GW2. Was it a mistake to announce?

I think at some point in time, ArenaNET would've had to announce that they were working on another game, or at least had their heads turned in another direction, and Guild Wars I. It's inevitable.

However, I think the biggest mistakes that were made is what was stated above: 1) Not at all focusing on the game that is still out there, and 2), not telling us any information about what is to come in the next game.

When I play Guild Wars, I basically feel like I'm blindly playing the game. There is little to no content updates anymore except for rehashed quests (like the Z-quests and find Nicholas' crap) and more ways to title grind. We're all just being told to fill fill fill the Hall of Monuments, but have NO idea what the Hall of Monuments even does or why we're doing it (except that it'll supposedly have some kind of bonus for GW2). It's basically like ArenaNET screaming, "Don't ask questions! Just do it!" and expecting everyone to continue playing the game like mindless drones for the next...X amount of years.

If you're not going to give us any more content except grind, at least give us some sort of incentive on why we're even doing it and give us some kind of goal in sight. Tell us about GW2. It doesn't have to be the entire synopsis or something; just make us excited to work towards filling the HoM. Give us some kind of objective to be filled instead of trusting us to faithfully keep playing a dying game we don't even have an idea what it's going towards. Just saying that "It's a bonus!" is just so darn ambiguous, I don't even care. Give us some more screenshots, a little snippet of lore, information on game mechanics--something. I can see why people think this game is vapourware; they just suddenly dropped the information-flow like it was hot.

And if you're not going to tell us about GW2, at least give us a reason to ride the old one out to even go to the new game (if this is their plan. For all I know, maybe they don't care if the playerbase leaves, as long as they come back for the next game). Give us some content updates that isn't just a bloody carrot. How about new quests? Or throw in a mission somewhere or maybe something in the style of the Titan quests? Heck, you can even make some quests that'll tie in to GW2 or something and give us some new lore to look at. I think at this point, I'd even take another copypasta dungeon as long as it's not another "Here, redo these same quests over and over again so you can get something pointless like 3582905382529-coin storage bag or a moss spider! YAY" update. But with no new content, no goals in sight, and no information on the new game, I'm with Upier. It's harder to keep my interest here every day. Which makes me sad, because I love GW1. It's sad how they're going about this, IMO. They must have some REAL loyal followers.

Some things were certainly strange. Arenanet got a huge number of pages to promote Eye of the North, yet that totally got lost in the middle of the GW2 announcement/lore. ArenaNet cannibalized their own attention.

Then after announcing GW2 they went dark about it. Real dark, deep dark. Name one other game that ever did that? (The Duke Nukem jokes start right about here) Usually games are announced and then produce a steady stream of news. Take any game on the market as an example. Once the title is out there, more things will follow at least once a quarter. Even if the game is two years away, some things will still be made public. (Even if it's only some art to go along the lore. e.g.: Dante's Inferno) As far as non-GW players are concerned, the brand GW2 is already back at square one. If you do not play GW, you have a 99% chance of neither knowing it exists, nor knowing what a GW2 is. Which makes the initial special in PCgamer all the more pointless.

Other NCsoft titles suffered the same fate before. Who knew Auto Assault even existed? What did people REALLY know about Tabula Rasa gameplay before it was released? Which future Aion customer can flame the bullet points of "why Aion is superior" on the forums? Compare that to Warhammer or Diablo 3 and you will know the difference. Especially the Warhammer marketing positioned it as a superior PvP game, whether it is true or not.

So on the one hand ArenaNet was extremely forthcoming in saying what they are dedicated to do next. But that also resulted in a fair share of customer frustration when nothing followed up on that initial announcement. Our current knowledge is the same it was in MARCH 2007. That is not good by any standard. Judging from the initial announcements made about GW2 it is fair to assume there were either setbacks, or the project got even more ambitioned; possibly both.

Not sure if it was a mistake or not but I really think that the population in GW1 is diminishing.
Gone are the days when towns are full of people (I'm not talking about Spamadan,LA or Temple of Balthazar)
But I think they made a mistake by not having a beta yet.
At least show us the beta or do beta weekends like they used to do with GW1 and that will keep people playing GW 1 when the weekend is over.
If people see how GW 2 will benefit from having done stuff in GW1 then that would help them out more.

