Guild Wars: A ghost town in the making.

OP: ok you said you had 5000+ hours of gameplay in guildwars.
Firstly: here is a comparison of my experience over last 12 months
Guild Wars: $40 Gameplay: >1300 hours
Halo combat evolved: $10 Gameplay: 13 hours
Mass effect: $20 Gameplay: 70 hours
Mass Effect 2: $70 Gameplay 96 hours
Borderlands: $80 Gameplay 56 hours

Bunch of others i wont bother posting

all those games i listed up there that as how long it took for me to become bored of them (excpt ME2 and GW) and stop playing them and how much i paid for them. Now; you say 5000 hours over 5 years. on average the life of a $100 new release game is 18 hours max. an MMO has a much larger life but most are subscription, meaning you pay every week or month for the same game. the average WoW player will play the game for over 12 months. a subscription is about $15 thats $180 for one game over a year. you played GW for 5 years thats $900 on the worlds most popular subscription MMO. i doubt very much that you payed this much for GW. be glad for the time you did have with it.

secondly
What did you think was going to happen? Did you really think that A-net was just going to sit there and let you cheat the game? did you really think that after going against the EULA you would not be punished?

After 5 years a game will have lost the vast majority of players to the next hot game. i dont really expect WoW to still be around in 2016 without some major updates. GW does not have a steady source of income. just how on earth do you expect A-net to pay for the updates when GW is barely paying for itself (if it is). your are expecting a non-subscription game to keep up with a subscription game, thats like pitting a starving athelete against a well fed one and expecting the hungry one to succede.

Lastly. GW is far from dead. and i dont think it will die out untill a few years after GW2 is released. even then i will probably find a way to run a server for me and my guild to play off because frankly. this game is awsome.

Thank you! I'm glad someone had the same thought I had. We are happy to plunk down big cash on a brand new game of a different kind while many of us put the most time into GW, yet nobody complains that games like Mass Effect and Borderlands are dead after a month and cry for content. For some reason, people think that an MMO will mean new content for life, and developers should keep up with people who play 4 hours a day. That's completely unfair and it's not asked of any other genre. This is especially true given that GW is a free service to play, and you don't have to pay for any additional content they add!

you only played halo for 13 hours? you must have not liked it very much. if halo 2/3 didn't make playing halo 1 near-obsolete (or if you include the halo series as one entity), i could easily say people have spent >1300 hours on this game.

Eve Online says hi....

That would have me repeat my earlier statement regarding pay-subscription vs. free service. I should have simply stuck with "It's free, quit complaining".

That really depends on the genre and community. There are a lot of $50-$60 games that fit your description, but there are also a lot that do not. I know that my $30 copy of Half-Life purchased about six months after release gave me at least as many hours of gaming as GW, if not more.

Now, you can argue that this happened because of a vibrant modding community, but Valve gave us a lot of that content free of charge.

A lot of games don't return the value per dollar that GW has, but the consumer knows that going in. Keep in mind that those games tend to return a richer, more detailed experience than GW for the duration of the game's life. You compare GW to ME1 and ME2. Those games provide a much deeper universe, cast of characters and story than GW, resulting in much stronger emotional impact. Some people will pay for that.

There's no question that GW has been a relatively good value, especially for serious PvP. But claiming that it's the greatest value on the market really is a bit of a stretch. If you played GW the whole way, you paid $190 retail for the installments. Other high value titles have been released at lower cost, though not in the RPG or MMO genres.

diablo? elder scrolls? possibly even neverwinter nights?

in terms of mmo's, i can go on and on about f2p mmos like maple story that i'm sure has way more (active) players than gw does.

Diablo and Diablo 2 were both relatively high value. I don't think that very many people got 3-5 years of life out of D2 (and no one did with D1, mostly due to rampant cheats), but D2 still has a significant community of loyalists even now. Even so, it's the team-based PvP of Guild Wars that ultimately set it apart and provided replay value to a broad audience.

NWN is probably the closest comparison with its expansion model, although with the expansions it was similarly priced to GW and didn't have quite the same shelf life as D2 or GW. But it was one of gaming's better values historically due to Bioware's recognition of the power of community mods. I fired NWN up recently and suddenly realized why DA:O bothered me so much. DA:O was NWN with an inferior combat system (due to limited character development options), customizable party member AI and a fresh coat of paint.

Elder Scrolls, MM3-6, BaK and other similar large-world RPGs didn't have the multiplayer component. They had a solid shelf life for the genre, but no potential for the thousand-plus hour range that comes with competition and social interaction.

