Originally posted by lasttime

Originally posted by RathanX26

Originally posted by lasttime

Originally posted by RathanX26

In the age of social media, it doesn't matter how much marketing you do, a failed product remains a failed product. Yes, you have to pre-purchase to get guarenteed access. Yes, those who pre-purchased are those who already liked what they saw of the game enough to buy it. We will be biased, however, we are biased in such a way that if we don't like what we saw during beta, you can almost be assured that everyone who had paid would make sure that everyone who had not yet purchased would know exactly what kind of crap they were about to buy. ArenaNet took one hell of a gamble on the Pre-Purchase + Beta weekend. Had it not been awesome, they could have flopped their game even before it launched. People enjoyed it, dispite the bumps that occured. And no amount of marketing will make you like something that you tried and hated. 

I still see commercials for TOR and no matter how cool they look, i won't buy the game.

 

Wouldn't a bigger gamble be to allow anyone to beta test it with out having to spend any money?

Who is more likely to give honest feedback, people who bought the game and liked it/disliked it, or anyone who could get?

Thats a loaded question because the very much is a phenomenon where people after having spent money  they can't get back convince themselves of the wiseness of their choice. Look at console fanboys. I bought a 360 and its the only system I've played so its clearly the best system even though I've never played a ps3. People have a habit of convincing themselves that they make the best decision even when they didn't.

So your thought is that people will tell themselves this game is awesome as opposed to saying this game sucks since they have already spent money on it? And your example is yourself? If thats the case then why do people drop their subs from games they have spent money on? Why do people stop playing games at all? I have spent money on something so i will keep playing it because although i hate it, i will tell myself that i don't even with all the other choices and releases coming up? I am not saying your wrong as i am sure there are people out their foolish enough to do what your suggesting, however, even though this forum is a PvP wonderland, you can be damn sure that if someone on here hates something,  they are letting everyone know about it. Same with facebook, twitter, knitting groups, chess teams, etc....

Originally posted by lasttime

Originally posted by Ramanadjinn

interesting theory.  would be more interesting to see evidence to support it.

giving the subject very little thought my first reaction is that there is more evidence to the contrary.  i'm afraid in this business customers who have spent money on the product do not seem inclined to love what they bought based on that monetary investment.  we seem all to quick to be willing to write our investment off as wasted money on a garbage product.  

 

Is that something you see yourself doing? I don't see myself doing that but I analyze a decision to buy something into the ground. I also don't think that my process is the norm tho.

no, i enjoy the genre.  i haven't really played an MMO that i thought was not worth its cost.

i am merely commenting on how i do see a lot of people here who have paid money for games and still attempt to run them into the ground with horrible reviews and constant berating.  it is that behaviour which i feel indicates and highlights the uncertainty in your premise.

OMG and OP one of thier most insane marketing tools!!! 

You forgot to mention their brilliant move of not ever having a release date, of having a company motto of we will ONLY release the game when the game is ready.

Unlike most game developers that make unrealistic release dates determined by promises to investors rather than letting the developers determine when the product is good enough for public release.

OMG it is totally unheard of in the industry!!

I can not tell you how many times I have read right here on these forums when some POS unfinished buggy game is released, and someone posts, " But that is the way it works".

This time we have a company saying, but that is not how it should ever work!!

Originally posted by lasttime

Originally posted by IPolygon

1) There are in fact lots of people who got into the BWEs without paying anything.

2) If the game was bad, it would have crashed and burned on the spot on the first BWE.

There may be blind fans, but there are a lot of fans who post tons of feedback to make a good game even better. The forums were flooded with threads and posts each time something went wrong (stuck at 95% anyone), but also when something was good or needed improvement.

Bottom line is: Possibly GW2 is actually a pretty decent game, believe it or not.

1)How many of those people were not under nda so they could state their opinion?

2)While there was a lot bad responses to the SWTOR beta it still sold a lot of copies. So I wouldn't go so far as to say a bad beta is an instant crash and burn.

I'm sure GW2 will be a great game.

The press was mostly not under NDA. The NDA covered mostly the cash shop (for obvious reasons). So if something went wrong, we would have seen it from the presses on the first Monday after the press closed beta ended in February.

Originally posted by Nefera

Originally posted by lasttime

Originally posted by Nefera

Originally posted by lasttime

Originally posted by Homitu

I'll add that I think you're underestimating players' reasonableness when you assume that everyone who prepurchased the game will automatically, unquestionably like what they try in beta.  If the game truly was bad, or failed to meet the expectations they've developed, players would be absolutely irate--especially so since they already bought the game and couldn't get a refund.  They wouldn't just happily pretend to to enjoy themselves forever. 

