Not releasing a new expansion for GW2 was a terrible mistake because WoW:BFA turned out to be bad

[zealex.9410]

@Blocki.4931 said:

@Jin.8501 said:ESO and FFXIV reaped thousands of thousands players due to this

No, they did because they have good content & many big WoW Youtubers went to check them out and advertised them when they liked it.

Which largely happened because of the discontent those youtubers/ players had with wow. Ofc the games updating and improving also helped.

[b k.1648]

@Omernon.9762 said:No? The main reason WoW players started looking for a new game was because BFA was so bad. The same applies to YouTubers and Twitch streamers. I have 10k hours clocked in WoW and I’m considered casual by WoW’s standards. In fact most of WoW’s population is made of very loyal and engaged players and the only reason for them to even consider looking for another game is that their beloved game had become a pile of kitten. So if BFA was good, then noone would leave regardless of how good ESO or FF is. You simply can’t just leave behind a game that had become almost a part of your life. So please don’t bring up this stupid argument, because most World of Warcraft players wouldn’t even know about these games in the first place, if Blizzard didn’t kitten up its own game. This is how terrible BFA is!

But don’t worry. Classic is back and soon FF and ESO will become a barren land once again.

For all of two weeks, until people start to realise they've already played it before and it wasn't that good the first time.

[zealex.9410]

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Klakax.2596 said:I mean just look at ESO or FFXIV, they both have record players on Steam this year. All because new WoW expansion BFA is terrible and a lot of people started looking for a new MMORPG.

If GW2 did the same and released a new expansion this year, I bet a lot of new and old players would be playing this game.

It's a shame because I think GW2 deserves way more attention since it's one of the best MMORPGs on the market.

And yet those record numbers are still shy of what Warframe has without ANY expansions... We don't know about GW2 because there's no such metrics, but i wouldn't worry about it...This is all pure speculation, yes, those games grew, but did they grow enough to catch up to GW2? Hard to say, because again, no numbers. From my experience, Living World has done more to garner good will towards the game than any expansions... And with Season 4 being somewhat lacklustre compared to season 2 and 3 (even the last 2 episodes being somewhat above average doesn't make up for the mid episodes being so meh) it was a better move to go forward through into Season 5 than focus on an expansion.That, and Arena Net were focusing way too many resources on their side project (the one that got shutdown and caused the lay-offs) so they probably didn't have the manpower to launch an expansion.But all said and done, yes, there was a lot of mismanagement of the GW2 product and IP, so much so that it had a repercussion to the point of causing a lot of people to lose their livelihood. But it does seem that those repercussions did shake Arena Net of their cushy lethargy, and they seem to be getting more proactive. Time will tell. Too bad it came too late to allow their colleagues to keep their jobs... It's not like a significant bunch of the community hadn't been vocal about that state of things, me included.

Iirc both ff14 and eso has scored bigger player gains and acounts created over gw2 which has largely remained stagnant over tge last 2 or so years. Also i wouldnt necessarily compaire warframe to eso and ff14 mostly because warframe has unique incentives for ppl to play through the steam launcher rater than their own launcher.

Eso's steam launcher was also a mess for a long time.

[zealex.9410]

@trixantea.1230 said:It's true that WoW's population is shrinking with each year but you're making it sound as if WoW is really that bad at the moment. BfA had relatively a good launch and a better content compared to Legion and WoD and now they just released 8.2 which has a new zones, a good raid, an intresting plot and more...

???????????? Did we even play the same bfa, even just looking at facts what you are saying here is false.

[RoseofGilead.8907]

@trixantea.1230 said:It's true that WoW's population is shrinking with each year but you're making it sound as if WoW is really that bad at the moment. BfA had relatively a good launch and a better content compared to Legion and WoD and now they just released 8.2 which has a new zones, a good raid, an intresting plot and more... FFXIV on the other hand will release Shadowbringers very soon and will have new jobs, races and tons of content and gameplay improvements.

BFA's launch was relatively good, but the general consensus I've seen (and experienced) is that it is nowhere near the level of Legion in quality. The new Azshara stuff might be good, but the overall expansion experience has been pretty bad and disappointing.

[Jin.8501]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Blocki.4931 said:

@Jin.8501 said:ESO and FFXIV reaped thousands of thousands players due to this

No, they did because they have good content & many big WoW Youtubers went to check them out and advertised them when they liked it.