As far as the F2P model, that isn't really comparing apples to apples. There are lower production values, hidden revenue mechanisms and nothing close to the quality of GW PvP.

TL;DR version: Thanks for pointing out D2 and NWN. Going to have to disagree with you on the rest.

You mean that subscription based game, where you pay 15€ month, where they push incomplete updates ONCE each six months that they dare to call "Expansions"? Those updates with ominous names, made up of skeleton features that are supposed to be improved soon(TM) (= they will never see competion) ?
See COSMOS missions, the fifth subsystem for T3 cruisers, faction warfare, sovereignity... do I need to go on?

Have you seen the last expansion, Tyrannis? ROFL, Planetary Interaction (aka place a couple of buildings on planets and produce stuff to sell), EVE Gate (facebook for your toon, awesome!), and what else? 6 months of wait for that?
All the while moon mining, empire war dec system, POS management stuff need a complete rework.

CCP (makers of EVE Online) change the login screen background, put a new name and throw in few broken features. And then they claim it is an "Expansion". A "free expansion".
Well, if Anet acted the same, here are some of the free expansions we had: "Guild Wars: Nicholas the Traveler", "Guild Wars: Signet of Spirits", "Guild Wars: War In Kryta". The only differences are that the features in GW are COMPLETE, Anet doesn't change the login screen as CCP does for each of the updates, and doesn't try to market them as "Free Expansions".

CCP/EVE Pnline is still alive because there is no competitor in their niche.

Don't make such comparisons, please. If ArenaNet acted like that, GW servers would have been shut down after Factions due to absence of players.

Even now, with the lack of major content updates for years, GW is alive and kicks ass.

BTW: GW costed me 20€ each chapter + 20€ for eotn... I can barely play half a year in EVE with that cash.

elder scrolls has a pretty decent modding community. theres even a mod that enables online multiplayer (though i haven't tried it myself). elder scrolls may not be as widespread as something like gw, but you'd be surprised at the amount of hours that some of the hardcore players put into this game.

if f2p mmo's don't count, then you really can't count a p2p (subscription-based) mmo either. so that pretty much leaves very few games that follow a non-subscription based mmo model (although, anet has stated that gw isn't technically an mmo).

I wouldn't include MMOs in the high value category anyway. They're a very expensive form of gaming.

How'd we end up hijacking this thread this badly, anyway? Just noticing that.

Back OT: I wouldn't say that the botting decreased activity. Bot-free play seems to have enticed enough PvP-ers back to cover the gap, and WiK seems to have appealed to enough people to replace the lost PvE-ers.

Update: I just tried logging in (havnt emailed support at all) and the reason for my banning has been changed to "Account Issues, please contact support for information"

The fact this thread has evolved into wild tangents says it all.

Nope....GW is not a ghost town.Soz botters.

kthx.

I took a year and a half off from GW to play Warhammer Online and .. as luck may have it .. came back a few days after the mass bans. My experience has been awesome so far:

- I can't believe how many people are playing. A heckuvalot more than Warhammer. Every town or outpost I visit has people in it. And the PvP-format-of the-day is always crowded.

- The new updates have been really good IMO. Zaishen Combat/Missions are brilliant .. every day people are focused on one thing. Ima PvPer mostly tho im grinding out the mission in HM. I havent tried the War in Kryta yet (or any of the other new stuff) .. but I'm kinda looking forward to it.

- There's so many redesigned skills that it's like having an expansion to me .. I'm still working thru all the classes and trying different builds in RA/AB and the new (to me) metas in HA/GvG.

Basically .. I was shocked how much activity there is .. I was expecting it to be an ACTUAL GHOST TOWN and I'd be finishing my HoM by myself. But there seems to be plenty of people doing stuff.

I'd say if you are feeling bored and have run out of things to do .. take a year off and play another game like I did .. you might find your perspective is alot different when you return.

I've played this game on and off since release, and I've recently come back to the game around the mesmer buff. Mes was my first character in pve, and I'm enjoying some of the changes. I was expecting a ghost game, however with the recent additions to the game since last time i was here

Zaishen Quests
War in Kryta
Nicholas the traveler

I am seeing people in random missions I havent seen in years. Just the other day I walk into the ice caves of sorrow mission in tyria, and felt like I was back in prophecies days! SO many people there was nice to see again.

Having a pugable elite zone farms is also not a bad thing. This isnt a true MMO where you need to have a guild tactic or strategy for elite dungeons, so having options in elite areas is excellent.

The only thing I was dissapointed in this time I came back was the sorry state tombz and gvg is in. Guess I wont be advacing to my bird or upping my champ title this time in gw. But PvP failure aside, this game is far from the ghost game I thought it would be, if anything theres more people playing now than there was a year ago.