I'm 50/50 on that. I don't think that everyone will blindly love the game but at the same time I do believe people can strongly sway themselves to think things they may or may not truely agree with.

You know, you're starting to sound like a cold reader to me. :S

 

On topic: would that not apply to every single game though? So the question boils down to this: how can you trust any review of any game, as people could be prone to stating things they may not truly agree with?

lol cold reader. I could see how it looks like that. As for your on topic  question thats pretty much it. So the game of it is really trying to disect where it appears people are making comments that are truly informative and when people are just talking out their ass.

Which in turn leads to a conclusion of why should we even read reviews at all, as it's either hard work or night impossible to disect where people are being honest and where they're lying to themselves. (If that's even happening? Wouldn't they just stay quiet and try to make themselves accept they don't necessarily agree with, than boast about these great features that they don't-like-but-really-do on forums?)

 

Let me try to structure it out in a logical manner. Arenanet gives pre-purchasers beta access --> people that like the game are more likely to pre-purchase --> reviews are more likely to be positive, hence it's a good marketing strategy --> some people may give it good reviews even if they don't genuinely mean it --> you can't trust positive reviews to be all that great --> reviews aren't that reliable of a marketing tool after all --> not that great marketing strategy anymore?

 

You sure you've thought this through all the way?

Yes I have. The flaw there is you stating you can't trust positive reviews to be all that great therefore reviews aren't that reliable of a marketing tool. While that statement is technically true thats not how the public repsonds. The public consumes game review websites. Your kind of pointing how it should be not how it actually is.

Originally posted by Eletheryl

http://www.vgchartz.com/preorders/  it doesnt look that great for a game who should be the  ¨messiah¨ of the MMO world. People here on MMORPG forums, need to undestand that not everyone is in love of the game after what they saw in the beta. 

Not that great? Are you kidding me? Look at that list of yours again. GW2 preorders rival many console AAA titles and its also the only PC game with numbers next to it and yet has no release date!

But then again who cares about that lists since prepurchases are not even counted there.

Take a look at this: http://i46.tinypic.com/dvr2qc.png

TERA is said to have about 750k subs. While that does not mean 750k active players GW2s 7 hour monday stress test reached TERAs active players number!

As for the marketing. Its brilliant. There is no BS, no false promisses (unless you have your head in the clouds) just pure info and well written articles. Yes some things could be done better still but so far they are leagues ahead of any other company.

By all accounts, ANet have done a great job of delivering exactly what it says on the tin. No dodgy marketing there. If there was still an NDA in force, you would have reason to speculate. But there isn't.

But certainly clever marketing. They've convinced hundreds of thousands of fans to pay for the game without ever playing it. And now they're letting those fans have little bites of the delicious pie (BWE's) and then yanking it away again :D

And the pie IS delicious. Nobody has tasted anything like it before. Those "little bites of the pie" are enough to convince the fans that this is the only pie they will ever want to eat. Ever.

Originally posted by Sorrow

OMG and OP one of thier most insane marketing tools!!! 

You forgot to mention their brilliant move of not ever having a release date, of having a company motto of we will ONLY release the game when the game is ready.

Unlike most game developers that make unrealistic release dates determined by promises to investors rather than letting the developers determine when the product is good enough for public release.

OMG it is totally unheard of in the industry!!

I can not tell you how many times I have read right here on these forums when some POS unfinished buggy game is released, and someone posts, " But that is the way it works".

This time we have a company saying, but that is not how it should ever work!!

Every single gaming company that has ever released an MMO has said the same exact thing. Eventually, GW2 WILL have a release date when it comes to the same point in production as those other games. Eventually, they WILL have a deadline they have to meet. Arena Net is no different than any other gaming company, and even have less money to work with than a lot of the others. Once again, they have you fooled into believing they are special. Exactly like the Blizzard fanboi's who think the Blizzard term "Soon" is amazing.

They have a nice little scam going on but they have already been flagged by PayPal. We will see if they still refuse to give those people who want refunds their refunds when the game isn't released. Myself I am playing it at launch so I don't really care.

Originally posted by Ramanadjinn

Originally posted by lasttime

Originally posted by Ramanadjinn

interesting theory.  would be more interesting to see evidence to support it.

giving the subject very little thought my first reaction is that there is more evidence to the contrary.  i'm afraid in this business customers who have spent money on the product do not seem inclined to love what they bought based on that monetary investment.  we seem all to quick to be willing to write our investment off as wasted money on a garbage product.  

