How was 2019 in my eyes and how grateful I am for it (with a link you don't want to miss)

[Arden.7480]

First of all I want to thank all of the people that make this place better, and want this game to improve sending constructive, lovely posts. <3

 

I want to take time and talk about all the positive things I've experienced this year, and there were plenty of heartwarming moments this year I'll never forget.

 

2019, that soon will come to pass, began with an amazing episode All or Nothing that affected so many people so deeply with its heartbreaking finale. And to see we all united to honor Aurene with so many art, music and comments was so beautiful, we needed this unity few months later, when once again we showed so beautifully support to Arenanet with #Love4Arenanet hashtag, spreading love everywhere, even though we were as scared as all the people at Anet that lost their jobs, but we knew we had to be strong.

 

This year I started regularly playing World versus World and meeting wonderful, helpful and like-minded people in there has been one of the most amazing thing I've experienced in GW2. Later this year Warclaw was added and seeing so many helpful commanders and players too that took their time helping all the PvErs how things work in WvW was amazing.

 

War Eternal was a big finale for Season 4 and it indeed felt like it, the cinematics really carried the episode. Dragonflight music theme - with updated Aurene's Fate motifs made it whole unforgettable. I enjoyed Skyscale collections, but it was a little bit a pain to grind those 250 currencies. :D

 

Throughout the whole Season 4 I could hear, feel and see how much love goes into cinematics, maps, music, sound design, art - those small things that make a whole picture beautiful.

 

 

**Today I read Jennifer Sheurle's (the Lead Designer) post about those small things unnoticeable by the players (because they can't physically see them), but those people at Arenanet really CARE and are passionate about Guild Wars 2, those people who spend time to make something beautiful working hard to not only feed their families and pay the bills, but most importantly to ENTERTAIN us all, doesn't matter when GW2 ends and if it's near, THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE WHO LOVE THIS GAME JUST LIKE THE PLAYERS!**

 

**LINK YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS** (https://www.polygon.com/2019/12/26/20976550/developers-players-video-games-empathy)

 

I could actually see that on August 30th that was marked by the community a sad day and turned the whole hard work into trash even before we even could see ANY fruit of it.

 

**This whole situation really challenged my empathy towards the players and the developers and I came into conclusion there are indeed liabilities, but if we focus on them alone, we will become a community of passionate fanatics seeing just vacancies that will eventually lead the whole hard work of the developers into nothing.**

 

Self-fulfilling prophecy it is called in psychology.

 

 

So I look forward to this challenging 2020 for Guild Wars 2, that hopefully will hit the mark and will not be as bad as we all may be thinking. :)

 

I believe in you all and wish the best 2020 possible no matter if you are a Hardcore or Casual <3

 

I want to finish my post with a quote from Path of Fire's "Small Victory"

 

_So a toast. Many challenges lie ahead. But may every battle lead to victory. And every victory to celebration._

 

Love ya <3

 

 

[Randulf.7614]

The problem with that linked article (which is entirely missable for anyone who didn't read it by the way) is that the players are crying out for devs to talk and interact with them and Anet just do not want to. We have successive Game Director who sit in a bubble of mystery because they also does not seemingly wish to engage with the community which is highly unusual for an mmo. When they have shared contexts and explanations from their pov, it has always been a productive and receptive experience. So why not continue doing it? Why are game modes abandoned?

 

We don't need an official secrets act for the game.

 

Naturally I condemn anyone who uses personal, vile attacks. They have no place in this world and this community. Anyone attacking a dev with threats etc can leave this game and go elsewhere.

 

I am no stranger to mmos - ive been enjoying them since Anarchy Online in 2003 and I have never seen this wide a gap between the devs and a community.

 

Are players jaded and unfair? Yes of course and the community is not blameless by any means, but the devs dearly love their work and whilst questionable direction from the top has obscured it, I don't think anyone who is a stable human being can believe the devs do not pour themselves into the game. But it will always be overshadowed whilst Anet continue to cultivate the us vs them mentality in an era where social media is ensuring the moaners are given a voice. If they instill the positivity, it will spread.

