GW2: The official thread

[Rocant]

I saw this thread and wanted to pop in since I was suckered into buying GW2 by a buddy who said it was everything a gamer dreams for and more....I played 10 hours total on it and got so ridiculously bored that I never bothered to pick it back up. 60.00 bucks to learn a lesson I should have already learned by now and that is "No game is going to compete with Rift mmo wise". The community there was god awful, large numbers of horribad trolls (do you know why the call it an xbox 360 - Chuck Norris comments - Shamas in Metroid was a cool 'dood') and people that would rather shun you for not knowing the game then try to help with basic questions. I rarely rant about how bad a game is, but seriously...its that bad. The fact that there is no "PvP leveling" aspect (because if you queue for pvp it automatically boosts your level to cap for it making you have to spend time to figure out what each ability is instead of learning to play your character properly from leveling and gaining abilities on the way) was the biggest blow to my morale. IMO, one day people will wake up and realize that Rift was revolutionary and unique (well as unique as a WoW clone can be, but atleast Trion did not sell out to the casuals like Activision/Blizzard did) and dump the money grubbing jerks that put mmos out just to sell more subscriptions to come to where an mmo was created to have fun.

[Diarch]

What really is the status of GW2 now?

I bought the thing and couldn't be motivated to get out of the starting area. Just didn't do anything for me.

I'm curious as to how the game is widely viewed now? Is it tanking hard?

[Eughe]

It went from eh to meh for me.

Haven't logged in for a month. Not motivated to alt either (though that isn't their fault per se. Not much if an alt person)

Their current direction isn't exactly pleasing to me especially since their gear grind is getting Koreaney.

[Salamol]

What really is the status of GW2 now?

I bought the thing and couldn't be motivated to get out of the starting area. Just didn't do anything for me.

I'm curious as to how the game is widely viewed now? Is it tanking hard?

I'm not going to pull up the posts for reference, but from official sources:
-Over 2 million copies were sold (as of mid September)
-Servers can hold a maximum of 40,000 players
-Server population is based on concurrent users and not accounts on the server
-51 servers
-7 servers listed at Full, 3 at Medium, 41 at High

On to speculation:
-Something doesn't seem quite right about those numbers, in the first week Arenanet reported over 400k concurrent users (SWTOR had 350k... it's hard to find other comparisons) and it's highly unlikely that they've passed that since.
-My guild sees 15~ log in each day, down from 25~ at launch (we have 50 members) so taken as a microcosm, the population has probably halved since release. Of the 50, 15 are(were) active Rift players pre-SL, but only 4 have levelled past 52 in SL.

I still really enjoy GW2 and play almost every day, I don't feel it's in trouble at all, and although they're overly ambitious with their events, once the tech gets sorted out it'll be great, and if they keep delivering content the pace they are now... I'm going to be playing for a long time. The best part for me is that I could stop, and then start again whenever, I find sub fees a real PITA!

[Tolmos]

I'm not going to pull up the posts for reference, but from official sources:
-Over 2 million copies were sold (as of mid September)
-Servers can hold a maximum of 40,000 players
-Server population is based on concurrent users and not accounts on the server
-51 servers
-7 servers listed at Full, 3 at Medium, 41 at High

On to speculation:
-Something doesn't seem quite right about those numbers, in the first week Arenanet reported over 400k concurrent users (SWTOR had 350k... it's hard to find other comparisons) and it's highly unlikely that they've passed that since.
-My guild sees 15~ log in each day, down from 25~ at launch (we have 50 members) so taken as a microcosm, the population has probably halved since release. Of the 50, 15 are(were) active Rift players pre-SL, but only 4 have levelled past 52 in SL.

