A small package to ArenaNet?

1st Official Post
    • Official Post

    Hello everybody!

    Over the last few days I've been thinking about sending a small package to ArenaNet with some gifts from our little community.
    I've thought about sending some specialities from my country (Belgium.. some pralines perhaps ;)) - I'm certain they'll like those.

    I'd like to ask the opinion of all of you on this and perhaps we can raise our donation meter a bit to pay for the shipping as well as our gift.
    The easiest thing to do is sending a box of chocolates of about 1.5kg (it costs around €40 and contains about 100 pralines) . That leaves us with about 500 grammes, in which I'd like to put letters and posts from us all thanking ArenaNet for the great game they've made with Guild Wars 1. Memories, great moments, screenshots... submit it all!

    That way, we an show ArenaNet that we as a community are grateful with the game they've made as well as give them some sweets. We haven't made it that easy for them over the last few months and we might not all agree with what ArenaNet is doing with Guild Wars 2, but this is a way that we can try to thank them for the game.
    (Btw, I will add a note that everybody who worked on GW1 should get a chocolate first ;). And we'll need a picture of Josh Foreman eating his. That guy rocks.)

    So what do you say?

    The costs would be:

    • Chocolates: € 40
    • Shipping: € 26.10

    That would make about €67 that we should raise as a community to do this.
    In the case that we won't reach the amount, I'll simply send them a Holidays card instead.

    Kevin

    Hi there! I'm the Guild Wars Legacy admin, feel free to contact me if you've got issues.

    :ass: Inquisitor Karinda :der: Sunspear Elke :mes:Librarian Amber

    obey.jpg

    • Official Post

    I can understand where you are coming from.
    On one hand you have the company, Areanet, that made one of the best games out there, ...as well as gw2...and on the other hand not many of the folks who had a hand in working on that game are still around.
    On one hand you have gw2--and the folks that have created it, continue to focus ALL efforts on it, etc working at the same company that had a great team who made gw--most of whom have moved on, leaving almost no one there who even knows what gw is let alone why it was such a great game....and they are linked since the company owns both (but continues to use all resources to work on gw2).....

    am I getting close?

    The day they take care of the people who spent thousands of hours and hundred of €/$ in they products and stop take them for morons, I'll thank all the people who worked hard on this game.

    Until that, i don't see the point to offer something to a company who doesn't care about their players.

    • Official Post

    I can certianly understand both sides here...wanting to send some good fuzzy thoughts to those are are currently running our game, and those wondering why we want to since the folks that cared so much for the game have left the company.

    I like my fence and will continue to sit upon it (also quite broke right now, both physically and literal--and for the same reason :P)

    I read this when it was posted but didn't have anything nice to say. Now that the thread has sort of taken off, I'll throw my hat in:

    I'd rather send individual packages to any GW devs we can locate. I don't have good feelings towards the whole of ArenaNet. I just get sad thinking about the GW->GW2 transition and I can't feel good about any nice gesture towards ANet as a whole until they show us a little something.

    Is the motivation behind this idea to get them to pay attention to GW again? Honest question here.

    Other than that, I'm finding it difficult to see a valid reason to send anything to Anet. They'll get the chocolates, eat them (possibly taking pics doing so) then go back to working on the over priced train wreck that is GW2. That's been made clear even by this very forum.

    That in and of itself, makes it very hard to get people motivated imo. We're being honest here and Anet only does things to profit. Anything people feel that was done above and beyond was nothing more than a business decision. That's neither good nor bad... just business.

    So sure, it's easy enough to take up a collection and buy the chocolates but I feel it's the equivalent of sending them to your ex, who's already moved on to another person and has no intention of looking back. They just don't really mean anything, and nothing good would come of it.

    I'll make it clear that I feel the intent was good hearted, but maybe not worth the effort? Do any of them even bother to look at this site?

    Edited once, last by Jayson (November 18, 2016 at 10:20 AM).

    • Official Post
    Quote from Jayson


    Is the motivation behind this idea to get them to pay attention to GW again? Honest question here.

    Other than that, I'm finding it difficult to see a valid reason to send anything to Anet. They'll get the chocolates, eat them (possibly taking pics doing so) then go back to working on the over priced train wreck that is GW2. That's been made clear even by this very forum.

