Is GW dead?

Is this the thread #345698 on this subject for the past 5 years?

I started playing in 2006 and it was already very hard to find teams for missions, especially in the crystal desert, where you couldn't find monks despite the 55 monks horde you could see in mission outposts, probably many of them bots.

GW it is a great solo game, it is a great co-op game.
Requiring players of 8 with organized builds to do even the most basic quests was silly and henchmen and heroes solved that.

PvP died when Anet stopped sponsoring the tournaments with monetary prizes - other than that GvG and HA matches have never been very interesting to watch by those that didn't have a deep understanding of the format and due to its focus on the builds pre actual match.

A game without an audience will never be an Esport.

Additionally, the entry barrier to GvG has always been a high one, especially in terms of preparation and time requirement., so casual GvG is pointless and AB/Arenas are completely different than GvG and HA.

The game changed and it is old with no real new content since 2007 - the PvE actually changed for the best, at least for those that don't really want to depend on other people.

Agreed on all points, in particular "Why are we having this discussion again?".

This is, as I mentioned before, why I'm so excited about the changes they've made for PvP in GW2.

- UAX gets people playing on a level playing field immediately, not after they've unlocked sufficient upgrades and skills via PvE.
- No PvP chars means that you don't have to convince RP-oriented or otherwise emotionally attached people to drop their precious PvE characters and roll a disposable PvP character to take into PvP.
- All structured PvP occurs on the same maps with the same objectives, whether you're playing in a random pick-up game or an organized tournament.
- Casual players can learn the game by playing casually, allowing them to either work up to tournaments (which can always be run with varied rank requirements, to allow newer players to participate without getting crushed) or...
- They'll have a framework to view high-level PvP through, which should go a long way to making GW2 esports more interesting for a wider audience.

This should, in theory, make the game so much more conducive to getting new players into top-level games. GW1 sucked for that, it really was all up to the community to do it, and the community just is not interested in it for the most part (largely because every slot in your team is precious, and "dead weight" can kill your chances of winning, so who is going to be the noble mentor?).

Exactly. The conclusion is entirely right, although the explaination is maybe not.
I personnaly don't see a problem having heroes allowed, players running crap boring builds( that's the case in starcraft2 anyway..), or anything else..
Fact is :
- a population of players left the game because they had enough facing heroes/henchs/iways/sways ( or even facing the same " standard" build in GvG)
- months later, they did put an end to heroes in PvP and started nerfing a bit spiritways or esurges, making those players leave..

Aside, an other problem is the fact that noone cares/cared enough about PvP, and that's probably why they didn't really try to balance..

Let's face it, it's only about the reward( AB is played today because they buffed rewards, GvG looks active because there are tons of guilds under 1000 rating farming quests, Codex has syncers because there are strongboxes, etc....)
Fair or serious players get flamed every day( gold capes players are called " leechers " 90% of time, players holding r6 champion are called syncers, players holding r10+ titles are usually called " iwayers " ( or something close), players holding commander titles are told " RR ftw isn't it ? " )..

Players mentality has something to do as well, although i will agree that the rank discrimination isn't the reason..

I wouldn't say dead. More like a zombie.

If it's so dead, why are there 21 comments as to it's being dead or alive?

I wouldn't call this game dead. Go to ToA and it's pretty lively around there and in Kamadan. As for pvp, HA was killed a long time ago when they switched favor of the gods from Europe vs. America in the Hall of Heros to title completion. No need to compete any more for Favor to do ecto farms. No need, thus, HA died. JQ and FA are bots now, AB was dead for a little bit but is now slowly making a comeback. RA I've been doing for a while, and really it hasn't changed, because new comers can easily get into matches and keep it alive.

Of course there's way less people. But It's not dead.

It's just that there's isn't as many people in PvP, unless it's a ZCombat for a format that is easy to join. And in PvE, there's way less people hanging around in outpsots. Instead, they are busy killing stuff.

There's also the thing of most people sticking to the American districts, making others look even emptier.


You'll know when it's dead because there will be so little people that they will discontinue the service altogether.

I still remember years ago that one of the strongest points of Guild Wars was considered it's community - it was one of the most helpfull, and that's something I do believe to be true, even after all these years.

It has shrunk, and only the real core, die-hard players remain. Makes it hard for newbies to come in, but I'm glad to help anyone.
PvP has never been my cup of tea, basicly because of the fact that you needed to be that profession, run that build and so on to avoid even being kicked in the first place.
I used to play in the European districts, but really, you need to be on the American ones; almost all remaining players are found there.

But I'm just in Ascalon City Europe District 1 and there's people there who are fun to speak to, to play with... it all depends what you think of dead.

For me, GW1 will never be dead, as I'll always be there to play it.

