Give ArenaNet a Break...

I keep seeing so many threads about general discussions that keep turning ArenaNet into terrible people for neglecting GW, saying that they don't care about this game anymore and are solely preoccupied with getting GW2 out the door. I've mainly seen these comments in the 7th year birthday presents, duping and JQ botting threads.

The thing is, they haven't completely disregarded this game. The servers are still running, updates are still happening, and support is still answering emails.

Yes, they are trying to get GW2 ready. They pushed it back many times and have made us wait for it, so I'm sure they were tired of listening to some people constantly bitch about it.

ArenaNet isn't like Blizzard. They don't have thousands of employees to work on three new games simultaneously and keep an already huge, existing game up and running. ANet a relatively small company, and always has been. They're working on a new game that's huge and different and I'm sure requires a lot of resources and manpower, so naturally, the GW1 team isn't as big or busy as it used to be.

I've always liked ArenaNet as a company. Hell, they're better than the company I work for. So I just want to know other people's beef with them. I understand if there was a legitimate problem but complaining because they recycled minipets? No.

Thank you! I have played this game for 6 years. And have more than got my money's worth. People who complain about Anet don't understand business, dont understand MMO's, or Think that they know better than the Pro's who made/keep GW running. If you dont like the game then please quit. That is all

I'd rate duping and botting as "legitimate" problems.

Agreed. However, though the duping fix is squarely in the ANet developers' court, aren't ban hand-outs the responsibility of NCSoft support?

Well said, thank you.

I agree totally with the sentiments they do an amazing job too keep this game going for the last 7 years.i do have 1 suggestion to make to anet, since they are working so hard on gw2 maybe they could look at using Rcons like we do in bf3. Buy allowing a select trusted few ' like the people that run this site, to become rcons and handle some of the in game botting and duping problems.

This might achieve some of the comunties complaints and also allow anet to focus on there development of gw2.

cheers phab

That is because they are almost "solely preoccupied with getting GW2 out the door". What is the percentage of resources thrown at GW2 versus GW1? Do you really think that ANet spends equal attention to BOTH? Of course not, if they have, our GW1 Live Team would still be busy working on GW1 updates and our ele update part2 would have been live by now.

So you are saying that the duping and botting problems are not important and should just be totally ignored?

The 7th year birthday presents kind of suck but I couldn't care less because I have already resigned GW1 to repeating birthday presents since most of GW1 resources got sucked into the black hole of GW2 release priorities.

Just ask any manager in any game company if they can do better with more resources and the answer would most probably be "YES"! All of them are just doing the best they can with the resources that they have using the process called PRIORITIZATION - Ignore the low priority stuff and focus on the high priority stuff first! If they think that GW2 is more important than GW1 then they would tend to ignore GW1 customers and pay more attention to GW2. That would be just like any other profit-seeking organization that I know of.

so could you guys clarify between ArenaNet and NCSoft? are they 2 seperate companies and how do they come together when it comes to GW? sorry if these seem like noob questions i just dont know. thanks

Short answer: ArenaNet is part of NC Soft Corp. They are the actual developers of Guild Wars, where NC Soft is the marketer and owner. NC Soft also owns Lineage, Aion, City of Heroes, etc. NC Soft manages "linked" accounts, such as when you tie your GW1 account to a specific email when purchasing, say, extra character slots or storage panes.

On-topic, I won't give ArenaNet a break until they start paying attention to their PvPers again. Not "throw 'em a bone" like this AB update, but actually give PvP life again. PvPers have long memories though and aren't as forgiving (hence why most of the hardcore players have moved on to other games, namely League of Legends).

If GW after 7 years out isn't perfect and need the same resources as GW2 to be a good product, then it is another problem altogether.

More Anet wouldn't be investing whatever millions they are investing on GW2 on GW anyway - those resources are being invested because they are expecting GW2 to be a bigger title than GW in terms of sales. GW already peaked.

Additionally I'm a costumer of Anet GW and GW2 products and I got my return of my money invested on GW already. And I'm not the only one on that situation.

I definitely know that duping and botting are problems. I was just pointing out the specific threads I saw these discussions in so it didn't seem like I was pulling stuff out of thin air.

I'm not too familiar with some of the duping problems the game had, but from what I've read, there were many bans and such. As for botting, that's really my only issue with the game right now in terms of ANet's care and attention to it (the players are a different story entirely.)

