Why ANet Shouldn't Nerf the Broken Skills of PvE

30 minutes are not 6.

Well I decided to post on yet another retarded thread.

Buisness aka money. Nerfs making people quit the game? A few here or there but the sad truth is Anet has your money already. If it was a pay per month game it might be a problem but anet already has the money you payed for the games. ( will this stop new players- Nah I don't think so alot of other mmo's are going thru the same thing so many people from WoW are coming over to gw now just to try it.)

Buisness being ruined for GW2.
OF COURSE NOT. Everyone qqing about gw 1 and saying they won't buy gw 2 need to shut it and shove it because I bet ya they will be one of the first to preorder it and qq on forums during beta.

Glyph

That was more or less achieved with the addition of Dhuum and the skeletons.

What the update really accomplished with Shadow Form, which reading moriz's post reminded me of, is that it went from having two or three skills + cons to maintain near invulnerability to having two or three skills + cons to create invulnerability.

It's a step forward, but a baby step at that.

LMAO...this is the type of person who votes for Obama. It does not matter what the effect of the change is, just that there is a change. The change could be worse, better, or ineffectual... doesnt matter. It is the emotions and feelings that really matter.

The funny thing is, I tried to send Regina a guru pm saying pretty much the same thing as the OP, but I can not because she does not accept messages. So much for community relations. I guess she can figure out the Duncan exploit herself then, I wont throw her that bone for listening to my input on the skill changing mentality.

Basically, I have narrowed down the reasons people play GW into 3 categories:
1) Socializing
2) Relaxation
3) Vanity

Socializing ~ the nerfs did nothing to affect the socializing of speedclearing groups using SF or ob flesh. It did kill the socializing aspects of 600 monking by killing holy wrath. Others are left frustrated in horrible pugs or go solo using h/h which is a lonely existance.

Relaxation ~ the nerfs did nothing to affect the key pounding of speedclearing groups using SF or ob flesh. The most important aspect is the time efficiency. SF and ob flesh are as fast and faster than before in the case of ob flesh. 600 monking got killed. You can get high blood pressure in a pug, or you can be bored out of your mind using solo+h/h.

Vanity ~ people want expensive items to show off for vanity. The SF users are still the best farming/speed clearing build in the game. 600 monks got killed. New users are forced into SF or Ob flesh now, or are pushed into low level, unproductive farms using spirits or other worthless farms. Prices are not going to drop, and new users will not be able to afford items, titles, runs as easily.

The end result of this "change"? New users are worse off than before, monk class players got killed, sin farmers and ele farmers are left as good or better than before. Monk class users and new users are not going to have a good taste in their mouth for GW2 when it is dangled in front of them. Every person they turn off from the fun of GW1 is lost net income for the company.

I completely agree with the OP. From a business perspective, they failed to look at the reasons why people play the game, and with 100% certainty, this has cost them customers for GW2. They should reverse the nerfs to monks, let everyone play how they want, and create a fun atmosphere so GW2 looks attractive for the existing customers.

Right now, anyone thinking of GW2 must think: Socializing... yes maybe (I say maybe because I hear that GW2 will be similar to Aion and WoW in that it is server based and you will NOT be able to visit with friends who create characters on other servers.) Relaxation... no, they have made it clear that they only want full team builds that are challenging, small team builds or solo builds are not welcome. Vanity... no, they are anti farming (in theory, yes, but horrible in implementing it) so acquiring vanity items will be frustrating and time consuming. Add in the very high likelihood that the GW2 engine is the same as the GW1 engine and that means that this new breed of .dll injected, undetectable bot plauging PVP, and I am assuming will be coming to a gold farmer near you soon, is going to be ported over to GW2 very easily.

I spent a few hundred dollars buying 4 x all expansions and add-ons for family members. My planned budget for GW2 is a big, fat, moa egg. BattleField3, Diablo3, and many other games will be in my future instead.

I can be agree with you... but... Im honest... Im enjoying the game more now than before the nerf... so at least for me the nerf it worked out well

Just snipping this out of your post, to which I'd like to add you'll need to work on your knowledge of facts before judging and/or bashing anything.

Server traversal will be fully functional, Anet will in no way restrict you to party up with friends.

GW2 will be solo friendly.

http://www.massively.com/2009/09/17/...-guild-wars-2/
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2/FAQ
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/world/faq/

This is actually a very valid point. From a business standpoint, would you really give a crap about people staying to play a free-to-play game? They already have their money, and people leaving isn't really a problem.

