquisher title that much faster so you can GTFO and stop killing our profit margins"

i like the word usage "hunger strike" it nails the overall feeling on the head. lol.

I cant see a late 2010 release for GW2, and the only reason i say that is because of the holiday season, its a great marketing pitch i know, but didnt they say they expect holiday events like in GW1? I dont think NCsoft and Anet would stretch themselves out with a brand new release and getting ready for both holidays event in GW1 and GW2. I do think that if the game is ready by 2010, it will most likely be released during the summer of 2010 or spring of 2011. I dont know what it was like when GW1 first came out, but im pretty sure there were several large updates that came out within the first couple months to fix certain glitches and bugs in the game along with content updates and what have you, i dont think they would stupid enough to do that while doing updates for Halloween and Wintersday and everything else, it makes more sense for them to release it afterwards, making the public wait another 3-4 months with the tagline "youve waited 3-4 years, you can wait 3-4 more months"

And i agree, Anet is losing interest from GW1, not GW2. If anything, more and more people are getting hyped up over GW2. I know i am.

You know, i thought just popped into my head. Im pretty sure alot of people would stay in GW1 for the next two years if Anet said they will only choose active people in GW1 for the beta testing for GW2.

No, if you market the game with no mention of subscription fees at all, then that's fair. If you market the game saying it's the future of MMO's and touting the no subscription fee, then it's misleading marketing to say "well we didn't really want people to play it much." Also these people come from Blizzard and they don't expect people to play games a lot? Really? And you believe them?