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Is it time to end GW2?


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@Gehenna.3625 said:

@"MetalGirl.2370" said:People need to stop overreacting. Those who act like it's end of the world and are leaving are the reason why GW2 is doing bad.

I think you got it wrong there. People leave cause the game has gotten stale. It's not right to blame the people for leaving or think they overreact. Anet has stopped with any thing that's interesting. Recycling old boring festival content, while adding some new sigil and a kitten rare infusion. They just add living story missions with boring worlds, and gem store updates for the most part.

They have just given us false/empty promises to keep us interested in the game.

Like for example a 2nd set of legendary set of weapons. Which were announced long before the first expansion and isn't even done now long after the 2nd expansion pack.I also remember a promise about WvW being their top priority of 2017. It wasn't much good other than reward tracks and real auto loot happened.

That's true of every single MMO on the planet. People have left WoW because it's stale too. There are exactly zero MMOs that you play for hundreds or thousands of hours that don't become stale to some people. Not relevant to the question at hand.WoW, as usual, is a bad comparison. It still boasts millions of players even after 15 years and has had 7 expansions. People often do come back for the new expansions. GW2 has only been around for 6-7 years but only had 2 expansions. Having said that, your general point is not wrong of course. People do leave all MMOs because they feel it gets stale. However, also a lot of MMOs have failed or have become very small. GW2 is doing alright compared to a lot of other MMOs but it would be delusional to say that it's doing fantastic. If that were true then there would've been no reason for the layoffs. So that begs the question whether it's better to burn out or to fade away? And I think that's sort of what this is about. Should it end on a relative high or should it be dragged out beyond its perceived expiration date? But also there I suspect opinions will vary.There are ALSO people who play for thousands of hours for whom the game isn't stale.This is essentially true but the real question there is if the revenue they get from the core fanbase is enough to sustain this game for the long term. Ncsoft said that under the existing circumstances it was not. Cutting a third of the staff is significant but it also does put the game in a better position from a business point of view as it improves the cost vs revenue picture on the cost side. It also means that Ncsoft doesn't see amazing growth in GW2 for the years to come. What's tricky there is what will happen on the revenue side because that could also go down more and more. So that leads me to believe that they're opting for the fade away option.People leave MMOs for all sorts of reasons all the time. Don't try to make it like this MMO is worse or better at holding players than any other, because no one can say for sure.This is also essentially true. In fact we know that for example it's been better at holding players than Wildstar for example. But what matters most in here is the revenue that players bring in. I don't say that as a counter to your comment but I am interested to see how the game fares revenue wise in the next year or two. The problem with a non-sub game is that active players do not automatically translate into paying customers. And I do feel that people who do spend a lot on gems may reach a point of saturation where they already have so much stuff that they really are not excited about new stuff anymore and spend less over time. That's the danger for this game with regards to banking on retention rather than new and returning players.

So really, I do not expect GW2 to die anytime soon. I also do not expect ArenaNet to stop putting effort into the game because it literally is all they have, especially now their other projects are cancelled. One path that lies open is that indeed they focus on LS chapters only and increase their gem store monetization. That's a path that wouldn't be interesting to me personally. But as much as GW2 is not that much different as other MMOs, that also means that if it follows the usual pattern that this game will continue to become smaller and smaller. Nothing unusual or strange, but that would be the reality for GW2 as well.

I feel like a lot of what you're saying is misleading. It doesn't matter how many players WoW has if it loses a higher percentage. It started higher because it started earlier, with less competition. There are exactly zero MMOs that were free to play when WoW launched. And they had the budget, after the success of Warcraft and Starcraft to advertise big. Those deep pockets go a long way. I don't recall seeing ads for any other MMO with William Shatner, or Chuck Norris or Mr. T in them on television.It's not misleading. For all intents and purposes WoW is the exception not the rule. What the problem is with using WoW as an example is that it has been so much more successful than any of the others that it allowed Blizzard to choose their approach more freely. They do not need to make the same type of choices as others do because they already make way more money with it than they need to keep it afloat. It is a COMPLETELY different ball game if you get in a groove where you will make a big profit pretty much guaranteed or a decent profit probably. I think it's fair to state that for WoW can be said that it became a victim of its own success. It killed their next MMO they were planning because WoW was just still way too profitable.Beyond that, WoW went form 12.4 million at it's heyday to under 4 million at one point before they stopped reporting the information. Saying WoW has more players doesn't change what I've said in anyway.\It does because with 4 million players they are still the best performing MMO in the west and do not really have to make hard choices because their bottom line is in danger. Just selling an expansion is likely enough profit to keep the game going for a few years. Everything else is just bonus. That's the sort of attitude nobody else can really afford. Look at ArenaNet... they had to make the choice to forego a new expansion at least for the time being so they could do different projects. WoW doesn't have to worry about such choices because it can do what it does and be extremely profitable still.Also your comment about the game not being financially viable. That's not what was said. They said Anet was not financially viable, because it had people working on projects that were making zero income. A lot of people were hired in the last year, and a lot of people were fired. We don't have significantly less people than we did at launch working for the company right now, That's a big deal. Plenty of MMOs have had lay offs in the past, and they're still kicking around years later. Companies often lay off people to appease stockholders. They can say anything they want, but I strongly suspect that this was done because they were down on many projects including some bad investments and stockholders want to perceive something is being done. The line from the movie The Game comes to mind. "Action is taken, confidence is restored" said by the CEO of the company firing the head of one of the companies he owes. This is what investors want to see. But there's no way NcSoft can come right out and say that. If Anet had a couple of projects which were making no incoming, thus supporting three groups of devs on one game, of course it was unsustainable, anyway. Those games needed to be released at some point. Obviously that wasn't going to happen and didn't happen.Where did I say the game is not financially viable? I do not remember saying that. As for your further assumptions, they may or may not be true but they are just as much opinion without facts to back them up. Ncsoft did say that NcWest was not performing as they need it to. That affected ArenaNet and the mobile side as far as I know but ArenaNet's cuts were by far the largest. That would not be the case if their revenue was a lot higher. A lot of MMOs that are of a certain age do not have 400 people to support it or being supported by that one game if you prefer it the other way around. That's what's not viable according to Ncsoft and that's what I am referring to.It's just a lot more complex than you're making it out to be here.You know full well that it's pretty much impossible to describe every detail here. There are complexities that I recognize and/or imply that I can't even begin to write down here or it will be a wall of text to which there is no equal possibly. I won't do that. In larger lines though it's a simple reality that ArenaNet suffered a massive amount of layoffs and had to cancel their other projects. If indeed GW2 was a massive success that brought in lots of revenue then their staffing would be a bad place to cut. As it stands GW2 has being doing ok but for a game of this age they have a lot of staff. More than the competition I would think. What I cannot rhyme in my head is why they increased their staff so much in recent years and cut back on GW2 at the same time. We know that because it has been said out loud that after PoF they basically handed over GW2 to the LS teams and we know for a fact that it was said also that they at least postponed expansions. That much is known. So that means that ArenaNet had a large portion of their staff working on projects that were costing money and not making any. So when Ncsoft decided it need to cut costs, that instantly becomes the first and best place to cut a lot of the "fat" away. Sometimes it's not more complicated than that.

