GW2. Was it a mistake to announce?

gun, you sound like you married gw and are now kinda pissed because the game was nice for some years, but is now getting old with no excuse.

no offence, but you should gw let go.

All the big April Update? It's nothing compared to an expansion like EOTN.

The only thing that was interesting for me was the heavy equipment pack which I just bought when the first started to appear. After helping many friends with missions etc last 2 years, the z-quests are extremely boring. Not really a great gaming experience when you did most stuff multiple times already.

So no, the 'big' april update was recycling content with some new avatar stuff (tonics). No new playable areas to explore, no new skills, no new armours etc.

Dressing up the game is not what GW needs, it's a game based on skills and character progression.

No offense taken, I understand that argument and believe me I tried and tried other games, but the game mechanics in GW are just wonderful, especially if you liked MTG. WHich is by the way the reason why I would like to have 7 heroes, so I can play with skills nobody wants and test out synergy builds etc to keep me busy for a while.

Sure, I have some fun in those other games, for a couple of days or weeks. I like to progress a character for many years. There are only two alternatives at this point: GW2 and Diablo3.

Aion with its angelics and demons theme with wings is just not my cup of tea. And even if I started playing it, D3 or GW2 will pop up at some point, so I will abbandon Aion after 1-2 years anyway. Best thing that could happen is D3 coming out within the year

I'm a difficult man I know.

This is what a real life friend thinks about the situation: ''GW is a game like MTG, it thrives on campaigns and expansions. Anet sold their soul to NCSoft and abandonned their original ideas. I will not buy and play Aion, because it would be a sign that I agree with NCSoft's approach, which I don't.''

Let's just get started off with something here. I play GW, as I have for 2 years now. I love GW. I started playing WoW last month, and I really like it, too. They're different games. I'll play WoW for a couple weeks and then, when the grind or ganking gets too much, go back to my baby charas in GW. I'm in a GW phase right now, and I'm remembering everything I love about the game. But I must say that there is a vast disparity between Blizzard's attitude toward customers, and ANet's attitude toward customers (and I think it largely has to do with payment model - Blizz needs to keep subscriptions, while ANet has already gotten most of what we can give, so if we are going to leave, we had better do it, and decrease the surplus server population.)

I have to say, the lack of updates sucks sometimes. But I never really noticed it until I started playing WoW, and that was more my astonishment at Blizz's customer support/community management than anything else - "Wow, they just get random content updates? Big new areas without buying expansions? Daaang, that's so cool!" Then I looked on the forums and found out that the WoWers are just as whiny as we are. I was excited to hear about the new skins for Druids, but when I looked on the forums, it was all "nyaeauuhhh, whyyyyyy are all the Night Elf skins piiiiink?" So it's really just what you're used to, I guess - whatever it is, you'll find some reason to be unhappy with it.

I don't think the mistake was announcing the game. They needed to do something to explain why they wouldn't be doing as much with GW. The mistake was making it sound like it was almost done. That initial PC Gamer article? Didn't have much proof the game was ready, and we didn't really care, because EotN was coming out. But remember when they said it would be ready for beta in 2008? Yeah. Sure. 'Cause that totally happened. If it had beta'ed then, it would be out by now. Clearly, it was nowheres near ready. Then they told us that it was taking them a little longer, that they'd start beta "closer to the game's release", in early 2009. Well, guess what, folks. We're over halfway through 2009. Thanks for lying to us. Again.

If they really wanted more time, they could have just given themselves a good chunk of it. Just said, "Hey, guys, we decided we wanted to do a lot more work and polishing on the game, so we're going to delay the beta for a while, at least a year if not more. We might have it out sometime in the 2009-2010 zone. Until then, we'll have a team making you some nice updates for GW, so hang in there. We just don't want to rush this thing out the door and give you an unfinished game." I would have been cool with that. And then, hey, if they got done sooner, they could have been all "Surprise! We worked our butts off on this thing and we think it's very close to done, so we've decided to give you guys the beta early! We'll have sign-ups ready in a month or so!" But no. They have to keep pushing back the deadline, angering people more each time, because they refuse to admit that there's some serious work that needs to be done. BioWare is great. They've given themselves some time, told people that TOR won't be coming out for a few years now, but they'll fill us in with more info as they go along. ANet was reluctant to admit it, but it sure looks like GW2 is going to be in that same timeslot... if it isn't in the Duke Nukem Forever timeslot.

