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Originally Posted by Kerus Tel Veren
People online are horrible. They really, really are. It is a trusim that without controls of some sort in place (moderation, strict barrier of entry, something else), the larger a community grows, the worse the quality and caliber of person becomes.
This is true of every mmo and the bulk of online games out there, and perhaps more true for GW because it attracts competitive players (who are, by and large, more high strung than players more interested in exploring and enjoying the world or missions) and it has no monthly fee.
It is true for most online forums as well - generally the smaller, carefully moderated, tightly focused discussion groups tend to be the most friendly, interesting, and insightful - until they become large and unmanageable. Then they either adopt strict moderation policies, or otherwise restrict access (take a look at the SA forums for an example of a huge but still thriving community... with amazingly harsh moderation AND a pay-to-talk entry barrier). If not, they tend to collapse under their own weight and either fragment or die completely.
Some mmos burn out and fade due to really atrocious gameplay, technical issues, support, or other problems. Guild Wars most certainly does not have those issues (I still thinking the tech they have in place is amazing, and I've played it on and off since beta with few or no problems that I can recall), and it is blessed with some astonishing artwork and world design.
But the community - the quality of the community is, unfortunately, not tied to the quality of the game. And indeed, as the popularity of the game grows, so too does its user base, and the average level of expertise drops - no barrier of entry, and an increasingly large amount of information, knowledge, and skill to absorb before a player can become truly proficient all cause serious problems; particularly when previous in-game learning barriers become circumvented and corrupted.
Witness the growth of running, until it becomes difficult to simply get a group to do a mission or an area 'for real'. Perhaps done initially by bored vets leveling pve alts, it eventually becomes the 'norm' for a large chunk of people, who start to expect that sort of treatment (and behavior) from others.
Similarly, genuinely challenging missions for new players are incredibly hard to work through in an environment where the population around the mission consists of either veterans (who know what to do, have already done it, expect you to know the same, and will be annoyed if you don't), or incredibly poor players who were rushed to the location, and are, in essence, completely new players (who will quit at the first sign of difficulty, whine relentlessly, and look for someones coattails to pull them through to the next sticking point).
Guild Wars is especially bizarre in that it has a little of something of everyone - it has a vast world to explore, it has a series of storyline quests to tackle, it has incredibly competitive pvp, and it has a strange mix of very easy and very very difficult pve content. It's an rpg, but it plays like an action game at times. You can spend weeks or months building a pve character, or you can, as a brand new player, buy a pvp unlock and never touch the campaigns.
The result of that eclectic blend of possibilities available to the prospective player is pretty obvious - you get a really eclectic blend of players. You get ex-quake clanners out for blood in GvG battles. You get card game players who like the Magic-esque feel of the skills. You get single player rpg fans. You get mmo fans. You get really young kids, you get older married couples.
It is no surprise, none at all, that pugs are a horrible experience for many people - the odds of you getting matched up with people who have similar tastes, similar expectations, and similar desires from a group are so bad, it's amazing that you can meet cool people at all.
Really, the next big jump for GW (and mmos in general really) isn't adding Heroes so you can skirt the issue entirely by playing online solitaire, it's adding the tools in-game to match compatible players in a group - and by compatible, I'm not talking about character class :P Think internet dating for online gaming nerds instead of a lfg window.
Anyway, that went off on a tangent.
Back to the topic - Heroes absolutely are a replacement for other players in coop. Why? Because I play Guild Wars to enjoy myself, and grouping with random PuGs is somewhere between the 7th and 9th layers of hell in terms of enjoyment for me.
I consider this to be unfortunate, as nothing beats the fun of playing with a group of like-minded people, but locating them in the seething cesspool of genetic rejections at Lion's Arch 1 isn't happening any time soon.
'lfg' in-game is a dire tool of last resort. Group with friends, make new friends on forums who seem sane, get in a guild that seems to have cool members... or group with Heroes and Henchmen, who are more likely to get you loot than they are to give you an ulcer.
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