I don't think so. You really need to look into Arenanet's history. I'm talking about right to the beginning. The three main developers associated with Arenanet all came from Blizzard. They also worked on all three of their major titles: Diablo 2, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft.

What you are seeing here is the same thing that Blizzard did basically. Announced Starcraft 2 and here is some info to tide you over until we are done. Announce Diablo 3 and here is some info to tide you over until we are done.

Granted that Blizzard did release cinematics, alpha gameplay, etc with their announcements but they also have the cash cow of WoW to support them that they can just put an entire team on one project without have to worry about going belly up.

I think it was a wise move to announce Guild Wars 2. Let's just hope we get some information soon and maybe a closed/open beta some time in the next year. There is still PAX this year, never know what could happen since Arenanet has been active there every year.

Logic + Looking at the bright side of the situation + facts + hope + positive attitude= A very nice posts that sums up evrything that the question asked.. Any-sayers you have been defeated.

This is a game, not your significant other. Quit flipping your bean and find something else to have a crazy psycho freak out about, folks.

This is like freaking out because Orek hasn't released any new information about their new vacuum cleaner. OMG OMG OMG I HAS TO KNOW ABOUT DA SUCTION!!

...What.

Driver 3 is one of the worst games of 2005. It holds a 40 on Metacritics.

...5 years and the game is WORSE than any of the prequels.

Unless you mean that GW2 will fail just like Driv3r failed, of course.

Mistake to announce ? depends on what they are doing .... if they do know what they are doing ofc.

Well you should look at Lineage2 Classes then , it looks EXACTLY ( except 2 names ) like that. I dont really see pointing Aion like something that must be discussed here :/

If they hadn't announced GW2 then we would all be sat here either wondering what the hell they were doing, or speculating as to why they aren't telling us what new game they are working on.

Neither is preferable.

They had no choice but announce it. The real mistake is the business model as they don't have enough recources to work on both GW2 and GW1 so we should have had real new content to bridge the gap until GW2.

Anet expanded way too slow because of their business model, they have 165-200 employees working for them, Blizzard has over 2700 in the meantime. Yes you read that right, 2700.

What has put me off Guild Wars now (logged in about 4 times in the past 8 months) is the fact that there are so many smaller things they could do to bring back lots of players, e.g. more AB maps, or just more maps for all types of pvp.

Creating a whole new expansion takes some time, but seriously, will it take them that long to make a few more AB maps to keep people interested, or more HA maps. What about new armour or weapons, surely its not that hard to create, you dont need a whole new story behind any of these things apart from

"The Kurzicks are now attacking an area that looks different for once where they have discovered more jade"

The Great Pumpkin is coming this year, he really is Charlie Brown!

You can blame a slower development cycle on the business model, but to call it a mistake?

The Guild Wars chapter based model was fairly revolutionary, and can certainly be described as successful. I doubt that the game would have been anywhere near as big a hit had they gone the subscription route.

Nobody will deny that the model was revolutionary and I agree it's part of the series' success, but you have to put things in context. In the long run it's a mistake as they can't deliver, which is a serious problem especially for a game like GW.

Look, the original business model could not continue indefinitely: 2 professions and 100s of new skills per Chapter? When GW is already bloated with useless skills?

Smart of Anet to stop when they did, and start working on GW2.

And better they take a long time to get it right, so we don't see GW mistakes again in GW2.

Whether or not they can deliver on Guild Wars 2 is yet to be seen. Thus far they have run a profitable and successful game.

Is your arguement that it was a mistake because they can't keep generating content for a five year old game whilst developing the sequel? I'd say that's fairly bad logic, as it's an approach that seems to work fine for ANet.

announced or not, we would still be none the wiser as to what exactly is gw2 or when it will appear

I was not talking about GW2, they will deliver on that. But the plan was that GW1 would have campaigns and expansions like MTG. Campaigns and expansions are the life blood of such a game.

MTG is over 10 years old, it would have died as fast if after 2 years they would have made no more expansions, but it's still around. Another example would be EVE and that's even subscription based. GW stopped after 2 campaigns and one expansion.

They have a monopoly in this segment of the market and if they would release an expansion tomorrow, it will sell. So not only is the current situation a mistake, they missed some serious oportunities especially in these times. GW has a lot to offer for that price and people look for good deals and spend money on entertainment in times of crisis.