That 40,000 users maximum on a server... I have a hard time believing that they could mean 40,000 concurrently playing users. Besides EVE, I have yet to see a game whose server supported more than 10,000-15,000 users at once, and even then it's a stretch. After all the threads on Rifts forums doing maths and using /who, I have a hard time believing these servers can even support 5,000 concurrent players. :-P

That said, I'd say they have not surpassed that 400k mark. I say that because the first week there were over 15 servers on full, all the rest were on high except for 1. If that week was the week they claimed 400k concurrent users and only 7 are on full now, the rest except 3 on high, the population has dropped. It's still a vast population, but not quite where it was.

[Diarch]

... their gear grind is getting Koreaney.

Definitely my word of the week.

[Salamol]

That 40,000 users maximum on a server... I have a hard time believing that they could mean 40,000 concurrently playing users. Besides EVE, I have yet to see a game whose server supported more than 10,000-15,000 users at once, and even then it's a stretch. After all the threads on Rifts forums doing maths and using /who, I have a hard time believing these servers can even support 5,000 concurrent players. :-P

As a bit more napkin math, there are around 40 zones in GW2, so that's 1000 per zone. I know the WvW maps are capped at around 450, and of course the overflow system is/was often in effect in busy places. But yes, it seems really high and would better suit a "total number of accounts living on that server." If that were the case, it comes out at 2.04 million accounts, and there should be much more than that if 2million sales were made before the middle of September.

[Nestran]

What really is the status of GW2 now?

I bought the thing and couldn't be motivated to get out of the starting area. Just didn't do anything for me.

I'm curious as to how the game is widely viewed now? Is it tanking hard?

Tanked for me. I got through the starter area and mostly through the next zone and it just felt so "What's the point?". I enjoy appearance as much as the next guy but I don't want it to be the one thing to achieve (Yeah, I know there are other things to achieve). If the costumes were all there were to Rift, I wouldn't be playing it either.
I like my trinity and I like my "Gear treadmill" as do many others. There's a reason WoW lived as long as it has and Rift is doing as well as it is. AN was afraid to go after a market that they felt was dominated by WoW so they tried to make the WoW/EQ2/hand full of others model look worn out.

Barbie wars 2 tried to fix something that, TBH, was not broken. Now they are trying to back peddle a teeny bit and alienating the players that actually do enjoy the game.

Dark days ahead for that one...

[-Swag-]

I'm curious as to how the game is widely viewed now? Is it tanking hard?

If you like the Rift endgame, GW2 is definitely a cap-and-quit game for you. Fun to level up; do the exploration and go through the story, but then the game just hits a wall.

[Goodberry]

GW2 is getting a lot of hate now, and I'm surprised by that as I was surprised by the excessive love before launch.

It's a big and complex game which has been out few months, and aks for no monthly subs. I think it's very good for the casual/explorer types (like me). If ArenaNet can keep the ball rolling with (free) patches and (unfree) expansions, I don't see any particular wall.

If all goes well and NCSoft doesn't do its worst to kill the game, I see it at a moderately successful "niche" game, the same future I foresee for Rift (again, if all goes well).

Anyway, I think the time of MMO games with millions of players has come to an end. I am not so sure millions are even actively playing WoW any more, if you exclude the Chinese market which has its own characteristics.

[Polynikes]

Posting on these forums mentioning a game other than Rift will most likely result in hate. I still enjoy GW2 on a casual basis I love exploration and the world is very rich and well done. Plus I love the combat much more fluid than most MMOs

[Tolmos]

GW2 is getting a lot of hate now, and I'm surprised by that as I was surprised by the excessive love before launch.

Tbh, the moment they declared ascended gear on Nov 15th I saw this coming, mainly because it turned away the only group defending the game. It was a niche game that suddenly tried to alienate its niche crowd. It would be like Mortal Online or EVE suddenly declaring that all PvP was consensual EVERYWHERE in the game. Who would defend those games on forums then?

