Update - 1/27/2011

I don't know where to begin. Competitive play is bad for MMOs and more PvE content is bad for them too? So you're saying that a game the size of Prophecies with no PvP element whatsoever would have survived 5 years? I think not.

The problem with competitive play is not the mode itself, but the players. While some play fair, others just exploit gimmicks as much as they can and grovel with a fake feeling of superiority when thrashing less inexperience players. When you get too many of those, competitive play begins to get empty.

As for outposts being empty. Well... people is OUTSIDE, in explorables, doing stuff. You can't look there.
With a Calculator to fill, there's no reason to stay in an outpost doing nothing, unless you are one of the few that bother to trade, or just socializing a little with some friends.

So you can't say how many people is in there looking at outposts. Not even if you look at the most populated American outpsots, the calculator changed the trend of things to make people more active and waste less time in outposts.

Its not that anyone expected the actual update two days before the mAT, but we did expect the skill preview which is supposed to come prior to the update.

I don't care how many coders, how thin they're spread, or how much they bullshitted away their time. Eight months for a single skill update is flat out bs. Even if the update was freakin godly it woudn't meet 8 months worth of expectations. Anet released a whole goddam campaign in 8 months, and now they can't even manage a skill update however extensive it may or may not be. I'm also tired of this "overhaul" bs. Of course the coding is complicated, but the way to fix Dervishes has never been complicated or obscure. I looked forward to the update initially but as another mentioned, even the update wouldn't make me reinstall the game at this point. I'll come back to look at what's changed and thats about it.

It has nothing to do with complaining about a "free update," but when Anet promised bi-monthly skill updates as mentioned previously, they screwed the pooch and NEVER hit that target. I don't care that they fail at making their own schedule, but OWN UP TO IT. Stop putting on this facade that you're actually doing several skill updates a year cause you're clearly not. Hell you can barely do ONE in a year. But then, skill updates aren't their main concern since they need to make new costumes to milk the remaining GW1 players before dropping active support for it completely and moving to GW2. Anet needs to either meet its' own words or stop lying about trying to.

Since I haven't posited any theory on when GW2 will actually be released, telling me "I told you so" would be rather...well... pointless. I have no idea when they're going to release GW2. What I've offered is a possible interpretation of current events. Nothing more.

I've waited 10 years for DIII... I'd certainly wait 10 years for GW2 if I had to. DII:LOD was released June 29, 2001... I'm hoping that Blizzard is planning on doing some big, epic, "10 years to the day after we brought you LOD, Blizzard is proud to present DIII!!!!!" thing. But I'm not holding my breath for that, either.

I am too intimately familiar with all the problems that can arise when trying to roll out a new game, updates to a game, bug fixes, etc. to join in with any QQ'ing about delayed releases. I've spent hundreds of nights staying up all night trying to help developers I've worked for meet their own self-imposed and publicized deadlines. And I know that a very small thing can snowball into an enormous delay.

So yeah, your "I told you so" would be wasted. But you know, feel free to say it anyway if that's going to make you feel better. We've all seen enough of your posts to give your words exactly the weight and value they deserve.

No you misunderstood me. Adding more content to the already established world isn't harmful. Adding more worlds to play in that world is. You separate the population you have and it spreads and spreads till eventually there is very little population to play with in ALL areas.

Add content to the already existing areas so players still play in the same places but for newer items or newer bosses to fight. Why does the same monster have to be in the same place with the same stats everytime? Why not have those change on a daily or weekly basis? Don't have the same bosses drop the same items either so there can't be a wiki of oh this boss drops this in this area.

There's plenty of ways to make an MMO fun and exciting without having to make it bigger and bigger.

I think noone is going to claim reworking an entire professions doesn't take a whole lot of time. The majority of the complaints also don't come from the size of the updates, they come from the fact that it takes so long to roll them out.

It's been almost a year now. A year. Entire games have been made in less time with less people.

Anet works slow, really slow. You can't blame anyone for pointing that out time and time again if the PR keeps saying "things will improve".

Um...unless you mean little flash games and the like, no, not really. Most games take several years with dozens (or even hundreds) of people working on them.

Protip: Games are in development long before they are announced. A year from reveal to release != a year to make.

