WoW:

Update!

• Entry into the brawler’s guild is by invitation only. Invitations can be found on the black market auction house, by invitation from somebody within the guild, and occasionally as drops from certain Horde and Alliance NPCs.

GW2:

As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.

As the occasional¹ connoisseur of a nice bottle of Schadenfreude, I must admit: this week has been delicious.

While I kind of hoped that the Blizzard folks would have stuck to their guns with the Brawler’s Guild, the original plan always seemed more informed by the source material (“The first rule of Fight Club is…”) as opposed to good top-down game design. Creating “tight knit, underground” communities by throttling access makes the non-instanced, spectator-sport aspect feasible? Sounds like double-win efficient game design… on paper. But as we all know, things that feel good conceptually have a way of not working out in practice.

Speaking of that… whoo boy, ArenaNet.

I think my favorite part of this development is seeing all the mental gymnastics. This thread on Reddit, for example, tries to turn the question around and ask “what is a gear treadmill really?” Part of the OP’s reasoning is that the proposed new tier of gear will be easier to get than, say, in WoW, where you have to contend with random drops and competition between players over what gear does drop. So… if the treadmill is slow enough, it isn’t a treadmill at all!

Seriously, at one point the OP suggested:

O… k? All I see from that quote is that there will be more stuff later. That doesn’t make it a treadmill, just another flight of stairs, if you will.

Oh to be a psychic vampire capable of feeding off this boundless optimism/denial²; I would never go without.

To be honest, I think ArenaNet’s shift is both warranted and necessary. The cessation of reasonable progression is the natural Game Over screen for me, and you run off that cliff the moment you hit 80 and load up on inexpensive Exotics from the AH. This new tier of gear both reintroduces progression and gives players a reason to play the new content more than once.

Really, it is only bad news if you hold the ArenaNet devs up to some impossible standards like:

• “We didn’t want the endgame to be something you could only experience after a hundred hours of gameplay or after you reached some arbitrary number.” (source)
• “If you go into a dungeon in a traditional MMO and you, you hit a wall that you can’t pass and you need better gear, you have to go to a different dungeon and play and get that gear, whereas in Guild Wars if you encounter that, you could get better gear by going to World vs. World or expanding your crafting skills or several other ways,” said Millard. (source)
• “We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.” (source)
• “Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; […]. It all gets back to our basic design philosophy. Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward.” (source)

So everyone just relax. You’re going need your strength for this extra flight of stairs anyway.

¹ Shut up.
² Shut up.