State of the game... 2013

I didn't bother to read your wall, but do you know that there is already a thread on this on the first forum page that you could have used to post in?

Reading before you post.. FTW

It's actually a fairly good opinion piece on the state of the game... particularly since its coming from the point of view of a self admitted cash shopper. But yeah Sylen is right... there is already a thread started with nearly an identical heading.

Although I'm one of those people who've openly said this game was sinking down the toilet bowl, I won't be quite as harsh as I have been in the past, because PWE is actually releasing content and trying to accomplish at least something.

Unfortunately, that something is being a cash hoarder.

How many games has PWE churned out since the Raging Tide expansion? Why is it that they're able to input so much money into these new games, and yet do little to nothing for their TITLE GAME? Right now we're looking at PWE flashing Dungeons and Dragons at us. Really? Perfect World Entertainment can throw a new game at us, but you can't fix the balance and content of Perfect World International?

Would it not wrap into the common sense category, that making a game new and interesting for both high and low level players would make the game last longer, and therefore raise your profits? Why is it your developers are so insistent on making unbalanced choices that are slowly killing gameplay?

But that's not the only issue here.

Think about how many things there are to actually do that moves you in real progress in the game in this day and age of the game. You can probably count them on your fingers.

1:) BH
2:) FC or PV
3:) Farming (this includes, but is not limited to: Warsong, Lunar, TT, or other mats.)
4:) Morai
5:) PvP
6:) Territory Wars
7:) Nation Wars
8:) Quests (this includes GBQ.)
9:) Level alts
10:) High-rolling (Generally, opening packs, merching, or other economy related things.)

That's it. Most of that stuff is reserved or highly favors the high end of the level pool. Where the heck is the CONTENT for the low levels, to draw new people in, and make them interested in your product?

There is none. Every expansion, they throw in a couple of new bits of gear, new races, new locations and quests, (all which mean diddly-squat in the big picture, since EVERYBODY has forgotten the storyline to this MMO) and decide that's enough for them, and it simply isn't. You have to entertain and draw in new people in order to bring in new money.

If you treat your customers well, they will note of this, tell others, and bring in more money. If you don't, there are people like me who tell them to stay the f*ck away from your company to protect their own sanity.

My suggestions are thus: Balance your game, update the old content, and produce better low and high level content. That's really all you need. This game is pretty good when you consider the whole picture--it's those three major elements that need addressing.

I understand much of this has been said b4 but just like 2 add that I agree with the sentiments expressed by the thread's author. I too am a cash shopper, mostly b/c I am addicted to fash b:chuckle but not to the tune of the thousands I see others put in the game. Played for over 3 yrs, had a 8 mth break a while back, under $1k invested over that time across three accounts.

It has been well over a year since people have quested on Archosaur server and you never see squads formed purely for grinding, not even for zhen; even fc is mostly heads' room being sold rather than squads going through.

The game is also becoming increasingly PvP with NW and you're cursed as some ridiculous testosterone driven expletive if you don't PvP. But I ask, what else is there to play (tried a few in my break)?

it was not just the quest well not in lost city.

it was like say someone ks u pk the sht out of him and move on.

or you see some ppl harasing someoen u could help.

ofc lots of higher lv pking lower lv but from my experience those kinda pker lv slowly and tended to get pked a LOT and they would end up quiting.


that was fun and much fun.


its not comming back.

From my experience of playing PWI since beta, I've noticed a trend of people leaving and then coming back for new content/expansions. Unfortunately, most of the people that come back, stay for a very brief period. During 2008-2009, the game experienced a large player base. Everything was new to players, the game well fairly balanced, and everything was new and challenging for players.

That was until things like packs came out. A large thread on the forums about packs was started, and PWE promised that they would be taken out. Weeks later, they were back by popular demand. A lot of shady business moves (constant sales), pushed gold from 90k per to about 250-300k per. A thread was created about this, and Xarfox (A GM who was active during this time on the forums), made a post about it. He said they were monitoring gold prices and that Jolly Jones would fix it by putting a coin sink into the game. He lied. Not only did it not fix the gold prices, but PWE wasn't monitoring gold. It rised more and more over the following year.

