Summertime Sadness : GW2

I very much agree with UltrViolet, who, when he briefly reviewed the latest Living World episode,  wrote

“See all previous comments regarding Guild Wars 2. There’s no need to write a new post. Nothing has changed. Whatever they spent extra time to work on is not evident to me.” 

Exactly so.

On the other hand, Jeromai, who very much knows what he's talking about when it comes to GW2, takes a different view :

"There’s a lot of what seem like under-the-hood tweaks to improve storytelling: from better NPC AI that form formations, in-instance object changes and scripting and zone phasing that are mostly remarkably used well in the service of telling a story, possibly over-fancy tweaks to the UI to indicate new status conditions..."

I have to confess I missed all of that. ANet did allude to some background changes when they were warning that the latest episode would be late:

"...we had an opportunity to make some adjustments to how we approach developing each episode..."

but in keeping with their usual hyper-cautious attitude to secrecy they gave not the slightest hint of what those changes or adjustments might be.

Well, they probably need to do something. Or maybe they don't. Who can tell? Megaserver technology makes it impossible to assess how well GW2 is doing by any of the usual means. You can't count the servers or make any meaningful judgment on  how busy the maps are. World vs World should be more quantifiable but that game mode is currently in such a deep, prolonged malaise pending the supposed root-and-branch revamp, that it's pointless even trying to take its temperature.

NCsoft’s first quarter 2018 report has GW2 performing tolerably well as part of the overall portfolio. I did initially interpret the table that had ANet's game neck-and-neck with Aion as evidence of a serious slide in profitability but in fact it turns out to be mainly due to a surge in monies coming in from Aion.

"Every other game saw a slight dip...with the exception of Aion which saw a big jump which NCSoft attributed to a “change in monetization scheme”"

All the same, the feeling in-game is one of drift. I find it more than peculiar that ArenaNet, with its 300+ employees (as reported in 2016) appears to struggle to produce four quarterly content updates, each of which provides  - at best - a couple of weeks of fresh entertainment for a very casual player, plus a full expansion only every two to three years.

Many - I would say most - moderately successful MMORPGs do considerably better than that. Even those that don't do a significantly better job at providing bread and circuses to keep the players entertained between major releases. ANet don't even seem to feel they need to work up a full year's calendar of holidays.

Jeromai mentions an upswell of feeling on reddit concerning GW2's lack of a genuine end-game, a problem that's ironically compounded by the game's horizontal sprawl:

"On the GW2 Reddit, there are threads bemoaning the lack of an endgame right alongside threads in which new and returning players profess their utter overwhelm and confusion with what to do next."

It's a problem ANet appear no nearer to solving than they were six years ago, when they trumpeted their mold-breaking manifesto. Over the running time of the game so far many solutions have been trialed and tried. Some have stuck, most have faded. The result is an ill-fitting, ill-seeming mish-mash of old and new.

Raids and fractals sit in their silos alongside the failing, fading original alternative game modes, sPvP and WvW. GW2's goal of becoming a popular platform for professional eSports is long forgotten. The supposed end-game equivalent, realm versus realm competetion in The Mists via what was once known as WorldvsWorldvsWorld languishes in deep decline, played by few,  cared about by fewer. A plan to revitalize WvW's fortunes lies somewhere in the future, maybe next year, maybe never.

Meanwhile the game limps along on crutches of cosmetics and collections. In the absence of anything comparable to vertical or linear progression the developers lean heavily on increasingly time-consuming busywork, leading to increasingly purposeless rewards.

What once seemed an outrageous shopping list for the original Legendary weapons now looks like a trip to the corner store in comparison to the requirements of the new batch. Jeromai considers his options:

"I’ve just come off the really long term goal of making a second set of legendary armor (heavy and light now done, medium to go… at some point far far into the future); am still eyeing Astralaria with temptation but utter trepidation (second gen HoT legendaries are intensive); and settled on the more medium term goal of repeating a easier first gen legendary..."

When we reach a point where players are working on their third set of "end game " armor and further "end game " weapons (all of which offer no practical character improvement other than convenience) just to have something to do, it's clear that we have a game whose appeal is going to be limited.

There are, it's true, a lot of players who like that sort of thing. Collecting all the things because all the things! has long been a recognized behavior. It's my feeling, however, that such an audience is dwarfed by the demographic that likes to see their characters become more powerful, more effective, better. Not just better-looking and easier to dress.

GW2 has become the poster child for that old saw "be careful what you wish for". We wanted an MMORPG with no vertical progression and no end game and this is what we got. I don't believe such a game has to look like that but this one does and I'm the poor sod stuck playing it - although I do at least play it my own way, most of the time.

I was, for a long while, invested in the narrative. It reels and lurches like a drunken sailor in a force ten but I've always found it entertaining and still do. In this, as in so many things, I seem to be out of step with the current audience. In game or out, few seem to care any more. Time was when each new twist and turn in the plot would spawn frenzied speculation in map chat and on the forums. These days all people seem interested in is where to go farm on the new map and how quickly they can get the mount.

I'm not going to say my time with GW2 is drawing to a close. The open-ended payment model means a GW2 player can never really quit, only take a break. I'm playing less, though. Much less. These days I just do my dailies and my Krait on each of three accounts, then I log out and play something else.

That's becoming an established pattern. With the new LS chapter I played a couple of sessions on the story but once I finished I haven't been back to explore the new map. Mrs Bhagpuss hasn't even logged in since the update. WvW is in freefall. Neither of us do much there right now. Maybe the proposed conversion to an Alliance system will change that, maybe not.

I suspect everyone who cares has already left and most won't come back, or rather they will, but they won't stay long. Old names crop up all the time but few hang around. Nothing much has changed over the last four or five years to make anyone who stopped playing feel they made a bad choice.

Then again, it is summer. People have other things to do. Maybe that's all it is. With World of Warcraft gearing up for an expansion launch a lot of MMOs will be retrenching, hunkering down to wait out the storm. Maybe come the autumn things will look different.

Oh, who am I kidding? In Tyria nothing ever looks any different and never will. Not now Scarlet's dead. I miss her. If only this could be true. Just the first bit, obviously.

Enough whining. Maybe I should go look at the new map after all. I might find something interesting. Someone did. Don't click on this if you don't want spoilers. If you've finished the storyline, though, seriously, CLICK ON THIS!

I'm not even kidding.