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Do you really think that GW2 will arrive before May/June 2012?
MMO.Maverick
Member CommonPosts: 7,619
I admit, when I absorbed all the videos and news regarding GW2 1-2 years ago, I was one of the people that optimistically believed that GW2 would be released in 2011, in fact I thought it'd be around May just like GW arrived around that time.
Obviously, I was wrong.
Now, I've seen a couple of threads where SWTOR and GW2 are pitched against eachother. They made kinda sense a few months back, sort of, however from an updated kind of perspective it doesn't make sense. When I look at GW2's current trajectory, I don't see it arrive before May/June, and then I'm even being optimistic.
When I played GW's open beta, that was I think in August/September and GW was released the following year in April/May, that's 8 months between the first open beta and release of the game. GW2's trajectory won't be the same as GW's trajectory, but seeing as how the closed beta only starts end of this year, I'm sceptic towards any release date before May.
And since I don't see any MMORPG release ever happening in the summer holiday months, it's either May/June or September 2012.
Frankly, I won't be surprised if MMO's like TERA, TSW, Firefall, Blade & Soul and ArcheAge will be released earlier than GW2, it'd make more sense to look at MMO's that are closer to eachother in release date for comparison to see who'd play which one than MMO's that are 6-10 months apart from eachother's release. More pragmatic.
To me, it's a simple choice of playing either SWTOR or 1 of the currently available MMO's, then at April 2012 a next decision moment when TSW arrives - whether to maintain 2 subs or 1 - and only when GW2 finally arrives, 6 months or maybe even more from now, decide which MMO I'll keep as P2P MMORPG. If Firefall and AA are interesting enough, I'll keep them on the side to dabble in from time to time.
But what do you people think? What are your expectations regarding release date, and why?
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Comments
I'm thinking around sept or oct. Hard to see that it would drop in the summer, mmo's hardly ever do. Most times games launch in the 1Q or 4Q of the year.
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Well, if SWtoR wants to retain people for 6+ months ofc it makes sense that they are pitched against each other if it drops around that time.
TBH, IMO, GW2 hitting April to June next year will be the worst possible scenerio for SWtoR.... Just the right time for even the casuals to be potentiolly looking around for another game to fill their limited gaming hours.
Head to head, I think SWtoR would outsell and eclipse GW2 in terms of playerbase... but at the 4-6 month stage when all the launch hype of SWtoR has passed and the content has been thoroughly played and tested? GW2 could have an open door to walk through.
What we've seen so far suggests they are pretty far already. GW 1's open beta might have been so long because they wanted as much word of mouth and exposure as possible as the GW IP was completely fresh at that time. Now that they've made a rep for themselves and have a big base of followers, they don't need to rely on long open beta's as a marketing tool so much.
I don't think they are holding back info on the last profession because it still needs so much work either; they'll use the reveal as a marketing opportunity mainly, just before extensive closed beta testing starts.
I'd say it could launch in May '12.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Does it make sense to launch at that time though?
You have other MMOs launching at a similar(ish) time; First half of 2012.
And since an MMO usually gets the '1st month' subs, it just might help to hold off till mid-late 2012.
I never realized how many were set to launch next year. Far out...
Then again, since GW2 has no sub fee, it might not be affected and treated differently. Hmm...
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
You really think GW2 has much to fear from competition? Aside from SWTOR, obviously. I'd think it's the other way around.
I think i know pretty well how Arenanet works and what to expect from them...
But there are still so many variables we or even Arenanet is not sure of, that guessing the right rel;ease date becomes a lottery..
Tough i dare say that they will release someday in 2012......
If they can hold their promise of a 2012 closed beta test, then we can safely asume release will be somwhere between March and September. If they don't make their target of a 2012 beta test, it could also be a very late 2012 release...
a 2013 release date would be a huge dissapointment to all and everyone including Arenanet and NCsoft
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Although NCsoft gives Arenanet a lot of freedom in the developement of GW2, I seriously doubt NCsoft would accept a 2013 release.
