Per Anet forums

We have not announced a release date. There have been rumors and different dates displayed by online and brick-and-mortar retailers over the past few years. Each time a retailer displays a new date and that date passes, we hope that it players learn to take retailer dates with a grain (or a pile) of salt. Any dates you see displayed by retailers are their guesses. Again: we have not announced a release date.

Originally posted by Ginaz

Originally posted by monarc333
Well we're in the 3rd qtr now, which ends when August ends. I can't imagine it releases next month or August. Just seems to soon considering they haven't dropped any hints or anything regarding a release date. More like early q4.

If we're going by business quarters, then we're still in the first. 1 April to 30 June is 1st, 1 July to 30 Sept. is 2nd, 1 Oct to 31 Dec. is 3rd and 1 Jan to 31 Mar. is 4th.  Just saying.

From Wikipedia:

A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is a period used for calculating annual ("yearly") financial statements in businesses and other organizations. In many jurisdictions, regulatory laws regarding accounting and taxation require such reports once per twelve months, but do not require that the period reported on constitutes a calendar year (that is, 1 January to 31 December). Fiscal years vary between businesses and countries. The "fiscal year" may also refer to the year used for income tax reporting.

Nevertheless, the fiscal year is identical to the calendar year for about 65% of publicly traded companies in the United States and for a majority of large corporations in the UK^[2] and elsewhere (with notable exceptions Australia, New Zealand andJapan).

Remember: The Korean Thanksgiving holiday is in September. Korean companies talking to Korean companies... odds are they're not talking about Thanksgiving in the U.S.

From my BWE experience the game still needs some work, higher level zones, balancing, client optimization etc, while other games have released in a much worse state I do not think Anet is going to release this till they are ready. One to two more beta weekends sound about right, Sept-Oct time fits right in there with that as well.

I still think they are holding their cards close due to MoP, say what you want but if this releases at the same time as MoP Anet is going to miss out on a lot of possible players. Blizzard has shown in the past that they will pull a marketing ploy like that and release MoP at the same time as GW2, I think Anet is going to announce a date and ship pretty damn soon after the announcement.

Originally posted by Volkon

Remember: The Korean Thanksgiving holiday is in September. Korean companies talking to Korean companies... odds are they're not talking about Thanksgiving in the U.S.

Strange thing is, this game will not release in Korea Initially

Originally posted by Saxonblade

From my BWE experience the game still needs some work, higher level zones, balancing, client optimization etc, while other games have released in a much worse state I do not think Anet is going to release this till they are ready. One to two more beta weekends sound about right, Sept-Oct time fits right in there with that as well.

I still think they are holding their cards close due to MoP, say what you want but if this releases at the same time as MoP Anet is going to miss out on a lot of possible players. Blizzard has shown in the past that they will pull a marketing ploy like that and release MoP at the same time as GW2, I think Anet is going to announce a date and ship pretty damn soon after the announcement.

 

I agree two more BWEs, but I think the last one will be mostly PR and a week before launch. I'm guessing mid-August launch.

The game systems, features, the professions, etc... still need a little tweaking and that has to at least show improvements before launch. PvE content bugs will decrease over the next two months, but there is so much content in the vast world, none of it gating other content, that the game can launch with some broken/bugged PvE content and it won't matter at all for the enjoyment of, or success for the game.

I hope Arnenanet realizes it, because I think a lot of us who play tested BWE2 heavily realized that tweaks and optimization aside, (which they wil work on betweeen now and launch), everything else feels good enough for release.

Originally posted by Ginaz

Originally posted by monarc333
Well we're in the 3rd qtr now, which ends when August ends. I can't imagine it releases next month or August. Just seems to soon considering they haven't dropped any hints or anything regarding a release date. More like early q4.

If we're going by business quarters, then we're still in the first. 1 April to 30 June is 1st, 1 July to 30 Sept. is 2nd, 1 Oct to 31 Dec. is 3rd and 1 Jan to 31 Mar. is 4th.  Just saying.