    That in and of itself, makes it very hard to get people motivated imo. We're being honest here and Anet only does things to profit. Anything people feel that was done above and beyond was nothing more than a business decision. That's neither good nor bad... just business.

    So sure, it's easy enough to take up a collection and buy the chocolates but I feel it's the equivalent of sending them to your ex, who's already moved on to another person and has no intention of looking back. They just don't really mean anything, and nothing good would come of it.

    I'll make it clear that I feel the intent was good hearted, but maybe not worth the effort? Do any of them even bother to look at this site?

    ArenaNet is quite aware of Guild Wars Legacy and I have no doubts that they look at our site - in fact, months ago I have contacted ArenaNet and we're in their fansite lists/relations.

    I have reasons to believe that they haven't forgotten about us, believe me. I can't really say anything and I have absolutely no information about what's in store for Guild Wars.
    Call it a underbelly-feeling. But if we treat ArenaNet with respect, we'll get respect back. ;)

    I think that what bothers me the most it's that there this no good or advantage that will come out of this in any circumstance as possible and thinking or desiring otherwise is really really wishful thinking.

    Call me an "utilitarian" for giving emphasis on the "Costs vs Benefits" even in such smaller matters as this, but to be honest like any other user pointed out they will probably take a picture with it to deliver a good PR and "fan-service" but as soon as the photo camera turns down the chocolate will probably go directly to the trash bin.

    Since 2007-2014 I was struggling to accept that we haven't been forsaken. I didn't want to accept it because Guild Wars meant a lot to me (it was by far the best MMORPG that I have played - and I had played lots of them believe me) it gave me greatest enjoyful moments of gaming since my toddler years especially in PvP where I had fun the most. But in time I came to realize what most people concluded several years before me, Guild Wars didn't got it's servers shot down because it didn't cost a penny to maintain the servers alive and doing so before 2012 would give a extremely prejudice propaganda out there.

    Therefore for them we actually don't exist since the game isn't profitable and for them we should take for damn granted that this game is still alive and kicking as they intended to portray in several former statements before . Even Joe Kimmes that was supposedly to be the guy of maintenance doesn't actually do anything that we are aware of. As far as we know he just scratch balls all day long ( with all due respect).

    So after all that being said I don't quite believe that it's "justifiable" even this little gesture for them.

    Nevertheless if we were to give that compliment to anyone I would endorse to be sent to Patrick Wyatt and Jeff Strain thanking them for the great game they had made, and maybe, just maybe, ask them for a spiritual successor, lol. But for Mike O Brien and the gang?! Fuck no! I believe you could get your ass kicked by saying something like that.

    Edited once, last by Sadness (November 18, 2016 at 10:12 PM).

    • Official Post

    why do people demonize ArenaNet so much, I feel a lot of people take for granted the fact that they even keep guild wars running, a factor that other NCSoft published titles have not been so fortunate about.

    GW2 != GW1 that is obvious. However, GW1 is dated, and "in need of a facelift" is an understatement. To be fair I do not think GW1's price model was even built to even be able to maintain itself, it was a garage project by some ex-blizzard employees for the longest time. In the end, they'd have to be churning out campaigns like they were, and I am sure that in itself is a reason they decided to go a completely different direction. I wasn't fond of GW2 either, but I wouldn't be so quick to throw them into the role of the bad guy.

    If someone has the addresses for Jeff Strain and Pat Wyatt I'm sure we would want to give a gift to them as well. Anyone have that info? ...

    Dwadwa "Take care"? Like putting an active exploit/anti-bot team on GW1? Define what you want from them. In the end I feel after the 205 banwaves they just want us all to sit over here and shut up with how most of the community acted.

    • Official Post
    Quote from AJayson


    Well it's nice to know they at least know of the forums.

    And without saying anything specific, what's the reason behind your feelings that they haven't forgotten about us? I know that's a hard question to answer without giving details, but at least try. :P

    It's nearly impossible to say the reason behind those feelings, but I would ask you all to trust us on this. There is a good relationship between Legacy and Arenanet. It goes way past them just being aware of us. It could even be described as a partnership (at a stretch) because there are plans. Exciting plans which you will all love. Don't worry - we're retaining our independence. Our independence is one of the founding principles of Legacy.

