What Brought About The Downfall of Guild Wars

Age.
The game is pretty old and almost everything is revealed and there is no new content.

I would say people.

After playing for a while, you become jaded.....you stop being amaze, your goals become more specifique and self centered, you start to feel more confident in what you do. Hanging out with new player is more of a hassle since you can;t complete anything, and you've pass that stage of trials and error, you should not fail the great wall in NM.

Hero and henchies defiantly did not help with that ( not saying there bad, I use em all the time) so getting out of your confert zone is not worth doing. So since every one learns everything them self....everything, there are less reward doing things with other player then with H&H. So every gets that very independent mode.

So individualisme + independance makes for a very intimatading and hard comunioty to get into.

I'm still playing the game since the original game came out (look at my join date), and I can tell you the biggest difference between now and then is the comunity....the game is better then it ever was (ok...maybe not the skill balance if you PvP....but i'm a dirty PvEr so I don't care as muc)

well im still playing GW until GW2 Collectors Edition comes out. :P

People think GW's downfall from the PvE perspective, which fails in the long term. From the beginning Arena Net had designed the PvE part of the game to be quick through played, no grinding needed and to make your toon to level 20 to play PvP. It was all designed to be PvP game, but later decisions didnt support this. With factions, it didnt boost PvP that much, but added lots of PvE, in Nightfall, the same trend went on and even more of the game was destroyed.

The part what ANet was perhaps missing, is the fact, that a game that would keep itself alive through good PvP, meaning it is balanced, has big competition etc. etc. etc. Needs to be funded somehow. Most games where such things occur are FPS ones, and they keep themselves up, because the game maker doesnt need to keep servers up to the game run. In Guild Wars, there was no monthly fee to keep the game going, this is why ANet had to do something dramatic to get more players to keep the game going by buying the expansions, which never were ones, totally stand alone games which could be linked to your old account and apart from that, the publishing schedule was far more looser than the 6 months they first speaked from. Ofcourse, it would need a slavery kind of work to do decent expansions every 6 months, so it is understandable that didnt happen. So, if there was no monthly fee, and as already stated, they needed more players, but where to get ones?

Answer is simple: PvE. So, they had to create massive amounts of new PvE content. Although, this wasnt that kind of an success either. The areas are all the same, there is never anything new to do. And there werent anything to grind, apart from titles, before EotN bringing us the dungeons.

I could continue alot, but off to bed now. But perhaps this gives somekind of image what happened. No1 wants to keep doing same PvE slaughtering all over.

Your acting like Guild Wars is WoW. It's a one time buy, how long have you been playing the same Xbox game? I doubt 3 years, every day. What other games do you have that you have put thousands of hours into. Of course it's going to get boring. If it starts to get boring just stop for a while.

One thing:

Guild Wars 2

Enough QQ'ing.

Selective Salvaging. How the hell is this a downside?
Assassins. If thou sayeth bad for one expansion profession, thou must sayeth bad for all expansion professions. And none of them brought the downfall of Guild Wars, they just made it a little unbalanced compared to how it was.
Heroes. These only replaced 3 of the crappy Henchmen. Those who H/H now just used Henchmen before. People who PuGed still PuG.
Loot Scaling. This didn't help with the downfall, it just added to grind for those who love to grind.
PvE Skills. This only made things easier, giving more access to more people. Nothing bad.
Consumables. Same as above. Although I do hate these.

I'l have to disagree with you....I've been PvEing for....like I said almost 3 years now. I'm maybe one of the more stuborn one.....or simply do not rush half as fast as others do.....but i still enjoy the game.

PvP can be blamed just as much....and I don't mean by bad skill balance either. The problem with it is getting in to PvP, I've been trying for....again 3 years....but with month of break every here and there... and ruthless and....mhm..."snub" comunity, it is incredibly difficult to get into. You say this its a compition and its always like that....but you also say this is a majorly pvp game too....so why is not the majority of players in pvp? Simple, its hard to get into the higher and more competitive tears.

