Originally posted by Treekodar

Originally posted by Syno23
I'm concerned how they're going to raise money for expansions, at what quality, what will endgame be like, things that GW2 cannot service to hardcore players.

If GW1 is any indicator, you don't have to worry about expansions, there'll be plenty of them, probably with a hefty price tag as well.

 GW1 only had one expansion though. :(  Technically the second and third boxes were stand alone games that could be added to the first.

Also, they've already said they're doing GW2 differently from GW1 when it comes to  selling boxes, they're not going to aim for 6 month windows, and they'll be doing normal expansions, rather than stand alone games.

Originally posted by Treekodar

Originally posted by Syno23
I'm concerned how they're going to raise money for expansions, at what quality, what will endgame be like, things that GW2 cannot service to hardcore players.

If GW1 is any indicator, you don't have to worry about expansions, there'll be plenty of them, probably with a hefty price tag as well.

Thank goodness they'll be easily affordable with all the subscription money we're not having to pay.

Originally posted by Mephster
Valid concerns that most people have expressed already. 

Yeah...I agree

I thought it was a good article. Not sure how some think that article shows he's clueless about the game or is a shill for Blizzard. Guy comes out and says he's excited as hell for the game. Nothing wrong with trying to be a bit objective about the game.

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Originally posted by Mephster
Valid concerns that most people have expressed already. 

Yeah...I agree

I thought it was a good article. Not sure how some think that article shows he's clueless about the game or is a shill for Blizzard. Guy comes out and says he's excited as hell for the game. Nothing wrong with trying to be a bit objective about the game.

his concerns mostly are on what the core foundations of this game are all about.. now yes me and probably most people had these concerns prior to the BWEs but most all were put to rest by the end of those at least for me. Aside from the endgame concern obviously

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Originally posted by Mephster
Valid concerns that most people have expressed already. 

Yeah...I agree

I thought it was a good article. Not sure how some think that article shows he's clueless about the game or is a shill for Blizzard. Guy comes out and says he's excited as hell for the game. Nothing wrong with trying to be a bit objective about the game.

his concerns mostly are on what the core foundations of this game are all about.. now yes me and probably most people had these concerns prior to the BWEs but most all were put to rest by the end of those at least for me. Aside from the endgame concern obviously

For you.  Not for everyone.

Originally posted by Ginaz

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Originally posted by Mephster
Valid concerns that most people have expressed already. 

Yeah...I agree

I thought it was a good article. Not sure how some think that article shows he's clueless about the game or is a shill for Blizzard. Guy comes out and says he's excited as hell for the game. Nothing wrong with trying to be a bit objective about the game.

his concerns mostly are on what the core foundations of this game are all about.. now yes me and probably most people had these concerns prior to the BWEs but most all were put to rest by the end of those at least for me. Aside from the endgame concern obviously

For you.  Not for everyone.

as I said for me

Originally posted by Ginaz

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Originally posted by Mephster
Valid concerns that most people have expressed already. 

Yeah...I agree

I thought it was a good article. Not sure how some think that article shows he's clueless about the game or is a shill for Blizzard. Guy comes out and says he's excited as hell for the game. Nothing wrong with trying to be a bit objective about the game.

his concerns mostly are on what the core foundations of this game are all about.. now yes me and probably most people had these concerns prior to the BWEs but most all were put to rest by the end of those at least for me. Aside from the endgame concern obviously

For you.  Not for everyone.

Your posts in the GW2 forums are becoming increasingly pointless and annoying.  Why are you here?

Originally posted by grimal

Originally posted by Eir_S

As for his comments on end game, it's sad that people feel a game will fail if it doesn't force you to stay competitive fhrough excessive amounts of repetition and widening the gap between max level and earlier content, making you an invincible killing machine outside of maybe 5% of that content.  It's really sad. 

Agreed, but this is the current MMO market.  It's one of the reasons WoW is able to hold onto their 9 million + subs.

Well as many of us have already come to the conclusion about, WoW is a different beast than these other MMOs.  In order to remain competitive, I don't think they can all assume they're going to march along the same path Blizzard did with subs.  It's getting depressing watching companies do this to themselves under some delusion that lightning is going to strike for them too.

Originally posted by grimal

Originally posted by Eir_S

As for his comments on end game, it's sad that people feel a game will fail if it doesn't force you to stay competitive fhrough excessive amounts of repetition and widening the gap between max level and earlier content, making you an invincible killing machine outside of maybe 5% of that content.  It's really sad. 

Agreed, but this is the current MMO market.  It's one of the reasons WoW is able to hold onto their 9 million + subs.

Eh, the main reason is that WoW is a polished game.

