Guild Wars 2 Release Follow-up

A Letter to Our Fans on GuildWars.com follows up on recent reports of a Guild Wars 2 delay, as ArenaNet's Mike O'Brien accurately points out that because the game has never had a set release date, it can't really be delayed, and since he is correct, we apologize for helping cause confusion in that regard. When the online RPG sequel was announced there were plans for a beta test in the second half of last year before testing was delayed, so there does seem to be an acknowledgement of fan disappointment that Guild Wars 2 won't be released this year (which is what the investor materials he refers to seem to indicate), but he wants it to be clear that recent changes at NC West will be to the game's benefit:
There have been some published rumors over the past few days about Guild Wars 2 delays, and I'm writing you today to set the record straight.

You've all seen announcements about restructuring at NCsoft West, and it's natural to wonder whether that restructuring impacts ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 development. In fact, the reason NCsoft West is restructuring itself is so that the company can put all of its focus into its top-tier games like Guild Wars 2. Our team continues to grow, and has the strong support and financial backing we need to achieve our goal of making Guild Wars 2 the best online role-playing game ever created.

On Friday, NCsoft released investor materials that showed a very broad release window for Guild Wars 2, with the explanation that release timing is still "to be announced." ArenaNet has never given a release date for Guild Wars 2 other than "when it's done." NCsoft's investor materials are a reflection of that philosophy.

I know some fans had hoped for a smaller gap between the launch of Guild Wars: Eye of the North and the start of beta testing for Guild Wars 2, but we communicated last summer that it would be some time before we could commit to any beta or launch dates. Guild Wars 2 is a large and ambitious game, and we're going to take the time to do it right.

I'm immensely proud of what our team has accomplished and continues to accomplish with the development of Guild Wars 2. We'll have a lot more to say when we're closer to release. Until then, we thank you for your continued interest and ask you to stay tuned.
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Re: Guild Wars 2 Release Follow-up
Feb 17, 2009, 14:19
14.
Re: Guild Wars 2 Release Follow-up Feb 17, 2009, 14:19
Feb 17, 2009, 14:19
 
1) Now, if you mean that you can't run a bot program, then I have zero sympathy for you in that case.

I'm not talking about a bot, I'm talking about them actively changing areas, altering spawns and increasing enchantment hate for the specific purpose of countering builds that are good at farming loot (and pretty much nothing else). Then they came out with all these bullshit excuses that they "had no problem with people farming loot", while at the same time practically ruining whole areas just to stop one particular loot farming combo. Lying to your customer base is always a great way to keep them playing your game.

If people like to farm loot, LET THEM FUCKING FARM LOOT! Who the fuck cares? I personally didn't care to make one build in such a specific way that all it could do was the equivalent of "running Pindle", but one entire area got so raped specifically to counter one fucking loot build that it also completely destroyed the mission that you had to do there. That mission had been a ton of fun up until their Nazi Anti-Loot bullshit swept through.

2) Where does this occur? The only place I can think of is in Prophecies where you have to go a match against other players but that's part of the pre-Searing Nolani Academy storyline.

I was more talking about PvE being gimped for the sake of the whining PvP horde. Neither side wanted to really worry about the other side, but everytime the PvP players didn't like something, it got changed in their favor and the PvE crowd got fucked out of just about everything. Perhaps they've finally changed that, I don't know.

3) Worthless in what way?

All I remember is the old party bullshit where you had to check the chat channel for someone shouting "NEED ROGUE!!" and you had to walk over to him and click, so from your description this probably got changed at some point. Cool. People were only clamoring for a party matchmaking screen for three months, it's nice that they finally did something after that...

4 However, I'd rather see a level cap than a stratospherically high level that is only attainable by grinding. I enjoy Guild Wars because it's the very antithesis of grinding.

Why does a high level cap automatically mean grinding? If there is no level cap, then your character can keep growing through normal play. if the end content is level 60 or so, and your character can go 70, 80, 90, so what? A level 20 cap is retarded in a game where character construction and building is a large part of its core.

5 Can you elaborate on this more?

This might have changed in the expansions. When the first shortcut runners appeared on the scene, the large large large majority of players thought it was freaking awesome. My best 30 minutes in Guild Wars came when a runner took me and a party of other level 9 fodder through a level 20 area. We were on our own, he ofcourse ran straight through. But I managed to keep alive for 3 or 4 areas, dodging all kinds of shit that would kill me in a single blow. It was awesome.
Arenasoft's first response to the shortcut running was to alter all the maps so that the runner's resting spots were now suddenly seeded with monsters, then to inflict massive enchantment hate (upkeep enchantments were absolutely required for running) across the entire area. The runners adapted, and Arenasoft tried to make other other changes to by all means prevent anyone from shortcut running.

Why? Because a few dozen people somehow felt that THEIR enjoyment of the game was being affected because others were shortcut running. And why was that? Well, because of the possibility that a character that had ran a shortcut might go into a PvP arena at level 10 while wearing level 20 armor.
See also point 2.

6 The Mesmer, Dervish, Ritualist and Paragon classes, let me show you them.

Kindly also show me the 75% of all monsters that have a "dispel enchantment while doing (Mana cost of spell) damage to player". AT WILL ability.
It got so bad with their fucking bullshit enchantment hate that everyone simply stopped playing enchanting builds.

That was right at the point where I quit. They may have changed some of these things, but I've never been interested enough to find out if their philosophy had changed.

With GW2, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, since they had talked about at least massively upping the cap.

Creston

This comment was edited on Feb 17, 2009, 14:21.
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