Lots of buzz this week over Guild Wars 2’s preview post for the year, as to be expected. Three million copies sold, for starters, which is pretty dang impressive. Still fun watching people try to come up with bendy logic to get around that number and declare the game is failing or what have you. If three million copies sold isn’t a slight indicator of success, then your standards are just impossibly high.
There’s a lot of discussion in this post about upcoming features that I don’t personally care about. Someone else will, undoubtedly, but not me. WvW, guesting, PvP, leaderboards, Fractal dungeon improvements… yeah, I’m good, thanks.
However, I was encouraged by the mention of more guild-related activities. I don’t get how undersupported guilds are in so many MMOs, particularly when developers are always saying how they’re the social glue that holds together the game. So stuff to do together as a guild? Awesome.
I’m most excited about some changes that are coming to the achievement system that encourages people to get out into the world and engage in daily activities. GW2 already delivers reward chests for players who complete daily, monthly, or zone-wide achievements, but it looks like they’re going to take it a step further and open up a store that uses achievement points as currency. Great idea. I’ve kind of wanted to see this ever since World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online started leveraging achievements in a big way. It sounds like the new system will be more flexible, with a choice between what activities you want to do to constitute your daily achievement.
I’m not feeling a particular lack of anything in Guild Wars 2 right now, save a solid housing system (seriously, ArenaNet, we know you could do so good in this area) and a much better wardrobe outfitter. The world is still a genuine pleasure to explore, and I seriously cannot wait to finish map completion so I can explore it all over again on an alt. Maybe I should push harder to finish up, I’ve really been taking my time as of late.
Anyway, I’m in general approval of this state of the game post. It’s nothing that made me stand up and cheer, but there’s enough good stuff there that has me feeling like the game is steering a good course and will continue to do so.
Bio Break 
Sounds cool. I’ll have to read the SotG when I have proper access the site. We’re discussing on Mercy Gaming’s TS the purpose of the achievement points, which for now there really isn’t any other than bragging rights. If they’re going to be used as currency, I’m down with that.
3 million copies sold is impressive for a single player game however I won’t, personally, measure the success of a MMO solely based on the number of copies sold. So your claim of GW2’s success (if that’s what you are saying) is also based on bendy logic too!
If anyone is interested, I measure the success of a MMO based on player retention and I have no idea if GW2 is success or not. 🙂
Hmm It would be based on player retention if the game was a subscription MMO but it isn’t so ………. do players matter or is it regarding revenue and turnover (it is a business afterall)
You can actually view GW 2 in two ways:
Box sales
and more importantly for ArenaNet – gem sales of existing and returning players
I personally have spent about a fair bit on gems to buy dyes etc and will probably continue to do so as I feel the cash shop is done pretty damn well. Im currently playing LoTRO alongside GW 2 and Turbine are in my opinion shocking in comparison.
Success is a relative thing and can be defined multiple ways. What qualifies as success for one thing can be a failure for another.
For example, I completely disagree with Pitrelli on the gem shop. I feel that it is a laughable offering. Full of meaningless, worthless tripe and traps for the naive.
Whereas I rather liked LotROs cash shop, apart from the terrible interface and the lack of skins for people who weren’t a) robe wearers or b) elves.
If you are interested in *finacial* success only, then count box sales (in a B2P game). I can see that financial success is important for fans of GW2, because it means new content and other forms of continued support for the game.
But as a gamer I am more interested if a game and its mechanics are well received by players. And this is not measured with box sales, only with retention. You can sell a lot of boxes on hype and IP alone, cf. SWTOR.