Then the TB expansion was released. Sins, hypers, BHs, Nirvana gear, etc. More packs came out by "popular demand", and PWE pretended everything was great. Eatwithspoons left as a Community Manager, and posted in his blog about corruption of PWE and how poorly they treated players. Frankieraye was pushed into the community manger position. Things were pretty solid for a while, while players learned the new classes. It became apparent how OP stealth and aps was during this time, and most BMs swapped into claw build and went 5aps. 5aps became possible thanks to the cheap gear from packs, and was wanted for just about everything.

More sales, more packs, more lies. Glitching to 105, censoring names, banning innocent players, ignoring the forums, etc. It was around this time Frankie's favorite words were "soon". We still haven't got most of what that guy promised the community, and it's been years. DQ was nerfed originally in 2010, then nerfed again in late 2012. R8 and R9 fairly easy to obtain, more unbalanced gear, lies about why 11 and 12* orbs were taken out of the boutique, etc.

The state of the game nowadays isn't what one would expect. Despite everything PWE has done, a fair amount of players still play. Most players nowadays aren't new, though. The game's quest-areas (most of the map) are abandoned. Very little new players seem to be playing the game. Multi-clienting is possible, so a lot of what we see in west arch and around the map is inflated populations. The real number of active level 60+ players can be seen during events like TW, NW, and tiger events. How many still play? Probably around 1000-1500 per server, with some of the newer servers having much less. Totals of players don't really mean anything, because if those players are paying good money (which some do), the game's servers will continue.

The unfortunate thing is so many things in the game revolve around group-oriented activities. While this is fun and great, the lack of players willing to do things are minimal. Not many people do full RBs for fun, culties, etc. No one does Nirvana now. OHT maps are dead as ever. FB89 or lower is rarely done, and generally just for BHs or culti. Heaven/hell are pretty damn empty, with most players just farming herbs here and there. The starter cities are pretty bare compared to 2008-2010.

Also, we must take into account how easy leveling is nowadays, and how hard coin-making is for new/low level players. I recently created a Cleric for the lulz. Within' a few hours I had gotten to level 25. I didn't hyper, use exp orbs, use another toon, or FF. I simply just quested. The quests nowadays give more exp for lower levels, and free stuff is everywhere for exp in start cities. If I had continued, I could have made to it almost level 50 without using exp boosters. This wasn't the case during 2008-2011.

Coin is hard to make nowadays. The only ways to obtain coin without cash shopping is merchanting, BHs, Cube, farming herbs in hell/heaven, and doing events like NW/Tiger event, etc. DQ drops aren't worth anything, along with Nirvana, or farming mats. So, how does a new player actually obtain coins? It's near impossible. This should make players rely more on either quitting or spending coins. Also, TT90 stuff like TT3-1/3-2/3-3 has been amped up to make it harder for players around that level to farm it.

This is the state of the game.

Copy & pasted from the last "State of the game" thread recently.

phisyc wrote: »

And with all this shiit i cannot even take part in NW thanks to my time zone,why am i still playing this game?Just because I do not want to lose the time spent and the money i made from catshoping,nothing else holds me in this game.

You can't take the coins you made from catshopping. It's useless in other games, PWI or non, so it has no bearing on staying or leaving. Most MMOs I have eventually left, I left behind gobs of ingame currency, high ingame value items, etc. Granted they were all P2P games, but still left.

After playing PWI for almost two years, I have decided I miss P2P MMOs. Everyone had basically the same chance at everything in game, even if it was a rare drop. Do it enough times and you would.get the item. It wasn't based on a company Hell bent on focusing on the "whales" but instead, the slot players.

"how much money can we suck out of players by giving minuscule chances at high end items?".

