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I've read most of the comments here, and one thing i agree with most, is to heavily focus on the fact the core game is free. The game doesn't need advertising for expansions, it sells itself once people experience it. There's so many things about GW2, just in the mechanics of it.. How you don't have nodes or mobs "stolen" from other players, giving it such a refreshing sense of community.. How you don't need to upgrade and get new armor every expansion. No sub fees! Jump puzzles! And even if you're playing free, to see those mounts, you realize this is a game worth investing in. These are the things for me that make GW2 irreplaceable, and that keep me coming back if I try other ones for a while.The beautiful landscapes and combat mechanics are icing on the cake. All that is needed is to get people to TRY it, and it will speak for itself. Why not give it a try, if you can for free, and get soooo much more than "free trials" I've seen. Featuring the expansion isn't terribly productive, as someone else stated, it's level cap content. New players will buy it, no doubt, once they're hooked on core.That eve video... Not my sort of game, but that was amazing! If I was into that sort of thing, I'd be immediately looking for a DL link, hehe. That's marketing, showing players enjoying the gameplay.

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  • ArenaNet Staff

@ReaverKane.7598 said:You know what could be interesting?A new GuildWars 2 Manifesto!!

Here's the thing, that video made me want to play the game because you could see some passion from the devs.Right now, i think Arena Net needs this. We see bland statements from MO that feel empty, and pretty much silence. The fact that you shield yourselves behind silence and AMAs that happen too early for people to actually have questions about the content, and on a third party site create a sense of aloofness from the team.Bring back Points of Interest, bring back World Tournaments on PvP, WvW Tournaments. Show the people that you care, by doing more than just a trailer that anyone with access to youtube and soundlcoud can reproduce.

You need to show us that your players, ALL your players matter, because so far you've successfully excluded a lot of us with the statement from MO that implies in not so many words that only those that buy the overpriced mounts are supporting the game. And when you have ACTIVE players and content creators feeling, and saying that they're "not your target audience", this more than anything drives people away from the game.

So yes, i'd suggest you start by mending fences with the community that you have, then move on to new horizons. At the moment, and not just in community relations, Arena Net seems to keep building their content on quicksand, instead of steady foundations.Strengthen your core so you can build on top of that. (And that's also a way to say, rework the stats, core professions, health pools, bounties in core tyria, etc before telling us "here's another mainly decorative expansion, cough up the dough")..

kitten... See, got me ranting...

Thank you for this. The Manifesto is a great video that taps into the emotion and dedication of the ArenaNet Dev team. I would love to do an update to this.

I also want to stress that ArenaNet...probably more then any company I've ever worked with, cares so much about there players...all players. We do make games as a business that we hope makes money but ArenaNet truly puts the players happiness as their number 1 goal above profit. It's a big reason I decided to come work here, leaving a job where I was very happy. It's an easy thing for me to write and hard to feel the sincerity in a post but I want this to be stressed as strongly as possible. ArenaNet is player first and I can promise specifically on the Marketing side that we are here. We are listening. When you guys say something it is noticed company wide. We strive to get it right and will continue to strive for excellence.

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@Nash.2681 said:@Mike: glad to read that. I hope at least you understand that your initial post can look suspicious, esp. since communication from officials in this forums is quite rare if compared to reddit. Hope you also read that I added some constructive feedback aswell.Oh, and I hope you not only appreciate the ideas and thoughts of everyone in here as they are (I believe you that you really do), but also keep in mind that everyone trying to support you in this thread is somehow working for Arena.Net for free.

Thank you. My hope is that more communication will start within our official forums first and foremost above all other forms of communication. I did read your constructive feedback and understand the time and effort you, as well as all players, have provided. I read everything and appreciate the work you have all put into this. :-)

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@DeceiverX.8361 said:Here's the thing...

As great as a trailer can be, the game made massive waves in 2012 and nearly everyone I know who plays online games (which is going to be the primary audience because most of the time people don't switch from console FPS's to MMO's, for example) has heard of or even played GW2. The problem is that an overwhelming majority of people would rather recommend something else or not recommend GW2. The game no longer has people on soap boxes screaming that this game is going to be the best one ever. The recommendations from your friends and family and coworkers are the ones that really matter. And needless to say, the game's been declining fast when it comes to the number of people willing to recommend it. While the game is aging which means that a population of new and prospective younger players/customer base is possibly emerging, so are new games, and one has to evaluate if the return from spending huge bucks in advertising is going to be more worthwhile long-term than trying to redeem players who have fallen off or are currently falling off. We can use Runescape3/Old School Runescape as an example that a substantial population of players can and will prefer older gameplay that they liked as opposed to shiny new gameplay that they do not. OSRS makes nearly the same amount of subscription revenue and often sports substantially more players online than RS3 despite RS3 having loot boxes and microtransactions at every corner. While I stick to the motto of "people who are going to spend money, will," this isn't applicable to GW2 as a comparison of possible revenue since it has a cash shop and is B2P as well rather than comparing Subscription + CS vs only subscription. This means, generally, you want as many players as possible interested in the game rather than trying to maximize off of whales, since those whales will be purchasing a lot, anyways. I can only assume that revenue is why the trailer is all about PoF and not GW2 as a franchise; you're trying to get people to buy the paid expansion because you already know that's where more revenue is going to be made.

