Now hopefully the board of ArenaNet will force them to put in Raids and gear progression so this is a game most people will wanna play. Everything else looks cool but without real raids and tiered gear progression it will fail.
It always makes me laugh when people claim to speak for 'most' people,what you really mean is 'me' not most.
Gotta luv it... Financial collapse - Prophecies from a dead Civilization that didn't have the forsight to see their own End - the final Apocolypse caused by a giant Asteroid colliding with the Earth. Sounds like a pretty decent premise for an MMO itself eh!
What I think we can count on actually happening is:
- the 8th Profession Reveal before the Xmas holidays
- Open Beta in February/March
- and an early summer 2012 Launch of GW2 totally free of gear grinds and Raid Hampster wheels.
Just me own guess, but that would place launch of game apart from any other known major studio launches that have been announced.
Nostradamus be dammed... he was just a mentally imbalanced monk anyways
Originally posted by stamps79 ArenaNet still has yet to release the last profession and I'm sure there's still some good amount of polishing they still want to clean up before the game launches. I'm sure Early Spring is what ArenaNet is hoping for, if things look even better it could be a late Winter Launch early next year. NCSoft is at fault for there loss, they don't have any titles that are bringing in enough cash flow. NCSoft is giving ArenaNet a lot of breathing room on this project because they know this is going to be a big hit for not only ArenaNet, but for NCSofts wallets.
This. This is basically why Anet can do what they want.
"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
and ArenaNet have stated that they where not affected by this at all. So basicly nothing have changed. If anything it have reinforced the impression that ArenaNet have the support and freedom to do GW2 the way they want!
Many of NCSoft's games are simply getting very old and therefore less profitable. But they have also raked in tons of money off of both lineages and good money off of City of Heroes and Guild Wars 1.
I am pretty sure NCSoft wants GW2 to be there for the long haul. I say that because without the profits from Lineages 1 and 2 they likely might have folded. Aion was one of their attempts to get another lineage and that may still happen for the korean market. But they definitely want one for the western market too and Aion did not turn out that way. I am pretty sure its made them good money but its not quite comparable at least in the west.
This is not the first time NCSoft has dropped this much in a quarter and it won't be the last. And GW 2 is not like Tabula Rasa where it got developed for a while then totally overhauled and then they forced a release because the development was whacked.
GW 2 is showing very good progress and I am quite sure NCSoft wants it to be a long term money maker.
To the OP NCSoft stock is worth well over 280USD, they are not doing bad, also they recently got a loan for 111 Billion KRW rougly 98,430,384 USD earlier this year, so they can have revenue to fund current projects, also there were talks around that time of a console port for gw2, so maybe they have a bigger agenda in mind that we are not informed about, but they are doing pretty well.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
If I remember correctly Guild Wars 1 was NCSofts highest grossing game, beating both Lineage and Aion (Aion was hugely popular in Asia, as is Lineage).
The earnings from GW1 more or less paid for the development of GW2 as well from what I remember reading. Given the hype and interest surrounding GW2 and given the fact the features and style of the game will be landing at an almost perfect time for the market to change and soak it up I seriously doubt anyone at NCSoft is going to change anything.
You need to remember GW1 sold 7m copies and in GW1 there is a lot less incentive to own multiple copies yourself due to the way the character system and gameplay are structured. WoW also slants it's figures to make it look more impressive, sure there might be 10m 'subs' but over 60% of those 'subs' pay per time spent in game rather than per month so don't actually have a subscription at all.
At the end of the day we have two things that are likely to be true.
1) WoW puts back a negligible amount of it's earning back into the game to the point were you would be downright disgusted to know the markup they are charging you for the privilage to simply access their servers.
2) The B2P payment model has as much, if not more, potential to bring income than P2P models do.
People need to step back from the P2P = quality mindset and understand there are other, better, ways of charging for things. One of the three founders of ArenaNet was Jeff Strain. He was the lead programmer for WoW and also helped with Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2. There's a quote from a speech he made at the GC Developer's Conference in 2007 (http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php - It's a damn good read btw, I would recommend anyone who plays MMO's to have a read)
'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.'
