If they named it something like "Guild Wars: Rise of The Dragons" people would just think it was a GW1 expansion.

I think GW2 gets the point across that it's a continuation, but not an expansion

Originally posted by jpnz

With the GW2 information dump happening right now there are all sorts of thoughts flowing through this community.

One of the more surprizing one is the response when people are saying 'I didn't like GW1 therefore I won't buy GW2'. The response from some section of this community is that 'This game is nothing like GW1 and therefore should not be compared to it'.

Should ArenaNet have named this game as 'ArenaNet's next-gen game' or something rather than GW2 so that people will judge this game on its own merits?

 

I think it is perfectly reasonable for someone to think this game is kinda similar to the original 'Guild Wars'.

When I bought Civilization5, I thought it'll be kinda similar to Civilization4.

When I bought Simcity4, I thought it'll be kinda similar to Simcity 3000.

 

 

No, if they named their game something else they would have to come up with a new universe and make up the lore. It would literally mean scrapping all that work they've put into their flagship universe.

Also this would alienate GW1 players. While ArenaNet are looking to expand their fanbase, turning their back on the people who helped them get where they are is not the right way to go. Don't want to be elitist but without people like me and other Guild Wars 1 fans who paid 200-300 dollars for the original game there wouldn't be a Guild Wars 2. And if naming their new game Guild Wars 2 means losing on people who can't spend more than 1 min researching a game then so be it. I am pretty sure that GW1 fans are much more important than these people.

Besides there are a lot of similarities with GW1. They do have the whole story driven singleplayer like campaign. They still force you to choose only a limited number of skills. They still focus a lot on competitive PvP without any gear imbalances. GW2 will also not be a gear grind as I think the most powerful items will be easily acquired which is similar to GW1. To be honest a lot of people didn't like the game because they couldn't grind for uber gear, they had to actually think which skills to bring and they didn't like that there was zero grinding for levels. 

Considering the game is a sequel to Guild Wars, it obviously wasn't a mistake...

I have had this same question in my mind for some time. I think it's less a question of should they have given it a different name, and more a question of should they have made a new ip at all for this. The game as it stands is obviously Guild Wars 2. It couldn't be anything else. But it could have been.

Honestly, I don't know. In many ways, getting a new ip started and popular is a lot harder than building off of your old one. But it does free you from the conceptions that people have of your old ip, and if you are changing the game as much as they have here, it might be a good idea to do so.

I don't have a definitive answer but in ArenaNets case I think they probably made the best choice. Many people have played the first game, the ip itself underneath the game is actually very strong, and obviously the developers are happy with their world. Not starting a new IP let them innovate in some areas without having to spend a lot of design effort on coming up with the world and lore. A mesmer is the same thing here, lore wise, even if the class has changed significantly in playstyle, for example.

You lay lose some people who didn't like the first game, who might actually be in your target audience, but you also gain a large target audience. If it hadn't been called Guild Wars 2 I highly doubt the dev blog posts which started the hype train would have gained as much traction. But this is a what if game. It's Guild Wars 2 now and forever :)

There are actually quite a few game series where new games in the series innovate, for better or worse. I know a lot of people who liked final fantasy 7 who had never even heard of the previous games. Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament are another example. They are vastly different games than their predecessors. Someone who likes single player fps only would have been really dumb to just buy Quake 3 sight unseen, and people who only like the multiplayer elements should have looked at it more closely.

I think anyone who is actually in the target market will eventually come around, but it's true that ArenaNet have a marketing task here to make sure they don't tie themselves too closely to the first game. They've done a pretty good job so far, considering I only just recently started playing GW1 for the first time due to GW2 hype.

doesn't really matter what they think now, once the game is out and everyone is playing it the rest will follow

It's just an idiot filter.

GW1 is a great game anyway. You just have to not be a dummy to understand that it's not an MMO. It's more like diablo 2. The towns are the lobbies and the areas where you fight is the game. It shouldn't be that hard of a concept to grasp.

When you got WoW did you think it would be just like Warcraft 1-3? Guild Wars 2 is a fine title. I will not miss the people that didn't take the time to do their research.