They don't want to balance this game, they aren't stupid. They know how dead the game is right now compared to previous years, they have the stats. Why would you want to fix a dieing game when you're already working on a sequel? They probably just went here and some other places, saw a bunch of people complaining about SF and went and fixed it to shut people up. What's the worst that could happen, more people would leave? They already HAVE their money, and fixing SF wassn't going to get a noticable ammount of people back into playing GW. The delay was so long because it simply isn't a priority to their current ideals.


GW PvE simply cannot be balanced in the current state of things. It's part of what GW is and will always be, which is bittersweet. No matter what you do, there will (usually) be a way to counter it, skill wise, and PvE is beyond fixable without a complete overhaul, and that overhaul IS GW2. I would not be surprised if GW2 is essentially GW PvP as it was ages ago, tacked onto a newly redesigned PvE that is seperate from PvP completely.

So essentially, Balancing PvE isn't going to make people come back, therefor they just want to sell crap like Storage space and Costumes to milk as much money as they can.

I think they just wanted to shut people up by "nerfing" SF and it's brethren

omg.... i think i agree with tramp

being new to farming, i was disappointed to learn of the skills that people used to use were no longer available. "build archived due to killed/nerfed skill"

tis was a big disappointment...lemme tell you. why? cuz i [really] wanted those elite fow armors for my characters....and the gauntlets... and the blindfolds...and well...you get the picture.

it did make me rethink about getting gw2....though only briefly.

i will give gw2 a chance however.....unless america revolts against mr soetoro where then he'd be forced out of office and i'll be on the frontlines to reestablish this republic.

-.-

Yes, stick to the facts also, not your projected feelings. They say you can move servers, but how? They say even they do not know how. Well guess what? I would be willing to bet you anything that it is similar to WoW = you pay money. Microtransactions are the future of GW2. Personally, micro transactions are fine with me, but to many people, they are not, and will be a restriction. Again, you can guess, I can guess, but the facts are players on GW2 will be on different servers and they are not saying how you can join your friends on another server. So do not say it will be unrestricted because you do not know either.

And solo friendly? Again, stick to facts not projections. I can run around and solo spiders outside of kamadan on noob island all I want right now, but that sure is not very fun. So when they say you can solo play "parts" of gw2 if you want, sure, the crap parts. They make it clear that the better parts of the game are team builds of a certain size only to their liking, small groups and solo is not going to be welcome. If that is "solo friendly" being relegated to the boring, garbage parts of the game, then they can keep it.

The best guess as to how GW2 is going to be from a player's perspective is GW1. You know nothing about GW2 since they are vague. I have an opinion as to why people play GW1 and in my opinion, they are not fulfilling the needs for all players, just some. If that is the case, I feel they will lose sales on GW2, because the best predictor of the future is the past. Plain and simple.

They need to look at the game mechanics that forced such abuse of SF/600. There's no other fricking way of making decent money or getting good loot. Normal gameplay sucks and is unrewarding. I'm not playing for an hour to get 2 crappy q13 basic skinned golds from a dungeon chest when I can run it for mass K's.

edit:Tramp,they said they would make GW2 much more solo friendly. And seeing as they're apparently dropping henchmen,makes sense.

The message you have entered is to short. Please lenghten your message to atleast 12 characters.

Here is an idea.

Why Anet Should nerf the broken skills of pve.

Because they are broken.......

Anet does not care a crap about GW1 because GW2 is coming out sometime in the future, and they would rather have us all buy GW2 in which they will have a better implemented in game store, for us to waste more money to give them.GW1 in game store(in other words, other ways to gain money), does not and will never work as good as they intend the GW2 extra buy-able items to work and gain them more money.

GW2 will be made up from the ground up to work with buy-able extra's including shiny weapons and armor only available if you are willing to pay even more,not to mention all the consumables we are now getting for free, becoming payable extras.
They didn't balance broken skills because it would mean they would have to give effort (money) into doing that.

The only reason they finally decided to waste money on GW1 was because they were truly afraid that people would become disinterested with GW1 and not come back for GW2, seeing as the number of other great options coming out in the future that we already have plenty of information about.


Now that I have gotten that out of my system

Well the skill balance, made me a since beta player come back to the game after I realized Anet did not want to balance their game, I didn't play for about 4 months because I had given up.I am sure I am not alone either.

It is not going to make Anet lose any significant numbers, for every three people that leave because their broken skill was changed 2 people will return to the game because the game is better balanced.

