The wait was not worth it

I bought this game in 2012. If I play right now, with the exceptions of fractals, there’s almost exactly the same things to do as there were back then. A few bosses have been added, one mostly empty zone, and the odd tidbit here and there. The focus on LS has made this game empty, painfully empty.

I was very excited (if a person can honestly be excited about gaming at all these days) for this update. I leveled two characters to 80 specifically to take advantage of the account bound legendaries and skin swapping. Now that it’s here, I have no more desire to play than I did before. In fact, I have less, because at least before there was anticipation, some hope of things actually being fun again, and not just tweaked.

I’m tired of killing the world bosses on repeat, running dungeons on repeat, and waiting 2 weeks for a LS update that sometimes is as minor as “have a single conversation with a single npc, and then wait another 2 weeks”. I’m beyond annoyed that most of the content that has been added since release has subsequently been removed “for story reasons”.

I feel like, in many ways, I am the ideal person you’d want as a customer. As a retired adult I have unlimited time and plenty of cash to throw around on things I really don’t need. I have bought multiple copies of gw2 at full retail and given them out to friends, so my goodwill towards this game should be proven. I have over 1200 games on steam alone because it’s enjoyable to me to be able to buy all the things I couldn’t have as a kid. If I felt like I was getting anything worthwhile here that had any value, it would be very easy for me to be putting multiple charges on my credit card to buy gems each month.

Instead, you’ve never gotten another dime from me, beyond the initial purchases. Every time I have been tempted to buy gems, I think about how greedy it felt during the 2012 halloween event when the BL Chest drop rate for the halloween weapons was stupendously low. I remember all the content that was removed. I think about all the minor (unvoiced by me, but pointed out many times here by others) complaints I’ve had that were never fixed, and the fact that there is not going to be any expansion any time soon, when it should have been here or have been announced, at the least.

The other day, while I was sitting out of wvw (the only thing I like doing anymore in gw2) after a transfer, unable to actually play anything other than eotm, I thought about getting a new game. Maybe go back to WoW, maybe try some D3, oh, I know, Wildstar. I’ve heard a lot about Wildstar. I go to pre-purchase it, but it’s an NCSoft game. Right there beside gw2. People tell me NCSoft is just the distributor, but after the “experience” of feeling ignored for two years in gw2, instead of pre-ordering like I do just about every other game that comes out, I hesitated. Did I really want to give money to people related to this? Did I really want to set myself up for another game of “Well I’ve put 1000 hours into this so I might as well stick with it?”. And the answer was “No”. No I do not feel like getting mired into another unrewarding gaming experience that sees my wallet like it has a bullseye painted on it. The only devs I’ve ever not bought games from based on past reputation are Peter Molyneux and EA, if that gives you any indication of how low my opinion is at this point, but just being associated with ANet now is enough to make me put my credit cards away and move on.

I know people are going to point out that I got my money’s worth from gw2. Fair enough, I certainly did. But it’s not 2012 anymore, and we’re still playing 2012’s mmo. That’s really clear to a lot of people. I’ve played mmo’s since everquest 1, been playing muds since they were back on compuserve and AOL online “was” the internet to most people. Only in the most pay-to-win games do I see new people join and drop out like they do in gw2. I see many, many new people (low ap scores) buy the game, join a guild, play for 20 or 30 levels and quit. They don’t even bother to max a single character, because everyone in their guild has told them, repeatedly “There’s nothing to do at 80, leveling is the fun part”. They don’t believe it at first. Surely there’s more to it. But eventually, after they’ve been told by several people “No, really, there’s nothing special at 80 except more dungeons” it finally sinks in that they’ve totally wasted their $25/$50/whatever.

I want to support this company. I feel strongly, however, that whatever made gw1 great (seriously, that’s my all time fave mmo, you really outdid yourselves in a lot of ways) has been watered down and neutered into something boring, formulaic, and so startchy-clean and perfect looking that there isn’t a spec of dirt on a norn. Giant sweaty dudes wearing leather and carrying axes, killing things all day, but every single one gleams like the top of Mr. Cleans bald head. That was ok in 2004 with 2004-era graphics, it’s not ok a decade later.

