My ROSE-Colored Glasses are BROKEN

[Vayne]

As I mentioned, I, personally, don't believe this game lacks rewards for me personally; I'm one of the people who get their fun out of hindering other people's fun (a.k.a. PVP ). WvW is all I've ever wanted in a game and more (even though it's inbalanced as hell and lacks lots of features that would make it even better; but I have my hopes high that this part of the game will get some love, sooner or later) I'm also an online-FPS player. I love BF3 even though I'm not really good at it (For me it's a big success to get a positve k/d ratio on Noshar TDM without using a shotgun ).

And I also stated that I'm perfectly fine with the rewards, as I'm not that kind of player. But I know a lot of them and they are not fine with them. I loathe dungeons in any game. I've done a few here and must say I'm equally unimpressed. The non-existing (or at least unpredictable) threat-mechanic is fun at first, but in the end a dungeon should have some big shiny chest at the end. And that's exactly were my beef with this game would begin, if I was a PVE player in the sense of a dungeon raider. The reward for going in this or that dungeon is negligible at best. The hat is a joke (let me at least choose what kind of item I want, if you don't want boss-loot tables like in that other game, everybody seems to hate . maybe I already have a hat but need a pair of jeans...) I also find it funny to be able to graveyard rush down any boss in this game (at least those I've encountered). This is probably good for story mode dungeons, as everybody should get the chance to see the story, but exploration mode dungeons shouldn't work that way.

At the end it's all opinion, of course. You have yours and back it with your claim to know tons of players who share it. I have mine and can also claim to know lots of people who think this or that is wrong with the game. The success or lack of it can only be measured by the people of ArenaNet who have access to their books and decide if they're getting the kind of revenue they're looking for. But it's fun to discuss it, nonetheless (do you write that so?). At least to me.

Believe it or not, I actually agree with you. If you were a dungeon crawler/raider, you have a good chance of being put off by Guild Wars 2. That's very true.

My contention is is that most people that play MMOs are neither. The raiders are by far the most vocal segment of the PVe population. By contrast, RPers barely even make a dent in their numbers.

But then there are people who play MMOs as if they're single player games, and they, believe it or not, account for a much higher percentage than anyone had previously realized. The first thing that led me to think about this was something Scott Hartman, lead developer for Rift said (and I'm paraphrasing here). He said something to the effect of MMOs that ignore solo players are likely to go out of business in short order.

A short time later I noticed in the Guild Wars 2 FAQ a question about can I solo Guild Wars 2? See, they didn't do that for 5% of their fan base. The devs simply know that a lot of people do solo MMOs and those people often don't do dungeons at all...and they never raid.

A while back a poll was done, the results of which said that between 12-15% of people who played WoW actually raided. I have no doubt since then that number has gone up, but I doubt very much it hit the 50% mark. A lot depends on your group of friend, but consider this.

If someone doesn't group, doesn't join guilds, doesn't post on forums and doesn't raid, who would know they were there. That's the problem that exists for players like me.

There's another demographic of players too, called social players, who use MMOs as basically giant chat rooms with occasional stuff to do. Many of those people don't raid either.

See it comes down to that old hard core casual divide (which isn't really so easily divided since many people, like me, are neither). There are far far more casuals playing MMOs than hard core players. There are far more hard core players posting on forums than casuals. It can lead to a whole lot of misinterpretation about the actual numbers. It has to.

But in the end, casuals are going to pay for games, not hard core players, which is why raids in other games continually get dumbed down and people scream and cry about it. If hard core players really did pay for the game, casuals wouldn't get a second look, but the developers KNOW who is paying their bills.

And many of them don't PvP, don't raid, don't care much about dungeons. You just never hear from them.

[Peaveywolf]

Quite the contrary. There are very few games of the many MANY games I've played over the past 9 and a half years that have kept me coming back day after day, week after week, month after month. The vast majority of the games I've played I've quit after a week or two (many games I've quit within days and some even within hours and some I never even come back to after the beta period is over). You don't know me at all, so don't assume I'm easy to please, because nothing could be farther from the truth.

I'm quite possibly one of the pickiest players you've met when it comes to what games I give my time to. I've played more games than I can count over nearly a decade of gaming. And I can count on one hand how many of those games I've actually given more than a month of playing to. And of all those games I've only played two that have held my interest for more than a year, the first of those two I played for 3+ years, the second of those two I played for nearly as long. Trying other games here and there while I played, but always coming back to them. And I think this is game will probably make it to the very short list of games I end up playing for a year or more. I enjoy this game very much, and I don't see myself going anywhere anytime soon. And I'm sure there are plenty of other people who feel the same.

