Originally posted by Badaboom

Originally posted by sammandar

Originally posted by Badaboom
I wouldn't say that WoW strikes.  More like WoW flails about.

I was thinking about that. What I would do be able to listen in on the higher level exec meetings of both Blizzard and Anet.

Well after the Anet release date announcement, and then the expected Blizz "gotta time the expansion" to a major game release, I have to say I was surprised that they timed it one month away.  You see, that would have been a smart play against a competitor sub based model, not a B2P model.

I think they realized and decided that it was not enough and wants to release a big patch, one month prior to an expansion release.  That just reeks of desperation. 

Anyways, they can have their pandas:

or Blizzard is just releasing stuff when its ready, they originally planned to release this expansion in q2, but blizzard isnt exactly efficient at content development.

It's pretty funny but it's also smart ofcourse, since this isn't the first time they do these big patches right around the launch of a competitor. Blizzard has done this apparently more often according to other people and I think every lead in a certain market would take such a step which seems pretty logical. It's a business after all right? My product must win.

If it helps.... that's a different question, it might for some and it might for none. Depends for what reasons some people stopped playing. Either way, doubt that anyone will miss Guild Wars launch anyway because of this, a completely new game against a patch of an already very long existing game.

Wow, absolutely nothing of substance added to the game. I guess I if I was playing wow I could play around with the talent changes...

Oh wait, they removed talent trees and gave you LESS choice despite what they tried to claim. Nevermind, nothing to do with an otherwise worthless patch.  Of course they would do something to detract attention, though I have doubts it will do much. Most people tend to get ready before release but with what they are doing, there is practically nothing to do to really get ready for.  Dumbing down the game barney level doesn't keep people interested, it just makes it more apparent they need to pump out actual new content to keep people busy. 

Don't worry guildwars fanboii, this won't do anything for your over hyped game, even if people find out GW2 isn't remotely close to the hype its still got plenty over that junk.  :)

Oh, and buying GW2 most likely myself so don't worry, I'm not completely bashing your game. :)

*shrug*

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by Badaboom

Originally posted by sammandar

Originally posted by Badaboom
I wouldn't say that WoW strikes.  More like WoW flails about.

I was thinking about that. What I would do be able to listen in on the higher level exec meetings of both Blizzard and Anet.

Well after the Anet release date announcement, and then the expected Blizz "gotta time the expansion" to a major game release, I have to say I was surprised that they timed it one month away.  You see, that would have been a smart play against a competitor sub based model, not a B2P model.

I think they realized and decided that it was not enough and wants to release a big patch, one month prior to an expansion release.  That just reeks of desperation. 

Anyways, they can have their pandas:

or Blizzard is just releasing stuff when its ready, they originally planned to release this expansion in q2, but blizzard isnt exactly efficient at content development.

Problem is there's no sensationalism behind thoughts like this. :p

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by Badaboom

Originally posted by sammandar

Originally posted by Badaboom
I wouldn't say that WoW strikes.  More like WoW flails about.

I was thinking about that. What I would do be able to listen in on the higher level exec meetings of both Blizzard and Anet.

Well after the Anet release date announcement, and then the expected Blizz "gotta time the expansion" to a major game release, I have to say I was surprised that they timed it one month away.  You see, that would have been a smart play against a competitor sub based model, not a B2P model.

I think they realized and decided that it was not enough and wants to release a big patch, one month prior to an expansion release.  That just reeks of desperation. 

Anyways, they can have their pandas:

or Blizzard is just releasing stuff when its ready, they originally planned to release this expansion in q2, but blizzard isnt exactly efficient at content development.

Thats because Anet was originally planning on releasing earlier but postponed release.  There is no doubt in my mind that blizzard is doing everything that they are to coincide with GW2.

Originally posted by Eir_S

Originally posted by semantikron

Originally posted by Creslin321

Hmmm...what to do on the 28th...

  Entirely new game with a completely fresh experience.

  A patch with new mounts and a revamped talent system.

Ooooooh that's a toughie!

But dude, think of all the gear you're leaving behind in Azeroth.  And, uh, the mats.

Yay!  You can once again feel the sting of having to replace "purples" you worked months to get with ugly quest greens, starting the gear grind stupidity all over again.  I can't believe more people aren't tired of that.

WoW is a Skinner box.

An obvious outcome to the GW2 effect!  When people are chatting up someone elses game in your public chat, you begin making changes to your game to compete!  Thank you GW2 for making the corporate players in the genre take notice!

They are releasing a patch for diablo 3 too. 

That game is pretty dead anyhow.  ( for a game which sold 10 million copies).

Originally posted by Eir_S

Originally posted by semantikron

Originally posted by Creslin321

Hmmm...what to do on the 28th...

  Entirely new game with a completely fresh experience.

  A patch with new mounts and a revamped talent system.

Ooooooh that's a toughie!

But dude, think of all the gear you're leaving behind in Azeroth.  And, uh, the mats.

Yay!  You can once again feel the sting of having to replace "purples" you worked months to get with ugly quest greens, starting the gear grind stupidity all over again.  I can't believe more people aren't tired of that.

Many mmo players like progression.  They like to feel as if all the hard work they are putting into their character and all of the time they've spent playing them actually mean something.  If I wanted to be on a level playing field with every single person that played a particular game, even if they only hopped online once per week, I'm sure I'd enjoy GW2.  However, many of us actually like to see tangible evidence of the effort we've put into a particular character.  