The majority of pve players do not care about ANY aspect of the game and will play it no matter what.They will continue to use bad and useless skills (mending) because they don't care.They will play the game in any way that is possible.
The majority of the pve player do not care about having massive amounts of gold,they care about having enough gold to buy the skills, armor and weapons that they want.And that means they don't need 5 million ectos.

Of course the amount of people wanting GW to be back the way it used to be are the big minority,most people that are playing did not experience what it was back in the day, and most of the players that did experience it, have moved on to better things.


Like I said above, the majority does not care.As was also said above, no the majority will be driven away.It would sound to be that if X ruined the game and then you remove X the game would be unruined, but I guess that does not make sense.

How is it impossible for Anet to change the skills back?I mean I know they don't want to spend the money on it,but that does not mean it is impossible.Why should the whatever is rest of the veterans be the ones to move on?Why do you not move on, and find the game that is already how you want, instead of changing the game we loved from the start and did not ask to be changed.I know you can make good money in WoW cause I played it, Enchanting and Jewel-crafting earn good money.

The trouble is that GW2 is, like you said, ANet's big priority right now, which means that if we don't want GW2 to end up in the state that GW is right now, then it's important that we tell ANet that that's what we want, and it's likewise important that ANet recognize that the standard of play should be set a bit higher than it is right now. IMO, that's what this most recent update did: it didn't outright kill SF and the other builds (because, let's face it, there have always been builds that seemed invincible to certain groups of mobs, because that's just PvE), it just brought them somewhat in line with other farming methods, and it simultaneously let us all know that they do think that permanent invincibility skills and the like were OP-ed. That's all I wanted out of this update, assurance that they know what the problems were, which gives me hope for GW2.

Not to detract from your enjoyment but I was just wondering... What is it that you're doing now that's enjoyable that you couldn't do before the nerf?

Back to the topic... Why nerf the skills in PvE at all? You can't take PvE only skills into PvP. Why not make EotN only skills usable in EotN only? Nightfall skills only usable in NF? etc. etc. We were given new (better, stronger, faster) skills with each campaign to deal with the new challenges.

If you've completed NF and gathered reputation skills in EotN then go back to missions/quests in other campaigns then technically you've traveled backwards in time as far as the storyline goes. It stands to reason you wouldn't have the skills you learn in the future. You know... the same logic in the bonus missions pack? They happened long ago and you're given the skills that were available to that character at that time.

In Anet's defense, it's damn near impossible to test every skill combination (not to mention point allocations) given the number of skills in the game. I agree something needed to be done about the abuse of SF for instance. But the skill in and of itself wasn't OP. It was the combination of SF with other skills (which I'm sure nobody anticipated) that caused it to be OP. So why nerf the skill instead of the combination?

That said, I agree that it's too late. Damage is done.

Oversimplified logic is bad logic. The playerbase does NOT break up into those three categories. Lots and lots of players do all those three things on a regular basis, while some do one or two of them. To say the majority are farmers MIGHT be correct, but what evidence to you have to support that claim? It's probably true that most guild wars players do some farming, but is that the same as calling them all "farmers" like they do that exclusively? Nerfing overpowered farming builds does not seem to have caused a mass exodus that you're claiming should have happened. On the other hand, how many players stopped playing in the last year as skill and content updates went from once a week to once every 6 months (feel free to point out my exaggeration here).

To say the state of the game was best during that period may or may not be correct. I personally don't feel it was more enjoyable back then, but meh to each their own. Keep in mind, back then there were frequent skill and content updates. As time has gone on those updates have become less frequent, and the quality of the game has gone down. Still, back then people got annoyed and quit because of nerfs just like they do now. I had a lot of in game friends leave after IWAY got hit for example.

Again, oversimplification detracts from the real issues. What evidence do you have that more people have left due to the nerf than would have (and did) anyway? The real problem was that those nerfs came SO LATE after having a broken game for years. People became dependent on dumbed down gameplay and were able to farm the hell out of the game in a way that should have never happened in the first place. Finally correcting that mistake is better late than never.



You should have said, its not hard to comprehend IF YOU OVER SIMPLIFY TO THE POINT I'VE DONE. Having GW1 lose players does not necessarily mean Anet loses business. They've already gotten the money from those players, right? A player leaving because of a farming nerf isn't necessarily a player who won't buy GW2. With the way Anet has set up products, it would be hard for them to "lose" business since their products are all one time expenditures. I assume you're saying they'll lose future revenue, but there's no real data to support your claim. Frankly, I put a lot more stock in the Anet/NCSoft marketing and production teams' analysis of this. I doubt they would continue to expend money servicing GW unless it were in their economic interests.