Which largely happened because of the discontent those youtubers/ players had with wow. Ofc the games updating and improving also helped.

I think you give too much credit for some youtubers and streamers.People have their own minds (i hope so, looking bad at 2019) and they know when the game is bad so they look for alternative

[zealex.9410]

@RoseofGilead.8907 said:

@trixantea.1230 said:It's true that WoW's population is shrinking with each year but you're making it sound as if WoW is really that bad at the moment. BfA had relatively a good launch and a better content compared to Legion and WoD and now they just released 8.2 which has a new zones, a good raid, an intresting plot and more... FFXIV on the other hand will release Shadowbringers very soon and will have new jobs, races and tons of content and gameplay improvements.

BFA's launch was relatively good, but the general consensus I've seen (and experienced) is that it is nowhere near the level of Legion in quality. The new Azshara stuff might be good, but the overall expansion experience has been pretty bad and disappointing.

Bfa had a very strong launch idd, but so did wod iirc. Honeymoon period of the expansion.

[Amaranthe.3578]

@finkle.9513 said:Just wait untill August 27th, then Anet will take note of their analytics

lol the people who are interested in wownilla and the people who might play gw2 are not the same people

[Blocki.4931]

@Omernon.9762 said:

@Blocki.4931 said:

@Jin.8501 said:ESO and FFXIV reaped thousands of thousands players due to this

No, they did because they have good content & many big WoW Youtubers went to check them out and advertised them when they liked it.

No? The main reason WoW players started looking for a new game was because BFA was so bad. The same applies to YouTubers and Twitch streamers. I have 10k hours clocked in WoW and I’m considered casual by WoW’s standards. In fact most of WoW’s population is made of very loyal and engaged players and the only reason for them to even consider looking for another game is that their beloved game had become a pile of kitten. So if BFA was good, then noone would leave regardless of how good ESO or FF is. You simply can’t just leave behind a game that had become almost a part of your life. So please don’t bring up this stupid argument, because most World of Warcraft players wouldn’t even know about these games in the first place, if Blizzard didn’t kitten up its own game. This is how terrible BFA is!

But don’t worry. Classic is back and soon FF and ESO will become a barren land once again.

I never said it wasn't awful, just that the other games did not gain players because of their expansions at supposedly the right time

[phs.6089]

One of those games reaped me from GW2, there no expansions would stop me from trying it cus of BannerSlave with GW2 itself.

[AliamRationem.5172]

I am taking a break from GW2 specifically because the content release schedule is not to my liking. I need expansions to keep things fresh for me. Adding a new story instance and such every few months is nice, but it doesn't keep me here in the long term.

That isn't just talk, either. I'm currently playing WoW for the first time in years, after trying FFXIV, ESO, and BnS in an attempt to find what I'm looking for. While none of these games are GW2 to me, at least a few of them release expansions that change things up.

GW2 is probably the best out of all the MMOs I've tried. Unfortunately, they also make a lot of weird decisions that ruin it such as...

• Boring non-trinity instanced PvE. I'm sorry, but this is not "innovative". All you did was remove tanking roles entirely and basically make every class into a DPS/support role. These other MMOs using the tried and true trinity format are simply more fun. While "fun" is subjective, objectively it's difficult to argue that having 1 role is better than having 3 in group content.

• A maddening lack of resources. WvW (I don't even need to qualify this statement). PvP. Still only ONE game mode?? No expansion on the horizon? You made a great game. How about supporting it?

It's such a damn shame. GW2 has the best open world gameplay. It has a cool story and lore with regular updates. Its combat system runs circles around games like WoW and FFXIV. But the main features that would attract and keep long-term MMO players are all missing! Dungeons/Raids? One-dimensional, boring, poor release schedule. PvP/WvW? Practically unsupported. Expansion...? I feel like ANet is really dropping the ball on one of the best MMOs on the market.

[zealex.9410]

@Blocki.4931 said:

@Omernon.9762 said:

@Blocki.4931 said:

@Jin.8501 said:ESO and FFXIV reaped thousands of thousands players due to this

No, they did because they have good content & many big WoW Youtubers went to check them out and advertised them when they liked it.

