Guild Wars 1

[gabel]

[...] GW1 never became unsustainable considering it's still active today

Exactly.

It's profit-maximisation all the way.
Prophecies was their foot in the door, and then they gradually dumbed it down and introduced micro-transactions, culminating in the piece of shit that is GW2.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's a bit more complicated than that. They changed it because GW1 was unsustainable the way they were doing things. That's why they killed it in the first place.

Do you have any evidence for this? Namely, unsustainability.

It depends on what you mean by evidence. We can make a pretty good guess that it wasn't economically viable, especially given the poor sales of Nightfall. Everyone who was there at the time was surprised at how fast the devs were pumping out expansion after expansion because box sales was the only thing that was keeping them afloat. The content of the expansions itself was too much and too exponential in the long run. They added 2 (!) new classes per standalone expansion, which already started to stretch the devs' imaginations and the game. For example, the Dervish got wind magic instead of the Elementalist's air magic and those are somehow different. On top of that, they added skills for all classes in all of the expansions, the skill count ballooned to more than a thousand (!) at the end of Eye of the North. There was also a problem with story content, they wanted to create unique bread-crumb-style quests for the characters from all expansions to the stories of all other expansions, so that would've become crazy kooky and absurd at one point.

What we officially have is the story about the dev meeting after Nightfall was released and how they talked about wanting to do things (i.e. project Utopia) that were essentially impossible in GW1. They were already making compromises with Nightfall (the lack of cinematic trailer for it for one). After that, iirc they have gone on the record saying some stuff about the economic viability of GW1 but I'll have to search for that. They were also in a perpetual crunch to be able to create so much content for the game.

After that meeting, they decided to create GW2 instead of continuing with GW1 as a long-term project. I think they thought players won't be happy with them scaling back the content for each expansion. They *could* have kept developing in a sustainable manner, like no 2 classes or new skills for *all* classes per expansion, using a hub to transfer characters from one story to the next as opposed to creating an exponential quantity of quests, etc., but ultimately decided GW2 is the way to go.

 

[Lacrymas]

If anyone is really interested in this whole ordeal, here's a very good video on the subject -

 

[gabel]

If anyone is really interested in this whore ordeal [...]

No, thank you.

 

[luj1]

It's a bit more complicated than that. They changed it because GW1 was unsustainable the way they were doing things. That's why they killed it in the first place.

Do you have any evidence for this? Namely, unsustainability.

It depends on what you mean by evidence. We can make a pretty good guess that it wasn't economically viable, especially given the poor sales of Nightfall. Everyone who was there at the time was surprised at how fast the devs were pumping out expansion after expansion because box sales was the only thing that was keeping them afloat. The content of the expansions itself was too much and too exponential in the long run. They added 2 (!) new classes per standalone expansion, which already started to stretch the devs' imaginations and the game. For example, the Dervish got wind magic instead of the Elementalist's air magic and those are somehow different. On top of that, they added skills for all classes in all of the expansions, the skill count ballooned to more than a thousand (!) at the end of Eye of the North. There was also a problem with story content, they wanted to create unique bread-crumb-style quests for the characters from all expansions to the stories of all other expansions, so that would've become crazy kooky and absurd at one point.

What we officially have is the story about the dev meeting after Nightfall was released and how they talked about wanting to do things (i.e. project Utopia) that were essentially impossible in GW1. They were already making compromises with Nightfall (the lack of cinematic trailer for it for one). After that, iirc they have gone on the record saying some stuff about the economic viability of GW1 but I'll have to search for that. They were also in a perpetual crunch to be able to create so much content for the game.

After that meeting, they decided to create GW2 instead of continuing with GW1 as a long-term project. I think they thought players won't be happy with them scaling back the content for each expansion. They *could* have kept developing in a sustainable manner, like no 2 classes or new skills for *all* classes per expansion, using a hub to transfer characters from one story to the next as opposed to creating an exponential quantity of quests, etc., but ultimately decided GW2 is the way to go.

If you meant "dishing out content for GW1 was unsustainable", that I can agree with. They had a crazy pace with content.

But I don't agree with "GW1 was unsustainable". The entire game has been run by 1 guy for the last 10 years.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

But not with "GW1 was unsustainable". The entire game has been run by 1 guy for the last 10 years.

And it runs on a virtual machine on the GW2 servers doesn't it?

 

[luj1]

Maybe. They said the cost of keeping the GW1 servers up is literally 0. It can run forever. Which is why I reacted to agris' comment on alleged unsustainability. It is only unsustainability in producing content.

 

[Lacrymas]

Unsustainable in terms of content output, obviously.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm not so sure that Anet was the one in charge of deciding whether to stay with GW1 or make GW2 anyway. NCSoft owns their balls and they were shooting for WoW-killer MMOs, as soon as GW1 showed that it wasn't going to pull in those big bucks from a few inventory and cosmetic microtransactions it was time for GW2. Not that GW2 ended up doing that either, but I'm sure it pulls in way more money from whales spending $1000 on legendary weapons or something.

I do certainly agree that the pace and amount of content wasn't sustainable though. Not just for constant skill balancing issues, but also things like needing an exponential amount of skins for armor and weapons each new expansion along with new enemy types and all. It is actually kind of insane how fast they churned out Factions/Nightfall/EotN, but I'm guessing the sales of campaigns weren't good enough to let them slow down.

 

[what am i doing]

It's a bit more complicated than that. They changed it because GW1 was unsustainable the way they were doing things. That's why they killed it in the first place.

Do you have any evidence for this? Namely, unsustainability.

