Devs and Guild Wars 1

[Mintha Syl]

Originally Posted by cosyfiep

Not everyone has been around since the beginning, there are people who started after nightfall, eye etc...these people may also not have completed everything they wish. That is what is so great about this game (and bad about the other), you can jump in at ANY time and not have missed too much

You can say that! Both things. I've been around less then 4 years now. And also I only played everyday for certain periods of time, but mostly I play randomly. When I feel like playing, I just log and do it. As you said, you lose nothing by not logging, unlike most games where you either log in everyday or don't at all. And when you only play sporadically and more for fun then for adiction/habit, it's hard to get bored or tired...

(sigh, I think this was a forced OT again. Why do we always end like this?)
Anyway, WTB new content, of course.

[Perkunas]

I won't worry one way or the other about updates. They would be nice, but not going to fret about them. I just added the Trilogy to my 4th account, soon will consider the skills unlocks too.

Enjoy the game while it lasts. Perhaps someday I will run into you all in game.

[ectogasm]

Originally Posted by Malice Black

You really expect enough people to be playing this game for it to hit 10 years?!

The game's potential age is not a function of population.

Originally Posted by Malice Black

Spamadan/LA were active to a point. For the most part it was either spammers selling stuff, or people standing around using GW as a chat room.

What else do you do in town?

[Ayuhmii Shanbwa]

i figured out what people think, they think: "the more leave, the less play" which is true in most parts, but people keep coming back AND newbies show up all time, i've seen one in the guild i am in, few days ago

expect an MMO to be 10 years old? sure, as long as they dont abandon GW, which they havent, they just are busy with GW2, and THAT is why the team is smaller FOR NOW, i cant find it, but stumme said it on his wiki page somewhere (i'm not good at wiki's)

GW is NOT dead/dying, its "less active than before"

only cuz most MMO's(online games) dont last 10 years, does NOT mean none of them would

dont compare times to times, as at eotn times, GW lost alot of people i met already, yet most stayed cuz of HoM for GW2, and everyday people joined GW
and now people leave cuz they have played GW for long enough (NOT meaning they wont ever return.... at least thats not in all cases), and maybe many people played WoW, lotro, PW etc (even GW2) for as long as they wanted, and now join GW

[ectogasm]

The fact that Anet abandoned an MMO after 2-3 years on the market showed that they had really low confidence at the time that GW1 would be sustainable. Looking back at the fact that the game continued running reasonably well for another 4 years even with no expansions and little active development, I wonder if Anet has any regrets about ditching GW1 so early in the life cycle, and if in hindsight they might have chosen a different course. It does makes me sad to imagine all the potential that is now lost.

[Martin Firestorm]

It wasn't lack of confidence at all. The 6 month development cycle became unsustainable as the game originally was envisioned. Remember, each new release was supposed to be a fully stand alone game if that's what you wanted, with its own starter area, new skills, and new professions. You could buy factions even if you did not own prophecies, etc. And it all was supposed to feed you into pvp as endgame, meaning anyone could bring any of the skills or professions from any of the games into any match, meaning everyone had to have all of the games to be competitive, meaning all skills had to be balanced with that in mind, and so forth. Of course, they could have just added new areas to the world, and new quests and storyline, with each release, avoiding all that complexity and making the releases more traditional expansions rather than stand alone games. But that was not what this game was intended to be originally, and the pvp crowd would have howled at the lack of attention. It's hard to remeber now, but this was intended as a pvp-centric, esport game. That's why they're named arenanet.

By the time they realized this the engine already was years old, so a sequel made sense. We were supposed to have it within a couple of years after eotn. Why it took so long I do not know, but it all makes sense to me.

[ectogasm]

I don't think it makes much of a difference to PvP whether Anet focused more attention on PvE or simply stopped development altogether. Either way, they overshot the importance of PvP in the original design and started to make adjustments for that with Nightfall. They could have directly addressed their concerns with the skill system, for example by reworking useless, existing skills rather than adding entirely new ones and increasing the complexity of possible interactions. They did not add new elites in EotN for example, and many of the skills they did add were PvE only, so already they were scaling these issues back and could have continued along these lines.

