Who knows if the game will retain those numbers (they rarely do), but even if your estimate of 800k subscribers is true, that is still more successful than almost any other MMORPG. Hopefully we will find out in a month or two.
Getting of topic here, but let me try to tell it to you this way. This is one of the three major broker house's who bankrolled the game after it went over budget in Jan 2011. They don't live in your world, they work with EA about returns on investments and have all the data at their fingertips. He was the one of the chief spokesperson for EA at both investors meetings. Pratcher was obviously top dog. But this is what he told his investment group after the panic selloff.
I'm getting sick of these threads about how GW2 may not live up to the "hype". Honestly, being B2P, there is no reason to stop playing the game, the game is obviously pretty damn good looking at everything it has in it, and how polished the game is. Even the closed beta's are ridiculously polished. The game is goin to be extremely good, there is no doubt about it, and it being B2P means we can play it without worrying about a subscription.
To answer your question: "Life after GW2..." the answer is... "better"
If GW2 doesn't pan out, that'll be it for me regarding MMO's. No other game out there now or in development really interests me. I've been mostly sticking to games i can run natively on my Archbox these days, except for Skyrim and some GoG.com games (dosbox).
SWTOR was the game that I had been looking forward to for years but after three weeks I had to cancel my sub and ultimately ended up back in WoW.
That being said, if GW2 does not live up to the hype, where will you end up?
the difference between being excited by swtor and being excited by GW2 is that way before swtor released we already knew it was going to be the same rinse and repeate we all did in WoW, while GW2 have more differences to that standard setting (according to all the info we know so far) that will break the pattern we have been following for years.
Im expecting GW2 to be the ray of light but if it falls flat in the dark, i always move on.
I'm cautiously optimistic that GW2 is gonna be good but considering that most people are really banking on ArenaNet to deliver the best MMO we've seen in quite some time, what will the MMO space look like if GW2 falls on it's face?
SWTOR was the game that I had been looking forward to for years but after three weeks I had to cancel my sub and ultimately ended up back in WoW.
That being said, if GW2 does not live up to the hype, where will you end up?
Its kinda scary that after GW2 there isn't much on the horizon to be excited about (for me at least). People talk about Tera and TSW but I don't have much hope for those games at this point.
For me, I can't lie...I'll be a bit dissappointed, but I'm also looking forward to other games. I always expect the worst in things, but hope for the absolute best. I have hardly any knowledge of Tera and can't speculate about it at all, but TSW and ArcheAge look very appealing to me. Even if those two don't live up to my expectations, I'll have plenty of other things to do.
Here's the thing... HYPE is generally hyperbole created from buzz words and marketing stunts. So far, from everything that ArenaNet has actually allowed us to see in gmae, it all lives up.
I'm not worried about this one.
What he said^
If you market something, say like a Jedi pulling down a tree with her force powers, in CGI graphics too, then do dual weilding attacks slicing people in half with one stroke. And yeah, you can't do anything like that when you play- that's hype.
Showing in game footage, then people drooling over what they see, that's called excitement.
Truth have been spoken
(when I saw the 2nd CGI of SWTOR I really thought: Boy are they desperate to hype the game for real)
I think I actually spent way more time reading and theorycrafting about MMOs than playing them
I can't say I understand threads like this. Or rather, the mentality behind them. I think I've always been more of a gypsy when it comes to games, in that I don't stay long, while a lot of you seem to want that "place" where you stay for years. That's rarely because of the game itself, but I don't like 'repeating' content and inevitably all games come down to it. It's not just an MMO thing, once I play my console MMOs the whole way through, they get sold, and I move on to something else. The only difference is with games like Mass Effect and Skyrim where two playthroughs can be radically different.
That's why I think I'll be entertained by GW2 for a while. I've played enough to know I like the gameplay, and the ever-changing events and the reputation Anet has for bringing out new and vast content leads me to believe they'll keep it feeling fresh. That said, I don't intend it to be the ONLY game I play, which is probably why I'm set for a lot less disappointment than others. I don't intend to make GW2 my home....more like my seasonal getaway.
There's too many games on the horizon to try, and I want to try them all. But I have a feeling that, just as WoW has become the fall-back for a lot of people, GW2 will be the place I return to when I've had enough of them. I'll play it till I've done it, and then I'll be back for every new patch, event, expansion, etc., while I run around trying other games.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
There's too many games on the horizon to try, and I want to try them all. But I have a feeling that, just as WoW has become the fall-back for a lot of people, GW2 will be the place I return to when I've had enough of them. I'll play it till I've done it, and then I'll be back for every new patch, event, expansion, etc., while I run around trying other games.
