What's your stand on GW1? You think Anet's doing a good job?

1) Skill balance since NF has been attrocious.

2) Overall class balance is even more attrocious and has been broken forever.

3) The grind in GW1 is over the top, not fun or enjoyable, and such a hypocrisy for a game that claims to be grind free yet added so much of it, optional or not when people who have enjoyed the game and completed it only have grind left to play.

4) Very little point or benefit to playing multiple PVE characters. With so many titles, rewards and accomplishments being single character based and taking so long to achieve, most people have found playing more than one character incredibly boring, especially since most of the games content is only fun to play once.

5) PVP balance and changes constantly creating pointless and unnecessary changes in PVE, even after the skill split. There are lots of people who are very good at PVP, and become so elitist that they think they know everything about the game including PVE, when they have barely put as much time into playing as experiencing the PVE part of the game. Any complaints by the PVE community fall on deaf ears because the PVP 'superiors' are the only people that Anet cater to when skill balancing.

6) /Report and dishonor feature. Great for bots, not great for report spams on people whose builds you dont like. Putting the ability to temp ban players from PVP into the communities hands was retarded.

Despite all that, it is the only MMO that I have enjoyed playing.

Well, concerning point 5, i got to say that HA'ers are usually the worse compared to GvG...Everytime people are trolling you, being proud of winning 1v1 koth, spamming on do not disturb, etc.... I actually thought this happened a lot on high ranked fights ( my guild used to be flamed for obvious reasons) but people are even flaming randomway...

I remembered when i said " well gg, monk henchs can't heal ghostly hero anyway ", i was answered " lol noob " and " UMAD" so....

"What's the point" bugs me too, sometimes. I'm trying to work past it.

My Ranger has many titles and many times the experience points of my Necro (who's my favorite from a gameplay standpoint). My Rit is boring but effective, but the Nacro has a dozen different effective builds, and is just damned fun to play. The Ranger just feels so... useless. She can do HM content, but does so only to direct targets for her heroes who do all the work. My Necro and Rit feel like they're major contributors to winning.

After more than five years, I finally gave up on my Ranger main, and have switched my full-time playing to my Necro and Rit. The Ranger is simply too ineffective in HM for fun, and even though she's my title character, I have 32/50 in the HoM, and could not care less about being 50/50 or GWAMM.

Yes, I've tried lots of different builds for my ranger, ranging from pets to buckets of PvE skills -- none of them are "fun", in the sense that she is the focus of the group.

Since I play the game because I like the game itself, my Necro is now my main, because she's the one I play most often. I just ignore the "titles" issue.

I'm not really sure what this point is supposed to be.

Anet doesn't listen to complaints by the PvE community because they don't listen to complaints by any part of their playerbase.

They don't care anymore, so they won't put the effort into this game that they used to.

Nice rant in the original post from some kid declaring that the game has "failed." Bottom line: we've had fairly steady content over a 6 year period, no monthly fees and still a decent playerbase to this day. If that's a failure, then more games should strive to fail this epically more often since, after 6 years, I'm still playing.

Honestly, a lot of what people complain about here about balance, etc. is exactly the same in other games of this type. I've played many. Go to any message board for these games and you'll see the same types of topics, particularly complaining about balance in PvP. This should tell you one thing: it is impossible to fully balance an MMO/quasi-MMO game. There will always be quirks no matter what you do, and always there will be people unhappy with whatever evolves into the meta game for that reason.

I see a lot of people talking about years ago as some sort of "glory days" for PvP or something. I was there and we had the same people complaining about iway/spiritway/eoe bombers/heroway/henchway/whatever-else-fotm-way/searing flames teams/HA being made into 6v6/HA reverting to 8v8, etc. etc. People look back with rose-tinted glasses and forget there's always been PvP and balance issues throughout the entire game's history due to the fundamental fact that I've stated above: 100% total balance is, and always will be, impossible to achieve.

As for the grind, well... it's pretty much all optional. If you don't wanna grind, then don't. Can't really get more simple than that. It's one of the reasons I love GW.

So yeah... GW isn't perfect; perfection will forever remain elusive regardless of what you do. ANet have made mistakes and some things could have been done better. But, 6 years and counting and only the transaction fee paid for the games themselves... this is one player who feels she's had her money's worth. =)

Take care.

You're right that people tend to overromanticize GW's past. Unfortunately, you also don't seem to understand the trends that make people unhappy.

Well sure the game is worth its cost... but that isn't saying much considering the only cost necessary is initially buying the game.

