Update - Thursday, June 11

Guru is not the community, you're right. But that doesn't mean other people in other parts of the community don't share the same views. I've read GWO, I've read other fansites, I've heard people in game. Guru is not the only place where views and opinions like this are stated. Many people in many places are disappointed with ANet's actions in the past year+, not just guru.

I must ask, how many people liked that they had to use real money to change their appearance rather than in game gold/items? I'm assuming not a lot. If the majority preferred it to be accessible with in game gold/items, then he's really not only speaking for himself, but for the majority of the community.

So no, we may not be 100% the community, but we are part of it, and we aren't the only ones with views and opinions like these.

Awww I used to like resurrecting dead NPC's in AB Battles. They should have kept that in, as it takes a bit of skill and timing to find and res dead ones, and then add new ones. It was fun anyway! Oh well

WE ARE THE COMMUNITY. IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Goddamn.

Now, Martin, would it really be that hard to tell us skill updates are not coming this week, but maybe the next, earlier than a day after the update lands? Is there really that big of a barrier that you couldn't have told us thursday morning? Or Wednesday?

Why do we get this kind of news so late?

If enough people don't like it and do move on, GW2 will die on the vine and you won't get any support because sales are below the ability to pay staff. Be careful what you suggest.

The moral of this story is that if Anet (Martin, Regina, the ghost of Gail) doesn't keep the community engaged (as this thread illustrates, though now there's an attempt to reverse that), you won't be able to play your Gilt Worz.

Meh, i can understand why they did it though. If people really want to change there characters appearance they pay and Anet make a little money, which i would like to believe they return to the game and put to some use, although thats quite obviously wrong. Although differentiating between a Makeover and an 'Extreme' Makeover was just greedy.

Being someone actually interested in the video game business, perhaps I can answer this instead of Martin.

You see, setting deadlines can totally messup schedules.
What if the update is too early? What if it's too late? What if the budget is b0rked?
There are many, MANY things to consider. But I don't work at anet, so I don't know the details. But from the mere basics of video game companies, I can tell it's not so simple.
From what I read on guild wars' team as a job, it is a very relaxed, casual form of work. As in, people don't want to be doing the infamous "Crunch time" that all video game devs fear.
They want to actually have fun with their job, rather than grinding is one damn good reason.
And if you look at the complexicity of guild wars from a technical side, any task is not easy. Even non-technical, it is hard to keep track of. For one, have you seen the huge amount of lore and dialogue in the game?

Why do have a feeling this thread is turning into some sort of boxing match between the Devs and the community?

Also, I think it's safe to say that Toxic is right in that lack of general information is what is losing so much of the fan base. You -really- don't want to hold off too long, think your announcing an amazing development, only to look around and realize not many people care anymore.

It's not that our expectations are not being met, it's that our expectations are being LOWERED constantly every week. THAT is why so many people are aggravated.

Not to completely change the subject, but this update did mess up the zquests, and for those of us who were not able to pick them up in the couple hour window they were available, we kinda feel screwed. Is there any plan to put them back up, or are we pretty much SOL until the entire rotation finishes and they come up again? (I'm thinking more of the bounty and mission, since the pvp comes up frequently)

I'm going to call it out. I <3 you guy's but really tell us where. Because I visit more forums (in multiple languages), more online chat rooms, more comment sections, more blogs, more gaming news sites, running around in game, then is imaginable. I'm probably up there with the best of you there at Anet. I see the overall opinion of Guild Wars out there and they are all speaking the same thing about Guild Wars. Is there some online GW Survey I've never received at pop-up? Is there some super secret Alpha testers you've brought on again for GW? Is there some weekly community gathering that no one has heard about? Some private chat room where all the GW players gather I haven't been to? Please, let us all know where we too can be enlightened about how Guild Wars REALLY is. It would serve to educate us all.

