What if GW2 were to shut down?

[SinisterSlay.6973]

1 hour ago, Tukaram.8256 said:

If you had fun - was the time really wasted?

An eventual shutdown is inevitable, but not the end of the world (well... it would be the end of this world ha ha).  Initially I would just spend more time on my private Ultima Online server (it is more fun to code than to play). Eventually I would probably find another game, I guess.  I have been playing MMORPGs since 1997 and kind of getting tired of the repetition. I would love to see something new, but even I have no idea what that would entail. 😎

If there wasn't a gw3 that had the same ideals as gw2, this would probably be my last mmo. Gw2 has spoiled me too much. It's too good of a game. I've never seen another mmo even come close. Most don't even make it past the "doesn't install a virus" stage of the requirements.  Gw2 is so rare it doesn't even force admin permissions on your system (seriously low bar here)

[Donari.5237]

Waste of time?  Nope.  It's never promised to be a forever world to visit, none of these games are.  Even single player games that are complete on launch will eventually not be playable on future devices, other than through emulators that most won't bother with especially as tastes and tech evolve.  It's always been just an entertaining way to spend your time while it's here.

There are plenty of ephemeral things we pour resources and love into, even knowing we will outlive them.  If one is willing to have and love a pet, knowing the heartbreak that will come when it grows old and dies while we still have decades left to us, then surely one can bear the loss of a gaming platform.

[Gajex.2386]

FF14.

The community is nice. (Enforced by SE, but at least no circle jerks.)

The fashion is still good. (Overly complicated but dyeable weapons.)

And what it lacks in open world content (I mean, seriously, invisible walls?!), it makes up with pug-friendly instanced content. (Queue me with a first timer, I want dat bonus, baby!)

catgirls

Combat is pretty slow though. No match for the action of GW2.

 

And yes, I'm only playing GW2 at the moment. Best free* MMO after all!
*y'all know what that asterisk is for

[Ragebru.1397]

Don't know if it's been mentioned, but a lot of countries are starting to go after game monetization with in-game cash shops. ANET has chosen to heavily rely on cash shop transactions- where as other games have leaned towards more steady content releases. Five years for an expansion, 10 years with no PvP overhaul or major updates, raids with lower participation that WvW and sPvP, etc. etc. Maybe this will light a fire under them to focus on things that the player base has repeatedly asked for over the years, or it could also be a chance for ANET to cut ties and abandon ship. 

This will be a hard lesson for ANET to learn, but it might be just what this game desperately needs. Focus, modernization, and rounded content for both PvE and PvP alike. Games such as FF are an exception due to their frequent expansions and their subscription model. So as someone suggested earlier that GW2 would outlive FF is simply untrue. 

[AzureShiron.7658]

Id just cry. Id cry. 

[lezbefriends.7516]

I'd just go to a different MMO.

[voidek.5738]

Quote

What if GW2 were to shut down?

gonna kms

[Gehenna.3625]

On 7/8/2022 at 10:54 AM, Arnox.5128 said:

Note that I'm not talking about the LIKELIHOOD of this happening. (It's very very low.) I'm just wondering what our backup options would be. Honestly, it looks pretty grim. Especially compared to WoW. If Blizzard shut down WoW tomorrow, it wouldn't matter THAT much because private servers for WoW are everywhere in almost every flavor. GW2 though, for better and for worse, is much more locked down, and I don't know if ANYONE outside of ANet even has any sort of access to the server software needed to spin up a GW2 server.

Nothing lasts forever in the end. There will be other games. The key is not to get too attached to an MMO. As you say they can be shut down and will be at some point. I think the key is to enjoy the moment and not worry about the future too much.

On 7/8/2022 at 10:54 AM, Arnox.5128 said:

What's worse, GW2 is a very fashion and player character focused game, and many many people have spent years and years earning and making all the characters on their account complete with equipment and figured out builds. There are even many items on accounts that, for one reason or another, were made unavailable years ago and have become collector's items. And THEN there's all the unlocked waypoints on characters. If GW2 were to shut down, all that account data that was so many years in the making is going to go right down the toilet. So even if someone somehow got access to the server software, everyone would have to start at ground zero. And sure, the server admins could theoretically make those unavailable items available again and/or speed up the time it takes to get rare items, but while that is indeed an option, it just won't be the same as how it felt originally.