I would have to agree with the business quarters.  If the 3rd quarter is a potential release date, then we're looking into autumn and allot more beta weekends.

It would be nice for us all to have an official release date.

A lot of people mention the role MoP might be playing in GW2s release, and I don't doubt it's something ArenaNet is accutely aware of as game developers, but I'm not inclined to believe it's the primary driving force. 

ArenaNet is clearly still at a stage in which they're comfortable altering, removing, tweaking, implementing and overhauling entire systems - which of course opens the door to future bugs and unforseen issues that will require further testing to iron out. Actually I guess you could ask, were they afforded this fiddle time due to their holding off based on MoP, but considering many of the changes can be directly traced back to player feedback, clearly the desire to provide a solid experience from the start is a major concern of theirs as well.

How much of an impact do you think MoPs release would have on GW2 (or vice-versa), and do you think MoP is being positioned to take some of the wind from GW2s sails in this case then? I can't guesstimate how closely the two are related as I'm not a WoW fan (and it seems I'm hearing less and less about MoP - if you told me it had released a month ago I wouldn't have been surprised  - any and all hype surrounding it seemes to have died down a long time ago), but my friends that do play certainly don't seem to be all that excited by it.

I assumed most people interested in both would simply just buy both. I've purchased games I've known less about with much less deliberation. It's not like either is a major cash investment, certainly not to the degree that they're release order would have any impact on my decision regarding which to play. That sounds like a horrible predicament to be in.

3.12 M x 55€ = 171.6 M Euros income minimum (ignoring collector editions).

I wonder how much the game costed to make, and the cost of server upkeep...

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

3.12 M x 55€ = 171.6 M Euros income minimum (ignoring collector editions).

I wonder how much the game costed to make, and the cost of server upkeep...

Yeah, would be interesting to know especially the development budget.

Server upkeep can't be that high, they managed to keep GW running with no sub fee at all, and it had a healthy player population all those years. Their server structure of 1 world with multiple instances per zone managed to keep the costs lower than normal, I think.

Originally posted by fiontar

Originally posted by Saxonblade

From my BWE experience the game still needs some work, higher level zones, balancing, client optimization etc, while other games have released in a much worse state I do not think Anet is going to release this till they are ready. One to two more beta weekends sound about right, Sept-Oct time fits right in there with that as well.

I still think they are holding their cards close due to MoP, say what you want but if this releases at the same time as MoP Anet is going to miss out on a lot of possible players. Blizzard has shown in the past that they will pull a marketing ploy like that and release MoP at the same time as GW2, I think Anet is going to announce a date and ship pretty damn soon after the announcement.

 

I agree two more BWEs, but I think the last one will be mostly PR and a week before launch. I'm guessing mid-August launch.

The game systems, features, the professions, etc... still need a little tweaking and that has to at least show improvements before launch. PvE content bugs will decrease over the next two months, but there is so much content in the vast world, none of it gating other content, that the game can launch with some broken/bugged PvE content and it won't matter at all for the enjoyment of, or success for the game.

I hope Arnenanet realizes it, because I think a lot of us who play tested BWE2 heavily realized that tweaks and optimization aside, (which they wil work on betweeen now and launch), everything else feels good enough for release.

I agree that that sounds very reasonable. I almost wish as a token gesture they'd grant us at least access to sPvP while they polish. It'd provide some of us with a bit of a GW2 fix as well as provide them with larger numbers to sample from as they tweak classes. Obviously that's just my attempt to present a somewhat reasonable reason to be allowed to play while I wait.

While somewhat off topic, I'm pretty sure they'll introduce the Asura & Sylvari prior to release as well judging by the tone of the AMA responses. 

My wife actually pointed out something prior to the AMA that I hadn't considered - if they don't introduce Sylvari & Asura in a BWE, wouldn't that likely skew player populations to those areas on release drastically? Surely if we'd never seen those areas, but had previously explored the Norn, Char & Human areas, we'd head straight towards them as they'd be completely fresh. 

