Discussing the Multiplayer Aspect of Guildwars

Yay a rant thread.
Nah, just kidding.
_________________________

Does this:

[_] Local [X] Guild [_] Team [X] Alliance [_] Trade [_] Emotes

...look somehow familiar? I bet it does, it's the way how most people have set up their game and it's a testimony for the maybe dead Multiplayer Aspect of Guildwars.
Most members of the community have gathered and collected an immense disrespect for the other players. I'd go as far as to state that they simply hate each other. The downside effect of this is that people prefer to play with all chats turned off. This worked in Prophecies and in Factions to great success. Some hardcore players could even complete the game without taking anything but henchmen. Congratulations to them and to me, i was one of them.
And back then i failed to see where this was heading, it went down the Single Player Path. Guildies, friends and me also learned to disrepect PUG Players because they were either bad people or very bad players - so it seems. They were used to complete a mission and once in a while you found a potential new friend along the way. Rare but it did happen.

Now however, with the addition of the heroes even the worst player can easily complete the game. This is in itself not a bad thing, neither are the heroes. But the direct follow up of this is that almost no one tries to play with other humans anymore. The usual thing you see when you're playing PVE (and to a degree even PVP) is people packing up on heroes, then henchies and doing everything single player style.

By now your chat configuration could look like this:

[X] Local [X] Guild [X] Team [X] Alliance [_] Trade [X] Emotes
And all you would see is:
"Hello, anyone there? Hello? Echo? Hello?"
I'm just missing the ironical "No one hears you. <--- with the powerful dot at the end)"

Now, if neither heroes/henchies, nor the game is a bad thing how comes that it has developed into a Single Player Game so quickly? On the european servers it's almost impossible to form or join a group. Well there are players, plenty of them. But they all have their Hero/Henchmen Configuration.

Enough of an introduction, i guess everyone has witnessed the problem allready.

The thing i'd like to discuss:
What are possible ways to rebreath "cooperative" into this game. How could it possibly be achieved to put a stronger focus on Teamplay? How could the hatred between the players be cured?
Do you think the Multiplayer Aspect is just fine? Is it lacking? Dead? Barely ressurected? You get the point what this thread is about.

Please no flames and please no "Pugs suck" or "Guildies, Friendslist ftw" comments. While both may apply they're no real solution, they're just trying to bypass it and in doing this make it even worse.

_____________________________________

Now comes my personal opinion on this:
Heroes are imho definitely not the reason, they're just the result of the problem. The problem itself lies in the ongoing hatred between the players. I'm sadly not sure if there is even a way to cure this, except for harsher feedback from the game itself (as in, a day ban for mal behavior). But sadly that's also out of the question due to the EULA and business model.

As of now, i have no idea how this situation could be improved but i hope that with the combined effort of the community of those that care about the Multiplayer Part, a solution for the potential problem can be found.

Bottom note:
Don't blame A-Net.

I just read parts of your post and the conclusion.

I think the problem is that it's way too easy to make a sucky build. There's so many skills, a new player is overthrown by the massive amount of options, and will, in the end, choose just some skills. And even though they might look good, they might not be.

Because it's so easy to be bad, PuGs get a name of being bad. Why should you play with sucky humans who won't follow you if you can play with bots?

I had been playing through Prophecies campaign with my NF monk for a bit. Was at Ice caves of sorrow. I was loading my group with heroes and henchies. I saw two guys without a group standing there (the rest of the district was empty), just invited them, and we had lots of fun clearing the mission.

I definitely agree with the problem raised in original post.

In my view the core issue here is that the very concept of "Cooperative Online RPG" such as Guild Wars does not work due to most people in general falling into a "Lowest Common Denominator" category that is not sufficient to perform the gameplay properly.

Most players are extremely horrible, hence Heroes and Henchmen are usually a much better choice than terrible PUG players, the PUGers of course with much worse skills and gear.

When they try to make an area like DoA where you need real players to perform well, most people don't like it (rightfully so) because it is too hard to form a team of competent players.

I think very little can be done to correct this problem, since the core issue is an out-of-game, real life problem that most people suck at the game. That's just reality and there's no fixing that.

from personal experience from the early BWE on i can state the 2 following items that started very early after release and have only gotten more intense and did not drop off

1 people from the start have been begging for henchie fices

heroes have most of the very things begged for

2. complaints about the pug i was with



every time the basic henchie got a small fix the number of pugs got smaller.

the community has a rep and unfortunately it seems to be a very well earned rep that will stick for a long time if not permanent.

also at the very start in an interview it was stated that with the instanced plan and the henchmen to fill/make a group GW could be considered an online single player RPG which allows you to play with friends if you want to.

i see it turning into a Baldurs Gate type which you can have friends in your party.(i like)

Even though i love playing without stupid people, and using heroes to beat the entire game. It feels wrong.
Some solutions i could think of:

A - You could make henchmen worse.