You'll be 15 dollars a month richer too. I think we all love money right? Except for the people who pay 25 dollars for a f*cking mount.
I'm like a few others here, if GW2 doesn't click for me - I'll be done with MMOs. I'm already on the way out and done with the mechanics that are present in the current selection, so it won't take much if GW2 isn't some breath of fresh air. In all fairness, there's a good chance no matter how successful GW2 ends up being, it won't be what I need - with no fault on the game, just my own for burning out on MMOs.
Besides, my kids are growing up and would rather spend time camping and other things with them and my wife - if I'm not completely sucked into a game :P
I find it interesting that so many negatives have come up about GW2 and it doesn't seem to phase anyone. Like the fact that we heard there were no mounts, no raids, no seemless world. That would usually have the community in an uproar around here. I can't decide if its the fact that this game is so over-hyped that some people just refuse to see the potential negatives or if people genuinely don't care about these things...
Personally, I have been around MMORPG.com long enough to know that people here ALWAYS over-hype every new game that comes out and are generally disappointed when they actually get to play it. I doubt this game will be any different, but I will definitely give it a shot to find out for myself.
I can't speak for anybody else, but for me the negatives are actually positives or nonfactors.
Having mounts I think is a negative. They potentially allow for griefing (and DEs are supposed to be especially hard to grief content) or bypassing enemies. Teleportation lets you stop and smell the roses as you explore the world but still be able to get to your friends quickly or to the furthest waypoint you've been. Mounts let you speed past the content you're seeing for the first time. Mounts add more things that need to be rendered and can obscure things. They potentially make people travel at different speeds which is annoying as hell. I'm all in favor of limited mounts (racing minigames, mounted combat minigames, rare DEs) and I think that would keep them exciting and special, not just a common thing that everyone has.
No raiding again I think is a positive. I've quit WoW twice and both times it was because feeling like the raiding gear progression treadmill was the only worthwhile activity. GW2 will have open world encounters that scale up to 100 people as well as WvW PVP for people who want to take part in large scale activities, especially with a guild. It will have explorable mode dungeons for people who want very hard content, only it'll be easier to put together and much more fluid and active combat with only 5 people.
ArenaNet is trying to make a game which doesn't totally change at level cap. With automentoring, new events, 15 different personal story options, achievements and things to collect, you can do whatever you find fun, not be locked into certain play modes.
As far as Seamlessness is concerned, this is a non-issue to me. The game is based on teleportation, so they couldn't have preloaded anything anyway. The zones are huge so you're not going to be constantly loading just running around. Seams let them do their Overflow Server innovation as well as probably allowing them to patch the game incrementally instead of having to wait all at once.
I've been playing GW1 and I don't think it's a great game, but I do think it's a good one. But the things I dislike about it don't have anything to do with mounts, raiding, or seams. I don't like the camera. They're fixing it. I don't like that there's no AH. They're adding one. I don't like the lack of replayability (one main storyline and static sidequests). GW2 has 3 personal stories per race and incredibly replayable DEs and World PVP. I don't like the clunky grouping and quest log. Totally a non-issue with DEs, defacto grouping and no companions. I don't like not being able to change your build outside an outpost. In GW2 you can.
I genuinely don't think I'm rationalizing here. I really think I'm going to love GW2 for what it is.
"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
This makes no sense at all. Rift's footage during prerelease was as good as all in game footage. A CGI tailer is just a CGI trailer, nice for setting the mood, but that's it. I think that it has far less impact on hype than you make it out to be, in fact I think in Rift's case it didn't matter at all, game footage and what people learnt about the game was enough to get people hyped up, including them playing the beta. Like with most MMO's actually.
Don't get me wrong, Rift is a GREAT MMO.
At least Trion has the foresight to copy the GOOD things about WoW, unlike Bioware, who just copy/pasted the awful content and gave us half the features.
That said, I haven't got very far into Rift so maybe it isn't my place to speak. However, I have seen NO "epic" battles in SWTOR that would look good in a marketing campaign. Hell 3 years after they released it, Bioware is STILL using the decieved trailer
While I find this constant TOR bashing kinda distasteful and frankly petty and annoying, I agree that TOR graphics simply don't look that appealing compared to other MMO's. So, visually it just won't astound people unless it's hi-res panoramic shots.
