Guild Wars is going on automated life support. Any thoughts on advancing the story on the Nameless Lich, Evennia’s disappearance, or Beyond Elona are now officially quashed. It would be nice if any of these are answered, but given ArenaNet’s penchant for keeping things unanswered most of it will likely go in their internal wiki version of Warehouse 13 (which is ironically being taken off life support).
My fondest memory is still in the early day when my old international guild beat the Hall of Monuments. This was the first and only time I ever went there and won. It was amazing enough that we beat it given the tough competition and our middling synergy, but I received a Celestial Sigil. The other thing I really remember was the War in Kryta. It might have been a dead cat bounce in community activity, but it was a lot of fun. The community was really alive with that content.
In some ways its hard to believe that Guild Wars is being eternally paused. What is the life of an MMO? It’s hard to say within the hopeful view of World of Warcraft and EVE Online reigning. Lord of the Rings Online seems to feel more and more like the elves of the Third Age looking to the West, but it is still alive and kicking out content. Are we almost through a significant portion of the life of Guild Wars 2? Bits of news like Guild Wars 1 seem to bring out a time for reflection.
I’d love to hear some more stories people remember about their time in Guild Wars.
–Ravious
Hey, Ravious
I’ve actually been playing a fair amount of Guild Wars lately, which was spurred on by two things: the latest Free Weekend of GW2 (which I still haven’t managed to purchase yet) and the Automation announcement. I have been wanting to play through the game as a ritualist for a while, but kept putting it off to play through content in other games. No more. I intend to finish all three campaigns and the expansion before the inevitable announcement that they’re shutting down the servers.
Why inevitable? Because the population of the game has dropped significantly. I imagine GW1 isn’t producing enough income at this point to warrant new content. Now, these are just guesses on my part, but some outposts in the game tell the tale quite well, Particularly Kamadan. Whereas before GW2 was launched, Kamadan used to be several districts deep in people, all trying to buy and sell their wares. Most days now see Kamadan have a full District 1 with a smattering of people, occasionally, in District 2. District 3 didn’t see any use until the server problems for GW2 happened the other day.
As for my favorite memory of the game, that has to go to Urgoz Warren. A friend of mine and I decided to wanted to beat that dungeon. It took us several tries and I had to tweak my build more than a few times to make it happen. But we finally did. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in the game yet. Just the two of us and our heroes taking down what was supposed to be a dungeon run by a full group of players. Good times.
Well that’s the thing. They aren’t shutting things down. I’ve heard throughout GW1’s age that running it is extremely cheap given how the servers work. They’d also have to give huge notice for people languishing on their Hall of Monuments.
You’re right. They aren’t shutting them down. Yet. I’m not complaining, mind you. I still need to get 3 more points in my HoM myself, so, even though I was looking forward to the proposed Beyond content, I still feel that the game is in a good stopping place and still feels complete.
I just see a day coming, probably in a few years yet, where the population drops off enough that keeping the servers running wont be viable.
That’s “penchant”, not “pension”. Suspect auto-correct sabotaged your spelling! :-)
Nope. I’m just dumb. Thanks for the kind assumptions though. :)
What with GW1 being so intensely campaign-story-based and having NPC-AI support baked in from the start, it’s a much better candidate than most MMOs to run indefinitely on an automated model. Indeed it might be possible, should the servers ever need to be shut down, to pass to a standalone offline model. With a co-op option that would replicate most of my own GW1 experience.
I’ve only played through the original Prophecies about two and a half times and about three-quarters of Eye of the North once but I own all the campaigns and I’d like to get around to playing through them someday. Chances are it won’t happen now, though. Too much else on offer.
It started during the Factions Beta, but my favorite experience in GW1 was playing through Factions, Nightfall, and EotN with my Ritualist, mostly as a Minion Bomber. Oh, pre-nerf Jagged Bones, how we shall miss you… Unfortunately, the MM in GW2 just isn’t the same experience, not even when compared to the Prophesies MM.
> that running it is extremely cheap
But if those people don’t make any money for Arena.Net, it might still be to expensive. Plus, people playing GW1 don’t spend Euros in GW2.
Incoming money is not the only asset. There’s also the goodwill and pride of having another game in the stable. It might hurt the brand/company more to shut it down than to operate as a small loss.
NCSoft does not care about the goodwill of its consumers, only about doing things they can present as advantageous to their Korean stockholders.
I am personally holding out for, if not a return to the continent, then at least some answers that might fill the same niche as a ‘Beyond Elona’ quest chain, but in GW2. I don’t see the opening of Cantha in GW2 happening any time soon if at all, but Elona is much closer and pretty much on the map already. I’d like to know more about what happened there after our characters’ times, plus I know a LOT of players would be more than happy to defeat Palawa Joko after all these years.