Community report july 2014 to Arenanet

I have bad news.

After reviewing the interview personally and after with Arenanet i'm afraid i have to decline it politely. I'm not in position to answer to most of the questions because i have no contact with Guild Wars 1 and most of the things you want to know are totally out of my knowledge. [...]

I feel bad for the time invested in it, but there's not much i can do about it. [...]


Anyway, thanks all for the time and the excitement you have put into this.

Anet declined the interview?

Can't say I'm surprised. It felt too good to be true.

I knew they'd find a way out.

Right. Ask me questions about the gravitational pull of mars....
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I don't know enough about the gravitational pull of mars so I have to decline to answer.

Nice work Anet. Smooth.

Thanks for the effort though Izzy. It was encouraging to see that people still care.

Max

Summarizes pretty much ArenaNet and GW1 for you.

Too bad most of those questions are out of anyone's knowledge associated with GW1 at ANet these days anyway.

That's unfortunate and totally unsurprising.
Not the janitor's fault though, he's probably working for free to keep the game running for us. Just not knowledgable in answering those questions. Our hero!

Red engine gored engine gored engine gored engine go red engine gored engine gored engine gored engine go red engine gored engine gored engine gored engine go red engine gored engine gored engine gored engine go red engine gored engine gored engine gored engine go


oh well. Thanks for trying Izzy

gee, cant say as I am surprised either...though we know the answers to most of the questions anyways---their recent actions speaking pretty loudly about their position on this game (and I will remind folks of statements I made back when gw2 was coming on line ...but alas that would be pointless and only get me the satisfaction of saying: I told you so)

and yes, thanks for all the work you put into this, and giving us that small feeling of hope for a few days (no thanks for you anet peoples ).

Not surprising at all.

Anet it's no longer what it's used to be. In fact there is only Mike O'Brian left (from the mastermind's of this game) and his interest in the original guild wars along with it's core fanbase is 0. To be honest and I bet that he see it as a nuisance he just doesn't turn the servers off because of a possible backlash.

Patrick Wyatt and Jeff Strain departed and now founded undead labs leaving Anet with nothing but new fellas who hadn't any commitment with GW. Maybe they would give their two cents about these questions since they no longer have any tie with Anet. But i don't think it would matter now anyway.

So saddening what anet turned into...

Backlash from who? The remaining player base of a game they don't care about? The same player base who isn't big enough to do anything? Come on now. There'd be a thread on guru filled with angry people and a few links to petitions. That's not backlash. At least, not to ANet.


IMO we got the only answer we need.

As long as they sell campaigns and expansions in the ingame new store, Guild Wars will stay up. How bad wouldn't it look if they sold a game to new players only to shut it down a week later?
The day they pull campaigns from the store. that's the day when they have decided on a date to pull the plug, maybe a year later.

But then again we can't know for sure with this new Anet on life support, they might as well just pull the plug tomorrow, and issue a refund to anyone who purchased anything within the last X months.

From a marketing point of view, pulling the plug now would just scatter the players, only a fraction would probably continue with GW2. If they're clever they work on a solution to soak up all those players. Perhaps in time for a brand new GW1.5 game with exclusive items for the old GW1 players. Even if it's a brand new staff programming it, perhaps some of the old GW1 players. Out of 6-7 million accounts sold, surely there would be some qualified programmers and graphics designer who would just die to be offered a chance to work on a new GW1.5

And that's why I used "possible". You can't always be a 100% sure about those things. But as you said probably won't happen.

DRM has been going on since 2000 but when Microsoft tried to implement it on Xbox One there was a huge backlash from a audience that represents less that 5% of the market probably less (cause by NeoGAF). The bluster was so loud that not only they have dropped it before the launch but it may have cost the entire generation race for them.

Getting back on topic would be nice to hear something from Jeff Strain and Patrick Wyatt his opinions of what went right and wrong etc. They no longer work there so it won't change anything but it still nice to hear what they think about it (Guild Wars as a whole).

I dont think Jeff or Patrick would be able to answer or even talk about guildwars, as they probably had to sign something when they left working for anet.

Jeff left at 2009 right? It would be a shame if a sign in those terms would last that long.

About Patrick Wyatt it was recent, so you are probably right. Wouldn't hurt to try though. However we have to face that it involves too much work for mere opinion's and speculation about an "old game".

What hurt me the most it's realizing that I will never get the same satisfaction I had playing GvG/HA/TA in the golden era 2005-2008 again. And whenever i felt tired, stretch my back at a decent/full experience non-grindy PvE. Oh boy.

some of you know me a long time now, and how P-ed off i got to people who ONLY had negative comments, especially with "wont happen" (still the same, as we never know if they ever open their eyes..... cuz GW is good enough to keep updated once in a while)

well, from that person (me), this reply:

why did i think we wouldnt get much at all, before i even posted about my ideas for GW?

yes, thats the new me
the only reason i came up with those (and the question about the facebook suggestion part), is cuz thats the only things which can make me happy in GW, without any other content updates (so those suggestions being made, if they dont do anything else anymore anyways)

thanks for trying, and anet......i dont know what to say anymore, you just let someone ask about GW, but before you give answers, you tell us you wont be able to answer this

unless someone else from anet has the balls to answer them

plz change GW to offline/LAN mode, or sell to perfect world (i dont have any faith in other companies.... and even PW isnt as good as anet once was)
wait, if not PW, sell to aeriagames (i know those 2 also do good stuff)

anyway, i hope for GW to stay online at least, and AT LEAST get some nice changes over time (not skill changes anymore).... even if it takes a year (including the elona content they have on paper)

In my opinion, I'm confident it will stay online for quite some time. I don't think they would make everything automated just so they could take it offline right away. Most of the reports that I'm aware of point to it being very cheap and easy to maintain at this point from their end.

Here's an article written a year ago where Mike Zadorojny even says it could "last forever", although you may already be aware of it. I just thought I'd mention it because of all the panic and predictions of the server being shut down in the near future.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/07/16/gu...eveloper-says/

As far as new content goes, everything they've said leads to me to believe it won't ever happen. I would love to get new content also but what can we realistically expect? It's not like there's a monthly fee that enables them to pay staff to keep working on it. Bottom line is they are a business and I don't think it would be very profitable or even maintainable to pay a staff to work on content for a 10 year old game. We will be lucky if they can even manage to find the financial resources to ban some of the illegal things that have been going on with HoH and JQ but I'm not counting on it considering the game is fully automated at this point.

Well, I think not answering is already an answer. They don't have any plans on GW1, they really don't know because their efforts are totally focused on other projects (mainly GW2, i suppose). I believe we'll have to deal with automation and actual problems until the end of GW1, which will probably happen when the game won't be able to maintain economically itself anymore.

Forgot... Thanks Izzy for the time spent on the interview

shame on you Anet!!!!!!! ty izzy for try and the much work u put into.

I am going to forward this interview to Stephan Lo Presti, french community manager that I have met a few time IRL.
Not going to surrender that fast with the work you've all done for this interview.
Keep you in touch.

ooooh, good luck with that (really). would love to hear what he has to say (or what he doesnt have to say----)