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Guild Wars 2 lives up to the hype
Jayaris
Member Posts: 308
in Guild Wars 2
Just like this other game I used to know :
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/09/review-warhamme/
Does living up to hype and having good early impressions make a game a success?
Historically, of course not..
In your minds - beyond a shadow of a doubt.
So I suppose my question is,
Do you think that Guild Wars 2 will follow the trend of every other highly anticipated MMORPG in recent history?
Or
Do you think that it will be the exception to the rule?
Hi
Comments
Only time will tell. I have a feeling thought that GW2 will do very well.
You pretty much gave one example of a game that failed and then said that all the other MMORPGs that were hyped have failed. Which is false.
There are a lot of games out there, including GW1, which have healthy populations and are still fun for a lot of people.
There are not only two options. It is not "BEST BIGGEST MOST AWESOMEST GAME EVER" or "FAIL GAME."
If any of the games were hyped to the level I'm talking about I assume I might've heard of it, I'm more specifically talking about WAR, Age of Conan, Aion etc.
Are you sure? 'Cause I've been on the internet a while and 90% of the people I see seem to believe so.
Hi
Funny thing is that Guild Wars 2 actually delivers on the promise of Warhammer Online. Wether its in PVE with dynamic quests, which where just a gimmick in Warhammer but which are the lifeblood in Guild Wars 2.
Or PVP in its World vs World. When I first how Warhammer would be oriented towards World PVP I was so excited, until I saw that bad design decisions killed of any world pvp beyond tier 1.
Guild Wars 2 on the other hand does create the DAoC 3 faction world pvp perfection feeling. I had more fun in the beta weekend doing WvW then I had with any other game before. Where Warhammer (and many other games) split up communities across zones, became the victim of faction imbalance, and created gameplay rules that stimulated avoiding combat, Guild Wars 2 almost seems to have closely watched Warhammers mistake and corrected all of them in their game.
No faction imbalance due to the 3 server vs server system that connects servers of similar size and power.
Avoiding combat is not stimulated and the map system and rules stimulate attacking the other factions head on, with constant big zergs in the eternal battlegrounds regions and tons of smaller zergs and small group play in all of the other worlds.
Genius siege system that lives up to its promise and is all that other games (WoW/AoC and Warhammer among many) have tried but failed to create at the level that GW2 does.
The list goes on and on. Even if I would get bored with the PVE (which i doubt) I could have endless fun with the WvW system which is the REAL sequal to DAoC we have waited for longer then 10 years.
guild wars cannot fail. they are already gonna make a TON of money off of box sales and theres always people that buy the item mall stuff. also, guild wars is historically very good with their expansion sales. they made 3 highly successful expansions and they have a very devout fanbase that will undoubtedly buy gw2, collectors edition and merchandise, plus they are collecting tons of people along the way. The current amount of content in the game right now is already more than enough to justify the box price. GW is very good at retaining fans because they dont make them feel cheated and milked for their subscription money. Once you buy the box you can play whenever you want, you dont feel obligated to pay 15 bucks a month if you just wanna hop on every now and then to check stuff out.
Most memorable games: AoC(Tryanny PvP), RIFT, GW, GW2, Ragnarok Online, Aion, FFXI, FFXIV, Secret World, League of Legends (Silver II rank)
That should tell you about how credible the article you linked is.
GW2 won't be an "exception to the rule" because there is no rule. Anyone who thinks a game will fail because of its hype or because of some recent trend is just an angry hipster.
GW2 sets itself apart in blatantly obvious ways.
"B-but all MMOs are doomed to failure!"
Yeah, okay.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
The interesting thing will be to see how WOW reacts to GW2 upon release (if not now already). I believe GW2 will be hugely successful due to the items you mentioned, including their dynamic events "quest" system and their competitive structured pvp system.
No doubt Blizzard will entice players with another free gimmick in order to sell MoP and maintain their subs numbers. But as GW2's numbers rise (as I suspect/predict they will), it will be very interesting to see how Blizzard shifts WOW towards a more GW2-ish mmorpg.
The reason why WAR flopped is EA has NO CLUE how to run an MMO.
There were ghost towns everywhere, and with the current guesting system, that's not going to happen.
As long as Arenanet doesn't screw something up, which I don't think they will, it'll be smooth sailing.
I played GW1, have already pre purchased GW2 and played in the BWE. I love what GW2 is bringing to the mmo table and am very excited for release. However, to say that "guild wars cannot fail", there's always the chance that for some reason Anet blows it after release or with an expansion or another more popular mmo appears which steals from GW2's playerbase. Though I'm extremely confident in Anet and see GW2 becoming one of the major mmorpgs in NA, there is always the chance of failure. Hopefully the knowledge of that chance keeps Anet on their toes and keeps them hard at work continuing to create such a marvelous game!