    But we can't say more.

    Also, we're trying to build bridges here, not burn them down. They do read this, so let's not give too much negativity here. Let's face it - how many other fan sites have a good relationship with them? We have a golden chance to achieve something. Don't blow it for us!

    Max

    Quote from K A O S Theory

    Dwadwa "Take care"? Like putting an active exploit/anti-bot team on GW1? Define what you want from them. In the end I feel after the 205 banwaves they just want us all to sit over here and shut up with how most of the community acted.


    Do I really need to explain my thought ? Yes I'm still mad at Anet for what they did / didn't do this summer, but my last 5 years Arenanet experience tells me enough about their policy about the players.

    GW1 is not maintained blablabla so I'll take two GW2 examples. When you launch a new game, bugs happen, errors are commited, players exploit them., it's the life.
    You don't ban 40k players the first week because you made a mistake somewhere and forgot some 0 (well, maybe the accounts bought after ban payed the time spent to fix the bug).
    You don't ban player using a Logitech G15 and tell them after that "hey secure your account, don't give your login to the first guy you meet in the street".
    More generally, you don't take your player base, the people who make you live, for retards only good to spend more money in your company.

    You said GW1 != GW2. I agree, but it's the same company. If you send something to them, I'm pretty sure nobody from GW1 team will receive it. If you find the people who gambled on this adventure, i'll be happy to thank them for all these years.

    Edit : after reading Max' post, I won't change my mind or suppress myself because they may read this.
    Edit 2 : after looking at my emails, the G15 problem was a ban for botting and next turned into a hack problem

    Edited once, last by Dwadwa (November 19, 2016 at 10:31 AM).

    • Official Post

    In general, I'm really glad Guild Wars 1 is still online and being maintained. Yes, it's not getting new content, but we have known this for years. We've had the live team, which never was intended to actually make content. We got that as a gift from ArenaNet, without it costing anything to us.
    People tend to forget that.
    They have been working actively on GW1 for as long as they could during the development of GW2. And yes, I still want to see those chapters that were planned, but they're never coming I fear. But we have gotten so much from them for free, which other companies would never have given away for free.

    I've played many MMORPG's in my time, and most of them have been pulled offline for years now (might be because I have a kinda special taste): Dungeon Runners, The Chronicles of Spellborn, ArchLord. None of those games, save TCoS, could capture me as well as Guild Wars can. That's why I have been playing it and still play it daily. But it's really rare to see a game that's nearing it's 12th birthday still being run and even being maintained. We all didn't expect updates this year, but we got one that fixed an issue that was in the game for years - and it was a proper fix. That was a long time in the making I guess, since you don't whip that kind of stuff up in a month.

    People should realize that with almost every other company in the world, GW1 would have already been sunset. Don't even doubt about that.
    And that's why I propose sending them those treats: to thank them. For the game they've made, but also the game they're still running after all these years. Yes, a lot of people from the GW1 era have left, but many of them are still working at ArenaNet on GW2: Joshua Foreman, Gaile Gray, Izzy, Mike Zadorojny, Tirzah Bauer, Joe Kimmes, ... I have only named a few, but still quite a lot of them are at ArenaNet.
    It's also a nice way to, as Max said it, build bridges. I mean, not much positive news (about ArenaNet) has come out from us as a community over the last years, which is completely understandable.
    But what if we try to improve our standing a bit? It might not do that much, or even anything, but it can only improve and I think that's something that all of us want.
    And believe me, they won't throw away real Belgian chocolates ;).

    About my feelings I expressed earlier, I have to agree with Max. It's nearly impossible for me to say anything about this. It's something that will be revealed later once we can.
    But I can say that they have done enough to make me feel that we still matter.
    Things have gotten both me and Max (and others) excited, so you know it has to be good ;).

    I can appreciate you having to keep quiet on whatever information you have, but try to look at it from the other side. Whatever it is you know... we don't. And I don't think the majority of us intend to be rude or to burn bridges but frustration does that.