As has been said by others, there's another nasty issue. It's my big beef with this whole thing. ANet doesn't seem to grasp how you keep customers interested this long. We have the official "Movement of the World" lore bit, some art that was released around the same time as the PC Gamer article, and a couple more pieces that were dug up by enterprising Gurus. That's pretty much it. No more concepts, no screenshots, no nothing. Is that the way to keep customers? Umm, no. I'm naturally inclined to trust people's word, if it makes reasonable sense. But this is the internet, the land of "Screenshot or it didn't happen!" And there are no screenshots! THERE AREN'T EVEN ANY NEW CONCEPT ARTS! What's next, an official trailer containing no in-game footage? If you want to keep people interested, if you want to keep people anxious, if you want to keep people excited about a new game, you drip-feed them bits of information. You fake suspense. All the info might be there already, but you give it out a little at a time, keep people's curiosity piqued. They'll want to know more. This is how BioWare has been doing it - adding bits to their site. This is how Blizzard does it - posting up previews of what the devs are working on to keep people interested between big updates. Apparently, ANet has decided that letting people linger on those initial tidbits through a TWO-YEAR dry spell is a better idea.

Guess again, folks. Guess again.

I'm not sure what prompted me to try and scale that wall of text, but I'm glad I did. Good post.

For me, it was the avatar.

Aww, thanks. Yeah, unfortunately my rantings tend to be on the long side... I'm told I was talking in essays shortly after learning to speak.

I don't have a problem waiting for GW2, but I'd be curious to find out what the source of the delay of the 2H 2008 beta was, although I don't think we ever will. Did they (or NCSoft) decide mid-way that they could add another year of development and make a much better game (also with another year's worth of content added to it, effective releasing with a built-in expansion pack) that would blow everything else away? Did they make some bad design or tech decisions and have to go back to the drawing board in a few places? Was there no real delay at all, and they were proceeding on schedule and simply decided to have only a short beta before release, instead of constant design feedback like there was for GW1?

In any case, if they are still planning on that "2010-2011" window (i.e. 2010 is a possibility), beta will need to start by early 2010 if they actually want to get useful feedback that they have time to iterate on, rather than just using people to find scalability issues and bugs.

Anet sure fooled alot of people huh?
guild wars 2 doesnt exist there just using it as a diversion so more people will play gw to wait for gw2, they started development in early 2006 but decided to cancel the entire project and fire the entire development team and keep a tiny little team to keep gw updated a little and trying to squeeze as much money out of this game until people realize that they've been lying, NCsoft is in on the whole scam and is letting Anet get as much money as they can before shutting down the original guild wars.

GUILD WARS 2 DOESNT EXIST

I think the easiest response to the "why is everything taking so long" question is that there were major delays in the game engine. Anet is looking to have players be able to interact more heavily with the vitual GW2 world, and the process of coding efficient, though complex code is time consuming. In attempting to really go all out, they likely got stuck at the engine stage, which made the skinning stage, etc. push back it's time frame. The concept art has been around for awhile, they knew something of the storyline (or mini story lines), they had what they needed to make it happen. They've shown they can churn out content when they want. It all comes down to technical difficulties. You can't put windows in without a frame, and they can't build the world if the virtual universe doesn't exist. Maybe they chose to include DX11 instead of merely DX10.1 to allow them to do more. It will come out in time, if Anet can get the proper level of support and funding from NCsoft.

Did Anet do wrong by telling us of GW2? No. Am I looking forward to it? Yep. Do I still love playing GW1? Yep. Heck, I still prefer playing factions over any other campaign (I'm weird, I know ). Give them time, and I'm sure things will come around soon enough.

