Guild Wars 1

[wideman]

I played GW in its "last days" before GW2 came out and I don't remember the Zaishen stuff being a problem. I actually think it was beneficial because they incentivized doing the missions again and that made for livelier mission hubs.

sounds like everyone (except Maxie) is in agreement with this :D

 

[Maxie]

I played GW in its "last days" before GW2 came out and I don't remember the Zaishen stuff being a problem. I actually think it was beneficial because they incentivized doing the missions again and that made for livelier mission hubs.

sounds like everyone (except Maxie) is in agreement with this :D

yes i was one of the sour grapes who didn't enjoy the resurgence of interest in doing earlier shit since i focused on AB meme at the time

 

[Kev Inkline]

GW1 started dying the moment PVE became the main point of interest of the devs instead of GvG.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's not true. GW was artificially killed by stopping support.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I'm speaking metaphorically, the spirit of GW died the moment pve became the focus. Pvers were always the mangy plebs compared to gods themselves, high level pvpers. But you cater to the audience that pays rl gold for vambraces.

 

[Lacrymas]

PvE never became  the focus, they delinked PvE and PvP balance at one point exactly so that wouldn't happen. What did happen is they started making flashier and flashier gear that is acquired from PvE (*cough* those glowing kitschy gauntlets *cough*), which contradicted the more restrained approach the game had up until that point, so they can get more box sales. Their business model was hard to sustain otherwise and it proved to be the downfall of GW1 because they were perhaps unwilling to cut back on new professions and skills with each standalone expansion. Too bad GW2 has nothing to do with 1, but it gets them more money for whatever reason. At least they are gracious enough to keep the servers going and throw us a bone from time to time. I'm kinda hoping they resume development at the 15th anniversary because there is an audience for it since a lot of people are still playing this ostensibly dead game. They just need a better plan going forward.

 

[what am i doing]

PvP killed itself via community elitism. PvE groups were welcoming to newcomers, PvP groups generally were not, so when players were allocating their time in the game they would naturally gravitate towards PvE. The PvP community wanted the devs to stop caring about PvP, that's why they deliberately made their own community as small & irrelevant as possible. That or the PvP community were really stupid and did it unintentionally.

Also adding professions was a mistake, or rather, adding unique mechanics for new professions was a mistake. Guild Wars had a really nice set of interacting mechanics / skill types, and when the devs added all these mechanics that didn't really interact with the old system and were linked too closely with specific professions, like binding rituals and shadow steps and all the Paragon crap, it basically broke the system and made it much harder / impossible to balance. Like before the expansion most buffs were Enchantments. Most of the remaining buffs were Stances. And a tiny remaining proportion were either very short-lasting Shouts (which were always a bit iffy balance-wise due to lack of a counter) and Wards (which are positioning-dependant and countered by things like AoE DoT that forces the enemy to move). Then you go and add a profession (Paragon) none of his buffs are Enchantments, so the normal counters of Enchantment Removal and Stance Removal don't work on him and they all fall under the uncomfortable, difficult to balance category of Shouts or shout-related unremovable buffs (echoes and such). How the fuck do you balance him then when you've made all his buffs uncounterable in a game that's all about counters? You don't, he's either useless or OP, you're never going to hit a sweet spot where he's perfectly balanced. Or the Assassin. You take a game where positioning, and IMS, and snares, and body blocking are all huge parts of the game, especially in PvP, and then you add a profession that teleports.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeap, the new professions being rushed was also a thing (it's not air magic anymore, it's wind magic). Paragon constantly shifted from useless to OP and back again. PvP vets say the balance was the best before any of the expansions and I can believe that. This could've been fixed, though, they just prematurely cut support.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

greed killed gw1. because ncsoft wanted to squeeze out of it much more money than the honest "buy to play" would allow them, that's the only reason gw2 exists: to koreanize it and to introduce a monthly subscription. ncsoft has a history of advanced retardation.

 

[Average Manatee]

One thing that time has proven is that GW1 was really well coded and must have been really easy to make content for. Anet was pumping out new campaigns and classes/skills at an insanely fast rate, and we also know their the upkeep and management of servers must have been easy since the GW2 devs have all but said that the reason they keep GW1 online is because its basically free.

