What comes around, goes around...

I would like to apologise for my bad english. It is not my first language, so im having some problems, even though that's not an fair excuse, I will try to do my best.
_____________________________

First I would like to say that this is just my opinion. Im not saying anyone is wrong or that I am right. Im just saying how I see things! That is all. Please don't get offended or feel like I have stepped on your toes or dragged you out of the bed with the wrong foot first. You are free to flame me or send me death threats if you wish, but please do it in a PM so we perhaps can avoid the "OMFG ill kill U" comments. Thanks.

It really should not come as a surprise by now. It seems to have happened in all major online RPGs, and in most large games anyway. I have been long enough scouting messege boards to see the equal tendency that sweeps forums.
There is a business ideology about consumer reactions and how they deal with them. A saying more specificly. It goes like this; "It takes 10 positive customer opinions to make up for one negative opinion". In that sense, a single individuel can cause much damage control upon bad mouthing a specific product.
This is an exciting time for Guild Wars. Factions is right now on top of the charts in both Europe and the United States. The game is swirming in with new players and every single day, Guild Wars has reached a new peak mile stone in the amount of people who are playing at the same time.

In the mean time, the fan forums that was supposed to be about fans discussing their favorite game, had turned into an overly massive convention for pessimists which sole objective seem to spread the word that the new campaign(In this case Guild Wars Factions) is the main horror from hell itself. The drama prevails and overflods. Massive amounts of people stand up to scream at ArenaNet, the company who probably was surprised at fans reactions after the great sales and intial reviews and good consumer opinions from the beta event.
This is all in the past. "You suck Anet", "You decieved us", "It's not stand alone!", "It's a hugh dissapointment", "im moving on", "this is like the worst game ever", "Factions was rushed out the door", "Gailie lied to us all", "GW is dead!!!" and the list outragous statements and unconstructive arguments go on.
Again, as a fan of video games for many years now I really should not be surprised. There usually is a large pack of people like this. You would always find a hugh group at people screaming very loud at the Half-Life 2, Halo 2 or Metal Gear Solid 2 boards, about what great failures these very anticipated sequels were when compared to their former legendary titles, which stand in the golden video game halls of Valhalla. Long Essays are written about the developers failures and about how everyone who even remotely enjoys the game should not. Statements and links are being made explaining that other games are coming that will not dissapoint.

In my opinion, Guild Wars is a strange postition and so, the consumers harsh reaction to the new product really cut me off guard. Im of the opinion that life is better when being an optimist, so that is what I try to be as often as I can, however im not blind to constructive claims and problems that these(and other games for that matter) may have.
But when looking at the reactions for Factions I feel like I have to step in and give my opinion on this hole matter.



I have never in my life played an online RPG sequel/expansion or thingy that has been so consumer friendly as Factions has been to me. And im saying this in the generel sense that ArenaNet kept their word, on what they promised many years ago.
That they would never force any people to buy more of their products, and they promised that no players would ever feel unable to competitive in the games end game.
While Factions has gotten new skills and new features and new classes, the game really has not screwed over people who simply wished not to buy factions. There has not been included any over-powerful weapons that makes the best ones in the old Game, useless. Same with Armor.
There has not been added any uber skills or actually pretty much anything that destroys Core Guild Wars players from having fun with their 50 bucks they used on Guild Wars over a year ago.
This is something I think is amazing, because almost all these games that gets expansions, addons or some sort of promotional enhancement, the publishers are making sure that the players will need to buy these new products to maintain effeciency. A good example of this is World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade were the level cap will be raised 10 levels, and 10 more levels of powerful weapons and armor will be added, which pretty much means that any players who should not feel like buying this new expansion would be forced out of the sheer concept of being made useless by the new exclusive content only made possibly by buying the new game edition. These is a core philosophy that has been shared through pretty much almost any online RPG I have personally played.