Well this is something that a lot of people do not understand: you don't own anything in the game. You essentially lease or rent the use thereof. Every skin you buy, you do NOT own. Anet owns it and grants you the use of it...for as long as the game exists. And yeah, ingame items you collected will also be gone, because you don't own them either.

That's the difference between an online game and a localised game. I used to be able to say that you owned single-player games. Of course all the single-player games nowadays also require an online connection to play them, so that's why I say localized games. And the reason for this new(er) approach is that they don't want you to own anything.The only things you own are the physical items you got (if you got any, like the discs or collector's edition stuff) but not the digital content. You bought the use of the digital content, not the digital content itself if you get the difference.

On 7/8/2022 at 10:54 AM, Arnox.5128 said:

Oh, and finally, I have a suspicion that WoW is a much easier game to run, servers wise, as compared to GW2. So if someone wanted to start up a private server, they may need a very beefy server just to have it running in a minimal state. Not even talking about any maintenance the server might require in the background that maybe only ANet will ever be equipped to handle.

Well it's much older than GW2. I think WoW started in 2004. GW2 came out in 2012, so there's 8 years between them. But the release of GW2 is also 10 years ago now. I think that this is not so much a problem as whether or not Anet would allow private servers or not. I'm not sure if they could or would stop it.

[Danikat.8537]

7 hours ago, Donari.5237 said:

Waste of time?  Nope.  It's never promised to be a forever world to visit, none of these games are.  Even single player games that are complete on launch will eventually not be playable on future devices, other than through emulators that most won't bother with especially as tastes and tech evolve.  It's always been just an entertaining way to spend your time while it's here.

There are plenty of ephemeral things we pour resources and love into, even knowing we will outlive them.  If one is willing to have and love a pet, knowing the heartbreak that will come when it grows old and dies while we still have decades left to us, then surely one can bear the loss of a gaming platform.

Single-player games which aren't compatible with newer hardware is more of a grey area, because you still have the option to keep the old machine to play them. Of course there are all kinds of problems which can come up, like the hardware breaking over time and replacements being hard to find, space to store all the different machines and weirder things like batteries in cartridges running out or over a long enough timescale materials decaying. Or simply holding onto it through life events (I lost access to 'my' N64 and all the games when I left home because technically the console belonged to my brother, but I got to keep the Gamecube, so there's that.)

But at least it's not an absolute cut-off like companies no longer supporting online games (or ones which require online validation to run). You won't immediately lose access when they decide that game or machine is at the end of it's life.

[Andur.9275]

If servers were shut down, GW2 would have been my last MMO, unless there was a promising successor in the making / already available.

I'd most probably try to stay in touch with my guildies and continue playing multiplayer games like Pummel Party or Human Fall Flat, etc. Additionally I'd start to reduce my pile of shame of single player games.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Diablo immortal obviously. No mortage, no student loan debt, no wife, kids...a guy's gotta ruin his finances somehow in this dark day and age!

[Mikali.9651]

I would play Guild Wars, unless that also were to shut down. now THAT scares me.

[Arnox.5128]

On 7/12/2022 at 10:40 PM, Ragebru.1397 said:

Don't know if it's been mentioned, but a lot of countries are starting to go after game monetization with in-game cash shops. ANET has chosen to heavily rely on cash shop transactions- where as other games have leaned towards more steady content releases. Five years for an expansion, 10 years with no PvP overhaul or major updates, raids with lower participation that WvW and sPvP, etc. etc. Maybe this will light a fire under them to focus on things that the player base has repeatedly asked for over the years, or it could also be a chance for ANET to cut ties and abandon ship. 

This will be a hard lesson for ANET to learn, but it might be just what this game desperately needs. Focus, modernization, and rounded content for both PvE and PvP alike. Games such as FF are an exception due to their frequent expansions and their subscription model. So as someone suggested earlier that GW2 would outlive FF is simply untrue. 

The steady stream of content is definitely helping out FF14 over GW2, but @Einsof.1457 was saying that if SE doesn't keep that pace up constantly, then GW2 will overtake it and beat it because GW2 is designed mostly from the ground up to sustain itself without content for long periods of time in several ways, most notably Fashion Wars and the endlessly fun combat. (The state of PvP is in DIRE need of attention though. I got some punk hacker not even four games in just by playing Unranked. And there's not even any mechanism available to report them either.)

 

16 hours ago, ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

Diablo immortal obviously. No mortage, no student loan debt, no wife, kids...a guy's gotta ruin his finances somehow in this dark day and age!

