tzaeru.3742

A guild for doing end-game content in a safe environment where failure is not only accepted, but expected! We do runs for strikes, fractals, and raids, as well as some achievement hunting. All the events are without requirements; no kill proofs, item checks, or DPS checks. We have regular runs, training runs and blind runs, where players new to a piece of content, such as a raid wing, go in without any prior knowledge and without using wiki or YouTube for guidance. The guild is most active on EU, though some activity also happens on NA times. We're friendly, welcoming and absolutely safe to fail with. Discord: https://discord.gg/HzeBYz96U9

Having played LotRO not so long ago, I wouldn't call the playerbase tiny tiny; there's players all around, has to be thousands if not a few tens of thousands a day. And yeah, GW2 is obv not going anywhere. Even if GW3 eventually came out, that's years away.

That's just silly. GW2 moved to top 5 most played MMORPGs in the Western market pretty soon after launch, and it's held its place there to today. Calling a top 5 most played MMORPG "dead" is just nonsensical. By that logic, only WoW and FFXIV are "alive". It's always a bit weird when people who apparently greatly dislike the game and believe it's been dead for 10 years actually still want to write to its forums. What's the point behind that? At the moment GW2 is very lively, with new players coming in all the time; I'm in a guild that specializes in low entry level and doing e.g. blind runs for content, and we constantly get new players interested in strikes, raids, fractals. It is true that some of GW2's appeal to new players suffers from out-dated graphics and a bit too many systems on top of systems, and in that sense, a fresh start can be good; but it's only good if the established playerbase actually moves with it. Well, naturally ANet complies; they're wholly owned by NCSoft. While ANet no doubt has many employees who care about making GW2 as good an experience to its players as it can be, this isn't really true for the shareholders of NCSoft. For them, the point is for NCSoft to grow and for NCSoft stock to gain value. I sincerely believe that the best way to do that is to build games and worlds that have long-term potential. Most of NCSoft's games are short-term money grabs. Mobile and console games with obnoxious monetization systems. Those games they have failed to make long-term profit from. GW is profitable and NCSoft of course understands that. There would be absolutely zero reason for NCSoft to kill ANet, since ANet is making them money, while many of their other studios are not. Revenue-wise, 2022 was actually the 2nd biggest year for GW2, with only 2015 having been bigger. From NCSoft's perspective, this should mean that ANet is a great investment. In the previous quarterly report, Q4 2023, they also added this bit of info: Q4 NA/EU sales grew by 15% qoq due to strong sales of GW2. GW2 is the only thing they have going for in the USA and EU markets.

The report is based directly on a question made to the chairman of NCSoft. I do not know Korean business culture, but typically, the thing is, if the chairman of a large public company says something like this, then it is going to influence the valuation of the company and that creates further pressure to deliver. Generally speaking, chairmen and CEOs of public companies should not lie, and it's in fact often illegal for them to do so. It is possible he spoke without understanding what he was speaking about and only said what he thought shareholders would like to hear. But that's actually rather worrisome if that's how NCSoft operates. Expectation management is a huge part of making any business profitable and at the end of the day, while ANet is its own company, it is wholly owned by NCSoft and as such ANet's capability to deliver is tied to whether NCSoft is able to stay afloat.

Must be a bit of a wild day for the people doing PR and communications at ANet at the moment; I would hope that they clarify already today what the NCSoft fellas were talking about.

Yeah, that could be it too. And of course some new project with GW IP might be in the doings, but it wouldn't be a replacement to GW2. We do know that ANet has been hiring people with particular skills with Unreal Engine 5. While UE5 could be utilized for e.g. asset creation and previewing for GW2, I don't think they would need to hire very many people for that.

It's still rather the turnaround from when just a few years ago ANet said that they aren't going to do GW3 and nothing of such is in plans. My experience with these sort of things is that if once people said "never gonna happen" and later it turns to "well maybe..", that "maybe" really means "likely to happen". I think the correction might also be a reaction to appease the paying customers. People don't want to spend money on a MMO game that is going to have a sequel.

I don't think ANet even could say that they are working on GW3 before NCSoft first said it. There's public company transparency rules and anything that can realistically have a meaningful effect on the stock valuation has to be published to the public and to the stockholders at the same time. NCSoft owns ANet completely and ultimately they decide on the projects and the budgets, not ANet. They later clarified that development hadn't yet started, but the original source is directly from the words of the chairman of NCSoft, and if they say something I'd assume that should hold weight; and actually, it has to, legally speaking, he can't just make stuff up when that stuff can affect the valuation of NCSoft.