I am sure it will take some hit but the vast majority of gamers that continue to play WoW are what I call the casual crowd who dont play often. I would bet that GW2 might pull a lot of WoW players but almost none of thsoe will leave WoW for good instead they will use GW2 as their mainstay and log into WoW only during raid nights, much how it happens now. at the height of my raiding days 1 and half years ago the majority our guild only logged in if it was a raid night, the rest of the time we barely could scrape a full group to do a heroic but on a raid night you would have 40+ people on
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
Playing: GW2
Waiting on: TESO
Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
ANet has already sold enough boxes to fill 24 NA servers to FULL during the last BWE.
ANet has already won the game. GW2 is already a success and it's not even out, yet.
The sad thing is that those people will be paying $15 a month to only log on 4-8 times a month for approx 4 hours each time (16-32 hrs). I used to dot hat until I decided that it just wasn't worth it anymore and cancelled my wow account. My wife still plays but rarely now. I have to say that GW2 ruined wow for us, we both just can't go back anymore; many people in our guild are doing the same.
The space per server during the first BWE was reduced in order to re-create the effect max pop servers would have on the game (a form of stress test). The 24 currently available servers will have more room for players upon release, possibly making the need for more servers not an issue. No one knows the exact number of players during the first BWE, but the grapevine has it at approx no more than 500k. When compared to SWTOR's 1.3m, Rift's 1m+, and wow's 10.2m, GW2 has a ways to go. GW2 already enjoys an approx 500k sub pop, not bad for a game still in beta!
The key factor will be how many copies GW2 is able to sell upon release and how many subs are they able to maintain and possibly even grow 3-6 months post release.
Success is relative based on how you define it. I would say profit is the best indicator of success. If GW2 turns a profit then Anet will have been successful.
ANet has already won the game. GW2 is already a success and it's not even out, yet.
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The BWE that you are referring to had A LOT of people that hadn't preordered in it. ANet was handing out invites to it by the fistful at every event they were at.
No more than 500k?
That would mean that between 48 servers (NA and EU), there were more than 10k people per server. How can you possibly know that they were putting an artificial cap on players per server in the beta?
Do you have a link or is everything you just said simply made up?
Maybe I genuinely want to know why people think the game will do well, despite all the other games people expected to do insanely well didn't.
I know plenty of people who would of staked their lifes on the success of MMO's in the past that have failed.
If you can tell me why it is you think this game will succeed and why it's different to any other MMO people knew would be a success I would be glad to hear it.
Hi
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3010494961?page=1
Your logic is akin to this mans line of thinking..
Edit : I'll admit pre-orders are more important for a game that doesn't have a sub - Given the likelihood of returning at a later date is higher.
Hi
A lot of people need to understand that many actually already own the game through pre-purchase. This is different from pre-order; there wont be any possibility to get refunds. That means ANet already won in terms of sales. However, unlike others, they know the game isnt fully ready and they are fixing it. That means that once the real reviews hit, it will be getting massive approval scores.
In other words ... it already lived up to the hype.
Boycotting EA. Why? They suck, even moreso since 2008.
You're very sorely mistaken about past games vs GW2. For example the article you linked was written by a reviewer for a site. Just like many other reviewers, they gave it high scores and praised it. Just like they do with the majority of new games. But the actual players, not reviewers on paid sites, who were there throughout the beta pushed to get a lot of things changed that were wrong with the game but Mythic didn't listen. They kept telling Mythic "change this or the game is going to suck" and they ignored it and we saw what happened within a few months of launch. I cant recall many regular players coming around claiming WAR was going to be the next WoW, that was mostly hyped up by the media. Media praise is a whole lot different than getting realistic information from normal players or experiencing the game for yourself.
On the other hand with GW2 you not only have the media praise for the game but constant praise from the thousands and thousands of players who have actually expereienced the game even in its pre-launch state. Ye sthere are some who dislike things about the game for legitimate reasons, and the obvious useless trolls just hating for the sake of hating, but the overwhelming majority really enjoy the game and are very excited for launch. Barring any really really stupid decisions and massive changes to the core of the game, it will do extremely well. No it may not be the next WoW as far as player numbers, but it will be succesful enough and have enough impact on other games releasing after it that no person in their right mind can seriously question wether or not the game was a sucess wether it be sales figures, active players, or other things such as altering the way MMOs are designed from here on out rathe rthan just continuing to copy WoW/EQ.
It may not be THE game to revolutionize the genre, but its going to be one hell of a catalyst to finally get some of these devs to try some new things and finally create that game that offers something completely new and original.
Not worth it ... Mods clearly want these sort of threads to keep on keeping on.
Have fun with the thread that starts off by screaming Gw2 is going to be Warhammer all over again.
For the first time in years, I can say GW2 will probably be the next big game. Not saying it's a killer to other games, but it will probably be around for years with healthy numbers into the millions. I haven't had the confidence in a game before that I'd say that about it. I'm not a ArenaNet fangurl type, I've never played even GW1 before GW2 beta. Just the beta weekend made me want to get GW1 and work on at least 30/50 HoM because I can honestly see myself playing GW2 for years like I did with UO, DAOC, AC1.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Well, it does blow all other MMORPGs completely out of the water, with a list of new "must have" features so long I always forget a few big ones when I try to list them all.