Where is the community then? Your sales figures? Your roundtable discussions amongst the devs? IM conversations with players who are there to build up ego because they are OMG! talking to a dev? Gaming conventions where the sheer awestruck of meeting game dev's overpowers fanboy's speech centers? Roommates? Magazines who are pining for an interview?

Tell me where this community is that is so elusive. Because apparently being on the Wiki, the fansite forums, the IRC channels, the news articles and interviews, other MMOG websites, blogs and in game just isn't enough community to gather an opinion from for the rest of us.

The addition of those features was probably more motivated for business reasons. Would they still have been added if they werent in a position to charge for them? Or even been allowed to spend time developing such features if there wasnt a profit in it.

I think theres definitely a problem with the communication between ANet and the fans. And while they might disagree, I think its clear from all the reactions every time something like this occurs.

The CMs rarely visit the forums to interact with the fans and appear more like passers on of notes from the company.
I guess its possible that the CMs are not entirely in the loop, that's how it seems at least as they don't seem to know much of anything.

You may want to rethink your policy of silence on matters of updates and future products. Theres a limit to fans patience, and its running out fast.

Hm, could you give me some more details? What exactly is not working/looking borked? Will check with Joe then.

I just put my boxing trunks on

I still love Guild Wars. It has given me countless hours of fun over the last 4 years.

Happy to wait for the updates when they are ready. Honestly, the way people here are carrying on you would think Anet was holding things back as punishment.

Want you Anet staff to know that regardless of the people here and their need to bitch and moan there is much love.

I'm sure there are other people here feeling the same.

Whoa... whoa.

All right, so while we learned that Anet gathers feedback (hey this is a good thing!) and that they gather it from multiple places (maybe we could know where?) and that they are listening (this is really very good) could we just back off with using the CM's as a punching bag please?

Otherwise this thread will be closed since obviously nothing constructive will come of that. They have a choice to respond here people. A choice. Let's encourage that.

Im sorry, i have liked Anet for some time but what you have said here, you have gone down in my books, we may not be the community but surely a part of it and the community on a whole should gets its views viewed fairly even if the views vary, would you be polite enough to say what exactly you think would have happened when you don't tell us skills won't be balanced when we actually thought they would.
?

Here's a thread about it. crazybanshee and I are both posters in it.

On-topic: even if it's only 2-3 hours before the update, I'm sure people would really appreciate knowing there's no skill balance coming, instead of downloading the patch, looking at the update notes, and wondering wtf.

All in all I think Anet does a wonderful job when you consider the monthly cost we pay (read: zero), but sometimes the communication does seem a little off.

And look how well he was treated by the community, on guru and other forums.

Personally i think we deserved some notice there wouldn't be a skill update.

My point precisely.

Do you honestly think not telling us until everyones got pissed off about it is a good move?

Even if all you get is hate for it from people with 0 patience its better to announce hours or days BEFORE an update that it won't be what you expect. People arriving at Guru to find the update notes and reading... what can only be described as meaningless crap like this update are not inclined to be happy about it. They're all adults, i'm sure they can shrug it off, but if they wait until its too late they get everything they deserve and more.

See...now at least that's information. It may not what we want to hear but it's something. I believe this is what most of us want....something. Even if it's: "it's not ready yet but we're working on it".

I think there is a misunderstanding about what "quarterly" actually means.

If you break the year up into four parts (quarters) this is what you have:

First Quarter of the year: January - March
Second Quarter of the year: April - June
Third Quarter of the year: July - September
Fourth Quarter of the year: October - December

Content updates every 3 - 4 months is not necessarily the same thing as quarterly.

The April content update actually arrived within the Second Quarter of the year. If we said we would do "quarterly" content updates, then we just missed the First Quarter.

I find it hard to believe that this takes up a months work, considering that Izzy basically gets spoon fed on how to skill balance (at least from the pvp side of things) from the high level pvp community through his forums. I'm not saying that this means that no work has to go into skill balances, but meetings between game mods should not take 1 month, with nothing being produced, or with what has been decided being delayed.

