define dead

Its not dead but it thriving either...

Another one of those crystal-clear, outstandingly accurate posts that I like to see. My hat goes off to you my good sir! Well-spoken.

seems anyone named martin is usually smart.. yet to meet a jerry that isn't fat though

game is on discount.. might get some new players before gw2- hope that pre-order for november is right

Dead refers to on the ground, beaten, shot up and torn apart, lacking any motion, breathing or functionality... so no, GW is not dead, it just lacks the audience that it used to have, but the audience is still rather large and people still continue to buy it and play, and probably will for a while.

I'll echo the sentiment of some other players. GW isn't dead, but my alliance and friends list very much is.

There are around 10 active people from a list that was in it's 30's initially. It may not be much, but it's enough to get just about any content done.

Not, really, I played many online games before guild wars, and never had any type of update that reduced the effectivness of skills or equipment, of course after guild wars, a couple games I did buy, the software company followed in Anet's example of nerfing skills or equipment, primarily for PvP online play. For those games, in which I only play the non online version of the game, I uninstalled them, then reinstalled the game, and refused to update the game further.

I don't mind updates as long as they enhance the product I originally bought, but when they de-enhance the product, I feel cheated, and lied to, not to mention ripped off.

A good example would be, imagine spending good money on an HD T.V., it got good reviews and such, even can be updated, yet instead of making it sharper in the update, the manufacter changes the DP to a lesser resolution because a couple networks complained that they would have to spend more money on their programming to keep up with this type of T.V. Also imagine that you don't even view those channels, but still have to suffer for it. Granted that is a hypothetical, that would never happen, but still that is the way I look at it.

I paid for a particular product, updating it to make it better is great, but down grading it to satify a small minority of users is an insult.

They should of printed a warning in big red letters, saying that you are not buying the game, but leasing space, and we reserve the right to change any aspect of the game as we see fit. Then as the consumer, I could make a intelligent decision as to wether I want to buy their product or wait till it's cheaper and see what changes they make.

I can't believe we still have incompetent non-creative people complaining how skill balance ruined their game because, gasps, once in 6 months they had to change a skill or two on their skillbar.

The lack of skill balancing is what killed GW IMO. The lack of creative smart people too.


ps: And yes Angelina I'm an elitist. What the heck should I be, averagist? GW was always about balance. Complaining how it ruins your gameplay shows nothing but lack of understand of the game on one side, and disrespect for the rest of the community on the other side. If ANet went with your idea of never balancing skills (which is your ideal), the game would be horrid beyond imagination.

How radiacally such a simple game has changed in the style it is played it why it is dead. I had a 2 year break from guild wars, and I am absolutely amazed at how much has changed (speedclears to name) and how little (A-net updates). Like the 100s of devs before them, A-net simply showed they could not properly moderate a online game to the way they expected without offending a minority. So they made bad decisions again and again till it gets to the point where every update is basically "what did they f*** up this time".

From the release of Eotn things went bad, real bad. Eotn is Guild Wars greatest mistake, it's overall affect on PvE is remarkable. Eotn killed countless items rarity, made PvE extremely easy and introduced stupid and overall "PvE only skills". A-net made far too much content which in-turn led to constant updates in an attempt to balance the game without taking in considering what really needs to be changed. Titles, mini-pets, consumables and PvE skills are complete rubbish that in my opinion having never been implemented to the degree they are currently in. Guild Wars went from a fast-paced, easy and fun game to a grind-fest gimmick-stricken cesspool of evil. A-net isn't the only one too blame, BuildWiki contributed to the gimmick status of PvP while GuildGuru created a server dedicated to power-trading in which a number of the moderators are involved in.

Guild Wars is dead because the original appeal and fun is no longer in it. Pugging it, good times, fun and focused PvE turned into spamastan, speedclears, and a joke of a pvp system.

Considering A-net has given up on GW1, I expected big things from GW2, which I probably won't even purchase.

Angelina, don't take my comments to mean that I agree with every update or move that ANet have taken (cos I don't), but I want to make a couple of points in response to your last post

Back when you got the game, ArenaNet were holding tournaments (as game publicity) with cash prizes for those who won. Not only is it not satisfying to watch a game where someone is abusing a skill or combination of skills, its also not going to encourage someone to buy the game. When money is on the line too, things need to be something resembling balanced. Some of the early mechanics didn't work. Even if they did, having all the skills exactly the same and "right" for the last 4 years would have made a boring game. Nerfing skills can be good as well as bad.

Could they have done things better by having PvP and PvE skills as they do now? Probably. But the changes needed to be made one way or another.

They did. Its called the EULA. It also says on the box that your online experience may change during play.

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OT: I'll agree with other people's sentiments about some guilds being dead but the game still having pockets of life. My guild is practically dead in Guild Wars, but very active on the forums and elsewhere. Side effect of this is its pretty much just me playing alone, but I still have a friends list and can find activity if I want it. Dead game? No, just old.

people just dont like change. someone mentioned not being able to find PuG groups going through a campaign but you CAN find pug groups doing other things...

I still pug the ZQ's every day. Not so bad for a corpse of a game.

Look chaps, you either play or leave. Get yourself some dignity and stop complaining about it ok? At this point, if you still play, you got your moneys worth in gameplay back a thousand times. Everything Anet tosses us if free stuff, or some fluff that you can buy if you somehow want it but doesn't have any impact on the game itself.