It's pretty apparent that the GW2 brand needs some reinvigorating, though. Sales are continuously down every quarter for the most part, and the game is slowly bleeding out. The PvP formats are ghost towns (which is often used as a basis for determining game health long-term based on its inherent replay-ability, which will cause players to be skeptical when they go exploring these systems, and thus, possibly electing to drop the game early).

Honestly, it's in ANet's best interest to try and make a stand and redeem itself with its old customer base. Go back to the roots of what made GW2 launch so well: A fan-favorite previous franchise (GW1), a top-tier experience, a clear vision for the future, and most notably: a manifesto that pretty much defined this game as being the one worth investing time and effort into. The game laid out plainly what it wanted to do. How it wanted to do it; why the ideas were good. We just saw Blizzard rake in millions from announcing the launch of both a revamped original WoW and Starcraft 2 among other big announcements. Graphical reboots are cool, but a lot of people just want that sweet gameplay from when the company was a visionary rather than one drifting by just trying to keep profits up. GW2 has felt without passion for some time now, and people en masse know it. Their friends tell them. Their colleagues don't seem excited by the game. And so on. The game needs to present something that gives people a reason to talk about it over other games. Some cherry-picked reviews from players won't do that (odds are if they're still playing they think the game is good). There is so much going on in the gaming industry that can be done to make a spectacle if you have the initial funding to get the attention. Companies nearly every day are shooting themselves in the foot. Show, don't tell, why GW2 is better than WoW and why ANet is better than EA.

And honestly, I think to show that, the company needs to re-align its priorities and figure out where leadership made missteps. GW2 shattered the mold at launch. Over the years, it's just crept more towards every other generic RPG out there, which is exactly one of the biggest criticisms behind your video; every other game has these features now. Every other game has the same selling points. This one is five years old. Why is it still better? Colorful vocabulary won't fix that. And the revenue doesn't lie in the shared sentiment of many players; we want ANet to be different because the convention is over-saturated and boring, and we want to feel confident the players' interests are theirs in order to justify big, long-term investments of both our time and sustained allowance of money.

You can make a video checking the boxes of things to do to promote a game, but that still doesn't instill the "Wow"-factor many will depend on. While I know major systemic changes are beyond the scope of your job, it needs to be realized the value of production of huge magnitude and potential RoI is not worth skimping out over. Once you pass this opportunity up, future reviews continue to mean even less, especially if the first one proves underwhelming; it all comes back to the integrity of that ad. Is it a major reviewer giving it a 9/10 or some random guy? Is it just some general pre-rendered footage, or are we getting our minds blown by excellently-designed combat and can verify ANet now knows what it's doing like it did leading to launch of the core game?

Wow...and I mean that. I read this a few times. Your comments are not only constructive but passionate but they have really engaged my thought process. As you said I have a controllable which is the marketing of the product so I will steer my attentions their but boiling down your sentiment within this thoughtful feedback is ArenaNet needs to refresh our creative efforts and infuse our passion. I can tell you the passions is still here at ArenaNet but we need to make sure the public sees this. We need to show how GW2 is better and worth playing. This accolade video will not be the magic bullet, but rather 1 small piece of a much larger strategic marketing campaign planned to rollout over the next few years and a lot of what we plan to do moving forward is coming from feedback such as this. We will have moments of amazing with some missteps along the way but it will take time. ArenaNet is going to show off GW2 with extreme passion and get the marketing right thanks to you and the communities support!

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The issue I have recommending the product is not a lack of enjoyment for the game, it's the presentation of things like the story. It gets quite convoluted trying to explain that you buy the core game, then you are forced to skip the next story because it's gone (thus losing a key introduction to many characters), then you buy the next story as a DLC to set up an expac which you buy, then you buy another story dlc to set up the next expansion, which is only playable if you bought the previous expansion but then if you happened to be online during one episode you get it for free ..aaannnd...I've lost them long before I get close to finishing all that.

Now I doubt this is something Marketing can really aid with beyond perhaps clarifying how the structure of the game is compared to simpler formats, but it's always been a huge stumbling block for me getting players involved. Almost every person interested gets turned off by the complexity of the "buy in" structure and either leave after the PS is done or never even get started.