However, the argument of no CGI = good hype and CGI usage = bad hype I find flawed as well. CGI has little to do whether a hype is bad or not: I saw WoW's CGI trailers at its launch and for the Burning Crusade, and they were simply awesome, some of the best I've seen. Still, the hype was justified. Same with GW's Nightfall, CGI trailer looked great but the expansion was very enjoyable as well. Anyway, this was the point I was trying to make. If that's not your viewpoint, well, I agree to disagree then :-)
On a sidenote, I've also watched the CGI trailers for TSW and they were some of the best and most appealing ones for MMO's that I've seen. Yet the game footage so far looked amazing as well. Maybe the hype for TSW will turn out to be bad, who knows, but I'm pretty sure that whether the hype is good or bad has little to do with the use of CGI trailers. imo.
I know right. I wish all games looked and played like their CGI ads. Anyone that expects this to be true..in most cases...should really look back at video game history. Their advertising campaigns in particular.lol. When I had an Atari 2600..it was no different. You would have some games that looked like awesome, action-packed, fun adventures...according to the box art . Then you pop it in the ATARI VCS and watch little kids cry.
Re: progression concerns. Progression doesn't make the game fun on its own. For example, I logged more hours in ME2 than I did in wow only due to its immensely fun combat system. In the end, people only care about having fun.
Also, gw2 for sure has visual aesthetic progression on your character, which is all that matters anyway. When a wow patch comes out with new gear and higher stats, it's just an illusion of progress to keep you hooked.
I find it interesting that so many negatives have come up about GW2 and it doesn't seem to phase anyone. Like the fact that we heard there were no mounts, no raids, no seemless world. That would usually have the community in an uproar around here. I can't decide if its the fact that this game is so over-hyped that some people just refuse to see the potential negatives or if people genuinely don't care about these things...
Personally, I have been around MMORPG.com long enough to know that people here ALWAYS over-hype every new game that comes out and are generally disappointed when they actually get to play it. I doubt this game will be any different, but I will definitely give it a shot to find out for myself.
I don't care about mounts, I don't care about raids, I don't care about seamless worlds. Guild Wars 1 is one of the two MMOs I have played a lot and I loved. Guild Wars had no mounts, no raids and the game was definitely not seamless.
Will it live up to the hype? I don't know. What I would like to see is how many of those people who hated Guild Wars 1 would like Guild Wars 2. Not sure how happy they will be when they find that gear grind will most likely end up being for cosmetic purposes.
I know what to expect from the game because I have played Guild Wars 1 for so long and I can tell you that ArenaNet is a developer who knows exactly what they are doing. They always put a lot of thought into their game development. I know that the people who really care for Guild Wars will be there playng Guild Wars 2. Most people who played Guild Wars loved the exactly opposite of what you are pointing out as negatives and most likely the exactly opposite of what you expect from an MMO.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
The onus is on the individual ~ google="arenanet+blog" All the researching in the world can still result in "not what I thought it would be like" and deciding you won't order that one again.
Community is probably the a big unknown that might not work for most people or may take some server switching/guilds to find the right match which might be a bridge too far again for some?
Exactly and that is my counter to every single, 'Anet provided everything I dreamed off, from that video I saw', or, 'You can trust Anet there cool guys', arguments. The problem I find is that that seems to be in some peoples eyes a valid comeback to any form of, 'negative', comment that appears on threads here.
Sounds like brainwashing to me, noone should have that much faith in a profit making business. Withhold the testimonials till you have a good amount of time to play with it.
Just be honest with yourself, it's NOT going to live up to the hype.
Maybe but I believe it will live up to my expectations.
Dont have expectations. Having expectations ruins everything in life. Keep an open mind and you will Always feel lucky no mather what reaches you. Having expectations means you only restrict yourself of how something can / is allowed to touch your inner.
Just be honest with yourself, it's NOT going to live up to the hype.
Maybe but I believe it will live up to my expectations.
Dont have expectations. Having expectations ruins everything in life. Keep an open mind and you will Always feel lucky no mather what reaches you. Having expectations means you only restrict yourself of how something can / is allowed to touch your inner.
I don't find it restrictive at all and I'll determine who or what touches my inner, thank you very much. Sounds like a world where everyone gets a medal because there are no expectations.
Sometimes things will fail to meet my expectations that will not define me. Further I can have expectation AND keep an open mind. Game-wise if it doesn't meet my expectation some how but provides something I didn't consider and is fun, I'm playing the game.
