Not to speak ill of anyone, but given the latest storm in the Reddit threads and a corresponding effort to increase red name posts in the forums delineating clearly what’s being currently worked on – even if it’s taken as bad news for a very vocal subset of the GW2 community – the winds of change for increased communication seem to be finally blowing.
Or at least, a small breeze is being felt.
Also, I think I’ve figured out where the stereotypical raider subset – you know, the elitist exclusive entitled bastard type who won’t ever shut up about wanting MORE challenge and MORE content for the only part of the game they think is worth playing, happily putting down others who don’t play their way or share the exact same interests and everpresently whining on forums instead of just gracefully bowing out for a while and playing another game – went in GW2.
Time will tell if they are too exclusive to come together to form a proper community. Their first challenge: Putting what they want into bullet points for communication.
Let’s see if they can come to a consensus agreement on what they would like, or if they’ll fail it just as badly as the concept of a united roleplaying community.
In other news, TIL that blue doritos point straight at charr butts.
(Yep, fell headlong into that goldsink too.)
Why I Game 
What about the stereotypical casual soloer subset? – you know, the snide, insulting, entitled bastard type who won’t ever shut up about wanting ALL content just for them and content for the only part of the game they think is worth playing, definitely NO group content for those nasty people who like to play together, happily putting down others who don’t play their way or share the exact same interests and everpresently whining on forums any time a non-solo activity is made instead of just gracefully bowing out since they mistakenly joined a MMO and playing single player game.
See what I did there? Works both ways you know. Some of the nastiest people I’ve seen are those who are incredibly anti group content.
GW2 is an MMO. It’s not a surprise people are going to want new content to play together with their friends and guild. And challenge is something that has been present in games.. for like… forever. 😉 Games usually manage to offer a light course for those who just want to play easily through a story and then something harder for those who enjoy playing through a challenge. I don’t see why both “sides” can’t be catered to and I certainly don’t see the point in villifying different playing styles.
The vast majority of the feedback has been respectful and I’m getting seriously tiring of seeing it labelled as whining or crying just because they disagree with it. There are many adults making impassioned responses about the game they love and they don’t need to be mocked or insulted for it.
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There’s plenty of them too, on the GW2 forums, all busy attacking the other type and not having any fun at all in-game.
Meanwhile, the more inclusive-minded are having a blast wandering the open world by themselves, occasionally running into another person, or hanging out in Orr harvesting wood and chatting socially, or gathering together to do Teq and Wurm.
I’m not attacking group or solo content. I do both.
I’m attacking exclusivity and negativity and toxicity, of which I’ve been really quite tired of reading on both Reddit and the official forums in the past few days. These emotions are all infectious – the more I read, the snider I get.
It really does so happen, imo, that the dungeon subset harbors a lot of the middling average whom would be happier doing raids in other games, who think that following a meta build makes them better than those that don’t, and who proceed to cover the forums in complaints rather than constructivity.
On the other hand, I have nothing but respect for the experts who spend time theorycrafting, posting and sharing their findings with the community, and offering to spend time teaching others.
There are differences, and I tend to get very frustrated with those who do not teach, yet presume to think themselves better than others.
If you -are- better than others, you are capable of teaching others to attain the skills / knowledge that you’ve learned/mastered.
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The problem, as I was posting about a short while back, is that once you filter out the extremely active post-launch hype machine you realize that GW2 has added less content in its first two years than almost any comparably successful MMO managed over the same timescale. If people are getting whiny and demanding it’s because they are hungry and hungry people are often ill-tempered.
What we have had over two years is a diet of scraps. Mostly it’s been nutrition-free fast food like holiday events, achievements and 90% of LS1. The infrequent gobbets of genuine sustenance just serve to emphasize how unsatisfying the rest of the fare has been.
I don’t actually have a problem with Buy-to-Play MMO that lives off constant tweaks to its Cash Shop offer and a regular flow of in-game fluff. That’s how many unambitious MMOs operate. What gets my goat (if I had a goat. Why don’t we have goats? I demand goats!) is the extreme disparity between the energy and activity displayed by the marketing department and the lassitude and inertia of the development of the game itself.
GW2 is, fortunately, a brilliantly designed entertainment with enormous re-usability. I have ten level 80s now, I’m working on an 11th and I will almost certainly buy a couple of extra character slots while Evon (why didn’t they listen to him?) Gnashblade has them on offer. Even I can only level up through the same content so many times though. Somewhere around character fifteen or twenty I’m going to have had enough.
By all accounts ANet has a massive staff – I’ve heard 300+. If that’s true, have you got any idea what they might be working on? Other companies seem to manage to produce two or three times the content with a fraction of the people.
Also, I don’t follow Redditt all that often nor do I visit the forums daily but I do pop into both a few times most weeks. I really haven’t seen much of the negativity you describe. I go to Redditt for factual information when I can’t see it on the Wiki and I often find very helpful advice. I go to the official forums for Lore and LS discussions and I’ve read a ton of good, and good-spirited, stuff there from which I’ve learned a lot. Maybe we’re just choosing to read different threads.
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