Completely agree with you Stacy Same applies to me.

[Lagger]

Because sitting here trying to convince people who are enjoying a game that they shouldn't be because you don't is quite silly. I mean what if you succeed? Are you improving the quality of those people's lives? Are you helping them somehow?

What was the point of that post, Vayne? You keep posting and telling people that they're just having opinions. Either you're downplaying their posts or what? You're not even arguing properly, you're just telling us what you think about our posts. So is that the thing? You think we want to ruin someone elses fun? Do you think Shoke is that petty?

I really have no idea why you made that post except for that paragraph, which is a silly notion to assume.

[Lagger]

I still believe, truly believe that there are just as many, if not more people, who don't care about the reward system in the same way you and Shoke do, but then those very people didn't come from MMOs in the first place. That's the point I keep trying to make. MMO players expect rewards, because games like that are rewarding. FPS players don't, and they're just as popular...more popular even...than MMOs. RPG players don't generally play for rewards either. It's a different mind set.

A lot of people play a lot of games that don't give these rewards. Those who like the games that did give rewards feel like that is missing. Those that played other games that don't, dont' feel that is missing. I think it's a much bigger group than you think it is. Just as you tend to think people who share your opinion are the most numerous, I think that even more people who share my opinion are out there. They simply didn't play MMOs, because most MMOs sucked from my point of view.

If Guild Wars succeeds in attracting those people, it will blow the field wide open, because until now to the genre, MMOs, even WoW has always been considered a niche game.

There it is again.. Vayne, you are WRONG. WoW is not a niche. MMOs are not a niche. Can you stop repeating that nonsense, please. Go look at the bloody numbers and stop pretending MMOs are the unloved child of the gaming industry. MMOs are the holy fucking grail right now, and they all want to know how Blizzard made the players open their wallets for about two billion quid each bloody year like that. Especially considering that Blizzard is pretty much doing jack shit in investment into the game and have been milking the cow for a couple of years.

Also, just to inform you, every game gives rewards. But giving you a +2 fire sword doesn't make bloody sense if you're running around with an AK47, does it? The reward system is in every game. Don't even pretend there isn't a kick when FPS players win a game. That's their reward. No player plays a game without any reward. Bullshit. This is not new to MMOs. And nothing that was said in the thread talked about rewards. Shoke was talking about risk.

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But then there are people who play MMOs as if they're single player games, and they, believe it or not, account for a much higher percentage than anyone had previously realized. The first thing that led me to think about this was something Scott Hartman, lead developer for Rift said (and I'm paraphrasing here). He said something to the effect of MMOs that ignore solo players are likely to go out of business in short order.

Yes, and because Rift was such a big success, I would say his opinion is really worth the quote. Not. If anything, I'd say take what he said and assume the opposite is true, because he crashed so hard with his game it wasn't even funny watching it. And yes, Vayne, I Know you played it. But I've established in my head already that you feel no pain at all and will play anything as long as it fits your immersion playstyle. That doesn't make a game a general success. I'm not even interested in your opinion on the success of Rift or not. We can either discuss the world as seen from Vayne or we can talk about failures in the gaming industry. And quoting Rift? LOL... Yeah, those dudes really were in the know, man. Totally knew what the gamers wanted!

Edit: Oh, I forgot... why you keep talking about raiders is beyond me, too. Neither Shoke nor me nor anyone else in this thread asked for raids. We're asking for challenge, some meaning to the PVE. That's it. Is that too much to ask for? Bloody casual game if you can't ask that...

[Fey]

Believe it or not, I actually agree with you. If you were a dungeon crawler/raider, you have a good chance of being put off by Guild Wars 2. That's very true.

Yeah but if they really didn't intend for that kind of content to be in the game, they should have left the grind for tokens out. As it is now, it's a pretty half-assed system.

"We don't want you to run the same dungeons over and over again! But if you want all these items you have to anyway!" lol wut?

[Vayne]

What was the point of that post, Vayne? You keep posting and telling people that they're just having opinions. Either you're downplaying their posts or what? You're not even arguing properly, you're just telling us what you think about our posts. So is that the thing? You think we want to ruin someone elses fun? Do you think Shoke is that petty?

