Thoughts on the calculated timing of EoD

[Adzekul.3104]

So the community has calculated/estimated the launch of EoD for late November, based upon the cadence of the Living World episode re-releases. I want to highlight the lessons learned from other game companies releasing expansions at this time-of-year, and the pitfalls that impact the game. I can imagine in the pre-launch push to "get it all done" nobody might be thinking about these things.

 

I experienced both SW:TOR and WoW releasing past expansions in November/December, and the major headaches that arose were the first wave of necessary bug fixes that had to be delayed because of the Christmas holiday. These were critical bug fixes that affected raid exploits that were allowing people to get the best gear too quickly. This problem does not exist in GW2, but the major features of EoD will (presumably) be story and elite specializations. Story exploits don't end up being so major (famous last words?) but broken instances / blocking progress happen often enough (recall PoF launch and the broken first instance in Lion's Arch that prevented many from even getting to Crystal Oasis). Additionally, elite spec bugs and/or imbalance breaks all game modes and having delays to balance patches due to American Thanksgiving and/or Christmas holiday makes for much frustration (recall the broken-ness of scourge in WvW, creating winnable 1vX situations).

 

One way to mitigate this is with detailed and extensive QA. But I think many people will probably note that QA thoroughness is a sore point with the community. Another way to mitigate this risk is to delay the expansion. Some have, for months, been saying "please take the time to get it right, and delay release if necessary". Others will say otherwise (NC Soft perhaps?). And so the options for mitigating the risks I identified above become problematic.

 

To the EoD Project Manager: please consider these issues in your project planning and delivery, in order to minimze the impact of game-breaking bugs on launch, the fixes for which will be delayed by Christmas holiday.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Adzekul

Edited June 15, 2021 by Adzekul.3104

[Vayne.8563]

They're not likely to change the launch date, because it's based on other factors, mostly how many sales they think they can make. They're not going to launch at the same time as other competing big expansions. They'll take their bumps by launch in the window that's most profitable. That's how businesses work.

 

Nothing you or I will post here is going to alter the release date/time by one single hour.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

You make some valid points, but I think something you're missing which may be a crucial detail is that this year alone there is more competition than ever coming into the MMORPG market. There are multiple MMOs launching this year, within the next 4 to 5 months at least, that will certainly pull players away from GW2 especially if GW2 has nothing new, exciting and big to show for itself around Q3 and Q4 of this year.

 

Elyon, Sword of Legends Online, Lost Ark, New World. Not to mention FFXIV's latest expansion, Endwalker, is potentially slated to drop this year and that game quite literally just surpassed WoW as the most actively played MMORPG. Lost Ark is an especially big one being put up against GW2 due in large part to it being Free to Play with a fantastic combat system and it has a PvP Arena system that is completely equalized; gear is not relevant in it, along with a substantial amount of PvE content and collectibles and exploration.

 

If they need to delay to get it right, then sure that could've worked for them in the past, but this year is different from many of the other years that this game has been around. They might not be able to afford to delay and November might be the best bet they have for release.

 

I know a lot of people around here like to make the claim of "You can't compare one MMO to another especially if they are so different from one another" and true, you can't do 1 to 1 comparisons. However that doesn't mean they are not competing in the same genre and that doesn't mean something new coming along won't pull players away from something else. GW2 doesn't have great player retention as it is, if EoD doesn't do something substantial then I can't see things getting better with the circumstances as they are.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

They're not going to launch at the same time as other competing big expansions.

Is this why it seems they will launch alongside Endwalker? 😋

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Really?  Is the consensus November?

What if the Devs decide/have decided to release 2 Episodes per week?

No one really knows what is to happen, or when any releases might be forthcoming. 

 

And, the Devs don't take off for Thanksgiving, other than the Friday after.

The Christmas holiday starts right before Christmas and ends right after New Year's Day. 

[phreeak.1023]

November release seems reasonable because sales will be higher fall/winter. It's colder outside, people stay more at home. In the summer usual people play less. 

Edited June 15, 2021 by phreeak.1023

[Kronos.3695]

55 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Really?  Is the consensus November?

What if the Devs decide/have decided to release 2 Episodes per week?

No one really knows what is to happen, or when any releases might be forthcoming. 

 

And, the Devs don't take off for Thanksgiving, other than the Friday after.

The Christmas holiday starts right before Christmas and ends right after New Year's Day. 

 

You're not considering one thing: in July we'll have the expansion announcement and they'll probably give us the release date.

From there, they'll have to marketing hard their product, or it'll end up just like PoF: "here you go the expansions, you'll be able to play it in 2 months" and the sales will be terrible.

 

November is a good spot because 3-4 months from the announcement of the expansion features will be a good amount of time to do proper marketing.

[Danikat.8537]

I thought the community had decided on September or October, around the time HoT and PoF launched (and slightly after the base game which was end of August).

 

More importantly though if Anet were planning to release it in late November and a forum post is what makes them go "Oh yeah, we might need to do bug fixes after the release, maybe we should move it" then the studio has much bigger problems than this. There will be at least one person whose job is to determine the best time to release the expansion, balancing all the different factors and that's going to be someone fairly senior, meaning they'd need at least a few years experience in the industry to get to that point. If they're missing something as basic as time to fix bugs after release the entire game, and the entire studio behind it would be mismanaged to a similar degree (yes, yes 'haha it's Anet everything has always been terrible') and fixing this one point isn't going to achieve much.

