Jh

Isn't the Island (or Isle) of Dawn the Vanguard starting island?

I CALL PLAGIARISM, I DO

/s, I'm a fan and no-one's heard of Vanguard.

SWTOR's ship droid was pretty funny.

I'm a serial guild-creator. In Rift and TOR I've built 2 120+ person guilds, and every time left for greener pastures, handing over control. Recruiting, and levelling together is fun for me, but logging on 2 nights a week to raid and manage the guild bank is not. Leave that to the others I say, off to GW2 I go.

I would like to see more story at endgame. For example the option to continue with a single player story (perhaps one shared between all classes, if they can't afford to continue all 8) on off-nights when you're not raiding.

See, I enjoy raiding, but the reason I quit TOR wasn't really because of the tired mechanics or poor graphics (other games have those too), it was because the story ended at endgame.

More characters, more adventure, less boredom/repetition and I'll be back.

@BigAndShiny
To clarify: Sure, gold selling was going on before/ in every MMO, but by making it official, many more people will do it.

I think the big news for me was Guild Wars 2's microtransactions leak.

Selling loot boxes?
Selling keys for ingame chests you pick up in the world?
Encouraging you to buy crystals, sell them, and then buy anything you want from the auction house?

Thats frankly disgusting imho, and nothing like the 'B2P with optional levelling boosts/cosmetic items' they suggested. This model is worse than LOTRO or DDO or AOC(At least there they dont sell the best gear). AND here you pay full box price as well.

@BigAndShiny

I want to add that the best 'stories' I've taken from other MMOs are ones with other people, about endgame wipes, or world events, or joking around on ventrilo. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't forget the genre. Its called mmoRPG. Role Playing Game.

And the role most people want to play is that of a hero. period.

People like being the hero. They don't want to have to be one of the top 20 players on the server to become one, and this genre would never get anywhere if that was the case. Sure its great if you have an amazing imagination and build a personality and 500 stories ingame with your amazing RP guild, but for everyone else, they log on for a few hours now and then and want to be a hero. They want to save the world.

You are advocating making most people not be heroes. Let them be the chefs, the dishwashers, the traders of the universe. Maybe thats what you want, but for the rest of us, we have normal everyday lives. The reason millions play games is because every day, they explore new worlds, meet interesting characters (written by people who actually studied how to write stories, not just decided to write fanfic in their spare time) and save the universe.

I play games to have fun. So lets not scrap developer made stories. Howabout we make all MMOs B2P, and just play them until we finish the story, then come back when they bring out expansions/dlc? NO grind, no boring endgame.

1.7 million is very nice. However im not sure if they can keep those kind of numbers, especially with a number of high profile releases this year.
BW needs to focus on STORY not raiding, if it wants to maintain subs.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.