You have a few low level entry pvp style you can enter and just have fun....RA....AB....Forst aspendwood and Jade Quarry ( too bad this one abandon). After that theres the nest level,TA....then again a tier up HA and finaly the creme of the creme GvG. As soon as you jump to TA....you hit a big wall because title become a requirement, you need a lot more knowledge, and become bigger and bigger with each step. The lower level are more populated level of pvp are more populated because people can simply bring what they want, experiment at there own pace and not worry about winning/loosing as much. They don't get eaten up too much ( except for a few sore winner/looser) and don't have to spend hours practiticing to be perfect.

In short words....If this is a pvp game....why is it so hard to get into? specialy the higher up more organize play that I think the majority of us want to play? Make it easier to get into, make it easier particapate and meet other players, make it easier to get better at it without a wall to run into.

You say they should learn on there own and basicly jump the 10 foot wall like you did. Not all have the patience or time for it....and if the real world would work like that....we would still be in the stone age.

pve became crap when inscriptions and heroes came out. the fun of the original guild wars was when ppl who didnt know each other partied up randomly for a mission. i met alot of my original friends that way. most of them quit when heroes came out. inscriptions ruined pve cuz since everyone could get 15>50 weapons easily, the demand for high end weapons dropped alot and many ppl stopped caring cuz 15>50 low req weapons lost their significance. those of you who are new to gw may say "oh but ppl still farm low req inscriptables!" dont know the awesome feeling of getting a r8-9 and id'ing it to hope for a 15>50. yall missed out on the crushing sadness of getting a low req item that id'ed to be crap stats or glorious joy of iding a good weapon.

I'l disagree with the second part, I've been using the same collector axe since that era, and it was not even a 15^50 weapon, its a 15/stance axe.

You can still get this feeling today by going and farming in faction/prophecy, what you miss is making tones of money in one big swoop because you got some thing the minority of the community could not find or pay. Inscription change that by making more acessible to more people.

The first point I agree, i do miss playing with random people, but with higher standart, and a degrading skill level of the comunity ( because of less interaction between people) this is a god send.....and anyways before hero's people were complaning how henchies were killing the game. If only there were more encouragement for people to group up randomly.....

Thank god somebody mentioned this before I found the thread. Now I don't have to type it.

Because time has shown that Anet is garbage at running a competitive game. Why do you think they did a nearly complete switch to full PvE? PvP games sustain themselves. PvE games do not without constant addition.

Because there are no other intense RPG compitition that can compaire to GW.

If you Thinking FPS/RTS/racing/sport game/ ddr & guitar hero style simulator, all those game you can practive on your own at your own pace before (ok not all those type of game) join a guild and/or get competitive. So you enter those competitive world with a base degree of experience at a level you feel much more comfortable at.

Guild wars is different in the matter that you need to depend on other people to get good at, and that there is very litle you can do to gain experience here. Very litle, its almost negligable what does, to prepares you for the organize pvp in guild wars.
Its basicly like trowing you self directly into the fire instead of the frying pan (at least the frying gives you some protection)

Anything that makes you realy on team mate to get better should have a much slower difficulty curve. Instead of ramming into a 10foot wall, make a very difficult stair to climb, at least it would not deter as many people

For me and many others I know, the downfall of Guild Wars is directly the result of two major problems:

#1 Linking of skill access & skill power to Titles (Allegiance, EotN Rep, SS)
#2 Announcement that Titles will bestow a benefit in GW2 via HoM

Before this happened, Titles were just for show. If someone wanted to grind for various titles to display on their character, so be it. The rest of us could play a game on equal footing without resorting to grind. That was actually one of the main attractions of Guild Wars for many of us; GW was a game designed around not needing to grind.

However, since #1 & #2, the game has now shifted into one that is all about grind. If we don't grind for titles, there is no small risk that we will be left at a measureable disadvantage when GW2 debuts, and many of us aren't willing to take that chance. Meanwhile, many people I used to play GW with moved on once the game shifted from being about fun to being about grind. If they had simply left titles out of the game, or at least left them unconnected to in-game benefits, many of those players would still be here, and I for one would enjoy the game a lot more.

There is a section on Guru forums that will give you an idea of what Regina is doing...find it!

Lazy people try to bring about the downfall but as anyone can see, GW is still here. Oh, and the sky isn't falling!