@"MetalGirl.2370" said:People need to stop overreacting. Those who act like it's end of the world and are leaving are the reason why GW2 is doing bad.

I think you got it wrong there. People leave cause the game has gotten stale. It's not right to blame the people for leaving or think they overreact. Anet has stopped with any thing that's interesting. Recycling old boring festival content, while adding some new sigil and a kitten rare infusion. They just add living story missions with boring worlds, and gem store updates for the most part.

They have just given us false/empty promises to keep us interested in the game.

Like for example a 2nd set of legendary set of weapons. Which were announced long before the first expansion and isn't even done now long after the 2nd expansion pack.I also remember a promise about WvW being their top priority of 2017. It wasn't much good other than reward tracks and real auto loot happened.

That's true of every single MMO on the planet. People have left WoW because it's stale too. There are exactly zero MMOs that you play for hundreds or thousands of hours that don't become stale to some people. Not relevant to the question at hand.WoW, as usual, is a bad comparison. It still boasts millions of players even after 15 years and has had 7 expansions. People often do come back for the new expansions. GW2 has only been around for 6-7 years but only had 2 expansions. Having said that, your general point is not wrong of course. People do leave all MMOs because they feel it gets stale. However, also a lot of MMOs have failed or have become very small. GW2 is doing alright compared to a lot of other MMOs but it would be delusional to say that it's doing fantastic. If that were true then there would've been no reason for the layoffs. So that begs the question whether it's better to burn out or to fade away? And I think that's sort of what this is about. Should it end on a relative high or should it be dragged out beyond its perceived expiration date? But also there I suspect opinions will vary.There are ALSO people who play for thousands of hours for whom the game isn't stale.This is essentially true but the real question there is if the revenue they get from the core fanbase is enough to sustain this game for the long term. Ncsoft said that under the existing circumstances it was not. Cutting a third of the staff is significant but it also does put the game in a better position from a business point of view as it improves the cost vs revenue picture on the cost side. It also means that Ncsoft doesn't see amazing growth in GW2 for the years to come. What's tricky there is what will happen on the revenue side because that could also go down more and more. So that leads me to believe that they're opting for the fade away option.People leave MMOs for all sorts of reasons all the time. Don't try to make it like this MMO is worse or better at holding players than any other, because no one can say for sure.This is also essentially true. In fact we know that for example it's been better at holding players than Wildstar for example. But what matters most in here is the revenue that players bring in. I don't say that as a counter to your comment but I am interested to see how the game fares revenue wise in the next year or two. The problem with a non-sub game is that active players do not automatically translate into paying customers. And I do feel that people who do spend a lot on gems may reach a point of saturation where they already have so much stuff that they really are not excited about new stuff anymore and spend less over time. That's the danger for this game with regards to banking on retention rather than new and returning players.

So really, I do not expect GW2 to die anytime soon. I also do not expect ArenaNet to stop putting effort into the game because it literally is all they have, especially now their other projects are cancelled. One path that lies open is that indeed they focus on LS chapters only and increase their gem store monetization. That's a path that wouldn't be interesting to me personally. But as much as GW2 is not that much different as other MMOs, that also means that if it follows the usual pattern that this game will continue to become smaller and smaller. Nothing unusual or strange, but that would be the reality for GW2 as well.

I feel like a lot of what you're saying is misleading. It doesn't matter how many players WoW has if it loses a higher percentage. It started higher because it started earlier, with less competition. There are exactly zero MMOs that were free to play when WoW launched. And they had the budget, after the success of Warcraft and Starcraft to advertise big. Those deep pockets go a long way. I don't recall seeing ads for any other MMO with William Shatner, or Chuck Norris or Mr. T in them on television.It's not misleading. For all intents and purposes WoW is the exception not the rule. What the problem is with using WoW as an example is that it has been so much more successful than any of the others that it allowed Blizzard to choose their approach more freely. They do not need to make the same type of choices as others do because they already make way more money with it than they need to keep it afloat. It is a COMPLETELY different ball game if you get in a groove where you will make a big profit pretty much guaranteed or a decent profit probably. I think it's fair to state that for WoW can be said that it became a victim of its own success. It killed their next MMO they were planning because WoW was just still way too profitable.Beyond that, WoW went form 12.4 million at it's heyday to under 4 million at one point before they stopped reporting the information. Saying WoW has more players doesn't change what I've said in anyway.\It does because with 4 million players they are still the best performing MMO in the west and do not really have to make hard choices because their bottom line is in danger. Just selling an expansion is likely enough profit to keep the game going for a few years. Everything else is just bonus. That's the sort of attitude nobody else can really afford. Look at ArenaNet... they had to make the choice to forego a new expansion at least for the time being so they could do different projects. WoW doesn't have to worry about such choices because it can do what it does and be extremely profitable still.Also your comment about the game not being financially viable. That's not what was said. They said Anet was not financially viable, because it had people working on projects that were making zero income. A lot of people were hired in the last year, and a lot of people were fired. We don't have significantly less people than we did at launch working for the company right now, That's a big deal. Plenty of MMOs have had lay offs in the past, and they're still kicking around years later. Companies often lay off people to appease stockholders. They can say anything they want, but I strongly suspect that this was done because they were down on many projects including some bad investments and stockholders want to perceive something is being done. The line from the movie The Game comes to mind. "Action is taken, confidence is restored" said by the CEO of the company firing the head of one of the companies he owes. This is what investors want to see. But there's no way NcSoft can come right out and say that. If Anet had a couple of projects which were making no incoming, thus supporting three groups of devs on one game, of course it was unsustainable, anyway. Those games needed to be released at some point. Obviously that wasn't going to happen and didn't happen.Where did I say the game is not financially viable? I do not remember saying that. As for your further assumptions, they may or may not be true but they are just as much opinion without facts to back them up. Ncsoft did say that NcWest was not performing as they need it to. That affected ArenaNet and the mobile side as far as I know but ArenaNet's cuts were by far the largest. That would not be the case if their revenue was a lot higher. A lot of MMOs that are of a certain age do not have 400 people to support it or being supported by that one game if you prefer it the other way around. That's what's not viable according to Ncsoft and that's what I am referring to.It's just a lot more complex than you're making it out to be here.You know full well that it's pretty much impossible to describe every detail here. There are complexities that I recognize and/or imply that I can't even begin to write down here or it will be a wall of text to which there is no equal possibly. I won't do that. In larger lines though it's a simple reality that ArenaNet suffered a massive amount of layoffs and had to cancel their other projects. If indeed GW2 was a massive success that brought in lots of revenue then their staffing would be a bad place to cut. As it stands GW2 has being doing ok but for a game of this age they have a lot of staff. More than the competition I would think. What I cannot rhyme in my head is why they increased their staff so much in recent years and cut back on GW2 at the same time. We know that because it has been said out loud that after PoF they basically handed over GW2 to the LS teams and we know for a fact that it was said also that they at least postponed expansions. That much is known. So that means that ArenaNet had a large portion of their staff working on projects that were costing money and not making any. So when Ncsoft decided it need to cut costs, that instantly becomes the first and best place to cut a lot of the "fat" away. Sometimes it's not more complicated than that.