It's things like this that I as a fan of this game does not understand. I simply fail to understand why would players would rather compliment on "quitting", "changing game" or making overly harsh statements about how the game suddenly became "broken" because of a certain expansion or patch and simply focusing on the games faults instead of it's achivements that have been seen and recognized throughout the entire video gaming industry as a product that dares to be different in a genre that long ago became stale and repeititve.
Another thing on this is, the chosen places to complain. While we all know that no humans are perfect, and while we all most likely know that million dollar big budget games like Guild Wars which have over hundreds of people actively working on them in development alone, might have changes planned, or problems arisen, we seem to ignore these to instead reign and hail flames and negative feedback over the newly released game, which was supposed to be a celebration to the fans of the first game, more of the same in a good way.
And after having read many of the "hate threads" about how much GWF fails, I sometimes notice fair arguments of complaining. Like certain issues with the Alliance Battles, player communication, grouping or trading.
But strangely I never here about some of the obviously improved things that which actually(in my opinion) has added allot to the game like oer 300 new skills, new entire looks for all the core classes, titles, pets, equipment and so on.
Simply it is being argumented that GWF sucks because it was shorter and apparently, when a game is shorter than it's prequel/big sister, it is not stand alone, it is actually an expansion, even though it is totally independent of the core game.
The question in my mind that comes off, often focus on peoples mentallity to this. That maybe people just want to whine for the sake of whining, in these extreme ways.

Simply now Factions is not only shorter and less worth for the money, simply everything is simply also worse than in the original. The AI henchmen is worse, the music is worse, the writing is worse, the cutscenes are worse, the story is worse, the area designs are worse, the quests are worse. Everything is simply worse and we are led to belive that Tyria and Cantha is falling apart, and that the game screams more of bargin bin quality than E.T for Atari or Daikatana.
Is it a nostalgic feeling? That simply people remembered Guild Wars as a superior game because the mechanics and game design was new to them a year ago?
Kinda like you hear old gamers rambling about Movies, music and games all used to be better in the 70s and 80s, and that these days it's all useless and commercial crap that the public will eat up.
As a gamer and fan of Guild Wars.
As a person who followed this game for a long time and was so enthralled by Jeff Strains vision the first time I heard him talk about the game at e3 many years ago now, im so happy and thankful that I have gotten so much over the last year.
I was truly surprised at the amount of hate and judgemental flamebait that has been circkling in the fanbase. My mother always told me, that If I didnt had anything good or constructive to say, I shouldnt say it.
So while the game has not been out for a month, the hatred has already risen.
And as a fan I truly feel sorry for all these new gamers who experience Factions for the first time - And love it! And come to these forums to meet and talk to other people who enjoy Guild Wars to see the forums in flames, full of people who are pessimistic and who would rather repeat over and over again how sad they were that they bought Factions and how much they wished that they had never played Guild Wars to begin with, instead of getting the best out of it, giving ArenaNet decent constructive readable feedback instead "OMFG teh GuildwÆrz is teh sux0r00rz lolz. D2->GW ROFLcopter!!!1111".



When I look at Factions I think I see a game that defintely is not perfect. I think there is still some very essential problems with the core mechanics of Guild Wars, in some ways, like the social systems like grouping/trading/communication/interacting and perhaps aswell as introduction to the PvP.
But at the same time im also very intrigued by what Factions have to offer that truly sets it apart. To me it looks like that the team at ArenaNet listened to allot of complaints about the first core game. For example Factions has much bigger areas. It feels much less on rails and allow you to much more move freely, which in my mind gives a consistent cohesive feel.

I feel the new music score by Jeremy Soule and leaps and bounds above his Scores for both Guild Wars, aswell as some of his other score productions like Oblivion, IceWind Dale, Knights of the Old Republic, Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights, to name a few.
I feel the new Art Design, the new characters and the new world adds allot to the core world. Im so grateful as a player that it is not more of the same. Im intrigued and happy that faction has a bigger part. Im happy that the gameplay has been redesigned to be open ended in the sense that you now have choices between factions which gives less predictable and repeittive gameplay.
I feel intrigued on the new quest design which has more empathy on fun than slow lvling and time wasting grind.
After all this game was designed to not be a grind. As far as I can understand It was designed for people to have fun in PvP or PvE when you really made an uniqe build or got a new skill, as opposed to character advancement which had a hugh factor in games like Diablo and World of Warcraft.