No? The main reason WoW players started looking for a new game was because BFA was so bad. The same applies to YouTubers and Twitch streamers. I have 10k hours clocked in WoW and I’m considered casual by WoW’s standards. In fact most of WoW’s population is made of very loyal and engaged players and the only reason for them to even consider looking for another game is that their beloved game had become a pile of kitten. So if BFA was good, then noone would leave regardless of how good ESO or FF is. You simply can’t just leave behind a game that had become almost a part of your life. So please don’t bring up this stupid argument, because most World of Warcraft players wouldn’t even know about these games in the first place, if Blizzard didn’t kitten up its own game. This is how terrible BFA is!

But don’t worry. Classic is back and soon FF and ESO will become a barren land once again.

I never said it wasn't awful, just that the other games did not gain players because of their expansions at supposedly the right time

They would gain ppl regardless, no mmo shrinks when they release an expansion, but the poor state of wow deff had a big boost to their popularity.

[XenesisII.1540]

An expansion would be good for gw2 regardless of whomever elses expansion has bombed, to keep the game fresh. The proof of that is the sales numbers for gw2 after the expansions came out, gliders and mounts provided a huge area of sales for new skins. The question is what would be the next mechanic that could provide a big skins market for gw2? And then you also have to deal with more elite specs which have had a ton of problems for pvp balance.

I also highly doubt people would be searching out gw2 over wow because the games are different, the progression is different. Many wow players will never touch gw2 or play it for long because once you get to 80 there's no real progression in gear for characters. Final fantasy is the real big winner in grabbing those players honestly.

Even if gw2 brought out an expansion in the fall it would be in the time Classic is out, you're still not pulling wow players from there. Not that I think classic will do well for long, I think it's being over hyped. Blizzard have been having a lot of problems the past year and a lot of their games are dying and they're starting to do shady stuff, it's not surprising for people to move to something else. But Eso and FF are more similar to wow play style than gw2 is.

[Luthan.5236]

I don't know how I'd feel about another expansion. Personally I played from 2012 (relase) to end of 2013. Then took a break until just a few weeks ago when I returned. But that was because back then I had problems with my old computer and since I didn't play any other games besides GW2 I bought and stayed with an office computer that was just enough for MS Office and watching anime.

Now I really like the way achievements are grouped (for the new expansions/maps it seems like per story chapter and map) - makes it a bit easier to find back into the game and still keep track of all the new stuff.

With more and more expansions it would feel harder for me to get back into the game. (I want to catch up at least with some main achievements and items and story.) I recognize that it is important for certain types of players: The ones that need new dungeons and grind - instead of doing any other missing minor achievements or WvW/PvP after finishing the main content. Might get them back playing ... but then again: It will only be temporary. They might finish new stuff quickly and then putting the game on the side doing other stuff/games.

For new players it surely might help ... advertising and stuff when everyone is talking about a new expansion. Espexially with new classes/races - but: that would probably hard work to implement ... every new class needs to be balanced to the existing ones ... new elite specs for each class would also mean tons of work. New expansion probably would be other additions that are a bit more than living story but less than new classes/races.

I'd say: Focus on other events about the sales of the existing expansiond and stuff. Heavy discounts for short periods of time. (Didn't GW2 get released in August or something ... could be in a month or two for birthday of GW2 ... 7 years it is now I think?)

WvW and PvP definitely seems like there could be more additons. (Then again I haven't played these that much since my return. But didn't seem like a lot of changes. Even less players there where in PvE open world it isn't noticable. (I guess because of the "megaserver" system they introduced shortly after I stopped playing back then a few months later.)

[Yargesh.4965]

As has been said, different markets, different target player base. Not sure why a profitable company needs to match your whims.

[zealex.9410]

@XenesisII.1540 said:An expansion would be good for gw2 regardless of whomever elses expansion has bombed, to keep the game fresh. The proof of that is the sales numbers for gw2 after the expansions came out, gliders and mounts provided a huge area of sales for new skins. The question is what would be the next mechanic that could provide a big skins market for gw2? And then you also have to deal with more elite specs which have had a ton of problems for pvp balance.

I also highly doubt people would be searching out gw2 over wow because the games are different, the progression is different. Many wow players will never touch gw2 or play it for long because once you get to 80 there's no real progression in gear for characters. Final fantasy is the real big winner in grabbing those players honestly.