Okay this is my original statement:

"That's true of every single MMO on the planet. People have left WoW because it's stale too. There are exactly zero MMOs that you play for hundreds or thousands of hours that don't become stale to some people. Not relevant to the question at hand.

There are ALSO people who play for thousands of hours for whom the game isn't stale.

People leave MMOs for all sorts of reasons all the time. Don't try to make it like this MMO is worse or better at holding players than any other, because no one can say for sure."

Every single thing I said here is factually true and this is what you responded to. What you said about WOW, while also true, doesn't affect what I've said at all. It doesn't matter if WoW has a billion players or a million. That's not relevant to my conversation. Someone made a blanket statement that people were leaving THIS game because the content was stale. That's true of all games. Different games are going to have different overheads and expenses and profits, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about someone saying that people are leaving this game because they feel the game is stale. And that's undoubtedly true. It's also undoubtedly true for every game.

I'm not sure where your reply came from, since I made no claims one way or another to how many people by percentage are staying leaving. I didn't mention whether the game can afford it. It simply wasn't the conversation. What the person I was replying to said, was that people are leaving this game for reason X and I said, factually, that's true of every MMO.

He has no numbers to back up what percentage of people are leaving for that reason. He only has his own feelings and maybe annecdotal evidence from his friends. The difference is I'm not making claims about what is or isn't happening, I'm simply saying what he claims to be happening here is pretty much happening everywhere. That people leaving a game because they've played it too much and got bored is fairly normal for games of all types, not just MMOs.

The implication is people are leaving THIS game, because it's stale as opposed to other games I suppose which are exciting and interesting.

In order for anything like this to matter, we'd have to know how many people are staying, how many people are leaving, and how many people are leaving for the reasons stated by the OP, as well as whether or not the game is sustainable on the people who aren't leaving. We have exactly none of this information, nor will we ever. I simply pointed out the logical fallacy in a post that I felt could be taken to imply that it happens in this game more than any other. I'm not sure how your reply to me made even a single lick of difference.

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Gw2 has a long way to go before it's finished.. and i'm not done playing until the story is completely finished.

The layoffs suck but so does the fact that Gw2 has not been the big primary focus over at Anet for a good while now.. still that hasn't stopped them making great new content for the game.In all honesty as a huge fan of GW2 I am a little annoyed that focus on Gw2 was sacrificed so it could be put on potential mobile games which are something I really cannot stand as for the most part they are typically nothing more than garbage cashgrab games they prey upon those with addictive personalities.I'm not saying Anet were planning on making a game to do just that but Mobile gaming in general is one market I honestly wish didn't exist at all.

I wish Anet didn't have to lay anyone off but I do hope that the renewed focus on Gw2 will benefit the game and make it better in the long run.

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@"Eloc Freidon.5692" said:Layoffs but all staff moved to focus on GW2 means more people working on the game directly.It could mean:

  • Fewer total staff hours devoted to GW2
  • More total hours on GW2
  • No difference in the hours for GW2

We don't know how staff were allocated before. We know that some staff split focus, some were 100% on GW2, some 100% on "other projects," and that this did not correlate with who got laid off. We also know that some veterans chose to leave, to enable retention of some colleagues with more restricted opportunities -- that could lead to having more hours of folks with less GW2 experience. And finally, regardless of any of that, losing 1/3 of the company impacts everything in unpredictable ways: morale, efficiency, standard operating procedures, tasks performed by only one person (who might not be around), expertise in special tools, and much, much more.

So really, all we know is that 143 fewer people work at ANet now. It's premature to say whether this will end well or not.

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Don't the living dragons absorb some of the power of the dying ones. So, even if Kralk is the strongest currently, his death will result in Jormag, Steve and Primordius each individually getting stronger - no? They've purposefully set it up, so that the last dragon will indeed be the strongest.

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@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:If you don’t think the Girl Scouts selling thin mints would be a bigger bad than Kralkatorrik then you haven’t had to walk by their cookie stands and felt the tremendous gravitational pull that boxes of thin mints generate. Star Trek tractor beams are nothing to that.

Next expac: Guild Wars 2: Box of Desire.Though I find the easiest way to resist GS cookies is to buy the store-brand knockoffs. 50% more cookies, 1/3 the price. :3

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What happened last week was inevitable - unfortunate because it involved 100+ people losing their jobs - but still inevitable.

Ive said this many times - in the past few years, the team at ArenaNet lost sight of what made the game great. They took their early successes and tried to expand into areas that ran antithetical to their original vision for the game.

Guild Wars 2 is successful because of four primary elements, imo -

  • A robust and ever growing open world,
  • an engaging and competitive WvW scene,
  • a fluid and fun combat system (including elite specs)
  • social tools that encourage forming large friendly groups (guild halls, shared resource nodes, commander tags, no treadmill, etc)

Everything else is extraneous and a general waste of resources, imo.

I believe that what happened last week - while terrible for those employees affected - will actually be beneficial to the game and its players. Management will have to make changes to how the game evolves - hopefully cutting the "me too" stuff we already see in other games and focusing all of their resources on the four areas I mention above (open world/LS, WvW, combat/character specs, and social tools/mechanics). Pare away everything else and focus on making those four areas as fun and engaging as absolutely possible.

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@Vayne.8563 said:

@"MetalGirl.2370" said:People need to stop overreacting. Those who act like it's end of the world and are leaving are the reason why GW2 is doing bad.

I think you got it wrong there. People leave cause the game has gotten stale. It's not right to blame the people for leaving or think they overreact. Anet has stopped with any thing that's interesting. Recycling old boring festival content, while adding some new sigil and a kitten rare infusion. They just add living story missions with boring worlds, and gem store updates for the most part.

They have just given us false/empty promises to keep us interested in the game.

Like for example a 2nd set of legendary set of weapons. Which were announced long before the first expansion and isn't even done now long after the 2nd expansion pack.I also remember a promise about WvW being their top priority of 2017. It wasn't much good other than reward tracks and real auto loot happened.

That's true of every single MMO on the planet. People have left WoW because it's stale too. There are exactly zero MMOs that you play for hundreds or thousands of hours that don't become stale to some people. Not relevant to the question at hand.WoW, as usual, is a bad comparison. It still boasts millions of players even after 15 years and has had 7 expansions. People often do come back for the new expansions. GW2 has only been around for 6-7 years but only had 2 expansions. Having said that, your general point is not wrong of course. People do leave all MMOs because they feel it gets stale. However, also a lot of MMOs have failed or have become very small. GW2 is doing alright compared to a lot of other MMOs but it would be delusional to say that it's doing fantastic. If that were true then there would've been no reason for the layoffs. So that begs the question whether it's better to burn out or to fade away? And I think that's sort of what this is about. Should it end on a relative high or should it be dragged out beyond its perceived expiration date? But also there I suspect opinions will vary.There are ALSO people who play for thousands of hours for whom the game isn't stale.This is essentially true but the real question there is if the revenue they get from the core fanbase is enough to sustain this game for the long term. Ncsoft said that under the existing circumstances it was not. Cutting a third of the staff is significant but it also does put the game in a better position from a business point of view as it improves the cost vs revenue picture on the cost side. It also means that Ncsoft doesn't see amazing growth in GW2 for the years to come. What's tricky there is what will happen on the revenue side because that could also go down more and more. So that leads me to believe that they're opting for the fade away option.People leave MMOs for all sorts of reasons all the time. Don't try to make it like this MMO is worse or better at holding players than any other, because no one can say for sure.This is also essentially true. In fact we know that for example it's been better at holding players than Wildstar for example. But what matters most in here is the revenue that players bring in. I don't say that as a counter to your comment but I am interested to see how the game fares revenue wise in the next year or two. The problem with a non-sub game is that active players do not automatically translate into paying customers. And I do feel that people who do spend a lot on gems may reach a point of saturation where they already have so much stuff that they really are not excited about new stuff anymore and spend less over time. That's the danger for this game with regards to banking on retention rather than new and returning players.