My biggest disappointment from anet is the lack of skill updates for PvE. I miss the days when we got an update every month... Constant skill updates kept the game fresh for me, and I didn't start taking long breaks from the game until after they changed to the "bi-monthly" (lol) skill update schedule.

This game has been an amazing experience for me.
Like many others i got interested in gaining titles after finishing the 3 campaigns and the expansion. I really like how there are many titles to max. Some take ages and/or lots of cash to go with it. But it does show true dedication.

What i dislike, is that they changed the drunkard title to points instead of minutes. I also dislike the changes in pre searing where the LDOA title is a laugh now.
And survivor also should have stayed the same.

I've been spending lots of time on drunkard and LDOA before the updates.
Now people laugh at me when they finish them both within a month.
Same goes for my survivor title. Slapping dwarfs in killroy's dungeon for hours straight. then lagging out and having to start over. Happened to me 3 times, but still got me the title, because i wanted it. Now when people die, they whine a little and start over right away.. it's not even remotely hard now.

All in all, Anet did a n awesome job on guild wars overall.
But they should have left the titles as they were.
It's not fair to let people work hard for titles they want, and a month later every1 can get it with hardly any effort. (The exclusiveness of the titles are gone)

pz

Those titles either were frustating and unfair, lead to boring gameplay, or both. If anything, more titles should be changed, especially to be account-wide. It won't make them any easier - it will make the player, however, feel the liberty to switch characters instead of being stuck to one "main", especially when they get bored of playing with that main.

The game is a financial success but that doesn't make it a success, not since factions anyways. While I am very grateful for the free content, the direction the game took in terms of skills and grind type content is what started to push me away. I was incredibly disillusioned with eotn, the travesty that was NF, the promises that were made then broken and I ended up leaving for 2 years. Don't forget the mass exodus of players after NF as well.

People serious about game balance do not ask for 100% perfection, if they are they're either stupid, trolling or getting rolled by someone highly skilled in that aspect of the game be it a class or game type. It's a different story however when using a mesmer brings you joy and when an ele leaves you wanting.

Grind is optional but refusing to do a lot of it will gimp you. Eotn, NF and factions rep titles are a clear example. Compare pve skills of a rank 3 to a rank 10 or 12. HoM is also another grind that will leave you gimped. Not having 30 points means less advantage in GW2 and people grinded the other 20 points in case anet released more items.

Huh? I have enjoyed learning to play all the different professions, even from a non-pvp stand point, understanding how the other classes work can be best done by playing them. I have multiple accounts, full of characters I ENJOY playing them (exception: dervish, sin and warrior). I even have multiples of the same professions! I think the content is pretty dang repeatable with a few exceptions (vanquishing for one).
Grinding out some of the titles is a pain (see sunspear, lightbringer and any of the eye titles)...but lots of them are achieved thru just playing the game (prot, guardian, and to some extent carto).
Account based titles are a pain to grind out--chest running, iding golds, kurzick/luxon, lucky/unlucky--THOSE are not fun.

Yes survivor was frustrating because of the fact that u could lag out or get killed in cutscene's etc. LDOA however was not, it was very very time consuming, which is what i mean with dedication. You do not require any titles, but if u want some, u'r gonna have to work for them. LDOA was somewhat exclusive, unlike most titles. Now it's demised to nothing due to the quests that are now available in pre.

I'm with you on the account wide thing tho. Each title should be account wide, however they should be obtained on one account!

Say your main has a title maxed. Another character should be able to obtain it aswell whenever it is maxed, but before that, should not be able to work on the same one.

Still my point is. Titles that used to be exclusive and took effort, are now kind of worthless. GWAMM is nothing these days, while it used to be a huge deal.
If Anet keeps this up, all n00bs will run around as GWAMM soon.
And i find that people who worked their butt of for such an exclusive title before the updates should be compensated.

I'm pretty sure you'll find that the HoM items don't provide any "advantage" in GW2, just cosmetic interest.

Eh, IIRC they provide an advantage in newbie-land GW-2. Just like /bonus items provide an "advantage" in GW1. However at the end-game they mean nothing.

Additionally, cosmetic interest. Lets be honest here. The only thing that matters in GW1 is "cosmetic interest." Stats wise a modded collector blue is no different than a green or a 200e gold.

From what I have read, GW2 may not be the same, but it will be similar in terms of having a rather-easy to obtain "gear-cap."

lol at the people saying GW has an excuse because it's not P2P

I "vaguely" remember that they were planning on pumping out expansions to fund themselves. I can't speak for everybody, but for that period of time I may as well have been a subscriber because I bought these expansions right/shortly after they came out.

