A Letter to Our Fans [from Mike O'Brien]

I have to say, this paragraph in particular is a little disconcerting:

On Friday, NCsoft released investor materials that showed a very broad release window for Guild Wars 2, with the explanation that release timing is still "to be announced." ArenaNet has never given a release date for Guild Wars 2 other than "when it's done." NCsoft's investor materials are a reflection of that philosophy.

See, I read this as , 'Hold on there, we can't really commit to 2010-2011!' Might just be the pessimist in me.

-ANoid

So, I guess I now have to ask.

Are they assuming that we will stay interested in GW1 until then with just re-hashed festivals and boring weekend events? Will this statement accelerate the death of GW1?

I dont understand this marketing strategy...

Arena Net has my faith 110%, I believe it WILL be the best game ever, and since it's free, it's going to grow rapidly.

But that's not the entire reason they have my faith, they have my faith because Guild Wars is the only good RPG I have ever played and it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to play ANY RPG but GW. And if they don't come out with GW2....I'm going to die Like literally. I'm one of those people that don't fit in society and must stay inside away from the light *hiss*

If I had the money I'd give them a billion dollars to finish the beta by the end of this month Don't make me wait, please

I think Sniper22 is probably correct, the real fanboys are the impatient people who need any and all info about GW2 now. As I have said in the past I may be naive, but when someone who is close to a situation tells me things are progressing, I will believe what they are saying.

I do, Blizzard infiltrators are eating away at GW2 plans, delaying stuff. So that the new wow expansion could come out when GW2 was suposed to go for beta.

Ow wait Anet's strategy...

To not survive the credit crunsh!

*logs onto Elf wow account*

Its working! Good strategy, i'm gone.

First of all... the letter is sad. I was like oh finally some answers and nothing. Don't "set the record straight" without setting the record straight.

Also this is really bad marketing. Don't get me wrong I'm all for waiting untill a game is really finished before releasing it but they should at least create another chapter or have had one in the bank to release later to help bridge the gap. Oh well, looks like I'll have a couple years to try out another mmo.

I love guild wars but imo it's been nothing but a dissapointment as of late.

Edit: And to the post above... yeah that would be a vaild reason for GW2 to hold of on beta but the reality is, this article clearly states that it is because it's not near ready, so your theory fails.

For those of you who keep saying 'well at least now we know GW2 is coming out' take a few minutes to read this article about a title that was damn near completed: http://kotaku.com/5132851/free-radic...nt-iii-is-dead

I do believe they're working on GW2, I do believe they have every intention of bringing it to market. Just because a company has a guaranteed seller on it's hands doesn't mean they can't go belly-up before hand, especially in troubling times.

For me, chatting in a thread with others who have the same concerns is very cathartic. It allows me to vent my concerns and hear from others with similar feelings, and helps me get through this time. If that's QQing and hand-holding, so be it, I guess I need it.

P.S. I also love to here from the believers in the group, it gives me hope. But the 'get over it' crowd does nothing for me.

*goes back to his Wii for a few years*

I'm done w/ GW. I'll be back when GW2 comes out.

"when it's done"
Famous words of id, blizzard and 3drealms, all champions of vaporware. I think we can all agree gw2 has been delayed because of the change of vision the developers had. I believe 08 beta was possible with the original gw2 which I would assume was just gw1 with some upgrade, but now they are hoping to make a revolutionary game. Hopefully features i enjoyed in gw1 will remain.

I can't believe the amount of people QQ'ing over this.

Really, how can you expect them to create the amazing game that you guys are expecting in such a short amount of time? Games do not pop up over night, they take years to develop.

I for one would much rather wait and get a quality game than have Anet rush the game out in a terrible condition. Yes it may be a long time to wait but in the end i'm sure it will be worth it. If they released the game prematurely to please all the people who are saying "QQ screw this, I can't wait that long, I quit QQ" it would be a disaster. No one wants to play a poorly finished game and i'm sure the same people who were being impatient would be the first people to complain about how bugged it is.

For all those saying "How will they keep my interest?" Knock it off.

1)GW is a non monthly fee game. They don't HAVE to update shit. I talked about this in another thread long ago and I'm not retyping the whole thing.

2) You don't have to be interested in a prequel for 3+ years to buy its sequal. That's like saying "I know Smash brothers Brawl wont be out for another good amount of years, but I think they should do something to Melee to make it more interesting so I have something to do until then!"