Certainly it would have had growing pains and they'd need to have some kind of scaling back of the "2 new classes and 500 new skills every 6 months" plan but it would have been financially profitable to continue active GW1 development for at least another 2 or 3 expansions. But it was never going to make the big bucks that the MMO genre was after. Not that I think GW2 is making great money either. You need the $15/month subscription price to do that.

 

[Lacrymas]

to koreanize it and to introduce a monthly subscription. ncsoft has a history of advanced retardation.

There is no monthly sub for GW2.

 

[Lacrymas]

Not that I think GW2 is making great money either. You need the $15/month subscription price to do that.

GW2 makes money from cosmetics as far as I know, but the shop is massive anyway, so it's probably a lot of other stuff too. The problem with the cosmetic shop is that they make the shop items more flashy than the ones you can get in-game, so a massive portion of the game (the hunt for cosmetic gear, like in GW1) is being undermined by the cash shop. It's not a good system imo and I would've preferred for GW1 to have had a monthly sub, maybe a cheaper one, than for them to have cut support entirely. Maybe make it optional. I'd have paid a monthly sub to periodically get stuff like extra storage space, extra character slots, etc. The truth is, there is nothing like Guild Wars 1 on the market, so it's a real shame such a unique and, more importantly, good game rots because of shortsighted business decisions.

 

[Average Manatee]

I honestly don't see how the cosmetics in GW2 can be bringing in that much money. I figure 95% of people who are going to use it will only buy one costume. Which is weird how they seem to make new cosmetics constantly. I guess this is the whale effect?

Although the other thing that the GW2 cash shop lets you buy is straight up gold. I wonder how much that makes. Is that a standard thing in other MMOs?

 

[Lacrymas]

The vast majority of items in the gem store are cosmetics, but you can also buy content and utility items from there, so who knows. And yeah, you can exchange bought gems for gold as far as I know. There is no denying GW2 is bringing in enough money to sustain the whole studio without a monthly sub, so there's definitely something going on.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I honestly don't see how the cosmetics in GW2 can be bringing in that much money.

Whales. 9 out of 10 players might not buy anything, but Anet needs only the 10% of diehards who spend hundreds on the cash shop. As aforementioned, all of the good looking skins come from the cash shop. Each item costs at least 500 gems ($6.25, but usually more. Many items are only available as a part of $20 combo packs) and there are 7 armor slots, not to mention weapons. Legendary weapons can be ostensibly earned or crafted for "free" but require expensive mats and for you to have a high crafting proficiency (which has to be levelled with a lot of expensive mats). It makes no sense to farm for gold ingame. Flipping burgers at McDonalds, etc - is orders of magnitude more efficient than farming Drizzlewood cost for dozens and dozens of hours. So to get a legendary you're looking at paying $50+ be it to craft it yourself or to buy a complete one off of the auction house.

You can only get mount skins from the cash shop. Also, if you play a big character like a Charr, then the default free mount skin looks comically small for your character. If you don't want to look dumb then you have to buy the Dreadnought Raptor skin and the Broadhorned Bull skyscale skin. A mount skin costs $20 so that's $40 right there.

Also, FOMO. Almost all of the cosmetics in GW2 are only available for a 7 day duration before being unavailable for several months. If someone sees something they somewhat like, they are pressured to buy it because then they won't have a chance to get it again for a while. Also, the limited time sales leads people to bookmarking the sales thread on the forum, checking it every day, which makes thinking about the game part of their daily routine. It's the same psychology behind daily login rewards in F2P games.

Also, there are utilities. For example, bag space is character specific, and in this game your bags fill up with loot at an incredible pace, and having less than 300 bag slots is a real chore. One bag slot costs 400 gems ($5), and as of right now you can buy up to 7 more bag spaces so that's $35 just to max out bag slots for one character, not counting the cost of the actual bags themselves, and the devs raise the number of max bag slots you can buy every now and then (it used to be 10 max a few months ago). If you play more than one character then that is a lot of money you have to spend just for that one utility.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

There is no monthly sub for GW2.

now. after years. but it was there on launch, and it was a disaster.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

There is no monthly sub for GW2.

now. after years. but it was there on launch, and it was a disaster.

No, there wasn't. You bought the game then you could just play it. Never changed as far as I know, other than charging for select additional content/expansions.

 

[Lacrymas]

There never was a monthly sub, I bought GW2 basically on release because I was a huge fan of 1 and there wasn't a sub.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

There was no sub for GW or GW2 on launch or ever.