Comments
Getting of topic here, but let me try to tell it to you this way. This is one of the three major broker house's who bankrolled the game after it went over budget in Jan 2011. They don't live in your world, they work with EA about returns on investments and have all the data at their fingertips. He was the one of the chief spokesperson for EA at both investors meetings. Pratcher was obviously top dog. But this is what he told his investment group after the panic selloff.
Life will go on, as it always does.
The only other game I can ee coming down the tracks that will interest me is AA really...
Others might show promise though, like Pathfinder.
The one certainty with MMOs is that there is always another on the horizon to argue over :P
I'm getting sick of these threads about how GW2 may not live up to the "hype". Honestly, being B2P, there is no reason to stop playing the game, the game is obviously pretty damn good looking at everything it has in it, and how polished the game is. Even the closed beta's are ridiculously polished. The game is goin to be extremely good, there is no doubt about it, and it being B2P means we can play it without worrying about a subscription.
To answer your question: "Life after GW2..." the answer is... "better"
If GW2 doesn't pan out, that'll be it for me regarding MMO's. No other game out there now or in development really interests me. I've been mostly sticking to games i can run natively on my Archbox these days, except for Skyrim and some GoG.com games (dosbox).
Archlinux ftw
I'm not hyped up about this game so I guess I have nothing to lose.
the difference between being excited by swtor and being excited by GW2 is that way before swtor released we already knew it was going to be the same rinse and repeate we all did in WoW, while GW2 have more differences to that standard setting (according to all the info we know so far) that will break the pattern we have been following for years.
Im expecting GW2 to be the ray of light but if it falls flat in the dark, i always move on.
For me, I can't lie...I'll be a bit dissappointed, but I'm also looking forward to other games. I always expect the worst in things, but hope for the absolute best. I have hardly any knowledge of Tera and can't speculate about it at all, but TSW and ArcheAge look very appealing to me. Even if those two don't live up to my expectations, I'll have plenty of other things to do.
Truth have been spoken
(when I saw the 2nd CGI of SWTOR I really thought: Boy are they desperate to hype the game for real)
I think I actually spent way more time reading and theorycrafting about MMOs than playing them
I have no single doubt in my mind that guild wars 2 will live up to the hype i have gained.
Theres a video of almost every single feature in game to prove what arenanet has said and even of stuff they didnt even talk about.
In fact i think i have never been so sure in my life about a game.
I can't say I understand threads like this. Or rather, the mentality behind them. I think I've always been more of a gypsy when it comes to games, in that I don't stay long, while a lot of you seem to want that "place" where you stay for years. That's rarely because of the game itself, but I don't like 'repeating' content and inevitably all games come down to it. It's not just an MMO thing, once I play my console MMOs the whole way through, they get sold, and I move on to something else. The only difference is with games like Mass Effect and Skyrim where two playthroughs can be radically different.
That's why I think I'll be entertained by GW2 for a while. I've played enough to know I like the gameplay, and the ever-changing events and the reputation Anet has for bringing out new and vast content leads me to believe they'll keep it feeling fresh. That said, I don't intend it to be the ONLY game I play, which is probably why I'm set for a lot less disappointment than others. I don't intend to make GW2 my home....more like my seasonal getaway.
There's too many games on the horizon to try, and I want to try them all. But I have a feeling that, just as WoW has become the fall-back for a lot of people, GW2 will be the place I return to when I've had enough of them. I'll play it till I've done it, and then I'll be back for every new patch, event, expansion, etc., while I run around trying other games.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Its... not... like... gaming is my only purpose to live.
Wow, what a question. I hope no-one lives that way. Because that would be HUGELY dependent of such a material thing.
You'll be 15 dollars a month richer too. I think we all love money right? Except for the people who pay 25 dollars for a f*cking mount.
I'm like a few others here, if GW2 doesn't click for me - I'll be done with MMOs. I'm already on the way out and done with the mechanics that are present in the current selection, so it won't take much if GW2 isn't some breath of fresh air. In all fairness, there's a good chance no matter how successful GW2 ends up being, it won't be what I need - with no fault on the game, just my own for burning out on MMOs.
Besides, my kids are growing up and would rather spend time camping and other things with them and my wife - if I'm not completely sucked into a game :P
I can't speak for anybody else, but for me the negatives are actually positives or nonfactors.