Altogether the original post is nothing more than an attempt to justify whining over a skill update with bad logic and unsupported claims.

How can you say this with a straight face? The "demonized" speedclearing times are EXACTLY the same as before using the "new" SF. Plus, they now have opened up plains ecto farming for sins in UW once again thanks to the new SF (which is what people were doing when ectos cratered to 3-4k each in case people forget). The only thing they did was kill 600 monk class which was not abusive. I think they should have left it all alone personally. Those SF sins never bothered my game at all. If you make ectos using a SF sin, they dont come out of my storage. Your play does not affect me at all. People want more fun for less time. All the nerfs did was continue the fun for sins and eles, ruin the fun for monks and new players who needed runs (not farming teams). I ran a lot of people and never took 1g for any of it, now they can waste time trying to make pugs. Meh... I dont care anyways. The more ectos everyone gets the better because I am selling everything off, finishing my HOM for no reason other than it seems a shame not to, handing the ectos left over when I am done out to old friends, and getting the hell out.

Didn't read the thread.

Q: Why ANet Shouldn't Nerf the Broken Skills of PvE
A: Because PvE (specifically HM) is «««balanced»»» around broken skills.

It's not like this is the first change that has possibly chased off guild wars players. If you look at what Anet has done over the past year as far as game updates most in my opinion have resulted in player attrition. For example, TA and HB [just an example]brought in a lot of people to play daily and after they were removed these arenas a lot of those people flat out quit playing. I think this recent update will definitely have the same effect. GW2 is set to launch this November the last i heard and making big skill changes of any kind is a mistake at this point. These changes are giving people affected by them feelings of resentment from what i have seen.

Yay! Another QQ thread/Game iz dead thread!

If the game is dead why bitch about it? And where do you draw your premises from? The majority of players are farmers or SF users? And these guys will quit the game as well if their favourite tool gets nerfed? How do you know that nerfs drive people away and not buffs? I'd be very interested to hear if you are basing this on anything other than a guess.

Meanwhile I don't find the game dead at all. I've picked up a little pve lately, even made a new sin to hop around with daggers for big yellow numbers. AB is a big box of fun, quality is higher than ever with many good players - occasionally top gvg'ers come to visit as well. And my favourite Costume Brawl is drawing close!

Maybe it's just time you stopped farming silly titles and seeked out areas that reward you with FUN.

Dude you will have to explain that one to me how do direct quotes from ANET developers or answers to FAQ at the official GW2 site become Arduin's "projections"

Timothy Leary says hi!

Op may well be correct. The problem is that the game has died too soon. GW2 is nowhere near and if you think SF alone is going to keep people playing, forget it.

ANet needs to do something more, the player base just isn't going to last another year of this.

They can balance the game by buffing the underused skills, and makeing
"Useless classes" (useing the term lightly because I know people along with ME play some of these) Like the mesmer, the Dervish, The Paragon, and The Ranger more playable in PvE and PvP (i think the only class thats favored in PvP is the mesmer after the ranger nerf)

Buff some of the monsters and change up builds in PvE to make the explorable areas, or dungeons more challenging rather than nerf everything that becomes great (though i belive shadowform was due its nerf because it affected more than just the farming areas it affected all forms of play for whomever wanted to join in on an elite dungeon, and its STILL USEABLE GUYS! You forget that, it just takes a bit longer)

The game needs new loot, or at least better loot, Loot drops need to increace, give the average player the chance to make a DESCENT profit in game, it doesnt have to be epic drops like voltaics or Ectos, but Gold drops should be increaced, possibly crafting material drops in terms of jewels should increace just a little bit, and in terms of gameplay change it up a little bit make te monsters different, make people have to change up a stratigy in specific areas.

I realy do hope A-net catches wind of this thread, i think it will be rather informative of the state that we the players are in.

This.

Assuming that the majority of people are indeed estatic about farming in this game and put it before anything else, then yes ANet would be smart to not make it harder for them. I highly doubt that it is, though.

People who asked for nerf does not equal the people who didn't want it at all. Concerns does not equal whining. Stop that shit.

I've always wondered if the people who've always made "the game is dead, don't bother" and "wait for Guild Wars 2" threads are registered voters in their country.

I for one still enjoy the game, so I don't understand why someone wouldn't want to keep the game from improving experiences of players.

Concerns does not equal whining. Agreed.

