GW2 Pre-order on Amazon? (with release date)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832784011

Here is New Egg's GW2 preorder page, lol

The Christmas rush has 50 AAA titles and 150 AA titles releasing in a 8 week period. They are only hurting themselves because to get that big rush you either have to go overboard with advertising or you risk drowning in all the releases. So no, Christmas isn't as reliable as it used to be. Release the game in the spring/summer when there is a drought of good game, like the companies did for the games I listed, and you don't have to advertise as much to stand out.

And if you are right with your very pessimistic guess of late 2011 for the release, GW2 has more issues than trying to stand out among a flood of other great titles. Team A at Arena Net finished Nightfall in 2006, Team B finished Eye of the North in late 2007. That means they would of had over 100 people working full time on GW2 for 4 years which would mean the budget would be huge and without a monthly fee they would be taking a huge gamble that the game will sell millions and the server and bandwidth fee will stay super low (relatively) like with GW1.

what i want to know is, why cant they just release ONE screeshot, just one, they dont even have to say anything! how can we NOT think this game is vaporware, as much as i love guild wars - and i still do - i cant help it , why anet WHY!?

they love to toy with us

I didn't even try clicking OP's link, no doubt it'll be a wild bantha chase

WOWSA... $3.00 bux cheaper and 15 months earlier!!

I think I'll order from Newegg

well, i have a guy on the inside, and... i hear that gw2 is actually scheduled for 1st oct 09, this is just what i hear, i can post a link concerning where the info comes from and sites where you can pre release at this date later.

Well my "guy on the inside" said this is complete bunk

Most e-tailers do this.

Barnes and Noble are known for this in regards to books especially. Patrick Rothfuss and the sequel to "The name of the wind" being an example.

Examples of Amazon doing this with games are : Stargate Worlds (MMO) and the Highlander game.

Bogus Info.

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Interesting date but like someone said earlier, they would not release it on Dec 31st. They would miss the whole holiday season and lose tons of money. But at the same time, I'm sorta thinking sooner then 2011 seeing how they already have a working GW2.

Well, I am on the inside and I would like to tell you all again, please don't believe a retailer's placeholder estimates over and above official sources.

Think about it for a minute. Why would we quietly publish a release date via retail channels rather than announce it all over our website, via our PR folks, and via press a press release?

because people are desperate to believe...

I think just narrowing it down to an actual year would restore a lot of faith in people. Surely it would be obvious having been working on the game since supposedly 2007, whether the work left to do would require another full year (2010) to complete?

If there really is that much more left to do, I would rather Anet said it was going to be 2011 or after than give people false hopes of a 2010, or even possibly a 2009 (unlikely, but still mentioned) release date.

Have you guys ever stopped to think what GW1 would be like now, had GW2 not been announced to be in development. No major content since September 2007 (EotN) and no word of a new campaign. Its quite ironic, the little we do know about GW2 is all that keeps a lot of people playing GW1 and visiting sites like this.

Playing the "remember, we announced GW2 before we started it" card to the fans, if you hadn't done so, I believe much interest would have been lost in GW1, assuming the same content route was taking and GW2 was being worked on in absolute secret.

A lot of players now are purely repeating over and over again what they have already done, in the hope it will be worth it come GW2. Take GW2 out of the equation and there would be a lot less stuff going on.

I myself stopped playing last year, because Anet made it impossible to lead a large guild of players, many of which who had played since the first year of release. Having done just about everything, and not being 'hardcore', people logged on less and less and eventually we had to call it a day. This was a former GotW guild which had being growing ever since it started back in 2006. After a year of no new content, we had to call it a day...

I hope so much that GW2 surpasses the expectations of everyone, each day that passes without new information only adds to the expectations. Guild Wars in its day would be an extremely tough act to follow, I hope the guys working on it have it in them to pull this off and make it worth while.

The same reason Anet continues to work on gw2 in secret with no new info other than lore available comming up on a year after a working open beta was supposedly going to be out?

Every "press release" about gw2 has been about how great its going to be, without anything of substance. Ive heard "oh, we plan to make it a game where...blah blah blah" everyone's tired of the empty talk and hush hush PR tactic.

you hear real informtion, you die shortly after.

Vaporware anyone? Who can guarantee us they are putting real work into GW2, maybe the only ones working in GW2 are the writers on the forums who let their imagination run wild...

It's gonna be GW2 the new Duke Nukem Forever?

Amazon are promoting GW2 better than anyone else . I think I will take their vague promise and feel good about the future for few moments.

Amazon marketing: It's like Christmas, Santa is coming soon. Get ready all you happy people.

NCSoft marketing: what do we do next?

Imho GW2s marketing is being held back by pay to grind Aion.

Sure! They have the entire GW development team sipping mojitos and getting pedicures on ArenaNets dime.

It's fairly obvious that their focus isn't on Guild Wars, and we'd know if there had been large staff cutbacks.