The amount of help that the GvG community gives to you is astounding, and I don't think its right that nothing should come out of that. If the skill update is delayed for 1 week because of whatever reason, fair enough. However, last skill update was delayed by one month, and this skill update has been delayed by at least 1 week. This suggests that it is not just misfortune that prevents updates being released on time, but it is something that is wrong with the way you go about it, or the time you put into parts of the update.

I can't speak for other aspects of game balance or content updates, but with skill balancing, I find it an insult to the gvg community that so few updates are released, and when they are, they are so often of so poor quality. When the community gives so much help and ideas, a decent monthly skill update is not too much to be expected.

I cannot, of course, speak for the 'community', and my opinion may not be held by the majority of players.

I do appreciate the more precise answers given in this thread by Regina and Martin, it is nice to have some idea of what to expect.

Yes it is. I am the community. You are the community. My guild is the community. Guru is the community. We are all the community. Of course, Guru is not the entire community, and anyone who claims that Guru is the center of it or something and tries to speak for the community is out of line. Still, Guru is probably the largest and most active public Guild Wars community Fansite & Forum that gets developer feedback like this. It is quite possibly the place where 'Joe The Guild Wars Player' goes to read about community news, developer announcements, and to vent his own opinion. Therefore, disregarding Guru as a vital piece of the community and disregarding someone's opinion as something many others may share is a bad thing.

People who flat out state their opinion on ArenaNET's ways of informing the community (if it makes you feel better, read: Guru), whether they are good or bad, seem to have been left out in your interpretation of the two way street. People should have the right to give their opinion on ArenaNET like that whether you like it or not, and it has nothing to do with constructive criticism. It has everything to do though with customer satisfaction levels, something a company ArenaNET like every other company should always consider in their business and marketing strategies. I think you'll probably understand why bad customer ratings are a great danger for a company and what can be done about them.

So you are protecting the players from themselves? Thank heavens for that, we would have almost killed ourselves. Seriously, I don't think something worse than this would have happened if ArenaNET had just announced the delay two or three days beforehand or something. It would have meant that people on guru would have at least believed that you wanted to keep us from a big disappointment on thursday. By announcing the notes, the worst that could have happened was maybe a few people going on a last keg farm spree, maybe dropping the price of mesmer tomes by 50g or so, big deal.

I think you also can't deny that the current way the community (or just guru) is being fed information is not a healthy situation. Not for the players reading it, and not for the employees replying to it. If ArenaNET is so secretive and ambiguous in their replies to the community, something has to be going wrong in the communication process. I'm not blaming anyone at this point, I'm just saying that the current way communications are made is very bad for all of us and should change.


Then who is giving you the information and who is deciding if it's clear information or not? If you're just the messenger, I'd like to know who I have to talk to.


I'd like to be linked and granted access to some of those other communities you are referring to, both to check on how their feedback differs from the feedback found here, and to verify if you do actually look for input there.

As a final note, to both Martin, Regina and any other Anet employee who reads this, I think you are doing a decent job at the moment, so don't feel personally insulted or anything. The fact that the "regular" monthly update has been delayed for the second time in a row doesn't bother me too much, as I am confident that it eventually will come. The fact that you don't give out the details of skill updates in advance, I do not like, but I can still understand it and live with it. I am not pleased at all however, with the way the delay has not been properly announced beforehand, and with the way ArenaNET staff members have been trying to avoid giving a clear and final answer to the questions raised in this thread. I see this as an insult against all the players that are devoted and caring enough to use this forum as a platform for giving their opinions, criticism, questions and suggestions to each other, and to ArenaNET.

Regards,

Meridon

Edit: Admin modded my post! - The "Don't kill the messenger" reference seemed harmless to me though.