Kudos for communications on the forums. Something we have campaigned for long and hard to little avail - but seeing this (and the pvp one) is encouraging for restoring much of the lost dev-player relationship

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@SoulPariah.2856 said:I'm so stupidly happy to see this open communication come through after your active involvement in the AMA. I mentioned in that AMA about transparency, saw you were serious about it, and then saw this and immediately was like "oh god community don't ruin it!". So, I'm very glad to see that it appears to have been more productive than not =)Crazy idea - Would it be possible to get a player whose quote you wanted to use to consent to being in the video (their toon) and then spectate them in a large scope kind of background, and then display their quote. This would give context to who they are and also market assets/gameplay, but might be more tedious and limit the amount of total quotes in a video.Observation - What got me into the game way back when was event scope, and maybe that method isn't as effective any more, but I would use the middle of the video for showing off more large scale events or scenery panned out and key into that before diving into the close ups to push primary themes / characters / assets (mounts) at the end. A new player isn't familiar enough with the game for some details to fully affect them at the speed of the shots changing, but the "feeling" of a larger scene can go far without needing to be familiar with it. Pure opinion, and I may be very wrong.Obs - The skimmer scene didn't register with me at first (not the pack scene, the solo one). Maybe background blend / maybe the angle. Maybe coming from a higher angle to show the water splashing behind as it pans shows more of that their an over water mount for a new player?obs - For the ending hype, I think the jackal attack scene gives more than balthazar. You see balthazar, give off that he's a baddie and then show an attack scene. That, for me, leaves the final thought for the viewer being gameplay and wanting to do that thing they last saw.

idea (not as crazy) - with the logo at end, use some form of audio injection (dragon sound or something) when the dragon comes out of the tornado to snap back from the silence to drawing attention to the path of fire product logo (while not ruining the intent of the fall off in audio).

oh god, it got long....ok i'm done! =)Thanks so much for this and I hope it has truly been more worthwhile than not. I nitpicked i think, but to me, the background video and showing off of assets and the music and all that are going to be priority, and then the quote thing can be worked on. If the content I'm seeing doesn't do it for me though, the quotes won't matter. If I like what I see, the quotes are additive.

ok seriously, done...Thanks again!

Thank you for this. I've been overwhelmed in the best way possible over the responses received from the community. Mostly constructive and passionate feedback. I plan on doing this a lot as we begin to put all of the community feedback into action items, not just on this video, but for the next few years of our marketing. Keep it coming. The ArenaNet Marketing Team is reading every word and appreciates the constructive feedback. :-)

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I have a feeling my feedback got overlooked because it had a wow video in it, but i'm passionate about this so i'll try another way. GW2 just had one of the biggest most impressive updates it had since it's launch, outside of expansions. New raid, new fractal, new legendary, new map, new story and a bunch of quality of life overhaul. Really a magnificent update. Imo the best non-expansion patch GW2 has ever had.

this was the trailer for it.I honestly wasn't excited for this. The update itself however blew my mind, but the marketing for it wasn't good. That's where you have a big disconnect. I'm a GW2 fan, the marketing didn't excite me. If you aren't a GW2 fan, but just randomly find that trailer, it means nothing to you. There is not a single good piece of marketing out there from Arenanet wich did the big update you guys had justice.

I know there's a big thing Arenanet likes to do wich is supprise people with the content they put out, but if it comes at the cost of people not checking out that content, that's not good. There were a ton of people i talked to ingame after the update that were totally shocked that a new fractal and raid were in the game. The only sources that anounced it were advertisers and articles. I learned it from BogOtter, a partner, who appearantly recieved a mail about it. But there was no official promotion for this at all. You guys have to start actually promoting what you put in the game, new fractal, new raid, new legendary, new map and story, that should be mentioned in the trailer for the freaking update, not left to people to find it out when they log in. Arenanet asks people to be their marketing tool, to help them get friends into the game, but i can't make friends excited for a new update or show them how active GW2's development cycle is if you don't give me a blogpost or trailer or anything that they can check out to see what is in the actual update...

This is far more important then random trailers with comments from John and Jane Doe who say they like the expansion. That doesn't do anything, feature trailers do.Even path of fire to this day still doesn't have a decent feature trailer. The only video mentioning all the features is the expansion anouncement, wich is half an hour long. I hope you see the problem with this. We need clear marketing that can give people an idea of what's going on in 2-3 minutes. Plz, be clear and mention why your game is worth playing, because it is worth playing, i believe that truelly, but you aren't selling it to us at all.

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@"Mike Silbowitz.1827" said:

(snipped)

You're welcome. Another long post incoming. While I'm not the only player who is often outspoken about being vehemently against a lot of the decisions made in the game recently, there is a substantial base of players like myself that despite being quit or inactive, still has an immense passion for what we experienced in the years surrounding launch and beyond, and quite frankly, still hold stake in the game in hopes we can feel good about coming back. In the past, it was in fact, that good. And I'm not being nostalgic. Those who know me know I do a lot of number-crunching and analysis on the game such that I can objectively say it was better than now. I'm glad my voice could be heard on this note of all things I've posted, and your continued interaction with the community is something that I can assure you is noted even from a critic's perspective; this shows dedication to doing the job well, even at the cost of time of release, which is precisely what so many people really want and would rather prefer (profession numerical balance being the lone exception since stagnant metas create boredom, but that's another discussion entirely with other nuances). GW2 released later than expected because that kind of attention to fine detail was valued at its release, and we were all better off because of it. This is a great marketing opportunity with possibly much bigger implications, and doesn't need to be rushed.