Think about that for a second.. Does that sound like something you would hear Jeff Kaplan say? Does that sound like anything anyone from Blizzard, Trion or anyone else would say? What it does sound like though is someone who wants to make a good game, that let's it stand on it's own merit rather than copy something else, and isn't here to bull**** us into thinking they have the best product ever. ArenaNet are indirectly pissing on the shoes of more or less every other company making a sub-based MMO and the best part is there is absolutely nothing any of the other companies can do about it except either hope they can ride it out long enough or convert their game to F2P/B2P.
Anyway I'm getting a bit off-topic now but I can bet you the folks over at NCSoft ain't dumb and unless every one of them have had a full frontal lobotomy they will let ArenaNet do their thing.
One thing the links don't clue us in on that I can tell is what NCSoft's board's state of mind and expectations are. Something like http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/85/ncsoftreport.jpg/sr=1 which was apparently from 2009 might show that expectations were high back then, but they know how their games have been performing, what the trends are, and when the new games are expected to come out.
We should note that we're still talking about profits. It's not like NCSoft is taking losses for the quarter. Their profit dropped from something like 35.5 million dollars to 25 million. Yes that sucks, especially compared to those previous estimates, but they might not feel like they need to make a drastic change considering how bright things still look on the horizon.
Also, as Eric Flannum recently pointed out in his clarification...
"There are going to be bugs when they release it so why not just release it now and fix the bugs later?"
In the current western gaming market a game has one chance to find it's audience and that chance occurs right when it releases. The examples of games that have released with huge problems and then stabilized and gained a following after being fixed are few and far between. On the other hand the examples of games that released with a lot of potential, made a bad first impression and have since been relegated to a small audience or have even been shut down are easy to point to. We've all seen where releasing unfinished gets a game and none of us want Guild Wars 2 to fail because it was released before it was finished.
Even though NCSoft has been very hands-off with ArenaNet, I'm not going to argue that they don't have final say over what happens, being parent company and publisher. This at least shows that ArenaNet is very aware of the downside of releasing a game before its ready. I suspect NCSoft is as well, seeing as how they've been giving ArenaNet this freedom and time to develop it for so long. Delaying the game an additional quarter might sting for the company and shareholders, but releasing it a quarter too early might be disasterous.
"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
If I remember correctly Guild Wars 1 was NCSofts highest grossing game, beating both Lineage and Aion (Aion was hugely popular in Asia, as is Lineage).
The earnings from GW1 more or less paid for the development of GW2 as well from what I remember reading. Given the hype and interest surrounding GW2 and given the fact the features and style of the game will be landing at an almost perfect time for the market to change and soak it up I seriously doubt anyone at NCSoft is going to change anything.
You need to remember GW1 sold 7m copies and in GW1 there is a lot less incentive to own multiple copies yourself due to the way the character system and gameplay are structured. WoW also slants it's figures to make it look more impressive, sure there might be 10m 'subs' but over 60% of those 'subs' pay per time spent in game rather than per month so don't actually have a subscription at all.
*snip*
Well, yeah but that is if you count income based on invested money.
GW1 was really cheap to make and earned loads of money, but if you just count total income Lineage (1) is the game that generated most money.
GW1s earnings is not enough to cover GW2 completely, it is around half that sum since GW2 have a huge crew but NC soft figures that they will get their moneys worth back. GW1 sold just under 7 million boxes in a bit over 3,5 million different accounts (source: NC soft). That is really great for a low budget game and more than Diablo 2 with it's expansions.
I'm more concerned about the Mayan calendar thing and 2012. Can we start a thread for serious discussion of that issue?
A even worse thing is that our calender only have 24 days left, so anyone thinking that the end of a calender means the end of the world have indeed a lot to fear. Well, most calenders actually shows the first as well so say 25.
The Mayans never said that the world would end, just that time moved in periods and a new one starts after the old one (or have at least done so every time before). and yeah, I know you are sarcastic but you aint the only one. ;D
I've been pulling for a late February, 2012 launch, but I just don't think it's going to happen. I'm beginning to think it's going to be closer to June, 2012.