Seriously, we can't all be perfectly happy with everything, but can we maybe show a little appreciation for GW1 and the effort on GW2? If I were working at Anet I'd have slit my wrists by now if this thread (and others like it) were my entire fan base. Give them SOME reason to work their butts off, eh?

nc west are workin on localizing aion, which may include anet staff so gw2 was delayed untill its done

Qing Guang has pretty much summed it up. Great post.

Give us SOME reason to be interested, eh?

I find that I'm in full agreement with Qing Guang.

Vaporware is a term used to describe a product, usually software, that has been announced by a developer during or before its development and, therefore, may never actually be released.[1] The term is usually applied to products which fail to emerge after having well-exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product. The term implies unwarranted optimism, an as yet unannounced abandonment of a project, or sometimes even deception; that is, it may imply that the announcer knows that product development is in too early a stage to support responsible statements about its completion date, feature set, or even feasibility. However, most vaporware would not be considered a hoax since the makers have a genuine intention to create their product, even if it ultimately never materializes. Products with unspecified release dates or long development times that outwardly demonstrate regular, verifiable progress in production are not normally labelled vaporware.

Quing Guang, thank you so much for that post. It was so well written, and I couldn't agree more with what you said. I really hope someone from Anet reads it.

I'm still hanging out for the game because I absolutely adore Guild Wars. It's the only game I've ever played that has managed to keep my interest for an extended period of time. It's hard to explain the feelings of disappointment when we have the promise of information dangled before us, and Anet simply fail to deliver. I remember Gaile saying at the end of her CR role that we could look forward to a lot more information about GW2 in 2008. Here it is, 2009, and WELL into it, and we have heard less than nothing.

I want to keep waiting, but frankly Anet are losing me...

Yeah...that'd be a great theory, if Guild Wars were pay to play. There is absolutely zero incentive for them to be using a fictional GW2 as a "hook" to keep the community around, because keeping us around doesn't earn them jack squat.

Congratlations!

all the Z-Quests are are dailies, a very staple part of most MMO's these days and a reason some of us even still log in most days now

I've played well over 7000 hours ingame, I've played every mission and completed the game numerous times, but Guild wars will always be the game I cover and come back to after I blitz another MMO fora couple of months

so why not try what i do and actually take a break from playing (although I'm on most weeks as I'm a community rep for my station, so fnuh anyway)

and yes! it does need a little dressing up with what the game cAN achieve, rather than showing off a lot of what it was missing and the main points they changed tack in the first place to do GW2 instead of more campaigns, namely the shortcomings of the engine, database (Auction house) and other things

Absolutely not. The community deserved to know why they were getting an expansion instead of Utopia, and why they were going to end it right then and there. Their big mistake was to hype it as early as they did, proclaim that they would be done in roughly two years, and yet still talk as if they were going to completely revolutionize the genre. I was ignorant to the timelines to MMO developments, so I bit into it, I'll admit. But they weren't. They should have known that if they want to be ambitious and explore the genre, it would take much longer than two years to complete a game of that magnitude. I think that was very irresponsible on their part... but at least they tried to communicate with us back then.

Just a little aside to the CMs with that last comment... I know you guys are handcuffed in all this, and it's all being decided by those above you. I hope your making the community's frustrations with this process known to your superiors.

The biggest strength of GW1 (and I suppose GW2) is also it's biggest flaw, the game philosophy of offering an MMO that you can play for a while, then put aside only to come back after another while. The fact you're tagged "MMO" created expectations that "made" people becoming more and more addicted, thus wanting more as you'd expect in an WoW-like world.

I personally continue to enjoy GW1 as much as when I started, even more sometimes, because I haven't played at the pace that most Guru-ers (and so-called "retired players") have. GW1 is indeed a casual MMO, but with so many great features that you don't really want to leave.

Ofc, I can understand why so many people are angry at the "missed opportunity" or have deserted. And as you said, these people should put the game aside for a while, including posting on fansites ;PPP.

I wanted to highlight this different viewpoint, which sheds a different light on the early announcement of GW2: it doesn't change much for me because I still have a lot of content to explore (but less opportunity to explore it with great players who have left, after all my guild is pretty dead). GW1 is the greatest game for me (except when it's too laggy ;P) and would be perfect if I had the time to do proper PvP.