So really, I do not expect GW2 to die anytime soon. I also do not expect ArenaNet to stop putting effort into the game because it literally is all they have, especially now their other projects are cancelled. One path that lies open is that indeed they focus on LS chapters only and increase their gem store monetization. That's a path that wouldn't be interesting to me personally. But as much as GW2 is not that much different as other MMOs, that also means that if it follows the usual pattern that this game will continue to become smaller and smaller. Nothing unusual or strange, but that would be the reality for GW2 as well.

I feel like a lot of what you're saying is misleading. It doesn't matter how many players WoW has if it loses a higher percentage. It started higher because it started earlier, with less competition. There are exactly zero MMOs that were free to play when WoW launched. And they had the budget, after the success of Warcraft and Starcraft to advertise big. Those deep pockets go a long way. I don't recall seeing ads for any other MMO with William Shatner, or Chuck Norris or Mr. T in them on television.It's not misleading. For all intents and purposes WoW is the exception not the rule. What the problem is with using WoW as an example is that it has been so much more successful than any of the others that it allowed Blizzard to choose their approach more freely. They do not need to make the same type of choices as others do because they already make way more money with it than they need to keep it afloat. It is a COMPLETELY different ball game if you get in a groove where you will make a big profit pretty much guaranteed or a decent profit probably. I think it's fair to state that for WoW can be said that it became a victim of its own success. It killed their next MMO they were planning because WoW was just still way too profitable.Beyond that, WoW went form 12.4 million at it's heyday to under 4 million at one point before they stopped reporting the information. Saying WoW has more players doesn't change what I've said in anyway.\It does because with 4 million players they are still the best performing MMO in the west and do not really have to make hard choices because their bottom line is in danger. Just selling an expansion is likely enough profit to keep the game going for a few years. Everything else is just bonus. That's the sort of attitude nobody else can really afford. Look at ArenaNet... they had to make the choice to forego a new expansion at least for the time being so they could do different projects. WoW doesn't have to worry about such choices because it can do what it does and be extremely profitable still.Also your comment about the game not being financially viable. That's not what was said. They said Anet was not financially viable, because it had people working on projects that were making zero income. A lot of people were hired in the last year, and a lot of people were fired. We don't have significantly less people than we did at launch working for the company right now, That's a big deal. Plenty of MMOs have had lay offs in the past, and they're still kicking around years later. Companies often lay off people to appease stockholders. They can say anything they want, but I strongly suspect that this was done because they were down on many projects including some bad investments and stockholders want to perceive something is being done. The line from the movie The Game comes to mind. "Action is taken, confidence is restored" said by the CEO of the company firing the head of one of the companies he owes. This is what investors want to see. But there's no way NcSoft can come right out and say that. If Anet had a couple of projects which were making no incoming, thus supporting three groups of devs on one game, of course it was unsustainable, anyway. Those games needed to be released at some point. Obviously that wasn't going to happen and didn't happen.Where did I say the game is not financially viable? I do not remember saying that. As for your further assumptions, they may or may not be true but they are just as much opinion without facts to back them up. Ncsoft did say that NcWest was not performing as they need it to. That affected ArenaNet and the mobile side as far as I know but ArenaNet's cuts were by far the largest. That would not be the case if their revenue was a lot higher. A lot of MMOs that are of a certain age do not have 400 people to support it or being supported by that one game if you prefer it the other way around. That's what's not viable according to Ncsoft and that's what I am referring to.It's just a lot more complex than you're making it out to be here.You know full well that it's pretty much impossible to describe every detail here. There are complexities that I recognize and/or imply that I can't even begin to write down here or it will be a wall of text to which there is no equal possibly. I won't do that. In larger lines though it's a simple reality that ArenaNet suffered a massive amount of layoffs and had to cancel their other projects. If indeed GW2 was a massive success that brought in lots of revenue then their staffing would be a bad place to cut. As it stands GW2 has being doing ok but for a game of this age they have a lot of staff. More than the competition I would think. What I cannot rhyme in my head is why they increased their staff so much in recent years and cut back on GW2 at the same time. We know that because it has been said out loud that after PoF they basically handed over GW2 to the LS teams and we know for a fact that it was said also that they at least postponed expansions. That much is known. So that means that ArenaNet had a large portion of their staff working on projects that were costing money and not making any. So when Ncsoft decided it need to cut costs, that instantly becomes the first and best place to cut a lot of the "fat" away. Sometimes it's not more complicated than that.

@"MetalGirl.2370" said:People need to stop overreacting. Those who act like it's end of the world and are leaving are the reason why GW2 is doing bad.

I think you got it wrong there. People leave cause the game has gotten stale. It's not right to blame the people for leaving or think they overreact. Anet has stopped with any thing that's interesting. Recycling old boring festival content, while adding some new sigil and a kitten rare infusion. They just add living story missions with boring worlds, and gem store updates for the most part.

They have just given us false/empty promises to keep us interested in the game.

Like for example a 2nd set of legendary set of weapons. Which were announced long before the first expansion and isn't even done now long after the 2nd expansion pack.I also remember a promise about WvW being their top priority of 2017. It wasn't much good other than reward tracks and real auto loot happened.

That's true of every single MMO on the planet. People have left WoW because it's stale too. There are exactly zero MMOs that you play for hundreds or thousands of hours that don't become stale to some people. Not relevant to the question at hand.WoW, as usual, is a bad comparison. It still boasts millions of players even after 15 years and has had 7 expansions. People often do come back for the new expansions. GW2 has only been around for 6-7 years but only had 2 expansions. Having said that, your general point is not wrong of course. People do leave all MMOs because they feel it gets stale. However, also a lot of MMOs have failed or have become very small. GW2 is doing alright compared to a lot of other MMOs but it would be delusional to say that it's doing fantastic. If that were true then there would've been no reason for the layoffs. So that begs the question whether it's better to burn out or to fade away? And I think that's sort of what this is about. Should it end on a relative high or should it be dragged out beyond its perceived expiration date? But also there I suspect opinions will vary.There are ALSO people who play for thousands of hours for whom the game isn't stale.This is essentially true but the real question there is if the revenue they get from the core fanbase is enough to sustain this game for the long term. Ncsoft said that under the existing circumstances it was not. Cutting a third of the staff is significant but it also does put the game in a better position from a business point of view as it improves the cost vs revenue picture on the cost side. It also means that Ncsoft doesn't see amazing growth in GW2 for the years to come. What's tricky there is what will happen on the revenue side because that could also go down more and more. So that leads me to believe that they're opting for the fade away option.People leave MMOs for all sorts of reasons all the time. Don't try to make it like this MMO is worse or better at holding players than any other, because no one can say for sure.This is also essentially true. In fact we know that for example it's been better at holding players than Wildstar for example. But what matters most in here is the revenue that players bring in. I don't say that as a counter to your comment but I am interested to see how the game fares revenue wise in the next year or two. The problem with a non-sub game is that active players do not automatically translate into paying customers. And I do feel that people who do spend a lot on gems may reach a point of saturation where they already have so much stuff that they really are not excited about new stuff anymore and spend less over time. That's the danger for this game with regards to banking on retention rather than new and returning players.