 

Is that something you see yourself doing? I don't see myself doing that but I analyze a decision to buy something into the ground. I also don't think that my process is the norm tho.

 

no, i enjoy the genre.  i haven't really played an MMO that i thought was not worth its cost.

i am merely commenting on how i do see a lot of people here who have paid money for games and still attempt to run them into the ground with horrible reviews and constant berating.  it is that behaviour which i feel indicates and highlights the uncertainty in your premise.

That's interesting. I don't read a lot of stuff on this site so I'm not aware of that. I would like to look more into how people react.

Originally posted by lasttime

Originally posted by Sephastus

Originally posted by bookworm438

While yes, it's brilliant marketing, you also need to remember that you don't have to prepurchase to get into beta. The only way to GUARANTEE your access to beta is to prepurchase. However, it's possible that you'll be selected to participate in a BWE if you signed up beta access back in February.

I have yet to see the FIRST person say that they got into the game because they were lucky and got selected to participate.

The games at fast food restaurants work the same way. They say "no purchase necesary", and that you only have to send them mail and they give you a game piece. How many people do you know do this? While it is POSSIBLE, I am pretty sure a very high percentage of those that played in the beta weekends pre-purchased.

Back to the point though, GW2 does have faults that could have caused huge uproars had the mayority of their playerbase been general community players: Login issues, Lag Issues, autorepeating "quests", cash shop dependancies to open some loot, ect ect. But the fact that those that are currently playing are the fans that see no wrong in what ANet does, the voices of reason get shut down.

Anything you say, that in any concievable way, can be interpreted as "bad" about the game, will immediately be tackled by what some forum users are calling "GW2 white knights" and "Damage control". This is actually quite unique to GW2 because while other games do have their fans, normal players and haters, the fans that have played the game are at a much higher proportion to the normal player that have played the game, and the haters just do not have the access to the game to show believable complaints.

So, I agree, it is brilliant marketting that I hope NEVER catches on. If it does, this will be the one surefire way to give companies the advantage in siphoning money from the players for mediocre or downright bad content.

With that said, I hope all those that payed for the privilage of playing beta are enjoying it. And I REALLY hope that the current issues with the game get resolved before release, because if it doesn't, it will affect the rest of the playerbase in a negative fashion since it will be telling other developers that they can overhype a game, collect money, and give the players garbage in return. Access to beta should NEVER be guaranteed if you buy or pre-order a game, and instead should be done through pure sampling of the general population. If its done the way GW2 is doing it, the feedback and reviews will be heavily skewed in favor of the game.

Very true. I hope the game comes out to be just as good as everyone anticipated but I'm also not a fan of how the beta was done.

Well I think it's fine.

I don't have numbers, but I assume that most people who try beta tests don't give real feedback. They use it as a demo. The developers spend all that time putting their games in a valuable state, were it needs fixing and a lot of gamers don't do what they are supposed to. The idea of entry was to help them. 

So now you see the consequences of this. Developers are now more and more making their betas perfect and making sure that the people who get to play it, are in it because they wanna invest. Gamers are entitled to nothing.

Which is why they have not even announced the next BWE. Because people don't easily accept failures now. They judge unifhsed products. So Anet are scapegoated into making some uber polished product. People were losing their senses with all the downtime during the last BWE. This was to be expected but people are hysterical. 

But it's nothing really new. guarenteed beta access upon purchase has been done with lots of games. I remember back in the day, you had to buy ZOE2 to get to play Metal Gear Solid 2 demo. the game sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It all boils down to supply and demand IMO. Economics 101:)

Originally posted by IPolygon

Originally posted by lasttime

Originally posted by IPolygon

1) There are in fact lots of people who got into the BWEs without paying anything.

2) If the game was bad, it would have crashed and burned on the spot on the first BWE.

There may be blind fans, but there are a lot of fans who post tons of feedback to make a good game even better. The forums were flooded with threads and posts each time something went wrong (stuck at 95% anyone), but also when something was good or needed improvement.

Bottom line is: Possibly GW2 is actually a pretty decent game, believe it or not.

1)How many of those people were not under nda so they could state their opinion?

2)While there was a lot bad responses to the SWTOR beta it still sold a lot of copies. So I wouldn't go so far as to say a bad beta is an instant crash and burn.

I'm sure GW2 will be a great game.

The press was mostly not under NDA. The NDA covered mostly the cash shop (for obvious reasons). So if something went wrong, we would have seen it from the presses on the first Monday after the press closed beta ended in February.

I don't count the press. I mean look at the SWTOR commercial with all these awards about game of the year and stunning.