Runic Games was founded in 2008 by the scattered remains of Flagship Studios (makers of Hellgate London) after they went under (and like full on under, like the only remaining guy was sleeping in his office trying to pull together something from all of the mess - read the incredible interview here: http://www.1up.com/features/flagship...oper-interview). In 2009 they released Torchlight, heralded as one of the best PC action games to come along since Diablo 2, so much so that it still generates buzz today (it's actually on the "games I'm playing" list on John Stumme's wiki page atm) and the sequel has a sizeable amount of anticipation. The game is awesome, and if it didn't lack multiplayer it would be incredible.

Protip: Great games don't require several to dozens of years to make or a massive studio staff.

I'm not saying the Live Team are slacking off or taking too long to produce content, from what I've seen Stumme has actually stepped up the amount of content they've been releasing since he took over (and aims for a greater amount of content in WoC than we got from WiK over a similar period of time in addition to his festival and feature side projects). I disagree with the priorities which always seem to result in the dervish being delayed another month and something else coming out instead. I also think it's weird we get hit with separate big updates close together (the final part of HotN was released at the same time as Wintersday after a 2-3 week gap of nothing, wouldn't it be better to space them out?).

I love Torchlight. I paid for 7 copies for me, my family and friends. It was basically a fix for my Diablo addiction. Why? Because it was done by many of the same guys who did Diablo... and while it sounds impressive that they rolled out Torchlight so fast, the reality is that a lot of the base engine work, mechanics and system work was done by those same guys long before there was ever a need, or a thought, for Torchlight.

I 100% support their success, I think Torchlight is incredible and I have nothing but praise for the game AND the developers... but it is a really poor example for this discussion. If they'd had to start from scratch... yeah, that'd be something to point to, but they didn't. There's a reason people refer to it as a Diablo clone, and a reason long-time fans of Diablo absolutely flocked to buy Torchlight and were very satisfied with it as a "fix" for their addictions.

But let's look at the original. It has been nearly ten years since LOD hit the shelves. Everyone knew there was a DIII coming long before the formal announcement in 2008. Blizzard openly admits they began working on the concepts even before LOD was rolled out. Ten years - for a much less complicated engine and less intensive mechanics than what GW has been building.

The only real protip: It will always take exactly as long as it takes, no matter how much fans QQ, scream, whine, complain, abuse, denigrate, demand, insist or beg. Gamers are some of the biggest whiners on the planet, possessed of an exceptionally high sense of entitlement compared to the rest of the population. Gaming development is one of the most murphy's law-laden endeavors in the world. These two points will always, inevitably, clash in stellar ways.

I've done a lot of e-based customer service work besides just gaming. I do a lot of pro-bono work for non-profits and charities I support. I've done a lot of small contracts for new eCommerce businesses. I've done sites, eSupport and ticket sale setups for cons. I've even done a few setups for adult networks (I'm such a perv). I have never faced the disrespect, abuse and outright death threats I've gotten in the gaming industry. I did the site & support portal for a charity where the president of same bilked people for donations and took off for Aruba or some such... and not one of those people flooding the helpdesk with tickets about the thousands of dollars they'd lost ever resorted to even a tenth of the abuse I've gotten from a single banned player of an f2p game.

So my sympathies nearly always lean towards the developers, rather than the fans... hell, just read some of the nasty, disgusting comments people make on THIS site about developers of THIS game.

It takes as long as it takes. Does anyone really think these guys & gals are sitting around the breakroom asking, "how can we disappoint the fans today?" I promise, they're not. In some cases, they're stuck dealing with corporate constraints the fans will never hear about. Some VP of Marketing who hasn't looked at a fansite in his life is sitting in his office 5,000 miles away and saying, "this could be more profitable if we...*insert idea that screws the fans*" and then sending off a memo that the developers are not only forced to comply with, but forced to be SILENT about.

Imagine being a gamer yourself, and a developer, and being tied to your desk with corporate shackles and a noose... knowing your fans are basically hating you for something you have no control over.

I can tell you from experience, it sucks.

What you leave out is nobody told them they HAD to go the corporate route. They CHOSE to go that route because they wanted SOMEONE ELSE TO FOOT THEIR BILLS!

There are developers out there who are their OWN DISTRIBUTERS and PUBLISHERS as well as developers. So since they can do it others can also.

