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[Preview] Guild Wars 2: Seeds of Truth Review and Speculation
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
It’s easy to dismiss Guild Wars 2’s Living World updates as “not enough content” if you’re not a fan of the game, or are anxious for a true expansion to Tyria. But as more and more of the Living World is released, I’m beginning to think that ArenaNet is painting a larger picture than episodic story content and biweekly updates to the Gem Store. I played through the latest episode, Seeds of Truth last night and while it had a bit of an underwhelming finish, it’s plain to see that it’s building toward something big in Guild Wars 2.
Read more of Bill Murphy's Guild Wars 2: Seeds of Truth Review and Speculation.
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Comments
It's easy to call people "not fans" when they are simply customers who want at long last to get the game they originally were paying for. Many of us who go to these sites to report to other gamers out there what our experience has been with the game were avid fanboys to the sickening degree prelaunch. Then the downward spiral began around Nov 2012. We don't go to the forums and go to these websites because we hate the game, we go there to report on the changes made to the game to make it impossible to play for us in our particular portion of the mmo community. To dismiss us by saying we are this or that doesn't discredit the truth of the information we are spreading.
We've seen them use the LS to build up to a particular event, and sure that event was fun for a while but like always as per their systematic practice, they dropped the ball. Just when it was getting good in Lion's Arche they suddenly cut off the story and we were left with a recovery without much of a climax.
So while you might remain hopeful some of us have learned from experience the hard way that we simply aren't going to get our hopes up at this point.
I experienced pretty much the same thing. I was a huge fanboy of GW2 when it first came out, and in my eyes it could do no wrong. Then the living story started, and while at first, it was all good, it soon become a year of living story and pretty much no lasting content. When I realized this is what they were planning on doing with GW2, I was saddened.
Not to mention on all the promises that ArenaNet has broken:
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Spontaneous genocide is an underwhelming finish?
News to me.
It's not so much WHAT happened, but the somewhat quick way it all ended. I was kind of like... "what, that's it?" I'm sure next week's will be more "final" even with a cliffhanger.
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wtf are you talking about, way before the game release TotalBiscuit had showed what actually were the dynamic events, and what you waited the release to see that dynamic events are something different ..? you were plain deaf i suppose ...
grind in GW2 ?!?!?!!? i played for 2 days and done the monthly, every aspect of the game is pure casual !!!
none wantes necromancer and you claim you play WvW ??!?!!
the game is no esport cause it has RNG ??? tell that to Riot and Valve :P
it seems people here post regularly HUGE BULLSHITS .
There's the "occasional" decent group, but WvW is still largest zerg wins. "We beat zergs a couple times..." Yup. The meta is still flawed.
"The game is no esport because it has RNG?" What? You didn't even read anything I wrote. Try harder.
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Some of the ppl commenting here are on serious drugs...amazing that they let people in rehab/looney bins have access to internet!
"It's not the game we were promised!" WTF? Then go sue them in court if you have a genuine claim that they objectively promised you something and then lied about it....ffs it's like saying "Apple promised us an iPad with a 100" screen and talking monkeys and dropped the ball"...no, you sick ppl developed those things in your minds and then projected them into real-life...companies deliver what companies deliver.
Does GW2 have dynamic events? YES
Are they usually the same "kill smthg, gather smthg"? Fuck YES, what do u want to do in an action game anyway?
Does GW2 have WvW? YES
Has it had trouble implementing it properly? ...Guess what? YES!
Does GW2 have no-trinity designed dungeons? YES
Are classes balanced accordingly? Heck no...warriors/guardians ftw (luckly it takes 10hours to max lvl and gear up a character with decent stuff)
Anyway, back to the article, IMO I think GW2 is using the Living Story in a very odd fashion, that doesn't really work that well. Think of it like TV shows, they usually have 1 episode per week, which is fine, with long breaks between seasons. So you wait a week, see an hour of content, wait another week, etc....till the end of the season and then wait another year for more sets of episodes.
