GW2. Was it a mistake to announce?

Ok I have a serious topic here to bring up.

When Anet decided it was time to start working on the next game, we already took that as a sign this one wasn't going to be around much longer and for obvious reasons. The main thing is the dev team will no longer focus on expanding or trying to make real improvements while the community either waits out doing something else or migrating to other games such as Aion.

I'm quite disappointed with this overall. Take a good look at Warcraft, sure they're our primary competitor, but they're still on the same game and after having only 2 expansions they're still going strong due to the fact that the support team is able to keep things updated with new content and all kinds of perks. Look at Everquest, they have 8... 12... god knows how many expansions they've gone through and they were able to focus on the original for several years before finally deciding it was time to move on. So how do we compare?

3 campaigns, 1 mashed down to an expansion, very minor updates and a team that could have continued to build on this for a few more years, yet they decided to dump early and make way for the next chapter. Truth be told If any development for GW2 were held back at least another 3-5 years, who knows just how much better this one would have been and maybe for once it would grow to be on level with Blizzard's offering.

Overall Anet has proven to be it's own kind of monster.

Your thoughts?

Yes. I've completely given up on both GW and GW2 out of sheer boredom. Arenanet is out of their minds if they expect to hold on to their community for this long.

/thread

They had to announce it eventually. If a year had passed without an expansion or any reason the fans would have gotten angry. However Anet failed to stay on the good side of the fans by failing to provide any major and substantial updates, nor did they finish their last campaign, Utopia in order to give us something to do. They still haven't even finished GWEN.

They had to explain why there would be no more campaigns/expansions. GW2 was released in 2007. It's now mid 2009. If they didn't announce it, do you know how pissed off the community would be? It's almost been 2 years since the last expansion. They couldn't have just said 'we're working on something huge, but you have to wait another few years to find out'. They were stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The real problem is people keep expecting these magical updates on GW2 when it should have just been left at the fact that they're making it.

You can't just shit out a good MMO in 1-2 years.

Look how huge Guild Wars Prophecies is.
Obviously Gw2 takes years to produce if the original GW was so huge.

They want to bypass our expectations. And the GW community is too spoiled to realize it.

IMO it was a good move because they saw into the future, would any of us still be playing if they had not announced it?

I think the market would have crashed for GW, all thats left to do is PvP and title grind and they saw that coming, no matter how experienced you think you are at GW they are always 1 step ahead of us, ALWAYS.

There is nothing wrong about announcing GW2. Nothing wrong with keeping details secret, either. Perfectly normal procedure for any studio.

Further, ANet has done a lot with GW. Special events, the recent additions to gameplay.

True, they did not do all they might have done if they had had the huge amount of money that NCSoft threw away down the Tabula Rasa rat hole. With that money they might have finished GWEN, yes. But that's all water under the bridge.

Devoting their resources to GW2 is a strategic decision that I think will pay off in the end. Meanwhile, there is the meanwhile and no way to shorten it.

The long period of abandonment for GW1, between the announcement of GW2 and it's (eventual) release is pretty hard, the lack of information and detail on the progress of GW2 does nothing to fill the void.

Obviously they hadn't planned on leaving us waiting this long between the final chapter of GW1 and the release of GW2 (Beta in 2008, anybody?) but still they should have either finished GW1 with far more content to tide us over (GW: Utopia), or allowed for a larger live team to keep things interesting, perhaps even brought back some big tournaments of yesteryear.

Failing actually delivering content in GW1, then throw us a few morsels on GW2... more concept art, screen shots of creatures, armor skins... anything, give us more information about the way PvP is being implemented, or the value of working on our HoMs.

Anything really, throw us a bone...

Guild Wars would be dead if ArenaNet did announce GW2.
Guild Wars would be dead if ArenaNet didn't announce GW2.

No.

Lack of additional campaigns would make people speculate about anet going belly-up and similar stuff.

Just imagine what would it be if they said "No more campaigns. PS: don't expect much of anything that would require dev work."