I don't care for the crying about how hard or abusive it is for developers since it's their own fault, they didn't have to go the corporate route.

Yes, how dare they attempt to use their talents as a means of sustaining their lives!

Developers don't need to eat. They should gain nutrients from their code as they type.

I think you're trolling, but anyway. You're basically saying a balanced game is less fun than a unbalanced game? I'm gonna have to disagree.

Gimmicks that are not fun are the game designer's fault. You can't blame players for using efficient solutions in a competitive environment. If you don't, someone else will, and losing isn't fun.

It doesn't work that way in an MMO. Competitive play adds a lot of replay value at the cost of creating a lot of maintenance hassles for the designers. But those hassles would be present in Guild Wars irrespective of the presence or absence of PvP.

The designers' decision to include fixed supply and ultra-rare items as endgame PvE content introduces a competitive process to PvE. You have to acquire more in-game wealth than most other players in order to get those items, and that means that PvE balance matters.

For example, if ectos, armbraces or zkeys suddenly become much easier to get due to the discovery of a loophole in the game's design, there are winners and losers. Players with the items people wanted to buy with ectos/zkeys/armbraces get richer, and players that have lots of time to spend abusing the loophole until it is closed get richer. Everyone else loses because item prices increase. Fixed supply is fixed supply, and people aren't farming the ultra-rare items any faster.

Long story short, what other people do in an MMO affects you, whether you realize it or not. It follows that PvE balance matters.

Again, this one's on the designer. It's their responsibility to provide easy, intuitive systems for players to link up for cooperative play. One might try to absolve the developer by pointing out that the game is six years old, but the system used in Guild Wars is actually worse than the system in Diablo II that it is based upon.

A better approach would have been to include the player search feature from day one, create a single meeting ground for each campaign (keep the instances, but include filters so players can advertise/search for what they want to do), and let players initiate quests from the meeting ground via a menu.

To be honest, I don't see why this cannot be done, has not been done already, and is not at the top of the Live Team's priority list.

I'll give you a story that illustrates how bad the current system is. When I was doing dungeon runs a couple of years ago, I literally used to pay guildies to spam zones looking for customers and pay them 20% of the cost of the run per player found. This caused me to make more money than I would have otherwise (no downtime), and the guildies profited.

But when you get rid of those gimmicks, you'll see them raging all over the place, and saying that 'their' game is ruined.

That's the annoying thing.

Let them rage. Seriously.
ANet fear the cries of the playerbase too much.

People playing now are probably the most likely to buy GW2. Piss them off too much and you lose a lot of sales.

This happens because ANet has been slow to recognize and resolve problems. When these problems are nipped in the bud, people don't adjust their expectations to include the gimmick and these complaints are never voiced. Instead, the people that play the gimmick briefly feel like they got away with something (and are happy), and the people negatively impacted feel like the developer is being responsive to their concerns.

It also happens because ANet rarely applies grease until the wheel gets squeaky enough. Try doing that with a child. I guarantee you the child will learn to throw more, longer and louder tantrums in a hurry.

I agree that it's best not to change much in the original game right before release of a sequel. But the game has had prominent gimmicks since 2005, and ANet has frequently turned a blind eye to them. Your argument can't excuse that choice. The developers seem to believe that gimmicks are a good way to introduce players to new areas and activities, and draw that conclusion from the spikes in activity in areas with a gimmick. But that data doesn't answer the real question, which is how the arc of players who play a gimmick heavily compares with those who don't.

If the people still playing GW1 count as "a lot" then GW2 already failed.

I would not be too sure about that because GW has a huge fan base of ex-players who are awaiting GW2. In fact I would guess that the total fan base is much larger than the current number of active players. These are the people who Anet doesn't want to piss of by altering GW1 so much that the old timers can no longer recognize the game and lose interest in GW2.

Thousands of sales are not something to take loudly. What they do to Guild Wars 1 now is going to have little effect on sales to those who never played it, it'll have something of an effect on ex-players, but only those who're still actively members of the community and who read the updates. These people are the dedicated fans, they still keep in touch with a game they no longer play and as much as they protest against the current state of the game I imagine they'll still buy GW2 in the end. Then there's the demographic that still play GW1, this is the demographic that is most affected by the current state of the game when it comes to them buying GW2. If GW1 gets screwed up they'll still have that fresh in their minds when it comes to GW2, whereas those who've already left are less likely to take it into consideration.