3) The upcoming release of the beta or game will make people curious about gw1, and have gw1 people want to go back at least for a little bit to replay it a bit.

4) Do ANYTHING else for the next 3+ years. Read a book, get a degree, hang out with your friends, try another game or another Anet game!

Honestly I'll be surprised if a single game can hold my interest for 7+ years.

DESPITE not having to update, they WILL be giving us more 'major' updates like they said in the dev update. Every 4 or so months. Most likely a new hero or a couple quests or something like that. I'm thankful they decided not to drop the whole game and move all their resources to everything else since they aren't getting money for every month we play it.

I'll weigh in here. I do appreciate the statement from ArenaNet, while it wasn't very revealing it at least acknowledges they are listening and that they heard.

As for whether GW2 is coming out, since there are believers and non-believers, there is no way to know. Pointing to a previous game believed to be vaporware that came out, means nothing. Pointing to a previous game that was on track and ready for release that was scrapped, means nothing. We all know of these games. Quite frankly, there are sometimes forces outside a publishers and developers realm that they can't control.

What you need to take from this statement is that GW2 is being developed. That's it. Nothing glorious or sinister.

As of this moment, right now, GW2 is being developed.

Exactly! Also...it woulda been akward if they scrapped it exactly while you were typing this XP

Jeeeeeez I had no idea there are so many whiners around

"What am I going to do till GW2 comes out? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?"

F*
Go to school and learn something useful. Start to live properly. Start spending quality time with your family. Find a job you enjoy

F*
Every time I go on vent I'm hearing parents saying to their 2-3 old child "Shut up son". Or "I hate my job"

You sad, sad people I feel sorry for you

Being a glass-half-full type, I read this as being confirmation that GW2 is still fully supported and well on the way through development.

To those of you who mention playing other games now and when GW2 comes out, well, what will be different if it comes in 2010 or 2012? You'll still play more than one game. Will you refuse to try GW2 if it comes later?

I had to laugh when I read some of these comments. How about starting a series of books in 1990 and 17 years later having the author die before finishing the 12th, and final book? Waiting a year or two is nothing.

You're failing to see a few things:

It's not necesarily the fact that it's takign a while to get here, whci his perfectly fine because it does take years to develop a good game. It's just that the beta is close to the release which means we won't get it experience nay part of it for a logn while, but that STILL isn't the problem.

The problem is that we can't even see a tiny glimpse of what it looks like, we are completely oblivious to ANY detail of the game. I know they are trying to keep it all a secret so they can blow us away, but does that mean we can't even see a tree, some grass, the sky, an eye ball? SOMETHING??

I'll wait as long as I need even though it pains me to wait to. There are only 3 companies in this world I respect.

1. Google.
2. Arena Net
3. Mozilla

If people can just see some small details to know that it IS being worked on and they ARE getting somewhere. Could seeing a tree or a hill really spoil the game? Well, maybe it can spoil a surprise if the DX10 version looks like Crysis' graphics multiplied by 50. In that case, I can understand not showing a tree =\ It'd burn out eyes xD.

I'd rather have them be straightforward than promise and try to meet a short-sighted deadline that forces them to either delay production/release or reveal a crappy product.

Take your time, Anet. I'll be waiting, and with eagerness, not frustration.

You'll get a picture of an eyeball and 2 days later people will start asking for eyelashes.
Something or nothing. They decided to give us nothing

Hehe, true xD
---------------
Moment the pre-order is out I'm buying it :@.

Idk what I'm gonna do 'til GW2. Except maybe play Team Fortress 2 'til it comes I guess. TF2 makes me feel like GW Made me feel during the first 3000 hours. Both offer Team Play xD wee, think I'ma go play right now.

I keep seeing this. It's false. It's to imply that being vocal on detail, visual or other, is a key to success in the end. It's also to imply that ANET's marketing team should follow in the foot steps of Mythic and FunCom, which needless to say dropped the marketing ball. If all this were true, that great marketing is constantly flashing bling, recent releases in the MMO market should have cut WoW's player base by, at least, 20-25% spread over those multiple releases. Instead, the opposite has happened. Those new releases have lost active players while WoW's has gone up.

Bad marketing is the failure by marketing teams to learn from previous mistake made by themselves, and competition. Bad marketing is the failure to adapt and be aware.

There are two huge mistakes that have been made in the marketing department in recent history. I'll use Anet as one example and the industry in general as the other.