So really, I do not expect GW2 to die anytime soon. I also do not expect ArenaNet to stop putting effort into the game because it literally is all they have, especially now their other projects are cancelled. One path that lies open is that indeed they focus on LS chapters only and increase their gem store monetization. That's a path that wouldn't be interesting to me personally. But as much as GW2 is not that much different as other MMOs, that also means that if it follows the usual pattern that this game will continue to become smaller and smaller. Nothing unusual or strange, but that would be the reality for GW2 as well.

I feel like a lot of what you're saying is misleading. It doesn't matter how many players WoW has if it loses a higher percentage. It started higher because it started earlier, with less competition. There are exactly zero MMOs that were free to play when WoW launched. And they had the budget, after the success of Warcraft and Starcraft to advertise big. Those deep pockets go a long way. I don't recall seeing ads for any other MMO with William Shatner, or Chuck Norris or Mr. T in them on television.It's not misleading. For all intents and purposes WoW is the exception not the rule. What the problem is with using WoW as an example is that it has been so much more successful than any of the others that it allowed Blizzard to choose their approach more freely. They do not need to make the same type of choices as others do because they already make way more money with it than they need to keep it afloat. It is a COMPLETELY different ball game if you get in a groove where you will make a big profit pretty much guaranteed or a decent profit probably. I think it's fair to state that for WoW can be said that it became a victim of its own success. It killed their next MMO they were planning because WoW was just still way too profitable.Beyond that, WoW went form 12.4 million at it's heyday to under 4 million at one point before they stopped reporting the information. Saying WoW has more players doesn't change what I've said in anyway.\It does because with 4 million players they are still the best performing MMO in the west and do not really have to make hard choices because their bottom line is in danger. Just selling an expansion is likely enough profit to keep the game going for a few years. Everything else is just bonus. That's the sort of attitude nobody else can really afford. Look at ArenaNet... they had to make the choice to forego a new expansion at least for the time being so they could do different projects. WoW doesn't have to worry about such choices because it can do what it does and be extremely profitable still.Also your comment about the game not being financially viable. That's not what was said. They said Anet was not financially viable, because it had people working on projects that were making zero income. A lot of people were hired in the last year, and a lot of people were fired. We don't have significantly less people than we did at launch working for the company right now, That's a big deal. Plenty of MMOs have had lay offs in the past, and they're still kicking around years later. Companies often lay off people to appease stockholders. They can say anything they want, but I strongly suspect that this was done because they were down on many projects including some bad investments and stockholders want to perceive something is being done. The line from the movie The Game comes to mind. "Action is taken, confidence is restored" said by the CEO of the company firing the head of one of the companies he owes. This is what investors want to see. But there's no way NcSoft can come right out and say that. If Anet had a couple of projects which were making no incoming, thus supporting three groups of devs on one game, of course it was unsustainable, anyway. Those games needed to be released at some point. Obviously that wasn't going to happen and didn't happen.Where did I say the game is not financially viable? I do not remember saying that. As for your further assumptions, they may or may not be true but they are just as much opinion without facts to back them up. Ncsoft did say that NcWest was not performing as they need it to. That affected ArenaNet and the mobile side as far as I know but ArenaNet's cuts were by far the largest. That would not be the case if their revenue was a lot higher. A lot of MMOs that are of a certain age do not have 400 people to support it or being supported by that one game if you prefer it the other way around. That's what's not viable according to Ncsoft and that's what I am referring to.It's just a lot more complex than you're making it out to be here.You know full well that it's pretty much impossible to describe every detail here. There are complexities that I recognize and/or imply that I can't even begin to write down here or it will be a wall of text to which there is no equal possibly. I won't do that. In larger lines though it's a simple reality that ArenaNet suffered a massive amount of layoffs and had to cancel their other projects. If indeed GW2 was a massive success that brought in lots of revenue then their staffing would be a bad place to cut. As it stands GW2 has being doing ok but for a game of this age they have a lot of staff. More than the competition I would think. What I cannot rhyme in my head is why they increased their staff so much in recent years and cut back on GW2 at the same time. We know that because it has been said out loud that after PoF they basically handed over GW2 to the LS teams and we know for a fact that it was said also that they at least postponed expansions. That much is known. So that means that ArenaNet had a large portion of their staff working on projects that were costing money and not making any. So when Ncsoft decided it need to cut costs, that instantly becomes the first and best place to cut a lot of the "fat" away. Sometimes it's not more complicated than that.

Okay this is my original statement:

"That's true of every single MMO on the planet. People have left WoW because it's stale too. There are exactly zero MMOs that you play for hundreds or thousands of hours that don't become stale to some people. Not relevant to the question at hand.

There are ALSO people who play for thousands of hours for whom the game isn't stale.

People leave MMOs for all sorts of reasons all the time. Don't try to make it like this MMO is worse or better at holding players than any other, because no one can say for sure."

Every single thing I said here is factually true and this is what you responded to. What you said about WOW, while also true, doesn't affect what I've said at all. It doesn't matter if WoW has a billion players or a million. That's not relevant to my conversation. Someone made a blanket statement that people were leaving THIS game because the content was stale. That's true of all games. Different games are going to have different overheads and expenses and profits, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about someone saying that people are leaving this game because they feel the game is stale. And that's undoubtedly true. It's also undoubtedly true for every game.

I'm not sure where your reply came from, since I made no claims one way or another to how many people by percentage are staying leaving. I didn't mention whether the game can afford it. It simply wasn't the conversation. What the person I was replying to said, was that people are leaving this game for reason X and I said, factually, that's true of every MMO.

He has no numbers to back up what percentage of people are leaving for that reason. He only has his own feelings and maybe annecdotal evidence from his friends. The difference is I'm not making claims about what is or isn't happening, I'm simply saying what he claims to be happening here is pretty much happening everywhere. That people leaving a game because they've played it too much and got bored is fairly normal for games of all types, not just MMOs.

The implication is people are leaving THIS game, because it's stale as opposed to other games I suppose which are exciting and interesting.

In order for anything like this to matter, we'd have to know how many people are staying, how many people are leaving, and how many people are leaving for the reasons stated by the OP, as well as whether or not the game is sustainable on the people who aren't leaving. We have exactly none of this information, nor will we ever. I simply pointed out the logical fallacy in a post that I felt could be taken to imply that it happens in this game more than any other. I'm not sure how your reply to me made even a single lick of difference.