Technical limitations of the engine (graphics, etc.) could have been addressed with client updates (much like other MMOs, like EVE, have done). But they didn't have the confidence to continue their plans with the existing technology and business model, which is largely why they chose to start on a sequel instead. I suspect that after EotN they figured the game would pretty much curl up and die. I don't think they anticipated that it would keep drawing interest nearly twice as long after the end of development than it spent during active development. Perhaps it was _because_ of this continued support in GW1 that they were able to keep extending the development of GW2. I think they underestimated the game's long-term appeal, even with no technology improvements, and that's why the question is about hindsight: If they had known the game would still be able to draw interest beyond August 2012, would they still have chosen to stop development in 2007 in favor of a sequel, instead of continuing to produce profitable add-ons for GW1? Only Anet can answer that, I'm just thinking out loud.

[Martin Firestorm]

Well, I guess its hard to say. But if they really thought they could crank out the sequel in two years I can see why they figured that was the better bet. It would have been tough to make all the changes in GW2 by just modifying the GW1 engine.

[Bristlebane]

I would love to see a "Guild Wars 1.5" which would basically be a modernized GW1 retaining most of it's features with a few GW2 features sprinkled in.
* Better textures
* More character customization options for all professions, not just core.
* Maintain GW1's low game requirements
* Revamped PvP from ground up to cater both novice and elites.
* Skills revamped to less total like GW2, but keeping full bars like GW1.
* Same movement and targeting style as GW1

[Gill Halendt]

Originally Posted by Martin Firestorm

The point is maintenance mode is low cost enough that there's not much reason not to keep the game running as long as ppl are playing. How many ppl have to play for anet to keep it running? I don't have that answer. But I know a few that do and this forum makes it obvious there are a few more, and we all know the forum population drastically under represents the player population, so draw your own conclusions. There are a lot of ppl who didn't start playing at release, that's for sure. I think another year or two is not unreasonable to expect. I won't be surprised if it goes longer.

That's exactly what I was implying: the game keeping up and people playing it everyday for some more years, but, sadly, I'm not expecting any significant content update as of now.

[Age]

They could attact some new customers if they revamped it and added some new small content no new area.

[Cuilan]

Less activity on a few fan sites may mean a few less players, but much of it is still the site's management.

[Age]

They could alway increase the level cap to 30 or 40.How would the old players find out.

[targetdrone]

Originally Posted by instanceskiller

I was wondering whether that is still true or whether they have silently moved over permanently to guild wars 2. Have they said anything?

I doubt they'd invest too much into GW1 at this moment - they need the resources at GW2 - there's plenty to be done there.

There are a fair number of things that might make GW1 significantly better but they aren't guaranteed to work either. For instance I believe the Embark Beach was to be the place for "everyone" to gather for stuff - form PUGs etc, but hardly anyone hangs out there for that purpose.

The idea was nice but the issue I see is the sort of people who want to do missions/quests/PvP would be the sort who won't want to hang around at an outpost for hours to try to start a group. They want to do something. They're not those traders who don't mind standing there all day trying to sell something.

Maybe it'll work better if they had some sort of advanced party search/queuing interface that you can use WHILE doing something else. For instance perhaps you could queue for Fort Aspenwood while doing a vanquish with some heroes, if there are enough people queued, you all get a pop up, say yes and you get sent in once enough other people click accept (within the time limit). Similarly you could queue for a mission, but for this you get sent to the outpost once enough people accept. Of course the problem is you'd be stuck with the build and gear you were using, but it'll be rather tricky to provide a user friendly nonexploitable way of having a different build and gear for the queued mission.

To prevent spamming you only allow preset messages/items (missions, outposts) and limit the amount of stuff you can queue for (3?), and you group the items - so if there are 7 LFG for "Raisu Palace" you'd just see one entry with the player count of 7 there, and the queuing players only get a popup when the count hits team size. Would be nice if it gave you a list of the queuing player names if you clicked on the player count .