I can’t do it anymore. Between the writing (those hiccups to break what laughably little tension there was in the Scarlett final scene are a perfect example), the family friendly until it’s painful art style, the npc’s in major cities constant spouting about how wonderful war is (as a veteran, “I had a dream about a war, I must go fight in it” is the single stupidest reason I’ve ever heard to volunteer to be a body bag, fantasy situation or no), and now this… modifying of things, instead of adding content, and acting like it’s something special… It’s the last straw for me for a while. I’ve put a lot of hours into this game, waiting for it to get good. It’s not getting good. I understand that now. This update has been upsetting to a large portion of your userbase, and I think most of them are going to sigh quietly and either go back to wvw or just move on to another game. Normally I would join them, but things have been wrong (to me) for so long here, and I’ve abided it patiently, that I feel I should speak up.

I’ll come back for the next LS event. I won’t expect there to be more than an hour or two’s worth of new content, and I will expect to grind that content until it gets boring because it will be the only thing there is to do in gw2 that I haven’t already grinded into the dirt.

There are a lot of people out there with 3x/4x/5x the achievement points than I do. People who never stopped defending you. If you go to reddit and mention that you’re disappointed with gw2 you’ll be downvoted to oblivion. It still took you two years to give those fans account-bound legendaries and account bound WxP. The phrase “battered spouse syndrome” comes to mind.

In some ways I think this is like EA’s move into mobile. Telling their customers “The new dungeon keeper wasn’t made for you, it was made for a new generation of fans”. Clearly, gw2 was not made to appease the people who played gw1. Maybe at one point that was the intention, but then some committee got ahold of it and now it’s just one big hot mess.

The game needs dynamic changes. Huge reworkings. Not skill balancing, not nerfing this skill and buffing that one, but big huge reworkings like when Blizz redid their starting zones with new missions and so on. The fact is, however, that if that ever happens in gw2, it will only happen when it is financially the only way left to survive. The vast majority of the things your real fans want (like the roleplayers you just screwed by taking their dyeable town clothes away, I don’t even RP but it’s clear that’s a jerk move aimed at the people who actually bother to buy your gems, and for what?) are never going to happen. You’re going to placate us with bits and pieces and hope it’s enough, and maybe it is enough for some out there. Maybe it’s enough for enough whales to keep buying those BL keys and keeping you going. I hope it is. I hope you manage to pull an expansion out in a year or two and give me someplace to actually wear those legendaries and be “proud” of them. As it is I look at that time spent as a complete waste of my life, and that’s not something I have ever felt about a game before. It’s something that really makes me re-evaluate where I want to spend my time and money, and that’s another sensation I’m not used to feeling from a game. I can name a few games I’ve played 1000+ hours of, and I have no regrets for them. No regrets for the hundreds of hours I sunk into gw1 at all. Then again, gw1 was never like “Hey break out your credit card and support me if you want bugfixes. You do really love me don’t you?”. The attempts at manipulation are transparent and unbecoming. I realize all mmo’s are skinner boxes to some extent, but you’ve really piled up the psychological impulses to buy (more! now! don’t you want the best stuff?!) in ways that are obnoxious and clearly visible. Everyone knows why the 5% listing fee doesn’t show up in the projected profits, and it’s no accident that it happened. The game is set up to make you waste money testing useless builds that require a full set of 20g armor+runes+sigils+this and that and oh you need more laurels and more this and more but you can skip it if you just. break. out. that. credit. card.

I know that this post will get flamed, and that’s cool, I don’t really plan on responding anyway, I just have wanted to express my displeasure with the direction this game has been taken for a long time, but today was finally a large enough, over-hyped letdown that I am uninstalling, and I wanted to say why before I go. I hope my criticism here has been constructive enough that it won’t simply be removed.

Yes, I spent 1000+ hours playing this game. However, that time has only made me increasingly positive that wherever you’re heading with it, it’s not going to be any place worth actually traveling to, and nothing I couldn’t find in 100 similar mmo’s, with new ones being released now on a near monthly basis. After 1000 hours, for someone to say “I don’t recommend that game, it’s a complete waste of time and a non-stop grind” is about the harshest criticism you could receive, but I don’t pretend that anyone that matters will actually see me pointing it out or care.

See you in a few weeks or whenever your new dragon comes out. Will not expect to be impressed. Feel free to prove me wrong on that one.

Thank you for your time, although, if I could go back to 2012 and do it all again, I would not have bothered to give you mine,

BFS

[Archived from the Guild Wars 2 forums. 2014 April 16. Link below]
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/The-wait-was-not-worth-it