I am personally of the opinion that YES, Anet made a mistake in naming this game Guild Wars 2.  For people that have done no research on the game and know next to nothing of it, they immediately assume it's a "sequel" to GW1 and will be very like it, to the point of assuming it will be the same, just more of the story.  I think it was a bad choice, myself.

Guild Wars 2 is the right name and in addition to lore, it retains many of the features that most GW-veterans value including: Lack of gear grind, limited skillbars and an extremely talented and dedicated company behind it all.

In Guild Wars I heard... QQ: Gear is all the same... WTF no jumping? WOW is so much better!

In GW2 I guess it will be... QQ: Gear is all the same... WTF no mounts? WOW is so much better!

No matter how the game evolves some of the players never will - They may fool themselves into believing that they seek something "new", "different" or even "innovative". The sad fact is that once they start complaining about the "missing" features from their favourite MMO they would probably be better of just going back to that :-)

I don't know if there's too much widespead dislike/hatred of GW1.  If anything, they're probably all here on this site because this is a haven for dissatisfied gamers.

I'm sure ArenaNet has statistics on what the habits of the GW1 playerbase are like.  They must know that significantly more people positively regard GW1 than dislike it, otherwise they wouldn't be using the name.

Instead of a 2, I might have maybe gone with "Beyond" or "Next Generation" or something else so that it doesn't imply it's a direct sequel and also implies progress.  But I don't think it'll hurt it in the long run.  If the glowing reviews continue once regular users get their hands on it, then most people will at least give it a try.  It's B2P, you can always just buy it for your stubborn friend and tell them to shut up and play it.

Originally posted by Halandir

Guild Wars 2 is the right name and in addition to lore, it retains many of the features that most GW-veterans value including: Lack of gear grind, limited skillbars and an extremely talented and dedicated company behind it all.

In Guild Wars I heard... QQ: Gear is all the same... WTF no jumping? WOW is so much better!

In GW2 I guess it will be... QQ: Gear is all the same... WTF no mounts? WOW is so much better!

No matter how the game evolves some of the players never will - They may fool themselves into believing that they seek something "new", "different" or even "innovative". The sad fact is that once they start complaining about the "missing" features from their favourite MMO they would probably be better of just going back to that :-)

 

Haha, I remember this. People were QQ so hard about all gear being the same. You will hear a lot of people on these boards QQ about gear grinds and how they wanted their skill to be the only determining factor but that's all BS. Most MMOers want their gear grind and I think some people will be put off when they get more into GW2. E.g. most MMO players don't want esports-like PvP. They want their open world PvP.

Guildwars is one of the most sold PC games ever, it have outsold games like Diabloo 1 & 2 by far (even counting seperate accounts and not boxes sold).

Using the name might turn some people off but most PC gamers have at least heard about the game so I think the name is right for the sequel.

And I also believe that if the game is good enough many of the people who initially didn´t try it because they didn´t like the first game will give it a go eventually.

Originally posted by Kyuz0o

ArenaNet isn`t blizzard you know where doing any game with a 2 behind it means: Take the original, overhaul graphics, add some stuff and you`re done.

People who don`t even look at GW2 because they didn`t like GW1 will miss out, so it`s their loss.

Actually it's your loss also, the more players the bigger the income to spend on expansions . And the more people for all to play with  "you should have went to specsavers " then maybe you would not be so short sighted :P

Originally posted by Loke666

Guildwars is one of the most sold PC games ever, it have outsold games like Diabloo 1 & 2 by far (even counting seperate accounts and not boxes sold).

Using the name might turn some people off but most PC gamers have at least heard about the game so I think the name is right for the sequel.

And I also believe that if the game is good enough many of the people who initially didn´t try it because they didn´t like the first game will give it a go eventually.

And then there are people like me who love pvp but bought games like City of Heroes and L2 at launch when they first started playing MMO's so missed out on the whole proper GW experience. My girlfriend at the time bought it so i left her to have her own game. I won't make the same mistake twice.