[Darcy]

They don't even have a good LFG system in GW2. You still have to stand around spamming for group members. I don't think they know how to design a good LFG.

[fadekill]

Originally Posted by Age

They could alway increase the level cap to 30 or 40.How would the old players find out.

Please don't come up with such an idea. Increasing level cap is a terrible thing to "enlarge" content. GW1 didn't need this and won't need this ever. I still can't unterstand why they want to increase the level cap of gw2 in the future.

[KotCR]

I'd probably start playing a little bit again myself if they'd just get that Paragon update out already. It's way way overdue, and it's the only "compulsory" thing left to really fix in the game, seems the PvP population aspect is mostly beyond repair now anyway due to the game's age and how the community have moved on.

I know alot of people probably still think the Ranger needs an update, but I guess in some way you could say that for all professions except the three that got overhauled. But the Ranger is still a solid, capable and versatile all-rounder even if it's not quite as effective as other profession in most roles, and last I checked it did still make occasional appearances in GvG.

But the Paragon is a one-trick pony PvE wise and is still in desperate need of a rework, more so than any other class, and I doubt it's made any appearances in GvG at all for the past year (or two).

Unfourtunetly my feeling is that they've abandoned the game aswell as far as content-updates are concerned, at this point with so much silence from ANet I've pretty much given up any hope.

It'd be nice if in one of the many GW2 interviews they regularly do on the media circuit if somebody would jump them with a question along the lines of "So what's going on with Guild Wars 1 at the moment?". Though I expect they'd decline to comment.

[targetdrone]

Originally Posted by KotCR

But the Ranger is still a solid, capable and versatile all-rounder even if it's not quite as effective as other profession in most roles, and last I checked it did still make occasional appearances in GvG.

I've seen a ranger in almost every GvG team. They are more common than necros (soul reaping doesn't normally help that much in GvG ). Current meta seems to be melee (W/D/A), Ranger, Mesmer, Eles for snare/spike, RC Monk, Heal Monk, Rit. In PvP a ranger is the cool laid back nonflashy class that does its job and strides away .

As for Paragons, I agree - they really need some help. I've hardly ever seen Paragons in GvG. In PvE imbagon all the time is boring. I've seen A/Ps in GvG, and if I recall correctly they kinda worked. So maybe the prob is buffing the Paragons without making some x/P class too powerful. Or making a team of 8 of them overpowered - the workaround for that could be having energy from leadership only coming from nonparagon allies (basically a team of 8 leaders shouldn't work as well as a team of 1 leader + 7 followers ).

[Alleji]

Originally Posted by Bristlebane

I would love to see a "Guild Wars 1.5" which would basically be a modernized GW1 retaining most of it's features with a few GW2 features sprinkled in.
* Better textures
* More character customization options for all professions, not just core.
* Maintain GW1's low game requirements
* Revamped PvP from ground up to cater both novice and elites.
* Skills revamped to less total like GW2, but keeping full bars like GW1.
* Same movement and targeting style as GW1

I would've been infinitely happier if GW2 was just GW1 with a new engine (new graphics and actual 3D), same active population like there is in GW2 right now, and an open world PvE. All the same PvP modes, classes, skills, etc.

That's all I wanted. Seriously. Instead they removed everything that made GW1 unique and made a shiny game that lasted me 2 months of pve and 3 hours of pvp.

[ruk1a]

I can't believe someone said ANet are doing a great job at GW2, when there are still game breaking bugs like the autoattack dodge glitch or the immobilize glitch, not to mention how boring everything is in general and god the massive grinds... I'll just stop there.

I really, really, really hope we get another GW1 expansion... that would sort of redeem themselves for failing so hard on the sequel and get everybody back to GW1 that used to play, and even new members. Realistically though, that is just a dream and most likely will never happen. We still should at the very least expect elona beyond although who knows how many years that is down the line...

I'm putting my money on ESO to hold my interest in the coming years. I consider GW pretty well dead and gone, with the direction they went it's clear even GW3 would suck for any GW fan.