Honestly it's pure speculation at this point given that the game itself isn't even in beta yet. People forget all these segments that we saw in trailers and that people got to play are especially polished for the occasions, they don't necessarily represent the current state of progress when it comes to how far into development ANet really is. Hell, listen to the latest Q&A sessions and you'll see there's a LOT of things they haven't decided on yet even conceptually let alone implemented them.
They're assumptions and my own decisionmaking, has hardly anything to do with 'thin air'. If I find comparing two MMO's that are closer to eachother in release date more pragmatic, then that's how I find it. If I decide to buy SWTOR now, decide whether to keep 2 MMO's in April 2012 or not and decide whether to keep an MMO next to GW2 when that one arrives, then that has absolutely zero relation with 'thin air'.
That's why I actually toned down my enthusiasm and anticipation, when I started to realise that GW2 would very likely arrive later than TSW and other MMO's into an 'something for later, wait and see' mode.
I had the same when I learnt that World of Darkness was nowhere near to being released in 2012 or even 2013, I put it out of my mind till after a couple of years when WoD is much closer to release than the many years it is now.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
"I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."
It is a much larger game though, thus more resources are needed to test.
Throwing more man-power at a problem ceases to reduce the time to get stuff done at a certain point.
What I do find concerning is that ANET has always been up-front/open about a lot of the things but their 'we think it'll work this way but...' when it came to some mechanics were puzzling.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Actually they are aiming for end of 2011 when it comes to the Closed BetaIt's looking like a solid bet for Q1 2012. Possibly by late February.
Closed Beta is going to be a Private Closed Beta, they aren't planning on having an application process or inviting fans.
Closed Alpha has been going on for a few months now and Arenanet has promised Closed Beta will start before the end of the year. With both being kept to a private testing pool, it seems that the delineation between closed alpha and closed beta will be that the beta will have the feature set and content frozen and they will start working on the final bug fixes, balance and polish. It's unlikely that Closed Beta will last longer than Closed Alpha and many feel that this stage should last two to three months.
The final stage will be Open Beta. The Lead Game Designer, Eric Flannum, has said a few times that they want the very first beta experience for fans to be a polished, release worthy build of the game. That hints pretty clearly that Open Beta will be very short and will occur very close to the release date of the game. Looks like a stress test and free trial sort of affair. If it's a single phase, this could possibly only last a week or maybe two. If it's multi-phase, with focus testing over a few weekends, it could be 3 to 6 weeks. This is by my estimation, based on what we know of the expected nature of Open Beta.
There had been a rumor that started saying that Closed Beta would be underway by the start of the G-Star gaming convention in South Korea this coming weekend. This rumor was based on a comment by an NCSoft exec in a Taiwanese Newspaper a few weeks back. Arenanet recently put the Kibosh on that, but if there was any basis for it at all, we could still see Closed Beta start by the end of November.
If Closed Beta does start by the end of November, the game could launch between the end of February and the end of March.
The absolute most optimistic guesstimate, based on Closed beta starting by mid November, would probably be Early February 2012.
If issues were to arise during testing, then yes, things could be pushed back, but I can't see the game launching any later than May/June 2012, making that a pessimistic, rather than optimistic guess.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
It would just be guessing for me. The closed beta would probably tell us more. But then if that turns out good, then Arenanet probably comes up with a release date too.
I don't know. GW1 had large scale open alpha and beta but the evidence seems to be that they've done away with that kind of alpha program. An unattributed statement on the gw2 wikipedia page suggests that they thought the playerbase had changed and that open beta was being used less for testing and more just as a free trial.
So it could be possible that they have been doing a lot of their testing in house already. I think a lot of it might depend on how robust ArenaNet's iterative development process is. If they really have had these "all call" sessions where the entire company has already played all the content in the game and given feedback, then I can see the closed/open beta cycle being very quick. The game would have to already be mostly done with only minor tweaking needed at that point though, not having to go back and fix fundamentally broken things.