I'll help fortify what I mentioned above as well coming from someone who also worked in the MMO industry mixed with some heavily-invested player perspective: This industry isn't like most mainstream games, because the entire player approach is different. Players in MMOs are often more more perceptive to the long-term about what they're getting into, because the game needs to entail a framework that allows for communities to thrive. These communities need to last. This isn't just friend-collecting like in CoD or League of Legends, where maybe you queue up with that guy once or twice after having a good game. Our friends in these spaces are named, often significantly. They are persistent bits of the world itself, not just another member of a match. They vary in aesthetic and personality dramatically. We can fight with them, against them, and endure all of the elements in the worldspace together or not as we choose. We can talk at no expense for hours, idle animations on repeat many times, talking about either the game or not. Dedication to improve and hone our skills at playing the game. Often, such friends will move to different games as a group for years, slowly building a community, despite possibly never seeing each other face to face. Most of the initial buzz about this game was because these frameworks were made to cater to these notions; the lines between formats were blurred with people leveling and gearing by just PvP'ing instead of conventional grinding or running dungeons, which let people with different tastes converge together after a while. The impact of Dynamic Events in populated maps felt substantial with the difficulty increases as literal hordes of enemies would invade low level maps, with good enough loot to keep high level players around, which makes the maps more populated and makes the game in general look more populated, which affects morale of new people staying, and removes exclusivity and the barrier between different communities. Fast-paced combat kept PvE players on their toes, but its balanced nature and fair simplicity made PvP and WvW competitive and really about skill which everyone appreciated. RoI and longevity in this space at the end of the day comes down to these systems working - to keep people around with reason to go and do something they've done before again. To experience all of that requires an immense time investment from players to establish and be part of, and to justify a community being fostered, there needs to be faith that such tenets will be upheld as best as possible by the company.

Faster, bigger content doesn't help address issues that may arise on this level. It just provides a distraction for the time being while interested parties explore it, to eventually get bored again. And every time new content needs to come out, in order to make it marketable, it needs to be continuously more extreme and over the top. With rising costs of game development, this isn't sustainable for any MMO publisher, which is why you see Asian imports come and go so often; the key systems aren't usually 100% there, and there's often little maintenance to those systems due to language and cultural barriers. It's yet another sequel akin to Transformers (What are we even up to now, 7? 8? See? Few people care). But this industry isn't about cheap, short thrills like movies are (although mass marketability which makes movies profitable can only help you in a B2P model). 2 hours and 20 bucks isn't much for a cheap thrill. Thousands of hours and hundreds/thousands of dollars is, and can quickly be invalidated. If coming at the cost of maintenance of old content and systems, it can alienate entire populations of players which can affect other ones, which affects income for the company and overall marketability into the future. WoW has probably been as successful as it has because it could boast about its huge player counts (a way to show prospects that they're doing something right, and Blizzard awed their audience year after year for close to the first decade. Runescape had a legacy as well, being one of the biggest innovators and easy to pick up given its pacing. Both games made huge mistakes (Panderia/a bit too much powercreep and RS3's system overhauls) which resulted in huge migrations away from the game, but both made concessions as to not lose a grip on what they had and reel people back into their products to foster those systems. And they're still doing great with record profits.

It's not that we need to see developer passion - an interview as an ad could show this, but it'd be boring or too complicated for new people, and from the perspective of many in the loop, nothing new. We realize ANet generally has an immensely talented and passionate batch of people. Your tech staff is honestly the best in gaming, period. You've had multiple near-seamless releases and never have downtime which is amazing. Show us some magic about the passion for the game as it was. As it is right this second. How those two things aren't any different, or the efforts being made to try to not have them be different if they are. I know ANet is hesitant to make formal commitments about incoming content since it makes for big backlash if/when things don't come, but keeping in touch on these systems is hugely motivational. You don't need dates. You just need to formalize the focus, show what's "being worked on and why we think it's a good idea to be doing this thing" and be upfront about making no commitments towards 100% actually implementing it. Riot does this all the time with League and their Dev blogs, and Runescape has done this for over a decade. The game can see big gains from marketing internally, especially given media sources like Reddit which promote popular discussion. A general-public ad is important to get new peoples' attention, but when you want to buy a new car, you ask your gearhead friend with your favorites or someone else who you know and trust who has the same one for their approval. It's the same thing here. But rather than responses like "It's okay," or "Not very reliable," you want responses like "Amazing," and "I wish I'd stayed with it." Find that first, then roll out your general ad, and I think GW2 will be on track to be hugely back in business.

