Soooooo that Guild Wars 2 BWE...

[sct]

It's this weekend and I will be vanishing for 60 hours while I drink mountain dew and stuff Cheetos down my throat. (I have a huge selection of socks in different sizes ready as well)

Who else is playing this weekend? :toot:

[Niavmai]

I am~. Human Mesmer will be my first roll.

[sct]

Going Necromancer because they are amazing.

[hoho]

Got the stuff as well but I'm not really sure if/how much I get to play it. Got plans for Friday+Saturday with GF and considering I entirely skipped the D3 open weekend in favor of playing around with the updated 1.2.5 mods I wouldn't be surprised if I end up doing the same with GW2.

[freakachu]

I am super pumped for GW2. I will so be there. I plan on rolling mesmer both for the BWE and launch.

[jakj]

I'm worried about this game, honestly: I keep hearing mixed messages. I hear that it has completion tracking on each map segment, and then I hear that quest events are controlled by who does them when and it might not even happen that an event gets down to a certain point to allow you to do that. I hear that events scale to the number of people participating, and then I hear there are events that scale down only to a certain point, so if the area becomes unpopular, it becomes unplayable.

So yeah...waiting to see whether this game will be worth bothering with for me. I have no intention of spending money on -another- game that ends up having content rendered impossible or useless because of the whims of the short-attention-span kiddies.

[freakachu]

I'm worried about this game, honestly: I keep hearing mixed messages. I hear that it has completion tracking on each map segment, and then I hear that quest events are controlled by who does them when and it might not even happen that an event gets down to a certain point to allow you to do that. I hear that events scale to the number of people participating, and then I hear there are events that scale down only to a certain point, so if the area becomes unpopular, it becomes unplayable.

So yeah...waiting to see whether this game will be worth bothering with for me. I have no intention of spending money on -another- game that ends up having content rendered impossible or useless because of the whims of the short-attention-span kiddies.

completion tracking: it's amount explored, IIRC. there's also a tracking for skill point challenges which are static and always available as far as I know. the stuff that is changing is the dynamic events and such, which is not tracked

scaling: there are only a few events that have a minimum number of players, and these are large world bosses that only spawn after an event chain is pushed all the way down a given path. all the rest scale down to 1 player, and if no one is in a zone the bosses don't spawn. additionally, because of level scaling there will be incentive for high level players to come back to even low level zones when a big event or boss is up, because they still get high level loot from it.

[Niavmai]

I keep re-running the launcher, just to make sure I have all the files completely updated in time for the servers to come up, so I can reserve my names. e.e

[jakj]

I keep re-running the launcher, just to make sure I have all the files completely updated in time for the servers to come up, so I can reserve my names. e.e

Beta names don't carry over into release. All you're doing is costing a good company unnecessary money.

[Niavmai]

Don't care, Beta names are important too. :3

[sct]

Beta names don't carry over into release. All you're doing is costing a good company unnecessary money.

This "good company" recommended to repeatedly start the client from now until the BWE starts so that you are constantly up-to-date. I have been doing it also since it seems there is a new patch every couple hours.

e: everyone here also going sea of sorrows?

[Niavmai]

This "good company" recommended to repeatedly start the client from now until the BWE starts so that you are constantly up-to-date. I have been doing it also since it seems there is a new patch every couple hours.

e: everyone here also going sea of sorrows?

I was a bit torn between Sea of Sorrows or Yak's Bend, but I figured Yak would probably be flooded with yogs fans, so not a very good idea.

[jakj]

This "good company" recommended to repeatedly start the client from now until the BWE starts so that you are constantly up-to-date.

Wow, really? Um. They are really going all-out with the good-will PR, aren't they?

On the one hand, this actually increases my respect of and interest in them. On the other hand, it makes me worry even more that this model won't be sustainable in the long-term.

One-time purchase, cosmetic-only microtransactions other than large expansion content, and encouraging flagrant usage of bandwidth... I really do worry. I honestly can't think of any games that use this model that don't include pay-for-power microtransactions other than League of Legends. That's not a lot of security for a for-profit entity in a capitalist environment.

That said, if they succeed with this model and make this game profitable in the long term while still not adding in serious pay-to-win elements, it will be a giant fluttering flag in the faces of every other company, and we might even see more games go down this route in the future. And that would be very good for us, the consumers.

[sct]

Well look at Guild Wars 1. It did just fine with the same model.

[jakj]

Well look at Guild Wars 1. It did just fine with the same model.

With nowhere near the initial investment expenditure nor the number of players. It also was not a true MMO, so it required far less processor power, bandwidth, and drive space. With more simultaneous characters in an area, every bit of data each one of them generates has to be sent to every other person, and that's an exponential growth.

[sct]

True. I can only guess they have thought out the long term plans. NCSoft is pouring a lot of money into ANet to make this a wild success. There must be some epic business plan.

[Niavmai]

Keep in mind, their ToS includes a portion that says "if we need to switch to a subscription model, we will."

So there's that to keep in mind.

[sct]

Oh god we are all going to be FUCKED by ANet. :tinfoil:

[Niavmai]

Oh god we are all going to be FUCKED by ANet.

I'm actually perfectly fine with the idea. If they have their one-time purchase for a few months, it's significantly less of a risk for people to purchase the game, and try it out. More people coming in, and then they introduce the sub method, if they like it enough, they'll stick around. It increases their launch numbers, and potentially their staying power.

[sct]

The community rage though. It would be a tidal wave of hate.

[Niavmai]

The community rage though. It would be a tidal wave of hate.

Those people aren't the kind of people who deserve to be acknowledged anyways. People with no understanding of a business model, probably have shitty opinions to begin with.

[hoho]

With more simultaneous characters in an area' date=' every bit of data each one of them generates has to be sent to every other person, and that's an exponential growth.[/quote']Yeah but as long as they don't implement something as stupid as Wintergrasp or other confined pvp regions where hundreds of people spam their stuff it should be fine.

I once did a bit of napkin math about wow. If my shadowpriest were grouped with 4 DK's in a 25-man raid and those DKs + myself let our pets loose during bloodlust my spriest alone would generate around 300 spell event (damage, healing, mana) messages per second on average to be sent to everyone close by (300*24 players = ~7200 events). Add in doubledotting mobs and things get even more fun. Obviously once the pets died things calmed down to somewhere around "only" 50-70-ish. Most other specs/classes generate a fraction of that and are nowhere near as spammy.

[freakachu]

I doubt they will move to a sub model. the thing to realize is that the cash shop currency(gems) can be sold for in-game gold. that means people will buy the gems even if there's nothing they want to buy in the shop with them, just to sell them for gold. on top of that, they're basically doing a F2P MMO with an initial buy in. people will waste untold amounts of dollars on xp/magic find boosters. mark my words.

[sct]

I am sure they will do just fine financially. Ill probably dump more money than necessary into the game because that's what I do.

[jakj]

It's a waste only if they don't enjoy it. Better than five bucks on a coffee quickly gone.