Although the english version of the NCSoft quarterly conference call was pretty poor, it seemed like they were saying they were hopeful for late first half of 2012, but it was possible that "full commercialization" wouldn't occur until the 2nd half of the year. If the English is even close to accurate, I would think they are hopeful for May/June, but need to hedge their bets with investors, to cover any unexpected "discoveries" during the beta process.
If the rumored early November start for Closed Beta had materialized, we might have had a shot at Q1, but as we slip further into December, I just don't see how it's going to happen.
Throwing a monkey wrench into any attempts to reason out a potential release date, is the fact that Closed Beta will at least start as a Private Closed Beta, with no application process. How long would such a beta last? If it transitions into a more accessible closed beta, how long might that last? I still think that Open Beta will be fairly short as far as total number of days the servers are open to Open Beta Testers, but we don't even know if that testing time will be condensed, or spread out in weekend events every few weeks, like we saw with TOR and have seen with many other titles in recent years.
I think the icing on the cake was the admission by Martin Kerstein that they haven't even begun marketing the game. Most big titles start marketing at least three or four months before launch, others seem to start their marketing almost a year before the launch date. Why don't we see print ads for GW2? Why aren't the MMO fan sites getting fed regular doses of exclusive screen shots and having their writers whisked to Arenanet HQ for private press demos? Why are there no teaser TV spots or even an official pre-order program detailing pre-order bonuses and the contents of a Collector's Edition? It seems, because the game is probably at least six months from launch.
So, I'm dialing back my hype for the game, enjoying Skyrim, debating if I should wait to apply my TOR retail key until I'm completely bored with Skyrim; and have started peeking at other AAA MMOs that may end up releasing before GW2 and hoping one of them might offer something compelling enough to keep me occupied until GW2 finally does release.
Now hopefully the board of ArenaNet will force them to put in Raids and gear progression so this is a game most people will wanna play. Everything else looks cool but without real raids and tiered gear progression it will fail.
I've been pulling for a late February, 2012 launch, but I just don't think it's going to happen. I'm beginning to think it's going to be closer to June, 2012.
I think the signs have been there to see for a long time. But eager fans see what they want to see most of the time! What turned me to look at a sommer 2012 release was the subtle statement from ArenaNet in a thread on guru website about developing time on GW2. Everybody in that thread assumed that they game had been in development from late 2006, and was looking for GW2 to come out before the development hit the 5 year mark, and ArenaNet corrected that by saying that development first started summer 2007. And I just can't see such an ambitius projekt as GW2 being planned to take less than 5 years.
Another subtle sign was the demos where they both times stated that they actual had put a couple of month work into getting them ready, If that meant that most other stuff had been idle in the meantime, game did look alot farther away than just about to be released.
Another thing i noticed this summer and fall, was that fans began to expect that we where so close to release, simply because there was so little less that there hasn't been an article or a blogpost about, and then ArenaNet came up with these "iteration stories, basicly saying nothing shown can be counted for finished!
ArenaNet still has yet to release the last profession and I'm sure there's still some good amount of polishing they still want to clean up before the game launches. I'm sure Early Spring is what ArenaNet is hoping for, if things look even better it could be a late Winter Launch early next year.
Yeah but is NCsoft willing to wait that long? next winter is still one year away. Thats 3 more quarters for NCsoft. Can they bounce back from this loss? specially with SWTOR in 2 weeks and MoP probably on summer, TSW on spring or summer maybe, diablo 3 on summer. What other options NCSoft have beside this? Their MMOs on international market are going to start losing even more subs due to those games specially Aion.
NCsoft will wait that long if they want this game released by their company ?
I'm sure ANet won't let anything get in their way of making the best possible game it can be.
@ Guileplayer
I think that when stamps said what I underlined, then he meant like the end of the winter that starts this month. So if Anet released at the end of the winter, it would be in Q1 2012. I agree with stamps, that if things look really good it could release late winter. But early spring seems more likely, with beta starting this month.
Now hopefully the board of ArenaNet will force them to put in Raids and gear progression so this is a game most people will wanna play. Everything else looks cool but without real raids and tiered gear progression it will fail.
Actually, I think that is why it will succeed.