I think its quite clear Anet is going after a bigger market with GW2 than the GW1 crowd. Frankly I think they'll be estatic for every GW1 fan they can get to move onto GW2, but they don't really care about loosing some if they can get the bigger fish.

Speaking from personal experience, my impression of GW2 was sealed a long time ago after the countless pathetic experiences with Anet and seeing the direction of GW2. I won't be buying GW2, nor do I play GW1 anymore, although I do check in often to see what happens to the Dervish (my favorite class). I think that no matter what happens to GW1, most people's minds are already set. Even if they dropped all active support of GW1 today I feel that the same people who were planning on buying GW2 would still buy it, and those who weren't going to still wouldn't.

GW1 was screwed up long ago, impressions have already been left for better or worse. At this point there's not much worse that can happen to it. But then again, Anet never ceases to amaze in that way...

The majority of players that buy GW2 will buy it for the same reason they bought GW1.. NO MONTHLY FEE. That's always been GW1 biggest draw. It's not the story, it's not the PVP, it's not the kewl graphics, it's not the silly mini pets and it won't be the grind it will be the $$ saved by it not having a monthly fee.

But, what can hurt sales of GW2 vs GW1 is less than we have now. Not having 3-7 heroes to play with will be a negative. Not having favorite classes especially the MONK class will be a letdown.A ton of Solo content will hurt those that prefer to group and we've all seen the uproar of what Anet did to the grouping part of THIS game.

So far myself I haven't seen the big draw to GW2. There's nothing shown so far that greatly impresses me to buy it like when GW1 was coming out. I couldn't wait for GW1 and oh was it fun when it was NEW. Now it's a boring piece of mess. Hardly anyone wants to group anymore or you have to be some PVX build or you can't get in one that does group. It's become a template of a game like some rts game. It's sad how boring its become over the years. Being boring now doesn't help the 2nd game of its ilk coming out. Players have long memories of the negatives of a game and many of them will remember with their $$.

I am not quite sure about this part. Personally, the major point for me buying and playing the game is the quality of it and support. If a developer fulfils both aspects, I am happy to give them my money each month. Regardless of intentions not being realized or mistakes done, GW1 has one of the best support in the gaming industry.

Of course tastes differ, but many issues were eventually solved (like bspike) and ANet listened to player concerns. They do tell us many things that sound nice, but there was also a long time were they told us nothing in advance and people were complaining about the lack of dialogue. Now that we got that, we must be patient and play the game for its current gameplay and content or move to another one.

Since the works on the Dervish seem to be a total overhaul of the profession, it is not too bad for a small team to finish it within a year. The original team probably needed half a year and we know how many flaws the Dervish had at introduction and still has. If they can solve it is another story, but some of us need to step down a bit or move on.

Telling people that the game bad, because things take much longer than somebody wants it to take, doesn't help either.

I have to disagree with you Aljasha. It was the lack of a monthly fee that got me to buy the original GW when it came out. It was fun game play that got me to buy the rest of it. I'll be doing the same with GW2. I'll give it a chance and if the game doesn't feel right to me I'll walk away and not spend anymore money on it.

Well there were many polls taken along the way about why players bought Guild Wars and hands down it was because of "No Monthly Fee" so you can question it all you want to just because you are in the minority of answers doesn't make it so. It's been well known for a long time it was the No Monthly Fee draw to the game.

As much as I agree that Bassma is a troll, this is the reason I bought GW, along with all my Rl friends that bought it. The "I want a MMO but I don't wanna pay $15 a month" was a thought I had for a couple months before I picked GW over WoW.

For casual gamers, which is ANet's main target, this is an excellent marketing ploy that DOES work.