Also I feel like as a player of this community, that many players complain about Guild Wars and try to make it something it's not.
Even though Guild Wars has the deepest, most complex pvp system and skill system I have seen in my entire life in an RPG, and even though I have never seen such free dedication in terms of service, patching and content updating aswell as keeping the community alive with a community manager which keeps the community up to date daily, guild versus guild blogs posted on the official site, and anual world championships, It still is amazing to see how much people can bad mouth GW for the things it IS, instead of appreciating the things for what it ISN'T.
At any rate, im just surprised and sort of dissapointed that this community does not(at least from my eyes, as of right now) does not seem mature enough or fair enough to give the company some time.
Perhaps some people here think and feel that if they complain allot and try to scare new potential buyers away with "Factions is crap" threads, that ArenaNet will suddenly get really depressed, eat allot of cheesecake, hire 10,000 new programmers and artists and make all your dreams and wildest ideas come true within days, but I seriously doubt that it works that way.

Perhaps there are some people here who are not trolls. Who are not out to tell everyone how mad they are at god, their family, us, themselfs, Arenanet and everyone else for their purchase of Factions. But honestly in my opinion, hype and expectation is an evil thing.
I also belive having realistic expectations from a consumer stand point can be incredible hard, because consumers rarely have any insight into how much it actually cost to develop games or how much time it takes.
A hot topic on the bashing on Guild Wars is of course the fact that the "expansion" cost 50 Dollars and that it simply is not worth does money. Of course that again is a very subjective opinion what is worth and what is not worth someone elses money.
I buy games fairely regularly. Both on consoles and on my PC, and I can say that by far the most games I buy today for 50 Dollars, last me 7 hours maxed. Sometimes this does not really matter though, because Im a firm beliver that quality by far exceeds Quantity.
The Max Payne games are nice examples of ultra short games, that had a very high entertainment value and solid production values.
Now I know for a fact that everything in Factions when taking the side missions, alliance missions, elite missions(which many people has not even tried) takes much more time than most game.
I belive that because the first guild wars was longer or took longer time to reach the cap of lvl 20, it did not mean that the game itself was superior. It would not be any different than saying that the first Guild Wars was vastly inferior to Factions because it didnt contained some of the suff that is new to factions.
Right now a player can go down and buy factions and be happy about the game, complete it and then go down and buy the first one because he liked factions and then became insanely mad and furious by the fact that he can't choose between a faction with uniqe missions like he could in Factions.
It's simply not a fair comparrison, in my mind.



But this was what I love so much about this game. You don't have to buy these editions. Now you can at least say - Oh factions was not really me! I better skip Chapter 3! Maybe things will appeal more to me when Faction 4 or 5 gets released. And furthermore I belive Guild Wars got tons and tons of competent fixes and additions.
Even new technology in forms of DX9 support, and the observer mode aswell as tons of item balancing, the PvP isle, the much improved skill balancing, the many improved aspects of the game.
Thats another thing. It feels like everyone thought they were pointed with a gun to their face, and threatned to buy Factions.
Most people wait for the proffesional reviews, as posted by sites like Gamespy and Gamespot, and then assume if the purchase was a worthy buy.

And I have seen many of the "end-of-Guild Wars threads". The long posts that tells you about how much ArenaNet failed and tells you about that the true creators of Diablo, the guys at Flagship Studio and their Hellgate London or Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2 will "kill Guild Wars", and will reign supreme with much better PvP and wild roses. I have seen many posts that try to argue for the sake that everything else is/was better. "If WoW did had an monthly fee I would totally play it", "Diablo 2 was much better". Honestly I have no idea if many of these ideas, comparrisions or analogies between other games and companies have any valid argument here, but I do think that there is allot of "The grass is always greener on the other side" mentallity. Perhaps even in the sense with GW vs Factions.

And It's so funny because suddenly everyone knows better than the GW Lead Designers and programmers. "No no no!!! They ruined the entire game", "GG... Nice way to screw over your Playerbase Anet. I hope u like our money cuz its the last you will ever see!!!" and so on. The Alliance grind discussion is a good example.
Tons of player shows their disgust, hailing Gailie as a liar and yelling about how it is wrong and hurts and offends them on so many levels.
It's funny to think about because before there were a hugh group of people who complained in the original game about the lack of diversity and the lack of being able to look truly uniqe, so even though stuff like this was wanted, and while it may be true that the way to get it is flawed by dynamic and concept, I still have hard to see how it goes against ideologies of free will to do it.
It would perhaps be like saying; "15K armor should be removed because I have to grind to get it. It has nothing to do with my skill. Its fact that I need to grind monsters to get endless sums of gold to get this armor. This is wrong because I say it. Rabble rabble rabble rabble!!!" .