Raiders are a very vocal minority who are best left ignored. They just want all games to be gear grinds to take away from the fact they hate pvp and are terrible at it, they even call themselves hardcore raiders, which is sort of like calling yourself a hardcore Bratz doll collector.
With the silence we've had since the conventions over the past summer/fall gives some indication that they might be closer than we think. I remember in the past that many developement teams "go dark" before making their biggest announcements.
The only thing really bothering me at this point is the non-announcement of the final profession. I would have thought that we would have received information on the final prof before the end of the year (sure we still have a few weeks). We might see more of a media blitz after the release of SWTOR maybe.
Now hopefully the board of ArenaNet will force them to put in Raids and gear progression so this is a game most people will wanna play. Everything else looks cool but without real raids and tiered gear progression it will fail.
You really think most people want this? It was my understanding that raiders are the minority of players and that the majority hate being locked out of the best gear just because they don't want to raid.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
Comments
It always makes me laugh when people claim to speak for 'most' people,what you really mean is 'me' not most.guess not many people are on to guile even after all this time eh?
I'm more concerned about the Mayan calendar thing and 2012. Can we start a thread for serious discussion of that issue?
Charr: Outta my way.
Human: What's your problem?
Charr: Your thin skin.
and will I have enough time to play GW2 to a satisfactory extent before the planet gets struck by a comet.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
oh great, something else to worry about
Charr: Outta my way.
Human: What's your problem?
Charr: Your thin skin.
Gotta luv it... Financial collapse - Prophecies from a dead Civilization that didn't have the forsight to see their own End - the final Apocolypse caused by a giant Asteroid colliding with the Earth. Sounds like a pretty decent premise for an MMO itself eh!
What I think we can count on actually happening is:
- the 8th Profession Reveal before the Xmas holidays
- Open Beta in February/March
- and an early summer 2012 Launch of GW2 totally free of gear grinds and Raid Hampster wheels.
Just me own guess, but that would place launch of game apart from any other known major studio launches that have been announced.
Nostradamus be dammed... he was just a mentally imbalanced monk anyways
This. This is basically why Anet can do what they want.
"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
WTF? No subscription fee?
Sry to burst someones bubles
but fact is that this happend 6 weeks ago
http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/10/27/layoffs-hit-ncsofts-north-american-offices/
and ArenaNet have stated that they where not affected by this at all. So basicly nothing have changed. If anything it have reinforced the impression that ArenaNet have the support and freedom to do GW2 the way they want!
And lets move on!
Many of NCSoft's games are simply getting very old and therefore less profitable. But they have also raked in tons of money off of both lineages and good money off of City of Heroes and Guild Wars 1.
I am pretty sure NCSoft wants GW2 to be there for the long haul. I say that because without the profits from Lineages 1 and 2 they likely might have folded. Aion was one of their attempts to get another lineage and that may still happen for the korean market. But they definitely want one for the western market too and Aion did not turn out that way. I am pretty sure its made them good money but its not quite comparable at least in the west.
This is not the first time NCSoft has dropped this much in a quarter and it won't be the last. And GW 2 is not like Tabula Rasa where it got developed for a while then totally overhauled and then they forced a release because the development was whacked.
GW 2 is showing very good progress and I am quite sure NCSoft wants it to be a long term money maker.
To the OP NCSoft stock is worth well over 280USD, they are not doing bad, also they recently got a loan for 111 Billion KRW rougly 98,430,384 USD earlier this year, so they can have revenue to fund current projects, also there were talks around that time of a console port for gw2, so maybe they have a bigger agenda in mind that we are not informed about, but they are doing pretty well.
http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=036570.KS
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Carl Sagan-
If I remember correctly Guild Wars 1 was NCSofts highest grossing game, beating both Lineage and Aion (Aion was hugely popular in Asia, as is Lineage).
The earnings from GW1 more or less paid for the development of GW2 as well from what I remember reading. Given the hype and interest surrounding GW2 and given the fact the features and style of the game will be landing at an almost perfect time for the market to change and soak it up I seriously doubt anyone at NCSoft is going to change anything.