I play only games without monthly fee. I am willing to pay for a game when I buy it but I'm not willing to pay for a game that as for monthly fee. Why I'm not willing to pay monthly fee? Cause atm I'm not aware of a game that if i pay monthly fee that is counted in gameplay hours (let me try to explain what I want to say, in the games that require you to pay monthly fee if u pay them and in those 30 days u played only 1 hour this is kinda paying for 1 hour of game play and not for 30 days of gameplay, I might be willing to pay some sort of monthly fee as long as the monthly fee will be calculated as minutes of gameplay). In this example with 1 hour of gameplay in those 30 days payed the company that made the game is going to get rich cause I payed way way more then their costs with my account. It will kinda be imposible to use all the time I have payed for due to the way that time is calculated by them so I will never pay to a company that calculate the time in a way I find it unfair for me (to actually use all the time I have payed for will mean that I have to be on 24/24h every day an play 24/24h every day, something that is just imposible to do in my case and I can bet a nice amount of money that if I will do that my account will be banned). Hope my english was good enough so you can understand what I wanted to say.
Now I may have a lot of time to play but in 1 year things might change cause I may have a job by then so I will not have so much time to play as I have now.

If i buy a rat I want a healthy rat not a rat without eyes, years, tail, without 1 foot, cause If i pay monthly fees to most games is like I buy half a rat. (I like rats .)

Atm I'm planning to buy GW2. Depending on how GW2 will be I may or may not bring my father to GW2 (depends if the reasons that made me bring my father to GW will or will not be present).

Wish they will update this page http://www.guildwars.com/support/gam...es/default.php each time they update the game cause it's not that hard to do it...

I don't know why people keep saying that no monthly fee is a huge deterrent to fans. The top three most-subscribed MMOs in the world today are all pay-to-play showing that the general public doesn't give a crap about a monthly fee if there's good content. The bottom line is that people will pay money for something that has a continual level of quality.

Here's a related example. Cable/satellite TV costs money to have every month. Why not just watch free broadcast TV? Broadcast TV has all kinds of Emmy-winning TV shows. The highest-rated and most-watched TV shows are also on free television as well. Today's Super Bowl is on free TV. By the GW fan logic, nobody should be buying cable and satellite TV and everybody that does is just a fool with too much money.

In any case, more and more good MMOs are becoming free to play and this includes DDO and LOTRO. Blizzard has already gone on record to say that in the future, they could see WoW turning free to play when the time is right. I expect this will happen once they launch Titan, which has an estimated release date of 2013. So GW2 being free is not enough for fans to get on board because it's not an unique feature.

Finally, I just have a general comment. I have no idea why ANet bothers to try to "fix" PvP. RPGs shouldn't even have PvP at all because they are all broken from the start. The last professional tournament that I know that used a RPG for actual cash prizes was in 2008 with World of Warcraft. Since that time, everybody has admitted that power creep, poor skill balance, and gimmick play has taken over just about every MMO. It's time for people to quit making PvP some kind of "feature" in RPGs when Bejeweled makes it to the professional gaming leagues and your game can't. Another truth: Diablo 3 will feature PvP (due to immense fan pressure) but Blizzard almost flat-out said that it will suck and they aren't going to fix it and they don't care. They said that PvP in RPGs only makes people try to min-max every character and turn the entire game into some kind of skill calculator game. In short, they said that you should be worrying about killing monsters in the game and not about killing some random person on the Internet.

DDO and LOTRO are technically f2p, but only to a certain extent. The amount of content that is available if you don't pay is pretty minimal, and you're greatly limited in what you're doing. They're cash shop f2p games, not a true f2p - which GW is.

And while yes, GW does have an in-game store, it's not a cash shop like most MMOs have - the stuff you purchase there does not lend any real in-game advantage, unlike many f2p cash shops where you're all but required to purchase items in order to advance in the game or be on a level playing field with other players.

So, yes, Guild Wars' subscription model has always been and will remain a large draw for the series, because it is unique.

In other news, F2P games don't have subscriptions. Derp.

And the top 3 most popular games are retarded facebook shit, which is F2P.

Anarchy Online and it's first expansion are F2P and you don't have to buy any extra content at all to play those two. I've been playing it free for a couple of years now. It's repetitive as heck though just like GW and the rest of them. Kill floozie in this zone, goto next zone and kill floozie again this time floozie has a blue suit, goto next zone and kill floozie again with his red suit and tie, etc. etc. There's nothing to these games really. Fedex mission or kill floozie. I wish someone would build a true dynamic world that changes by the way the players play it. Not repop floozie every 5 minutes or everytime you reenter the zone.