I'm sure it wouldn't be the case 100% across the board, but I do think it would be enough of a population to notice. In reality we'll all likely pop back and forth between the 5 areas at various points anyway, I know we already have a rough outline of a favorite progression (Example: This area 1-4, that area 4-6, back to that first area 6-10...etc).

Originally posted by Valkaern 

My wife actually pointed out something prior to the AMA that I hadn't considered - if they don't introduce Sylvari & Asura in a BWE, wouldn't that likely skew player populations to those areas on release drastically? Surely if we'd never seen those areas, but had previously explored the Norn, Char & Human areas, we'd head straight towards them as they'd be completely fresh.

Your wife is right here, even though you can create e.g. a Norn and level him 100% in e.g. the Asura starter area.

I suspect we will see Asura and Sylvari in the next beta week end personally.

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

3.12 M x 55€ = 171.6 M Euros income minimum (ignoring collector editions).

I wonder how much the game costed to make, and the cost of server upkeep...

I don't know that we're looking at the exact same scenario we see with most MMOs though as in this case, a large portion of the team seems to have been in existance for years while a huge cost of most MMOs comes from bringing together a new team, which is then whittled down post release to a smaller crew.

I'm sure the ArenaNet team expanded, but it seems that having a pre-existing infrastructure and a fine tuned development pipeline has been a huge boon (see that?) for them.

I'm not sure exactly why I quoted you specifically here as it's more of a general musing, but I think yours was the post that triggered that thought. 

There was a nice 500mb patch released...  I just checked today and got it. A BWE might be coming soon, or maybe another stress test (doubt it though)

Originally posted by seridan

There was a nice 500mb patch released...  I just checked today and got it. A BWE might be coming soon, or maybe another stress test (doubt it though)

I'm guessing it's impossible for any fans of the game to resist hitting 'Log In' even though we know without a doubt that the servers aren't up, and not just me.

Originally posted by Valkaern

Originally posted by seridan

There was a nice 500mb patch released...  I just checked today and got it. A BWE might be coming soon, or maybe another stress test (doubt it though)

I'm guessing it's impossible for any fans of the game to resist hitting 'Log In' even though we know without a doubt that the servers aren't up, and not just me.

I run the launcher once per day....

Originally posted by Valkaern

Originally posted by seridan

There was a nice 500mb patch released...  I just checked today and got it. A BWE might be coming soon, or maybe another stress test (doubt it though)

I'm guessing it's impossible for any fans of the game to resist hitting 'Log In' even though we know without a doubt that the servers aren't up, and not just me.

At least once a day.

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

Originally posted by Valkaern 

My wife actually pointed out something prior to the AMA that I hadn't considered - if they don't introduce Sylvari & Asura in a BWE, wouldn't that likely skew player populations to those areas on release drastically? Surely if we'd never seen those areas, but had previously explored the Norn, Char & Human areas, we'd head straight towards them as they'd be completely fresh.

Your wife is right here, even though you can create e.g. a Norn and level him 100% in e.g. the Asura starter area.

I suspect we will see Asura and Sylvari in the next beta week end personally.

I don't think so. They had those areas open to the press but A.Net said not all areas will be open in the BWE's.

I think the game will come out july- early August. As NCSoft has other games coming out, they need to stage them properly so they don't impinge on one another.

Originally posted by seridan

Originally posted by Valkaern

Originally posted by seridan

There was a nice 500mb patch released...  I just checked today and got it. A BWE might be coming soon, or maybe another stress test (doubt it though)

I'm guessing it's impossible for any fans of the game to resist hitting 'Log In' even though we know without a doubt that the servers aren't up, and not just me.

I run the launcher once per day....

Big patch this morning.....

This game has the potential to beat wows sales numbers and I hope it does I really do we need a new champion wow has been king for far too long. Since watching game of thrones it is high time for a wind of change.