Even if the game was called something else i'd still get it because of what it promises, the name is just one more selling point.

Originally posted by fivoroth

Haha, I remember this. People were QQ so hard about all gear being the same. You will hear a lot of people on these boards QQ about gear grinds and how they wanted their skill to be the only determining factor but that's all BS. Most MMOers want their gear grind and I think some people will be put off when they get more into GW2. E.g. most MMO players don't want esports-like PvP. They want their open world PvP.

I am not so sure. Most MMO gamers want a fun game and replacing the gear grind with more fun combat can easily work. I am sure it will turn some playrs off but I also think many will enjoy it as well. Of course a single troll can complain more than 10 fanbois can praise a game and there will be whiny threads but I think the majority of the MMO gamers just want a fun game. I mean I couldn´t care less if a game is a sandbox or themepark, or gearfocused or not as long as it is fun.

As for PvP you are just wrong. The game that have most PvPers are still Wow and those people mostly play battlegrounds and arenas. MMOs with open world PvP have gone really badly for a long while now.

It is possible that they want a more gear focused PvP where you can win by grinding better gear instead of learning to play better but if that is true then this have the potential to get many new players into MMOs that prefered games like DOTA instead.

Well, if they named it something other than GW2 then they would have to make the game an entire different IP, meaning they could NOT use the same classes, zones, races, etc. If they did name the GW2 something other than GW2 and still had all the GW lore, then people would say  

"Oh this isnt 'different GW name', it has all the lore from GW, so why are they calling it 'different GW name' ?? " or

"This isnt 'different GW name', its just GW2".

Originally posted by tleytek

Well, if they named it something other than GW2 then they would have to make the game an entire different IP, meaning they could NOT use the same classes, zones, races, etc. If they did name the GW2 something other than GW2 and still had all the GW lore, then people would say  

"Oh this isnt 'different GW name', it has all the lore from GW, so why are they calling it 'different GW name' ?? " or

"This isnt 'different GW name', its just GW2".

 

 No they wouldn't.  They could just name the game something that represents the Guild Wars universe and IP but is not "Guild Wars 2."  As I said in a previous post, I thought they should have named the game:  Tyria.

It makes it clear to GW fans that the game will be set in the GW universe, but may not be a direct sequel to GW1.  It also communicates more of an emphasis on the persistent world by naming the game after the world itself.  Finally, it would hopefully prevent people from being prejudiced against the game because they hated GW1.  After all, if you hated GW1, you probably don't know what Tyria is ;).

Oh, it would also set the game up for nifty expansion titles.  The first expansion could simply be called Cantha, and the second, Elona.

It might hurt ANet a bit. But as a gamer looking forward to this game... it's someone else's loss if they want to judge a game by the title... I wouldn't believe this if I didn't enjoy a little gem called Tiny Toons: Acme All-Stars on the Sega Genesis for so many years.

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Originally posted by Creslin321

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Originally posted by tleytek
Well, if they named it something other than GW2 then they would have to make the game an entire different IP, meaning they could NOT use the same classes, zones, races, etc. If they did name the GW2 something other than GW2 and still had all the GW lore, then people would say  
"Oh this isnt 'different GW name', it has all the lore from GW, so why are they calling it 'different GW name' ?? " or
"This isnt 'different GW name', its just GW2".
 

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 No they wouldn't.  They could just name the game something that represents the Guild Wars universe and IP but is not "Guild Wars 2."  As I said in a previous post, I thought they should have named the game:  Tyria.
It makes it clear to GW fans that the game will be set in the GW universe, but may not be a direct sequel to GW1.  It also communicates more of an emphasis on the persistent world by naming the game after the world itself.  Finally, it would hopefully prevent people from being prejudiced against the game because they hated GW1.  After all, if you hated GW1, you probably don't know what Tyria is ;).
Oh, it would also set the game up for nifty expansion titles.  The first expansion could simply be called Cantha, and the second, Elona.

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This is a great idea, until you want to make Guild Wars 3 in however many years. You know they'll want to, and if you call the game Tyria, what are you going to call the sequel to that?

Tyria 2 :P