Private areas stink

WoW player here and one of the things that kind of makes things a little boring for me is that GW gives you your own private area when leaving main cities and districts. That is fine for lower levels and picking your 2 professions, but not after that. It's just well.. boring.

Something that I think would be cool is if private areas were almost eliminated from the game. Have all areas public, so everyone can play together at once.

In WoW, you can run all over the place and meet all sorts of people, not just in main cities.

GW is supposedly about teamwork, so why not make the world of GW totally public? It's a lot easier to form alliances and friends when we can see everyone all the time. Know what I mean?

There's nothing better than seeing reinforcements walk up and help defeat the enemy when your group is getting slaughtered.

2 letters: No. I dont even want to say why.

In WoW you have a rather llarge installed base of players that expect to be able to go anywhere but in guild wars its more about teamwork. To put it in another term you only want one person to drive a car at a time not 2. Guild Wars is more of a skilled game than WoW in that you have to become good with a limited amount of skills and players to get the job done,the system is set up that way to prevent players from breezing through the game then quiting. Now I do agree that there should be a couple areas that can be deesignated as "open" areas where anyone can come and go and no-one is safe from attack. These just need to be planned carefully and can make a great addition to the guild battles. Have these areas from new maps outside of the arenas and open to anyone willing to take a chance.

MegaMouse

Theres a reason we aren't paying $15 a month

To quote Arkantos.

2 Letters. No.

GW is fine like it is.

No. Never. Ever.

There are some good reasons for it.

The first advantage with private areas is that you don't need to worry about someone else taking out your target before you get there, which is something I've heard can be a problem in more traditional MMOs. Also, because instances of the world don't need to be 'persistant', you don't need to worry about respawns appearing on top of you - except, of course, for those creatures for whom appearing on top of you is their tactic (but in this case, once you clear them out, they aren't going to mysteriously reappear until you change maps).

In discussion of having reinforcements appear mid-battle: No, you don't get that. On the other hand, you don't need to worry about being trained by the monsters some other group couldn't handle, either. What happens to you is entirely your responsibility and that of your party - no one is going to save your bacon apart from you, but if anyone is going to screw you up, it is, with the exception of the odd multi-party mission, going to be someone you chose to come with in the first place - and if they show themselves to be a griefer, you can put a stop to it by leaving them behind next time.

Overall, the way I think of it is that GW is more story-based than WoW. The impression I get with WoW is that you're given the world, and there are various things going on in the world, but it isn't in quite the same sense of flux as the GW world (and the Warcraft world during WC3 and FT) - and even then allowing quests in the persistent world leads to a little sillyness (I remember being told a story about an NPC who's been informed of his wife's death thousands of times and still doesn't believe). I don't think anyone's suspension of disbelief would be maintained if, on doing a mission or a major quest, they meet someone else on the way back who's done the same... "Oh, sorry, we just killed the frost drake, but if you wait a few minutes he'll come back for you as well."

And that brings up the other issue with persistant worlds: Although Guild Wars hasn't made as much use of this as it was originally going to, it is possible to do nasty things to the terrain at points in the game. WIthout instancing, you'd need to either leave the terrain static, or you'd need to have the terrain reforming at regular intervals (which, depending on the terrain piece in question, makes things even sillier than respawning monsters)

Or PKers or KSers (Player killers and kill stealers)

The "everything is instanced" is the single biggest selling point of GW for me. I played EQ2 on a role-playing server, and there is nothing which breaks immersion worse when you're out on an epic quest than having to wait for the Lord of Penultimate Evil to respawn because those other random guys milling around just killed him. Well, except possibly when the other random guys are talking about how great Justin Timberlake is.

Instancing FTW.

Thanks for the nifty replies. The main purpose for opening up the whole world to everyone is making it easier to meet people and form alliances. I've met some really nice people in WoW in a much faster period of time than in GW becuase of all the open areas.