So if the news hadn't yet hit you, it seems that the chairman of NCSoft, in a shareholder interview, confirmed that is GW3 is greenlit. The original news, in Korean, use e.g. Google Translate: https://m.inven.co.kr/webzine/wznews.php?idx=294408 Making a sequel for a MMO is always a bit risky. You might end up splitting the playerbase, and the whole franchise can significantly suffer from that - take, for example, EverQuest. It's also possible some people will not want to spend more money into GW2, if they feel that GW2 is going to go away and get replaced by GW3. On the other hand, GW2's codebase by now is prolly pretty hefty and hard to expand. It's also difficult to do a significant graphics overhaul with the existing game. Models and textures would eventually need to be redone, etc. It's also not confirmed, of course, that GW3 will even be a replacement for GW2. Maybe it will do a reverse Warcraft and be a RTS. Who knows. I personally still see a lot of potential in GW2 and hope that this doesn't mean that GW2 gets less attention. There are also ways to mitigate e.g. consumer fears of spending money to a game that is going to be replaced. You can, for example, give a fraction of the GW2 account value back for GW3, etc. Thoughts?

Yeah, the jaded bitterness is what one will hear on every MMO and even non-MMOs like ARPGs. I recall people with thousands of hours into a game endlessly complain about the end-game at last in Elder Scrolls Online, Warframe, Destiny 2, Path of Exile .. even WoW's reddit has highly upvoted threads akin to "End game is boring". Yes, when one spends thousands of hours into a game it tends to get boring for most, no matter what. Actually the phenomena is quite common outside gaming, too. Even in relationships - people get bored with their spouse, don't find anything exciting about them, fail to solve the situation to their satisfaction and build up bitterness towards their spouse for the next decade. This is my thoughts too. Over the last few years I've reflected a bit on why I burn out of games and never seem to find a MMO I liked in the long term. Eventually I realized it's really mostly because I obsess over the grind, try to speedrun my way into all achievements etc, and then burn out. The game becomes boring. GW2 is pretty unique in the regard that it doesn't really make me feel like I need to do things. In WoW for example, you need to grind the new gear fast so you can utilize it effectively, before it gets out-dated. Same in say, Warframe. Someone somewhere wrote that GW2 values your time. And that's very true. It's a MMO where you can participate effectively in all content without being always grinding for the new sets etc. To some players that will also mean boring. The WoW gear treadmill for example is something that keeps players always chasing for something new.

PvP has been quite ignored, that's true, but WvW has been getting more attention. I'm yet to see a MMO where the PvE veterans who've put thousands of hours into it didn't complain about the end game being too shallow/there being nothing to do/balance being wrong... It's the same in every MMORPG, and it's not the fault of those MMORPGs; the problem rather is the expectations people have. Unless we one day start producing content with AI tools, there's just no way for human developers to keep pushing out stuff at the pace veterans are consuming it. My question is, if the game has always been in a bad spot for veterans, why are the veterans still playing?

At this very moment, GW2 is in amazing spot all things considered. It's a great time to begin the game as a newbie; WvW has gotten some attention; there's more end-game PvE content than ever before; class balance is - compared to where it has been - in a decent spot; so on. There are of course a few larger things that maybe need a bit of tweaking. WvW still needs to be about guilds rather than servers; it might be good if there's a bit more commitment shown to a particular style of end-game content; some older content really should have a brief balancing pass done both in regards to rewards but also challenge levels. There has been some power creep after all. But none of that is as important as just having a steady stream of content updates, smaller and larger, and having a steady influx of new players trying the game out to replace the playerbase that moves elsewhere. GW2 is better than it's ever been before and that is a great thing. From ArenaNet's comms it seems that the future is quite bright and content updates are to be expected for many years to come. My top #1 hope for the next content update is this - no matter what tweaks are involved, invest some serious money into marketing this game. It's never been a better time to start playing it. It's the time to reach those players who haven't yet tried the game out. I recall seeing one or two End of Dragons ads and it was far too little compared to the visibility the competitors have.

Hi, Looking to join a few guilds to advance stuff with! Importantly the environment needs to be friendly and inclusive, that's really what I care most about. I'm looking for both casual & semi-competitive guilds. I'd like to do some challenge modes, raids, and maybe even a little bit of WvW and PvP, but I, unfortunately, can't commit to a high regularity. English primarily. If there happen to be any active Finnish guilds that fit the above that's cool too.

Bumpety bump.

Hi all!I'm new to the game, currently in the process of bringing my first two characters to level 80. I'm looking for a guild, both to simply reap the standard guild benefits but also to eventually try out coordinated fractals and raids.I'm kind of a cross between casual and hardcore. I like to do content casually and I might not be a super active guild member. On the flipside, I can also get deep into optimization, I like to challenge myself with difficult content, and I've played RTS and FPS games competitively, including in amateur leagues. I don't look for that in a guild foremost, but if the guild has likeminded members, that's of course a boon!Additionally, I play a lot with my spouse. She's much more casual than I and she prefers to mostly stick to herself and me - she's not much into groups. One day, I hope to show her wrong in the way of finding an online community that she actually feels comfortable in.. and now I hope she doesn't read this. But anyhow, she would likely join with me, but she might not really do anything in the guild.We are currently on Gunnar's Hold, but I am willing to switch servers should I get into WvW at some point.Thanks!