Maybe the game will still be on schedule for only a few months of closed beta and then a short open beta, but at the same time, have we ever seen evidence ArenaNet is going to rush things? We still don't even know what the last profession is yet. Everything they say speaks of taking their time and doing it right. Are they going to be happy with a short beta cycle?
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
How do we know closed beta hasn't started yet?
Because I havnt been called to play the closed beta :P
Because they announced that closed beta would commence the end of 2011, that's the terminology they use.
One could argue that the way they do alpha test is as good as a beta test would be in any other game, but this is how they defined the various stages of their testing trajectory.
As for open beta, usually when an open beta proves to be satisfactory, you're still looking at 6-8 weeks between the end of beta with the 'go' decision and an actual release (shipping, distribution, production of the boxes etc). Sorry, but February/March sounds hopeleslly optimistic and unrealistic unless they plan to throw overboard any regular release trajectory and rush that last part, which I just don't see them doing, considering how they've taken their time to do it right with everything else.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Someone in another thread made a good argument for February, I seem to have it stuck in my head that Feb-March is going to be the release date. Just long enough to let some of the shiny and new wear off of SWTOR.
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~Albert Einstein
I'm still betting on April of next year. It coincides with GW1's anniversary and I think that once GW2 gets into beta, everything will move much more quickly than we've seen. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that ANet isn't anticipating a long beta period because they are doing so much testing while they are in full development. I can't cite a source, but I do recall hearing it somewhere. So if they go into closed beta in December, they could conceivably get all the kinks ironed out in three months, depending on how serious those kinks are. If it's mainly skill balancing and stress testing, three months is entirely possible. That would give plenty of time for an open beta and a late April release.
I've been wrong before though, but hope springs eternal.
April is a good educated guess based on the time frames that most MMORPGs follow from closed beta to open beta to release.
My theme song.
the optimists looks at what little there actual is left to reveal, then try to create the shortest possible timeframe for that! including a closed beta and an open beta as short as possible, leading to a release imidiatly after
That kind of thinking had most of this year been very vocal about a 2011 release, and have lately moved on to a Q1 release.
Alot of things could still be said against it! I tend to fokus on 3 things here.
1) there was a thread on guru where it was specualted alot in a 5 years of development process,and people was very vokal about if it was a failure if the game was not out then before q1 2011. And ArenaNet corrected the assumption that the game was worked on from the annoucement in spring 2007, stating that work first began summer 2007. (this makes summer 2012 the 5 year mark,). In all fairness this doesn't have to mean anything from a "when its ready" company. but the other way around if anything ever could be pointing at something between the lines it would be a statement like that! Left is simply to think about if ArenNet really plans to finnish this projekt with a shorter time line than most major MMO's are developed to day. I don't think so with such an ambitius projekt!
2) Colin Johansen have plenty of times went out and stated that between each stage of alpha , closed beta, open beta, and release there will be a evaluation process where the feedback from that stage would be used to decide when and how to move into next stage! I have a hard time seen short betas go together with that, but I might not be optimistic enough. I actual see it as a warning about being too optimistic.
3) the fact that all things revealed is still subjekt to change by ArenaNet , that is by the way, a company both very iterative and striving for perfektion, even claiming that they want their game to be the best game ever! Also lately seeing chances being made all over the game, (both from blogpost and in demoes) points at that most parts of the game is still being worked on and as such, it's hard for me to see it done soon.
So basicly I am with OP , the interesting question is whether or not it hits summer 2012.
but as most fans there is also pessimists, I would so much love to be wrong!
Ive got to believe that they will release it before May/June. The game is incredibly playable right now. It looks and feels like its been in beta for a couple months NOT alpha. The only thing holding me back is they have yet to release the last class. But my gut it telling me they will release that class before they announce beta. But if the beta announcement is before the end of 2011, then we could conceivable see full release 3-4 months after. I do fear though that if we dont have it by May, then they will push the release back to Sept, possible holiday time frame, which would be shitty.