With most of us anxiously awaiting for the release of open beta and the full game itself.  Guild Wars 2 has grown such a large fan base by revealing new content month after month.  As many of us are excitedly waiting for arenanet to post updates about their game's status, many people have been leaving the hype train because fans feel like arenanet has been holding out in them.  The Guild Wars 2 fan base grows in a daily basis, however, they are loosing many fans including the players in Guild Wars 1, (yes, we all know Guild Wars 1 has a ridiculous amount of players that left the game)  Many of the fans are being lost to games that have been advertising/marketing more and seem to give more information about the game and having access to the playability.  i.e. Star Wars The Old Republic / Tera / Secret World etc.  What it is coming to is the question:  How will arenanet keep their core fans from drifting away compared to the games now.

Feel free to post your opinions on the topic in the bottom

Originally posted by ngueva2

With most of us anxiously awaiting for the release of open beta and the full game itself.  Guild Wars 2 has grown such a large fan base by revealing new content month after month.  As many of us are excitedly waiting for arenanet to post updates about their game's status, many people have been leaving the hype train because fans feel like arenanet has been holding out in them.  The Guild Wars 2 fan base grows in a daily basis, however, they are loosing many fans including the players in Guild Wars 1, (yes, we all know Guild Wars 1 has a ridiculous amount of players that left the game)  Many of the fans are being lost to games that have been advertising/marketing more and seem to give more information about the game and having access to the playability.  i.e. Star Wars The Old Republic / Tera / Secret World etc.  What it is coming to is the question:  How will arenanet keep their core fans from drifting away compared to the games now.

 

Feel free to post your opinions on the topic in the bottom

I don't know what your talking about with 'holding out on them'. The only thing they held out on was the last class as far as I know, which, really, was more of a joke, because they clearly said in not so few words that is would be the mesmer returning....they have said just about all they can about the way the game would work, as well as what they were doing different...

to the part highlighted- I can't speak for every fan, nor will i try to, but i myself haven't lost interest in GW2. My hype, however, had died down abit from the space in time nothing new was announced. This isn't a bad thing-i was playing skyrim, zelda SS, and other games as well. That doesn't mean i'm not waiting still and very eager to throw my money at them. I simply accepted the 'When it's Finished' as my own motto, and patiently wait.

You mention advertising and marketing, well, they just gave the last class, and are talking about beta. that's all they need, IMO. It shows us that it's coming, and from the looks of it, sooner than later.

While I don't doubt GW2 will be very successful, it cannot be denied that there are many players who were looking forward to both TOR and GW2.  Whichever one released first would get first access to that particular group of players.  As long as that game, which it turns out is TOR, can hold its players full attention through GW2's eventual release, GW2 may miss out on a moderate chunk of its once potential playerbase, at least initially until those players finally decide to put TOR down for a bit.  

The same can be said for any other major title that may release before GW2, but TOR and GW2 seem to be the top dogs in the discussion at the moment.  

Incoming "but GW2 is b2p, you can play both!" argument and the 10 natural follow-up responses to that.  

Perhaps it is more your feeling about being held out then that of the current and new guildwars players and fans. I found more (official) information about guildwars then I could find about SWTOR last summer, so it certainly doesn't look like they are holding back. It is just as they said, closed beta is held now, the end of this year, just as they said. The release will depend on the results of this closed beta, I have no reason to doubt their words.

SWTOR and Guildwars are very different games, with different players attracted to them, they are fishing in different pools and although there may be a significant overlap, I don't think there will be many who wanted to play GW 2 skipping it alltogether because of SWTOR, and vice versa.

Originally posted by ngueva2

With most of us anxiously awaiting for the release of open beta and the full game itself.  Guild Wars 2 has grown such a large fan base by revealing new content month after month.  As many of us are excitedly waiting for arenanet to post updates about their game's status, many people have been leaving the hype train because fans feel like arenanet has been holding out in them.  The Guild Wars 2 fan base grows in a daily basis, however, they are loosing many fans including the players in Guild Wars 1, (yes, we all know Guild Wars 1 has a ridiculous amount of players that left the game)  Many of the fans are being lost to games that have been advertising/marketing more and seem to give more information about the game and having access to the playability.  i.e. Star Wars The Old Republic / Tera / Secret World etc.  What it is coming to is the question:  How will arenanet keep their core fans from drifting away compared to the games now.

