The community isn’t absolute shit; you have quality people to discuss things with, most of the time. Your mileage may vary.

Depending on what server you really end up in, the people are worth socializing with and grinding together is bearable.

While “facerolling” (which I disagree with; I call it slotwheeling) isn’t very social, there is a genuine acknowledgement that the people participating in ‘dynamic events’ and ‘AOE fests’ are actually people.

…Unless they’re bots, then they’re just a large minority and might as well be one anthropomorphous entity.

Yes, it’s casual, but I’ve always seen a trend in blogs/discussions like this, where everything is objective for the sake of being objective and it kind of unfairly tarnishes whatever the subject of discussion is. My two cents.

And yes, I do believe GW2 will get better with expansions. Hence why they’re expansions.

+1 to that. I put MOBA communities (if they even deserve to be called communities) in the same class as the Counterstrike kiddie population. A transient population of foul-mouthed angry crackheads. My few experiences playing games like LoL confirmed this. We have a LoL fanatic in our guild and I don’t know why he even plays the game for entertainment as he spends most of his matches raging.

I did actually think along the same lines (“if only LoL had guilds and a reason to be in them”) purely because ALL of my friends bar one hate/won’t play LoL and it does get a bit stale playing the matchmaking lottery on what kind of people you’ll get.

GW2 progression is incredibly short, not just for an MMO but for a game in general. Skyrim or Fallout have longer progression curves. In GW2 once you are 80 with lvl80 exotics, you are done progressing. You can’t get stronger, you can’t get new abilities, and you can’t open new content. Not only that, but you can’t get weaker. Gear does not break, you can’t lose XP, and nothing you do in-game cuts you off from content.

I understand this is by design. My point is it’s shitty design for an MMO, because an MMO should not have an implied “Game Over” screen. Watch what happens to player activity once the masses hit 80, it won’t be pretty. Of course there won’t be a disastrous PR release stating subs have dropped by 90%, but other metrics will reflect it. (And I’m sure Anet fans will write-off Xfire as being inaccurate, just like WoW fans did when that game was losing people…)

If you are fine with a Game Over screen, cool. But that stretches the definition of an MMO to comical proportions, and is not good design if your goal is to retain people, which is what MMOs attempt to do.

That is a valid personal opinion.

Quote:”Your ideas one the forms of progression are wrong.”

That is pure bullshit. Someone likes something else than you, so he is in the wrong? I said it before I’ll say it again: there is a request for the progression GW2 offers, you are just not part of it. If you state a wish for no game to be like this, you are trying to deny other people what they want. I personally hate WoW, EVE and all those, in my opinion, grindy MMO’s. Do I call them bad? Yes, since I think they are, Do I think people shouldn’t play them? Hell no, everyone has a different taste, and there is a market for it. I will just choose not to be part of it. Tolerance is an important value and you are expressing a pretty big deficit in that department right now.

Quote: “As to the ‘surprise’ of WvW, that’s a joke. The only feature of long-term interest to MMO players with GW2 was WvW, and everyone knew that.”

Correction: the only long-term interest a progression centered player like yourself could see is WvW. What you don’t understand or perhaps truely don’t know is not inexistent. The fact that only 30% have queued for WvW, shows the majority seems to be interested in other stuff.

You are trying to speak for a whole niche of gamers with one voice, do you really think that is clever? Do you really think everyone that plays WoW, plays it for the same reason? I am getting the feeling you have some idea of “true MMO player” in your head, I can’t explain this ignorance to a genre that has so diverse players with so diverse motivations any other way.

Your way of seeing things is totally valid, but it is not the only one, the one to rule them all.

And like I said before, your critique is uncalled for, since those are the points that were advertised and hyped by a lot of people.

what I agree with is that in the longer term ANet must deliver more content and there’s certainly stuff to fix asap about the appeal of WvWs for PvPers. Tremayne recently wrote that one big flaw of WvW is the random server matchings and I fully agree. there must be proper feud and server pride and meaningful rewards for PvP to be enjoyable for organized groups. since ANet made WvW one of their selling points, they need to step up here.

Ok, do ‘end-game’ like EVE or UO do/did it.

“We do things differently” is not a valid excuse for not have ANY end-game or progression after 80. Or maybe it is, but again only if the intent is for GW2 to be played like Skyrim. If that’s the case, Anet should have never called it an MMO and this would all be a non-issue. We would not be talking about GW2′s failings as an MMO, but instead comparing it’s stories and content to Skyrim or titles like it.

Your ideas one the forms of progression are wrong. See my original response. Or just look at progression in EVE to get an idea. Numbers are just one form, and I don’t know wtf story has to do with MMO progression.

SW:TOR sold more than 2m boxes. Is that game a success? Now maybe Anet planned all along for GW2 to last a month or so in terms of content like SW:TOR, but then why call it an MMO? Why not just do what they did with GW1 and state outright they are not making an MMO?

As to the ‘surprise’ of WvW, that’s a joke. The only feature of long-term interest to MMO players with GW2 was WvW, and everyone knew that. Look at all the pre-planning and websites that sprang up around GW2 just focused on WvW. So no, sorry, but the queues and off-hours scoring is a major design flaw, not just “oh well never could have predicted this, all good” BS like you are trying to write it off as.