When was the peak of Guild Wars?

Kinda of agree with the poster above. I've been playing since the beginning and quit a few times. Every time I quit is a trough and every time I come back a peak.

As for all the QQers saying its all downhill, my take is that the people who moan the most are the ones who really need to move on but can't bare to let go. Seems catastrophically lame to me when I see people spending their chunks of their time moaning on forums about what is an entirely optional leisure activity.

Factions era. IMO, after NF, things started to go downhill.

I definitely agree with Sorrow's Furnace as the peak. I was just seriously addicted for about 3 weeks when that patch came out. (Not like it was any better before that, ahaha)

I'd say it was probably after Factions was released, and before NF was released. Large amount of new content, with enough good, repeatable, do-able (without stupidly gimmicky builds) high end content.

Sorrow's ye, that also was the most enjoyable time maybe. Well there's been more of that, but SF sure was memorable

What about PvE/PvP split and the August 2008 major skill rebalance? I find that update great, it rejuvenated the game at least a little bit.

Definitely Sorrow's for me.

Between the end of spirit spam and the beginning of iway

I'd say before titles came out. That caused the huge e-peen era that we've beentrapped in (and will never escape from). Factions was fun, but, when NF came out I only ever played GW anymore to do what everyone else did-- to flaunt(sp?)/e-peen my
"perfect" account.

I have to agree that they've done the game more harm than good overall. Yeah, they're optional, but they changed the ways and reasons people played the game for the worse.

Holy damn...September 05 was an amazing month for Guild Wars. That was back when Anet knew how to do updates. The good old days as they say.

I'm also in complete agreement with Nightfall being the downfall of the game for me. 100% honest I have rarely had fun playing Guild Wars since that expansion came out.

My opinion is that the downhill began when skills were split between PvP and PvE.

But I'm still enjoying this downhill.

Ye, nice to read through those update notes

Sorrow's Furnace update was awesome and still is. Not much else after that.

It's not that they "knew how to do updates", really. More that "the game was still in such a bare-bones state that they had to do constant and major updates". Now, though, since the game isn't going to have much in the way of new content (as opposed to modifications to, and re-enabling (such as the festivals), old content), there isn't really a need for much in the way of updates (no matter how much the PvP crowd screams about it).

Iway was around before factions.

Also. I would think around the SF era myself. been playing since about 6 months after release.. and that was always my favourite time.. Sup Vigour 60k anyone?

In the middle of the Factions era. Seriously that campaign killed GW, if it didn't let people level up so quickly, more people would probably still be playing. NF was an improvement, but than EoTN killed GW. If Eutopia came out, it would have revitalized GW. That combined with the release of GW2 killed GW, thought there are occasional spikes of players with every update like this one, BMP, MOX quests, etc.

My favourite point in time was probably... oh, I'd say 2007, particularly late 2007.

I disagree. Utopia would hurt Guild Wars if anything. 2 other classes to try to balance :/.

OnTopic:

I really liked the Factions era. I wasn't around when SF came about, but I beat it was pretty awesome.

PvE skills killed alot for me. And going from multiple updates a week to 1 (usualy mediocre) a month is a real kick in the nuts too. And I'd have to agree on Sorrow's Furnace. I remember reading up on it on big sites like IGN, and it being a huge deal. First massive content update in Guild Wars, go team!

I hope they've learned from their mistakes.