obtained my first "carrot" just a couple of weeks back. the amount of farming needed to obtain it was quite hefty but totally worth it, imo. 

i think people who can't find anything to strive for in the game just don't really care about cosmetics or just haven't found the look they want. the game is definitely lacking in the skins department atm, which is surprising tbh. i hope they add more and more armorsets and variety in the coming months so that more people can find their "carrot" to keep them playing.

i'm pretty sure ANet has a ton of artists working for them, so why not have some work on more armorskins? so far, all named lvl 80 exotic armors within the same armor class  look the same. hell, even the Mad King exotics have the same skins as those.

Originally posted by Homitu

Originally posted by Nephaerius

Originally posted by Creslin321

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I initially thought this would be a large issue ingame.  Surprisingly though, I actually think that the DE's work 1000000x better with the population thinned out.  They are way more fun and challenging but still entirely doable.  The majority of them can be soloed with enough time/effort.  Compared to when I initially leveled during headstart and the crazy zergs I vastly prefer the thinned out experience.  I think many people's issues with the DE's and their experience of them comes from the crazy amount of players initially present during DE's with the launch of the game.  The DE's are a very different animal with thinned out population and are vastly better because of it. 

I haven't yet experienced Creslin's "issue" either, but like him I acknowledge that it one day could become an issue.  Hence the proposed solutions.  As for now, I continue to be pleasantly surprised with how I seem to run into other players in the most obscure locations in the far corners of Tyria absolutely huge maps.  I think part of that can simply be attributed to how map completion and DEs that spawn guide players to specific locations.  

That said, part of my concern actually stems from the potential reverse problem: that too many players in one area make many events not fun.  This is entirely subjective.  I know many players love running around with the zerg, not for the challenge but for the sense of camaraderie.  I'm not one of those players.  When too many players congregate together in GW2 (like in the halloween events) or any other MMO, gameplay and combat tends to get reduced to the bare basics and becomes extremely boring.  There seems to be a "sweetspot" player requirement for most DEs, where you can still get both the MMO community feel and also a small challenge.  I've found this number to be between 2 and 5 for me.  

exactly how i feel, ty. i generally stay far away from zergs unless we're fighting a meta-event boss. DE's just lose any sort of challenge and/or fun once a zerg arrives, imo.

despite what i said, i gotta say, it's a pretty damned awesome feeling when u start an event chain with 2-3 people then see it build up overtime and end up with a crapload of people by the end of the chain.

i'm on the "GW2 has a great soundtrack but GW1 is a bit better" boat. maybe it's just the nostalgia talking.

anyway, this one is one of the reasons i actually like going to the charr areas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ySnDUAkos

Originally posted by just1opinion
18.8, 17.3, 10.2 are the percentages of people still playing and enjoying it.  That's about 46.3 percent.  I imagine that that holds up to most recent games and probably surpasses some in player retention.  Remembering, however, that this is a very small cross section of the player base that is being polled here. 

not to mention ANYONE on this site with an account can vote. meaning some people who have never really touched the game can freely vote on the most negative option. sure the most rabid fans  will vote for the best option but at least it's pretty much guaranteed that they actually play the game.

Originally posted by Homitu
This has also happened to me and a few friends I know during personal story events and large scale zone events, like the dragon fights.  No idea what causes it.  

+1. normally happens to me against tequatl and the big event in straits of devastation. CTD soon follows after it happens.

Originally posted by OldManFunk
OH for christ's sake, GW2 could shit gold bricks and you'd wonder why they weren't diamond encrusted.

man, that should be a sig. 

Originally posted by Kzak

Originally posted by Requiamer

OP obviously never played the game, there is a full progression in pve (gear, skills and level), there is a semi progression in World vs World pvp (gear and skill but everyone is at lv80 when entering those zones), and there is no progression at all in spvp (you get same gear, skills and lv as everyone else) but you still gain rewards though like gear skins and others stuff.

I bought GW2 and have played in beta.  In my mind, LOL is the ultimate in the gear grinding, pay-to-win game there ever was, yet it was a huge success.  So I must not be alone in what I want in a game.

i'm surprised only 1 guy responded to this. is this guy for real? i don't know about u guys but after reading this, i'm finding it hard to take this guy seriously. 