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@Fox.3469 said:I have a feeling my feedback got overlooked because it had a wow video in it, but i'm passionate about this so i'll try another way.

That's right! How dare you point out the competition to us. JK of course. ;-)

I'm sorry I didn't respond to your previous comment but I had read it as well as this latest comment. I had responded to some of the other comments that were similar but you may have missed. The WoW trailer is an exceptional example of what to do right in educating players on content.

I know there's a big thing Arenanet likes to do wich is supprise people with the content they put out, but if it comes at the cost of people not checking out that content, that's not good.

You are 100% right and I promise you and the rest of the community that this feedback is a big topic of meetings we are having this week for future videos. We need to do a better job of detailing content and not be as precious as we have been about not spoiling content. We've allowed this fear to take over and to your point what does it matter if our players are not playing because they do not realize the robust nature of the content released. Changes are coming and we are taking this feedback seriously. We just ask for patience and continued constructive feedback as we drop more marketing assets. I want the feedback and intend to live up to the expectations of the community.

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@Mike Silbowitz.1827 said:

@Fox.3469 said:I have a feeling my feedback got overlooked because it had a wow video in it, but i'm passionate about this so i'll try another way.

That's right! How dare you point out the competition to us. JK of course. ;-)

I'm sorry I didn't respond to your previous comment but I had read it as well as this latest comment. I had responded to some of the other comments that were similar but you may have missed. The WoW trailer is an exceptional example of what to do right in educating players on content.

I know there's a big thing Arenanet likes to do wich is supprise people with the content they put out, but if it comes at the cost of people not checking out that content, that's not good.

You are 100% right and I promise you and the rest of the community that this feedback is a big topic of meetings we are having this week for future videos. We need to do a better job of detailing content and not be as precious as we have been about not spoiling content. We've allowed this fear to take over and to your point what does it matter if our players are not playing because they do not realize the robust nature of the content released. Changes are coming and we are taking this feedback seriously. We just ask for patience and continued constructive feedback as we drop more marketing assets. I want the feedback and intend to live up to the expectations of the community.

I'm glad you're not opposed to looking how other companies are doing stuff like this, and that you realise it's important to promote. I'm hopefull that the community feedback will help shape things a bit better. I'm hoping that "new living world story and map, new fractal, new raid" will replace ""AAAAHHHHH" - Sugarcube.GW2" on future adds, because the first one has allot more meaning to get new players in imo.

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So, what about the contest ? Not necessarily for this one because it's something that take time, but that can be a good idea.The community is implicated, some good trailer can emerge and its practically free for Anet. :)After choosing the winner you can still "improve it" if you wish.

And bonus, you can learn what people want to show for advertising to new players (so what they like in the game).

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@Mike Silbowitz.1827 said:You are 100% right and I promise you and the rest of the community that this feedback is a big topic of meetings we are having this week for future videos. We need to do a better job of detailing content and not be as precious as we have been about not spoiling content. We've allowed this fear to take over and to your point what does it matter if our players are not playing because they do not realize the robust nature of the content released. Changes are coming and we are taking this feedback seriously. We just ask for patience and continued constructive feedback as we drop more marketing assets. I want the feedback and intend to live up to the expectations of the community.

Mike, you are a breath of fresh air. Best of luck to your team, with the attitude you are showing and the skill behind your group as a whole, I am positive we will all enjoy the results of your efforts when they finally come to fruition.

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@Kaizok.7839 said:So, what about the contest ? Not necessarily for this one because it's something that take time, but that can be a good idea.The community is implicated, some good trailer can emerge and its practically free for Anet. :)After choosing the winner you can still "improve it" if you wish.

And bonus, you can learn what people want to show for advertising to new players (so what they like in the game).

I like it. We are going to look into logistics but I think it's a very solid idea.

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@DeceiverX.8361 said:

You're welcome. Another long post incoming. While I'm not the only player who is often outspoken about being vehemently against a lot of the decisions made in the game recently, there is a substantial base of players like myself that despite being quit or inactive, still has an immense passion for what we experienced in the years surrounding launch and beyond, and quite frankly, still hold stake in the game in hopes we can feel good about coming back. In the past, it was in fact, that good. And I'm not being nostalgic. Those who know me know I do a lot of number-crunching and analysis on the game such that I can objectively say it was better than now. I'm glad my voice could be heard on this note of all things I've posted, and your continued interaction with the community is something that I can assure you is noted even from a critic's perspective; this shows dedication to doing the job well, even at the cost of time of release, which is precisely what so many people really want and would rather prefer (profession numerical balance being the lone exception since stagnant metas create boredom, but that's another discussion entirely with other nuances). GW2 released later than expected because that kind of attention to fine detail was valued at its release, and we were all better off because of it. This is a great marketing opportunity with possibly much bigger implications, and doesn't need to be rushed.