Good post there Meridon, I am support of your view
Okay, what you are describing is indeed one way to view the quarterly update model. I confess I was under the impression Quarterly meant 'every 3 months', but I won't be nitpicking about semantics.

I don't really recall when the message about an update every 3 months was posted. I was under the impression it was like a month (maybe 2) ahead of the April update, but I could be wrong. However, I started counting from that moment, so I thought the April update was just a 'late' update of the first quarterly cycle, meaning the next was due July.

Again, this is just my point of view (and I won't speak for the entire playerbase, that has been made clear to me). The only reason why I would potentially lash out to you guys at Anet, is because I simply love this game. If Guild Wars would have been a game I could just easily put away, I wouldn't have bothered posted on a forum about it.

And in this, I think a lot of players are with me. All I want the best for you people, for your game, and for it's successor. That's why I'm agitated when something unexpected pops up, when some issues that are seriously bugging me don't get resolved in a few months time (and I know a lot of people are with me, namely Shadow Form and Roy of Judgement...) And I know it's not as easy as pressing a button and 'tadaa', a new and improved build is live.

Just remember, sometimes the people that most vehemently express themselves, are sometimes the ones that care the most about you, and your game.

I think it's sad that a Community Relations employee doesn't know what newsletters on www.guildwars.com say.

---

How can you talk about PvP-love if it's been so damn unimportant to balance update a few skills in the last months.

I can open any forum and I see complaining about RoJ (Jesusbeam, Ion Cannon) and "npc AI".

---

Martin is right, Guru is not "The Whole Community".
That's why I post the same opinion on 3 different forums for over 3 years.

---

So you're actualy telling us that we shouldn't be suprised when the next large content update is in september. Anyway, that's still 2 large content updates left for this year according to www.guildwars.com

We are fully aware of that - like I said, we are gamers as well, not just Community Managers (hell, I play games since Pong^^)

And I know it does not mean much right now, but I hope some of the things we can probably talk about next week will help to address some of the problems which are the basis for most of the anger and frustration.

Meridon:

Well written posting, but you misinterpreted me on two points:

Of course people can flat out state their disappointment, you are absolutely right - I actually think a state where everybody agrees with everything we say would be kinda worrying. My statement was more about giving actual feedback on specific issues.

And the quote about how expectation can be go astray - this was aimed at "we want information on what you think, even if you cancel it/will not do it", not about this update.

I think it's time for everyone here to calm down, be patient, be thankful for what we've already gotten so far and remember something crucial about Guild Wars.



No monthly fees.



Heck, it's the single line their publisher uses to market the game.

http://us.ncsoft.com/en/guild-wars/



Please don't expect them to move heaven and earth every month either.

Here is some customer feedback:

Played this game for a couple of years, and stopped.
Came back with that april update to do a bunch of zaishen quests, and carried on with some HM stuff.
A month later i think, the last skill balance was released, and i found it disappointing, and simply lost interesting in playing again. atm, im running about these forums waiting for the next skill balance, but ultimately not really playing the game.
what would be a shame from my point of view is to have the skill balance released so early, and have it a disappointment again, rather than making me wait an extra week or two, and getting a higher quality update that was great for random pve, high level pvp and anything inbetween.

What i found most disappointing was the large amount of nerfs applied to "overpowered" skills, and some meaningless buffs to a small number of skills. What really got me was that basically for a pve mesmer like myself, my next month of fun could be based around everything i currently have available, but also Illusionary Weaponry as well...
1 month of playing seemed a bit daunting when the only new option available to me was some useless elite being made more accessable.

Just something to mill over if you want, whilst I wait around for another spark of interest into this game I have already spent so many hours on.

Well I for one am impressed at your quick resolution of the mass confusion this was causing. Thank you so much for taking the time to clear this up for us. I'm sure we can all rest a little easier now that someone finally came forward and clarified one of the major concerns of Guru(not-the-communtiy) players minds. Thank you for making Guru your choice.