I really have no idea why you made that post except for that paragraph, which is a silly notion to assume.

If you bothered to actually read Shoke's post, you'd say that he was saying that his opinion isn't like other people's because he played the game to 80 and he really really knows it. That sounds suspiciously to me like he's putting his opinion above the opinion of other people. In fact, quite a few people I spoke to about it noticed this, so I'm surprised you didn't.

When someone says my opinion is better because I know better, it actually sets that person up as more of an expert than anyone else. It's at very least misleading. The purpose of my post was to point out that it was misleading.

It's one thing to express an opinion. It's another to try to inflate your opinion by denigrading the opinion of others. And my post wasn't addressed to you, but to Shoke, who I've spoken to extensively about this in mumble, anyway.

It's about taking the spin out of the spin. You may not see that as necessary...but I do.

[Vayne]

There it is again.. Vayne, you are WRONG. WoW is not a niche. MMOs are not a niche. Can you stop repeating that nonsense, please. Go look at the bloody numbers and stop pretending MMOs are the unloved child of the gaming industry. MMOs are the holy fucking grail right now, and they all want to know how Blizzard made the players open their wallets for about two billion quid each bloody year like that. Especially considering that Blizzard is pretty much doing jack shit in investment into the game and have been milking the cow for a couple of years.

Also, just to inform you, every game gives rewards. But giving you a +2 fire sword doesn't make bloody sense if you're running around with an AK47, does it? The reward system is in every game. Don't even pretend there isn't a kick when FPS players win a game. That's their reward. No player plays a game without any reward. Bullshit. This is not new to MMOs. And nothing that was said in the thread talked about rewards. Shoke was talking about risk.

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Yes, and because Rift was such a big success, I would say his opinion is really worth the quote. Not. If anything, I'd say take what he said and assume the opposite is true, because he crashed so hard with his game it wasn't even funny watching it. And yes, Vayne, I Know you played it. But I've established in my head already that you feel no pain at all and will play anything as long as it fits your immersion playstyle. That doesn't make a game a general success. I'm not even interested in your opinion on the success of Rift or not. We can either discuss the world as seen from Vayne or we can talk about failures in the gaming industry. And quoting Rift? LOL... Yeah, those dudes really were in the know, man. Totally knew what the gamers wanted!

Edit: Oh, I forgot... why you keep talking about raiders is beyond me, too. Neither Shoke nor me nor anyone else in this thread asked for raids. We're asking for challenge, some meaning to the PVE. That's it. Is that too much to ask for? Bloody casual game if you can't ask that...

You keep saying I'm wrong...prove it. Like Shoke, all you have is an opinion. MMOs make money, not because they're not niche, but because they charge a monthly fee, where no other game does. That's where the money comes from and that's why everyone wants in. But if you follow the business end of MMOs, you'll find a lot of people who were developing MMOs, or were going to decided to develop instead games for phones and social media, because there's just as much money in that, without the investment in an MMO. This was actually brought up on panels at the annual MMO developers show.

12.4 million accounts at its max is peanuts compared to some games. It's niche because computer games themselves are niche. Console games have become mainstream by comparison.

There are still a ton of people out there that look at your crossed-eyed for playing MMOs. You might not hang out with them, but that doesn't make a bit of difference. You hang out with people who like MMOs and it will look like MMO is popular. In fact, it's massively niche. I keep saying it because it's true.

First person shooters aren't niche. Grand theft auto isn't niche. Farmville (unfortunately) isn't niche, but MMOs still are. Get some transcripts from game developer conventions and look at the panels and look at what the people in the industry are saying, and you'll see that I'm not making this up.

Saying someone is wrong, just because you disagree doesn't make them wrong, or you right.

Edit: Put it another way. Skyrim sold 7 million copies the first week, and Diablo 3 sold 7 million. WoW, the most popular MMO of all time sold 2.7 million in the first week. Far less, and that's the most popular MMO. Other games have sold even more than Skyrim, btw.

Again the reason MMOs make a lot of money is because of the subscription fee, not because they're considered mainstream by the industry. When MMOs go mainstream, they're going to get a whole lot bigger than they are now.

[Steel Singer]

If you bothered to actually read Shoke's post, you'd say that he was saying that his opinion isn't like other people's because he played the game to 80 and he really really knows it. That sounds suspiciously to me like he's putting his opinion above the opinion of other people. In fact, quite a few people I spoke to about it noticed this, so I'm surprised you didn't.