"If we offer endgame gear that is epically better than free gear, I bet a lot will pay thousands for it"

"Now that there are people with R9(rrr) it will force most competitive people to follow and spend spend spend"

I must admit, there is little left for me to say here, much of what I would have typed has already been said by other posters so I will keep my input to only the latest updates.

I hated Morai, and other players only used it to gain the new skills. As a map its a nonsensical mess, each area being beautiful in itself but making absolutely no sense as a whole. The content for it wasn't great either, being only one quest chain and 3/4 of a dungeon (made up from 2). Most finished the map in a week and many are done farming the skills. It left a sour taste in my mouth as I realized this was the level of effort PWE was going to put into future expansions for this game, if any.

NW is a real head scratcher. Well implemented it would have actually added a great deal of longevity to the game. As a PVP arena that has a purpose and doesn't rely on TW it was actually a good addition to maintain the interests of those not involved in large scale factions. It ended up having the opposite effect though, with many people leaving the game instead of wanting to stay. Everyone knows why and there are already many threads on the topic so I won't go into it. If their goal is to force people from the game then they are further compounding their problems. As many have said, they (including myself) only keep playing because of what we have invested, not because we hold any sense of loyalty or esteem to the company. Brand loyalty is not something to be taken lightly, and PWE's brand name is not looking too good right now. Move on to Neverwinter? I think not.

Is it possible to save this game? I think so, wouldn't be too hard really, there are many out there who hold the first few years of this game in high regard. Rerturning balance, adding actual content and difficulty, while putting a cap on the power creep (or flood in this game's case) would likely cause a few of them to come back. There are several examples of game companies out there who only have one online MMO that continue to maintain a strong player base because the companies take care of them and don't try to shuttle their players off to the next game before they ruin that one too. One such company recently came out with a Kung Fu Panda expansion for their MMO which is actually older than Perfect World.

A new expansion is only a few weeks away. I wish I could say I was looking forward to it, and as a veno I kind of am. But given the recent examples I can't say I hold my expectations very high, and after I learned that the new forms would also be available in the cash shop I pretty much figured Yah, it's going to be THAT type of expansion. "Don't want to quest for your new forms? Don't want to play the game? No Problem! Just give us $$ and you'll be as good *scratch that* better than anyone who actually bothered to earn them." There in lies the core of the problem and why the game is in the state that it's in, PWE has never learned that money should enhance play, not replace it.

Technically, PWE did not make the Game Ad we cannot name. They bought Cryptic Studios, who are the ones who created it. Hopefully, it was too late for PWE to **** it up with over their current overseas management model of using packs to generate revenue.

At this point, my hope is honestly that they drive the current PW version so far into the ground, that PWI over here decides to not license it anymore. And if so, maybe the possibility of licensing PW 1 and go for a low rate subscription model and do away with all the pack sales and such. And hopefully have older content as it was, instead of the many reworks that were done. No hypers, no tokens, no packs. They could have gold at a set rate for coin conversion, to not have to change hieros around and rebalance for the removal.

But being able to play again, where the largest complaint is how overcrowded the lvl 20 Arch quests are would be nice. And where crafted 2*s and 3*s with good adds, or a similar drop from a mob, is something to be happy about.

And the sad thing is, there will not be a chance for that as long as this current license continues. Their over-all revenue from overseas has been increasing, while decreasing from lower playerbase over in china. And they are looking to a couple new games they are making, which would hopefully move them on.

And while it may seem like both could run concurrently, we all know that isn't the case. Many of the highly geared just have too much of an ego, to keep spending with the better version out. Because no matter their achievement, no one would take it seriously. Not when there would be a version out, that is completely based on skill and playing ability to a much larger extent. And without the shortcut to power, they'd eventually ragequit on the P2W version. So until it dies here enough, no hope for a better version.

