Comments on: GW2: Pre-80 vs post-80

By: Mag

Mag — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 22:50:52 +0000

To each his own I guess but most players who still defend or support GW2 just don’t have the experience and foresight to see where the game is headed. The entire reason the industry still cranks out games like these is because of this large population of players.

If I buy a nice new shiny bouncy ball for a 5 year old he will have a blast with it, for a very long time. If I buy that same shiny bouncy ball for a 13 year old, he will have fun for a short time then move on to something a little more engaging. It’s understood you just know any better which is fine.

Players stood up and defended, Rift, SWTOR, WAR, SW, etc… the list goes on and on, you’re all in the same demographic.

By: Shadow

Shadow — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:29:11 +0000

Fuck, I’m bored and only level 50 something.

By: bhagpuss

bhagpuss — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 18:48:42 +0000

I think this is the crux of it: your issue (SynCaine) looks to be far more with the way GW2 has been promoted and hyped, especially by ArenaNet but also by the rather rabid pre-launch fanbase, than with the quality of the game itself. Can’t argue with that.

I never bought into the hype and what I got was pretty much what I expected. Also pretty much what I wanted. To hear people still making overblown claims is either amusing or irritating depending on mood.

The one thing I do think is genuinely different and which should and probably will be copied by other developers is the same thing you pick out – the “other players are your friends” part. Other than that, it’s a nice, solid, very lovely to look at MMO with a good amount of content for a brand-new game.

Entertainment providers overselling the originality of their product is hardly unusual. Just ignore it.

By: Xyloxan

Xyloxan — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 18:45:37 +0000

I was in a large WoW guild for several years (starting on day 1). One of the main reasons that our “casuals” kept playing and enjoying progression for months or years was their appreciation and often idolization of our hard core raiding elite. They listened to our stories of close encounters, and they eventually wanted to experience them too. And the only way of getting there was through progression.

By: spinks

spinks — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 18:15:18 +0000

Not every hardcore player is a hardcore progression raider, though. Some of those people who loved organising player events will have been in fairly casual guilds or roleplayers.

By: SynCaine

SynCaine — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 17:55:37 +0000

The hardcore were also the mod makers that made the WoW UI what it is. They were the ones organizing server events for casuals. They were the ones in epics that made some casuals go “I want that” and keep at it. They are the guild leaders of casual guilds. They are the ones bringing entertainment to everyone when they raided a city/hub. They are the ones who turned AV from an endless stalemate to a really fun BG. Etc etc etc.

You lose the hardcore by violent protest. Without them, the casuals drift away in silence.

By: Zyref

Zyref — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 17:54:12 +0000

Eve encourages incredible amounts of time and dedication, which will inflate its xfire counts. Much of that time isn’t actually “playing” the game in xfire.
That said, Guild wars 2 doesn’t encourage this kind of play… Neither does Warcraft, or SWTOR, or rift or…. … .. Some players play a huge amount, but that is a minority. In EVE, it is the baseline.

You can have a game be equally successful to Eve, and only have a tenth of the playtime because you’re focused on a different kind of player. A “casual” focused game might have a dedicated player who logs in once a day for an hour… whereas Eve doesn’t support such players.

Furthermore, your point was about popularity of the game, where subs is a poor measure with Eve. The actual size of the active community is much much much smaller than 350k. When talking about the popularity of a game, you need to count active individuals, not the amount of time or number of active subs, unless the amount of time to progress, or number of active subs themselves are good indicators of number of people.

By: Syl

Syl — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 17:44:51 +0000

‘MC and the whole raid setup worked’ – it worked for me back then because I was competitive, I wanted better gear and I wanted my guild to be top 5. I was not the average WoW player though in vanilla and thats my point.
Blizz never ‘needed’ the hardcore raiders in terms of numbers. we already knew back then we were minorities.

the progression content in wow works well in its classic setup and its a bonus; but the fact remains that the majority in wow are casuals – and the majority makes the game successful because they pay subs too.
outside of wow you still have a very hard time to find many MMOs that are successful while also having more dedicated progression people than casuals. maybe not EvE but otherwise I see none that is different in this from wow.

By: SynCaine

SynCaine — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 17:23:40 +0000

Funny, I was having a bad day too.

People sell WoW’s raiding model short. It had a much bigger influence on retention than what the number of ‘actual raiders’ shows. And vanilla WoW had a pretty solid social model, especially matched up against current-day games like GW2.

Sure, the more casual you make your MMO, the less hooks and social ties it’s going to have. But at some point, you cross a line and the game in question is no longer an MMO by some definitions (read: mine). GW2 is much further across that line than even I imagined pre-release.

By: SynCaine

SynCaine — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 17:18:03 +0000

I disagree that WoW’s success has nothing to do with it having solid progression. I really don’t want to get into it, because it’s a long-ass topic, but yea, WoW was successful because it not only had long-term progression, but it was progression that people wanted to get into.

And WoW was just an example. Again, look at what MMOs have been successful long-term, and look at their progression models. There’s a very strong correlation for a reason.

As for MC and the 500 runs, there is no romanticizing. Unless you are telling me you hated playing WoW at that time but did it anyway for some strange unexplainable reason, MC and the whole raid setup worked. It kept you playing/paying.