 

[luj1]

This is the craziest thing

I remember in GW days (circa 2004) there wasnt any toxicity among the players

people were calm, friendly and taking it slow

i am still in contact with some people i played GW1 almost 20 years ago believe it or not

now you cant enter an online game without someone screaming NOOB and tilting/raging/griefing

Its crazy how internet and smartphones changed humans in just a few years

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

This is the craziest thing

I remember in GW days (circa 2004) there wasnt any toxicity among the players

people were calm, friendly and taking it slow

i am still in contact with some people i played GW1 almost 20 years ago believe it or not

now you cant enter an online game without someone screaming NOOB and tilting/raging/griefing

Its crazy how internet and smartphones changed humans in just a few years

In the old days, playing online with other people in real time was novel, and the game mechanics hadn't been thoroughly documented and the optimal way to play games "solved". People were going through MMOs at their own pace. Games back then didn't have megaservers or matchmaking, so there was a sense of community on servers or in lobbies where you saw the same people regularly and your name mattered, so you wanted to be in people's good graces. Then megaservers and automated matchmaking became the norm. It is unlikely you will meet the people you are matched with ever again, so why care? You also started seeing the esportisification of games as they became hyper competitive, with ranked becoming the end-all-be-all. This coincided with the rise of DotA and LoL. Lastly games started becoming thoroughly documented. So communities were destroyed, people wanted to succeed at all costs, they knew the optimal way to play, and thus started viewing random strangers as impediments, as cogs in a machine to be replaced.

I think people are also a lot more stressed out nowadays. People having home computers and mobile phones means that they cannot escape the 24/7 news cycle. The news only agitates people by making them worry over things they cannot affect in their life. Money has become more tight as it has been 16 years since the 2008 recession, Obamacare drove up health insurance prices by 10x, massive inflation, increased job competition as jobs are shipped overseas/made obsolete by automation/more foreigners pouring into the country. Cancel culture makes people more on edge. Etc.

 

[Kev Inkline]

PvP killed itself via community elitism. PvE groups were welcoming to newcomers, PvP groups generally were not, so when players were allocating their time in the game they would naturally gravitate towards PvE. The PvP community wanted the devs to stop caring about PvP, that's why they deliberately made their own community as small & irrelevant as possible. That or the PvP community were really stupid and did it unintentionally.

That's fake news. A good part of PvP community was willing to go even for monthly payments, if that would have helped to stop NCSoft pushing for an expansion after another too fast.

Also git gud.

I remember in GW days (circa 2004) there wasnt any toxicity among the players

GW1 was released on late spring 2005. Maybe you were in alpha.

 

[gabel]

[...] I bought GW2 basically on release because I was a huge fan of 1 [...]

Why would you have done that? It had been clear well before GW2's release that it would be nothing like GW.
In other words, I didn't buy GW 2 because I was a huge fan of original.

 

[Vic]

This is the craziest thing

I remember in GW days (circa 2004) there wasnt any toxicity among the players

people were calm, friendly and taking it slow

i am still in contact with some people i played GW1 almost 20 years ago believe it or not

now you cant enter an online game without someone screaming NOOB and tilting/raging/griefing

Its crazy how internet and smartphones changed humans in just a few years

that's because everybody was a noob back then, you'd have a lot less patience if you've been playing the same game for 20 years and constantly see people doing the same newbie mistakes.

I'm not raging, but I let them suffer for their stupidity.

 

[volklore]

This is the craziest thing

I remember in GW days (circa 2004) there wasnt any toxicity among the players

people were calm, friendly and taking it slow

i am still in contact with some people i played GW1 almost 20 years ago believe it or not

now you cant enter an online game without someone screaming NOOB and tilting/raging/griefing

Its crazy how internet and smartphones changed humans in just a few years

For the short time I played GW2 community was also significantly friendlier than any other game. Idk what it is. Their games probably draws a public less prone to colorful displays.
GW1 was already considered to have considerably much more friendly players than WoW back then.

On another note, ArenaNet support actually recovered my account I hadn't accessed in 10+ years which was stuck on a discontinued e-mail service and I had extremely minimal info and didn't have access to keys from box sets. So I started a warrior in pre-searing and fooled around a bit. Let's see where nostalgia takes me. Game still looks good fully maxed out.