SWTOR could have taken away a couple or more million subs from WoW easy, maybe even half the subs.  Why did TOR fail (in this regard)?  It wasn't polished.  Warhammer?  Wasn't polished.  AOC?  Wasn't polished.  Etc, etc, etc.  All these companies rush out games that have blatant problems with them and then they do badly.  Wow, big surprise there.

It has nothing to do with becoming an invincible killing machine in most of the content.  Heck, if anything that's detrimental.  Think of how much content WoW would have if all the content stayed relevant?  But frankly, most of its content is pointless and lame, because you can now solo 40-man raids from Vanilla, etc, etc.  Heck, they aren't even great at keeping new content out there, despite the fact they could easily afford to (but that costs monies they rather pocket).  So why do they do so well?  It's bloody polished.  And despite what some may say, it was largely quite polished when it first came out too.  Sure, it had its problems, but the interface was sound, mobs moved around rather than just sat still, NPCs would interact with you and say things, etc, etc, etc (and it was less of a timesink than other MMOs when it came out).  That's all part of polish and most MMOs just don't have that.

WoW Execs can afford to spend as little money on WoW development as possible, not because WoW is super-mega-awesome.  Rather, it's good enough, polished, and...it has no viable competition.  The latter is a key element to WoW's success.  It's never faced valid competition, because all of its competitors have been horribly flawed.  That gives it a huge market advantage.

GW2 seems pretty polished to me.  The DE and Heart systems make the world feel alive.  The interface feels responsive.  So it is going to do well unless they are hiding some sort of major problem with higher level zones.

It isn't like GW2 doesn't have a lot of stuff to do at max level.  So people that enjoy the game will stay.  They don't have to resort to treadmills and psychological tricks to keep people playing, because they aren't demanding a sub fee.  That changes the dynamic of the playerbase a lot.  They don't have to convince people to log in every week.  It's ok if they take a week or a month off or wait for new content or whatever.

It also helps that they aren't trying to compete for the exact same people that really like WoW.  That's another problem that has plagued MMOs and emphasized their faults.  If a game is doing what WoW does, then it better be really good, otherwise people will go to WoW.  GW2 is an themepark MMORPG in a fantasy-tech setting.  Beyond that it is quite different from WoW and isn't trying to be WoW.  That's an advantage not a disadvantage.

Decent article. I can see where he's coming from with a lot of the social concerns during events and such. That's not really an aspect that would bother me one way or the other, though, so I don't see it as a big deal.

The trinity issue was a bit of a shock. A full group of devs and they couldn't beat their own content without him resorting to a healing/support role? I hope that was just a fluke run, or maybe that they hadn't nailed down the difficulty to a proper level. I guess we'll see how it plays out once the playerbase gets the hang of it.

Originally posted by Caliburn101

If only internet 'journalism' was subject to some sort of editorial rigour...

Couldn't agree more...

1. Will the Community Be Weak?

He starts well enough here - making a valid point many people are worried about. He doesn't however point out the rather obvious fact that judging community interraction from a beta - where there are no permanent guilds, targetted resource farming, dedicated dungeon grouping and grouped people who know each other (not to mention dedicated RP'ers running events) is not representative.

3. Will the Lack of a Trinity Actually Work?

This one is just amazing. In BWE2, having personally grouped with a 'ragtag group' (as he puts it) and having downed the 'Eater of Ghosts' in that explorable iteration of the Ascalonian Catacombs I was both impressed and pleased at the level of difficulty, the skill and cooperation shown by the group I was with and the innovative ways we managed to deal with things. Having to think about how to make our collective abiities 'fit' over a soution and radically change who did what in each boss encounter was a breath of fresh air. Sorry - all dungeons in all MMOs at first are multiple wipefests if they are well designed. It takes time and effort. This guy clearly likes his challenges dumbed down. Implying that the Dev's he was playing with were 'experts' in PvE and therefore the no-trinity model doesn't work is a the laziest form of tangential reasoning - and entirely invalidates this part of the article. A clear case of garbage in, garbage out

I've had my morning cofee and am in a good mood - so I'll review this review with a generous score;

3/10

Aren't you using the same argument to invalidate somebody else's opinion and to validate your own? What was it about editorial rigour you mentioned;)

Originally posted by Kakkzooka

Hi. It's the resident biggest apologist on the face this green earth for GW2 again.

 

Again, I've said this before in other threads, I have to agree with his concern about the community. While the game structure in terms of keeping things moving is great, it does lessen the need to communicate with one another. I very rarely saw anything amounting to casual banter between events. In fact, the quickness with which one can scamper about the world negates the need for problem solving with others. Because grouping isn't necessary, communication isn't a key component to accomplishing goals.

 

This is my biggest concern about the game. The remainder of the concerns in this article seem like padding. But he hits the nail on the head with his first concerns. This game could use something to slow down the players and encourage conversation. I'm sure that Holiday events will help do that, but there needs to be a mechanic that causes the players to break the ice and gel as a community.