Try to pretend and maybe hide from the truth? but the fact is ANets strategy was like P2P just different. I could piss on the horse's grave (as there is no more dead horse to beat) about all the problems GW had, but I won't waste my time on that.

Just don't pretend that GW didn't follow a P2P because it did. Even more so in PvP where those extra skills could make a HUGE difference.

They will however help you get to end game faster.

Oh, I don't mean to slight cosmetic interest. I think it's an excellent motivation and that's why I'm chasing HoM points. But the guy I was replying to said that not grinding HoM points would "leave you gimped." I don't think that's even remotely true.

As someone who has dipped in and out of gw over the past few years (I have never been the most committed of players, and as a result don't really have much wealth), I think anet have done a fine job keeping the game going over all these years. Everytime I come back to gw after a while not playing it there is new content to explore that will eat up yet more hours :P

It seems pretty inevitable that with work on gw2 obviously dominating anet's schedule that gw content may suffer slightly, but I personally think it's still an awesome game and still love playing it

P.S. My one gripe is that English servers are now dead, got no problem with playing on American servers (which I do) but it would be nice to play specifically with other UK players.

You are incorrect. When they created it, it was designed with the pvp endgame in mind. Do you know how many people take part in PvP today? So few people take pvp seriously that many Automated Tournaments fail to get started because not enough guilds sign up, and keep in mind this is with smurfing. Linsey Murdock said (this was more than two years ago, so it's a generous figure today) that only 1/12 of their players actually do pvp on a regular basis. If only 8% of your players play the game as you designed it, I wouldn't call that successful.

If you want to talk about sales, then Guild Wars is successful. Then again, so is Superman 64. That game made a profit, and it's often considered the worst game ever made.

If you want to talk about popularity, then Guild Wars is successful. Then again, so is Sarah Palin.

ArenaNet already knows (but won't admit this to the public) that it's far too late to fix GW (pve and pvp), even if they knew how. The Test Krewe is the best thing to happen to the game, but unfortunately, they started it three years too late. Guild Wars had the potential to be the next big eSport, but they blew it, and they decided to leave the genre altogether and create another WoW clone.

If you still enjoy the game, power to you! However, if you plan on buying Guild Wars 2, I would advise you to thoroughly investigate how well ArenaNet understands game maintenance. Forget about balance, and just look at how they go about doing things. There have been updates that introduce content and also delete the very same content accidentally. There have been updates that crash the game when you put skills on your bar. There was even an update that improved lockpick drops, but removed hard mode from the game. These aren't innocent mistakes - these are things they didn't even spend ten seconds to test. If something like Ursan or Shadow Form speed clears got into a Blizzard game and made every other strategy obsolete, it would be fixed the next day, not a year or two years later. If there was a bug that allowed someone to win every single pvp match in StarCraft, it would be fixed the same day and that person would be banned. They wouldn't have said "go ahead and improve your rank all you want. We'll fix it next week, then change the rules to exempt you because we like you." If you can look past all that, then GW2 just might be your thing.

Engines can change, especially if you have the source code, which Anet does. They gave us observer mode, pvp faction for unlocking stuff, skill templates, equipment templates, heroes, lip synching, and pvp skill data. These things didn't exist when the game came out. The only thing GW could never support is a Z-axis, which is forgivable, since the gameplay is good even without it. There's no reason GW couldn't have an auction house. I would know, I made one myself.

Developers of online games have this huge luxury. It's called being able to change your game after you release it. After six years of maintenance, you'd expect little bugs like this one to be fixed. This is just one surviving bug from the good ol' days, but it took anet nearly a year to fix Dancing Daggers, a year and a half to fix IWAY IAS stacking, a week to fix the Dark Aura infinite damage exploit, a week to fix the "hex removals don't exist" part of Recurring Insecurity, 2305 days (and counting) to fix Choking Gas, a month to fix the bug where you could take your ghost off the altar in HoH and basically never lose, and four years to fix Empathy/SV killing your Guild Lord when he used Cyclone Axe. These aren't minor issues - they're game-breaking issues.

I used to love this game, but every time they threw up an update, it was met with disappointment, and eventually disgust. I have seen very few good games have such a lack of care going into them as this one. I'm not upset because it's bad now. I'm upset because I am no longer able to play the amazing game I had in 2005-2006. It just doesn't exist anymore.

If the game has been as bad as you say for the last five years, and yet you're still here, I'd have to say it has been an enormous success.