The game is not improving, its devaluating. Every nerf lowers the fun of many players, where a few -unfortunately those who are yelling loudest here for nerfs- say yay! Sure, you can say it forces players to be more creative when facing an ever decreasing amount of decent skills. But is that fun? Well not for me! I started to play the game again when Nightfall came with its heroes. Rejoyced about Eye of the North and the change of attitude toward powerplay. A bad thing? Why? If players want to do it the hard way than that's always possible. In reverse its not: Once you nerf it all, there's no way back... And only a minority of the playerbase will like it. But they yell and get heared. Thats the sad difference.

When the "Cataclysmic Event" occurs, you will all be back. I haven't gone anywhere. GW is awesome. Always has been, always will be. The game doesn't die, it just goes through cycles I call, "Good Update/Bad Update". I play through them all because I am an unabashed GWfanboy. The more of you that leave, the better, and for the people that post here all the time but, "..don't play anymore" You are all either lying, or trolling. I don't care which it is, just go somewhere else. you are all the same in every game/game forum I am a part of.

How? Because I am not stupid. Let me put the quotes side by side for you so you do not get so confused.

Arduin: "Anet will in no way restrict you to party up with friends"
Developer: "We have not announced specifics on how we will let players transfer but we want it to be easier than in other online games."

Arduin's statement is an absolute fact according to him. There is nothing fuzzy about Arduin's words "in no way restrict". However, the developers did not say this now did they? They said they want to make it "easier." So there WILL be restrictions. How easy or strict they are is a matter of opinion to be debated. Given that the developer says they have not announced specifics yet, then Arduin is just purely fantasizing and projecting when he says "in no way restrict" because clearly there are going to be restrictions. In my opinion, I will forecast the restriction is real life money in the form of a micropayment. This is what WoW does and GW seems to be copying WoW at every step from what I can see. How micro the payment will be is anyone's guess, but to some people, any form of payment is a significant restriction, and to others it is not.

Arduin: "GW2 will be solo friendly."
Developer: "Most content will be designed in a solo-friendly way, though often with mechanisms for scaling up in difficulty when more players are involved."

Again, Arduin makes a blanket statement, while the developer clearly states that not all the content will be solo friendly. Most does not mean all, nor does it mean the worthwhile parts. As I said, you can solo all you want on noob island, but who in the heck is going to waste time doing that. People want to play areas that have a good return/time ratio. The people at GW are making it very clear that they do not want solo or small party farming in worthwhile areas of GW1 or they would not have nerfed 600 monks while leaving the SF sins to continue speedclearing like maniacs. (they dont care about farming the crappy areas). I see nothing in these comments from the developer that makes me think that the history of GW1 is not a good predictor of GW2.

Timothy Leary was an idiot, and apparently you and Arduin need to stop drinking the grape Koolaid.

I too don't understand the people that have quit GW, but still cry about what's going on with it. Move on with your lives already.

Farmageddon has come and gone. And it still looks like the same amount of players are still playing.

I will agree that 600/Smite took it in the butt a little harder than SF or OF, but only if you want to H/H. With the HW nerf, ANET is basically saying that if you wanna run this build. You best to be a human team like the old 55/SS build, because you're gonna have to both be in casting range of each other. And if you want the old speed back you might want to add a second Smiter. Or at least that's my take on it. Which kills my monk since I'm in a guild of one (me). I tried to H/H UW with a 600/Wrath/SoJ team, and found it feasible, but risky once aggro could no longer be maintained.

Looks like I'll pick up with the Sin I had put on hold. Man, if I had only been playing back in SF's hey day. When I came back, I had started to make the Sin, but stopped once I heard the nerf was coming. Little did I know I still had months to abuse it. Lol!

sorry mate, but i'm not american, so i couldn't have voted for obama even if i wanted to. kindly stop judging people you have no idea about, kthxplz.

have fun playing those other games you've mentioned. will they be better than GW2? who knows. i do know that i'm not going to write off a game that's still around a year from release, just because one tiny part of the game's prequel rubbed me the wrong way.

My favorite thing about this whole nerf/don't nerf thing is this... (and you're more than welcome to go back and read the threads for proof) People cry and cry and cry to get something nerfed then when players (who don't even read these forums) say, "WTH? This sucks.", the ones who cried and cried to get the nerf start posting flames saying "Stop crying." lol That just tears me up.

Dude, you don't even have to say it. Ive been saying this for a while now. No matter what side of the fence you are on, some idiot will drop by not adding anything but "Another one of these lololothreads?" or "Stop whining." Doesn't matter how you say what you say. Its great im not a mod, cause I would be temp banning for clutter. OP said something valid, respect it or dispute it. Do not spam up the thread just because you disagree.