 

Feel free to post your opinions on the topic in the bottom

Why is it that you think any of us on the GW2 forums want to talk about TOR? Arena net losing fans, get serious. If you didn't have a GW2 Avatar I would swear this was a troll post, it might as well be one. Good job.

i don't think anyone looking forward to gw2 is in danger of "drifting away".

i was playing skyrim. i'm up for some swtor.

i'll crack open pretty much anything new and shiny.

but the reality is: it's all in waiting for gw2, because gw2 still has the one thing all these others are sorely missing: innovation.

skyrim: a slick but pale shadow of oblivion.

swtor: haven't played yet, but it's not sounding like it will hold water if it were a bucket.

gw2: sure, anet aren't the most conversational of companies, but nor do they look like they're lazy, or promising things they can't deliver. hell, just a look at the raw gameplay footage is enough to give you a nerdgasm. and what i've loved more than ANYTHING is a complete lack of slick movies. it's all gameplay movies. that's the most honest way to sell your game, in my opinion.

in short: i'm hooked. reel me in.

To a degree I agree with the OP.  It seems that Anet is not giving enough information about GW2 but I think a big part of that is they spend so much time iterating on content thats already been implemented.  Iteration is a double edge sword, yes I want to play the best game possible but when they re-tool jsut about every major feature in the game time and time again it gets down to the point where the gamers want the damn game released already and the Devs can iterate on things post launch.

The good thing I honestly could care less as long as the game is out by late summer since I am having a blast playing with my old WoW guild in SWTOR right now, friends I havnt played with since Janruary when I quit the disaster that was Cataclysm.

The game will be ready when it' ready. No-one is going to say im not buying it when it's released because it took ages to build.  Too much information and people complain about overhyping.  Me, im happy to wait and avoid most media ) so the game is a fresh experience when I buy it.  (although mesmer video recently was too tasty to pass up)

Drifting away?

I wouldn't say that lol. With at least 6 months till release (using my famed out-of-my-ass prediction method) it's perfectly natural fans are looking for something to fill the gap. I can't see any mmo on the horizon which will be popular and addictive enough in that time to seriously challenge GW2. SW:TOR? Don't make me laugh - that game is a one-month wonder. TSW? Maybe, but I really don't see it as having that wide an apeal. I'll definitely try it out and maybe even stick to it if it holds all its promises but I don't see myself forgetting about GW2 because of it.

As for "holding out..." Well maybe ANet finally decided to take pity on us poor fans and stop teasing us so cruelly with release being so far away. A case in point - the almost secretive, never officially announced start of the closed beta. Can you imagine the wailing and the gnashing of teeth from all the fans who weren't invited? This waiting frustration can turn negative and maybe they decided to turn it down a bit.. until they get close to final release. Maybe we'll all be a bit happier if we just put GW2 somewhere in the back of our minds until the release time comes and have fun with some of the many newly released games instead of biting our nails every thursday and checking our emails constantly for that invite.

i think arena net is smart to keep things under wrap for now. They don't want this game to get overhype. overhype=disappointment, disappointment=game being dead.

Originally posted by Azaria

Why is it that you think any of us on the GW2 forums want to talk about TOR? Arena net losing fans, get serious. If you didn't have a GW2 Avatar I would swear this was a troll post, it might as well be one. Good job.

It is sort of an odd reversal from a few months ago, when all of the trolling went in the other direction.

But hey, the doomcriers always move on to the Next Thing, whatever the next thing is.

I don't mind people coming and going. It's just how things work.  Once you are done with the game, it's over. The game is designed to have an end and not to bleed the time out of people for the sake of justifying subscription. After all, time is the only thing you cannot get back.

Originally posted by ngueva2

With most of us anxiously awaiting for the release of open beta and the full game itself.  Guild Wars 2 has grown such a large fan base by revealing new content month after month.  As many of us are excitedly waiting for arenanet to post updates about their game's status, many people have been leaving the hype train because fans feel like arenanet has been holding out in them.  The Guild Wars 2 fan base grows in a daily basis, however, they are loosing many fans including the players in Guild Wars 1, (yes, we all know Guild Wars 1 has a ridiculous amount of players that left the game)  Many of the fans are being lost to games that have been advertising/marketing more and seem to give more information about the game and having access to the playability.  i.e. Star Wars The Old Republic / Tera / Secret World etc.  What it is coming to is the question:  How will arenanet keep their core fans from drifting away compared to the games now.