Some people, if you gave them free gold would complain about the weight

Some people, if you gave them a bag of feces. would say thank you and use it as fertilizer.

moral: some folks are never happy, some folks can make lemonade no matter what lemons life throws at them

I love how everyone just assumes that A-net isn't doing anything. We have absolutely no idea what they are up to in regards to duping. As mentioned numerous times I think manpower is an issue but also don't you think they want to be cautious with GW2 coming out? If I was them I would like to make sure all my ducks were in a row before items were deleted or the banning starts. For all we know they have a list of names and are checking everything out. They are a business and need to take that into account before making poor decisions.

I couldn't be happier with how A-net has done. The game is 7 years old. They release free content, it is free to play, there are very limited interruptions in service, I can't name another game I played consistently that I have owned for 7 years.

My sentiments exactly.

Anet have done a relatively good job over the span of GW's lifetime, I agree with that.

HOWEVER, the reason for the majority of the recent threads and complaints is totally legitimate. Both Duping and Botting are causes for concern, and it shows a lack of progress made by Anet in clearing them up. Bots have been running unchecked in JQ for ages now, and duping is yet to be officially recognised unless it was patched secretly in the last update.

I don't have any beef with anet, lets face it the game is 7 years old. We all got out moneys worth from this game, and its almost time to move on. Its a business, they need something new. Hence GW2, its all hands on board for GW2.
Quit whining, you guys here complaining, why they taking so long to release GW2, well they are working on it. At the same time, you guys also bitch about these bots and dupers, and why haven't they fixed it yet. They don't have enough resources to deal with both. I'm sure Anet cares to some extent about these bugs, but GW2 is their number 1 priority, and their big ticket item. Keep in mind, its also the most anticipated MMO of 2012, thats a lot of pressure on them.

And sometimes they throw feces at us and tell us it was gold. To most of the longtime players we feel like this has happened more than once.

Heres my 10 cents worth
Anet`s support is probably having a crap time due to gw2 client affecting gw login ( seen that mentioned somewhere and i assume its quite a few ppl ) , players returning after year+ and forgetting login details etc , dupes , botters , pvp reports.
Every problem that arises anet has to investigate - otherwise we`d have complaints on here xxx was banned for leeching because anet never checked.
We have also to assume each time certain complaints arise like errors/bugs/glitches support has to log it and pass it onto the techs to check out and this itself may take time - we all know something could affect 10% of the players and 90% thats left dont have the problem and trying to recreate the instance it happened may not be that easy.
Remember Anet isnt 1 person but several teams in different areas - otherwise id be hating anet for constantly having incorrect event starts on login and failing to announce events - i just hate the ppl who are meant to put the info up and seem to be unable to for unknown reasons.

If someone did that to me (6 year player here) I wouldnt stand around asking them to stop or to change their ways...I would leave.

I dont feel this has been the case. Its a great game...ANET's game. Bots and Dupers are people who RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO with the game and ANET has done more than most company's would have after this long (imo). There has always been and will continue to be bots and dupers...at this point if YOU feel ANET is to blame then its deal with the "feces" or leave.

Far as im concerned thats gold being thrown my way and Ill hang out and collect.

I agree with all of your statements, but I just had to LOL at this one, in light of Blizzard's recent nearly complete crash of their servers (for ALL games) due to being really stupid at the launch of d3 (a game that took 12 years, as opposed to GW2's 5 or so). In all the years I've played GW (coming on 7 now I think), I've NEVER seen a downtime of more than like, half a day. They're surprisingly quick about fixing stuff, and frankly my GW2 experience so far has made me pretty willing to forgive them for being preoccupied on it and not "fixing" gw1.

As they say though, haters gonna hate: the recent release of this Xunlai Baker NPC was of course met with a number of people whining because it made titles too easy, or because they'd already given away their trade-able items.

Yes, it's a 7 year old game, but the fact that I'm still enjoying it after 7 years kinda says something.

And some people tell life to take the lemons back! They get mad! I don't want your **** lemons!

Fair enough, but "more than once" does not equal "often". Sure, I feel that sometimes updates aren't wonderful - the Energizing Wind nerf back in 2007 that made it almost useless for trap farming comes to mind - I don't think this is the norm for ANet. In fact, other than the rare skill update that makes a certain build (or class of builds) unworkable, I can't really think of any MAJOR update that has caused be to think "wow, ANet's idea of a good game has really gone to seed".

ArenaNet's a great company, great philosophy, with great products. They've given great support to the best of their abilities (they worked with me extensively in locating some server issues pinned down to an exterior source en route from some Ericsson servers, found via multiple trace routes), and they're putting out another great game soon that I'll also love and enjoy (and have already bought).