So what's the point with this long post? To convert people to suddenly like Factions? Nope. To enlighten people who have not bought it yet? Nope. I think it's merely my way of seeing things as I seem to not share the generel philosophy. Im simply not a guy who likes to jump on the "let's flame this game bandwagon!".
I belive Factions is a game, and that ArenaNet is a company that excists of people who try to do something new that has never been done in the industry before. I belive they are very brave and hopefully will be a visionary as the pioneers of these CORPG games that will hopefully evolve in the future.
I don't think the game is perfect, but I also think it's wrong to change it into something it's not.
Sigh, but this is most likely not the last time that this will happen. Perhaps people just enjoy screaming doomsday, or like to feel cool when being negative about something.
After all it's not unsual to get flamed for liking a certain type of music, movies or games on the internet.
Many hates everything everyone likes... Even on forums like these, which were supposed to be for fans. Oh well. What comes around, goes around I guess.


regards, Lawnmower,
Mowing lawns in Cantha since 1502.

I could write a long post to support your point of view, but I think only one thing needs to be said:

Amen to that.

If this were a movie, the "inspirationnal speech just before battle music theme" would have played as you made your speech.

THANK YOU

i too am having fun in my own small pve way just sightseeing and going *look at that* every now and then.

my screenshot folder is over i gig and growing.

BTW most english teachers here in the states would hold your english up as a good example to be reached for.

A well thought-out post. One of few.

Bravo.

One of the best posts I have seen in awhile. I can tell that you put in a lot of effort in this post, and the pictures and quotes add greatly to it overall. You, sir, have my respect.

There is a saying in my country, though it may not come out well in this alphabet. So I will just say it in english.

You are my hero, bravo!

nice post, but it won't change the fact that i will not buy a second copy of factions for my other account (as i was planning to do), maybe i'll add chapter 3 to this one.

prophecies imho was worth buying it twice, factions is not - i play it, but i don't love it... ^^

your post is the truth, but as you mentioned - is was, it is and it will always be the same with every expansion or sequel that is released for any game - hate>love.

still i prefer an expansion like faction to the possibility of NO expansion...

Could be one of the posts to turn many people to Factions, and away from the flame-machine. Good Job!

Agreed. You have my respect too. I love your english also, its really good . Also you have really dug deep into your thoughts and put it in a crazy long speech. I hope people read it all to understand your veiwpoint. I also hope Anet will read it just for their benefit. Once again...uder respect.

~Captain CCC

Hienzen Dune Zonlien Vrukto...
[He-en-zen Dune Zon-lee-en Vrook-to] (to-pronounced like toe)

Means:

Finally some positive feedback on Factions...

Very nice post!

Good thing you posted this on Guru too, since a majority of the flames came here. Like a few I don't complain to Anet about the game, I'm just here to have a fun experience. I'm very patient and neutral, and by neutral I mean I can understand the point of views of both sides, the community and Anet. I know that the community are looking for improvements on Alliances, Alliance battles, Elite missions, etc. that will make their experience much more fun and smooth. I know or I think that Anet has a lot of pressure from the community and they are trying their best to keep the community happy. Sometimes I have a feeling Anet doesn't get any appreciation.

Hopefully, your post will set some people straight and would make them see both point of views instead of one. Also, lets hope there will be more constructive and appropriate threads/statements on the forums and when a Dev visits in game.

I wouldn't feel self concious about my english if I were you-the syntax is perfect, and you'd be hard pressed to find a spelling or grammatical error. Makes me feel guilty about my feeble french..

i have had the game for 10 months: How many games has anyone owned for that long and still cant wait to get home from work just to play it.
Guild Wars is the only game i have had for so long and still get withdrawalls if i go too long without it.
Easily the best game i have ever played.

My my! Someone certainly has far too much time on their hands! Don't worry about your spelling, just ignore the grammar police.

You got good evidence, facts and information, and:

I respect your opinions... can't flame your opinions

Still, i'm baffled how you could say GW:F environments look worse than Tyria:P The detail in GW:F is astounding if you take the time to explore every nook & cranny. However, if thats what you think, thats alright with me.