You need to remember GW1 sold 7m copies and in GW1 there is a lot less incentive to own multiple copies yourself due to the way the character system and gameplay are structured. WoW also slants it's figures to make it look more impressive, sure there might be 10m 'subs' but over 60% of those 'subs' pay per time spent in game rather than per month so don't actually have a subscription at all.
At the end of the day we have two things that are likely to be true.
1) WoW puts back a negligible amount of it's earning back into the game to the point were you would be downright disgusted to know the markup they are charging you for the privilage to simply access their servers.
2) The B2P payment model has as much, if not more, potential to bring income than P2P models do.
People need to step back from the P2P = quality mindset and understand there are other, better, ways of charging for things. One of the three founders of ArenaNet was Jeff Strain. He was the lead programmer for WoW and also helped with Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2. There's a quote from a speech he made at the GC Developer's Conference in 2007 (http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php - It's a damn good read btw, I would recommend anyone who plays MMO's to have a read)
'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.'
Think about that for a second.. Does that sound like something you would hear Jeff Kaplan say? Does that sound like anything anyone from Blizzard, Trion or anyone else would say? What it does sound like though is someone who wants to make a good game, that let's it stand on it's own merit rather than copy something else, and isn't here to bull**** us into thinking they have the best product ever. ArenaNet are indirectly pissing on the shoes of more or less every other company making a sub-based MMO and the best part is there is absolutely nothing any of the other companies can do about it except either hope they can ride it out long enough or convert their game to F2P/B2P.
Anyway I'm getting a bit off-topic now but I can bet you the folks over at NCSoft ain't dumb and unless every one of them have had a full frontal lobotomy they will let ArenaNet do their thing.
One thing the links don't clue us in on that I can tell is what NCSoft's board's state of mind and expectations are. Something like http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/85/ncsoftreport.jpg/sr=1 which was apparently from 2009 might show that expectations were high back then, but they know how their games have been performing, what the trends are, and when the new games are expected to come out.
We should note that we're still talking about profits. It's not like NCSoft is taking losses for the quarter. Their profit dropped from something like 35.5 million dollars to 25 million. Yes that sucks, especially compared to those previous estimates, but they might not feel like they need to make a drastic change considering how bright things still look on the horizon.
Also, as Eric Flannum recently pointed out in his clarification...
"There are going to be bugs when they release it so why not just release it now and fix the bugs later?"
In the current western gaming market a game has one chance to find it's audience and that chance occurs right when it releases. The examples of games that have released with huge problems and then stabilized and gained a following after being fixed are few and far between. On the other hand the examples of games that released with a lot of potential, made a bad first impression and have since been relegated to a small audience or have even been shut down are easy to point to. We've all seen where releasing unfinished gets a game and none of us want Guild Wars 2 to fail because it was released before it was finished.
Even though NCSoft has been very hands-off with ArenaNet, I'm not going to argue that they don't have final say over what happens, being parent company and publisher. This at least shows that ArenaNet is very aware of the downside of releasing a game before its ready. I suspect NCSoft is as well, seeing as how they've been giving ArenaNet this freedom and time to develop it for so long. Delaying the game an additional quarter might sting for the company and shareholders, but releasing it a quarter too early might be disasterous.
"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
Well, yeah but that is if you count income based on invested money.
GW1 was really cheap to make and earned loads of money, but if you just count total income Lineage (1) is the game that generated most money.
GW1s earnings is not enough to cover GW2 completely, it is around half that sum since GW2 have a huge crew but NC soft figures that they will get their moneys worth back. GW1 sold just under 7 million boxes in a bit over 3,5 million different accounts (source: NC soft). That is really great for a low budget game and more than Diablo 2 with it's expansions.
the GW2 will not be out before summer 2012, but who cares, what we really want its a bug free and a stunned game for the next years to come
And that, my friends, is how you win the interwebs
Charr: Outta my way.
Human: What's your problem?
Charr: Your thin skin.
A even worse thing is that our calender only have 24 days left, so anyone thinking that the end of a calender means the end of the world have indeed a lot to fear. Well, most calenders actually shows the first as well so say 25.
The Mayans never said that the world would end, just that time moved in periods and a new one starts after the old one (or have at least done so every time before). and yeah, I know you are sarcastic but you aint the only one. ;D
I've been pulling for a late February, 2012 launch, but I just don't think it's going to happen. I'm beginning to think it's going to be closer to June, 2012.