What you said in your original statement wasn't factually false but the problem with WoW lies in the larger context. We're talking about whether or not GW2 should end in light of the layoffs and story coming to some form of conclusions presumably. The issue with taking WoW as an example is that this is a game that was essentially done and they were already working on a new MMO. I think the working title was Titan. However, as WoW kept being very successful even with a lot fewer players, they ended up canning Titan and go on with WoW. That's a context that makes WoW the exception rather than the rule.

I would say that for the points you were making it didn't matter so much but I was already thinking beyond that and then I thought, well, for this discussion WoW is really just not a good example to move forward with because it was never in a situation where a studio had to make tough decisions because the game wasn't as profitable as it needed to be and as we learned that ArenaNet due to other projects decided to lessen the content output for GW2 in favor of those projects. I do not think that WoW still is in that position with millions of players still today who have the expansions and pay a sub.

So I will certainly acknowledge that I may have misinterpreted some of the things you said, but for me the WoW comparison falls short not so much in those points you were making but in the larger context of the actual topic I felt like bringing up WoW was not helpful. Perhaps that clarifies it a bit.

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Anet still have ~250 emp.As some of the devs who left said they will bring back the focus to Gw2 now since the side projects have been closed.

So the game Is not gonna die, but i think they are at a crucial turnig point now where they should really start to work on a new expansion and say It loudly to generate hype.

Another Lw season and gems store incomes are not gonna be enough to mantain a good amount of active players and increase again the revenue imo.

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@Mortifera.6138 said:In light of the layoffs, everyone wants it (the game) to not end abruptly, but what if its conclusion is right on schedule?

Think about it: spoilers we are currently facing Kralkatorrik. The Elder Dragons are more powerful than the Gods, and Kralkatorrik is the most powerful of the Elder Dragons. That makes him the most powerful character in the game. What better way to end things than to fight Kralkatorrik?

If we keep going with the game because we don’t want to say goodbye, that means they’ll drag on the story longer than it needs to go, or retcon in some new, bigger bad guy. It’ll be like WoW after finishing Wrath of the Lich King, or after we defeated Sargeras at the end of Legion.

So, this poses the question: regardless of whether or not you want to keep playing new content for as long as possible — we all want this to last — is it really in the game’s best interest to keep going? In other words, would you really rather play a mediocre, watered down Guild Wars 2 instead of just letting if end?

I guess you should've not led with the whole lay offs thing or even the game ending/moving on to the next, even though that is what made you think about it.

I understand at least that what you're saying is that, at some point there needs to be an end to the story, and start the next story. It's like with a good movie, series of movies, a tv-serie, a serie of books, where well there is an ending to every story. People don't want to think about that, until it just is.

Whether it is good, or possible to keep a game world alive with other stories, just as compelling as the first one, is ofcourse the question here and I honestly wouldn't know. GW2 has been, well... killing off (sometimes literally) some of the mysteries of GW1, which doesn't really set the most amazing foundation for future additions to the game's story.

I really hope that they are able to bring in new villains, or adversaries, or even just stories, that are worthy of being the main storyline, which aren't the ones we already know of. Personally speaking... LW season1 was doing that the best, story wise, and well, it was received with mixed opinions, to say the least.

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@starhunter.6015 said:if you don't want to play then leave, kinda getting tired of all of the bad attitudes and doom and gloom from players about the layoffs.

I'm sorry, but... how can you reply something like that? Can you elaborate a bit more? You've got players seriously concerned about the storyline of the game and your answer back to them is that?

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@Gehenna.3625 said:

@"MetalGirl.2370" said:People need to stop overreacting. Those who act like it's end of the world and are leaving are the reason why GW2 is doing bad.

I think you got it wrong there. People leave cause the game has gotten stale. It's not right to blame the people for leaving or think they overreact. Anet has stopped with any thing that's interesting. Recycling old boring festival content, while adding some new sigil and a kitten rare infusion. They just add living story missions with boring worlds, and gem store updates for the most part.

They have just given us false/empty promises to keep us interested in the game.

Like for example a 2nd set of legendary set of weapons. Which were announced long before the first expansion and isn't even done now long after the 2nd expansion pack.I also remember a promise about WvW being their top priority of 2017. It wasn't much good other than reward tracks and real auto loot happened.

That's true of every single MMO on the planet. People have left WoW because it's stale too. There are exactly zero MMOs that you play for hundreds or thousands of hours that don't become stale to some people. Not relevant to the question at hand.WoW, as usual, is a bad comparison. It still boasts millions of players even after 15 years and has had 7 expansions. People often do come back for the new expansions. GW2 has only been around for 6-7 years but only had 2 expansions. Having said that, your general point is not wrong of course. People do leave all MMOs because they feel it gets stale. However, also a lot of MMOs have failed or have become very small. GW2 is doing alright compared to a lot of other MMOs but it would be delusional to say that it's doing fantastic. If that were true then there would've been no reason for the layoffs. So that begs the question whether it's better to burn out or to fade away? And I think that's sort of what this is about. Should it end on a relative high or should it be dragged out beyond its perceived expiration date? But also there I suspect opinions will vary.There are ALSO people who play for thousands of hours for whom the game isn't stale.This is essentially true but the real question there is if the revenue they get from the core fanbase is enough to sustain this game for the long term. Ncsoft said that under the existing circumstances it was not. Cutting a third of the staff is significant but it also does put the game in a better position from a business point of view as it improves the cost vs revenue picture on the cost side. It also means that Ncsoft doesn't see amazing growth in GW2 for the years to come. What's tricky there is what will happen on the revenue side because that could also go down more and more. So that leads me to believe that they're opting for the fade away option.People leave MMOs for all sorts of reasons all the time. Don't try to make it like this MMO is worse or better at holding players than any other, because no one can say for sure.This is also essentially true. In fact we know that for example it's been better at holding players than Wildstar for example. But what matters most in here is the revenue that players bring in. I don't say that as a counter to your comment but I am interested to see how the game fares revenue wise in the next year or two. The problem with a non-sub game is that active players do not automatically translate into paying customers. And I do feel that people who do spend a lot on gems may reach a point of saturation where they already have so much stuff that they really are not excited about new stuff anymore and spend less over time. That's the danger for this game with regards to banking on retention rather than new and returning players.

So really, I do not expect GW2 to die anytime soon. I also do not expect ArenaNet to stop putting effort into the game because it literally is all they have, especially now their other projects are cancelled. One path that lies open is that indeed they focus on LS chapters only and increase their gem store monetization. That's a path that wouldn't be interesting to me personally. But as much as GW2 is not that much different as other MMOs, that also means that if it follows the usual pattern that this game will continue to become smaller and smaller. Nothing unusual or strange, but that would be the reality for GW2 as well.

I feel like a lot of what you're saying is misleading. It doesn't matter how many players WoW has if it loses a higher percentage. It started higher because it started earlier, with less competition. There are exactly zero MMOs that were free to play when WoW launched. And they had the budget, after the success of Warcraft and Starcraft to advertise big. Those deep pockets go a long way. I don't recall seeing ads for any other MMO with William Shatner, or Chuck Norris or Mr. T in them on television.It's not misleading. For all intents and purposes WoW is the exception not the rule. What the problem is with using WoW as an example is that it has been so much more successful than any of the others that it allowed Blizzard to choose their approach more freely. They do not need to make the same type of choices as others do because they already make way more money with it than they need to keep it afloat. It is a COMPLETELY different ball game if you get in a groove where you will make a big profit pretty much guaranteed or a decent profit probably. I think it's fair to state that for WoW can be said that it became a victim of its own success. It killed their next MMO they were planning because WoW was just still way too profitable.Beyond that, WoW went form 12.4 million at it's heyday to under 4 million at one point before they stopped reporting the information. Saying WoW has more players doesn't change what I've said in anyway.\It does because with 4 million players they are still the best performing MMO in the west and do not really have to make hard choices because their bottom line is in danger. Just selling an expansion is likely enough profit to keep the game going for a few years. Everything else is just bonus. That's the sort of attitude nobody else can really afford. Look at ArenaNet... they had to make the choice to forego a new expansion at least for the time being so they could do different projects. WoW doesn't have to worry about such choices because it can do what it does and be extremely profitable still.Also your comment about the game not being financially viable. That's not what was said. They said Anet was not financially viable, because it had people working on projects that were making zero income. A lot of people were hired in the last year, and a lot of people were fired. We don't have significantly less people than we did at launch working for the company right now, That's a big deal. Plenty of MMOs have had lay offs in the past, and they're still kicking around years later. Companies often lay off people to appease stockholders. They can say anything they want, but I strongly suspect that this was done because they were down on many projects including some bad investments and stockholders want to perceive something is being done. The line from the movie The Game comes to mind. "Action is taken, confidence is restored" said by the CEO of the company firing the head of one of the companies he owes. This is what investors want to see. But there's no way NcSoft can come right out and say that. If Anet had a couple of projects which were making no incoming, thus supporting three groups of devs on one game, of course it was unsustainable, anyway. Those games needed to be released at some point. Obviously that wasn't going to happen and didn't happen.Where did I say the game is not financially viable? I do not remember saying that. As for your further assumptions, they may or may not be true but they are just as much opinion without facts to back them up. Ncsoft did say that NcWest was not performing as they need it to. That affected ArenaNet and the mobile side as far as I know but ArenaNet's cuts were by far the largest. That would not be the case if their revenue was a lot higher. A lot of MMOs that are of a certain age do not have 400 people to support it or being supported by that one game if you prefer it the other way around. That's what's not viable according to Ncsoft and that's what I am referring to.It's just a lot more complex than you're making it out to be here.You know full well that it's pretty much impossible to describe every detail here. There are complexities that I recognize and/or imply that I can't even begin to write down here or it will be a wall of text to which there is no equal possibly. I won't do that. In larger lines though it's a simple reality that ArenaNet suffered a massive amount of layoffs and had to cancel their other projects. If indeed GW2 was a massive success that brought in lots of revenue then their staffing would be a bad place to cut. As it stands GW2 has being doing ok but for a game of this age they have a lot of staff. More than the competition I would think. What I cannot rhyme in my head is why they increased their staff so much in recent years and cut back on GW2 at the same time. We know that because it has been said out loud that after PoF they basically handed over GW2 to the LS teams and we know for a fact that it was said also that they at least postponed expansions. That much is known. So that means that ArenaNet had a large portion of their staff working on projects that were costing money and not making any. So when Ncsoft decided it need to cut costs, that instantly becomes the first and best place to cut a lot of the "fat" away. Sometimes it's not more complicated than that.

@"MetalGirl.2370" said:People need to stop overreacting. Those who act like it's end of the world and are leaving are the reason why GW2 is doing bad.

I think you got it wrong there. People leave cause the game has gotten stale. It's not right to blame the people for leaving or think they overreact. Anet has stopped with any thing that's interesting. Recycling old boring festival content, while adding some new sigil and a kitten rare infusion. They just add living story missions with boring worlds, and gem store updates for the most part.

They have just given us false/empty promises to keep us interested in the game.

Like for example a 2nd set of legendary set of weapons. Which were announced long before the first expansion and isn't even done now long after the 2nd expansion pack.I also remember a promise about WvW being their top priority of 2017. It wasn't much good other than reward tracks and real auto loot happened.

That's true of every single MMO on the planet. People have left WoW because it's stale too. There are exactly zero MMOs that you play for hundreds or thousands of hours that don't become stale to some people. Not relevant to the question at hand.WoW, as usual, is a bad comparison. It still boasts millions of players even after 15 years and has had 7 expansions. People often do come back for the new expansions. GW2 has only been around for 6-7 years but only had 2 expansions. Having said that, your general point is not wrong of course. People do leave all MMOs because they feel it gets stale. However, also a lot of MMOs have failed or have become very small. GW2 is doing alright compared to a lot of other MMOs but it would be delusional to say that it's doing fantastic. If that were true then there would've been no reason for the layoffs. So that begs the question whether it's better to burn out or to fade away? And I think that's sort of what this is about. Should it end on a relative high or should it be dragged out beyond its perceived expiration date? But also there I suspect opinions will vary.There are ALSO people who play for thousands of hours for whom the game isn't stale.This is essentially true but the real question there is if the revenue they get from the core fanbase is enough to sustain this game for the long term. Ncsoft said that under the existing circumstances it was not. Cutting a third of the staff is significant but it also does put the game in a better position from a business point of view as it improves the cost vs revenue picture on the cost side. It also means that Ncsoft doesn't see amazing growth in GW2 for the years to come. What's tricky there is what will happen on the revenue side because that could also go down more and more. So that leads me to believe that they're opting for the fade away option.People leave MMOs for all sorts of reasons all the time. Don't try to make it like this MMO is worse or better at holding players than any other, because no one can say for sure.This is also essentially true. In fact we know that for example it's been better at holding players than Wildstar for example. But what matters most in here is the revenue that players bring in. I don't say that as a counter to your comment but I am interested to see how the game fares revenue wise in the next year or two. The problem with a non-sub game is that active players do not automatically translate into paying customers. And I do feel that people who do spend a lot on gems may reach a point of saturation where they already have so much stuff that they really are not excited about new stuff anymore and spend less over time. That's the danger for this game with regards to banking on retention rather than new and returning players.

So really, I do not expect GW2 to die anytime soon. I also do not expect ArenaNet to stop putting effort into the game because it literally is all they have, especially now their other projects are cancelled. One path that lies open is that indeed they focus on LS chapters only and increase their gem store monetization. That's a path that wouldn't be interesting to me personally. But as much as GW2 is not that much different as other MMOs, that also means that if it follows the usual pattern that this game will continue to become smaller and smaller. Nothing unusual or strange, but that would be the reality for GW2 as well.