Just one other comment: Give the game longer out! People are complaining there is not enough as promised but Factions is young yet. Didn't Prophecies have a tricky start too? Take into account that much more content/fixes may come.

just to edit: I've seen a LOT of games rise and fall, and believe me every single game has had a post like this made before. Yes, it is in Human nature to argue, but one thing i know is no matter what you do people will moan, so youre gonna have to accept it laddie. I'm really happy you expressed your opinions and went to all this trouble though!

O ye and one last thing, do remember that people rarely log in to compliment, but gladly take the time to complain, so it is my recommendation before making claims on the communities reaction to the game that you broaden your research, because coming from one or two sources may be biased. This is a fan forum yes, but for starters it may not be their 'favourite' game, but merely one they enjoy now and then, secondly, the forums arent 'supposed' to be about anything! I dont see a notice saying 'feel free to rant but that is not recomended because you are SUPPOSED to give positive feedback!'

So either this post is a big rant, or it is just another of the 10000 threads ive seen in the past that contemplate on typical human behavour (which is to complain because everything isnt handed on a silver platter). If its the latter, then mate, youre whole entire post was in vain! But il say again kudos for taking the time out to type up something i already know fused with your own issues.

Nice of you to take the time to post so much. I will not corrupt your thread with my opinions, I've stated them enough. The only thing I wanted to point out was centered around this

This is only a half truth. Guild Wars Supports directs people who email them with any complaint or suggestion to post it on any of the fan forums for further discussion, support, etc.. So, one of the main reasons why you see repetitive threads complaining about the same things, is due to that reason.

Very nice thought out post.

When anet released Prophecies they unleashed a "first of it's kind" game. A game with outstanding graphics and game play, a free (no monthly fee) online game. They released a game that takes skill and not time to be competitive. A game any one can play no matter how much or how little time they have on their hands. They worked hard at this through updates.

Then came factions. Anet made all the same promises. A stand alone game that a person can own without owning the first chapter and still remain competitive. A game where you need skill and not time to be competitive. Then previewed this game to the public a certain way.

All in all they failed. The game rushes you to level 20 very quickly indicating it's a game for high level characters, hence lvl 20 tyrian characters. Those that own both chapters have the upper hand while those that just have factions are at a loss. A game where to access the full content of the game you don't need skill just the time to farm. They changed the pvp system which seems to be a huge dissapointment to the pvp population.

I don't do pvp only pve so for pve they lacked in this game. It seems they made the game more pvp oriented. Look at the elite missions. You have alliences competing for access to the pve missions. Players competing against other players, PvP.

Now look at the characters. The ritualist isn't bad for a necro/monk combined into a single class with it's own spin on things. I've seen a lot of suggestion for new character classes some of which were totally unique. Then there is the assassin. A class that is designed to be a melee fighter but lacks the ability to stay toe to toe with a small group of enemies. Not without relying heavily on skills or the secondary class anyway. Yeah he does alot of damage but he only does little more than the warrior but takes a whole lot more damage than a warrior. Forget magic users anymore, the assassin is at the top of the enemies agro list now. The tactic? Warp in, do 2 or 3 strikes then warp out. He would remind me of a r/w using a sword but even a ranger primary can stay alive better than an assassin.

So if people have a problem then they will voice it while those that don't just play the game? I'm sure there are alot of people would have a beef with one part or another in the game but don't bother to vioce themselves. For good reason too. First they just get insulted or their idea gets insulted making them feel stupid. Second they don't bother because they think anet just doesn't care and/or won't listen. Third the mods.

However anet claims they watch the forums and for noone to voice themselves would just show anet that they are doing good when they are not.

So when anet makes promises then breaks them, shows the game content in a preview then changes it before the release and makes the pve end game more pvp oriented than any pve'er would ever like it to be they will have a lot of unhappy customers who will stop playing plain and simple. You may not think that means much and that the game would be better off well I wouldn't hold your breath. There are alot more unhappy customers than what you see on any of the forums listed at the GW site and if they begin to move on to other games that is a major loss in money. Lose enough people and anet wouldn't be able to make enough money off the game to keep it going. I for one will be moving on. Buying Oblivion monday and I plan to get NWN2 this fall. I may play every once in a while but unless anet makes some major changes or chapter 3 turns out to be a complete turn around then they have lost one customer (as I'm sure there are others too). I won't even buy chapter 3 now untill I've seen a professional review as well as players opinions on various forums.