ToA constantly has 2-4 american districts, but I guess that's the last bastion of PvE which will also die soon. ^^

if I were anet developer, I would probably work on gw2 along with gw1, after gw2 released,

since the mechanics in gw2 doesn't offer much profits in terms of dollar earning than gw1 expansion continuation release, that means if gw2 release a new expansion, it may be less profitable than gw1 release another expansion after gw2 being released, as gw1 has been a giant game being developed overtimes, it already has it old market, and it should be having a connection between gw2, even when the playing style of both games are slightly different, totally abandoning gw1 would be a bad business strategy.

however gw2 can be considered as another newly released game with some connection with the existing gw1, if a new expansion of gw2 happens to release too soon after gw2 is offered to the public, it may confuse or irritate the gamer of having extra spending on a newly purchased game,

on the other hand, if another gw1 expansion being released along with gw2, then the marketing story will be different, because this may not even attract new potential gw1 buyer of the whole game, the expansion or not, tagging along with gw2 release, it also please the old gw1 players who happens to dislike gw2 mechanics, but want some major update/expansion/more players to gw1, and fresh gw2 players can also ignore gw1 for awhile to focus on the gw2 game, until they wish to go back to a semi-old-existing gw1 and see it with somewhat new continuation updates.

it is arguable, a major update to gw1 with gw2 release may do to please the old players and pricey new gw1 expansion maybe further irritate old gw1 players, but another expansion may potentially attract more profits to anet with new content to please old gw1 players and fresh gw2 players who happens want to buy gw1 as well, will not find gw1 lacking of connection, update, and work being maintained by anet.

The questions are how much risk anet will take with the resource they have, whether they have the resource to do so, and it is also very questionable as to whether a release of gw1 expansion and release of gw2 will revive gw1/anet to the old glory days. LOL.....

I started 4 years ago. To me, the "good ol days" just weren't that good. All I had then was proph.. and my pug experiences were some of the worst I have ever experienced... to the point of giving up and beating it with Hench.

The game has plenty of life left, but you cannot gauge numbers by looking at a few outposts. People are all over, playing, because 7 heroes mean they can.

As with most aging games the player base is scattered, you just will not find the majority doing the same questlines, and with 7 heroes, it scattered more. You will find more players in outposts with z quests active because that is what a lot do. You won't find them randomly in ring of fire.

Every game has these posts. Every game has death predictions. Once the initial surge of players starting at the same time, doing the same thing subsides, the death moaning starts. A year from GW2 launch, people will be posting re the "good old days" in that game, and bemoaning the death of the game.

I have read posts like this regarding EQ for 10 years. It is 13 now. I think it is amusing to see the cycle of death predictions play out over and over, in every MMO I have ever played.

I see roadkill that's more alive than this games PvP. PvE was kept alive through HoM.

For PvP to become alive again, and I mean HA/GvG, there needs to be drastic changes to the formats and an easier learning curve for new players. A neat idea that has floated around for a couple of years is making some current formats like costume brawl. Costume brawl narrows the skill pool down to a few premade sets that allow for super easy balance and take some player focus off team build synergy and give it to individual skill. I assume codex was a step in this direction but failed due to lousy implementation.

Of course the veteran players would cry and say that's not what GWs is about but their a bunch of selfish idiots that would rather see the game die than live in another form. Chances are they are the same people who drove new players out of high end pvp.

The syncing problem in RA has an easy solution but again Anet is too afraid to take risks. Changing it to 5 glad points per win and having players return to the town after 1 game would kill syncing outright.

Codex needs bigger and better skill pools. If anything codex would do good under a costume brawl format.

I really think it's too late for that Swingline. I think Codex would be a fun format if teams were randomized like RA, mainly because I don't know if there's much desire anymore for people to spend the time to form teams, only to wait around in the outpost because no one else is spending the time to form teams. My evidence for this is the fact that pretty much every PvP format where you can jump in and play immediately without pre-forming a team is alive and kicking, and every game where you need to form a team is basically dead, and if you ever want to play those formats it'll take you at least 20 minutes before you're actually playing. AB is the exception, primarily because (IMO) it's a small-team format and most people aren't too picky about their team composition.