Although the english version of the NCSoft quarterly conference call was pretty poor, it seemed like they were saying they were hopeful for late first half of 2012, but it was possible that "full commercialization" wouldn't occur until the 2nd half of the year. If the English is even close to accurate, I would think they are hopeful for May/June, but need to hedge their bets with investors, to cover any unexpected "discoveries" during the beta process.
If the rumored early November start for Closed Beta had materialized, we might have had a shot at Q1, but as we slip further into December, I just don't see how it's going to happen.
Throwing a monkey wrench into any attempts to reason out a potential release date, is the fact that Closed Beta will at least start as a Private Closed Beta, with no application process. How long would such a beta last? If it transitions into a more accessible closed beta, how long might that last? I still think that Open Beta will be fairly short as far as total number of days the servers are open to Open Beta Testers, but we don't even know if that testing time will be condensed, or spread out in weekend events every few weeks, like we saw with TOR and have seen with many other titles in recent years.
I think the icing on the cake was the admission by Martin Kerstein that they haven't even begun marketing the game. Most big titles start marketing at least three or four months before launch, others seem to start their marketing almost a year before the launch date. Why don't we see print ads for GW2? Why aren't the MMO fan sites getting fed regular doses of exclusive screen shots and having their writers whisked to Arenanet HQ for private press demos? Why are there no teaser TV spots or even an official pre-order program detailing pre-order bonuses and the contents of a Collector's Edition? It seems, because the game is probably at least six months from launch.
So, I'm dialing back my hype for the game, enjoying Skyrim, debating if I should wait to apply my TOR retail key until I'm completely bored with Skyrim; and have started peeking at other AAA MMOs that may end up releasing before GW2 and hoping one of them might offer something compelling enough to keep me occupied until GW2 finally does release.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Actually, I think that is why it will succeed.
I think the signs have been there to see for a long time. But eager fans see what they want to see most of the time! What turned me to look at a sommer 2012 release was the subtle statement from ArenaNet in a thread on guru website about developing time on GW2. Everybody in that thread assumed that they game had been in development from late 2006, and was looking for GW2 to come out before the development hit the 5 year mark, and ArenaNet corrected that by saying that development first started summer 2007. And I just can't see such an ambitius projekt as GW2 being planned to take less than 5 years.
Another subtle sign was the demos where they both times stated that they actual had put a couple of month work into getting them ready, If that meant that most other stuff had been idle in the meantime, game did look alot farther away than just about to be released.
Another thing i noticed this summer and fall, was that fans began to expect that we where so close to release, simply because there was so little less that there hasn't been an article or a blogpost about, and then ArenaNet came up with these "iteration stories, basicly saying nothing shown can be counted for finished!
the list could go on.
It doesn't look like that is even taking the $32 million NCsoft now has to pay Garriott into consideration.
@ Guileplayer
I think that when stamps said what I underlined, then he meant like the end of the winter that starts this month. So if Anet released at the end of the winter, it would be in Q1 2012. I agree with stamps, that if things look really good it could release late winter. But early spring seems more likely, with beta starting this month.
Raiders are a very vocal minority who are best left ignored. They just want all games to be gear grinds to take away from the fact they hate pvp and are terrible at it, they even call themselves hardcore raiders, which is sort of like calling yourself a hardcore Bratz doll collector.
GW2 is going to Smash The Old Republic, badly.
With the silence we've had since the conventions over the past summer/fall gives some indication that they might be closer than we think. I remember in the past that many developement teams "go dark" before making their biggest announcements.
The only thing really bothering me at this point is the non-announcement of the final profession. I would have thought that we would have received information on the final prof before the end of the year (sure we still have a few weeks). We might see more of a media blitz after the release of SWTOR maybe.
Yeah, this silence is killing me! I hope something big is coming!
Guild Wars 2 Youtube Croatian Maniacs
My Guild Wars titles
You really think most people want this? It was my understanding that raiders are the minority of players and that the majority hate being locked out of the best gear just because they don't want to raid.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein