Hear, hear. I'm pretty sure there are like five OG fans left that actually enjoyed the concept of a casual open world MMO. The most bizarre thing is that Anet actually managed to take off by not competing with WoW and instead pandered to an entirely different consumer bracket.
s i g h
Yeah, it's mostly me being a pedantic prick. It just boggles my mind to fuck people over for blocking some twats. What the fuck kind of bizarro clown world bullshit is this. Imagine a room full of adults going "yeah this is fine". Breaks my mind.
Compared to pre-HoT numbers: https://i.imgur.com/Vgd7ejp.png
It's sad to see GW2 being barely able to scratch even the pre-HoT numbers of twelve month of content drought. Never mind the pre-HoT numbers during active content deployment. Took them almost ten years after their bait-and-switch.
Well. Not much to add to that now, is there. I'd have to start nitpicking to really find anything, so I pretty much agree across the board. All I can add is my personal interest on what really happened at Anet. I wonder if the ship's being run by scabs now or if it's just a valiant last effort to, as you said, against 100% shareholder interest. Did MO tell NCSoft to get fucked and pissed off? Was his departure part of a deal to not completely nuke Anet or the game from orbit, more than NCSoft did with IBS anyway? Considering that MO's hand-picked successor mysteriously vanished, his project got fucking murdered and that we now have a 25€ half-season I feel like things have gotten pretty dirty at some point. Unfair speculation: probably scabs that genuinely think they can do it better and don't mind rule over rubble. But what do I know, my speculations are barely more than fanfic.
Ah well, could've, should've, would've. RIP GW2, it delayed my departure from MMOs for ten years, heh. It'll at least keep being a small part of my breakfast routine.
You know what's the most fascinating thing? How the subreddit does not care in the slightest whatsoever. The same subreddit that threw an absolute rageboner at Mount Adoption Licenses, the 50€ box price of HoT, or Build Templates. But paying 25€ for half a season of LW? Fucking people are actually thrilled. Absolutely bizarre. Guess it's the 2023 gamer crowd, "kids these days" just never learned that games can come without a cash shop? Everyone just gave up and became a consoomer? Fuck me if I know.
We don't pay Anet, we pay NCSoft. NCSoft gives Anet a budget. NCSoft has a history of shutting down perfectly fine MMOs because they're not profitable enough, pretty sure that's what happened to GW2. Except that it's not been shut down, instead it runs on like 25% of its season 4 budget or whatever. So no, we won't get more of we pay more. And yes, the entire "mini expansion" is just recycled and repeated content ad nauseam. I can't see the design loop of "go get glowy orbs with your skyscale" anymore, it happens 25 times per event, acrpss 90% of events.
Pretty sure that's it.
Here is my take: remember City of Heroes? Has nothing to do with the codebase, I'd say. It's just NCNet now, mate. Like ActiBlizz. It's not a flesh puppt yet, took a while for Blizzard, Bioware and Co as well. But it's not going to get better anymore.
Half a season of Living World over twelve month for almost full price. Fuck me that's grim.
Genuinely just three maps and a hub. Fucking hell.
I, too, would like to have the karma of a Buddha. The last time I got kicked out of my own group was when I told someone to stop switching to higher-level Swampland. (It had Afflicted.)
Apes. Together. Strong.
Oh. Gliding back. And I thought I did the smart by gliding forward. Well, that'll ease the daily.
Yeah, it’s much more interesting that way and a curious thing that you don’t find those numbers anywhere anymore. It’s also from interest that almost the entire 2014 numbers are during a complete and utter stop of content deployment. Almost 12 month of absolute 0 content updates in favour to rush out HoT. And it still had better numbers than everything that came afterwards up to EoD.
Though it’s revenue . Squeezing more out of less players can highten the revenue as well, and Anet got nuked from orbit by NCSoft pre-EoD.