Anet made the huge mistake of giving information concerning GW2 and a beta in 08. It was a mistake because it fell into the catagory of a risk that this information could be taken back on. To repeat something I've said in previous postings around here - The moment a company gives information on something, that's the bar of expectations the public will expect to be met. If you can not meet it, if there is any doubt whatsoever that this information can change drastically, you're better off not saying anything. If people want accurate information, information that can be delivered upon, they must be willing to wait for it, or risk that information to be greatly altered. (I say greatly because a push back by a week, or two-weeks wouldn't be that big of a deal in regards to a beta announcement).

The second mistake, in general industry which I already spoke on, was the hype-machine. With Hellgate, with Tabula Rasa, with Warhammer, with Age of Conan; All the hype can't sweep poor quality under the rug. All the screenshots, trailers, and teasers these games showed us were, in the end, useless because the final quality of the product didn't meet the bar of expectations they hyped on. The bar of expectations the public demanded be met the moment the first detailed information was given. So, YaY - Players got pretty pictures for months and months before release. Was it worth it?

I've said it before and it's worth repeating: Potential Customers is one thing, but actual customers is another. You can market all you want to gain potential, but if your quality doesn't meet the standards, your actual customer base (the one that will count) will plummet and all that marketing was pointless.

There is only one purpose to release 'something' right now and that reason is to shush the howling wolves. That's not a good enough reason. Showing a pre-alpha phase screen serves no purpose for Anet. None at all. It would immediately get, "So this is the Great Awsome Mind Blowing GW2??? What a joke!".

The only return they get is a few calm down for a week, but the rest scrutinize the screens until the next release. I, for one, highly doubt this board would be vacant of displeasure.

As it stands right now, from the first announcement of GW2, to it's time-frame release, ANET is right on the mark of your average development time of a large scale online game. I simply cannot imagine a surpurbly designed game to be done in 2 years in today's MMO market. 2010-*11-*12 puts it right on target for avg span.

The main difference between this and other games is gamers are used to being spoonfed goodies during the process. Since that method has shown itself to not garuntee any success with a final product, there's no motivation to spoon feed the public this time.

It appears ANET is learning from the constant mistakes made by other companies and even mistake they've made in the past. Some gamers, though, appear to not have learned much of anything. If I were ANET, the very last thing I would do with my marketing team is to have them follow the same steps of recent games that didn't come close to the success they promised.

Oh well, it is what it is.

Pretty much nothing left to post about or do in game, so happy gaming to the rest of you.

There's good advice in this thread btw. Yes, the situation is lame, but go do something else. Don't brood over it. You're actually letting them win your attention if you sit around pissed off. Do something cool with your life. If you already are do something cooler. Games aren't everything, in fact, they're not even close to being a big thing.

"Continued interest" has limits, Mike.

Why would they even want to start on building "marketing momentum" more than a year before release?

I really haven't read this thread too thoroughly yet, so I apologize if someone has already pointed this out... but what people seem to be forgetting is that before EotN came out, there was this idea of releasing a new campaign every month. They couldn't just say "Sorry, we're canceling Utopia and anything we might have done after that" without explaining why. If they had just stopped work on Utopia and released their last, simple expansion pack with no announcement of what comes next, there would be a collective wtf from the fanbase. Guild Wars players would probably feel more abandoned than they might already feel in this current situation. At least we know why they canceled Utopia and any later campaigns. We know it's so they could instead do GW2. Yes, ideally they wouldn't want to tell us about GW2 until they had more to show, but then we'd be complaining a lot more about them seeming to be doing nothing on nothing.

This way, at the very least, we know they're doing nothing on guild wars 2

Well if it comes out in 2011, poor anet going to eather be total RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed over because of the changed in the world, or there will be to many games that took less time to make that are even better. Oh and there fanbase will also be gone.

That's because no one expected Diablo 3. ANet announced Guild Wars 2 in 2007, it's 2009 and they have released nothing. Blizzard announced Diablo 3 in 2008, and on the same day provided information, screenshots, a cinematic and gameplay video. If Diablo 3 was announced in 2002 and there was no information until 2008, I can assure you that there would be a lot of complaining. However, that is not the case.

Ok, more more time....