Yes, I also like to burn my money too. XD

[Ragebru.1397]

9 hours ago, Arnox.5128 said:

most notably Fashion Wars

which unfortunately ties into arguably the most fatal flaw for GW2. If the EU does in fact make it illegal for games to have cash shop transactions for skins, real world currency transactions into game currency (gems, gold, etc), and limits cash shops to only allow transactions for content updates and expansions- GW2 would pretty much die off. Unless they implement a subscription or start releasing an annual expansion. There really isn't that many skins in the game that are strictly farmable. A couple weeks and you could have most of the skins unlocked. 

 

edit: and unfortunately, there just isn't enough content in my opinion to pay a subscription for a game that doesn't even update its existing features. PvP and WvW really were just abandoned, which is sad because New World was able to attract nearly a million players for basically WvW and strongholds style content. 

Edited July 14, 2022 by Ragebru.1397

[Labjax.2465]

8 hours ago, Ragebru.1397 said:

which unfortunately ties into arguably the most fatal flaw for GW2. If the EU does in fact make it illegal for games to have cash shop transactions for skins, real world currency transactions into game currency (gems, gold, etc), and limits cash shops to only allow transactions for content updates and expansions- GW2 would pretty much die off. Unless they implement a subscription or start releasing an annual expansion. There really isn't that many skins in the game that are strictly farmable. A couple weeks and you could have most of the skins unlocked. 

 

edit: and unfortunately, there just isn't enough content in my opinion to pay a subscription for a game that doesn't even update its existing features. PvP and WvW really were just abandoned, which is sad because New World was able to attract nearly a million players for basically WvW and strongholds style content. 

Is that actually on the table right now? That's interesting. I didn't know the EU was even considering it.

At any rate, I imagine Anet would find some way to keep GW2 going. It's too big of an IP to ditch it over that.

[Arnox.5128]

9 hours ago, Ragebru.1397 said:

which unfortunately ties into arguably the most fatal flaw for GW2. If the EU does in fact make it illegal for games to have cash shop transactions for skins, real world currency transactions into game currency (gems, gold, etc), and limits cash shops to only allow transactions for content updates and expansions- GW2 would pretty much die off. Unless they implement a subscription or start releasing an annual expansion. There really isn't that many skins in the game that are strictly farmable. A couple weeks and you could have most of the skins unlocked. 

 

edit: and unfortunately, there just isn't enough content in my opinion to pay a subscription for a game that doesn't even update its existing features. PvP and WvW really were just abandoned, which is sad because New World was able to attract nearly a million players for basically WvW and strongholds style content. 

GW2 may qualify for an exception. Not sure. I haven't heard anything about that though for a while.

[Ragebru.1397]

37 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Is that actually on the table right now?

18 European countries’ consumer groups have joined the fight against loot boxes | VGC (videogameschronicle.com)

The general bill is to ban loot boxes, but just as any legislation- they are reaching out for micro transactions as well.

[Labjax.2465]

2 minutes ago, Ragebru.1397 said:

18 European countries’ consumer groups have joined the fight against loot boxes | VGC (videogameschronicle.com)

The general bill is to ban loot boxes, but just as any legislation- they are reaching out for micro transactions as well.

Nice. I know it may sound bad for GW2's future, but this is a good thing for customers of video games in the long-term, who have had to watch for years as games became less and less game-like and more and more casino-like. Hopefully their efforts lead to something.

[Ashen.2907]

On 7/14/2022 at 11:03 AM, Ragebru.1397 said:

which unfortunately ties into arguably the most fatal flaw for GW2. If the EU does in fact make it illegal for games to have cash shop transactions for skins, real world currency transactions into game currency (gems, gold, etc), and limits cash shops to only allow transactions for content updates and expansions- GW2 would pretty much die off. Unless they implement a subscription or start releasing an annual expansion. There really isn't that many skins in the game that are strictly farmable. A couple weeks and you could have most of the skins unlocked. 

 

edit: and unfortunately, there just isn't enough content in my opinion to pay a subscription for a game that doesn't even update its existing features. PvP and WvW really were just abandoned, which is sad because New World was able to attract nearly a million players for basically WvW and strongholds style content. 

It wouldnt be the first time that Europe embraced Authoritarianism.

