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GW2 Massivity: The Two Big Social Flaws of Guild Wars 2

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I like GOOOOOLLLLD!
This is an article written on gamespy.com you can find it here: http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/guild-wars-2/1226812p1.html

It's a very timely article in that it addresses what its like to not have a strong community in GW2. If you watched the podcast I pointed out that I think the lack of the game building guild communities is the biggest flaw. It also addresses Rux's point about needing a LFG tool and the game seriously does. Totally worth a read.

There's something off about Guild War 2's approach to socialization. You might remember that I'd worried about the strength of its community back in August. While it's since proven itself to be an outstanding MMORPG in most respects, it's bad news for a game that seems designed to favor socialization over hardcore progression that I recently met a level 61 player who didn't know he could use /s command to chat directly with other players. He'd been in numerous dynamic events and even jumped into PvP for a bit, but for him, the experience of Guild Wars 2 was no more social than speeding down a busy highway. There are problems here, and I can point to two major ones that together pose significant challenges for the continued success of ArenaNet's ambitious MMORPG.

1. Guilds Lack Cohesion

I've been in 11 guilds since I started playing Guild Wars 2. Eleven.
I've been in 11 guilds since I started playing Guild Wars 2. Eleven. That's a personal MMO record. World of Warcraft comes in second place with six, but that's only because I've played off and on for eight years now. Guild Wars 2, by contrast, has graced my hard drive for a mere three months. By and large, I've found that its guilds seem to lack the cohesion of guilds in other MMOs, which may prove disastrous for the experience of all players.

My typical experience with guilds in Guild Wars 2 goes something like this: I join up, seduced by the promise of dozens of active, social members and frequent expeditions into dungeons and PvP, only to find myself dumped into a guild chat channel where no one responds to simple chat or to my offers to help -- aside, that is, from a hopeful guild leader. This status quo maintains itself for perhaps a week, but eventually I'll open up my guild tab to find most online players representing another guild or even cavorting about on a different server. The good news is that I think I've now found a decent guild; the sad news is that my standard for "a decent guild" has declined to where all I require is that people chat and acknowledge each other's existence.


The culprit is Guild Wars 2's ostensibly attractive open-ended approach to guild membership.​
Meanwhile, I've seen guilds who transplanted from other MMORPGs that seem to be doing fine, because the bonds of kinship were already strong. What makes Guild Wars 2 fertile grounds for existing guilds, but a terrible incubator for new ones? The culprit, it would seem, is Guild Wars 2's ostensibly attractive open-ended approach to guild membership. Even though you can only "represent" one guild at a time (thereby letting their tag appear by your name and letting you access guild chat), you can join as many guilds as you want -- even across servers. It's a good idea, in theory, as it lets you flip between progression-based bands of hardasses and buddies who might be out for pure, simple fun without the drama that such guild shifts create elsewhere.

In practice, too many players use it as a "flavor of the month" feature. They join up for a couple of days and hang around, but after they encounter an ad or invitation that promises even better times, they represent the new guilds. Few new guilds get a chance to build a community in the midst of all this fickle shuffling, and consequently most seem to die as quickly as they're founded. That's got to be depressing for players like me who jumped into Guild Wars 2 alone, and I suspect we make up a huge chunk of the playerbase.

2. Guild Wars 2 Needs a Dungeon Finder

It's sad when a dungeon-finding tool is in such demand that players make entire new websites to fill the need. One even has an Android app. To my knowledge, at least, even Star Wars: The Old Republic never got that bad during its reluctant march to free-to-play and its eventual adoption of the controversial mechanic. I'm well aware that PvE in Guild Wars 2 is technically a secondary feature, but as I said in my review, it seems odd to omit a dungeon finder in a world that lets you jump between waypoints with all the ease of cutting and pasting a hyperlink.


Valuable time that could be spent on leveling alts or finishing your dailies gets wasted on begging.​
There are arguments against dungeon-finders on the grounds they hurt community, but these days, I'm not convinced that standing in the middle of Lion's Arch and begging for a group is somehow more social than queueing in a tool. If you ask for an extra group member more than once every five minutes, you're accused of spamming (and let's be honest: you kind of are). It also means that valuable time that could be spent on leveling alts or finishing your dailies gets wasted on begging. Begging isn't fun. If anything, it's worse now with Guild Wars 2's otherwise entertaining Fractals of the Mists, as its "endless" structure leaves players on different tiers of progression. These days, at least on my server, 80% of the posts in Lion's Arch chat seem composed of these messages.

It's worth noting that I'm not worried that a dungeon-finder tool will "ruin" the social experience of ArenaNet's game as it may have done with World of Warcraft. Unlike WoW's, Guild Wars 2's dungeons demand cooperation and communication on every playthrough, and that difficulty alone prevents players from slipping into a familiar trinity-based rhythm that trivializes the experience and robs the dungeons of most of their novelty and fun. Without exception, I feel like I know the players I'm with once I finish a dungeon, and I highly doubt that feeling will vanish with a group-finding tool. If ArenaNet

These aren't the only problems, of course. I could point out that the punching-bag design of Guild Wars 2's outdoor dragons yields little of the cooperative excitement of world bosses in other games, or how many dynamic events sometimes make me feel less like a member of a powerful fellowship than just another nameless sans-culotte ransacking the Tuileries. But these are secondary problems, dwarfed by the issues posed by Guild Wars 2's flighty guilds and the missing dungeon finder. Sure, a good guild will solve all these problems -- but a good guild, like most good things, is hard to find.
 