Like you say, it works fine for Anet it seems, but do you work for Anet or do you play their games?

If nothing changes, GW2 will suffer the same fate. It will still work for Anet, but the playerbase will be screwed again when they start working on another game.

No, the error is the lack of information about GW2 ( No screens, no confirmed jobs , no videos etc...only artworks ), and new zones or armos in GW ( 2 years if new explorable areas, elite zones or dungeons is much time).

Still left 1-2 years until GW2 is realeased, and if arenanet think that the community still play until GW2 release they are wrong, and if they think "Well doesnt matter, in GW2 everybodyl comeback ueeeee" i think they are too wrong.
More and more people of old community of GW migrate to WoW or other MMO games because they are tired ( i play since beta and im tired, most people of my guild have 30 max title and some rank 9 and they are migrating to WoW because the lack of new content like new expansion each 6-9 months ¬¬U or updates like Furnance Sorrows or DOA time a go), the Star Wars Kotor Online is going release soon too, Aion ( well this is more money for NCSoft......). And when the this people have a good guild in his new games, toons of hour play like they had in GW.

Did arenanet think they comeback and quit his new community to suffer the same update lacks when GW2 have 2 years ?

I think no.


Sorry for my english :S

Which is pretty much what I was about to say, this discussion having essentially gone cyclical - ANet WANT to do a big Blizzard-style release, but because they were stuck with having to explain why GW1 was being (essentially) stopped, they had to let people know about GW2 well before they were ready for the big Blizzardesque release.

Ideally, of course, they would have got away with it the way Blizzard does by producing/supporting other games in parallel (ie more GW1), but keeping in mind the failures NCSoft had had around that time, it's probably safe to say that this didn't happen due to a resource allocation issue.

Yes.

Linsey has actually described how much effort it takes to make a new map and, well, it's not exactly trivial.

2 counter-points:

1. People are still buying GW, believe it or not.

2. GW2 will appeal to a broader base than original GW. There will be players who will buy GW2, that never even played original GW.

And that fits GWs model perfectly... once you buy the game, Anet doesn't make any more money off of you. In fact, you are costing them money. (Which is why I never understood the introduction of grind titles in GW from a business perspective).

GW was designed to be able to play, stop, and play again with no detriment to you. You can (gasp!) own both WoW and GW (and StarCraft, Diablo, Bioshock, Dawn of War, and whatever other game you are playing).

I think you're trying to say:

"Does ArenaNet think people will comeback to GW2, after people quit GW because of lack of updates?"

Well, there HAVE been updates: Daily Quests, the Traveler, more storage, Menagerie, etc.


The only sentence I didn't understand was the one I tried to rewrite.

Its a good thing for them.People play GW1 more and they dont have to update the game.
But for the community it isnt,they are basicly insulting the community with this bullshit.
RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO you Anet.

Bad timing IMO.
Yes GW2 will, hopefully, come out before warcraft and other get a new version (if that ever happens) but how long can that last?

They had already a plan worked out where 1/2 the team worked on one campaign and the other 1/2 had a head start on the next. IMO, they could keep that up but have 1/2 team at a time working on GW2. End result, GW1 alive longer, maybe 1 more campaign/expansion and Gw2 being developed at the same time. Almost dropping Gw1 for Gw2 was bad. The live team is doing a good job but they can't make a campaign, or new content, or deep changes, bonus missions, etc. See my point?

I don't like any of the Driver games myself.
I was using them as an example. :/
Because graphicly and mechanicly Driver 3 was better than 1 and 2.

You are assuming that most people would rather have a couple more chapters, rather than a sequel. I'd bet at this point a lot of people want to move on from Guild Wars. I know I certainly do.

I definately feel like I've got value for money from ArenaNet, despite having two accounts stolen over the course of my Guild Wars career. I'm more than happy for them to work on an improved sequel, hoping they have learned all they can from the development of Guild Wars.

You want to move on because there's no new content and the next new content is GW2. My point was that they don't have enough recources to bridge the gap with expansions till GW2 and that's because of the business model.

Guess who's lurking in the meantime? Blizzard. I have the strong impression from what they announced so far that Diablo3 will use something similar like Anet's business model for that game and they will show how it's done properly, because they can.

And yes I feel the same about having value for my money, but that's not the point of the discussion. We have a status quo for several years now and that's the issue. It raises questions like the title of this topic.

