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Guild Wars 2, Arenanet Love and Hate
WargRider2
Member UncommonPosts: 12
Hey guys I believe this is my first legitimate thread post here at MMORPG.com, I have been an avid MMO player for years now, not as many as most of you but approximately 6 years now, and I have played my fair share of mostly F2P games. I got enchanted with GW2, I never played WoW and I really don't want to, I saw this was B2P so I decided to give it a go. Oh my god, I had the best time in an online game I have ever had, and I am continuing to absolutely love it. I will leave my personal opinion on the game aside, and just wrap that up by saying it is wonderful for me.
That aside, I have had some grievances with Arenanet, nothing completely serious but I thought I would ask the community their opinion on that. I like Lore a lot, and I was annoyed to find that the Wiki had been down and parts of it are still dysfunctional as of this post, just a minor grievance. I found it annoying to not be able to look up some lore and what not on the wiki. Another frustration was that the forums are still closed, this annoys me quite a bit, I would like the official forums to talk about the game solely, I know the ones here at MMORPG.com are wonderful, but for me still it just annoys me. Then comes the patch notes, or lack thereof, this , believe it or not, annoys me to no end. Please tell me if I am wrong, but I cannot find any announcements or notes on the patches for this game at all, and I know it doesn't really make a huge difference, but it is just so annoying when you enjoy a game so much, I want to know what they are fixing / modifying. Finally, this I admit is an opinion so please for the love of god do not make this a 50 page "he is trolling, they are trolling" thread, but I hate the Arenanet naming policy. If you feel inclined to share your opinion on it, please do, but for me this whole notion of banning names because they are not 100% immersive is just annoying. I got banned for 3 days, but I will admit my character's name was just crude and probably offensive, but some people are getting banned for dumb names like 'Scary Man', and 'Adolph Critler'. I personally think that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard, I know it's their game their rules, I will oblige, but I feel like I reserve the right to criticise it as well.
So as a wrap, these are all my opinions, namely the fact that I feel Arenanet is doing a disservice to the game by not getting the wiki fully functional, having the forums closed, the lack of patchnotes and the annoying naming policy. If you would like to state your opinion on these matters, please do, and have fun ingame guys!
Edit: I just remembered, adding to the naming policy ban, it is 100% more frustrating that they give 0 warning, yes folks 0 warning, I know that for a fact because I went through it. Not a single e-mail, and to be quite honest they could have just forced me to rename I would have happily obliged, why a 3-day instaban? Oh well, I forgot to mention also the insta-bans for crude language. I mean really... there is a profanity filter for a reason, I am just finding this absurd, here they make a great game, _finally_ a game with adults and a great community, and then they ban swearing, I feel like I am being treating like a 12 year old. Again, their rules their game, just grievances is all. Enjoy GW2 guys!
Comments
I won't touch on the naming policy, but as for your other points:
The Official Wiki and Official Forums:
While I admit I was abit frustrated when the wiki was seemingly having issues - I began thinking - do I want them spending time and resources on the Wiki / Forums - or do I want them spending time fixing bugs. Now presumably the staff is not the same - but there is likely *some* overlap. I speak from personal experience in software development when I say that focusing staff on main goals and not overstretching is definitly the way to go.
Imagine, if you will, that they fire up the forums. They now have to make sure their moderators are ready, that the website server can handle the traffic, and presumably have community managers on hand to be funneling feedback to the developers. That is quite time consuming and something I would prefer they leave until later.
Patch Notes:
This I slightly agree with you - BUT I am holding off on complaining until real patches are coming out. These patches every day or more are rapid bug fixes to a new application - patch notes at this stage would probably be a hindrance to development.
I completely understand where you are coming from voxnor, just for reference's sake I am not 100% oblivious to the software development industry as well as game development, I have actually taken a fair share in a few game developments nothing big just indies though, I claim no experience in the MMO field. However that being said, I understand they want to get fixes and develop faster, however for a company like Arenanet, I am sure they can and probably have a dedicated web development/management team, they should be able to fix the game just as fast as well as maintain the wiki and release patch notes. Even at the rate they are releasing them, I have only counted 1-2 patches per day so far (since the 25th), that gives you ~10 patches, probably with minor fixes. I do not believe that would really kill their day in order to just post that. Thanks for the reply though!
Edit: Damn I am forgetting a lot today, I can agree with you on the forums though thanks for the insight, it is true they would need to focus a lot of energy on that to sustain it.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page AHH - don't know what you gents are talking about - it is all there. You can also go to Guild Wars 1 for lore, since GW2 is built on GW1 lore.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page
As a MMO veteran as far back as MUDS and someone who is not a role-player online (for twenty years I played Paper and Pencil RPGS), I absolutely stand by their naming policy. Why? Because nothing pulls you back out of a game faster than IPWNEDURMOM LASTNIGHT, or Adolph Critler or Britney Spears the human mesmer.
I am not meaning this to pick on you personally, but by and large people that choose those kinds of names:
a> lack imagination or a simple google search for names
b> came to the game to troll.
The naming thing is one of their ways to try and clean up the WoW troll mentality (I have played more hours of WoW than I care to admit) that permeates their servers. Let me just say that if you haven't experienced the trade chat trolls in WoW and other games of the ilk then you may not have a solid basis behind their naming decisions.
The wiki and patch notes I'm not concerned with just yet. I think the emergency fixes for things like exploiting mail or exploiting the auction house are not announced so the general populace won't go out trying to exploit more issues. I believe larger patches will have plenty of notes but these emergency fixes are just that and I don't think they care to list every minor tweak in some running dialogue.
Is it annoying? Maybe, but like you said it is not game-breaking.
Thirty years of gaming experience...not sure if I should be proud of that
www.mmoexaminer.blogspot.com
I am well aware it is up at the moment
. It was very spotty for the first few days - which is what I assumed the OP was discussing.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lore
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Lore
Want me to continue? Then there are the books that were written in the Guild Wars universe - there are 3 now
Ghosts of Ascalon
Edge of Destiny
Sea of Sorrows
There is the lore you are looking for.
Quote: Wiki had been down and parts of it are still dysfunctional
It is true it is up, I meant the first few days it was completely down, and ya I managed to read up from Guild Wars 1 lore, keep in mind I never played Guild Wars 1, never knew any background or the sort. Some parts of it are still not 100% smooth, again minor grievance it's not a huge deal by any means, for example I clicked on "Elona" a minute ago, some obscure PHP error where some variable was set to true came up, then after some refreshing the page worked. Things like that you know?
Thanks for the books xD
@Skuldin: Thanks for the reply, you are right I have no clue the trolling on WoW, I understand for some it ruins the immersion but at the base I feel like we all play the game to have fun, for me that involves naming my characters funny names like that, it is just outright hilarious for me. But then again, where I have fun I ruin someone elses, so I will be civil and and abide by their rules, thanks for the reply. Oh so tempting, to name my character Adolph Critler :'( lol