Guild Wars 2: Is ArenaNet a Victim of Misplaced Devotion? - MMORPG.com

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Guild Wars 2: Is ArenaNet a Victim of Misplaced Devotion? - MMORPG.com

From the onset of what the general public understands of massive layoffs in the gaming industry, these ejections are usually a stark foreshadowing of a darker picture. While that may not specifically be the case in ArenaNets case, or at least, it may be too early to tell whether this restructuring may indeed produce a leaner more profitable ANet, it behooves us to postulate on the broader picture of what ArenaNet may be leaving behind, and why we may not be out of the woods just yet.

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alkarionlog

problem with gw2 is they didn't evolved they make things worse, you could say teh lay off is a sign of something they did long ago

but here is the problem also, I don't even care if gw2 will continue or close shop, the game is not what is was for years now

Aeander

Where I think Arenanet went wrong was in not properly supporting the original Guild Wars ALONGSIDE Guild Wars 2.

I accept that Guild Wars 2 is different. I don't like it nearly as much, but it makes business sense, when developing a new live service sequel, to not cannibalize your original audience.

But when you tell your fans that the sequel will be everything they love about your current game in an open world, stop content development for the current game, and then launch a game that is NOTHING like your current game, then I'm sorry, but you've made a bad decision and your original fans have every right to be angry.

Guild Wars 1, the best game ever made in my opinion, deserved better. It's fine that its sequel is a different type of game, but it deserved more expansions, graphical overhauls, engine improvements, and continued support. It doesn't deserve to linger around in maintenance mode.

SpottyGekko

I can't recall any game "vastly improving" after significant layoffs and/or "restructuring". It's usually the writing on the wall, it's days are numbered, etc.

Maybe ANet will buck the trend, but I'm not holding my breath on that one...

rojoArcueid

Aeander said:

Where I think Arenanet went wrong was in not properly supporting the original Guild Wars ALONGSIDE Guild Wars 2.

I accept that Guild Wars 2 is different. I don't like it nearly as much, but it makes business sense, when developing a new live service sequel, to not cannibalize your original audience.

But when you tell your fans that the sequel will be everything they love about your current game in an open world, stop content development for the current game, and then launch a game that is NOTHING like your current game, then I'm sorry, but you've made a bad decision and your original fans have every right to be angry.

Guild Wars 1, the best game ever made in my opinion, deserved better. It's fine that its sequel is a different type of game, but it deserved more expansions, graphical overhauls, engine improvements, and continued support. It doesn't deserve to linger around in maintenance mode.

I love both games and never get tired of saying it's my favorite in the genre, but i agree with you there.

As much as i like the Living Story I think they should have one team creating expansions for GW2 and a smaller team working on GW, instead of two teams doing different things in one game.

Whatever ANET decides to do from now on, i hope it makes the game better, both games actually.

TheDarkrayne

SpottyGekko said:

I can't recall any game "vastly improving" after significant layoffs and/or "restructuring". It's usually the writing on the wall, it's days are numbered, etc.



Maybe ANet will buck the trend, but I'm not holding my breath on that one...

Plenty will have done. It's only recently that company layoffs has become 'news'. We never used to know when these things happened.

Lokero

Aeander said:

Where I think Arenanet went wrong was in not properly supporting the original Guild Wars ALONGSIDE Guild Wars 2.

I accept that Guild Wars 2 is different. I don't like it nearly as much, but it makes business sense, when developing a new live service sequel, to not cannibalize your original audience.

But when you tell your fans that the sequel will be everything they love about your current game in an open world, stop content development for the current game, and then launch a game that is NOTHING like your current game, then I'm sorry, but you've made a bad decision and your original fans have every right to be angry.

Guild Wars 1, the best game ever made in my opinion, deserved better. It's fine that its sequel is a different type of game, but it deserved more expansions, graphical overhauls, engine improvements, and continued support. It doesn't deserve to linger around in maintenance mode.

Yeah, Everquest made a sequel that was totally different, but at least they had the good sense to keep developing both.  It really helped them a lot in the long run... if they had gone full in on EQ2, they'd both probably have been shut down by now.

I'm not sure what Square ended up doing with FF11?  I saw them release more updates along the way after 14 came out, but I don't know how much they were really working on the game.

