I'm with you on this. I always find myself back in GW after a few months of trying another game. I hope the same is true for GW2. I'm glad to see some tidbits coming out. Gives me hope.

I often remind myself that Massively is just a blog site. And like most blog sites, it is just people at home who read something on the web and either post it exactly, paraphrase the content and post it, or write their opinion about the content and post it.

There is a difference between blogging and news reporting. I know it says "Daily News about MMOs" at on top, but that is not used to mean this is a true news site. I wish it was, I soooo want exclusives and real interviews.

But, assuming that AOL is getting the money here and they are paying their bloggers very little, if any, and the bloggers likely have other jobs to go to every day - then I would say Massively does a great job. When I remind myself that these guys are just bloggers, not reporters, you can't expect much more.


Now, if anyone wants to point me to a site that does true reporting on MMOs. You know, sends their staff to actual game HQs on a regular basis to find the real news. Like if I were editor for a news site like that, I would have sent a person to NetDevil the day I heard Jumpgate was delayed without a new release date to interview someone in person. When Cryptic announced microtransactions on top of subscriptions, I would have also sent a person to their offices, in person, to ask for more details. There is always something about a reporter who camps out at your office, wining and dining the staff, in order to get the real good that is so different from just writing about something that someone already wrote about elsewhere.

I wouldn't! That was part of the reason I loved GW - pay once, play as much as you like!

Personally, I too wouldn't mind a small sub for GW2. One of the reasons Guild Wars failed from a PvE standpoint is that it was built as a PvP game and therefore started out with a PvP business model. The pay once, play forever model for GW was created with the though that most players would eventually transition to PvP and they would not have to add PvE content that often, if ever. That, as we know, didn't play out as Anet had planned it, and they decided to start releasing new campaigns twice a year, which was destined to fall apart (like it did) and the money you spent on buying new expansions was hardly any less than a subscription. With its current direction, GW2 would benefit well from a small sub. A sub would keep the servers from sucking less, and give the developers more resources to create and properly test new content (something that didn't really happen in GW, see Nightfall). Some people have speculated that GW2 might go with an item shop system, similar to the things Anet has added to GW recently, but a sub would be more consistent flow of money, and the chances that an item shop might unbalance the game (even in the smallest of ways) would not bode well with the few competitive PvPers GW has left.