There's a big difference between a little dressing up that accompanies actual new content versus almost everything to be dressing up and recycled content.

This game was promoted as a no monthly fee model with extra content every 6-12 months. The fact stays the same, they stopped after only 2 years which is way to soon.

They changed tack to start working on GW2, I have no problem with that. What I and many others have a problem with is that they let GW1 with its playerbase rot in the meantime. That's an approach that I as a fan can't support I'm sorry.

On a side note, you claim that JR knows a lot about the industry and the history of this game, while at the same time you both made statements that are not true. One example was that you both claim that Anet only introduced the chapter model after release, which is clearly not true. How are we supposed to have a decent debate if you guys didn't do your homework properly? Show me something more than blind fanboism please.

It's not because you were part of the Alpha that you can talk out of your ass sorta speak. Since JR questionned my knowledge about the industry earlier on...I follow the industry for over 20 years now and worked in it as a game tester and writer for the dutch magazine PCGameplay. So yeah JR, I know something about it and you being an alpha tester was prolly a great experience for you, but it doesn't intimidate me in the debate.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...2&postcount=32

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...7&postcount=57

When a developer has a title out the door, they either have a new project with new financing, or they all get the pink slip.

MMO developers are different, they can pay the team with revenue from monthly subscriptions. So all they care about is keeping subscribers happy, which is usually done by feeding the players some crumbs, fragments and delayed bits. Meanwhile they develop the new real expansion for which they OF COURSE are going to charge you full retail. If a developer does not attract enough subscribers, e.g. Flagship, they go extinct or move on to the next pre-financed project.

ArenaNet did something different right from the start. They did not want to charge monthly fees, so naturally they had to move on to the next project after finishing Prophecies. They did not make an expansion, simply because a stand-alone product can be sold to more people: Factions. ArenaNet wanted to make iterations every six months, but as it turned out their production pipeline was a little bit longer than that. Not even EA cranks out sequels at this rate!

Realistically we have to assume that ArenaNet can only work on one game at a time. EotN was released September/07, then everybody took a break and full scale production on GW2 did most likely start around November 07. So GW2 is 21 months into development at best. When GW1 was released, its focus on story telling set it apart. Meanwhile Bioware starts entering the ring, they will also release a multiplayer RPG with a big license and their storytelling pedigree behind it. Sure, the GW fans are excited about GW2, but those not playing are hardly excited for GW2. Yet they will be the ones raking in the sales numbers. As hard as that might be for the forum dwelling hardcore fans, they are the irrelevant sales fringe and GW2 is too far away to feed them anything.

I'd say that the mistake with GW2 is the over-extended silence around its development. Three years with nothing but crumbs is ridiculous.

How about a blog? A gameplay demo? SOMETHING!

still, anet fear their competitors for no reason. on second thought, there are no direct competitors to anet or has anyone sighted a worthy alternative to gw during the period between the initial release of gw and its 4th anniversary? if anet truly want to revolutionise their own franchise and exclude themselves from the standard mmorpg market, there is no reason not to talk about the game's progress.

even with aion as an inhouse competitor there will be so much differences between the two in gameplay, mechanics, priorities etc that gamers might buy both (heck, who plays only one game at a time anyway?).

if they had any substantial info on the game, they would share it with us.

Fixed your typo because unless you worked for ANet/NCSoft you won't have a clue as to when Guild Wars actually started development. I would guess they had teams start on it prior to if not at the time that big daddy NCSoft gave the okay to cancel Utopia. They had to come to NCSoft with a plan including a feasibility study to make GW2 how they wanted to make it (no subs, persistent zones, etc.).

Like Ravious says, it all depends on when they stopped working on Utopia, and started working on GW2.

We can assume Utopia began development after Factions was released (remember, ArenaNet has 2 teams working on two campaigns at once, to meet their 6 month release date goal. It's also worth mentioning only one Chapter met that goal: Nightfall, released 6 months after Factions.)


Anyway, assuming they started working on Utopia right after Factions, at some point they realized they weren't going to to release it, and instead started (both teams?) on Eye of the North (GWEN). (It's also possible ONE team was working on GW2, while the other was probably changing Utopia into Eye of the North.