Scellow

Their problem is they focused on developint features for single player experiences aka living story

They made an MMO and they kept focusing on single player shit, i keep saying it, and this is the proof that i was right

You don't focus on single player experiences in an MMO, fire these developers

Aeander

Scellow said:

Their problem is they focused on developint features for single player experiences aka living story

They made an MMO and they kept focusing on single player shit, i keep saying it, and this is the proof that i was right

You don't focus on single player experiences in an MMO, fire these developers

*Facepalm*

You do realize that those "single player experiences" come with MMO maps, right?

alkarionlog

Aeander said:

Scellow said:

Their problem is they focused on developint features for single player experiences aka living story



They made an MMO and they kept focusing on single player shit, i keep saying it, and this is the proof that i was right



You don't focus on single player experiences in an MMO, fire these developers

*Facepalm*

You do realize that those "single player experiences" come with MMO maps, right?

actually this new mmo maps would mean little to nothing if the rewards was not good, till I stoped to play people used to run the same maps over and over, save for times when certain dragons did go up on other maps so people tp there to do then before returning for the old map runs

what really killed was the way you develop a char that is what really killed the game

Lokero

Aeander said:

Scellow said:

Their problem is they focused on developint features for single player experiences aka living story

They made an MMO and they kept focusing on single player shit, i keep saying it, and this is the proof that i was right

You don't focus on single player experiences in an MMO, fire these developers

*Facepalm*

You do realize that those "single player experiences" come with MMO maps, right?

Furthermore, I'd argue that the problem is they lacked any type of real focus at all.  They were swinging wildly in every direction after launch.

They tried to make a dynamic world with the original LW stuff.  But, with the performance issues and the lack of replayability, they had to change directions on that. 

Personally, I liked the original LW stuff way better than the instanced solo stuff, but I understand they wanted more replayability for newcomers, etc..

They tried to go down the less-solo path with raids and fractals, but that largely blew up in their face, because the majority of the player base wasn't interested in stuff like raiding.  Therefore, HoT was an abject failure.

They tried vertical level designs, but people whined it was too confusing.  So, they went back to flat zones in PoF.

They tried large, involved more open-world events in HoT with their meta events.  I'd argue those went over fairly well, but it makes some of those old zones nearly impossible to explore since they are locked by event progress half the time.

So, they cut back on that after HoT, as well.

They tried to focus on cool legendaries/items, but apparently that system just had too high a workload, so they abandoned that mostly.

They tried to focus on a housing system, but that got scrapped, also.

They completely abandoned their dungeons, altogether, post-launch.  So, that was another dead and abandoned system.

I think you can see the trend.  There's plenty more half-hearted systems like that, especially if you include sPvP/WvW alongside PvE.

I guess you could even say that, not only did they focus on GW2 to the abandonment of GW1, but they also kept scrapping GW2 systems to focus on other games that eventually got cancelled.

So, really, they didn't put enough proper focus into either game.

Aeander

Lokero said:

Aeander said:

Scellow said:

Their problem is they focused on developint features for single player experiences aka living story

They made an MMO and they kept focusing on single player shit, i keep saying it, and this is the proof that i was right

You don't focus on single player experiences in an MMO, fire these developers

*Facepalm*

You do realize that those "single player experiences" come with MMO maps, right?

Furthermore, I'd argue that the problem is they lacked any type of real focus at all.  They were swinging wildly in every direction after launch.

They tried to make a dynamic world with the original LW stuff.  But, with the performance issues and the lack of replayability, they had to change directions on that. 

Personally, I liked the original LW stuff way better than the instanced solo stuff, but I understand they wanted more replayability for newcomers, etc..

They tried to go down the less-solo path with raids and fractals, but that largely blew up in their face, because the majority of the player base wasn't interested in stuff like raiding.  Therefore, HoT was an abject failure.

They tried vertical level designs, but people whined it was too confusing.  So, they went back to flat zones in PoF.

They tried large, involved more open-world events in HoT with their meta events.  I'd argue those went over fairly well, but it makes some of those old zones nearly impossible to explore since they are locked by event progress half the time.

So, they cut back on that after HoT, as well.

They tried to focus on cool legendaries/items, but apparently that system just had too high a workload, so they abandoned that mostly.

They tried to focus on a housing system, but that got scrapped, also.

They completely abandoned their dungeons, altogether, post-launch.  So, that was another dead and abandoned system.

I think you can see the trend.  There's plenty more half-hearted systems like that, especially if you include sPvP/WvW alongside PvE.

I guess you could even say that, not only did they focus on GW2 to the abandonment of GW1, but they also kept scrapping GW2 systems to focus on other games that eventually got cancelled.

So, really, they didn't put enough proper focus into either game.

