devtrackers.gg
I will start with a bit of background. An old friend of mine who has since passed took over the management of an elite car dealership chain. This was a long time back but in a bit of a Brubaker type of move, he decided to start by hanging out with the customers but pretended he was a customer too. So, he did things like sit in the service waiting room and rode in the shuttle that they used to take customers back home or to work when they dropped their car off for a service. After doing this for a week he changed all of those processes because he noticed that customers would talk to each other about their bad experiences or problems.
The point is that A/Net need to start doing the same thing. I don't mean having one or two employees running around in WvW but having an employee on each WvW pairing spending a few hours in the game mode each week. The same thing with sPVP. They need to have people playing each profession in instanced content (strikes, fractals, and raids) and joining groups from time to time. They need to try and join existing groups in LFG to see if it's easy or not to get involved in the content. They need to spend an hour in a boss train once a week and try to get a skyscale / legendary trinket.
In short, they need to experience the game, because without that, they are missing a big part of what happens in the game. They will never understand why players complain about certain professions in instanced content, or about OP ones in sPVP/WvW. They would pick up situations like our resident TC WvW hacker that has been going at it for 5 days (It's hit meme territory and people aren't even bothering anymore and are just letting him flip stuff). They will pick up on the bugs in KO before it becomes a running joke with players. They will understand frustrations with research notes, etc. But it's not just about seeing the pain points either, but they will also experience what it feels like when people complete something like strikes for the first time, or complete a long term goal like making a legendary. They can get to feel what it's like to have an epic battle in WvW or a 500-500 game in sPVP.
GW2 isn't like a car dealership computer system or flight controller system where they only make sense when used in those environments. It's a game that anyone can play. They are fortunate in that they can "experience" their own software as other customers experience it. I know that there are employees that spend some time in game but I don't think it's enough.
TLDR; GW2 can be a lot of fun, so play your own game A/Net.
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