-> GW2 is just doing 1 big episode every month or so, with 2-3 major stops along the way. The content is too thin in my view, and they should either follow TV series with more aggregated "seasons" OOOOOORRR do like Netflix and release the whole season in one go as an "expansion pack" of sorts. (or DLC if you will). I think that would entice a lot more players than their current system
Don't take Razeekster too serious. He/she is the number one Gw2 hater on this forum like years. And funny thing is that most of the nonsense he/she complained about are not even real. I'm not even playing the game anymore but he/she is beyond the hater status. I'm just sorry for him/her.
About the article, I was thinking the same thing. There is more than 300 people in Anet and they're still hiring people. And what are they giving us? Living stories. Don't get me wrong. I love them. But I think ArenaNet preparing something huge behind the closed doors. And I think with this season of living story they're forming the basis of the future content which I hope that it will be an expansion. If they will announce something close to I hope, I will come back for sure.
That and the fact they are bleeding real talent. They hire people - yes they do. But at the same time people who actually created Guild Wars as a franchise left studio and search for luck elswhere. It's been more than 2 years, and there is not much to show for their work. Some bits and scraps left after LS with no greater value to newcomers (and no value to old-timers). You could think that as expirienced studio as Anet is, would make something really memorable in that time, wouldn't You?
It reminds me of one of jobs I had few years back. Quite simmilar situation in quite simmilar bussiness - management was far too sure of themselfs on brink of beeing plain arrogant. When the real talents of team meet obstacles and turn to management for support, it end up in hiring a lot of new people. I was in that company almost to the end and management still didn't see (or understood) the ship is sinking because they drilled holes in it. And as far as I know - the "talent" (as I like to call them) still work in the bussiness and they do great.
Oh well. Hope the next feature pack is good. I really don't care for the bland story of the game anymore, I just log in to PvP every once in a while.
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We're not talking about Anet here. There is a fact that we call Ncsoft. Ncsoft is one of the most impatient and money oriented companies out there. And Ncsoft fired a lot of people from their western companies not too long ago. They even went to downsizing with Carbine. But they leave Anet untouched. And can you please tell me how many old Guild Wars developer left the studio in last 2 years?
And I disagree with you. Anet did a lot of great things in the last 2 years with Gw2. They only became silence after the s1. Yes we're getting a very quality story with the new season. But this season is more like a basis of another huge content. Which we know that it will be a new dragon. The thing we don't know is that how big will be the new content. And if you have that much employee in your company with nothing new and with a boss like Ncsoft. You have to do something.
We can't blame everything on NCsoft. Anet did a lot to hurt themselfs without NCsoft interferance. And what do You mean by "We're not talking about Anet here" - actually You started it.
About people who left studio - I don't make the list actually. I remember Kernstein, Dociu, Welch between others (I think Grubb skipped while GW2 was still in production and it wasn't pleasant either). I'm not too good with remebering names, but what I do remember is the fact that scope of outflow was really depressing. And judging by how clumsy was the use of lore in first season of LS I think the new people didn't have time to do their homework.
You can disagree with me as much as You like. It's Your opinion, I have mine.
-You say "we're getting a very quality story with the new season", I say it's 1k times better than LS s1, but it's still only "so-so". It do have shiny moments ("Echoes of the past" if I recall corectly is considered to be great) and shitty as well ("Tangled Paths" if I'm not wrong)
-"But this season is more like a basis of another huge content" - I wish. As for now, I play other games, because simply GW2 doesn't deliver to my taste.
-"Which we know that it will be a new dragon" - but the question is about the form. Will it be simple awakening and nothing above that? Or battle? Real battle or the one like with Zaithan - oh press 2, press 2, press 2 again, press it for 10 mor minutes, oh it's so epic 2 clicking I'll gonna come! -_-
-"how big will be the new content" - You are talking about future, I'm talking about present. GW2 have 2 years (and counting) and not much to show for it. Best parts of the game is vanilla, heck - more than 95% parts of the game (approximately) is vanilla content. To make it worse - some parts were better as a vanilla (NPE). When Anet will start deliver the content I'll revisit my attitude towards them.