So why didn't they put an AH in? They claim it couldn't be done but I don't remember them telling us why.

While we're on the subject, why didn't ANet ever lengthen the text string message in the Party Search window so we could actually write something worth a damn in there? At least make the length as long as the text string in the chat channel windows so messages could be interchangeable between the two interfaces. (I'm sure I'm not the only one sick of getting PM's about my chat channel trade messages that are getting cut off by the Party Search window. Questions that wouldn't need to be asked if those people could actually read my entire message.)

There were complaints about this from Day 1. Maybe it's not as simple a fix as it sounds, but it would certainly upgrade the usefulness of the chat tab of the Party Search window to where more people may actually use it intentionally.

Without getting too technical, my guess is they didn't have the network infrastructure to handle it after the game was already out, and either didn't have the funds to do it later, or just had no idea how easy it is.

It would really surprise me if GW2 didn't have this feature.

You would think with 3 senior blizzard staff that this wouldn't have happened. It sounds as if the programmers for the game were lacking in foresight and just wanted to ship a game out asap.

If they haven't learned their lesson by now I am done with anet and ncsoft.

Game balance was ultimately what killed GW.

PvP balance killed GvG.

PvE balance encouraged farming to the exclusion of actual PvE game play (doesn't help that PvE end game was weak to begin with), thereby killing PvE.

I completely agree! 100%. Stuff like this is always inevitable. Especially in a F2P game that has limited resources and team members.

To all of you who doubt GW2 and Anet's maintainability, have you even seen all the info pouring out about GW2 on guildwars2guru.com and Arenanet's blog? Obviously you haven't or haven't enough to see the innovation and passion these developers put into the game and the community. They are reiterating over and over due to some of the feedback fan's critique. They are making a game that is going be the next best MMO and I can assure you they have learned from poor development and maintainability.

GW1 is 6+ yrs old. They have moved on to bigger and better things; GW2 is especially a motivation for the developers to fix all the bad things they screwed up with in GW1. Give them a chance. We're even lucky we have a few individuals like John Stumme keeping the CURRENT & EVOLVED free2play GW1 player base going on it's limbs for so long.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Marketplace

Sounds like an Auction House to me.

Actually yes, I have been paying attention to GW2guru and arenanets blog and it doesnt matter if everything looks perfect so far. It takes 1 bad update to completely RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO a game so until I have played gw2 for a while my faith in anet will be shaky. That same passion you speak of was seen in the beginning of GW1 yet look how the game turned out.

Yep, it turned out great even after all these years have passed.

To answer the original question I think Anet did/are doing a good job with GW1.

I have been slightly confused reading this thread for the past few months why people seem to have the impression that it is common knowledge that Anet have not done a good job. There are some things that a certain section of the forums are not happy with, but I don't think that is the same as universal acceptance that Anet "messed up". The fact most of the people complaining are still playing and logging into guru I think shows Anet did not do a "Real Time Worlds" and fail like APB did.

I can only level two criticisms against ArenaNet and both involve their handling of PvE.

The inclusion of the PvE-only skills was, in my opinion, disastrous. These skills were clearly more powerful than base skills (mistake #1) and many were untied to class (mistake #2). This resulted in cookie-cutter builds using these skills as crutches. More importantly, it exacerbated the second big problem: leaving classes in unplayable conditions for extended periods of time (this was also a problem before any PvE skills were introduced). For the longest time, Mesmers were awful. Since the inclusion of hard mode, rangers, paragons, and elementalists have all been severely underpowered except in niche builds. Overpowered PvE skills like Save Yourselves, Critical Agility, Necrosis, etc. allowed for the devs to provide "useful" builds to "useless" classes. Efforts to ensure that no class is so far from playable have not resulted in timely updates. For games with limited lifetimes, this is unacceptable. The first priority for the live team needs to be class balance (and bug fixes) not the addition of content, which should mostly come from expansions (you want to make money, right?).

It would be reasonable, given the number of quality game titles coming out each year, that you can expect up to a couple years as the lifetime of your game. Leaving unbalanced skills and bad class mechanics in the game that long means your customers may not want to give you a second try when your next title comes out.

The same complaining since 4 years already. People complained that there is no new content, they got new content now they complain it is not it. They asked for a 7 hero parties they got it so now they are creating new reasons to complain. Blah. Me and my friends simply stopped playing because there is no more time for it. Plain and simple. Game is good otherwise I would never spent time on it (who would play a broken game when there is a few hundred alternatives around?).