When someone says my opinion is better because I know better, it actually sets that person up as more of an expert than anyone else. It's at very least misleading. The purpose of my post was to point out that it was misleading.

It's one thing to express an opinion. It's another to try to inflate your opinion by denigrading the opinion of others. And my post wasn't addressed to you, but to Shoke, who I've spoken to extensively about this in mumble, anyway.

It's about taking the spin out of the spin. You may not see that as necessary...but I do.

You're half right imo. Devaluating someones opinion is mostly a bad thing sure. But someone who has played the game for 100 hours or someone that has played it for 500. That's a huge difference and the guy that has 500 hours played probably has had more experience to base his opinion on. Mostly because that guy has seen the whole game. Whereas the guy that has played 100 hours has barely scratched the surface.

There is a reason why on television, during sports reviews, only 'experts' get asked to state their opinion. People who have played at the top level and have retired or have coached top level teams. Or simply other competitive players.

They don't ask the average Joe to state his opinion. So indeed, some opinions have more value that others. You can't deny that. For example, people can't say anything about dungeons if they did them 1 or 2 times. You can only talk about it if you completed the dungeon at least 5 times.

So I do agree with Shokenaw that his opinion holds more value that some super casual random posting here. But that has to do more with the random guy posting than with Shokenaw.

There are still a ton of people out there that look at your crossed-eyed for playing MMOs. You might not hang out with them, but that doesn't make a bit of difference. You hang out with people who like MMOs and it will look like MMO is popular. In fact, it's massively niche. I keep saying it because it's true.

First person shooters aren't niche. Grand theft auto isn't niche. Farmville (unfortunately) isn't niche, but MMOs still are. Get some transcripts from game developer conventions and look at the panels and look at what the people in the industry are saying, and you'll see that I'm not making this up.

This is kinda very true, many people will look at you badly if you say you play WoW (or any other MMO). I myself have played Guild Wars 1 for over 5000 hours, but NOBODY in my real life knows that I ever played it. I don't even think they know what Guild Wars is. I keep my MMO gaming a secret as I'm kinda ashamed of it when I'm around other people.

Sure you could say I should find new friends and all that do play MMO's. But why?? I love hanging out with them and NEVER EVER talking about MMO's in real life. When I'm in real life I don't want to be remembered about gaming, I want to have other kinds of fun. I absolutely disgust talking about games in real life (unless it's FIFA :P ).

And also, it would be quite hard to find other people in my village that do play MMO's. Probably there are, but they are basically all 'outcasts' in my town and are viewed as no-lifers. Also because they don't go out as much as the rest of us. Others might also be like me and keep their MMO gaming to theirselves. My town has about 5000 inhabitants and gaming, other than shooters and FIFA, are basically frowned upon.

This also has really formed me. I also frown upon people that walked around my college openly discussing MMO's or League of Legends (I was an avid LoL fan at the time) and think they're geeks. Sometimes it's because they dress differently, sometimes it's because they really out of shape.

Gaming is quite a large part of my life, but I'm still in a great shape. I practice sports (soccer, squash, running) 5 times a week. 2 weeks ago I even ran a half marathon (20km) and I disgust people who are so out of shape that they can't even run 5km without taking a break. I mean seriously? That's fucking unhealthy!!

[TitanBlade]

Games Sucks (My Opinion), People are leaving (Fact according to most forums (could be untrue), Role Players and Social Players love it, will always love it because it is soft and casual. Fair Play to them, there is definately a space in the market for this sort of online community who enjoy questing and doing things that other gamers do not.

Its not going to kill every MMO on the market and it never will.

It will have its own group of die hard players (Like on this forum) who will play it for many years I am sure.

But tbh if you enjoy tailored raiding, testing your limits on your play styles, or serious PVP this game is just terrible in every single regard.

If you enjoy questing, completeing pointless jumping quests, pretending you ARE your pixel, or chatting in a city, then this game is all about you!

[Ender4000]

12.4 million accounts at its max is peanuts compared to some games. It's niche because computer games themselves are niche. Console games have become mainstream by comparison.

I think the problem is you are misusing the term niche. Niche doesn't just mean small, it means aimed specifically at a small subsection of a market. A hardcore PvP MMO is a niche title, WoW simply is not. People from all walks of life and every portion of the gaming market enjoy WoW. All kinds of gamers play PC games, the PC isn't a niche market, it is just a smaller market than consoles.