I'm optimistic about the second one getting remedied fairly soon. It'll take a fair amount of programming to get it working smoothly, but I trust it's something they're looking at intently.

The first one will take much longer, and will be developed in bits and spurts. Luckily, Arcanix is a guild that knows how to make its own fun.
 
If we didn't work so hard on making the community strong we would have had the same thing as point 1 happen to us.
 
why are some ppl so bitter about a game?? yeah it's not perfect, it can be greatly improved in some areas, I DO agree we need a LFG tool and better guild cohesion (for ppl unlucky enough not to be in [ARX])... BUT when I login I have fun, that matters right? the only thing i'd wish for is more ppl to play with.... my playtimes are odd lol
 
I believe that things will start to get better, still need to reach 80 first before i can really rant about the game. I don't want to because it hasn't given me any problems yet.
 
why are some ppl so bitter about a game?? yeah it's not perfect, it can be greatly improved in some areas, I DO agree we need a LFG tool and better guild cohesion (for ppl unlucky enough not to be in [ARX])... BUT when I login I have fun, that matters right? the only thing i'd wish for is more ppl to play with.... my playtimes are odd lol
The article didn't come across as bitter to me. More constructive and hopeful.

I can play an MMO by myself for awhile, but it starts to get boring once I'm leveled and looking for the next thing to do. IMO, MMO's are supposed to be social, otherwise there's no point in populating it with real people instead of NPCs. I can play Skyrim for that.
 
With Wintersday and the supposed MASSIVE January and February patches, I am quite excited for what's to come. At the moment, I see this as an opportunity to get in some other games though. And that's exactly what I've been doing.
 
With Wintersday and the supposed MASSIVE January and February patches, I am quite excited for what's to come. At the moment, I see this as an opportunity to get in some other games though. And that's exactly what I've been doing.
I'm starting to itch for a game with a set beginning, middle and end. I'm leaning Arkham City.
 
Yeah, read this article too and I think it hit the nail on the head. The LFG tool is really needed. I farmed TA for my set of exotics and spent WAY too much time sitting around in LA finding groups. The entire guild-life aspect of this article isn't really applicable to us since we have a really good community - although our guild chat is often a complete barren wasteland haha.

As for the bitterness, I've noticed a ton of this in reviews and forums. I think the major thing to take away from this is that a massive amount of people tried GW2 in the first place. The game wasn't only bought by MMO-enthusiasts, and I think that's where the hate came from. If you played WoW, AC, GW1, SWTOR, EQ etc, then you'll probably like GW2 - if you didn't, you'll probably find it way too open ended of a game with no real 'direction' to move in. I think the same thing happened with Diablo 3, it was (over)hyped and a ton of people bought it on principle, who probably wouldn't have fun with any dungeon crawler and/or hack-n-slash. The real proof of this is that both GW2 and Diablo 3 top most 2012 lists in terms of Most Anticipated, Most Bought, and, Biggest Dissapointment. That just tends to happen when you have ~10 million people buy it (for D3 at least) in a span of 6 months.

just my 2c.
 
why are some ppl so bitter about a game?? yeah it's not perfect, it can be greatly improved in some areas, I DO agree we need a LFG tool and better guild cohesion (for ppl unlucky enough not to be in [ARX])... BUT when I login I have fun, that matters right? the only thing i'd wish for is more ppl to play with.... my playtimes are odd lol


I agree totally with this, it's like I wrote it, lol, people get so uptight about it. They need to step back a second and realize, this game is a baby, it's brand new, they're still working out the kinks they might not have thought of, or were working on already and didn't get done before release, that's all.

I definitely can't wait for LFG tool, because sadly, my free time rarely coincides with anyone else in the guild unfortunately. *onycryy:
 
My real life is a bit absorbing, and when I'm not doing real life things the thought of grinding my brains out on a game my pc can barely run makes me want to crack my head open with a brick, so I'm a little spotty on my playtime. That said a LFG thing would be great.
 
LFG was a huge improvement to WoW, but it had some problems. First of all, the wait times were horrendous for all dps players. Half an hour was normal. Tanks had an instant invite any time they entered the line. Healers took a max of 5 minutes. Luckily, I only played tank or healer in random groups, so it was good for me.

The other problem was that random people suck at playing. Really bad. So they had to nerf everything to make it doable so the bad people wouldn't get frustrated and stop paying their 15 bucks a month. They nerfed raids the hardest and even released special "you are really bad, so here's a subpar peice of gear" epics that were earned in the newby level random gorup raids.

Fortunately, A-net does not have to pander to the masses to keep it's base of monthly subscription fees. The bad people just buy thier gear.
 
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