Sorry in advance. We’re about to get economics all over your Guild Wars 2.
A good number of players (rumored to be around a couple hundred) received bans over Wintersday due to a crafting and salvaging process that ArenaNet labeled an exploit. Since it is no longer possible to perform this process, we’ll post it here. The process goes like this:
1. Craft a Snowflake Mithril Earring of Winter, which consumes 1 glob of ectoplasm, 6 mitril ingots, and 1 pristine snowflake for materials
2. Salvage the earring with a Black Lion Salvage Kit, which will return your brilliant snowflake guaranteed plus some mithril ore and has a good chance of giving you 1-3 ecto.
3. Use the brilliant snowflake that was returned to you to craft another Mithril Earring of Winter.
4. Rinse, repeat.
The end result? You were able to essentially manufacture ectoplasm. ArenaNet called it an exploit, stopped the process, and dropped the banhammer on those who, they said, were using it heavily. Naturally, the official forums have exploded with dissent. There are people who asked if this a bug or some sort of exploit, but did not get a clear answer until the bans were issued. Many, myself included, are wondering if it’s even worth trying to make money off of playing the market and crafting, since it appears to potentially be a bannable offense. Maybe. Sometimes.
Before we go any further, it’s time for an economics lesson.
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As you may or may not know, fellow Guild Warriors, there’s trouble on the farm with ArenaNet’s publisher NCsoft. Another NCsoft title, the MMO City of Heroes, has been shut down entirely, and now there are reports that restructuring and realignment are taking place at NCsoft’s offices in Seattle, which includes layoffs. NCsoft as a whole has seen a 12% decline in revenue not too long ago. In other parts of the video gaming press, there’s been a lot of questions raised as to how this is affecting ArenaNet and if Guild Wars 1 or 2 are in danger. We here at Guild Wars Insider have put together a part news, part editorial, part Written in Red to put these fears to rest.
Let’s put this in a bit of perspective, first. For one, NCsoft Seattle, also known as NCwest, is not ArenaNet. ArenaNet is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NCsoft that happens to be in the Seattle area, and is insulated from the rest of NCsoft in just about ever aspect except publishing and distribution. The Guild Wars franchise is also the second largest piece of intellectual property NCsoft owns, behind only the big-in-Asia Lineage series. The almost 9 million in combined sales for Guild Wars 1 and 2 dwarfs all of the recently shut down NCsoft games, such as the aforementioned City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, or even the North American Lineage servers. To put it another way, Guild Wars 2 and ArenaNet are in no danger because they’re wildly successful. Head of Global Community Martin Kerstein confirmed in a forum post that the NCwest layoffs are not affecting ArenaNet and that ArenaNet is actually still hiring.
Any speculation regarding the demise of Guild Wars 2 is simply unfounded because it just doesn’t make business sense. The absolute worst case scenario is that ArenaNet would either be spun off or sold off, and even then that chance is so miniscule that, at this point, it’s not even worth speculating. ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2 are the proverbial lynchpins of NCsoft’s North American and European operations. They’re safe. There is no reason to assume that the trouble at NCsoft will affect ArenaNet.
It may be more correct to question the future of the Guild Wars 1 servers. It’s a seven year old game and it has a sequel. We as a community shouldn’t be surprised when the day finally comes. At the same time, the way Guild Wars 1 was designed is radically different than other recently shut down NCsoft games, and that will go a long way towards lengthening the life of the game. For one, it’s not an MMO. ArenaNet uses the term Competitive/Cooperative Online Role Playing Game (CORPG). With how instanced GW1 is, it would really be quite similar to the Diablo series in structure if it weren’t for the very convincing elements of towns, outposts, and an interface that makes it look like an MMO. It probably has similar server requirements to the Diablo games as well, which means a tiny fraction of your average MMO. Couple this with the fact that the game is extremely bandwidth efficient (did you know GW1 is playable on 56k dial-up?) and you could probably move the Guild Wars 1 server software over to the Guild Wars 2 server cloud and never even notice a difference. Obviously this is all just speculation, but the technical side of Guild Wars 1 is truly a masterpiece, and I think that will go a long way in extending the life of the game.
In summary, Tyria is safe from the trouble at NCsoft. No matter what happens, ArenaNet is a very, very good game studio and they have the sales to prove it. You never throw that kind of thing away.
Hello my GuildWarsInsider friends, hopefully you’ve recovered from the weekend where you no doubt stomped on many a karka, and ran the Fractals of the Mists until you reached level 9000. Here at GWI we took the the chance to stream the event for all those that couldn’t participate, and today I’d like to share my thoughts. What did ArenaNet do good and bad? Was it a success? How will the results of this event effect the game going forward?
Hit up the break to find out all the buttery details. (*Note these are my opinions/experience on the events and do not reflect the opinions of all the writers here at GWI)
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Immersion vs RP: What’s the Difference?
I’d love to say this is an age old question, but it’s not. The reason for this is that people have been RPing for ages but only recently have people began to talk about immersion as a separate play style. Some people love this and some hate it, but I think it’s necessary because, though related, they really are two separate things. That is to say, when I RP I’m definitely doing something different than when I immersion play.
Anyone who’s ever really gotten into a single player RPG will know about immersion play. You’re not really RPing, you’re becoming your character. And I think the real difference is in how much you decide.
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If you’ve had the chance to participate in structured PvP or World versus World, then you’re probably already familiar with the various methods of crowd control in the game. Each of them is perfect for disrupting your opponent, and each of them can mean the difference between victory and waiting to respawn. If you’ve been on the wrong side of some, then you already know what I mean.
But what if there was a way to ignore most of these effects? What if you could shrug them off, making your enemy waste his most precious abilities?
Sound good? Then read on!
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