    It's hard to have the same enthusiasm we used to when we lost out on the Elona portion of GW Beyond, the Ranger and Paragon skill updates, as well as and rest of the Lunatic Court storyline. All for a game that is literally nothing like the original so many of us loved. Old news, I know.

    @K A O S Theory I don't think we need to be thankful for them keeping the game running.
    They're the ones who tied the HoM to it in the hopes to generate sales for their new game. If GW stops being profitable or useful to them? They'll close it pretty fast. Nothing personal, just business and it would suck but that's life and we move on.

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    Quote from Jayson


    I can appreciate you having to keep quiet on whatever information you have, but try to look at it from the other side. Whatever it is you know... we don't. And I don't think the majority of us intend to be rude or to burn bridges but frustration does that.

    It's hard to have the same enthusiasm we used to when we lost out on the Elona portion of GW Beyond, the Ranger and Paragon skill updates, as well as and rest of the Lunatic Court storyline. All for a game that is literally nothing like the original so many of us loved. Old news, I know.

    @K A O S Theory I don't think we need to be thankful for them keeping the game running.
    They're the ones who tied the HoM to it in the hopes to generate sales for their new game. If GW stops being profitable or useful to them? They'll close it pretty fast. Nothing personal, just business and it would suck but that's life and we move on.

    What we know has nothing to do with the game or plans for the game. We only know Legacy-related things.
    I can't really say more than that. We literally know as much as you guys about the plans for the game.

    The big issue is that they've said they wanted to do those things, and as such, we were kinda expecting them. In the case that they didn't talk about it, people wouldn't complain about that so much.
    However, this is completely normal and is why ArenaNet now has a "we don't talk about anything unless we ship it in a week" attitude for GW2. Which kinda looks like the attitude that they had for GW1...
    GW1 had it's share of cancelled projects as well, like the Guild Vault which never saw the light of day; The Xunlai Market, Ahmtur Arena. But except the Vault, we officially don't know anything about these, they never talked about them.
    Look at it from the other side: we did get War in Kryta, Hearts of the North and Winds of Change, which in total is quite a huge amount of content we got for free. I literally can't say that I know a company that created such a ton of high quality content and released it completely for free in a triple-A game, especially an MMORPG.
    We can still be thankful for that. It's not like just any company would have done that completely for free.

    And I actually got excited for the Hall of Monuments and I think it is a very good addition to EotN. When they talked about adding the HoM to GW1, they literally just started development of GW2.
    Back then, they didn't know that the game would turn out to be completely different and that GW1 players wouldn't really like it. That was when they were even just prototyping things.
    So yes, they added the Hall of Monuments to boost sales in a way, but rather to give us GW1 players something extra in GW2. It took years before we knew what we would be getting, and that's for a good reason: they didn't really know themselves.
    The skins that we get in GW2 for our HoM-points are mostly GW1 references. You can only get the Fiery Dragon Sword in this way.
    I'm not trying to talk things good here, but I'm trying to put things into perspective. Game development isn't easy - things change a lot during building the game (note, I can relate to this but in other ways, I'm a programmer myself).

    Was I dissapointed when GW2 came out? Yes and no. It never replaced GW1, but I think nearly nothing can replace it. It's so special, unqiue and there's nothing like it. Is GW2 a good game? Yes, if you cut it loose from it's GW1 roots. The biggest dissapointment for me in GW2 was that the lore was minimal. I liked the wall of texts in GW1, the quests which gave you so much detail.
    I liked that when you did a mission you would return to the area around it to do quests to broaden the story. I really loved that, dynamic events are too limited for that.
    I much prefer the skill system in GW1, the replayable missions in GW1, hard mode, the gameplay, the story... GW2 is a good game on it's own, it's just not a good successor for GW1.

    But enough about that and time to end my rant - ArenaNet didn't make all the perfect choices, but no company ever did. I'm just glad we're in a position to keep playing our dear game with no clear signs of it being shutdown.

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    Quote from Jayson


    If GW stops being profitable or useful to them? They'll close it pretty fast. Nothing personal, just business and it would suck but that's life and we move on.