Having mounts I think is a negative. They potentially allow for griefing (and DEs are supposed to be especially hard to grief content) or bypassing enemies. Teleportation lets you stop and smell the roses as you explore the world but still be able to get to your friends quickly or to the furthest waypoint you've been. Mounts let you speed past the content you're seeing for the first time. Mounts add more things that need to be rendered and can obscure things. They potentially make people travel at different speeds which is annoying as hell. I'm all in favor of limited mounts (racing minigames, mounted combat minigames, rare DEs) and I think that would keep them exciting and special, not just a common thing that everyone has.
No raiding again I think is a positive. I've quit WoW twice and both times it was because feeling like the raiding gear progression treadmill was the only worthwhile activity. GW2 will have open world encounters that scale up to 100 people as well as WvW PVP for people who want to take part in large scale activities, especially with a guild. It will have explorable mode dungeons for people who want very hard content, only it'll be easier to put together and much more fluid and active combat with only 5 people.
ArenaNet is trying to make a game which doesn't totally change at level cap. With automentoring, new events, 15 different personal story options, achievements and things to collect, you can do whatever you find fun, not be locked into certain play modes.
As far as Seamlessness is concerned, this is a non-issue to me. The game is based on teleportation, so they couldn't have preloaded anything anyway. The zones are huge so you're not going to be constantly loading just running around. Seams let them do their Overflow Server innovation as well as probably allowing them to patch the game incrementally instead of having to wait all at once.
I've been playing GW1 and I don't think it's a great game, but I do think it's a good one. But the things I dislike about it don't have anything to do with mounts, raiding, or seams. I don't like the camera. They're fixing it. I don't like that there's no AH. They're adding one. I don't like the lack of replayability (one main storyline and static sidequests). GW2 has 3 personal stories per race and incredibly replayable DEs and World PVP. I don't like the clunky grouping and quest log. Totally a non-issue with DEs, defacto grouping and no companions. I don't like not being able to change your build outside an outpost. In GW2 you can.
I genuinely don't think I'm rationalizing here. I really think I'm going to love GW2 for what it is.
"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
I know right. I wish all games looked and played like their CGI ads. Anyone that expects this to be true..in most cases...should really look back at video game history. Their advertising campaigns in particular.lol. When I had an Atari 2600..it was no different. You would have some games that looked like awesome, action-packed, fun adventures...according to the box art . Then you pop it in the ATARI VCS and watch little kids cry.
If it doesn't live up to its hype oh well. There are other games on the far horizon such as Archeage to watch and wait for.
Just be honest with yourself, it's NOT going to live up to the hype.
Maybe but I believe it will live up to my expectations.
Also, gw2 for sure has visual aesthetic progression on your character, which is all that matters anyway. When a wow patch comes out with new gear and higher stats, it's just an illusion of progress to keep you hooked.
I think the key is does it live up to your own personal expectations. About other people's hype? I could give a rats ass.
I don't care about mounts, I don't care about raids, I don't care about seamless worlds. Guild Wars 1 is one of the two MMOs I have played a lot and I loved. Guild Wars had no mounts, no raids and the game was definitely not seamless.
Will it live up to the hype? I don't know. What I would like to see is how many of those people who hated Guild Wars 1 would like Guild Wars 2. Not sure how happy they will be when they find that gear grind will most likely end up being for cosmetic purposes.
I know what to expect from the game because I have played Guild Wars 1 for so long and I can tell you that ArenaNet is a developer who knows exactly what they are doing. They always put a lot of thought into their game development. I know that the people who really care for Guild Wars will be there playng Guild Wars 2. Most people who played Guild Wars loved the exactly opposite of what you are pointing out as negatives and most likely the exactly opposite of what you expect from an MMO.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Exactly and that is my counter to every single, 'Anet provided everything I dreamed off, from that video I saw', or, 'You can trust Anet there cool guys', arguments. The problem I find is that that seems to be in some peoples eyes a valid comeback to any form of, 'negative', comment that appears on threads here.
Sounds like brainwashing to me, noone should have that much faith in a profit making business. Withhold the testimonials till you have a good amount of time to play with it.
This looks like a job for....The Riviera Kid!
Dont have expectations. Having expectations ruins everything in life. Keep an open mind and you will Always feel lucky no mather what reaches you. Having expectations means you only restrict yourself of how something can / is allowed to touch your inner.
I don't find it restrictive at all and I'll determine who or what touches my inner, thank you very much. Sounds like a world where everyone gets a medal because there are no expectations.
Sometimes things will fail to meet my expectations that will not define me. Further I can have expectation AND keep an open mind. Game-wise if it doesn't meet my expectation some how but provides something I didn't consider and is fun, I'm playing the game.