Originally posted by lasttime

Originally posted by Nefera

<snip>

Which in turn leads to a conclusion of why should we even read reviews at all, as it's either hard work or night impossible to disect where people are being honest and where they're lying to themselves. (If that's even happening? Wouldn't they just stay quiet and try to make themselves accept they don't necessarily agree with, than boast about these great features that they don't-like-but-really-do on forums?)

 

Let me try to structure it out in a logical manner. Arenanet gives pre-purchasers beta access --> people that like the game are more likely to pre-purchase --> reviews are more likely to be positive, hence it's a good marketing strategy --> some people may give it good reviews even if they don't genuinely mean it --> you can't trust positive reviews to be all that great --> reviews aren't that reliable of a marketing tool after all --> not that great marketing strategy anymore?

 

You sure you've thought this through all the way?

Yes I have. The flaw there is you stating you can't trust positive reviews to be all that great therefore reviews aren't that reliable of a marketing tool. While that statement is technically true thats not how the public repsonds. The public consumes game review websites. Your kind of pointing how it should be not how it actually is.

Fair enough, one last point and I'll leave my argument at that. (Need sleep - work tomorrow morning).

I don't necessarily agree with your assumption of how the public behaves. You yourself discounted the credibility of game review websites (along the lines of "Press beta weekends don't count") in an earlier post, so we're only talking about actual player reviews  and impressions here. I would agree that the public consumes game reviews, especially from fellow players, a lot more skepticism is shown towards actual games media. Hence the focus here is on the reliability of player reviews. And the actual reality I've seen in majority of forums is that their reviews are heavily discussed and questioned, most what are considered to be uninformed or unfair reviews being torn apart. The public isn't as much of a sheep as you may suggest they are.

Originally posted by Nefera

Originally posted by lasttime

Originally posted by Nefera

Which in turn leads to a conclusion of why should we even read reviews at all, as it's either hard work or night impossible to disect where people are being honest and where they're lying to themselves. (If that's even happening? Wouldn't they just stay quiet and try to make themselves accept they don't necessarily agree with, than boast about these great features that they don't-like-but-really-do on forums?)

 

Let me try to structure it out in a logical manner. Arenanet gives pre-purchasers beta access --> people that like the game are more likely to pre-purchase --> reviews are more likely to be positive, hence it's a good marketing strategy --> some people may give it good reviews even if they don't genuinely mean it --> you can't trust positive reviews to be all that great --> reviews aren't that reliable of a marketing tool after all --> not that great marketing strategy anymore?

 

You sure you've thought this through all the way?

Yes I have. The flaw there is you stating you can't trust positive reviews to be all that great therefore reviews aren't that reliable of a marketing tool. While that statement is technically true thats not how the public repsonds. The public consumes game review websites. Your kind of pointing how it should be not how it actually is.

Fair enough, one last point and I'll leave my argument at that. (Need sleep - work tomorrow morning).

 

I don't necessarily agree with your assumption of how the public behaves. You yourself discounted the credibility of game review websites (along the lines of "Press beta weekends don't count") in an earlier post, so we're only talking about actual player reviews  and impressions here. I would agree that the public consumes game reviews, especially from fellow players, a lot more skepticism is shown towards actual games media. Hence the focus here is on the reliability of player reviews. And the actual reality I've seen in majority of forums is that their reviews are heavily discussed and questioned, most what are considered to be uninformed or unfair reviews being torn apart. The public isn't as much of a sheep as you may suggest they are.

I would certainly like that if it looked that way but from waht I read on gaming forums(I'm not well versed on how it happens on mmorpg) it looks to be more pointless flaming and fanboyism than any actual discussion. People seem really drawn to either hating something with a passion or guarding it like the holy grail. I don't often see someone walking the middle objectively commenting on games.

Originally posted by lasttime

This post isn't about the quality of the game or whether its good or bad its just about something I found rather ingenious. ArenaNet shows some footage of the the game here and there not giving away too much but enough to make some assumptions about the game. Does a closed beta followed by a press beta. Then sets up an "open" beta which you get into by prepurchasing the game. Now what they've done with this is have only people who like the game enough, just from the info given out so far, to pay for the game entirely before release. Now those people are the ones populating the beta and surprise they like it which is statistically likely as those people were willing to prepurchase it. (Here what im sressing is not the preordering it which I've done a several times and then been unhappy with the game, but the prepurchasing which requires the the paying of the game entirely.) Now because of this the beta receives nothing but amazing reviews from most everyone in the beta. Just a little thought I had.

