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Originally posted by marinrider

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Originally posted by therez0
What you linked to are stock prices. Not revenue or profit. Stock prices for the MMO industry rarely reflect the state of their internal budget (and if it did, thats called insider trading which is highly frowned upon and illegal in most markets). With the MMO industry (and a major portion of the tech industry in general) prices will decline significantly in periods where there is no new product being launched within the quarter, and will rise significantly when there is a new product launch.
There is no reason to believe that this info changes anything with the GW2 release. NC is a big company, with numerous people budgeting and planning ahead for these inevitable low spots in the often cyclical stock prices.
For all intents and purposes, look towards April 26-28th as a likely date for something big coming from Anet. Thats GW's birthday and Anet always makes a big deal of it. Maybe not the release day, but likely there will be big news about GW2 in that timeframe.
The real issue we should be speculating about is whether or not we will get the last profession reveal before the new year or not.

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The companies financials are there too.  I almost said the same thing you did until I thought to recheck to make sure this guy was at least close to what he was talking about. 

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Ah, I double checked; didn't see the paragraph a few screens below the first time through. But my argument can be applied to their profit margins as well; NC has not released a major sales product since the Aion expansion more than a year ago, and as the product reached saturation, revenue went down. Its something thats to be expected and planned for in any industry.

And don't doubt that there is an existing plan that they are sticking to; no company would play the market/industry like Darth Vader plays a Bespin gas tycoon.

What you linked to are stock prices. Not revenue or profit. Stock prices for the MMO industry rarely reflect the state of their internal budget (and if it did, thats called insider trading which is highly frowned upon and illegal in most markets). With the MMO industry (and a major portion of the tech industry in general) prices will decline significantly in periods where there is no new product being launched within the quarter, and will rise significantly when there is a new product launch.

There is no reason to believe that this info changes anything with the GW2 release. NC is a big company, with numerous people budgeting and planning ahead for these inevitable low spots in the often cyclical stock prices.

For all intents and purposes, look towards April 26-28th as a likely date for something big coming from Anet. Thats GW's birthday and Anet always makes a big deal of it. Maybe not the release day, but likely there will be big news about GW2 in that timeframe.

The real issue we should be speculating about is whether or not we will get the last profession reveal before the new year or not.

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Originally posted by VirusDancer

That is not the definition of an instance... perhaps it is your definition of an instance, but that is not the definition of an instance.
If you're going to play around with the definition of instance, then you would be facing the issue that each server represents an instance of a game world.  They are instanced.
In talking about MMOs, instanced areas are outside the normal game world.  Quirky, eh?  Considering the game world is an instance...of a game world.
But that is not how folks look at it.  They see dungeons, arenas, and battlegrounds as instanced - why?  Because they are outside the game world.  Using WoW as an example, Wintergrasp is not instanced - Alterac Valley is instanced.  Which is kind of funny, because AV supposedly does exist somewhere in the game world... but you can only get to an instance of it.
WvWvW does not exist in the game world.  You enter an instance of it... you're not crossing a zone - you're not staying in your game world.  You're leaving it... to play in an instance of another "game world" - with folks from two other game worlds.

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Lets throw in some metaphysics to really confuse the subject. The WvWvW is fought in the Mists, the realm of the gods. It exists as a metaphysical plane in the normal game world. Ergo, its not an instance. Unless you're atheist (in-game), in which case you don't believe in the existence of The Six, and you just remain dead instead of traversing The Mists to revive at the nearest shrine; in which case you probably shouldn't PvP anyways since that would mean perma-death.

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Originally posted by tshack88
The mesmer armor was created that way for a reason...if you'd actually do a little research and look into WHY it's like that then you'd understand.  Of course it's just easier to say whatever's on your mind despite the fact that it's horribly ignorant.

Why couldn't you use an example from any other game where you pick up random pieces of armor?  You pick Guild Wars, where each profession has it's own specific style, probably the worst example you could have found.

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You gave two spots to WoW, but completetly failed to mention GW's Mad King Thorn and the Lunatic Court.

If you're a fan pop-culture tropes and bad puns (and lets face it, you play MMO's, so of course you love 'em) then the Mad King's yearly visit is a highlight of GW experience.

As far as the teleportation, theres no way it can break immersion; they put a solid explaination in the lore for it: Master Snaff invented the Hole-in-my-pocket, a coin-sized Asura gateway that can be attuned to certain geographic locations that have high aether density.

From a lore stand point:

Mounts, sure (expansion material).
Faster travel via mounts, No.
Intercontinental travel via mounts, more than likely (GW2_Trailer_3 (Gamescon)) @4;20.

Now there are good reasons for not using faster travel via mounts. For one, there are no horses in Tyria.Typically, thats your faster travel/base mount. It just doesn't exist. Common mounts in the lore are Dolyaks and Lesser Etins, neither of which are faster than travel on foot.

Now if faster travel (via mounts) doesn't (and shouldn't) exist, why would I say sure? Its simple: combat and (as the OP said) events. If Anet can spend time to implement a visceral and balanced combat experience that includes mounts, I'm all for it. In the original GW, there was one battle (Thunderhead Keep) where the enemy dwarven leader was riding a fire-breathing drake--and he was completely badass right up to the moment you killed him. I want to ride a drake (or one of the other impressive beasts in the lore).

And lets not forget that Anet already has a wonderful environmental weapon system. For all we know, there may already be map-specific mounts that move around (charr tanks, Asura golems, junudu wurms, etc.) but will be temporary and limited to the specific map, the engine is already capable of that.

Now permanent ownership of mounts... thats a different question entirely. It would be cool to own something like a ship (once the harbor is liberated from Zhaitan) and have a crew of you guild and do ship-to-ship battles, but I think something like that is a long ways out (at least 2 expansions).