[Danikat.8537]

On 7/14/2022 at 6:03 PM, Ragebru.1397 said:

which unfortunately ties into arguably the most fatal flaw for GW2. If the EU does in fact make it illegal for games to have cash shop transactions for skins, real world currency transactions into game currency (gems, gold, etc), and limits cash shops to only allow transactions for content updates and expansions- GW2 would pretty much die off. Unless they implement a subscription or start releasing an annual expansion. There really isn't that many skins in the game that are strictly farmable. A couple weeks and you could have most of the skins unlocked. 

 

edit: and unfortunately, there just isn't enough content in my opinion to pay a subscription for a game that doesn't even update its existing features. PvP and WvW really were just abandoned, which is sad because New World was able to attract nearly a million players for basically WvW and strongholds style content. 

The EU is not even considering banning microtransactions, only loot boxes. In GW2 that would only affect Black Lion Chests, not the vast majority of things they sell.

Depending on the specifics of the legislation it may not even affect Black Lion Chests, or it may mean a relatively minor change like restricting them to people who are over 18, considering literal gambling is legal in a lot of EU countries.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Danikat.8537

[Svarty.8019]

On 7/8/2022 at 10:23 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's not a matter of private servers. It's a matter of alternatives. 

This is correct. Even GW2 developers (and/or their sinister NCSoft overlords) want their game to be a clone of what they know works from WoW, rather than being innovative and interesting. The whole industry went the safe route after the global financial crisis. We haven't seen anything like the innovation that preceded it... you know, innovation like WoW. 

 

[Ragebru.1397]

Oh wow, looks like the movement to end monetization of in game transactions gaining momentum in the US too. RIP black lion keys.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz Wants to Talk to Asmongold About Diablo Immortal - YouTube

He even mentions being able to boost your character (while he claims he's guilty of doing it), is something that he'd be willing to consider limiting access to. He basically says items that make the game more convenient can be manipulative and problematic.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Ragebru.1397

[Halandir.3609]

On 7/13/2022 at 7:45 PM, Mikali.9651 said:

I would play Guild Wars, unless that also were to shut down. now THAT scares me.

 

GW2 shutting down, honestly: Not too bothered. Bad for all the ppl that love the game and the devs, but personally: No problem! I already moved on to a game with (to me) more engaging combat, better lifeskilling system and more.

Guild Wars shutting down: THAT would be terrible and sure... It would bother me, but hey... ppl seem to think WvWvW is the kitten while Guild Wars GvG was the actual format that could have made a name for A-net in E-sport.

Yeah-yeah - Go on chicks: Flaunt your confused state of mind 😛

 

[Labjax.2465]

35 minutes ago, Ragebru.1397 said:

Oh wow, looks like the movement to end monetization of in game transactions gaining momentum in the US too. RIP black lion keys.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz Wants to Talk to Asmongold About Diablo Immortal - YouTube

He even mentions being able to boost your character (while he claims he's guilty of doing it), is something that he'd be willing to consider limiting access to. He basically says items that make the game more convenient can be manipulative and problematic.

I wouldn't put too much hope in that. The only things the US parties usually agree on is funding for cops and military, and ways to make rich people richer. Just about everything else becomes a performative dumpster fire of impossible-to-resolve ideological conflict, while they continue hand-shaking over the stuff that screws everybody.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Labjax.2465

[Smoky.5348]

On 7/12/2022 at 7:13 PM, PzTnT.7198 said:

Seeing that arenanet is owned by ncsoft the likely scenario if they decide that they aren't bringing in enough profits is similar to what happened to wildstar and city of heroes. Basically the studio gets nuked from orbit on very short notice. Nothing comes out as open source (because there is no time) and ncsoft hordes the IP rights forever.

Which means everything done in this game just goes poof. Some years down the line a private server that has been reverse engineered to work with the client will probably pop up. It will be extremely limited and kind of niche at that point as most people will have moved on to other games. 

This was the first thing I thought of. City of Heroes just suddenly died because NCSoft said so. All the cool characters you have here mean nothing once the plug is pulled. And that stinks something fierce because GW2 is currently the only MMO l can play comfortably. I don't like playing MMOs, l don't like playing PvP pubs, and l don't like playing PvE pubs. I only play online games with my friends these days, but GW2 has just the right combination of stuff that the online gameplay doesn't bother me.

But, considering ANET doesn't play their own game enough to know what needs fixing, that plug might be pulled sooner than we think.

Edited July 16, 2022 by Smoky.5348