We have no idea how much work was put into Utopia before it was cancelled: did they have new professions? New skills and weapons and armor for those professions? How much of GWEN had to be done from scratch, and how much was "taken" from Utopia?

So, best case scenario GW2 was started sometime after Factions (when Anet decided Utopia was not what they wanted to do), worst case scenario it started (in earnest) after GWEN. That's a 16 month window!

From what we can piece together, Utopia had a central city called "Hub of Time", the Chronomancer was one of the original classes and at some point it got drastically reworked into Eye of the North as one of the Art guys put it on his blog.

ArenaNet once had the idea of having two teams each on 12 month release schedules, resulting in a 6 month release rhythm, but that targeted manpower was not achieved. If you compare the credits for the games, you will see, it's the same people all the time and there are no two teams as was initially intended. They fused in the process of making the expansions.

ArenaNet licensed Umbra technology in 11/08. By my count that would have been 12 months into real development of GW2 and around the first time somebody made efforts to fire up the 3D engine in a real time environment for the first time.

How do you figure that 12 month time? GWEN came out in 8/07, they took 3 months off after GWEN?

I really hope (although it will never happen) someone will give an "in-depth" story on the development of GW2 after it is released. I know not everyone cares, but I find the inner workings of development fascinating.

Gwen did come out at the very end of August. With crunch time over most of the team most likely took the vacation they couldn't before, and nothing really happened for the whole of September. So when everybody was back in October the real planning began. Before you know it's November, but my guess is by then at least everybody knew what he was doing for the foreseeable future.

So there are your three months. August was still crunch time, September was vacation and October was orientation. Considering that they are programmers and designers not factory drones, the whole process might took some time to get off the ground. But again, even telling the community that is good news. Nobody is going to hate ArenaNet for not overworking themselves.

Actually, now I think about it, it was August 31. Then there was patches, fixes, downtime.

Yeah, I agree with your points. Actually, if you figure in November / December vacations, it's possible it wasn't until January 2008 ArenaNet really started full production on GW2.

Of course, if we theorize all that, it becomes very hard to reconcile the soft plans for a 2008 Beta...

EDIT: Actually, I'm still convinced there are 2 teams, and at least some people were working on GW2 as soon as a few months after Factions.

Im pretty sure I read somewhere that they began on GW2 development, shortly after they released Nightfall.

It would be cool if you could find the quote.

You might be thinking of the part where Jeff Strain and Co. said something to the effect of 'after Nightfall we sat down to figure out what to do next, and decided we had to make a whole new game with all the ideas we had,' which likely appears in all the reviews related to EOTN and GW2.

They began Utopia, which they said would take place in a "frigid" region.
That region became the Eye of the North.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/guild-wars-2/784302p1.html

Nearly the first question, which also leads to we know Utopia was "concepted" but we don't know how far, or if, it actually got into content creation in game. It is possible that Utopia was being concepted, etc. by Team 2 while Nightfall was going to release. Like Mordakai said, it could be a pretty big window when development/concepting actually began.

I remember somewhere (and now I can't find the interview) where I think Mike O'Brien or someone said how they were really concerned about the Guild Wars engine being able, at all, to handle persistence, and it was actually easier than they thought. I am pretty sure that was pre-EotN.

Yea think that's it.

guild wars 2 is released?

March 2007, gw2 development started. I have no idea why that date is sticking in my head though. Will have to find reference also.

Well, that's when GW2 was announced.

Surely, it was being developed before then?

Yeah, just found the reference:

http://www.massively.com/tag/guild-wars-2/

I guess they could have announced it at the time that the decision to make it a new game was decided though. Doesn't mean they had started development yet. Just that the execs had made a commitment to a new game.

Can you link the article? I skimmed through all that and did not find a specific development date. (Unless you are just saying they announced it in March, 2007. I found that).

If they were really planning on having a beta in 2008, I can't see them just starting in March, 2007.

I think they at least had a small team working on it as early as after Factions, but after Nightfall for sure.