Wow biased much? Was simply pointing out that there is at least one mmo that is geared to hardcore players and updates for free.

Oh and -5 points for comparing the free2play GW with the Pay2play Eve...

I played eve for some time, and those flaws are common knowledge among the playerbase. Many just bitch about them, but still pay for their 3+ accounts each month (yeah, if you know eve, you know even the alt-itis phenomenon...), I decided to stop my subscription since the game is so full of bugs and incomplete stuff, I had the feeling of paying for an eternal beta-test.

GW, even if is free to play has nowhere near the stability issues that EVE has got.

BTW I was simply pointing out that you are wrong.
Not only those "free updates" are half-broken/uncomplete, but you are not getting them exactly for free, since EVE is subscription based.

^^
Guess who mentioned EVE Online as an example of a game that gives "free" (LMAO) "updates" (ROFLMAO), in comparison to some other game.

After almost 4 years of gw I still log in from time to time, I see gw still populated, and I see long time players messing around.
EVE kept me interested on and off... couldn't keep me hooked for more than 1 or 2 months at a time, then I had to unsubscribe for 3 or 4 months due to boredom, then played a couple of months again, and so on, repeating the cycle for some time, until I dropped the game entirely.

EVE Expansions... rofl... I would be laughing too if Anet claimed "You are getting the Guild Wars : War In Kryta Expansion for free".

I think they want to destroy the game.
People get banned that didnt even bot or did anything and so also some of there friends stop.
That is what happened to me and 3 friends of mine stopped too and prob also wont buy gw2 so good job ncsoft you suck

Ya I'm sure they aren't lieing to you or anything...

P.S. It's ArenaNet not NcSoft.

If it was a ghost town would this thread really get 11 pages of responses? or for that matter, would GWGuru be able to support this site? just a thought.

Longest. Troll thread. Ever.

Lock please?

As much as people like to say the game is dead. At the end of the day it's been a while since I went to any outpost and been the only one there. Factions outposts i'm looking at you, even still, theres usually at least one other player there. After what, 5 years? Well done to A-Net for making a game that holds the interest for that long!

I'm back in GW again, i have 3 characters at 61 months of age. Hooray for 5th year mini pets! $$$$$

With a standard $15/mo MMO you are essentially paying for 6 $30 expansions per year. Name me one MMO that comes close to delivering on that.

GW provides new content for FREE. They have no requirement to do so .. yet they consistently over-provide value while every other game under-provides value.

Have to agree.

Well that was kinda emo.

Well it took a bit to translate the above into a readable format -

Anyway, WoW I spent about $40 something on it and not boring! Well we have different ideas of boring then. I didn't last two months I was so bored. And I've never ever seen an uglier game.

Enough of that. I don't see GW as a ghost town and I don't think it will be one. I've gotten more then my money's worth out of it. I spent $60 on Aion and will probably never have the hours I have in GW. And I still like it.

1. Guild Wars = Farm Wars

This has been my biggest complaint about Guild Wars. There isn't enough unique content after completing the main quests. It gets repetitive quickly. The devs defend themselves by saying that we don't have to farm, and that's true, our other option is to go play something else.

2. Some of the account bans were screwed up.

I was banned for credit fraud when the ban hammer went down. The thing is that I never committed it. Fortunately NCSoft was nice enough reactivate my account. So now I can go farm some more...

After completing the main quests for every character in every campaign takes hundreds if not thousands of hours. ANY game will get repetitive after thousands of hours. Scratch that. Any activity will get repetitive for thousands of hours. If you masturbate for thousands of hours your hand will fall off.

Well, that's really true for most MMOs, no? They are either grinds from the get-go or soon become them. We all paid, what, 20 dollars per campaign? The cost : play time ratio is actually outstanding when you break it down (as some on here have). While I don't think many would complain if there was more content, it's just never been possible to have endless content.

The way I like to see it, either a minority get their wish of fresh, oozing content for GW, or we get a sequel. I think we're going in the right direction on that one. Sorry to hear about your account woes, though! I'm glad I've never had to deal with support.

[QUOTE=Mort Mythoryk;5153319]Dear Gurus,

Personally, I've achieved GWAMM, r8, g3 on my own, no bot help. I moved to PvP because there was nothing else left to do in PvE. When PvP becomes redundant, you simply move on (botting). An evolutionary process mediated by A-net themselves.

QUOTE]

If your that bored with the game why not just play ANOTHER game? Just saying...

amen to that. There are dozens of other games to play out there.