I get your point about early impressions going sour, but I was sold on this game based on it's design, well before I had a chance to test it and the beta event just confirmed that Arenanet have made good on the design in game. If Guild Wars 2 were to sour on me after a couple months, I think it would be time to just abandon the genre entirely, because if all this innovative design, with a solid product to translate that design into gaming reality, can't keep me happy for more than two months, it's hard for me to imagine any other title slated for release this year to have a snowball's chance in hell.
I don't want to harp on other games, but since you've brought this topic up, I think it's appropriate to make a brief comparison of my early impressions of two other recent titles, TERA and Star Wars the Old Republic.
TERA
I put a good number of hours into the first pre-order weekend for TERA. There were a few things I liked, but by the last evening of that beta, I just had no enthusiasm to keep playing. The next event I took my highest level character to level 20, just to give the game a chance to grow on me, found things slightly better, but when the third and fourth events came along? I couldn't even force myself to play for more than 10 minutes. I then canceled my pre-order and never regretted it.
SWTOR
SWTOR was an even bumpier first impression. I found the first few hours of SWTOR to be one of the worst introductory experiences for any MMO I've played in years. Slow, boring and dominated by linear quest progressions and super tedious travel related time sinks, I found myself hating the developers after the first four hour session. However, it was Star Wars! I could play a Jedi, visit some great Star Wars locales, soak up the "star warsy" feel of the game!
So, I powered through the first weekend and looked forward to the second. Things got a little better, but the time wasting run around continued further into the story line, the quests remained linear and something just felt "off" about the entire game.
I actually kept my pre-order, gave the game a real shot for two weeks, only to find I could never shake the feeling that the game was 50% time sinks, didn't really bring anything fresh to MMORPG game play and just lacked any "oomph". The third week I fell back on instanced PvP to keep me entertained, but by the end of week three, the level 50s started to dominate the matches, a situation that got worse as they started to earn gear with PvP specific stats.
Ugg... That was it for me. I got three weeks of live play time from SWTOR. Given the number of hours I played, I feel I got my money's worth. I said so with my final impressions on the SWTOR forums and just signed off, only disappointed at yet another MMO that failed to hold my attention for even a full month.
Now, Back to Guild Wars 2. Yes, I have only logged 38 hours of play time so far. Yes, previous MMO experience tells me that you can like a game through a few beta events and even through the first couple weeks of live, only to have it go sour. So, yes, I do get your point, painfully so.
However, I have never, ever felt so enthusiastic about a game after the first 38 hours of play time. Ever. Not even WoW, which I enthusiastically embraced during it's beta and went on to play for two years straight, before hoping in and out with less enthusiasm and frequency with each expansion.
On paper, GW2 seemed to be "the game" I've been waiting for since I played my first MMORPG over a dozen years ago. It wasn't just one or two features, it was a Opus Maximus of MMORPG game design that sought to address all the things that sucked about MMORPGs and address them in ways that bring the genre much closer to fulfulling it's potential for providing a long term, onoing experience of fun, immersion and comraderie!
We've seen MMO hype before. Hype and spin from lead developers who are more showment than game designers. Selling us on features and design philosophies that always fail to actually meterialize as anything other than the palest shodows of what the hype promised.
When people say "Guild Wars 2" lives up to the hype, they mean just that. All the features and elements of game design Arenanet have been telling us about and selling us on? Well, there were no smoke and mirrors involved. We didn't get some shallow, translucent reflection of what they promised. They actually delivered by fully actualizing the game they built up in our heads!
On paper, the game is one worth playing for months or years ahead. For as long as the developers can keep it fresh with live content between expansions and expasion packs that live up to, or exceed the standards set by the initial game release.
What makes the game so excitingly unique is that the game so completely lives up to it's hype that one can actually feel some degree of confidence that the game, on paper, is the game we actually get to play! Coupled with the fact that the game's design promises a long term, immersive MMORPG experience that is based around being played to have fun, rather than being played as an obstacle to some carrot at the end of a stick you can never actually catch up to and eat; you'll have to forgive some of us for being excited that the game completely appears to have lived up to the hype!
(Is the game perfect? No. However, it doesn't have to be. It's the first incarnation of an exciting new paradigm for MMORPGs. Perfection, or as near as we can get, will come closer and closer as Arenanet and others build on what Guild Wars 2 does and find ways to do the same, only better. As far as first steps go, though, it's a gigantic leap in the right direction for the genre and charts a new path that isn't stuck on the same dead end we've been traveling down since WoW was released)!
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Playing the beta usually gives you a pretty good idea of what the game is like; only a few games have surprised me after launch.
SWTOR was not a bad game IMO, but I always suspected I would play it for a while as a single player RPG and then leave.
Furthermore, I think ArenaNet has put some thought into the issues that have killed other games, and corrected systemic problems like low-pop starting zones, empty end-game, etc.
agreed
I'll have to get back to you on that one. I remember reading an article online regarding the artificial server caps; trying to find it. There are numerous articles online regarding GW2 expanding the server cap for the upcoming BWE (hence the stress test this coming monday).