GW2 and Eye of the North announced -------- 2007 Q1 (Working on GWEN)
Eye of the North released ------- 2007 Q3 (Swtich gears to work on GW2)



Diablo 3 --- Blizzard started working on it in 2005 (dont know the Quarter)
Diablo 3 --- Blizzard announced its in 2008 Q4 (BTW: last info was it will be done when its done)

The only difference is that, Blizzard didn't announce at the beginning of the project like Anet didn't.

Now here's a question for you guys, if Anet didn't tell us about GW2 and had just released GWEN and then nothing else, what would you be doing now, how piss off would you be?

Anet took risk by tell us about GW2, and hoping we would understand a game takes time to make, IMHO, they would have taken a bigger risk by not saying anything.

I suspect that Anet announced GW2 very early to give them an excuse for not releasing new game content (that is new chapters, questing, etc) as promised in their original model for their GW MMO model......what was it every 6 months for a new chapter...lol

I am looking forward to GW2, but it will be an extreme disappointment if we have no major new content for GW1 between EoTN and GW2 (say over 3 years).....and....no updates on GW2 progress to boot.

Basically a 3 year GW vacuum...and as many have indicated....it isnt the end of the world, there will be other games to play, other things to do....and I am sure every now and then I will pop back into the game to do something or other....but nothing hides the fact that Anets current reasoning and lack of information is disappointing, especially to the long term players and those who have supported the game since day dot.

...and honestly what damage would a few screen shots do, or some sort of update....

...anyway my 2c.....

Cheers

Just thought I would fix this for you.


In the interest of full disclosure, I think it is fair to mention that Blizzard did release a good amount of information when they announced D3. That being said, I think the GW2 announcement was a bit premature. As far as I am concerned though, I can wait.

I agree, I would rather see them spend time and make it a more awsome game then we could ever imagine, because who wants to play an MMO that is riddled with bugs, missing content, and whos player base disapears in weeks not years.

I also see their standpoint on releasing more information/screenshots, etc, the game is 2 or 3 years off and they don't want people to see unfinished work and make judgement on it, they don't want their ideas picked out from under them, and there is no reason for it other then to please a relatively small base of people who are dyingto see it.

I understand their reluctancy to add any new content to the origional guild wars, they have no reason to really; afterall we pay no sub fees so they don't have a huge amount of incentive to keep us around.

On the other hand I think they have, if for nothing else, a moral standard and a promise to uphold. I remember playing Gw vanilla, no new content and when Sorrows Furnace came out they said they planed to do stuff like this every 8 months if I recall. So we saw SF, new campaigns, and some other decent things such as the change of Tombs. After EotN was announced they said no more new content to guildwars(besides the usuall skill updates/and other misc things) so we played EotN, grinded titles, but now it has been 2 years since GW2 announcement, they gave us an expansion set on transitioning us from GW1 to GW2, and they tell us 2 more years before we might even see a screenshot.

Thats fine but please please give us new GW1 content, ill pay for it, it dosen't need to be a huge expansion just another Sorrows Furnace type thing, keep us involved and looking forward to something. Who knows Guild Wars 2 might have gone the path of Windows Longhorn I.E. Not good enough, start over, so we waited and got Vista. So they might not have anything to show us, it might just be some early wireframe terrains and some ideas on a napkin. Who knows, but games such as Operation Flashpoint 2 gave us early screen shots and then we didnt hear a word from them for years. I know for a fact a huge fan base totally forgot about them because of this. I do wish Anet would give us just one screenshot/concept art/real info every once in a while, nothing crazy, just something to say hey heres a tease at what we have. Or at least give us a timeframe, first they say 2010/2011 now they say well lets set the record straight it moght not be 2010/2011, to me this looks and sounds like they are having major issues with the game and cant figure ou for themselves a release date, because then they could say "Hey no promisses here but we are aiming for Q4 2010 but if it takes longer, it takes longer."

Oh well ill go back to what ive been doing: living real life, playing other games,and every 3 or 4 months pop on guildwars.com and see whats going on.

Oh and here is a bit of my GW2 concept art, if you don't get any from anet...make your own!
http://www.caedes.net/Zephir.cgi?lib=Caedes::Showimage&name=GunnerMan-1230750878.jpg&width=1280&height=800&ts=1234914529 &r=1

From start to finish it takes around 5 years to put together a game on the scale of Guild Wars, and from what I have personally heard, Guild Wars 2 is looking to have 10 times the depth that Guild Wars did at launch. ArenaNet set the bar very high and were basically given the go ahead by NCSoft to aim high with a new product rather than merely a sequel. They are reworking the game engine underlying the game, which I expect will be optimized for multi-core processors given the types of machines they purchased at the start of GW2 development. They have been on a constant hiring campaign for the past two years, and have nearly doubled the size of the headquarters during that same time period. This is much more that merely a large expansion to Guild Wars - it's a whole new game.