ITT: PR Nightmare.

I think what 99% of people are really wanting out of the community managers, is more interaction with said community. If there was more feedback to what constructive criticism takes place (not often, but it does happen), people might be a bit less hostile when you finally do come around.

I will agree however with a previous poster who said that making the community happy will take nothing less than GW2 coming out. After this long, the game has grown stale and boring. Unless you guys are packing a SF size update somewhere, I don't see people calming down.

All I can say is I hope you guys get the act together in GW2, which has the ability to be a great game, otherwise it will be a huge disappointment, which GW1 has become.

I can't decide which would be worse, the update coming a week before the mAT or having to play another month with this meta.

Whether they are willing to admit it or not, GW1 has essentially taken a back seat to GW2. Not just in terms of development, but in the public eye. And there's only two ways you can keep people happy in that situation. GW1 has to be good enough to hold peoples interest until GW2 comes out, and there should be enough of a trickle of GW2 info coming out to keep people enticed. Both of which I'm sure they intend to deliver in spades someday!

Not to mention that GW2 will have to be nothing short of spectacular after all this. If you think they're rabid now, just wait 'til the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be a train.

I doubt Regina can do anything about that. GW2 would be ready when it is ready.

I am not upset because GW2 is coming in late, but I am a little annoyed that there is so much shouting about nerf this class and that class but please dont touch my favorite class "suggestions". Combined that with XTH rewards and skill update postponements, with the prospect of more PvE build breaking nerfs for PvP purposes coming soon.

Dear Martin,

Thank you for your reply.

I see, thanks for clearing that up.

I think my point on this still stands though, whether or not your comment was not specifically aimed at this update. Personally, I don't need to know what you think, but I do think the playerbase should be informed in advance if the general expectations can or can't be met. Explaining why is something I don't think you or any other Anet staff member should be responsible for, as I think everyone can guess those (financial crisis / resources on Gw2). It's also none of my business anyway.

In short, I think people shouldn't need to know why it was late, but they should need to know why the delay wasn't announced beforehand at all, which it should have been in my opinion. You and Regina have already explained in this thread why you think otherwise. Of course, you are entitled to your own opinion. I'm not expecting to debate this with you as there isn't much I can do about it, I hope you understand where I'm coming from though.

Regards,

Meridon

Big thumbs up to Martin for putting some of the guru community in their place. Nice to see them actually go on the offensive against the "it changed and therefore it sucks" crowd.

All I can say is, Anet's garbage has been called out.

We might not be the community, but we are a fansite. We are a fansite that pays very close attention to what you say and do - probably a bad thing sometimes, but scrutiny can also work in your favor.

Your community has up on its website "A". You state "B". Do not try and deflect. Do not try and say,"We did not know, or we cannot say, or it was inconvenient to do thus".

No.

Own up to the fact that you have screwed up. Own up to the fact that your team has not listened to its community. Acknowledge that you have a treasure trove of information on ways to streamline and improve your game, and have squandered it. PvPers and PvEers alike have given you information - THE BEST OF THE BEST have told you how to improve the high end for the best, and the low end for the casual.

Do not try to say,"There's only so much we can do." We have purchased your products for four years - you have had ample time to make informed decisions.

Your company releases information on such an inconsistent basis, with such massively inconsistent levels of accuracy, that it's staggering.

You guys screwed up big time, for far too long. That's really all there is to it.

They can't listen to everybody. For every thread that says "no more titles" there are dozens of threads with people suggesting new titles. Some people want to game made easier. Some think the game should be harder. Some want PvE skills to be more powerful, some less.
The point is, there is no "community." We are by definition divided. A.net can't listen to us. We don't even know what we want. How can they?

Excellent news. We can expect big content updates in September and October!

but we can all agree that there wouldnt be basically 16 pages of flaming if anet did their job right.

"Right?" Which is what exactly? What could a.net do that we would all agree on as a good thing?