 

As for 2019, well it is easy to slate it for the year given the dreadful end to LS4, but there are plenty of positives

 

- a new festival

- The skyscale mount was a game changer

- I at least love the wvw mount

- The kralk battle in ep5 was a marvellous feat of gameplay

- The map in war eternal was superb and offset prob the worst story arc climax yet

- The prologue was a universal success from the story to the concert

- Ep1 was poor, but still had some highlights with atmosphere and the strike missions

- We got some great new qol features (albeit the biggie needs a redo)

 

2020 isn't really a year with much to look forward to if the devs do not start engaging with us and not ignoring the communication issue and hoping itll go away. We need communication, bigger episodes (imo - Ep1 was unacceptable), vastly better storytelling after what happened with LS4 (one of the worst rpg stories ever) and a focus back on all modes - raids, fractals, wvw and so forth. Designing new stuff is great, but not at the expense of existing modes. That almost never pans out well.

 

But....I AM looking forward to Drakkar. I really want that to be one hell of a fight. The game needs and deserves it.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

This year was a tough one. Plenty of disasters and problems. A lot of people left the game, and the gust of fire and acid was a couple of times just too much to withstand.

 

We now have a group of active players who wish that this game will die asap, some hope for GW3. That is both funny and shocking at once. Like boarding a cruise-ship in the hope it will sink in the ocean, so you can **maybe** board a more luxurious one that **maybe** comes by. Two maybe's with a rational chance lower than winning the local lottery.

 

The roadmap at the end of the year was a good start. I hope to see more of these in the future, more frequently and another leap forward in terms of communication with the player-base. They improved a lot over the past year, but we are still clue-less about the most important topics.

 

My greatest fear for 2020 is that balance regarding power-creep. I am quite worried regarding my own class. We have been subject to a couple of rather questionable decisions in 2019. As many others. Everyone has an own opinion about justice and balance. There will be tears, no doubt about that. But no matter how I think about this, I end up with belly-aches.

 

My greatest hope for 2020 is the Living World. The Icebrood Saga (LS5) started nicely. The festivals and fillers are good as well. They keep improving those. There should be enough content to keep us busy until they finish their project. Whatever it will be, I am looking forward to that as well. But for the moment, Living World it is. Same as @"Randulf.7614", I am quite excited about Drakkar. Expecting something like the Twisted Marionette, Triple Trouble or Tequatl. Strike Missions work good as well. But I hope they continue with releasing real raids as well. Competitive? I do not expect anything, but every update is welcome.

 

The game and its community are still alive and active. I do not know what the future will be or how long Guildwars 2 will last. But I am happy to be part of this community. Let us hope for a good new year and a fresh start. There will be mistakes, dramas and disasters as well. But it has been that way every year.

 

 

 

[ugrakarma.9416]

> @"Arden.7480" said:

> This year I started regularly playing World versus World and meeting wonderful, helpful and like-minded people in there has been one of the most amazing thing I've experienced in GW2. Later this year Warclaw was added and seeing so many helpful commanders and players too that took their time helping all the PvErs how things work in WvW was amazing.

 

Anet should realize the abandoned WvW is what extend the lifetime of the franchise, of my 5 years of guild wars 2, i took 2 years on WvW only, WvW and PvP is what saved me from left this game long time ago.

 

Enough of naive theories and lets face the truth: PvP / WvW is the real end-game to retain player-base, much more efficient than "Raids". Also when a player get bored of pvp modes, is still very easy to jump back in Pve and vice-versa..... a bored raider/speedrunner will not return to "lazy" pve modes, will at max put a LFG selling raid kills.

 

WvW its a amazing universe a part in itself, its sad seems this game mode left to the ruins. The WvW commanders, organized WvW guilds, random pugmanders, the small group of dedicated havockers/roamers are the heroes we need, not the ones we deserve. R.I.P. **Tidal Legion** R.I.P **Tsym** from Sea of Sorrows, i miss u guys very much.