The problem is that Daily Quest are the SAME old quest, the SAME old bosses only with Zcoins of reward, and if you alredy have the Heavy Equipament Pack they are so useless until arenanet put NEW items like new armors to buy with ZCoins ( And ZKeys and Elite tomes are ridiculous expensive in the ZCoins seller, is 10 times more easy and fast farm Gold and buy in Kamadan to someone ).

Nicholas is good, but one time a Week only means 30 minutes -1 hour farm to get 5 gifts.

More storage was a good update, but have more storage dont make people play more time, furthemore that if you want more you have to pay ¬¬U.

Menagarie that was good the 2 first day, but when you have all pets is so useless...why?... because the pets and beast mastery are useless in GW PVE and arenanet dont make nothing to change this, furthemore you cant show the Zoo to other friends and you cant take this pets to GW2 like Hall of Monuments.


I want NEW CONTENT now Old content recycled.

To be honest, after I've completed Prophecies and Factions and completed a lot of titles, I got a bit bored when playing Nightfall. It was all the same. Already done something alike before.

EotN was even more if the same, it didn't had the chemistry Prophecies had for me, but that could only be because Prophecies was my first experience with Guild Wars.

It;s time for something entirely new, something that couldn't be achieved by crunching out another campaign every 6 months.

Thanks for making that assumption for me, but I'm afraid it's just not true. I'm bored of the Guild Wars mechanics. There is nothing left for me to figure out. I'd like to be challenged again.


They don't need to. They have enough money just to focus on the sequel.

Would you rather have new content in GW, or GW2 a little faster?


I'd rather ArenaNet put all their resources in GW2, personally.

I agree with JR above. I want a brand new game to figure out. Another "bonus mission"? Is that what people here really want?

Inde says it best right here:

http://www.killtenrats.com/2009/07/0...nde/#more-4366

"I can summarize it shortly by saying that once a good portion of an MMO’s user base has figured out the game, the mechanics, and the mystery is gone we grow bored. We don’t want to move on, we want the gaming developers to recapture the initial adrenaline and excitement as we eagerly anticipated the game and initially began exploring a new world. Our criticism’s were few and far between because we were involved with a new experience, with learning. Once that begins to fade we now begin to see nuances and annoyances from game bugs, or a missed deadline, or a feature promised that we realize was never delivered.

Over time, more and more players lose that feeling and the community outside the game grows. The noise factor multiplies and if the gaming company can’t meet the expectations it begins to spiral. Now this is actually all a very natural course for a game to take. But as players, we grow attached to those things that we have spent so much time and put so much energy into and it becomes personal. The problem only compounds when you have a persistent and constant world such as an MMO that is supposed to continue on for years.

There’s really no solution except a bit of tolerance, patience and seeing through the noise to try to learn where any major problems are, it also helps to kind in mind that if the community is still talking about a game, then they care enough about it to express that view. "

Ok if they go to recycled old content at last make a good recycled , a easy and cheap solution is make a new 12 weapon set like torment or destroyer to put in HoM, but PRETTY AND COOL like Torment Weapons , not like Deldrimor Weapons, or new materials to build new armors like DOA Gems or Ectos .

-Ok, make Furnace Sorrow like Duncan ( reseteable ) , when you complete the final quest, you have to make the previusly quest again.
-Change the dwarn builds of Furnance Sorrow to make impossible farm with 600/Smite or SF, and make more hard ( at this moment the Furncance Sorrow is pretty easy, not like 3.5 years before ).
-When you complete a Quest of Furncance Sorrow a Final Chest Spawn, and when you complete the Final Quest a better FInal Chest respawn, exactly like Duncan, with 6 of the new weapons sets or the new material to armors , and with a rare drop like Obsidian Edge, Voltaic Spear, Emerald Blade, Eternal Sword etc...., and after, delete all previusly quest and make againt to get the Final Quest, exactly like Duncan.


-Change builds of enemys of King Tombs to make impossible farm with SF or 600/smite again, and make harder ( like Furnance Sorrow ).
-Put a Final chest when you kill the 3 shadows ( and not put the greens on the chest please, nobody want in this days the greens of Tombs ) and put the rest of Weapon Set ( the other 6 ) with rare drop too or materials to new armos in the final Chest.