I feel like a lot of what you're saying is misleading. It doesn't matter how many players WoW has if it loses a higher percentage. It started higher because it started earlier, with less competition. There are exactly zero MMOs that were free to play when WoW launched. And they had the budget, after the success of Warcraft and Starcraft to advertise big. Those deep pockets go a long way. I don't recall seeing ads for any other MMO with William Shatner, or Chuck Norris or Mr. T in them on television.It's not misleading. For all intents and purposes WoW is the exception not the rule. What the problem is with using WoW as an example is that it has been so much more successful than any of the others that it allowed Blizzard to choose their approach more freely. They do not need to make the same type of choices as others do because they already make way more money with it than they need to keep it afloat. It is a COMPLETELY different ball game if you get in a groove where you will make a big profit pretty much guaranteed or a decent profit probably. I think it's fair to state that for WoW can be said that it became a victim of its own success. It killed their next MMO they were planning because WoW was just still way too profitable.Beyond that, WoW went form 12.4 million at it's heyday to under 4 million at one point before they stopped reporting the information. Saying WoW has more players doesn't change what I've said in anyway.\It does because with 4 million players they are still the best performing MMO in the west and do not really have to make hard choices because their bottom line is in danger. Just selling an expansion is likely enough profit to keep the game going for a few years. Everything else is just bonus. That's the sort of attitude nobody else can really afford. Look at ArenaNet... they had to make the choice to forego a new expansion at least for the time being so they could do different projects. WoW doesn't have to worry about such choices because it can do what it does and be extremely profitable still.Also your comment about the game not being financially viable. That's not what was said. They said Anet was not financially viable, because it had people working on projects that were making zero income. A lot of people were hired in the last year, and a lot of people were fired. We don't have significantly less people than we did at launch working for the company right now, That's a big deal. Plenty of MMOs have had lay offs in the past, and they're still kicking around years later. Companies often lay off people to appease stockholders. They can say anything they want, but I strongly suspect that this was done because they were down on many projects including some bad investments and stockholders want to perceive something is being done. The line from the movie The Game comes to mind. "Action is taken, confidence is restored" said by the CEO of the company firing the head of one of the companies he owes. This is what investors want to see. But there's no way NcSoft can come right out and say that. If Anet had a couple of projects which were making no incoming, thus supporting three groups of devs on one game, of course it was unsustainable, anyway. Those games needed to be released at some point. Obviously that wasn't going to happen and didn't happen.Where did I say the game is not financially viable? I do not remember saying that. As for your further assumptions, they may or may not be true but they are just as much opinion without facts to back them up. Ncsoft did say that NcWest was not performing as they need it to. That affected ArenaNet and the mobile side as far as I know but ArenaNet's cuts were by far the largest. That would not be the case if their revenue was a lot higher. A lot of MMOs that are of a certain age do not have 400 people to support it or being supported by that one game if you prefer it the other way around. That's what's not viable according to Ncsoft and that's what I am referring to.It's just a lot more complex than you're making it out to be here.You know full well that it's pretty much impossible to describe every detail here. There are complexities that I recognize and/or imply that I can't even begin to write down here or it will be a wall of text to which there is no equal possibly. I won't do that. In larger lines though it's a simple reality that ArenaNet suffered a massive amount of layoffs and had to cancel their other projects. If indeed GW2 was a massive success that brought in lots of revenue then their staffing would be a bad place to cut. As it stands GW2 has being doing ok but for a game of this age they have a lot of staff. More than the competition I would think. What I cannot rhyme in my head is why they increased their staff so much in recent years and cut back on GW2 at the same time. We know that because it has been said out loud that after PoF they basically handed over GW2 to the LS teams and we know for a fact that it was said also that they at least postponed expansions. That much is known. So that means that ArenaNet had a large portion of their staff working on projects that were costing money and not making any. So when Ncsoft decided it need to cut costs, that instantly becomes the first and best place to cut a lot of the "fat" away. Sometimes it's not more complicated than that.

Okay this is my original statement:

"That's true of every single MMO on the planet. People have left WoW because it's stale too. There are exactly zero MMOs that you play for hundreds or thousands of hours that don't become stale to some people. Not relevant to the question at hand.

There are ALSO people who play for thousands of hours for whom the game isn't stale.

People leave MMOs for all sorts of reasons all the time. Don't try to make it like this MMO is worse or better at holding players than any other, because no one can say for sure."

Every single thing I said here is factually true and this is what you responded to. What you said about WOW, while also true, doesn't affect what I've said at all. It doesn't matter if WoW has a billion players or a million. That's not relevant to my conversation. Someone made a blanket statement that people were leaving THIS game because the content was stale. That's true of all games. Different games are going to have different overheads and expenses and profits, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about someone saying that people are leaving this game because they feel the game is stale. And that's undoubtedly true. It's also undoubtedly true for every game.

I'm not sure where your reply came from, since I made no claims one way or another to how many people by percentage are staying leaving. I didn't mention whether the game can afford it. It simply wasn't the conversation. What the person I was replying to said, was that people are leaving this game for reason X and I said, factually, that's true of every MMO.

He has no numbers to back up what percentage of people are leaving for that reason. He only has his own feelings and maybe annecdotal evidence from his friends. The difference is I'm not making claims about what is or isn't happening, I'm simply saying what he claims to be happening here is pretty much happening everywhere. That people leaving a game because they've played it too much and got bored is fairly normal for games of all types, not just MMOs.

The implication is people are leaving THIS game, because it's stale as opposed to other games I suppose which are exciting and interesting.

In order for anything like this to matter, we'd have to know how many people are staying, how many people are leaving, and how many people are leaving for the reasons stated by the OP, as well as whether or not the game is sustainable on the people who aren't leaving. We have exactly none of this information, nor will we ever. I simply pointed out the logical fallacy in a post that I felt could be taken to imply that it happens in this game more than any other. I'm not sure how your reply to me made even a single lick of difference.

What you said in your original statement wasn't factually false but the problem with WoW lies in the larger context. We're talking about whether or not GW2 should end in light of the layoffs and story coming to some form of conclusions presumably. The issue with taking WoW as an example is that this is a game that was essentially done and they were already working on a new MMO. I think the working title was Titan. However, as WoW kept being very successful even with a lot fewer players, they ended up canning Titan and go on with WoW. That's a context that makes WoW the exception rather than the rule.

I would say that for the points you were making it didn't matter so much but I was already thinking beyond that and then I thought, well, for this discussion WoW is really just not a good example to move forward with because it was never in a situation where a studio had to make tough decisions because the game wasn't as profitable as it needed to be and as we learned that ArenaNet due to other projects decided to lessen the content output for GW2 in favor of those projects. I do not think that WoW still is in that position with millions of players still today who have the expansions and pay a sub.

So I will certainly acknowledge that I may have misinterpreted some of the things you said, but for me the WoW comparison falls short not so much in those points you were making but in the larger context of the actual topic I felt like bringing up WoW was not helpful. Perhaps that clarifies it a bit.

You're rewriting history a bit there. WoW wasn't being replaced by Titan. Titan was a new MMO they were working on. IT wasn't a WoW replacement. Nor was it canned because of the popularity of WOW. IT was canned because the MMO market went softer over all. It was canned because WoW was losing subs at a faster than anticipated rate. The time of the MMO had come and gone and people had moved on to other types of games. WoW at it's height didn't have as many players as League of Legends. I'd like to see a quote where they canceled Titan because WoW was so popular.

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@tim.4596 said:

@starhunter.6015 said:if you don't want to play then leave, kinda getting tired of all of the bad attitudes and doom and gloom from players about the layoffs.

I'm sorry, but... how can you reply something like that? Can you elaborate a bit more? You've got players seriously concerned about the storyline of the game and your answer back to them is that?

It's one thing to be concerned about the story line and such but quite another thing to advocate the end of the game.

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