As I said nearly 2 years ago now, Guild Wars was a proof of concept test for a new business model for MMO-type games. It has proven very successful while running pretty much on a shoe string. A lot more resources are being brought to bear for Guild Wars 2, and it should be accompanied by a very large launch - unlike Guild Wars saw.

So while ArenaNet is concerned about the current community, they fully expect a whole lot of new players will be coming along and trying out the game (after all a lot of the current community might be expected to have grown out of the genre anyway). In additon though, Guild Wars has very strong brand recognition worldwide. Old players will doubtlessly at least consider checking it out, and a new generation of Guild Wars players will probably be around to kick start it.

Given the big launches that Age of Conan and Warhammer Online had last year, I expect Guild Wars 2 to be huge. But ArenaNet also has to make sure not to make the same mistakes those games made - trying to compete head to head with WoW and not having polished end game content at release. If you want to blame the delay on anything, blame AoC and WAR for crashing and burning. ArenaNet is investing some 30+ Million Dollars in the development of Guild Wars 2, if delaying it a year is going to help ensure success instead of failure, it just makes good economic sense.

I think the problem is that your post explains the reasons for GW 2's "delay" a lot better than Mike's "letter to the fans" did.

So Anet have basically said "stuff" the existing 5 million activated accounts for GW1.....we are making a new and better game, expect new players to come along for the ride (where from though..mmmm)...so live with the fact GW1 is dead until GW2.

Just as I thought.

Starcraft: Ghost leaps immediately to mind.

i dont think anet will ever realize how stupid they are with this whole GW2 ordeal.

were seriously pissed. and they relly dont get it

Nice, succinct summation Billiard

I also appreciate the punctuation and paragraphs

If you want to see what ArenaNet's philosophy for Guild Wars 2 is, take a look at the speech Jeff Strain gave at the 2007 Game Developers Conference. I think he correctly foreshadowed what would happen to Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. Also from that speech you can see why ArenaNet has had so much direct and indirect interaction with the community concerning the development and updating of the game. These are things that many other developers are just now trying to do themselves, and for some it fails when the company doesn't carefully weight what the players want with their own design ideas. The thing is, ArenaNet has had people communicating with the community for so long that this quiet concerning Guild Wars 2 seems to be unsettling.

Don't you know that asking for more content and saying "does Anet expect us to be interested in GW1 until 2011?" equals the ultimate way of admitting you will be staying for until GW2 release?

By asking for more content and requesting more content/expansions to buy for GW1 you are already revealing yourself to Anet that you are the ultimate GW1 fan boy.


I lol'ed at you guys.

I don't care about the release date as long as they plan to put in the same Asian themed Assassin into GW2 with improved controllability/moves.

...and people *cough*Arkantos*cough* are STILL throwing around the same tired, "Why did they announce it so early if it was going to take them so long???"

They. Had. No. Other. Choice.

I have not seen a single person come up with a reasonable suggestion for what ANet should have done, at the point that they decided they wanted to move from GW1 to GW2, and yet I have seen this same argument thrown around endlessly in every GW2 thread on these boards. It's simply absurd, and it needs to end.

Furthermore, I feel obliged to remind you that we did get a significant quantity of GW2 info when they announced it. Not an entire website or anything, but we did get an entire issue of PCGamer dedicated to GW:EN and GW2. The pages of concept art may or may not be incorporated into the new game (some quite obviously will be, like the new Charr concepts, and the Sylvari), but we also got pages of backstory, a bunch of new lore, and descriptions of basic game mechanics they're planning on including. I've been anxious for any new info for a long while as well, but to say that they announced GW2 without giving us anything to go on is just not true, any way you look at it.

I'm very well aware of that. They had 2 options: announce GW2, or keep quiet and not tell the community why they weren't making any more campaigns. However, I don't understand why you're telling me this, seeing as I said they had to explain why we weren't releasing any more campaigns (read: announce GW2) on the first page. If you're talking about my last post, I was simply comparing the differences between what ANet is doing with GW2 and what Blizzard is doing with D3, not asking why they announced it so early.