GW2 was not designed to cater to the classic themepark crowds (EQ, WoW, Rift, etc). It was designed more to cater to the GW1 crowds and anyone tired of the above games, or at least wanting something different. A game with a stat plateau, where playing was simply for the fun of exploration. Expansions would include new skills, new zones, new stories, new puzzles, new PvP zones, new classes, new races, and new gear DESIGNS... but no new stats. No more chasing the carrot, no more hamster on wheel gear grinds. So sayeth the manifesto and all that...

That's where the love came from. It was different, and people loved the idea of different.

So when the ascended gear got announced and information came out that they were going to create a stat difference between exotic and legendary (none existed prior to Nov 15th. Exotics were, for all intents and purposes, expected by the playerbase to remain BiS forever since legendaries matched their stats exactly), and then they were going to create a new tier of gear to gap that difference, people freaked the crap out.

Sure. it's just 3 items now, but they have already announced this is only the start. They'll finish the tier, and what then? A full set of legendary gear at the same grind as the weapons? That's a looooooot of grind. Normally it wouldn't matter, but it affects WvW. That's kind of a big deal.

Why did they freak out? Why all the hate? Because GW2 had focused on pulling in all the people who wanted to get away from that. All the content locusts looking for a gear grind had played, got bored, moved on. A few still hadn't reached max level, or desperately hoped they could convince Anet to turn the game into a WoW clone, but for the most part the original target audience was the main crowd hanging around. So, when they got alienated... who did that leave to defend the game?

People who love gear grind chose games that did a better job (Rift, WoW, etc).
People who hate gear grind had just gotten alienated and were the ones raging.
People who dgaf one way or the other are in game playing or just walked away for another reason besides this... either way they aren't on any forum defending the game.

That's where the hate came from

[Goodberry]

Posting on these forums mentioning a game other than Rift will most likely result in hate. I still enjoy GW2 on a casual basis I love exploration and the world is very rich and well done. Plus I love the combat much more fluid than most MMOs

Actually, I read GW2's forum now and then and the amount of hate against the game there, currently, is appalling.

Ok. I think ArenaNet did a blunder, but I agree with Tolmos that it was probably forced on them by NCSoft.

My take about what happened is that so many complained about "lack of end game" that the suits at NCSoft, a company surely not known for its wise decisions (imho, AION could have been the main WoW competitor, instead of going free to play and going bad all the same, if they had added just a few PvE servers), forced ArenaNet to add vertical progression.

Now, maybe it's because I always played games with vertical progression, but though I agree it probably IS a blunder, I fail to understand why it's felt by so many as SO game breaking. The things I love about GW2 are the art, the music, the character models, the huge world, the spectacular cities, the personal stories, the Vistas, even the combat system, which turned out to be very fun though I had misgivings about it. It is a GREAT game, currently second after Rift in my book. To say the truth, I didn't even know that GW2 had only horizontal progression before last patch.

Saying that it's a blunder, and asking ArenaNet to roll back on it? Yes. Quitting a game you like, because of that? Are you kidding? It's like I abandoned Rift because the new dungeons are too difficult for my tastes (just an example, I don't know them yet). Annoying doesn't mean game-breaking, there were a lot of things I found annoying in Vanilla WoW, and it's my favourite game ever.

[Amethyriel]

the item difference wont be big most likely, it's just to give the item progression motivated people a grind. for me, the item carrot in gw2 is simply not there but i also only play it casually. some peope need one to keep playing a mmorpg.

it seems the gw1+ butthurt ex themepark players+ casuals don't generate enough money on the gem store, so they have to cater to the progression+grind oriented ones.

maybe it's also a psychological thing.

- i don't have to pay to keep playing the game
-> i don't have to get my moneys worth out of a sub

- i don't have to keep playing and catch up because there is no real item progression and i don't have to dedicate myself to raiding and competition

-> i can drop the game anytime, join anytime and not loose much

this certainly benefits the players, but probably doesn't look good on ncsofts wallets

[Goodberry]

The trick is managing to draw vertical/grind oriented players without alienating the big GW1 player base which sees that as hell on Earth (or Tyria). It needs a flexible approach and good PR skills.