Therefore forcing people to have at least 2 players in a party. This would result in serious objections of a lot of good players, who are used to using hench/hero teams to play the game.

B - Restricting maximum AIs in a team to X.

Forcing players to play together.
With a small number, it would force people to play together, resulting in a lot of Pugs with players of skill, again resulting in objections from the above average players.

C - Restricting maximum AIs in a team to X per player.

Mostly the same as above.

Yes I agree, it is not heros fault, nor anets fault, its people. And there is no cure for people. I'm always for a good pug group, cus without that, you'd never have a good friendslist, or guild.

Factions *encouraged* people to group and the beginners island has some nice scenery. that was it for me

that for Factions .

force me to group with the map drawers/etc and i stop there.

old chapters here i come

Personally, I belive heroes have ruined - yes, runied - Guild Wars. The whole aspect of being able to complete a game, without playing with other players. Has, in my eyes, destroyed the community completely.

PUG wise, I've never hated them. Up until recently. Most PUG's seems to have a lack fo respect for fellow players and constantly spam comments like: "OMFG!!! You n00b - your a f***** waste of time. N00b!" Shortly followed by '[users name] has left.'

I really, really hope the next chapters brings back the community and social aspect of Guild Wars. Nightfall hasn't helped the community at all, and I hope the 4th chapter doesn't follow suit. Like I said, I really hope the next chapters gives the community a kick up the backside and encourages them to play with other players.

They cannot just abandon their hero system, and people will be able to keep them for future campaigns. We're trapped in the circel.

2 things: people/group search and Random Pairing

The deeper you can build on those things the easier and more likely players will work with each other.
Otherwise henchmen, heros and guildmates will get you the most for your efforts consistantly.

Ummm... Why not? Blame may not really be in order, but what you describe is a direct consequence of their business model and design decisions.

There is no grouping system in GW, a fact that has been talked about and lamented since before Chapter 1 was even released. Grouping with others has always been a tedious and annoying process, whilst henchies were always a click away and were suffecient for anything in the game save FoW, UW, and the Titan Quests. Factions came along, still no grouping system but they did add even more henchie variety, including something henchies had lacked before -- interrupts. Now Nightfall comes along, still no grouping system (though something sounding suspiciously like one is mentioned in the booklet), but now we have new, improved, and personalized henchies. Grouping with others remains as difficult, tedious, and annoying as ever, but with each new chapter it has gotten easier and easier to hench everything save the 'Elite' missions, which most people don't care to bother with anyway.

Trying to group with others has remained the same tedious process of spamming "LFG!" over and over ever since the release of the game. Henching it has gotten easier and easier with each iteration of the game. That one is dying on the vine whilst the other prospers can hardly come as a shock to Anet or any of us.

As for chat, you can thank a lack of any other viable in-game tools for grouping, guild recruitment, nor buying or selling for its unlamented demise. Far from being an empty echo-chamber, chat in any large town is a confused mess of WTB/WTS spam, guild recruitement spam, and LFG spam, mixed together with the occasional racist/sexist/homophobic rant and an endless stream of low rent con jobs. In places like LA, Kaineng, or Kamadan, chat goes by so fast the average person couldn't keep up with it if they wanted to, and they don't want to. The only attempt to clean it up was the trade channel, and that's been a failure of monumental proportions.

You could clean up chat by providing other in-game tools for grouping, guild recruiting, and buy/sell, and instituting draconian penalities for using the chat channels for those purposes. Unfortunately I doubt either would fit into Anet's business model as both would require fairly substantial resources. As for getting people to play together, it needs to be easier to find/create groups, there needs to be some strong incentive to do so, and/or there needs to be no choice but to do so. Unfortunately a grouping system does not seem to be in the offing, there will likely continue to be no incentive to grouping and the several disincentives will remain, and forced grouping would likely kill the game.

The GW 'community', such as it is, has long been, for want of a better term, broken. It is a direct result of a business model that requires an extreme hand's off approach, design decisions that minimize tools and incentives for player interaction, and human nature -- especially the mangified negatives of human nature that tend to come when large numbers of adolescent personalities, whatever their chronologic age, congregate.

How do you fix it? Without fundamentally changing the game or the business model, I don't think you do.

There is no solution, because you can't fix people. If you tweak the game to force good players to play with bad players, the good players will just quit.