*claps

Also remember that when Chapter one came out, they raised the bar several levels to what we're comparing to now. The easy route would have been to just introduce a new map, professions and skills, but they once again wanted to come up with an original approach. It's not perfect, but it's progressive development, and I'm sure we'll see it refined in future updates.

It's a crying shame that there are so many people around here who won't take the time to read this.

I like what you said about the WoW expansion. I just read about that a few hours ago, and thought exactly the same things.

Unfortunately, people have a tendency to take things for granted. Nobody comments on the good stuff because they..hm...I don't want to say they are narrow minded, that isn't really true...they sort of have tunnel vision, as if they were looking through a cardboard paper towel roll. They can't grasp the notion of how much worse the game could be, and so they take it in stride, never saying thanks. When something happens to disrupt their blissful paradise of a game, their cardboard tube narrows down on it, as if the tube becomes the barrel of an artillery cannon. When they discover they have no ammunition with which to destroy said problem, they run screaming (and quite often swearing) to Anet via these forums and others. Sometimes Anet will bring out their own cannon and fix things themselves, but many times it is just a case of a player taking good things for granted.

Every once in a while, a player will be walking around, searching for something (yes, searching) to focus their cardboard tube on, when a large, awkward-looking fish lunges out of nowhere and smacks them across the face. Suddenly, the cardboard tube is knocked out of the player's hands. After a moment of dismay, the player can finally see more than what the confines of his tube allowed him to. he can see how much effort was put into the scenery, to actually make exploring worth while. He can see that blancing certain skills and builds is most often a good thing. He sees all the great things that he was blind to before, and gladly trades in his artillery cannon for a magifying glass so that he may carefully examine each exquisite detail, and never again take them for granted.

It is my hope, and I imagine most peoples' hope, that the very long but insightful speech featured at the beginning of this thread can be that large, awkward-looking fish, and that the poor player who's eyes are stuck in a tube will focus his cannon on this thread just long enough for the fish to spring into action.

Wth.... People if you knew Factions was going to be shit, then why did you pay 70 friggin dollars for the CE

that is just plain stupid

sometimes i wonder why this is the first timed i have flamed idiots on a forum

maybe its the lack of nicotine ^^

The best post on factions i have read.Thank you Lawnmower!

While i agree with you that an optimistic vision is always better, i want to stress my personal opinion on some issues:

* The consumer-friendly Factions point of view is yours, strictly personal, and only shared by PART of this community: i am aware by reading this very forum that some people do not feel Factions is consumer-friendly... specially Chap.1 owners.
The general claim is that GW:F forces you to grind factions to really enjoy the game... some people might find this amusing, and some might not.
If these claims are wrong or right seems to depend on each and everyones opinion, a very variable issue as we see.

* The competitive capability of players buying one or more products is still unknown: could you seriously state that from this moment on there will be no nerf/buff on any skill/weapon/armor of Factions?

* I really don't know if Factions has not screwed over people who simply wish not to buy factions. I can tell you that the main issue here is people who BOUGHT Factions and feels screwed.

* I look to your post and i can say that you really love and enjoy GW, then why you compare it with the very game Anet tried to differentiate from its very beginning?

* IMHO, Factions is not "different"... Prophecies was.

* While is true that Factions has a lot of good things and you don't see too many people posting about that, the things you recognize as "fair complaining" (Alliance Battles, player communication, grouping or trading) were supposed to be "perfect" because they are KEY COMPONENTS of Factions, or VERY EXPECTED, MUCH-ANTICIPATED UPGRADES from the Prophecies Campaign. This is when the "broken" feel kicks in.

* While there has been some destructive criticism, many people stated possible solutions, based on their view of the issues.

* FIRST QUOTE:
"Guild Wars Factions was confirmed to have had started development after Factions release, so in the end it would most likely have gotten one year worth of development, minus the shipping out to retailers period. I think most game developers would say that, that is incredible, incredible short time for any game to be developed. Let alone an RPG, and let alone again an Online RPG which are notorious for taking many years due to the amazing complexity of writing code on persistent servers and netcode. Perhaps with that in mind, more reasonable expectations should have been set by the community?
* SECOND QUOTE:
When I look at Factions I think I see a game that defintely is not perfect. I think there is still some very essential problems with the core mechanics of Guild Wars, in some ways, like the social systems like grouping/trading/communication/interacting and perhaps aswell as introduction to the PvP.
** I believe that FIRST QUOTE is absolutely true, but i also believe that peoples "reasonable expectations" from First Quote were at least that some of the problems you mention on SECOND QUOTE were solidly solved. People expected, IMHO, Anet was wise enough to recognise this expectations as important issues to address with Factions and simply deal with them.