Originally posted by Enok4Twunni
It'd be all the original Guild Wars campaigns re-done with the GW 2 Engine...Mhenlo is now a Guardian! haha....

least then his tank mentality would actually fit him a bit more. 

Originally posted by Nightgroper

Originally posted by HeWhoKnocks
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5081999

This guy has a point, why are you still here, bilbodoggins?

thread should've ended here. can anyone actually take the OP seriously after that old thread?

"I really wanted this game to succeed and be great but I cant lie to myself"

this has got to be the biggest horsedung i've ever seen someone post on here and that's saying something. 

Originally posted by Zyllos

...When large amounts of players hit the opening zones, they found the NPCs scaling up quickly to make encounters much harder than they should have been...

I do not like this statement. None of the BWEs felt too hard due to the number of invidivuals (or most likely when a small number of people was in the area but was scaled too much). Hopefully I am mis-reading this statement but I think they reduced the difficulty which it shouldn't have been.

u must've missed the flame shaman event in the charr starting zone back in BWE1. ;) people could hardly do any damage to him while he just one shots everyone. i'm sure that's one of the things Mike Z was referring to. :)

Originally posted by laokoko

Originally posted by dekou

Originally posted by laokoko

Originally posted by rykim86

I dont' need to buy character slots, bank slots, bag slots in other lame f2p games too.  I thought the point of b2p is we don't need to do things like that.  ok have a nice day.

Do you understand the difference between the development of a B2P game like Gw2 and a F2P game from Asia?  You obviously don't.

I'm asian so I know.  But I'm comparing it to the hybrid western games.  Aka lotro etc.  And dont' hate on the asian f2p games.  You just think it sucks and have low quality.  But the reality is the most profitable games besides wow are all asian f2p games which you guys probably never heard of.

Take a look at forbes top 10 most profitable games of 2010.  I'm sure the 2nd and 3rd you probalby never even heard of.

Why would we care about what's popular in Asia?

Anyway, what you're missing is that the bank slot expansions, etc. are really not needed in GW2. You get five bags by default. That's 100 slots + your first bag's 30 slots. If you buy two bag slots more you'll reach the maximum of seven bags. That'll increase your storage by 40 slots, or ~30%. It doesn't quadruple your storage like in many crappy F2P games.

Obviously I don't know what I'm talking about.  I actually need to play the game first to know if it get tedious without buying extra bag slots.

So all of you playing, you don't have "any problem" with running out of bag space quickly?  I heard some complaints on people in beta about running out of bag space quickly.

(ps, you guys started the talk about other f2p games first, and asians etc).

(ps another, I thought the default is main bag slot + 4 more), and you can buy 3 more slots with gems or cash not 2 more slots.  That's 50%-60% bigger bag?

crafting materials don't take up ur bank space. instead, each kind of material has its own slot in the bank so u don't have to worry about crafting materials taking up the bulk of ur storage space. u can also send all of the crafting materials in ur bag straight to ur bank anywhere in the world in just a couple of clicks. additionally, u can salvage all the gear that u pick up that aren't very valuable into crafting materials as long as u have a salvage kit available. these and the ability to sell items in the auction house from anywhere(but with limitations) makes filling up ur bags actually a bit tough to do. 

i think people are underestimating how fast ANet can make content - free or not.  this is the same company that was able to make 2 stand-alone campaigns for GW1 that are as big, if not bigger than the original game(Prophecies) content-wise, as well as Sorrow's Furnace in just 1 1/2 years. not to mention with a dev team with less than 50(?) people at the time.

imagine how much they can do now that they have had 5 years to develop GW2 with 250+ people working on it.  sure there are a lot of factors to take into account like the time it takes to implement new systems, reiterating game mechanics, etc. but i can't see those things affecting the development of the game that much that ANet would end up doing the same thing Funcom did back then with AoC.

and besides, have u already forgotten the dreaded phrase "when it's ready" that ANet used to throw around when people ask anything remotely related to a release date? i doubt it's just their version of "no comment".