It is a lot easier to form a group in GW, but I've also noticed a bit more hostility when forming groups in this game. That is unfortunate, but it does seem to happen quite a bit.

Oh ya...Someone mentioned kill stealers. It doesn't really matter in GW because you get very little XP from killing creatures. You get the real XP by completing missions and intances, so IMHO that statement is pretty null and void. I pretty much just kill only the enemies I have to and run through the missions super fast.

Thanks for the replies. I hope to see some of you out there.

Whats that? Add monthly fees, spawn campers, kill stealers, and make the game more like a game its not (WoW)? YES! LETS DO IT! Deface everything Guild Wars strives to be!

Very little experience? Unter that logic, powerleveling shouldnt work as it is.

Too many people in one zone at once makes getting anywhere and getting anything done easy. And what about places like FOW/UW/Tombs?

I think you missed my point. I'm not saying turn the game into WoW. I'm just saying to impliment one of the bonus' of it. Forget monthly fees man. I can't afford the game right now. That's why I'm playing GW. :P

If you're talking about boss type spawn camping, then yes it does exist, but stealing the kill is a rareity.

Besides, The vast majority of players will ask if someone is waiting for the spawn. If the answer is yes, then the first person is allowed the first hit. However, most of the time they form a group.. share the quest and both waste the boss getting full credit.

About the regular kills, like I said before, It doesn't really matter because you get so little XP from killing monsters. If you are killing every single monster, then you're wasting time IMHO.

If you're worried about powerleveling, then raise the level cap.

It's ridiculously easy to level in GW, so what's the point in powerleveling? A person can get to level 20 in no time at all. I've gotten to level 20 in under 15 total hours, and I'm sure there's people that have done it in less time then that. It's called grinding my friend Grab some henchies and roll through the quests and blam.. ur lvl20

I mean you can get to lvl 10/11 without even going to the first coop mission area. Just do all the side quests. Particularly at the beginning.. Do every quest for every class before you choose the secondary profession. Easy as pie

You're playing the wrong game.

Instancing has its ups and downs: it forces team work, but then there is more resentment towards certain players when looking for a team.
It does negate the problem of kill stealing and things like that. But while I enjoy being able to go out in the middle of nowhere to my "special spot", I'd also like to wander around with other people. So it would be nice if they could toss in a couple of pvp areas where you can stake out your territory and defy all comers.
Other than that, I think instances should be kept as a major component because they keep the game unique and simple. But tossing out a couple of noninstanced areas isn't going to hurt anybody(as long as they're nonessential to the story) and will add some variety to the areas and gaming.

"Instanized World" is a word you should look up.

For such thing, (I take you want a public join exploration area), you need to make mob spawnable, which, I don't really see it happening. There are many other points to why GW can not do as you ask, which I am sure many other will tell you that.

The more important question is "Why should GW be like WoW?" There are just many MMO out there, why should GW be like one of them? Enjoy GW for what it is and the differnt game play it offer to you. If not, there are many other free grinding traditional MMO out there (including free WoW... if you know what I hint), which could better fix your fix.

Or you can try to suggest a palusible way of adding such public hunting area to current GW's enviroment with out throwing off balance, like some who had tried before.

I think it would be kinda cool if you could challenge people to fight in public areas and others could spectate. You could challenge them to a fight then they could accept or decline... and others could watch the fight and maybe place bets. Just a thought

dont know why but with the large number of people for and against builds like iway ect I see this happening in public chat.

Decline= turn off local
Accept= leave it on and comment to the random people

good times

In reference to the op GW isnt for you if you dont like having your own copy of the world. I happen to enjoy not being pked and having my loot stolen from me because kid mcwiggles is lvl X and will do whatever he pleases.

You missed my point entirely. My point was that with killing monsters, the experience adds up and it is a good way to level up. Instead of doing a quest o get that last 100 experience, i'd rather go and kill something instead of starting some long quest.