I'll help fortify what I mentioned above as well coming from someone who also worked in the MMO industry mixed with some heavily-invested player perspective: This industry isn't like most mainstream games, because the entire player approach is different. Players in MMOs are often more more perceptive to the long-term about what they're getting into, because the game needs to entail a framework that allows for communities to thrive. These communities need to last. This isn't just friend-collecting like in CoD or League of Legends, where maybe you queue up with that guy once or twice after having a good game. Our friends in these spaces are named, often significantly. They are persistent bits of the world itself, not just another member of a match. They vary in aesthetic and personality dramatically. We can fight with them, against them, and endure all of the elements in the worldspace together or not as we choose. We can talk at no expense for hours, idle animations on repeat many times, talking about either the game or not. Dedication to improve and hone our skills at playing the game. Often, such friends will move to different games as a group for years, slowly building a community, despite possibly never seeing each other face to face. Most of the initial buzz about this game was because these frameworks were made to cater to these notions; the lines between formats were blurred with people leveling and gearing by just PvP'ing instead of conventional grinding or running dungeons, which let people with different tastes converge together after a while. The impact of Dynamic Events in populated maps felt substantial with the difficulty increases as literal hordes of enemies would invade low level maps, with good enough loot to keep high level players around, which makes the maps more populated and makes the game in general look more populated, which affects morale of new people staying, and removes exclusivity and the barrier between different communities. Fast-paced combat kept PvE players on their toes, but its balanced nature and fair simplicity made PvP and WvW competitive and really about skill which everyone appreciated. RoI and longevity in this space at the end of the day comes down to these systems working - to keep people around with reason to go and do something they've done before again. To experience all of that requires an immense time investment from players to establish and be part of, and to justify a community being fostered, there needs to be faith that such tenets will be upheld as best as possible by the company.

Faster, bigger content doesn't help address issues that may arise on this level. It just provides a distraction for the time being while interested parties explore it, to eventually get bored again. And every time new content needs to come out, in order to make it marketable, it needs to be continuously more extreme and over the top. With rising costs of game development, this isn't sustainable for any MMO publisher, which is why you see Asian imports come and go so often; the key systems aren't usually 100% there, and there's often little maintenance to those systems due to language and cultural barriers. It's yet another sequel akin to Transformers (What are we even up to now, 7? 8? See? Few people care). But this industry isn't about cheap, short thrills like movies are (although mass marketability which makes movies profitable can only help you in a B2P model). 2 hours and 20 bucks isn't much for a cheap thrill. Thousands of hours and hundreds/thousands of dollars is, and can quickly be invalidated. If coming at the cost of maintenance of old content and systems, it can alienate entire populations of players which can affect other ones, which affects income for the company and overall marketability into the future. WoW has probably been as successful as it has because it could boast about its huge player counts (a way to show prospects that they're doing something right, and Blizzard awed their audience year after year for close to the first decade. Runescape had a legacy as well, being one of the biggest innovators and easy to pick up given its pacing. Both games made huge mistakes (Panderia/a bit too much powercreep and RS3's system overhauls) which resulted in huge migrations away from the game, but both made concessions as to not lose a grip on what they had and reel people back into their products to foster those systems. And they're still doing great with record profits.

It's not that we need to see developer passion - an interview as an ad could show this, but it'd be boring or too complicated for new people, and from the perspective of many in the loop, nothing new. We realize ANet generally has an immensely talented and passionate batch of people. Your tech staff is honestly the best in gaming, period. You've had multiple near-seamless releases and never have downtime which is amazing. Show us some magic about the passion for the game as it was. As it is right this second. How those two things aren't any different, or the efforts being made to try to not have them be different if they are. I know ANet is hesitant to make formal commitments about incoming content since it makes for big backlash if/when things don't come, but keeping in touch on these systems is hugely motivational. You don't need dates. You just need to formalize the focus, show what's "being worked on and why we think it's a good idea to be doing this thing" and be upfront about making no commitments towards 100% actually implementing it. Riot does this all the time with League and their Dev blogs, and Runescape has done this for over a decade. The game can see big gains from marketing internally, especially given media sources like Reddit which promote popular discussion. A general-public ad is important to get new peoples' attention, but when you want to buy a new car, you ask your gearhead friend with your favorites or someone else who you know and trust who has the same one for their approval. It's the same thing here. But rather than responses like "It's okay," or "Not very reliable," you want responses like "Amazing," and "I wish I'd stayed with it." Find that first, then roll out your general ad, and I think GW2 will be on track to be hugely back in business.

So much has been said and I thank you because your passion shines through in a big way. I also appreciate the time it takes to put pen to paper to this level.