Even if gw2 brought out an expansion in the fall it would be in the time Classic is out, you're still not pulling wow players from there. Not that I think classic will do well for long, I think it's being over hyped. Blizzard have been having a lot of problems the past year and a lot of their games are dying and they're starting to do shady stuff, it's not surprising for people to move to something else. But Eso and FF are more similar to wow play style than gw2 is.

I think elite specs are just the name of the problem in balance rather than specifically the problem. Anet would have and have had imbalance without necessarily introducing elite specs, simply looking at some of their normal balance patches is proof of that.

As you said the game needs to be fresh, this is something that riot has adopted and pretty much most mobas have to keep ppl engaged. Balance is nice to have but a balanced game wont keep you playing if its stale.

Id certainly take new specs and imbalance over the current way things are, which is largely stale yet still imbalanced in certain parts of the game.

[zealex.9410]

I see alot of ppl talking about how they dont see wow players picking gw2 because wow players are all about the raiding life?

I think to an extend thats ignorance, yes wow is known for raids and how well made/ hard are but nowhere near the entire community engages with them to that lvl of play, alot pf ppl never raid let alone go above lfr and thats mainly because wow story is directly connected with the raids.

But even outside of that wow is so much more than just raids, wow get argueably as much if not more ow content for ppl to engage with, less new maps overall but imo maps themselves arent reallt the meat of an update anyways. WoW has alot of casual friendly and lighthearted content and honestly unless u are only interested in raids and dungeons then gw2 is a prime alternative.

[Thalimae.3406]

I think it's a bit silly to expect ANet to somehow link their release schedule to the ones of other big MMOs just in case their newest expansion sucks so GW2 can reap the glorious reward of disappointed fans migrating to a new game. Heck, I've seen people in the past say that ANet should have a new expansion ready when whatever new hyped game is released just in case it sucks so disappointed players can flock to GW2. ANet would probably have to release 4 expansions every year just to meet those demands. lol

[mortrialus.3062]

@zealex.9410 said:Every other mmo is showering in player gains and growth and gw2 is the only game left out.

Gw2 is missing the train and it will be hard to catch up until maybe the next expansion train and thats if the other mmos have less than stellar releases of their own.

Last customer service ticket I had they did expicitly mentioned as I was speaking to the representative that Guild Wars 2 is going through a serious influx of new and returning play and that was why my ticket took so long.

So GW2 is benefitting. Its just we can't see how much.

[Vancho.8750]

If Anet plays its cards right and drops the season 5 episode 1 with big and good promotion a month after the hype for classic is gone and all the tourists are off to look for something else, since classic is hardcore by today's standards and it is serious time investment almost like a second job, people will flock to other mmos or BFA (ha not with that class design). But we know that marketing hasn't been Anet's strong suit, they are neglecting Twitch and other mmos like ESO are pumping some marketing money in there like many people said, also anet only makes the news on the big crap "gaming news" sites like IGN, PCgamer, Gamespot, Eurogamer, Escapist (as shitty as they are they have a lot of viewers), only when they fuck up and have negative news around them. And for one they missed the promotion time between the BFA being bad and classic release they could have swiped some big streamers but noo we get crap like friendships and kung fu tea (but only for USA) or whatever stupid shit they have from the 90s marketing .

[zealex.9410]

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@zealex.9410 said:Every other mmo is showering in player gains and growth and gw2 is the only game left out.

Gw2 is missing the train and it will be hard to catch up until maybe the next expansion train and thats if the other mmos have less than stellar releases of their own.

Last customer service ticket I had they did expicitly mentioned as I was speaking to the representative that Guild Wars 2 is going through a serious influx of new and returning play and that was why my ticket took so long.

So GW2 is benefitting. Its just we can't see how much.

We can see to an extend and its not as much as the others. Ofc it had new and returning plays.

[zinkz.7045]

@"Vancho.8750" said:But we know that marketing hasn't been Anet's strong suit, they are neglecting Twitch and other mmos like ESO are pumping some marketing money in there...

Not only do ESO pay some bigger streamers to stream the game when they release an expansion and attach free in game drops for viewing ESO sterams at times, but the three largest ESO streamers (Fextralife, Fengrush, Alcast) are pretty sneaky in that they game their viewer numbers by embedding their streams into websites. So most of their "viewers" are actually people looking at builds, dungeon guides, etc on Alcast's website with a tiny muted stream box in the corner. But of course Zenimax (ESO dev) love that, because ESO appears much more popular and higher up the list of games on Twitch than it really is.