    I'm not affiliated with arena-net in any way but with what they HAVE come out with, I can be very confident in saying that the GW1 servers will close when ArenaNet dies. Why? Because their server architecture is very similar to the two games, and because GW1 takes minimal amount of resources compared to GW2. Because of this they can easily just piggyback any GW1 instances open out of the servers for GW2. In short, I am pretty sure that GW1 is alive now in large part to GW2.

    Its easy to call ArenaNet a single entity, however there are many people with many different opinions and positions in the company. Yes a good chunk of their GW2 employees have probably never even played GW1. Yes their network security team has had a bad rep for mass bans before. Yes their support team was outsourced which allowed for very mediocre service. But realize that there are good people there, even to this day.

    Also, I think most people know, whether you want to admit it or not, that most of the 2015 bans were warranted, whether they got their accounts back or not.

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    Quote from K A O S Theory

    I'm not affiliated with arena-net in any way but with what they HAVE come out with, I can be very confident in saying that the GW1 servers will close when ArenaNet dies. Why? Because their server architecture is very similar to the two games, and because GW1 takes minimal amount of resources compared to GW2. Because of this they can easily just piggyback any GW1 instances open out of the servers for GW2. In short, I am pretty sure that GW1 is alive now in large part to GW2.

    Its easy to call ArenaNet a single entity, however there are many people with many different opinions and positions in the company. Yes a good chunk of their GW2 employees have probably never even played GW1. Yes their network security team has had a bad rep for mass bans before. Yes their support team was outsourced which allowed for very mediocre service. But realize that there are good people there, even to this day.

    Also, I think most people know, whether you want to admit it or not, that most of the 2015 bans were warranted, whether they got their accounts back or not.


    A fun fact: after the Gaile hack, they brought the servers down for Guild Wars but not Guild Wars 2.
    Guild Wars 2 kept on running perfectly, but the entire integration was blown: you lost all your HoM points and titles and the God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals title as well.
    Which means that Guild Wars 2 doesn't really need GW1 to keep on running, but it would take quite a lot of work and resources to decouple them.
    I think it's way easier for them to just let GW1 run... and they might still earn a bit from it too.

    Back to the OP, I'd happily donate a fiver(£5) to this good cause as I'm one of those strange beasts who loves both games and has had years of enjoyment from them.
    Kevin,pm me as to how you'd like the money sent (if you're still doing this).

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    Quote from korrel


    Back to the OP, I'd happily donate a fiver(£5) to this good cause as I'm one of those strange beasts who loves both games and has had years of enjoyment from them.
    Kevin,pm me as to how you'd like the money sent (if you're still doing this).

    You can use the "Donate" tab on top (below the logo, next to Recent Activity).
    That will open up the donation screen :)

    • Official Post
    Quote from Jayson


    Well it's nice to know they at least know of the forums.

    And without saying anything specific, what's the reason behind your feelings that they haven't forgotten about us? I know that's a hard question to answer without giving details, but at least try. :P

    And I'm now able to lift the veil only a little bit...
    Follow us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/guildwarslegacy/), I might drop some hints there in the following days.

    Everything will be made clear on the 15th of December, if everything goes according to plan...
    I just hope everyone will like what we've been working on ;).

    Late reply as I just joined the forum (used to be Bristlebane on old forum).
    While it's a nice gesture to send Anet a "forget-me-not" appreciation, we have to remember something. Anet is not the Anet that made Guild Wars, most of the team is gone.

    In my opinion, we would need a bolder plan. Something along the line when using kickstarter to create a new Star Trek series using a lot of the original actors (another story).
    Point is, appreciation should go to the original developers that made it happen. Ultimately even raising money on kickstarter or indigo to get (most) of the orginal team together to work on Guild Wars again with Anet's blessing. They already expressed that it was getting prohibitly harder to add new contents to the game, campaigns in particular. In my opinion a "remastered" Guild Wars would have been better. Something that could work with current servers, or perhaps a prequel. Taking all the experiences from the old days, avoiding mistakes that only can be avoided when doing things fresh while still keeping the spirit of the original game alive. With enough settings to allow older computers to run the game on lower settings, while high settings should cater to the ones with more modern hardware.

    /Lexx (Bristlebane)