Re: HoM additions after GW2 is launched from the 24 June 2008 dev update

Guild Wars 2 Unlocks

Aside from the switch to account-based accomplishments, this has not changed. You will be able to add to the Hall of Monuments in the original Guild Wars even after the release of Guild Wars 2, and any newly unlocked accomplishments will then be visible in Guild Wars 2. We will provide more information about the exact rewards for each Hall of Monuments accomplishment as we get closer to the release of Guild Wars 2.

Yesterday evening I did 16 GvG's with my guild in under 6 hours. That comes down to an average of 22 minutes per match, including waiting time. We're rank 1k+. GvG is not dead.

There's a scientific word for those: extinct species.

How about the sheer bloody arrogance that one VERY SMALL section of the players dictate how the other 99.9% of players play their game, when the reality is that what happens in PvP has very little if any impact on PvE'rs.

For once one of the best decisions Anet had was when they started splitting the skills into PvE and PvP versions.

Change is relative, if the enviroment doesn't change, change doesn't have to happen and extinction is not even a distant problem... Crocodiles anyone? Couple 100 million years and counting.

Stop talking nonsense. Look what no skill balance in PvE did. The fact that permas exist in GW just shows how silly GW is now.

The only reason why you blame PvP is that bad side-effect of skill imbalance is best seen in PvP. In PvE it's not so well seen although in PvE skill imbalance kills creativity and fun, but hey, if 90% of GW players don't mind playing with 1 skillbar for 3 years as long as it's overpowered - then who cares right? You're getting titles faster no? Well I call it BS. PvE should be balanced too, instead of every Wammo being able to do even HM dungeons (literary). When GW PvE was balanced, missions like THK were actually fun instead of being loooong travel quest.

Stale
No balance
No further balancing
No meaningful new content
No new maps
No nothing.

This isn't about SF, or anything else. It's about a small narrow-minded group dictating to everyone else how THEY should enjoy playing a GAME.

If people want to use SF that's a choice they make. I don't use SF. I don't really do SC's, that's not to say I haven't done SC's just that I have more fun with a build that I made. I don't give a rats arse what PvP fan boys do, so long as it doesn't affect how I play MY game.

(back on topic) With the upcoming nerf, I wonder how much closer to the grave this game will become. We've seen it happen after Ursan, I'm darn sure we'll see it again after SF.

Glad you liked it. Evidently the work on getting my writing back up to snuff is paying off.

"Gw is dead" is referring more to pvp then pve.
You pvers can play this game as long as you want, but general pvp was killed off by all the mistakes anet has made.
There's really no way for you to fully understand it without being a top gvger/haer some point in time.

An obvious reason people think GW is dead is because of money.
Anet used to give away so much to high end GvGers and they even had a LAN(big tournament full of nerds all in one place) every year.

When Anet stopped doing this and created the "Automated Tournament System" which only gives away in game prizes, the pvpers claimed anet did not care about them anymore thus the reason why "Guild Wars is dead".

GvG has been going downhill ever since Nightfall and the powercreep came out. And when they focused too much on PvE rather than PvP in that chapter.

A lot of people I know including myself think of Prophecies and Factions as THE best time of GW's pvp.

I don't think gw is dead...
It will be when they don't bring any new updates or just focus at gw2... But this isn't happening yet.
So I would say gw rocks ^^, else I won't play it :P
But it hard to find new guildies these days... Recruiting didn't become easier
Even if sf would get nerfed gw still won't be dead...

Um, you couldn't do that about 2 years ago. Once Nightfall came out the players were getting spread out and this problem occurred. The wilds were a bit of a ghost town when Factions was out.

Not feasibly possible in full human PUG, but NF, GWEN, Faction would probably be doable by waiting 5 min to look for people before filling the rest with heroes. If one is ready to wait before doing a given mission so you can find someone.
Slow and probably better for a casual only, but mostly doable I think.

If I could hug you, I would kiss you.

GW is officially dead. The community gets worse and worse (regarding PUGs, my ally is awesome ) and less and less and less players play.

I hope people don't have to think to hard to guess what I think of the above poster.

GW will be officially dead when the server goes down, or when there are zero players.

Nice of you to surface again

Have to agree though. Anyone who thinks the game is dead is clearly dumb or have special needs issues. It's just showing it's age, nothing more.

First of all, mid ranks is more in the 200-500 range, where GvG isn't "dead" necessarily but stripped barren of about 80% of the original GvG playerbase. In addition, there is a huge difference between Europe and American times. There are probably less than 15 American guilds playing every day. Not to mention the fact that only two or three of those 15 are remotely close to the top 100.

The funny thing is, Automated Tournaments are exactly like the kinds of skills anet said they hate: "fire and forget". While daily ATs were a good idea, the system has been unchanged after almost 3 years even after complaints about awkward times for the AT. It's pretty easy to see this by just looking at the number of guilds in each AT compared to the old number of 20-30.

Perhaps "stale" would be a better word for it.

PvP could use a Word of Healing.
PvE can be healed with the divine favour bonus of a 600 smiter.

An idea the people who handle the financial side would NEVER allow to happen.

Scenario 1: you do this. Players abandon GW1 altogether as soon as GW2 is launched.

Scenario 2: You allow people to continue earning bonuses in GW2 from GW1 AFTER GW2 is launched - new GW2 players who didn't already own GW1 go out and buy it so they can reap the benefits in GW2

Which of these makes Anet more money in the long term?
1 gives a long term benefit if you then shut down the GW1 servers, while 2 gives a greater mid-term benefit, with those rewards tailing off eventually. At which point GW1 can be shut down with the same long term reduction of profit impact as the first.

PvP: More like an Infuse!
PvE: 25/90.