* QUOTE:
But at the same time im also very intrigued by what Factions have to offer that truly sets it apart. To me it looks like that the team at ArenaNet listened to allot of complaints about the first core game. For example Factions has much bigger areas. It feels much less on rails and allow you to much more move freely, which in my mind gives a consistent cohesive feel.
** I have seen posts on this forum stating exactly the opposite: some people even used the expresion FedEx Guild Wars.

* QUOTE:
After all this game was designed to not be a grind.
** I have seen many posts on this forum stating exactly the opposite.


* True: nobody was pointed with a gun to their face, and threatned to buy Factions... people just had what is called "blind faith" on ANet.

* People are just doing what Gaile told them to do: "Wait, and if it seems wrong to you, complain..."

* If Alliance Battles are "flawed by dynamic and concept" ... Is it correct for certain people to have access to this "uniqueness"?
Wouldn't be the right thing to do to correct the flaw or change the concept and then offer access to this content?
Weren't Alliance Battles a KEY CONCEPT of Factions?
Is it good that a KEY CONCEPT on a game is flawed?

This are just questions i am asking to myself and i wanted to share them with all of you. Many of them express a personal opinion, which of course can be different from yours.

Regards,

Thanks for your kind words


I don't know, mate. You ask many good questions, but to be fair I don't understand what the developers was doing while thinking this up.

I could imagine that they wanted to adress the lack "grind" or "thing" that some people could do by doing this.
We have to remember that Chapter 3 which is made by the original team(does who made GW:P) is going to focus on totally different things. That expansion won't(most likely) have faction war and large battles.
I think there are endless ways to look at it, and maybe ArenaNet tried to attract a totally new kind of gamer with this game.

Chapter 2 was made by half the original team, chapter 3 is being made by the other half.

It was already stated that each chapter will introduce a new tournament (i.e. competitive) style. And if they are going to make you pay for it, that means its likely going to be somewhat limited to your PvE characters... and somehow of interest to them in terms of PvE rewards rather than balthazar faction.

NO

they did not split the team in half.

if you read it you would have noticed they hired many more people to take up the additional load.

...can't say anything for the moment...

You just said what thousands of ppl are thinking

ANET gets all sad and depressed from reading the complaints, it's hard to work with tears in your eyes so Factions came out to be short and buggy.

Instead of defending ANET against unhappy customers fanboys should send them another $10000 worth of cookies to cheer them up (along with money for chapters 3 to 10).

I loved the post, diagreed with some opinions, but that is good! Means the world is right, I, personally, am among the Faction lovers. I love GW as a whole, and even though Factions was [better] than Prophecies, imo, I respect everypne's opinion otherwise. I hope everyone will atleast try out Factions, who knows?

Oh right, it just seems that only half a team made it.


hehehehe

From what I could understand from the 1up e3 podcast, the expansion would have an entirely different focus

Really? It didnt seem short to me, maybe because I actually bothered to play the game..ah well. As for buggy, I've encountered them, I've also encountered bugs in any game I've ever played and very few had them fixed within hours.

And instead of stabbing at Anet from your basement you could ofcourse act like and adult...or perhaps not.

I dont fully agree with the OP but I do agree Factions is worth the pricetag, my wife and myself are enjoying it and will continue to do so for some time to come.

A very detailed and quality post about something that needed to be said. Its about time us optimist started speaking up and letting anet know how good a job they did. / Hat off Bravo.

Yes thank you Lawnmower although I disagree on some things said.

In perspective 5% of the issues (12v12 Elite missions access, Gates to Towns, etc) have caused 95% of the issues. That said I think factions is great considering the Armor improvements, better henchmen and henchmen AI, New Classes, etc.

We may criticize a lot because we might be over zealous of the game we really do love. I know Anet reads these posts and I am sure they will respond to the Game base when they can.