If you read the lore carefully, guilds in the lore were only had about 12 people in them, and the guild wars the title references mentions that guilds would ally to fight the larger conflicts only to break apart alliances and fight each other afterwards. So guild wars would have never been this large scale thing you guys are envisioning them to be.

Even in the real world, guilds have never been some huge affair with hundreds of bodies; EQ and WoW have really distorted the meaning and purpose of the world 'guild'.

Getting back to point... If you played the game from the start, you would have seen that the main focus of the majority of players was the GvG. The primary focus didnt change until the release of NF, and after that the main body of players didnt shift until EotN and the HoM was announced. Being in a GvG guild was a whole different experience than the PvE guilds. You had rival guilds, you had allied guilds (even before Factions alliances) and the tension and hate you had for your rival guilds was real and shared; it was war with that other guild.

If we want to get into the nity-gritty of the lore, there are at least 3 seperate guild wars. The most recent in the lore culminating with the charr taking advantage of the weakened state of the humans causing the Searing and the cataclysm of Orr. The first guild war is mentioned in the chronicles of Dwayna where the humans has recklessly squabbled over the gift of magic, resulting the creation of the bloodstone seals and the keystone crafted from King Doric's blood. The second guild war is only mentioned briefly in the Prophesies pre-order material.

After the White Mantle took over Kryta, guilds were disbanded until emissaries of Cantha offered to open isles up for guilds to use. Canthan officials then oversaw the guild versus guild combat, turning into a sporting outlet.

And to confirm what Diovidus has been saying, the GvG was the intended endgame from the beginning. The concept for tombs/HoH was not added until the second phase of testing and was added/refined due to player feedback. The realms of the Gods were not even activated until the second live-patch and Sorrows was not added until much later.

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Originally posted by Distopia

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Originally posted by therez0
Second-System effect is non-applicable here. Arenanet already has 3 games and an expansion out. Not to mention the platform dev team behind the scenes is the same team that made the original Battle.net (part of it anyways... the other part went and sank Flagship(by the second-system effect no less)).

And forgive me, but... Aion? Really? Its mediocre asides from the petroleum-jelly smeared on the lens. In gameplay quality and development terms its about the same as AoC, IMO. So if avoiding the sophomore slump was the goal for Trion by all the mediocrity of the first, then they very well may succeed.

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Trion didn't make Aion, Trion made Rift.
Not many view GW as three different games.

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DERP on my part. Dunno where my head is. Must be too late at night.

Of course you are right. Dunno how I was thinking Aion...
But yes, Rift is decent, just not my cuppa.

But I do consider the three games to have a nulling effect on second-systems. You can tell with each new game that they tried to add too much, and each time made the tutorial segment more difficult to grasp. NF is a key example of this with the addition of heroes. And clearly in their blogs you can see that they have learned the dire straights of adding too much.

Second-System effect is non-applicable here. Arenanet already has 3 games and an expansion out. Not to mention the platform dev team behind the scenes is the same team that made the original Battle.net (part of it anyways... the other part went and sank Flagship(by the second-system effect no less)).

And forgive me, but... Aion? Really? Its mediocre asides from the petroleum-jelly smeared on the lens. In gameplay quality and development terms its about the same as AoC, IMO. So if avoiding the sophomore slump was the goal for Trion by all the mediocrity of the first, then they very well may succeed.

The way I see it, the farther out GW2 is, the more time I will have to complete Skyrim (11/11/11).

January may not be enough time for that... so my money is on an April launch.

Originally posted by Cruoris

i hope this contest isnt the first of many marketing blunders.  most twitter fans dont have the attention span for mmo's.

 

There I fixed it.

TWITTER ONLY! THATS BULLSHIT.

A couple points:

1) You can re-arrange the UI.  Give that point back.

2) Bullshit on the longevity.  I've been playing for six years.  There are still items in my quest log, zones to be vanquished, weapon skins to be collected, builds to be made, seaonal events to partake, and GW: Beyond content to explore.  Not to mention the PvP, which is still as gripping as the day the game launched.  Good luck getting through all that in 1-2 years; its possible, but you may want to have your nurse move you every once in a while so you dont get bed-sores.

Have two major issues with this article:

First, it fails to mention Skyrim as one of the potential turn-around games.

Second, NEVERWINTER is also coming out this year, its not just SW:TOR.

The player run tournaments thing is meh. The original GW had support for it, it just that AT's (Automated Tournaments) were much more compelling so only 2 big player-organized tournaments ever happened (and they were hosted by Guru, which if you follow my posts in the GW/GW2 sections, you know I have major beef with because of the poor first tournament).

Hopefully there will be some compelling features to the player run tournaments to make it not so meh; special rules (Golden Gun mode anyone?), limiting map rotation, etc.

Also, FATALITY

Curse my slow internet. I want to watch this sooner rather than when the sleep aid kicks in and starts making me loopy...

So just about everyone knows about the big two games looming on the MMO horizon: GW2 and SW:TOR.

And everyone knows Blizzard's next game on the horizon: Diablo III.

And then there are two other games also on the horizon: Neverwinter, and The Secret World.

Now, we pretty much all know that Blizzard and Arenanet never commit or announce a tentative date. But the others have not shied away from putting out tentative dates, even if they had to be pushed back.

While that is probably a good thing for the online game industry (since the released games may end up with a higher level of polish), are we looking at a release date stand-off, cold-war style?

Its inevitable that the games get released within the Q4 2011/Q1 2012 window since the investors have a say, but are these games waiting for the others to announce release dates?

Would having a release-date edge on the competition have any real impact in this market?

3354

Edit: got ninja'd