People complaining treat the game like a $60 game they just bought, that turned out broken. It's not. It's had years of free updates, and a solid gameplay experience the whole time. I got my money's worth and much, much more. I'd buy GW2 on principle, even if I didn't enjoy it (which I do). $150 is well worth 1500+ hours of play.

Yeah stop having opinions everyone, so sit down and shut up. Anet employees such as the community managers never visit this site to see what issues the player base is having, ever.
Nope... never.
Guild Wars 2 isn't the result of years in the making because of the limitations Guild Wars 1 platform presented, ideas and imaginations, a effort on all sides of the table, did not cause for radical shift. Nope, so stop whining, go cry to Blizzard because Anet/Nscoft no longer have to do their jobs. I mean it's been 7 years...7 years is a really long time who's ever heard of a company having a product go on and make profit after that?
It's not like they sell product any more, nope no games or merchandise in the stores, it's all shut down now.
Guild Wars 2 will be out end of the year so support for the game that makes them money should be left alone. How else are they going to make a profit off of those fools who just bought the game last week, suckers.

Yup, well said, well said, I agree. People with opinions should just stop typing in a forum. It's not what forums are for. What are they for? I don't know , but certainly not for having issues with something, and stating that voice in a public space.

In short, if you have nothing nice to say about Guild Wars, don't say anything at all. because in the developing a game no one likes new ideas.
*Sarcasm Over*

Now that bit is done, I will say that I respect your opinion and you are probably tired of seeing the same thread over and over again. What I don't agree with is telling the other side of the table to shut up.
I agree it is annoying, but shouldn't that say something about, the real problems the game as at the moment. It's not just one lone gun man trying to troll. There is a crowd of voice speaking up.
I personally don't expect new free content from the game, but the game still needs to have full support, in fixing issues.
Anet and Ncsoft could be working on the problems right now, they might not. All the players know is they are tired of waiting to see Dhumm pop up in town.
With bots over populating the players in PvP matches, duping, ect... the list goes on. Taking the GW1 team off the case to work on GW2, just got the community to raise an eyebrow or two.

In my opinion, I think ANet is doing a fine job. After 7 years, I still love this game and I still have fun and still there's new and interesting things I haven't done yet. Those things may be old things I haven't gotten around to ever doing (Such as DoA) but nevertheless, they're new to me.

Big deal that 7th year birthday presents were recycled, bar 2 minipets. If you feel it's a big deal then I don't think there's an MMO past, present or future that can live up to your standards. Also, you don't know what is or isn't duped or how old they are unless you're duping items yourself or know people that dupe, who you should be reporting. Duped items could be quite old from a now-fixed vulnerability. Yeah, bots are an issue but the problem is that the programmers found a way around GW's bot detection methods and unless people do their part in reporting or ANet gets their hands on the sourcecode for the bot, there's nothing that can happen.

While the OP does have a point, duping, 7th year presents (and more precisely, the initial lack of clarity over whether these can yield Asian minis) and botting are legitimate issues.

The worst part of this is not that they're not doing anything about it, it's that, for the most part, they've utterly failed to even acknowledge that the problem exists, let alone keep the community informed. Shitty communication is shitty, and it would only need 1 person to do this right.

Absolute bull crap. The newest (ie not 5 years old dupe glitch) customizes the item in question, so if you're buying a customised minipet or material, it's not legit.

I don't think it's unreasonable for people to be less than happy about the recent handling of problems. What have we had recently? An AB update and a sweets update. Niether is fixing the most prominent issues.

Judging from a chatlog I saw a week back or so they've already evolved that part. So an item not being customized is no guarantee it is not duped in the first place.

I'm going to base their reputation with the way they're treating this game and it's current community. What's to say 3-5 years down the line they won't pull the same once they start on some other big name project?

GW1 is still alive, wake up anet.

Part of the mystery is finding one for yourself. It isn't their responsibility to hold your hand and tell you if it has one or not. Who cares one way or another if they do anyway. But, they have no obligation to tell us. Shit, this reminds me of "The Waiting Game", when people bitched and moaned when ANet never said a set time anywhere, until... oh wait, people bitched and moaned asking how long.

Never have I said anywhere that people shouldn't post their opinions. Opinions are good. Opinions are what make things what they are.

But when you're on a thread that's got tons of people whining about another mini Jora they got in their 7th year birthday present and you're the only person who has a different point of view, you get shot down. By a lot of people.