Ok only make a new Weapons sets, change enemy builds of 2 old and forgot elite zones of the game, and put final chest.

Easy and cheap compared with make the zone Zaishen Maguire, and they could comeback the people to 2 Elite ZOne of Prophecies that the people only go to Farm some ectos, or Greens in special Weekend, and only recycled old stuff.

Oh boy, more weapons to collect. Can't wait.

/sarcasm

(Nice idea to revamp Sorrow's Furnace though, that would be cool).

I said Weapons, like i can said tell armors, or new items, but something rare that make people want to comeback to Furnance or Tombs like 3 years ago.

I preffer new armors, but arenanet told it more hard make new armors that weapons, and because they didnt make more, because i put weapons, because is the cheap solution.

A celestial, eternal or destroyer armor, hard to get like Obsidian Armor in the first days game....... that would be sweet ^^

I expected you to respond with 'I'm bored of the mechanics'. I hope for you that GW2 will be new enough to give you that challenge then, in maybe 2-3 years. In the meantime there are other players who would have welcomed new content as there are not a lot of alternatives out there.

They don't need to? I'm not so sure, time will tell. No need for doomsday scenarios yet, but the way they handled things left a sour taste in my mouth. I expected more from Anet but at the same time I realise they did an overall good job from a devs point of view with less than 200 people in the team for a complex game like GW. I'm a gamer though with high expectations when it comes to games and their support (that's Blizzard's fault/credit).

Even if Anet released the three missing God areas tomorrow...it still wouldn't be enough for me. It would make people come back, until that area is farmed to death using Shadow Form, or some other OP build. Armors would be nice and shiny at start, but after that...it's just armor. Even for the people that just want to clear the area oldfashioned, for 'fun', it would take them 1 month tops to be back in the state we are in now.

And to be honest, it would just be more of the same. It's all been there, done that. EotN was, the Zquests are... I don't hold it against Anet though, they are doing their best to keep peeps interested, but GW is basically on it's last legs.

It's a good thing GW2 was announced, it's something to look forward to.

You are saying Anet should have milked the franchise harder so they could afford to employ more people, to pump more content into a dying game, because you want it.

If Anet wants to make a sequel (and they can obviously afford to) you don't really have any right to criticize that decision until either they fail or you get a doctorate in business and marketing in the video games industry. Be careful of fostering any false sense of entitlement; ANet does what it wants.

If your beef is with Guild Wars being ditched, take a look at Left4Dead for comparison. It has already been... left for dead by Valve for a sequel after only one year. We have had many years of enjoyment out of Guild Wars, and ANet will continue to support it for a long time yet I'm sure. Support and development are two very different things, and it would certainly be insane for ANet to continue developing content for an old game just to please those who stubbornly cling on.

Man seriously, bringing out new content resembles milking the franchise according to you. When they were still releasing new content, the game was far from dying.

Those micro transactions we see now are more an example of milking the franchise and they have no other choice it seems.

Like someone posted earlier, the ideal situation would have been developping some more content for GW1 while at the same time working on the sequel. But they're not big enough to do that. Regina even posted they know that there is still an audience for gw1 products, but NCSoft doesn't want that. It all comes down to recources.

Sure Anet does what it wants, just like I play and buy the games I want and they're lucky no better alternatives popped up so far (which might say something about the business model btw).

Oh, I think even ArenaNet bows to market pressure and audience demands from time to time, whether it fitted their original vision of the game or not.

This is actually the best/worst sign to figure out when GW2 is going to drop. Look at the balance sheet for ArenaNet. Their numbers are remaining slightly steady at 1-1.5 million per quarter, if I read it correctly and memory serves. So this is good because it shows the efficacy of the business model, but at the same time it is not enough to keep a 170+ subsidiary afloat on its own. IOW, big daddy NCSoft is going to want results (read: profits) after the Aion launch.

guildwars is dieing and nothign goign to bring it back maybe if they decide to bring out utopia instead and nto do gw2 yet lol

but yeah im not exspecting anything gw2 til 2011 fall time if they annouce release date any time before that ill beep my pants...l;ol beep... til then aion is here and taking the world by storm and giving wow a run for there people .. its agreat game looks great plays great and doesnt need a high end computer to run ... for now i might try gw2 but i might be to much for aion by then