[Vayne.8563]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Is this why it seems they will launch alongside Endwalker? 😋

I don't think they  will. My guess is they're aiming for 30 days before that.

[LucianDK.8615]

There will always be another game you could launch 'competitively' with. Wow get the same conspiracy theories all the time too.

[Vayne.8563]

9 minutes ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

There will always be another game you could launch 'competitively' with. Wow get the same conspiracy theories all the time too.

There's a very big difference between WoW and Anet.  The size of the company, their percentage of the playerbase. WoW is the game to compete with, Guild Wars 2 is not.   At any rate, I've worked with enough companies to know that launch windows are decides for specific reasons, including marketing reasons. You don't have to believe it. But I promise you it's not random.

[Mik.3401]

I’m kind of worried how the EoD will be able to face the huge mmo releases later this year, but we can only hope they will do their best.

 

[kharmin.7683]

Boosting a financial quarter is another reason to select a particular time to release an expansion.

[Danikat.8537]

36 minutes ago, Mik.3401 said:

I’m kind of worried how the EoD will be able to face the huge mmo releases later this year, but we can only hope they will do their best.

 

People have been saying that since before GW2 came out, and they say it about all the other MMOs and many single-player games too. There's always something someone is looking forward to so much they're sure it will be a massive success and huge numbers of people will stop playing everything else to move to the new game.

 

Even on the very, very rare occasions a game is that successful it's impact on the competition is actually fairly minimal. For example Ultima Online, Everquest and Runescape all managed to retain players, keep going and keep releasing new content through the launch of World and Warcraft, and all the games which followed it.

[Wintermute.5408]

Nevermind, wrong thread lol.

Edited June 15, 2021 by Wintermute.5408

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I don't think they  will. My guess is they're aiming for 30 days before that.

Ah. For me 30 days window in case of MMORPGs is still well within the range of competing releases. For example, for me, anything i won;t be able to do within those 30 days in gw2 will get dropped as soon as Endwalker launches - and i am sure i will still be far, far from being done.

[Jarvis.9540]

They'd be crazy to release in November.  FFXIV Endwalker releases 11/23/21.

[Danikat.8537]

Maybe I'm weird but I've never been inclined to play just one game at a time and I tend to prefer long games, so I'd never expect to finish everything I wanted to do in one before another one I want to play comes out, I just go between them based on what I feel like doing at the time.

 

At the moment my main games, other than Guild Wars 2, are Elder Scrolls Online (where I've barely touched the new 'chapter' because I'm doing other stuff), Breath of the Wild, both Xenoblade Chronicles 1 & 2, and Valheim (although I'm holding off on doing a lot before the next big update). In between I play a bunch of other games based on what I feel like doing.

 

So I don't really see it as a problem if two (or more) games I want to play come out around the same time, I'll get them when it's convenient for me (if it's late November onwards that usually means either as a Christmas present or buying it myself after Christmas) and play them whenever I feel like it. If I do drop a game it's rarely a conscious decision and usually because I'm bored with it rather than because I have to prioritise something else. But then I'll come back to it sometime later.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Late November 2022 anyone?

[Pifil.5193]

As there is an Intermission next week rather than the first episode of Season 3 I'd say early 2022 is more likely than November 2021.

 

Assuming there's an Intermission between each Season that's another 3 weeks. Unless the Intermission is maybe a week for the Side Stories and counts as one of the 24 weeks in total?

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, Pifil.5193 said:

As there is an Intermission next week rather than the first episode of Season 3 I'd say early 2022 is more likely than November 2021.

 

Assuming there's an Intermission between each Season that's another 3 weeks. Unless the Intermission is maybe a week for the Side Stories and counts as one of the 24 weeks in total?

 

Well techincaly they can launch it december 31th and still have it in the year they said they would release.

[Astralporing.1957]

3 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

 

Well techincaly they can launch it december 31th and still have it in the year they said they would release.

Only theoretically, since there won't be anyone to actually launch it at that date - remember, they all leave the building for christmas and come back only after the new year has started.

[Linken.6345]

3 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Only theoretically, since there won't be anyone to actually launch it at that date - remember, they all leave the building for christmas and come back only after the new year has started.

If they can work from home pretty sure they can launch from home.

[Vayne.8563]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Ah. For me 30 days window in case of MMORPGs is still well within the range of competing releases. For example, for me, anything i won;t be able to do within those 30 days in gw2 will get dropped as soon as Endwalker launches - and i am sure i will still be far, far from being done.

There are tons of people that'll drop $30 on a game to play until the other comes out in a month just to try it. I bought TSW and Rift when I knew Guild Wars 2 was coming out, even though I knew I'd be playing Guild Wars 2.  And I was social in Rift at least. Not so much TSW because it was a month but I don't regret buying it.
 

Of course there are others who won't buy. The sweet spot I'm guessing is at least a  month before a big expansion or at least 3 months after one.

[Pifil.5193]

56 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

 

Well techincaly they can launch it december 31th and still have it in the year they said they would release.

 

Yep, of course, I doubt that would happen though.

 

The last balance patch had server and client crashes, that's not unusual for GW2. I can't imagine them releasing a whole new expansion without having the team on hand to support the release.