The problem is that GW is pretty much an unmoderated game open to anyone. Without a monthly fee, there's nothing to prevent some 10-year-old kid from buying a copy for $40 and just signing on for an hour or two everyday and screwing with people just because he doesn't get the discipline at home that he deserves. Since you're not paying a monthly fee, there's no reason for the majority of the populace to take the game seriously. It doesn't matter if you fail the mission and get nowhere, as long as you had some LOL's and ROFL's along the way.

I actually don't think there's anything wrong with PvE turning into a single-player game. I'd wager that the majority of the players only care about getting rare items and being rich anyway, so whether they complete the story on their own or with a party is irrelevant. They're going to be spending the rest of their GW lives solo-farming in the newest areas anyway.

it's not the fault of the heroes. it's the fault of anti-social, emo people wanting to play solo with their heroes.

A.Net should advertise more to Sims or other community fostering MMORPGs than to ps, xbox or other solo online games players

No, it's the fault of the immature idiots who just annoy you throughout the mission drawing crotches on the radar, bossing people around and just being an ass. I have never wanted to group up less in any other MMO than I do with GW. Why? Because the community is one of the worst I've seen.

Better grouping features would be nice but still won't fix the problem of the dying PUG situation. It's just less annoying to play with heroes or only playing with people you know.

If you have ever played runescape...I don't think your opinion would be the same lol.

People have always said stuff like that. Bad language is a result of internet anonymity, taking responsibillity (sp?) away.

Runescape has the worst community ever, not even worth to compare other games.

I think maybe forcing a max of 3 heroes per player combined with a new LFG system might be a good idea.

i disagree on that for one simple reason.

from the start people have been begging for some way to form a decent group.

DECENT NOT MEANING GOOD PLAYERS JUST SOMEONE WHO IS NOT THERE FOR THE EXPRESS *FUN* OF SCREWING THE OTHERS FUN.

most people hero/henching are not antisocial in general just that they have one too many bad groups and say thank you for the hero/hench fixes to a friendly community that lasted 30 days from launch then went from bad to worse.

does that hurt my fanboi rating BTW?

It's already a max of 3 heroes per player. But if you meant 3 heroes only per group then that's a horrible idea. If I play with my two other friends why should we be forced into grouping with more if we choose not to?

Forcing a playstyle onto others is bad.

The problem with removing henchies is that it completely screws over casual players. My main character right now is a monk. Say I want to complete some quest to get some experience. Noone will want to do the same quest, probably. So I take henchies. Even if there are multiple people that want to do the quest, there aren't 8 other people, with the right professions to make up a team. Not without a party forming system.

I also like casual play. If I'm bored I'll do some questing. At the same time I read forums. If there's suddenly something, I can just quit. However, with PuGs, people don't want to wait, and you can't suddenly leave.

Yesterday, I had to do Dunes of Despair. I warped there, and got invited into a party of 5. I accept, and we leave. Halfway through the mission, the other monk, who was also the leader, and was also carrying the ghostly, suddenly says: "G2g 4 tea". He doesn't respond and doesn't get back.

What the heck?

We activate the cutscene of the bridge, and luckily, he drops. So we arrive at the altar. After killing the additional guys, we wait for the ele, who was carrying the hero, to put him down on the altar. After 5 minutes, the timer finally starts. After killing 2/3 guys that go after the ghostly, an ele and warrior suddenly run off to one of the gates. Ele wants to do bonus. Being the only monk (there was another one, but he was a smiter), I'm forced to follow. after 2 min of fighting, I see a group of monsters going for the ghostly, so I quickly run back. The ele and the war just keep attacking the boss for bonus, not paying attention at all to what's happening, and die.

Luckily, we still finished the mission with a tank, a smiter and me.

Where did you gather the information that most players play like that? I would be interested in someone posting a pole to confirm your data.

Why would you need a poll? You really think most casual players wait around putting together a team instead of just grabbing heroes/henchies and go? Using common sense you'd figure a casual player with little time will just grab NPCs.

A better grouping system, along with an improved system for chat, trade, and guild recruitment would go a long way.

When I get a good PuG, the game is 10x more fun than if I played with henchies. Sadly, it can take 30 minutes to an hour to form a full group in most missions, and often closer to 2 hours for HA or high end areas. When I log in for an hour or two at a time, I usually play with heroes and henchies, just because I hate going through the hassle of finding a group.

You might say the guilds and friends lists are the answer to this, but do you remember what it was like when you first started? Recruitment in town is reduced to shouting through trade spam. Finding a guild with interests similar to your own can be near impossible, and expecting players to stand in towns and wade through a flood of chat just to find a solid group is ridiculous.