I think GW2 ended up taking a lot longer than they thought, but by the time they realized that (or changed their plans and decided to make it a bigger game), they had passed the point of no return where it didn't make sense to take resources off GW2 to go back and develop a new GW1 campaign.

This. GW2 isn't the mistake, YET because we don't know anything about the game. The announcement was inevitable, but failnet's subsequent management of GW1 is where the shortcommings are.

They should have subcontracted GW1 out, since obviously it is too much of a hassle for anet to do anything effectively while producing GW2. And hey, who cares who they subcontract it out to, obviously they don't even give a 2 cents about it or balance, and when they do it takes half a year to nerf something that should have never allowed to live for more than a few weeks.

GW2 announcement hurt player confidence in the point of playing GW1, but what hurt it more (totally my opinion), was the grind tied with eotn, skills/farming going unchecked like ursan, late, buggy, and nonexistent updates, and the staleness that has occurred because there are no resources for new content. Im now thinking that if they subcontracted to a very capable company, combined with the BMP they probably could have gotten away without any GW2 talk for at least 6 months. But rumors would have flown like crazy b/c of the HoM, so that would have forced some kind of info.

The biggest failing wasn't the announcement of GW2 or even the ceasing of full chapters. It is entirely due to Anet's idea of focusing 95% on GW2 and only 5% (if that) on the existing game.

If there was much more focus and understanding on what the HoM will really accomplish in GW2, as well as a constant flow of new content (even paid content, such as in the form of more expansions like EotN), GW1 wouldn't die, even after GW2 is released.

The paltry content we get now tastes like the last few drops of water in an empty canteen in the middle of the Sahara.

First post lol

Announcing something does not kill the other thing. They are two different games. And it is hard to compare one to the other.

I think the new team is doing a great job with the updates actually. High Levels players are now getting their butts kicked in areas they once owned, the way it should have been all along. Take for example the last Dragon festival. I think the new masks make up for the stupid "RUDI" mask from Wintersday.

All I hope is they do not tinker with what makes GW a great game in the first place. Many old school MMO players will remember the Asherons Call 2 fiasco. Which caused the death of the original game. And the entire franchise as a whole. Which is sad really considering in all actuality what a great game AC was.

I have faith in the development team...

But do I really.. REALLY want to play as an asuran?... I think not lol lets hope they fix the "announced" races list and then go from there.

So should they have held back? I think we need something soon. At least a teaser but as with most companies we will get it when somethings ready.But GW moves on as it always has. lol

That's a good thing =)

Lately I've been bouncing between thinking that the complete lack of information is a business decision related to keeping competition away from Aion, and thinking that GW2 just may be a company destroying, Tabula Rasa style time bomb that Anet is trying to keep blanketed to milk GW for all the worth it has left.

Either way, announcing GW2 was a good decision, GW just wouldn't be as active if there wasn't the carrot of GW2 leading most of us to furnishing our HoMs.

I do agree /w shoyon however that my confidence in GW2 IS somewhat shaken because EotN was billed as not just a bridge, but as a proof of concept for GW2. All that proof of concept seemed to show me was that GW2 will widen the gap between PvP and PvE players by splitting skills and dumbing down PvE with a steady stream of over powered grind skills to keep the the tards that can't put together a good build happy.

all good things take time. how about you go and do something else and come back when gw2 is out.

You mention a carrot, and yet I neither see, smell nor taste carrot. Just having ArenaNet yell "carrot!" and disappear does not provide incentive, I want to see the carrot, I want to savor the expectation that I might one day be able to taste that carrot dammit!

The carrot is a lie.

Nope, don't think so. I really don't think it would have mattered if GW2 was announced yesterday, it's still years away.
And, in my opinion, i'd rather have it come out in 2012 than 2008, that way they can make the game better, and not end up being a huge dissapointment.

Yeah.
Or stick with the new thing once GW2 comes out.

On-topic:
I find myself caring less and less.
It's their salary.