First I will say that a lot of what you touched on does not fall into my purview but rather with dev so I can't control much there but my controllable in these areas is to email your comment to the dev team, which will happen after I write this response.

As for marketing for GW2 I see so much value in the lifelong connections fostered in game and I want to highlight this human aspect of what GW2 brings. The fostering of human connections around the globe. I can't go into too much detail but the ArenaNet marketing team has something amazing in store that I hope will celebrate these human relationships. More to come this February.

I also want to make sure ArenaNet is providing our loyal fans with the tools they need to evangelize the game. We are five years strong with the most amazing and passionate community. I want the GW2 players to be proud evangelists and my promise is to provide you with high quality marketing that will aide in showing your friends why GW2 is a game they should be playing. It will take time to get everything created and I ask for continued patience and support over the following months and years but it WILL happen.

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As a returning player this video is just not my cup of tea. It seems that a person whom knows little to nothing about GW2 is not going to understand much from the in-game clips in this video, expect for maybe that GW2 has an epic looking wolf mount.

The video needs to throw a short narrative at its viewer and then ask if they have what it takes to help save the day. The story is spoken by someone with a godly sounding voice that will leave the viewers with goosebumps. As each part of the story is told to the viewer an in-game clip is played that goes with that part of the narrative. The idea it to give them a little taste that’s so good they can’t resist to look for more.

An example of a quick narrative could be; “The Elder dragons have once again have awakened. Our Gods have abandoned us, whilst a fallen God seeks to forsaken us. Tyria needs heroes! Heroes who have what its takes to defeat the Elder Dragons. Heroes whom against all odds will show no fear in facing a fallen God. Will you be this hero? Will you answer our call?

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Living Story trailers are marketed toward existing GW2 players -- new and old. They do NOTHING to lure in the outside world. It doesn't tell you that there's a large, active community of helpful players. It doesn't say the game is free to play. It doesn't say the expansions are affordable. It doesn't say, most importantly, that there isn't a subscription fee. It doesn't say anything about the features of the game; the concept of the Living Story should be a selling point, not the episode itself.

Sell the game. Sell the pricing. Sell the low investment cost. Sell the accessibility. Sell the active community. Pull people in with the things that would make them say, "That game looks good. Let me give it a try."

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I have stopped playing, other then daily logins and making sure I am on for the new chapters that get added so that I don't have to pay for them if I do decide I want to play again.

As for the video, I think that including your player bases comments in the video is a fun and rewarding aspect to the Video! Because we aren't sponsored or biased like many media sites out there such as MMORPG or PC Gamer etc etc. So that's cool. There is no doubt that this game's graphics are amazing. They always have been and I doubt that is changing. And the mounts were a great addition. I do love the hidden things in the game that make you want to explore the areas a bit more. There are a lot of pro's to this game and maybe those will work for new players and old players coming back... but it will only work for a short period before people get frustrated with how things work.

[offtopicish here I apologize but these are issues I think will put some people off from the game in the long run]Now let me start a bit with some of my background in MMO's, Ive played Star Wars Galaxies, WoW, Rift, Aion, Blade and Soul, Final Fantasy 11 and 14 and I have played GW2 since I got my Beta invite. I played Guild Wars 1 from the day it came out well past GW2's release (hello Birthday cupcakes!). I love the franchise and story. I'm a crafter and I tend to play healing and Tanking rolls in just about every single MMO I have ever played.

For me the video really didn't say anything more then, "hey we have beautiful graphics and mounts and there is some fun things around the world you can find." It prolly wouldn't pull me back in but it would possibly make me do a bit more research into what it is they're talking about. I think its lacking in a lot of key areas that people right now are looking for in an MMO.

I used to be all about the "no trinity." approach, but have since gone away from that thought and really miss classes like monk that focused on boons and healing. The Devs tend to over balance as well. They would rather make a drastic nerf vs small adjustments. I believe that GW 2 would benefit from a test relm. Healing in this game while O.K. is still a pain in the kitten if you know what I mean. Its not fun.

Crafting is dull and grindy. I dont want to spend a week or 2 getting the things needed to make commanders armor to even be considered for PUG Fractals. The Market is horrible and because of how grindy the game is people know that people dont want buy those spendy mats (hello Fresh Water Pearls!) .

Not a fan of the Black Lion Company, the issues are currently what many people are having issues with. RNG Loot Boxes and the mounts in this game are crazy. And until those things are looked into a bit more I wont be spending a dime on black lion goods.

Not sandboxy at all and personally thats a real turn off for me right now. If I am going to spend my time off investing in my character I want to make sure its invested in something other then crafting...

Dungeons and Raids are meh. Nobody runs the old stuff anymore everyone is doing fractals and they feel rushed and not well thought out. Mechanics are bleh and without the trinity it seems tedious. Again just my opinion.

All in all those are my big issues. That video really didnt tell me much. The message gets lost. But visually the game is the best out there imho. And do feel people should play the game I would just warn people its going to get real old after a few months.