Ant

I think that the easiest way to describe the state of the game right now is that GW is a super trendy bar, were it has been getting better and better, removing and changing thing people hate with better and improved things, and make other change people don't like (you can make every one happy, just not all at the same time).
but with these change, people have been socializing less and less, either dancing alone in the middle of the dance floor, or making small, very exclusive group.

So even if the bar itself is as good as ever. because there is no exciment and energy coming from the cround it self, it seem the bar is going bad. Its the comunity the biggest problem, what give its alusion of a detiorating GW, and in a sense it is, its loosing one of it best assest slowly.
I remember when Rahja the Thieft created huge party in various location, or when Witta Was created tones of solo built for every one of every kind, even soloing the deep. We need more exciment for the comunity and more involment.

That and for the dancers (pvpers ) the music has been getting worst (skill balance)

Shame PvP is stale too, GvG has lost its spark the way it is now.

Oh! That one that has nothign new from her in like 2 weeks? Almost forgot about it, being as inactive as it is.

I 2nd this, but, you know most everyone who doesn't like the direction GW turned also turns into a chicken little roleplaying character. The SKY IS FALLING, the SKY is FALLING...HALP THE SKY IS FALLING. lol

But on another note what happened to GW is it ran out of steam because from the first chapter on it never added any new phatt loot or more power in the loot though it did add more power in the skills u used that phatt loot with, but, I much prefer both types, great new skills and great new phatt loot and phatt loot that not everyone can get to. Face it that's what keeps a lot of people playing these games is because there's still something over the next hill. But, GW doesn't have any hills after the initial 20 levels and some simple 15^50 weapon and a +30hp shield or sumthin. Thas boring loot the boringest loot I ever saw or played for in a game. If it weren't for PVP killing sins and rangers Ida been gone a long time ago. GW does have one of the best PVP systems I've ever played and it's pretty fair although too many people complain everytime they get beat by something new.

This game is still fun, the servers are running, and people still play it. /win

No, they didn't, that's one thing I'm damn glad has been mostly left in the past. Also, you forgot the "joy" of the dual-profession/triple-profession/multi-attribute caster weapons that were absolutely USELESS.

I completely agree with 3,5 and 6. 3 because Heroes have horrendous AI, i mean they can't even use some of the skills correctly, what's the point if they can't do what a player can. Albeit they are better for pugging. 5 because skills like URSAN made PVE WAY to easy, with the addition of hard mode i was like "Oh joy a new challenge" 1 week later triple necro vanquish came about (thanks heros ), it just became another easy repetitive waste of time. I agree consumables also ruined the game because of the added effects, if they didn't give you a stat boost i would be fine with it, just stop making the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing game easy!

P.S. I've been playing since the retail release, i miss the old days...

OP... You took the words out of my head. Particularly selective salvaging.. In my opinion that was the first metaphorical spike driven into Gw. It shit kicked the economy in ways nothing has been able to duplicate. That was the original economy buster.

Next was heroes... They removed the necessity of social playing, and turned the game into solo grinding anti social playing. 1st spike into the Social aspect of GW.

With heroes came Inscriptions. Spike 2 into the economic life of GW. It removed the concept of finding truly unique and valuable items. You having 1 of a few, never seeing the same weapon for months. Now, everyone has 1 of 1,000,000... That was the worst idea period. HoH should still drop Uninsc. The original 2/3's of the chapters were Uninscribable. The 3rd chapter and expansion were Inscribable... Seniority lost apparently...

And finally, my biggest gripe. TITLES.... This was a huge nail in the social atmosphere. You need to be this rank or have so many of something or what ever to join this group/guild... Wtf. Make them less of a grind to get and people will actively look to get them.

My idea of GW perfect... Have all 3 games the way they are with the settings from Guildwars in December of 06... no selective salvaging.. No lootscaling.. No multiple title grinds. Hard missions.. Reasonably ballanced skills.. Ways and means to make enough money to enjoy the game and afford things that you want with a little earnest effort.

There's only a few places in game that are worth farming... A few to little... Not to mention you need to have a particular character with the perfect weapons/armor/skills in order to stand much of a chance. Running is how to make money. Missions/Dungeons/Locations..