Why do so many PuGs suck? It's hard to find 8 players of roughly the right balance, and several orders of magnitude harder to devise any kind of team build or strategy. Me, I'd rather live with the healing hands wammo rather than spend a bunch of time teaching him what a dragon slasher is. Every second you spend standing in town is a chance for someone in your group to leave, and a second you could be spending actually playing the game.

So what are the solutions to this?

1. Some sort of trade fix, hopefully in the form of an auction house.
-This would clean up the chat in towns, make trade accesible for the casual player, and foster actual conversations in town.

2. Ingame guild recruitment
-Perhaps in the form of billboards or a message center. Anything is better than chat spam.

3. Improved group formation system
-Put up a list of all the groups in all the districts, what people they have, and what they still need. This is also critical for bringing HA back to life.

We need a way to identify PvE players as experienced or inexperienced. We all know that a henchman is 100 times better than an inexperienced, or unintelligent player. Personally, I don't pick up anyone unless I absolutely have to. I have my guild to help me through tough spots.

I was in Prophecies just a couple of days ago. I hadn't beat it for the bonus with my Ranger out of pure laziness. There were three or four people there crying for an interrupt ranger to go with them.

I want to note: I felt horrible but I stacked Jin, Magrid, and the General with 2 monks and scrubs, then took off without them. I didn't have much time, and to be honest I didn't want to risk wasting 30 minutes. I knew what I needed to beat it, and I did. Went ahead and beat the game again, just to see if I could. No sweat.

I dunno what happened to the PUG. But I felt really bad.

I don't think this can be helped, since we can't determine the skill lvl of PvE players.

Sad, but true. You can practically do most missions/bonses with NPCs now. Hell, I figured out how to do 3/4 Titan Quests with NPCs just because, for days, not a soul wanted to join.

I have to say the issue are the people. Whoever said it's because it's free has a point. It doesn't cost money, just the initial buy. So if you buy it and hate it, eh, why not just mess around with people. Half the time I PvP you get sweared at, called a "noob, n00b, n00bzorz, n00blet", yelled at for not healing, bringing a resurrection signet, or whatever...Heaven forbid we mess up, we're human...we're not perfect, but people expect you to do everything how they see it and will get in your face if you don't. I now know some bizzare racist jokes all thanks to Alliance Battles.

Out of any MMO or MMORPG I have to say Guild Wars' community sticks up in the top three of the most hostile and unforgiving.

What irony that a game that fiercly discourages elitism has such an elitist community....

Guild Wars has always been about one thing:

Optimizing the game to your, the player's, style of play - and no one elses.
It's great.

A community isn't created nor destroyed by the company - it's the players, aka the Community, that creates and destroys. Blaming ANet for a lousy community? That's like blaming the local representaive of your county/city/district because you can't get along with your neighbor.
YOU can't get along with your neighbor.

ANet created the hero system for many reasons, one being so players wouldn't have to sit in empty outposts waiting for 7 other players. The game is huge now, do you want people standing around waiting for just the right group nowdays? It's near impossible. Hence, heros.
The one thing the heros system did NOT do was destroy any community or cooperative aspect to the game. It changed it, and as always, Guild Wars shines when it comes to adjusting, adapting, and more often than not, giving players what they always want in any 'role-playing' game: choices.

Find the players you want, group with them, and enjoy yourself.
Your choice.
I'll look for a group for a bit, give up, grab my heros, and enjoy myself.
My choice.

And it's great

First I would like to state that I consider this whole thing Alesia's fault. If she wasn't such a bad monk, people wouldn't have started demanding controlable(sp?) henchmen.

I am guilty of henching most quests, but for missions I like live people. I like the chat, the chance of winning against the odds and the odd builds.

I think ANet should come up with something like "heroes or henchmen," with at limit on the number of henchmen, so that you cannot fill up your party without at least one other live person. If they don't have heroes, then henchmen are your only choice.

Of course, this would cause endless hate threads directed at ANet. Most posters want to complete the game with non-live people, so they can brag that they've completed the game on their own.
-------------------
As to the in-town chat, I don't turn off the local. As the problem is usually pre- & early teens acting out their fantasies. I just go to another district if they become overly offensive. I wish there was a Town Group option so they could take it private. As this age group are the most numerous in the game, there is no getting rid of them. You can only hope they will soon get bored with GW and go to another game.

Local chat is important to me, not just for finding a PuG, but I watch for people asking for help and respond if I know the answer. I warn people whose posts are in violation of the EULA, so they won't get banned through ignorance. I use it to time my WTS or WTB posts so I am not spamming them.