I don't have any "documents from the devs" type evidence, but look at the game itself.
- Release schedule of 1 campaign a year (edit: faster than that actually, I think). That's rather a lot. Now, fair, it's less work than making the core game because you're reusing code and just adding content, but it's still a lot of content.
- Profession / skill mechanic bloat making the game harder and harder to balance. More professions, more skills, and of course fancy new mechanics (or overuse of niche mechanics) to make the new professions feel worth having, all makes the system harder and harder to maintain.
- Player base gets spread across more and more campaigns, and you're not really going to grow the player base proportionate to that. New players will buy it, but old players will leave as well, and you'll outpace growth of the player base. As the player base gets spread out, areas feel more empty, new players have a harder time getting groups especially with fellow new players, and as an MMO feels empty it dies. An MMO is like a party that you have to keep going, once it breaks it's very difficult to get it back and you want to avoid that happening at all costs, so while new areas are good, you can't add too much of them too fast.

 

[Kev Inkline]

GW Factions is one of Soule's best works, for sure.

Art was great too

I think it was some Korean guy? I still have my GW1 manuals, they have his digital art everywhere (and also they smell nostalgic)

I believe Daniel Dociu was the head of design for GW1, he's Romanian.

https://daniel_dociu.artstation.com/

https://www.artstation.com/daniel_dociu

 

[Vyvian]

Guild Wars 1 was truly ahead of its time. I know there's strong sentiment against it but the PvP was so good I feel like it would thrive in the esports/twitch era if it were to come out today.
I've never played a better PvP system in an online RPG that's for sure. Even the causal PvP modes like Fort Aspenwood and Alliance Battles were fun.

 

[what am i doing]

Guild Wars 1 was truly ahead of its time. I know there's strong sentiment against it but the PvP was so good I feel like it would thrive in the esports/twitch era if it were to come out today.
I've never played a better PvP system in an online RPG that's for sure. Even the causal PvP modes like Fort Aspenwood and Alliance Battles were fun.

The difference between PvP in Guild Wars and PvP in other RPGs is so massive it hardly even feels right to treat them as being in the same genre.

 

[Lacrymas]

Guild Wars 1 wasn't ahead of its time, it's straight up unique and there's still nothing like it on the market. And yes, PvP was great even if you were playing casually. Just go over to the random arenas and have a non-stressful blast with whatever kooky build you came up with. You can still do that, but you have to go to Fort Aspenwood instead of the random arena hub.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Guild Wars 1 wasn't ahead of its time, it's straight up unique and there's still nothing like it on the market. And yes, PvP was great even if you were playing casually. Just go over to the random arenas and have a non-stressful blast with whatever kooky build you came up with. You can still do that, but you have to go to Fort Aspenwood instead of the random arena hub.

Skill collecting rather than gear grinding/leveling up is such a better mechanic. It's just way more interesting.

 

[Naraya]

If anyone is really interested in this whole ordeal, here's a very good video on the subject -

Hmm - Nightfall was great and was universally loved? I must be living on a different planet then. NF is the worst campaign of GW for me, for various reasons.

 

[Lacrymas]

NF is the worst campaign of GW for me, for various reasons.

Why?

 

[Naraya]

NF is the worst campaign of GW for me, for various reasons.

Why?

Well. It's (obviously) my subjective opinion so drop the pitchforks guys, however - since you asked - my reasons are as follows, in no particular order:

- requirement to use specific heroes in missions
- drab, dull pallette for the most part of the game
- dark, depressing environments (Desolation but ESPECIALLY Realm of Torment)
- boring soundtrack

My favourite campaign will always be Prophecies, however Factions (bar Kaineng, which is bleh) is also quite unique and interesting.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Nightfall up to the end of Vabbi was excellent, Nightfall post Vabbi is tedious. The Desolation is a drag on an already too long campaign, making use of the Junundu would have been novel for a single quest but you have to use their shitty skillbar for an entire mission and a primary that's about as long as a mission. That's also ignoring sidequests out there. It feels like a chore every time you pass through and based on experience, whenever you're rolling with a party of real players, the Gate of Desolation is the unambiguous "Welp... I'ma jump off for the night." point, regardless of time of day and how long you've been playing.

No problem with anything else, I like the music, pallette, specific heroes for specific missions etc. I especially like that the game is generous and places free buried treasure that respawns once a month all around the continent. A great way for new players to get money and rare items early on.

 

[luj1]

Factions > Proph > Nightfall > EOTN for me

 

[luj1]

GW Factions is one of Soule's best works, for sure.

Art was great too

I think it was some Korean guy? I still have my GW1 manuals, they have his digital art everywhere (and also they smell nostalgic)

I believe Daniel Dociu was the head of design for GW1, he's Romanian.

https://daniel_dociu.artstation.com/

https://www.artstation.com/daniel_dociu

Yes this is the guy. Such an amazing style. Words that come to mind are 'massive' and slightly abstracted.

 

[luj1]

PvP was so good I feel like it would thrive in the esports/twitch era

It did, it was very twitchy and skill-based.

I remember playing TA with some French crew for a while, once we actually beat the mod team who was balancing the game. Their chat had admin colors and I couldn't believe it. We played Balanced (1 Monk, 1 FF Necro, and either 1 Warrior, 1 Ranger or 2 Warriors). Balanced was one of the most long-lived TA metas and highly skill-reliant unlike the cheesy overpowered 2 Assassin 2 Monk TA meta which came later (forgot how it was called).

I've never played a better PvP system in an online RPG that's for sure.

They say DAoC was great too and some claim it was the spiritual predecessor of GW1 PvP formats. I think Matt Firor designed them.

 

[Naraya]

Still alive and kickin'!

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedback:Game_updates/20240215

 

[Caim]

The game's really being kept up by two dudes in their spare time because it's easier and cheaper than just taking it down. Gotta love it.

 

[Average Manatee]

In a way we can be thankful that Guild Wars 2 happened because it meant Guild Wars 1 would be untouched and age like fine wine.