Maybe someone at Anet or certain streamers should ask whoever runs Metabattle about doing the same thing.

[Yumenei.7943]

@Ben K.6238 said:

@Omernon.9762 said:No? The main reason WoW players started looking for a new game was because BFA was so bad. The same applies to YouTubers and Twitch streamers. I have 10k hours clocked in WoW and I’m considered casual by WoW’s standards. In fact most of WoW’s population is made of very loyal and engaged players and the only reason for them to even consider looking for another game is that their beloved game had become a pile of kitten. So if BFA was good, then noone would leave regardless of how good ESO or FF is. You simply can’t just leave behind a game that had become almost a part of your life. So please don’t bring up this stupid argument, because most World of Warcraft players wouldn’t even know about these games in the first place, if Blizzard didn’t kitten up its own game. This is how terrible BFA is!

But don’t worry. Classic is back and soon FF and ESO will become a barren land once again.

For all of two weeks, until people start to realise they've already played it before and it wasn't that good the first time.

Some of them for sure, but don’t forget that there are private servers with total population bigger than some larger MMOs and Vanilla servers were the most popular ones. Also YouTubers and Streamers seem to absolutely love Classic beta. Even Nixxiom who moved to ESO from BFA and was at first very skeptical about Classic is now prizing the game in all of his recent videos and will be playing the shit out of it when it releases. Both Guild Wars and World of Warcraft were my most played MMOs and I’ve been with both series from the very beginning, but one thing that WoW Classic has over other new MMORPGs is the way it brings players together. It’s entirely player-driven, promotes active cooperation (Guild Wars is mostly passive in this regard) without forcing it down the player’s throat and it’s a kind of game where the actual gameplay is a reward - you're not playing it for daily rewards and achievements points, hoping they will one day somewhat matter to you. This is what MMORPG truely is about - massive, fantasy world with a huge and active community that is both working together and competing against; not a safe space with barriers and dozens of difficulty levels that further segregate community into smaller portions and turn the game into largely single player experience with a scarce and mostly heavily scripted group content. Sounds familiar, right?

[b k.1648]

Yeah, it sounds like EQ and UO.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@Omernon.9762 said:

@Ben K.6238 said:

@Omernon.9762 said:No? The main reason WoW players started looking for a new game was because BFA was so bad. The same applies to YouTubers and Twitch streamers. I have 10k hours clocked in WoW and I’m considered casual by WoW’s standards. In fact most of WoW’s population is made of very loyal and engaged players and the only reason for them to even consider looking for another game is that their beloved game had become a pile of kitten. So if BFA was good, then noone would leave regardless of how good ESO or FF is. You simply can’t just leave behind a game that had become almost a part of your life. So please don’t bring up this stupid argument, because most World of Warcraft players wouldn’t even know about these games in the first place, if Blizzard didn’t kitten up its own game. This is how terrible BFA is!

But don’t worry. Classic is back and soon FF and ESO will become a barren land once again.

For all of two weeks, until people start to realise they've already played it before and it wasn't that good the first time.

Some of them for sure, but don’t forget that there are private servers with total population bigger than some larger MMOs and Vanilla servers were the most popular ones. Also YouTubers and Streamers seem to absolutely love Classic beta. Even Nixxiom who moved to ESO from BFA and was at first very skeptical about Classic is now prizing the game in all of his recent videos and will be playing the kitten out of it when it releases. Both Guild Wars and World of Warcraft were my most played MMOs and I’ve been with both series from the very beginning, but one thing that WoW Classic has over other new MMORPGs is the way it brings players together. It’s entirely player-driven, promotes active cooperation (Guild Wars is mostly passive in this regard) without forcing it down the player’s throat and it’s a kind of game where the actual gameplay is a reward - you're not playing it for daily rewards and achievements points, hoping they will one day somewhat matter to you. This is what MMORPG truely is about - massive, fantasy world with a huge and active community that is both working together and competing against; not a safe space with barriers and dozens of difficulty levels that further segregate community into smaller portions and turn the game into largely single player experience with a scarce and mostly heavily scripted group content. Sounds familiar, right?

We'll see about that. I'm skeptical that when the gear treadmill stops turning, these players are going to stick around "for the gameplay". Especially when their memories of the quality of that gameplay are almost certainly magnified by nostalgia.