Just my two cents.

I may be wrong, but when I played the BWE, I was so excited and wanted to see everything, that i didn't take the time to talk with folks...I wanted to put in as much effort as i could just learning the game.   When we relax a bit, you'll see a lot of socialization.

Originally posted by garretth

I may be wrong, but when I played the BWE, I was so excited and wanted to see everything, that i didn't take the time to talk with folks...I wanted to put in as much effort as i could just learning the game.   When we relax a bit, you'll see a lot of socialization.

There's also the fact that is weekend-only events there's a lot less of a chance people will get to know each other.  The chances of forming any friendship that lasts is pretty small.

Originally posted by lifeordinary

Originally posted by Leucent
Lol, those are my feelings almost bang on. WvW is the only thing saving this game for me. As I ve said many times, GW2 is a great second or third game.

Honestly, PVE in GW2 puts me to sleep. I am also only and only playing  GW2 for PVP.

This confuses me, not saying you're wrong, but this just confuses me becuase of my standpoint with the game.

7 years of PvP in DAoC, I consider myself a PvP'r, not hardcore, but it's the heart of the game for me. 

GW2 is the first game that i've actually enjoyed PvE in, i've stomached part of woW, most of SW:TOR, parts of Rift and all of Warhammer, but that's all it was, getting by it so I can PvP in big mans land.

Don't get me wrong, ima WvW like a mofo, but this is the first game I myself enjoyed PvE in.

Originally posted by Chingo

Originally posted by Caliburn101

If only internet 'journalism' was subject to some sort of editorial rigour...

Couldn't agree more...

1. Will the Community Be Weak?

He starts well enough here - making a valid point many people are worried about. He doesn't however point out the rather obvious fact that judging community interraction from a beta - where there are no permanent guilds, targetted resource farming, dedicated dungeon grouping and grouped people who know each other (not to mention dedicated RP'ers running events) is not representative.

3. Will the Lack of a Trinity Actually Work?

This one is just amazing. In BWE2, having personally grouped with a 'ragtag group' (as he puts it) and having downed the 'Eater of Ghosts' in that explorable iteration of the Ascalonian Catacombs I was both impressed and pleased at the level of difficulty, the skill and cooperation shown by the group I was with and the innovative ways we managed to deal with things. Having to think about how to make our collective abiities 'fit' over a soution and radically change who did what in each boss encounter was a breath of fresh air. Sorry - all dungeons in all MMOs at first are multiple wipefests if they are well designed. It takes time and effort. This guy clearly likes his challenges dumbed down. Implying that the Dev's he was playing with were 'experts' in PvE and therefore the no-trinity model doesn't work is a the laziest form of tangential reasoning - and entirely invalidates this part of the article. A clear case of garbage in, garbage out

I've had my morning cofee and am in a good mood - so I'll review this review with a generous score;

3/10

Aren't you using the same argument to invalidate somebody else's opinion and to validate your own? What was it about editorial rigour you mentioned;)

 

No I am not.

Read it again.

I am dealing with two entirely separate points and each is criticised on different grounds.

That should be perfectly obvious to anyone reading what I wrote - as is the fact that trying to tie to two together to make a spurious point is ridiculous.

In this case - your lack of comprehension does not equate to my lack of clarity, or indeed a hypocritical arguement.

So - I will explain once again in case you just have the wrong end of the stick....

Firstly - one cannot judge in-game community interraction from any number of betas - to claim otherwise is patently ridiculous. No-one can say if it is going to be good, bad or indifferent because it cannot be judged from a limited access test where everyone is rushing around to try things out and not pacing themselves in any way. 'Haters', 'fanbois' and everyone in-between - we all need to wait and see.

On the entirely seperate point you highlight, I can judge the difficulty of a dungeon run in a beta because I played it and we eventually completed it after an enjoyable struggle. I am not a Dev - neither were the other players presumably (not that it matters of course....) - and we did far, far better than the reviewer reported the Dev's did. Ergo - he cannot judge whether the 'no trinity' model is not working based on their singular failure. The dungeon is clearly 'do-able' and with the no-trinity mode in full effect. I know plenty of others who's direct in-game experience matches my own in this regard.

The article is shot through with examples of single instance anecdotes and observations which any secondary school pupil would recognise as unrepresentative in terms of 'sample size'. Marrying such a critically limited exposure to the perceived problems and then making game-wide sweeping predictions with the strongest language possible is terrible journalism and maximises the chances of it being unrepesentative of the truth and therefore entirely misleading.

I don't mind criticism when it deals with real issues in a reasonable way - in fact I welcome it.

This article however was not in any way an example of that - which is a shame, because two of the points raised were legitimate and warranted being raised by someone with more analytical skill and credibility.