 

Feel free to post your opinions on the topic in the bottom

pfffftttt TERA - that game is a stillborn baby when it finally happens, it's already lost almost all of it's hype and flopped huge in the east.  GW2 will be fine, by the time it launches the intiial SWTOR buzz will have died down and many will be over the initial high of the story - left with the bare bones game that it is and wanting something new.  The Secret World will be good but it's going to be a little too different for a lot of people, even though I want to play it.

Arenanet doesn't rush anything. The game is now in closed beta after 4 years of development which is normal for any serious AAA title. Open beta will be as soon as bugs are fixed (if there's any) and polish is complete. They said that beta testing will be much closer to release than what was case with gw1. So we can expect release in 2-3 months imho.

Originally posted by Zylaxx

To a degree I agree with the OP.  It seems that Anet is not giving enough information about GW2 but I think a big part of that is they spend so much time iterating on content thats already been implemented.  Iteration is a double edge sword, yes I want to play the best game possible but when they re-tool jsut about every major feature in the game time and time again it gets down to the point where the gamers want the damn game released already and the Devs can iterate on things post launch.

 

The good thing I honestly could care less as long as the game is out by late summer since I am having a blast playing with my old WoW guild in SWTOR right now, friends I havnt played with since Janruary when I quit the disaster that was Cataclysm.

That highlighted part doesn't really make sense, because after the Mesmer reveal and Beta announcement, which they previously told us they would announce in this time-frame, there really isn't anything else left for them to reveal. The only major things left are WvWvW and Guilds and we already have a few tidbits of info on both those areas, to get an overall jist of them.  So no... ArenaNet are not "holding back" information from the community and the recent AMA where the devs answered over 200 of the fans questions, is more than enough evidence that goes in their favour.

The people that left the hype train are pretty those that mindlessly jumped on it thinking that GW2 would be a great game to play, if they "Release it NOW!" The majority of actual fans appreciate what ArenaNet is trying to achieve and will likely play another game until it eventually releases. I'm playing Rift and will likely get Battlefield 3 and SW:TOR, once the price comes down, until GW2 comes out.

How to keep the fans? Everyone gets tired of the hype, look at SWTOR how tired people was there but once the game announced to be released everyones got excited again.

I was superhyped this summer, now I'm looking into the game now and then (Mostly to save myself from overhype) but will I be hyped again when the game is announced to be released? You bet your ass I will

I think the TC forgot about GW2 being b2p. It's a crucial difference from both p2p and f2p because you don't need to get as many people as possible as early as possible and keep them on the hook as long as possible.

This is the down time for news for all games still in development.  Luckily we got some news this month.  Until the next convention/show season starts I expect we won't see any new footage.  There will be some news next week on Thief class, they still need to talk more about WvWvW and Guilds.  I expect some more info on Traits and actually expect some more info on Crafting.  There should also be some news about Collector's Editions soon.

I think the first convention/show of 2012 is GDC in March.  It would be the perfect time for an open beta weekend.  If the purpose of open beta is to do some stress testing then I expect open beta will be fairly short.  I'm guessing in May 2012 sometime we get to play the game for real.

I want both, GW2 and TSW to succeed, but I'm actually worried that they are going to launch almost at the same time...

TSW release date is april, GW2, most people believe it is early/mid 2012.

but since the GW2 hype is far bigger, I think TSW is in a bigger danger than GW2

for each person that loses the GW2 hype, there is like 5x more that get into it, so I don't see a problem

People have been waiting for GW2 for YEARS before it was even announced, and now within 4 years they have the game nearly finished, closed beta (which they stated, by the way, that they'd only do beta when they were close to actual release, even closer than they did with GW1), all professions revealed, pvp and underwater worlds completed, and have already started working on the first TWO expansions for it. They are making INCREDIBLE time with this game, and anyone who actually cares about this game is waiting patiently and is by no means falling off the wagon.

The only people losing interest, if at all, are the ones who only just jumped on the train recently and weren't really fans to begin with. They're the "shiny new" players, the ones that are interested in playing everything that just came out and rarely, if ever, stick with it for long. The game won't miss them, but chances are they'll find their way back to it once it launches and every MMO site in the world is spammed with GW2 news and hype.

Anet has nothing to fear.