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Hey Mike, I was just watching WP's video where the thread about Marketing/ Media was discussed. Just wanted to say that it's really nice to see you this active discussing the topic with the players. I think that's the best of both worlds. I can imagine however, that some of the feedback might feel like a smack in the face (justified or not). And even though that's part of every job, I want to thank you for the effort and the motivation to improve. I think we all in this chat appreciate it very much. In the end we all care about this product and we all want the best for it. So yeah, thank you for listening and discussing!

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This video wouldn't get me to look at the game, and may have the exact opposite effect. Looking at this from the perspective of a person that doesn't already love the game I'm actually getting quite turned off by the video.

-All of your accolades are from usernames and social media, this instantly tells me you can't get a good review from a reputable source like IGN, PC Gamer, etc... and instead need to rely on die-hard fans to get a positive review.-There is little combat being shown, and none of it is meaningful. Instead it's a grainy mount montage with some peter jackson ripoff clips thrown in.-The video doesn't tell a story, it's all disjointed and doesn't flow.-Even in the small player the video looked grainy and pixellated.

What I'd want to see as a prospective player is something like an epic story told in 1 minute. Starting with level 1 and jumping forward to dungeon and story bosses in the order they come up. BOSSES not random open world mobs, nobody cares about killing a random mob. As the story progresses the character's armor and weapons get grander and grander. The story reaches a crescendo with 10 characters in legendary armor with "serious" legendary weapons taking on a raid boss, leave an open ending suggesting this isn't the end but the beginning. All of this is done with renders or extremely high res footage, cropping a 640x480 area of the screen then blowing it back up to 1900p looks horrible. Any accolades are quoted from reputable sources only, not users or social media posts.

Telling the video's story shows that there is an epic story being told within the game far better than a 3 second clip of balthazar here and there.

Basically show me this is a game worth playing over World of Warcraft from a raw quality of content standpoint, not fashion wars and landscapes.

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@Mike Silbowitz.1827 said:As for marketing for GW2 I see so much value in the lifelong connections fostered in game and I want to highlight this human aspect of what GW2 brings. The fostering of human connections around the globe. I can't go into too much detail but the ArenaNet marketing team has something amazing in store that I hope will celebrate these human relationships. More to come this February.

Hype level reaching critical! Can't wait for February now.

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Mike Silbowitz.1827

Welcome to the team, and I hope you enjoy your stay here.

I watched the video and a few others. But I want to share something with you.. something that will touch a lot of Old School Gamers like myself. And it was said by Mike O'Brian himself.

MMOs are social games. So why do they sometimes seem to work so hard to punish you for playing with other players? If I’m out hunting and another player walks by, shouldn’t I welcome his help, rather than worrying that he’s going to steal my kills or consume all the mobs I wanted to kill? Or if I want to play with someone, shouldn’t we naturally have the same goals and objectives, rather than discovering that we’re in the same area but working on a different set of quests?

We think of GW2 as the first MMO that actually has a cooperative PvE experience. When I’m out hunting and suddenly there’s a huge explosion over the next hill – the ground is shaking and smoke is pouring into the sky – I’m going to want to investigate, and most other players in the area will too. Or if the sky darkens on a sunny day, and I look up and see a dragon circling overhead preparing to attack, I know I’d better fight or flee, and everyone around me knows that too.

With traditional MMOs you can choose to solo or you can find a good guild or party to play with. With GW2 there’s a third option too: you can just naturally play with all the people around you. I personally spend a big chunk of my time in traditional MMOs soloing, but when I play GW2 I always find myself naturally working with everyone around me to accomplish world objectives, and before long we find ourselves saying, “Hey, there’s a bunch of us here; let’s see if we can take down the swamp boss together,” without ever having bothered to form a party.

It's was such a painful loss that this was not advertised more, as many other MMO's, PvE is amost PvP where players compete for resources, kills, loot, and yet here in GW2, it's what a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE game should be. We can all be playing, doing our own thing, and still be working together, sill helping each other. For example, I see a hero Point stat, I run over, because, I want the point, and could not solo it, in doing so, I see the person that started it.. well they are not doing so good either.. but together, we kill the challenge boss, and have worked as a team, even if that was not the game plan all along, it was the plan of the game, all along.

Truth is, if the forebears MMOs like EQ did this, instance based content never would have existed, as we could all share a world together, among each other, always working together, as community, as opposed to private little bands of players.

I am not sure how you could truly sell to someone the idea that we can all run to a Jormag.. we can all help and add our arms to the fight.. and we all win and get rewarded for it.

That was truly one of the best parts of the game.. to be among the community, a part of it, without needing to be in a group.. but knowing that someone cold be there for you, just as you can be there for anyone else around you.

Such a brilliant yet simple idea.. and as far as I can tell.. you all invented it.. why not market it more?

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