Surely looks like that...Both statements...

Really? Only 2 years since Guild Wars 2 has been announced and it's already "vaporware."?

And it's not like Guild Wars has shut down... if THAT happens, it's time to declare the end of the world.

But all evidence points to an active Guild Wars team, still doing updates to a "dead" game, and by all accounts working hard on Guild Wars 2.

I'm not sure what Jeff Strain and the other lead programmers have done to earn people's distrust. For those asking for a hard date: what if it slips? Then they will be accused (rightly) of delays, and more questions will come up on the status of Guild Wars 2.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I hope ArenaNet takes it's time and makes the best game they can. I'd rather wait another year or two for an awesome Guild Wars 2, rather then have a crappy launch that kills this great franchise.

This great franchise was killed the very moment NCsoft put their greedy claws on it.

The only hope we have GW2 to be a great game like GW used to be, is ANET open their eyes and break relashionship with ncsoft, so GW2 don't become another microtransaction grindfest.

^Except then there wouldn't be any GW2 for Anet, as NCsoft likely owns all rights to the GW franchise.

The NCSoft slide said "2010-2011", not just "2011". I'm interpreting this as meaning they are racing to release in late 2010 but aren't confident enough to know if they can make that date, so it may slip into 2011 if it's not perfect. If they are optimistically shooting for a late 2010 release I would guess private beta testing starts around 1Q 2010, which really isn't a lot of time given how much they beta tested GW1, but it sounds like they want to be more secretive this time around.

Have ArenaNet said much about PAX 2009 yet? I remember last year they said they would definitely have nothing in GW2 to show, but I think I saw a more nuanced response to the question this year. I really do hope GW2 is as far ahead of other games graphically as GW1 was when it came out, although that's getting harder to do these days.

Hate to burst your bubble, but NCSoft has it's "greedy claws on it" from the very beginning.

Grindfest? For what? Titles are optional. And besides which, you can get 7 titles just for doing the game in normal and hard mode (guardian).

Microtransactions are so far pretty tame, and Anet has to make money while waiting for GW2. It is also completely optional, with nothing being sold effecting playstyle one bit.

I know Mordakai, but i bet Ncsoft has discover a gold mine with GW, at the beggining they didn't believe much in the game, but now, when all their fanchises are losing players fast and GW keeps, and by the discover of new bussiness model of micropayments, now NCsoft executives say "hey dude of ANET, this shit is good, and give money too, shame we don't realize we could charge players for things 4 years ago..."

I fear GW2 it's almost finished the only reason that keep them to make it gold is marketing reasons, maybe executives, marketing and devs are thinking of what features are gonna be charge for money and what ones are gonna to be free in the game, they want to find a balance where they earn tons of money while keeping enough players from running to other game.

There are a lot of reasons companies don't want to tell you about their products early in development:

-You will write huge 7 page topics about why XYZ idea is bad and GW2 will not be as good as GW1.
-Companies will shift their release schedules to best compete against GW2.
-Companies will steal every idea GW2 comes up with.

There is no positive reason to release information about GW2. It's not like it will help sales in any way. The absolute best process is to keep everything a secret for as long as possible because it's not like you'll lose customers over it. Each and every one of you will buy GW2 regardless if they release information on it or not. If you claim otherwise, you are lying.

Claiming you believe GW2 is vapourware wont "trick" ArenaNET into releasing information either. ArenaNET isn't a 6 year old child.

Underlined/bolded- The point is that by now GW2 should not be in "early development" almost a year after Gaile said an open beta would be available and at a time when the "whole team logs on on Wednesdays to play together" (not exact day, but on one of the recent interviews I did read that).

And yes, people will always complain about why this idea or that is bad for GW2 prematurely. The good thing about complaining, is it can usually get developers to reassess this idea or that, and if the team is GOOD they can use it for constructive purposes and make the game better for release.

Really, we both already know D3 is already being lined up to compete directly with GW2. And we both already know who will win. But honestly, most big companies like Blizzard have enough of the pie to not to be worried about Anet's meager playerbase. If the game is all the rhetoric they claim, then they shouldn't be concerned about this snag.

Stealing an idea from a screenie or a video? Let's get a few things straight, GW2 is MORE of a copy of other MMO's and less revolutionary than GW was. Auction house, high level cap, persistent world, world-shaping events, etc... are all ideas being incorporated into GW2 that come from WoW and other MMO's. If any anet ideas would've been copied, they would have been from the more unique Original GW.


Just to note: While D3 has had considerably more working time and the larger resources of Blizzard than Anet, let's compare the efforts of the two. Guildwars2 has a mini info section on guildwars.com with just interviews and a guildwiki page with lore. Diablo3 has its' own website with 3 of the playable classes revealed, a huge faq list, constant new lore articles, terrains, and a partial bestiary.