I think the only problem Anet currently has is that they created too many skills. With all the skills along with their PvE / PvP splits it is nearly impossible to keep everything on an equal plain as many people want. Let's just hope they can manage a new system in guild wars 2 that is more easily maintained for sake of balance, as world PvP has been hinted to / announced.

Kudos to the OP for recognizing the business side to ANet's decision-making process. The OP is one of the most intelligent and provocative posts I have seen on this forum in some time.

However, I am unconvinced by the proposition that failing to nerf broken garbage like SF => more revenue for ANet. Leaving things like SF alone certainly means more revenue now. But there are plenty of former players sitting on the fence watching to see how ANet handles this situation before making the decision to purchase or not purchase GW2.

Leaving broken skills alone doesn't just send a signal about how GW will be maintained. It also sends a signal about how GW2 will be maintained, and what the core audience for GW2 will be.

Available evidence would suggest that a lot more people have quit the game because it is not like Prophecies than there are people that currently play the game because it is not like Prophecies. If that is true, then the value of marketing GW2 to a large set of former players is much larger than the value of marketing more GW expansions and GW2 to a small set of players, because current GW copies are cheap and GW2 and its expansions will, at first, be expensive.

This suggests that ANet is better off returning to their roots and alienating the fanboys of degenerate junk.

People got what they wanted. I hope they're happy. As for me, I enjoyed GW, but for the past two years, I'v only logged in to do events and I'v even been skipping those.

I might be willing to get back into it, but sadly, anything I might like will probably just get nerfed. No point in wasting more time playing guild wars when other games offer reliable content. I'v also been completely turned off to the way Anet/NCsoft runs their games. So I'll be avoiding their games in the future. I wish them success, but their just not for me.

The old timers in my guild log in at intervals of days to weeks to months, probably just to check the log to see who logged in last. Including me, who gets on every few days to go out and mess around some area for no good reason, just a fun excursion.

There is no way to get these players back. They drifted away because we've all been there, done that; and that is that and no more fun in it. Most are now involved in some other game or games, some having even fallen so low as to return to real life. There are just a lot of games out there to choose from; some of them a lot of fun. And people will go where the fun is.

Newer players do exist in our guild. They are very active and enthusiastic and seek to bring in more. I don't think they really care about game play issues or skills all that much. They are just in it for the fun.

Are nerfs fun? Well yes, for masochists; like when their whip is at the cleaners and they have nothing better to do.

This is how I feel about the issue. There are still plenty of players out there who may've stopped playing GW awhile ago, but still hold an opinion over buying GW2. Personally I am a bit glad to see them taking any at all action towards farming since I see it as a wildly broken concept in PvE's format.

I strongly disagree with OP.

Even in a 'dying' game nerfing degenerate imba shit is important and it actually improves the game. And it's good from business point of view aswell, for many reasons:

1. I doubt people really quit the game because of the nerfs - changing the meta gives players new challenges, even PvE can't be the same stale boring thing because, uh, it gets boring. I know many players are actually playing much more after the nerfs just because they're working on new builds and perfecting their new runs again.

2. State of the old game matters for opinions of buyers of the future game. When new players find out about GW2 before it's release, they will very likely be interested in how well the company was able to maintain it's prequel. Future customers WILL look at GW1 to see if it's overrun by bots, suffering from heavy lag or server downtime problems, and will also be interested in how well Anet solved the most important problems and if the game still suffers from any.

3. While it's unlikely that even the best balance update will bring back players who quit or any new players, but new content can do both. And there have been official promises of new PvE content coming in 2010. But having a horrible state of the game balance can greatly hurt the possible new content (why create even more areas farmable by the same degenerate shit?), that's why balancing has to be done first.

And 30 minute UW runs proves that SF isn't fixed. Where are you going with this?

In PvE, there's next to nothing to do but farm. When looking for pugs, the only pugs you're going to find are for farming groups. Farming outposts are always busy, where as most other outposts are always dead. ToA is always busy because it's packed with farmers, the Deep is always dead because no one farms there.

Now, I didn't do a census or anything, but it's pretty logical to say the majority of PvE players are farmers. Feel free to prove me wrong.

no thanks.

yes please.

also, i do believe that if anet fixed their game, it would be more active. however, it won't happen because:
1) theres a shit ton of work required to be done.
2) anet can't (won't) do the required work.