When it comes down to it, there just aren't enough people getting into the higher-level formats to make them worth playing. Shame. I think people would still be afraid to GvG, even if they were playing against another team of 8 random newbies and getting rewarded for it, because it's just such a foreign game mode to 90% of the population.

initially when there was only gw : prophecies, all players were supposed to be causal, and it was, even the players in the "high end" pvp (ha/gvg) were causal,

it changes eventually when new expansions being released, pve and pvp skills list getting expanded, the skills and playing style of players have shifted from causal to a more grinding style, players cannot play causally to achieve what they could achieve when there was only gw:chap1, they need to grind in pve and pvp to get the new skills, combination, and players organisation.

random arena was categorized to be a low-end pvp arena, while HA/gvg were the high-end and later on more pvp arenas like jq/fa/ab, then players spread out wider, skills and builds are harder to get organised, the high-end pvp, namely ha/gvg became the hell ground for players to play causal, which wasn't the case when there was only chap1, and now, the high-end pvp previously, we can call it as exceeding any humanity capacity to achieve any supposed design result, or simply broken.

the low-end pvp, ra, has become the new high-end causal pvp through expansions, where the market or human can still "achieve" something in the arena unlike the broken high-end ones.

randomization can be a nice idea to make something into less hardcore, and the arena can still be high-end, however, it will demise the idea of having organised teams to pvp like the broken ha/gvg

codex has been suggested numerous times to be a test ground for bridging ra to ha, but I think the bridging is quite wobbly, because codex always require knowing so many skills with so many professions, plus having to organise players, players don't really know to do what first, randomize team can be an option, but it provides lessor opportunities for players to learn how to form groups, so it has it owns defect, which make the whole gwvp seemingly disconnected from the whole game.

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my suggestions had been,

a) make 2 codex, one is random team, and the other is organised, with the same skill set, so players can choose want they want to learn without being drown by too many things need to be done, that is a separation between organisation of builds and players.

b) make another or change the high-end 8v8 into weekly/monthly ha/gvg tournaments with separated expansions skill, so that players without expansion will not be left out in pvp because of lack of certain skill set.

c) the old maps structure might be better?

The problem is that adding an other format won't do anything...
Clearly, leaving organized formats at this state is terrible, and the only solution to bring back activity everywhere is to allow hench parties. If you change one format ( with rewards or anything), it will be played and others will be empty..

Empty formats will be synced by cheaters, and the only format a little active will be about guild teams farming poor pugs tha just wanna play...

The separation idea isn't good : there are all RA players, all JQ/FA players... If you divide codex population by 2, both formats will be more or less empty. Basically, organized one will be empty and synced. Thus, all players that wanna play will go in the random format. Thus, some real teams will go sync in random codex like they do in random arenas..

I'm suggesting hench parties because it would be the easiest solution( the code is already there since it happened before) and would obviously give activity to PvP. You log you can go in and have a match( only 2 players required at best)...

I don't know whether a separation or a combination of the arenas/games is a better option, but the gaming industry is suggesting currently that making multiple alike genre game, sorta separating and combination the existing can create something new and the next stage would be a trial to see which one stands out in the market, the quite obvious examples are dota/hon/lol/dota2/sc2dota, diablo3, gw2, gw1, mmo, bf1,2,3, cs, c&c/aoe, angry birds, plant vs zombie alike etc. aren't they all fairly similar?

if separation is a bad idea, will then gw2 separating from gw1 may create lots of bots and cheaters in gw2?

whether this theory is predictable or refutable, using the current empty arena to predict a future result of more empty arenas may not be rational.

AI can be used, and I don't disagree, I suggested before fixing 5 real players + 3 ai vs another 5 real players + 3 ai in the 8v8 arena, but it is still doubtful whether it will guarantee more players.

a further ideal suggestion on AI is to open the AI source to the public like wikipedia to let the public programmer program the AI, so that the AI won't be as weak or as strong as human, but with a "public intelligence" AI which the majority of players generally accepted.

Wow...just wow at all you whining babes blaming Anet for everything. First off, the game is not dead. If you stopped trolling the forums long enough to log in and actually do something besides QQing around Spamadan then you'd see that. I've seen an influx of more new players these past few weeks than I have in a year. As far as pvp goes, mostly HA, yeah the boring as hell meta builds and elitists killed that. Still plenty in RA, although it sucks just like it always has. Codex has always been dead because it forces people to think and be creative, something those that live off the meta can't accomplish on their own. Codex itself works fine and is actually really fun to play. FA,JQ,AB, ect, still plenty active, I play them everyday. If you wanna sit around QQing all day, that's your business, but don't go claiming the game is dead just because you're too ADD to sit till long enough to enjoy the wonderful legacy this game is. And yes I agree with what someone said earlier, the community has failed at properly teaching the new players. That's what I spend half my day doing and its a blast seeing how excited these people get at the fresh GW experience. Reminds me of my newbie days.

Zomg best idea ever. Instead of deleting RA and making codex random; make RA use randomised skill bars. WIN.RAR

Make it to 15 wins with your randomly generated build and team mates, you are warped to Codex!

Co-op play with PUG's is DEAD.

PvE play with friends and Heroes is very much ALIVE.

I think others have pointed out most of the PvP though you will still find Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quary busy from time to time.

Sine day one my rule of thumb for any new players is FIND AN ACTIVE/FRIENDLY GUILD!

Bots are literally the only reason why JQ is still populated, because bots are also literally the reason why it's been close to completely abandoned by human players.