Thursday, January 24, 2013

ArenaNet's Greatest Strength, & how it's Grow to be their Greatest Weakness


Over the past week we have seen ArenaNet make a important push to engage the community and lay out their plans for 2013. After a wintersday update that included (virtually) no permanent content, it's nice to see what they plan to add to the game lengthy term. Here's the challenge although, regardless of one or two confirmed alterations coming in the January update, it appears like most of the fantastic stuff is not hitting till February at the earliest, maybe even further. ArenaNet wooed it is fanbase into a chant of "when it is ready" before the launch of the game, however convincing them to wait months for uncomplicated features once the Guild Wars 2 gold game is out has proved a slightly harder trick to pull.

I want to be extraordinaryly clear in my intentions here. I think the roadmap laid out by ArenaNet is stupendous. I even mentioned so myself when they first started discussing it a number of days ago. The issue for me has been the complete avoidance of specifics. I respect the reality that in the event you just do not know, you just don't know. I also respect & understand how difficult a path it is to navigate in the public sphere when discussing future plans. And should you dig around for a lot of my world wide web personas before I began writing for GuildWars 2 Hub, you will find I'm a pretty staunch defender of ArenaNet & what they're doing.

So what is altered? I've been a paying client since 15 minutes after they opened the presale doors. I waited months from investing real income on the game just to get a taste of a beta weekend. Why need to I be upset that now that the game is out and I get to get pleasure from it, minus a number of features that are nonetheless a couple months away? The concern isn't in the waiting, it's in the delivery.

Before the launch of the game, it was perfectly valid for them to convey, "We don't know when the game will be coming out, so we can't tell you when all of this will be done."" Although ArenaNet set the clock for themselves after launch when they began down this monthly update cycle. The issue with this seems clear in hindsight, so permit me to Monday morning quarterback for a bit.

ArenaNet had the luxury of 6 years of soft deadlines. I'm not naive enough to think they did not have internal deadlines & goals for the production of the game. Nevertheless decided by their handling of the development & betas it appears abundantly clear that while there were ambitions, they did not have challenging deadlines. I think if the gw2 gold game had not been ready to ship on August 28th, it would not have. It was for that reason I put so much faith into ArenaNet to commence with. It was for that reason I was willing to put down income for a collector's edition before I ever even played the game. It was since I believed that if something wasn't right with the game, it wouldn't ship.

This reassurance by ArenaNet that if something wasn't outstanding adequate for them, it wasn't great sufficient for the game, was (& is) the right factor ArenaNet had to offer. It was the unofficial badge of quality to everything that they did. What has happened since launch is what has appeared to be constant fudging of that code of standards to appease a fanbase that from my perspective seemed fairly pleased. The 2 most glaring occurrences are horses that I have already beaten dead, but they're worth mentioning for the reason that I do not think they are the trigger of my recent frustration, but the symptoms of a deeper difficulty.

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