HEY at least there is no town plague like there was in WOW. So it could be worse.

i played starcraft like a religion for 7 years.
that having been said; factions doesnt have many issues, but the issues it does have are, generally, major ones...and unfortunatly, seem to be issues that they have no intention of fixing.

Playing devil's advocate here, so be nice.

I commend the effort, and agree there has been flaming in excess. No arguement there. (Still working on reading the whole thing, it is long, so don't jump down my throat)

However, there is a difference between genuine "complaints" and "flaming"

All flames are complaints; but not all complaints are flames.

What also holds true is that even "negative" feed back is "positive" feedback, so long as the company to which the feed back takes away the appropriate message.

I dislike how it seems that ALL persons who complain are lumped in with the crazy, out of control people. It's the responsibility of the customer to enlighten a company to mistakes that it has made, in a timely, and forceful manner. I would surmise that any decent player who cared about the future of the game, complains at one time or another.

The only thing that such a wave of dissapproval as has been seen recently proves is that something is wrong with the game that is of enough concern to warrent a response.

Regardless, a great post, worthy of respect and acknowledgement.

Bad English? You're kidding, right? You could do far worse than that.

While I agree with most of the article ( guild wars is my favorite game by far) I also agree with this point made :

This sums up the only gripe I have with factions. In the original game you had the option to farm, in factions it's basically a requirement to progress. I'm still hopeful A-net will address this , but am not getting the impression it'll be changed ( by reading coments from Alex and Gaile the general feeling at A-net seems to be it's working well ) .

Amen to the first post.

Great post,

But the alliance stuff is all ok
I rather have 4-4-4 vs 4-4-4 then 12vs12 cuz then ull get all those guilds there -_-' and the PvE ppl won't stand a change (And cmon this is kinda for the PvE ppl to gain their jadeite and amber)

But my problem with factions is, when u come to the mainland there is this city area.... it sucks !!
Its like a maze where you have to deliver packages (ill tell ya that aint nice).
Factions started for me when I entered the area outside Maatu Keep, When i did the kurzick mission Arborstone i went to the Luxon area bcuz that area appeals more to me then the Kurzick area.
Shing Jea Island is cool tho
Just the so called ''FedEx'' experience is bad(which i feel in the city area a lot), especially bcuz there is no sort of ''Droks run'' (Maatu Keep run for example),
U have to do it over and over again its just boring, bcuz it isnt a challenge just takes hell of a lot time.

amen

Agreed but...forceful manner?

I think that what most people have an issue with is how people complain on these forums. I will read a thought out post like this one whether it be a complaint or praise. What I get really sick of are the immature whiners saying "OMG anet plz nerf *****" or "OMG anet, this **** is teh suxxor". If people have complaints, fine, sit down and right like a normal human being and you will get more respect and attention to your complaint. Act like a 5 year old whiner and you will be treated accordingly.

I have said it before and will say it again. I personally think that Anet(god bless 'em) thought they were doing a great thing by telling us players a LOT about the content of Factions before it was released. They wanted to be "in touch" with the player community and that community turned around and bit the hand that was feeding them. Anet should stay in touch with comunity BUT when it comes to upcoming expansions I think silence would be prudent/golden. The less we know, the more excited we will be. The less we know, the more exploration and playing the game we will do. When I played Diablo 2 for years and years, players hated the fact that Blizzard kept their mouths shut about upcoming patches and such. Drove us nuts but in the end players were more satified IMO.

Its a fine balance. Too much talk can bite you in the butt and too little talk can make players think the Dev's don't care about them at all.

Although I agree with most of the sentiment, I did resent a little the generalization of all players into the silent fanboys and the raving flamers... But of course, that's inevitable. It is impossible to discuss millions of people without generalizations, and they are pretty well grounded in fact (as generalizations go).

Your english was as good as most people's that I've met. Of course, the vast majority of people who speak english as a first language write it horribly, so maybe that's not saying much. But nonetheless, take the compliment. I can get my ideas across in French and ask where the bathroom is in Russian, but I sure can't write that well in a second language.

It's nothing new, though. People complained a lot when GW originally came out. People have complained a lot in the past year. The game is vastly better than it was at release. Anyone here can tell you that. But regardless of all that it's still far and away much better than the vast majority of games released. And I think we can all agree on that, no matter how much we might complain.