Ops link has been blazing away

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/08/14/world-of-warcraft-schedules-big-patch-for-guild-wars-2s-launch/

250 comments in the last hour

Originally posted by Smikis

Originally posted by Kaneth
Blizzard has done something similar for nearly every major mmo release for years now. This is nothing new, and it's not even really all that noteworthy because it's so predictable.

+1, been done on like every major mmo release.., we need one every 3 months, so maybe at that rate wow would have enough content :)

You can accuse wow of a lot of things, lack of content isnt one of them.

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

I think Blizzard is crafting itselves a war out there

I think they recognise a real thread to their supremacy when they see it.  Maybe they willl have a lot of good things in the expansion that would make WoW, a new and fresh game again. Otherwise, i spell doom on them for their western part of the game.

Maybe in several years we will remember the 28th as the birth of the newborn son, who knows, maybe just another prince in the royal fammily

Maybe we could use a WWII analogy for this...

On December 7th, 1941 Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor surprising US forces docked at the Naval base. The Japanese were banking on weakening US forces before they could even start threating Japanese dominance over the Pacific. Thing was, it wasn't enough. "If you shoot at a king you must kill him". On December 7th the Japanese Empire sealed its fate. In the movie "Tora! Tora! Tora!" Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is portrayed as saying: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

In an analogous fashion, could the same be said about the coming storm between WOW and GW2? Could August 28th be the "Pearl Harbor" for WOW?

P.S. I realize I could be overeaching here, I guess you could say I'm get caught up with all the coming excitement!

Originally posted by sammandar

Originally posted by Asuran24
yeah it is less to do wth being worried, or scaried of gw2, and just being sound business sense to give an excuse/reason for players fo yoru game to want to keep playing. Most of all when a game/competitor puts out somethgin that would syphon off players that are bored at the moment waiting for content to be released. Also if blizzard was actually worried they would have pushed for mop to release as close to gw2 , most likely within a week or two of it, not just toss out a content patch to keep players interested. If anythgin i would say that blizz views gw2 as a bump in the road really, and tossing out this content patch shows that they think they can keep a good partion of the players they would lose just with that agianst all that gw2 offers.

True enough, but the difference between your assessment and reality is 2-3 weeks; not much of a difference. The order of events is what is most telling.

Anet announces GW2 release for August 28th (3 day headstart on Aug 25th). Blizzard then announces release for MoP for September 25th and content patch for August 28th.

Yellow/Orange: in layman terms that usually means "skerred".

Considering the fact that WOW has been continuously bleeding subs for the past 2 years (1.1 million in the last 3 months alone) I think also plays into the equation.

Lol actually no that actually always means damage management, and control when you kknown that you are going to have to do it anyway. Blizzard for better or worse have always done very well with controling, and managing the fall out from mmo launches. I am sure they had been waiting to hear the date as much as they are always waiting to hear abbout the release dates of any game that could take subs from wow. If you look at history you would relize that this is just busniness as usaual for blizzard, and so nothign to do with neing skerred at all. What is more telling is that gw2 fans need to make it seem their game is such a threat that blizz is acting out of the norm for them (really putting out a patch on launch day of a game is not strange at all for bliz.). Also the fact that they have been bleeding out makes the fact that they are doing this more about damage management, and stemming a further large bleed out of players into gw2, because of lack of any new content or patches. The reality is that this is nromal practices for blizzard with any large scale mmo launch, and that if it took the fact that they are bleeding out large numbers of subs to make them actually keep doing it (as then they might have just skipped the content patch till release of mop.), it would go to reality it is showing tht gw2 is viewed as less of a threat then the pror mmos were to wow.  For them to be skerred it would need t be they moved the mop release to the week after gw2 release, as a show of putting the full force an amount of content in mop agianst te fact of the players leaving, sso that they could actually conteract the appeal of gw2.

I think they are doing this for 2 reasons. 1) To try to take some of the wind out of the sails of GW2 and 2) because 1 isn't going to happen to a substantial degree, they know that releasing a patch on that day will not affect the 2 million or more WoW players who will be playing GW2. Less people inconvenienced than a normal patch.

Sort of a 'when life hands you lemons...make lemonade' scenario.

Originally posted by Roybe

An obvious outcome to the GW2 effect!  When people are chatting up someone elses game in your public chat, you begin making changes to your game to compete!  Thank you GW2 for making the corporate players in the genre take notice!

 

LOL, you aren't very familar with the WoW forums or public chat, are you?  EVERY new game that comes down the pike gets the WoW players all chatting about it.  The amount of chatter that was going on about SWTOR before it released was twice that of GW2, and we all see how that turned out:  Another "WoW-killer" sent to near extinction.  

But I'm sure it will be different for GW2.  Just like it was for SWTOR.  And Rift.  And WAR.  

Once again, GW2 is B2P - B2P games do not interfere with sub-based games. They might take a handful of individuals, but most people have no problem keeping a sub game and a variety of B2P's going at the same time.

Originally posted by Badaboom

Thats because Anet was originally planning on releasing earlier but postponed release.  There is no doubt in my mind that blizzard is doing everything that they are to coincide with GW2.

There is zero evidence to even suggest this.  The MoP beta has been very public.  They are neither holding it back or rushing it, the progression has been pretty smooth.

I think Blizzard is smart enough to know that the release date is meaningless.  If the expansion is good people will play it.  If GW2 is good people will play that too.  

They learned first hand with EQ2 rushing to beat them out the door that its not who starts the party sooner, but who throws the better party.