For me it was TotalBiscuit.  When TotalBiscuit went nuts for this game...   I bought it within 15 minutes.   He doesn't even like good games...   And he was acting like a school girl with her first crush...

Originally posted by MosesZD

Originally posted by lasttime

This post isn't about the quality of the game or whether its good or bad its just about something I found rather ingenious. ArenaNet shows some footage of the the game here and there not giving away too much but enough to make some assumptions about the game. Does a closed beta followed by a press beta. Then sets up an "open" beta which you get into by prepurchasing the game. Now what they've done with this is have only people who like the game enough, just from the info given out so far, to pay for the game entirely before release. Now those people are the ones populating the beta and surprise they like it which is statistically likely as those people were willing to prepurchase it. (Here what im sressing is not the preordering it which I've done a several times and then been unhappy with the game, but the prepurchasing which requires the the paying of the game entirely.) Now because of this the beta receives nothing but amazing reviews from most everyone in the beta. Just a little thought I had.

 

For me it was TotalBiscuit.  When TotalBiscuit went nuts for this game...   I bought it within 15 minutes.   He doesn't even like good games...   And he was acting like a school girl with her first crush...

lol

Originally posted by Eletheryl

http://www.vgchartz.com/preorders/  it doesnt look that great for a game who should be the  ¨messiah¨ of the MMO world. People here on MMORPG forums, need to undestand that not everyone is in love of the game after what they saw in the beta. 

Wow, so it's being beat by Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Halo 4, Borderlands 2 and Assassin's Creed 3?

You do realize that MMORPG gaming isn't a majority of the gaming market right? You also realize that those three games (GR:FS, H4, AC3) are (behind Call of Duty) the three most popular franchises on console right? You also should know that Borderlands 2 was a huge success, and is (according to IGN) one of the most anticipated console games of the year as well. You also ignore the fact that the chart you have is showing ALL pre-orders for ALL consoles. GW2 is definitely the most pre-ordered PC game by a long shot (The next PC game in line is WoW:MoP, which is 15 places behind GW2). 

So let's get this right: You're saying that GW2's sales doesn't look great, yet it's the 5th most preordered game on any console in America alone.

Yeah, I don't think you have a point there.

A great mmo sells itself.

A bad mmo dont do open beta's.

Still Arenanet knows alot about merchandise and marketing, they lived alongside WoW for many many years and did quite fantastic, witch alot of people forget.

Also if people prepurchase they want it bad, and if they get disapointed when invited into the beta this forum would have been filled with rage posts and bad 1st impressions, witch i havent seen minus the posts about the engine not optimized and servers to crowded (stress testing).

Anet might shock the world at release in 2 ways: 

Best mmo of the decade or trashcan fodder like Aion / Warhammer / SWTOR.

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Originally posted by lasttime

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Originally posted by kanezfan  

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Originally posted by lasttime

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Originally posted by kanezfan People who pre-ordered SWTOR were pumped for that game as well but there was a ton of disappointment posts during the beta for that. Everything that Anet promised is in the game right now and it works as advertised. Basically Anet is competent and people are really happy with the game. I've ever read posts here from former haters who tried the game and changed their tune.

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True but that game didn't require you to pay for the game in its entirety. Also you didn't need to pay at all to be in the beta as I tried during the one weekend anyone could try it.

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  Yes but the reaction was terrible. The reaction for GW2 hasn't been terrible. Try harder.

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Because people who were going to dislike SWTOR were able to try it. To try GW2 I would have to prepurchase it. That requires me to be pretty sure I like it before even playing it.

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no you can wait until there's an open beta or a free trial. a beta isn't a demo anyways, it's there for the devs to test out the game.

Originally posted by kanezfan

 

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Originally posted by lasttime

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Originally posted by kanezfan  

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Originally posted by lasttime

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Originally posted by kanezfan People who pre-ordered SWTOR were pumped for that game as well but there was a ton of disappointment posts during the beta for that. Everything that Anet promised is in the game right now and it works as advertised. Basically Anet is competent and people are really happy with the game. I've ever read posts here from former haters who tried the game and changed their tune.

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True but that game didn't require you to pay for the game in its entirety. Also you didn't need to pay at all to be in the beta as I tried during the one weekend anyone could try it.

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  Yes but the reaction was terrible. The reaction for GW2 hasn't been terrible. Try harder.

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Because people who were going to dislike SWTOR were able to try it. To try GW2 I would have to prepurchase it. That requires me to be pretty sure I like it before even playing it.

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no you can wait until there's an open beta or a free trial. a beta isn't a demo anyways, it's there for the devs to test out the game.

I hope they do an open beta. THat would be nice.