I cannot find the exact quote, but last year it was said there would also be a whole new GW2 site. If they meant guildwiki, then they're completely oblivious.

You don't know all of GW2's features. Of course what we know is teh standard run of the mill MMO stuff. Did you think they were gonna write out all their new ideas?

No one does, and thats not the point I was making. The point was that all features of which I mentioned, and more I'm sure, that are common among MMO's and were not largely present in GW1 are going to be key elements of GW2. These are recycled ideas anet I'm sure plans to twist to work for them.

Im not saying they should write out ideas, I'm just adding to the point that anyone stealing ideas from GW2 would be quite ironic seeing as how they're taking ideas from others.

what ideas ?
like unlimited level ? that is just for marketing, the power cap will still remains
persistent world ? definitively a + for explorable

but when you see d3 using free&illimited respec + their own kind of runing on skills, there haven't been tons of models in mmos

but arent we off topic ^^

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well if we don't know any release date, at least we know the price !

Yeah I have played the Diablo series back when Diablo 1 came out, yes I'm a Diablo Veteran/Nerd W/e you wanna call it. I have had only one character at level 99 tho, and that was my Hammerdin, he was my main... Anyways, Diablo thinks of it's own skills and Guild Wars has some similar stuff to WoW that was also made by Blizzard. I think NCSoft wants to release GW2 before D3, so that they aren't blamed for having yet another similar game.

All companies steal ideas from each other. If what you said was in any way true or logical, car manufacturers like Ford & Chevy and CPU manus like Intel & AMD would frequently give each other all their research information early in development so they could steal from each other.

Just because GW2 is an MMO doesn't mean all of it's "ideas" are stolen and unoriginal. No one steals and idea and leaves it as-is, it's improved upon and made better. Anything GW2 comes up with that is fun, all the other MMO's will copy, including older ones like WoW & WAR. Where do you think all of the ideas from WoW's Burning Crusade and Lich King came from? Guild Wars! Warhammer was pretty much a rehash of WoW+GW, except they improved upon most of the ideas they stole.

GW2 has plenty of unique systems that other companies will steal when given the chance. Just wait and see.

I lol'd, seriously. Did you even play either of the two?

EDIT: I suppose you could say WoW started doing titles after Anet did, but if you think the idea of a piece of text under your name as a reward was unique, then you are mistaken.

And you know this because you work for anet right? You don't know that and what we do know is that they are reverting from the main selling points of GW1 and in fact becoming more like other mmos with high/unlimited lvl cap, persistent world, etc...

It may not be a bad thing, but to call GW2 revolutionary at this point is a load of <bleep>

The only features they've let on about GW2 are the obvious ones that you could guess at for the sequel anyway; you'll finally be able to jump, a persistent world, with actual character advancement (i.e. gear and levels). So really nothing that anyone can steal, because, yawn, every other game out today already does those things.

Jeff Strain's "How to create a successful MMO" speech very specifically states that making a game that is a WoW clone is a recipe for failure, so I can't see them going down that path (which includes pooping out generic mmo #43523454).

I've always wanted a MMORPG that has the full explorable map, high level caps, and legendary quests and crap like that.

However, I didn't want monthly costs. I didn't want it to be as borring as WoW, or slow and sticky like Runescape.

(Though if I had to choose between the two, Runescape beats WoW... yeah...)


Even though I play GW1 without the montly price, I still feel like I haven't been able to play a full classic MMORPG without paying. GW2 is gonna fulfill that for me, but the BEST thing is... ...I'm sure ANet will make it lasting, original, and interesting.

That is my point. You don't know anything about the game except what is on a few websites. You can't name one new revolutionary feature because they haven't released any information about them. And they wont, for the reasons already explained to you.

What advantage does Chevy or Intel gain by releasing their engineering specs to the public at the start of their development process? None. But I can think of an infinite amount of disadvantages.

At this point in time, ArenaNET is correct in keeping GW2 under 100% shroud. There is no advantage to releasing even a single screenshot at this point in time.

Exactly, they haven't released anything, yet you're making the assumption that they will have some brilliant new idea just because they're anet. Whereas all evidence points that they are not going for revolutionary, they're going for generic MMO.

For people who are looking forward to GW2 just because they want a typical MMO but are too stingy to pay monthly, you obviously haven't looked hard enough. There are tons of microtransaction type MMO's like Perfect World that aren't monthly.

Point is that you're right, they shouldn't show any cards early in development. However, seeing as how Gaile gave a prospective '08 beta before and looking at that '10-'11 release timeline, they shouldn't be early in development, unless they have already secretly planned Dec. 31st, 2011.

Not to mention, I question the "big splash" strategy for a company like NCSoft/Anet. If it was a big name like Blizzard-Activision, I think it would create enough hype before launch. There is this false assumption out there that people will come back for GW2 just because of Anet's name. Well I'm sorry to say but with the way GW1 went, despite their best efforts, that is actually a negative.