This criticism I agree with. It took them far too long to hit a design direction that didn't waste resources on half-baked ideas.

There are successful ideas that are core to the modern iteration of the game. Namely, Elite Specs, mounts, and a 3-4 month release cadence for new maps. These are all massive improvements to the game. But these are also changes limited by their late inclusion.

Years 1-3 were a sloppy disaster with Seasons 1 and 2 being abject, inconsistent failures. The game had no coherent direction, and I almost quit before the announcement of Heart of Thorns on my birthday.

Had the game had mounts at release, it could have maintained more of the traditionalists it was gunning for.

If elite specs were a thing at launch, we'd probably be sitting on 4-5 elite specs per class.

If the modern release cadence and quality were a thing from the start, the game wouldn't have been bleeding players with sloppy biweekly updates.

GeezerGamer

GW2 was a victim of it's own success. The original design was to take what was wrong with the (circa 2010) genre and correct these issues. This was a great idea, but they focused far too deeply on what was wrong with other games, which the growing fan base loved, but not enough on what worked within the genre. ANET attempted to re-invent the wheel. They didn't start with a base game that worked and improved on what didn't. No, rather they wanted to push the innovation narrative. The problem is that innovation comes from the expression "necessity is the mother of invention" Many of GW2's innovations weren't really needed in the genre. ANET was more concerned with not being a WoW clone than creating something that actually worked well. So there were massive and unneeded trade offs that really hurt this game out of the gate. This is why I have always referred to GW2 as "Not-WoW Online" Because that was it's design focus.

Aeander

I don't know if this is entirely fair, but I blame Colin Johanson. The Colin years (launch and Heart of Thorns) were miserable, characterized by inconsistent release quality and wasted features, while the MO and Mike Z years have actually been great, though too late in the game's life to right the ship.

Scot

I think GW2 has started on the path WoW has been on for some time now, future updates will be what shows how true that is.

Alomar

While maybe not in the majority, I and everyone I know only played it for a brief few months at launch. We played it for the WvWvW rvr style of pvp, but maxed out on everything there was to do/accomplish/reach way too quickly. While I enjoyed it quite immensely for that period, everyone I know described it as an extremely casual game.

Sovrath

Aeander said:

Where I think Arenanet went wrong was in not properly supporting the original Guild Wars ALONGSIDE Guild Wars 2.

They couldn't.

Part of why they wanted to change how they developed/updated their game was because it was getting too expensive to expand/develop Guild Wars.

Their "buy to play" model didn't scale well over time with that game.

I read this in an early article when they started making Guild Wars 2. Can I find the article. No. No I can't.

Xiaoki

Scellow said:

Their problem is they focused on developint features for single player experiences aka living story

They made an MMO and they kept focusing on single player shit, i keep saying it, and this is the proof that i was right

You don't focus on single player experiences in an MMO, fire these developers

Yeah, the Living Story crap is definitely where ArenaNet screwed the pooch.

ArenaNet put out chapter after chapter of this nonsense and the revenue went down and down.

They kept doing the same thing over and over again and expected different results. Thats insanity.

Manute

When Gaile Grey was fired after 18 yrs I had a very bad feeling about the direction Anet was going.

Hariken

For me, I really loved GW2 at launch. Loved the races and lore. I even bought the two novels set around the time before the game with the failure of the alliances. All those early promises about how the game would be different. But I don't just blame the devs for how it all went to crap. I blame it on the player base wanting the game to have Wow features. They were always complaining about how it would be better if it was more like Wow. So now to me the game is just a mess that keeps getting worse.

Nhisso13

You mean people got bored spamming 5 poorly animated skills of which many are useless? Noooo way

Seelinnikoi

My favorite soundtrack of the event!

Asch126

"A new game, even of the mobile persuasion would have been an encouraging improvement"

Living under a rock or already forgot Diablo Immortal? Them implying that the reason why resources were being taken from GW2 was to make a mobile game would've crippled ANet far more.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Asch126

Warhawke80 said:

It failed because it never came close to living up to this.





It failed Because before launch their booth at gamescon had more to do with an art exhibit than it did the game.



It failed because of the general Political Horseshit surrounding the games and film industry.



It failed because it had a cult following instead of a Mass following.

Ah, the manifesto they ignored almost immediately.

Still wondering where the hell are the Leviathans that were teased at the end.

Aeander

Guild Wars 2 isn't so much a problem of player numbers, but of monetizing those numbers. If you log in, it's still hella active. But because of its business model being ironically too easy to ignore, they aren't raking in a proportionate amount of money.