[lokh.2695]

It's sad to write these lines...

 

2019 was the year I disconnected from the game. Sure I play daily and I enjoy the game and its mechanics a lot and much to the same degree I have been since release. But 2019 was the year I gave up on the games future, the year I stopped believing anything ANet says or comes forward with. It was the year I stopped defending ANets decisions for myself and in public. Maybe it's natural to let go of things aftera given amount of time and maybe I'm just in the game long enough to have seen all of its ups and downs and, in the end, to become tired of the devs, NCsoft, the marketing ttricks, the coorperate talk and all that. I know, that all the doom and gloom that fills the community are just one part of it and that the game itself is still very good and solid but 2019 definitely was the year I "woke up" if you want to call it that way. The devs saying "we're looking into it" or "it's definitely not totally of the table at the moment" just doesn't do it for me anymore and the things that actually do happen, like obscure promotions that don't ever seem to actually work, monetization getting more and more shoved into our faces, abandonment of content rather than developement and so forth, has left me unable to further speak in favor of ANet or NCsoft. As I said, the game's still great but everything behind it is dragging it into an early grave.

 

For 2020 I wish more than anything that ANet proves me wrong.

[ugrakarma.9416]

> @"HnRkLnXqZ.1870" said:

> We now have a group of active players who wish that this game will die asap, some hope for GW3. That is both funny and shocking at once. Like boarding a cruise-ship in the hope it will sink in the ocean, so you can **maybe** board a more luxurious one that **maybe** comes by. Two maybe's with a rational chance lower than winning the local lottery.

 

The crew that permanently needs a "hype" is a part responsible for this situation, and Anet for heard these people. Theyre the same crew that supported dumb ideas like unpeatable content like LS1. Those want a "new thing" for the sake of have a "new thing" cant complain if the game goins in the **heavy monetization** direction. Want a GW3 asap? Then dont complain about paid build templates and stuff like that.

 

Want a luxury ship to save them? they do not complain that the save-boats of the sinking ship become paid to be used.

 

> My greatest fear for 2020 is that balance regarding power-creep. I am quite worried regarding my own class. We have been subject to a couple of rather questionable decisions in 2019. As many others. Everyone has an own opinion about justice and balance. There will be tears, no doubt about that. But no matter how I think about this, I end up with belly-aches.

 

In fact this should not even be a concern, this is a adaptation to another previous problem which is the long time they take to fix problems ..., a broken balance patch would be no problem if they didn't take 3 months to fix it. In the end, players understand that it is impossible to get a balance patch ok at first, but the worry is about the game is broken for 3 months + .... Not to mention they horrible habit of dropping balance patch in the middle of a season..........

[coso.9173]

It was a nice year. Nothing groundbreaking, but I've had fun playing the game, which at the end is what counts to me.

Got burned while doing the skyscale collection. Then came back, then left again when grothmar was released and came back a few weeks later. Nowim playing this game and trying to get my HoT masteries complete, but it takes a looooong time.

[Arden.7480]

> @"coso.9173" said:

> It was a nice year. Nothing groundbreaking, but I've had fun playing the game, which at the end is what counts to me.

> Got burned while doing the skyscale collection. Then came back, then left again when grothmar was released and came back a few weeks later. Nowim playing this game and trying to get my HoT masteries complete, but it takes a looooong time.

 

Good luck and have fun, if you have fun doing something, it goes much easier :)

[Arden.7480]

Friends, can we keep this discussion less about problems and more about some things you enjoyed this year? ;)

 

Old year wasn't the best, but that's why we have new year, so we can try to reset our minds and go into a new adventure :)

 

Winter is coming after all :)

[Ghetx.1752]

I wish santa visited me and gave me Foefire Power hammer for my scrapper.

 

Happy holidays,especially new year.