And I've said it in another post and I'll say it again, I know that botting and duping are real problems in this game. I was using those particular threads as examples of where I'd seen anti-ANet comments.

When the community is worried by an active duping issue, it's not the time to be playing stupid guessing games with extremely rare items.... unless you are a retard.

In a nutshell, Arena Net has lived up to fewer promises than they have broken. So when players see the same old behaviors they howl. The angry responses are not happening in a vacuum; as everyone says this game is 7 years old. Botting is a massive problem that has been occurring for years. Lack of updates has been happening for at least 1 year (several months before putting gw on autopilot). In any other business, if a promise is broken, the customer is always expected to be upset. Why is it gamer's are not afforded the same courtesy? Because gaming companies are ran by the socially inept. As an aside, the "no monthly fee" holds no water for me. When Anet started selling in game items (despite saying they never would) I didn't complain and bought some. I felt that the game was worth it and considered an extra $10.00 here and there was ok. I haven't purchased anything in a year. Coincidence?

As an enraged farmer of imaginary monies I demand that Anet bring forth the programmer that was responsible for the dupe bug so that I may personally beat the crap out of him in real life.

Seriously though, I couldn't give a damn about dupes or bots as long as it's not screwing up PvP. On the other hand, customers who ask companies to provide less service deserve to be shot on sight.

That's unfair and extremely unreasonable, expecting Anet to toss forth some nameless programer for the frothing masses of angry gamers to beat...

A more reasonable approach would be to peddle off such an opportunity in the ingame cash shop... $10 and you can hit him once, with a multi strike bonus pack available for the truly dedicated fans, 7 hits for $49.99!

Anet would make a killing... one way or the other.

Have spent 7 years playing gw1 with a few alts and slots ect I think they have did a great job for the time it has been running.

Yes you have the guys who want more throw a bone and they want it covered in meat. Geeze guys what does it all do when an exploit comes up or some sort of glitch.

I for one dont care re whatever a guys wealth means all it means he does farming to get more . Does it do him any good ? as far as Im concered no as why hoard armbraces ect so you can throw some epeen to guys.

I have had my monies a 100 times over although I used cash shop for cosmetic /slots ect as long as someone is having Fun and enjoying the game thats what many forget and just like Oliver they want more nomatter what they do.

Even now the update gives someone max pve skills at 5 so what? its not affecting your gameplay you are still doing what you have always done.
so well done Arenanet for 7 years of enjoyment and I still play the game

Personally I've not seen many people complaining about the downscaling of rank skills ect. I think it's a bit of a kick in the teeth to everyone who maxed or worked on their rank to get it to a certian point, but Anet are making the game easier so more people can max their rewards.

The point is that there's been nothing done about the duping or botting, and people seem to think that's okay. These are game-breaking exploits. It's not like someone coming up with a kick ass teambuild, cos synergy between skills has always been there, it's the EULA abusing problems people are unhappy about.

Until they allocate more resources to Guild Wars I will not give them a break.

You all know that saying that movie sequels mostly don't live up to the original movie? I give about 3.5 years till GW2 degenerates into exactly these same complaints, if it manages to launch at all.

GW is GW. The design is broken, no matter what number you put after the title.

I wouldn't say that's a fair assessment. Games aren't movies. Movies try to milk as much out of the originally storyline and make more money off of it. While games do that as well, they also have the opportunity to change and fix mistakes that were wrong with the original.

You can't have the exact same Jurassic Park movie and decide to kill the kids instead of the lawyer.

What is Guild Wars 2 then, if not an attempt to sucker current and past players into paying yet again for the stuck Siege Turtles, the Mulefactory merchants, the skills you payed to unlock but didn't acquire?

They ought to fix their current game before they sell a new one with all the sameness as the original.

My only beef is Anet and the live team making too many skills useless, and severely limiting and reducing builds, choices, and synergies. I also see a lot of untapped potential in spicing up skills. I see this potential in every class, too. There's so much that could've been done to salvage every player's interest, but sadly nothing has been done. Skills, builds, and the meta itself, are frozen stiff. If Anet were to look up some of the skill feedbacks in the gw wiki, and actually implemented some of those suggestions, I'm sure that PvP activity would boost up again. They just need to revamp some of the overnerfs and underbuffs, and I guarantee you that a lot of people would come back to play PvP again. Same goes for PvE. Anet should have paid closer attention to FoW, UW, Urgoz, Dungeons, etc., and should have created synergetic builds to get players having fun again. So much potential they had... and all they did was let it all go to waste.