1st i dont belive in p server saving the game


some do have a more balanced gear system then ours BUt the yare out geared still

i so would have a 1 star to 3 star gear with ppl crafting them then our overpowered ones

and ppl say but it took 3 hours to complete a tt

so is doing a tt in 5min much better then what are you gona do with the rest of ur missing 175min you have left


mmo at beast are most fun when u do thing together and do bosses who take time and are hard

that is also when our version was alive

if those 10 of thousen ppl dont count as in showing the game is alive

plusonepostcount wrote: »

unfortunately there isn't an influx of new players to this game whatsoever most new acc's are probably someones alt account. The game in all honesty died when bh's were introduced right after for the most part in world map died being nothing in it was worth doing anymore towards lvling up or attaining gears.Only time you see people in the map is the bots farming dq in heaven/hell as well as the lvl105 desert area with the 100+ guild base quests.Which we all know nothing is ever done about.

There isn't anything that would drive a person to try this game anymore as a new player to a new game. The lvling is all done through frost now aday's as soon as whatever toon you have gets enough coin together to buy a spot or solo big room. The geared farmed from instances is too hard to do at a proper lvl for that gear as well meaning most have to buy it from another player vendoring said gears.

This is kind of the reason I myself have never even considered going for r9 I just dont see it being a worth while investment of time and or money. Basically theres just not a good enough influx of new players to mitigate the amount of players that reach end game and leave each month and it will eventually get to a point that hosting the game is no longer profitable for the company which in turn will result in the game itself ending.

from reading u i would not recomend you to buy r9 either.

as you understand when or if u did you would feel more dumbed then anything else as i bet the game is alredy feeling easy from reading you and with r9 and then r999 u would just not do them all together cos u would not feel a thing from it.

it wont feel challenging at all and for u it woudl prolly make u ragequit so dont buy it

basecally i only hade r9 gear on my one barb but it fellt so wrong so i started playing my bro barb and made him nv based and it feelt so much better

if u wish to pk i gues r9 and r999 woudl be good to compete with the other r999

but for pve no dont buy it ull hate it

its alredy dumb enough with aps and bp u dont need it even more dumb with r9....

VKnightV - Lost City wrote: »

do company liek this really exist company that put a life value of how long a game will last.

isnt making a game to last and to be enjoyed to the fullest

it was really fun back then i even remembered when actual gm walked with player and listned to our complain and we saw them very often.

and we were thousen open thousen player back then so in all the corner of the game u woudl see ppl.

that is in my book what a living game is all about

compared to today where there almost no ppl to see i would prefer play a mmo where at least there no so much empty space cos of lacking players.

tho singel player game can never replace a real living mmo

not in the long run.

as for the duration of a game does that exist it sound almost cruel

i mean making someoen make a plan to make a game live when it just does

how can u really know i mean u cant tell ppl to love this game or hate it

ppl like diff thing and one of the thing ppl loved was this game cos it was a open map
war and quest aroudn the corner graphic was decent.

why would the devs want to kill this game it almost feel cruel.

does anybody know the real version the p2p version website i would love to see if they might have a new game in development.

Go to yahoo finance and bookmark PWRD page. It updates all current news for the company, and while most analysts are best ignored, occasionally they can figure out how to actually make charts with real information. Reading it from time to time gives you an idea why things happen the way they do.

karmelia wrote: »

PW's philosophy is to create a game, support it less and less as it grow older in order to allow more development ressources to create other games and repeat the process over and over again, and hope their current players will start playing one of their newer games.

It's not a bad way to do business as long as you are able to attract players with your newer games.

Other game companies will do the reverse. They will only develop one ar a few games, support them fully to extend their life expectancy as much as possible and bet on their players fidelity to continue to play their games and to help attract new players.

hm and what companies would those be

cos after playing since pw_my and loving how the game originally was and to see how this company turned this game to garbage i am insecure what good company who belive in there player base are.

should i look for the companys oldest game to find them or

Ive already found out how to fix everything - go read and take part in the poll in the Suggestion Box titles 'WRAITH ATTACKS"