-"with a boss like Ncsoft" - oh come on! NCsoft is in the bizz to make money. They do want Anet to succed because it means more $ to them. Yeah, I know we all want to blame Anet mishaps on someone, but NCsoft is hardly to blame. If anything - Anet is only company that seems to have special treatment under NCsoft wings. NCsoft was even the ambasador to Anet to make expansion, because players demand it (shareholders demand it as well), and Anet didn't want to communicate with own playerbase. Go on forums, read awesome thread by Dlonie - the fight for communication is carried out by players and Anet is still failing, day after week. It's not NCsoft fault that Anet is dropping the ball at the moment.
@jcsadone ;I'm not blaming Ncsoft or Anet. How do you get this from my post? I'm saying that Anet is not an independent company. They are just a side company from Ncsoft. And that's why I know employees in the Anet are doing something we don't know. Ncsoft is not a company which will pay someone bilndly anything. +2 years later and Ncsoft still keeps Anet together and still expand their investment in Anet. And the time being Ncsoft decreased their investments in Carbine Studios only 5 months later. Even this only shows how much Ncsoft trusts Anet. Anyone can say that Anet's annual income is dropping every year. Guild Wars 2 is a b2p game. Which means you can't expact too much from box sales after 2 years. Their only big income is cash shop right now. There is only one way that Ncsoft can earn enough money from Guild Wars 2. And that is the paid expansion. 300 employees and growing everyday with only little living story updates. That's what I'm trying to argue about. There is no way Ncsoft let a side company grow without any additional profit.
Again please don't change the subject. I'm not talking about the game itself. Or how great Gw2 etc. I'm not even playing Gw2 anymore for god's sake... I'm just saying that I'm guessing Anet will announce an expansion any time soon. That's all...
@Nephet - Well, judging by what we were disscussing it was obvious
. I'm glad that I was wrong.
-"Ncsoft is not a company which will pay someone bilndly anything" & "And that is the paid expansion" - it's only true if Anet is working on expansion. For all we know, they can make different game. Unlikely but not unheard of.
-"Ncsoft still keeps Anet together and still expand their investment in Anet. And the time being Ncsoft decreased their investments in Carbine Studios only 5 months later" - yep. But on the other hand, without pumping new people into project, whole game would colapse. Yeah, that's my opinion, but we are talking about 300+ employees for more than a year now. If NCsoft and Anet are really hiring that fast, it should easily 400+ by now. It's not and that leads me to conclusion - it's rotation. It's not only hiring new people, at least some of that new blood (and by some I mean most) came to replace old staff. Some out of the rotation were bigger names (like Hrouda - another name that came to my mind), some of them were unknown to me. It's hard to keep track on +-300 workers in game making company competing with dozen other. Sometime to protect investment You need to invest more, ofc if by investing You call hiring people to take hot-seat. So the "hiring" part seems to me like a good PR.
On the other stuff - my point is, it's too late. Take me 1-2 years ago, I would preorder expansion on the first day avalible. During LS s1 I would probably consider it right before Xpack would hit megaserver. Today I won't buy it. If I'll ever going to invest my time and money into GW2 (or anything from Anet/NCsoft for that matter) is after premiere, when the dust of hype will be long gone and Anet proves that they learned to deliver promises.
@jcsadone I don't think it is too late. Yes they should have announced their expansion earlier but Gw2 is still one of the most populated mmos out there. And on top of that there are plenty of people who owns the game and doesn't play it for the time being. My only concern is that can they overcome this expansion? Did they learn something from their past mistakes. I hope they can do a great job.
That's actually completely false. I was a huge fan of GW2 when it first came out. I praised the hell out of and that's pretty damn clear from my post history which you can see all the way back to when I was playing GW2 in closed beta. So please don't try and go invalidating people by calling them "haters." There's a difference between a "hater" and someone stating actual facts. Everything I stated was true so it's silly that there are people like you that need to label others as "haters" when they are disappointed that a title didn't deliver on promises. I mean come on, over two years later and still no guild halls or truly meaningful guild content? There's a valid reason for some people to be disappointed like I am.
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