Gah. It has nothing to do with bragging, thanks for that ridiculous piece of speculation.

And you know what I hate? People trying to force other people to play how they play. Some people don't want to have to group with others. Or being forced to play with complete strangers from a horrible community. And what about those areas where there simply isnt a lot of people to group with? Horrible horrible idea of forcing people to group up.

I agree with Ernada. Thats why I kinda am starting to dislike Anet too.

I think the problem is that people are getting sucked away from PUGing into going into, often superior, guild teams. Once they have played in a few guild teams they realise that PUGs are often too disorganised and so on and choose to go henchway if no guildies are available.

Personally in my 3 months of play I have observed a decline in the quality of PUGs, which is probably the product of the above, which then amplifies the above problem. When I first started I went through the first two chapters PUGing relatively easily. With Nightfall it got harder to find a good PUG and had to go hero/henchway for quite alot of the game. Now on some of my newer characters I have been trying to PUG quite alot, but to be honest they tend to be absolute crap. Barely anyone seems to know what they are doing, are silent and do not help eachother in anyway, and once in every 2 or 3 games someone will rage quit. This isn't helped when you get party leaders who, all too often, don't listen to the party members and make some of the worst team builds ever, such as filling a team almost completely with people only of their profession in a place where it just won't work... most places then.

But I dont dislike Anet.

Ohh, im sorry, I thought since you dislike people trying to force other people to play how they play (as do I) that it kinda correlated with how Anet is designing these new chapters. Bad assumption on my part.

oh man i so love the heros when my regular buddies arent online. and in the meantime to escape the random insanity, immaturity and fubar reasoning of 95% of the gw community....



oh anet i love you so for the heros and ai placement commands.

I'm going to say it - I have the set-up you mentioned because the towns are full of idiots.

Everyone is pointing at the players for being anti-social... I think the game design has a lot to do with it, too.

The game is split up across what, 300 different areas now? It's amazing that we have some odd 90 outposts to meet up with other players in, but even among those outposts trying to find people with similar goals is nearly impossible. This is what makes grouping even with guildies incredibly difficult. You can group with a guildie, but only one person is going to get any real reward from the whole endeavor, as the other one probably has no business to be done in the same area.

well put,right on

I miss PuGs. I realize I'm probably gonna get a lot of "PuGs sux u n00b" and "OMFG u use teh PuG lol learn2play" from a statement like that... But it's sincerely the truth.

I miss going into a party of random people, starting a mission, and by the end patting everyone on the back saying, "Well done! We did it."

Now I just go to a mission. I say, "Healing Monk lfg..."

After 30 minutes of reiterating that, I succumb to using my heroes and a group of 4 heanchies. The mission goes good, bad, doesn't matter... But when all is said and done, there's no one there I can say "We did it." I can't say that at all... Because I did it.

A.Net should not be blamed for this. They are just trying to make it so that those of us who have no one to help us can use NPCs to at least play the game.

I doubt there's any way to fix this, however. I miss PuGs and the community when it came to the game, but now it feels like Guild Wars really is just a single player game.

It doesn't matter, though. I'll still keep shouting in towns and outposts, just before I click the mission button, "Healer lfg..."

Just be glad the GW community don't all also play games like UT or other multiplayer games. They'd probably end up helping turn those into single player games too... honestly if I made a multiplayer game I'd pray this hench loving human hating crowd didn't end up at my game, for fear of them helping to turning it into a single player experience.

Anyway undeniably Herohench has had an adverse impact on co-op. I can't be bothered to go into the details right now. Also I do wish people would stop comments like this

Try this on for size:

Try find the players you want, wait around a while watching people come and go in groups of 8 (1 human + Herohench), hit the Logout/Quit button.
Not much of a choice.
Look for a group, give up, grab heroes, feel like you've been pushed into that path.
Also not much of a choice.

I bet co-op minded players have encountered that a fair bit. Now compare to Prophecies and it was a completely different story, everyone was teaming up far more.

I honestly believe this is the way of the future, as it seems to be how the players in GW generally seem to play PvE so I'm not sure if any constructive ideas how to encourage co-op will get taken on board. It seems to be the way the wind is blowing if you observe how things have changed since Prophecies.

What you are looking for is a LFG system. That was suggested(and rumored to be a feature coming).

AND The game doesn't exactly make people anti-social.

People make people anti-social.

Examples:

- When you sit in general chat, you see "WhERz the hot Gurlz" and they spout every racist statement you can think of. The first step is to ignore it and look past it. But eventually you get tired of it and turn off the channel. That's one channel down.

- Trade Channel, when you don't want to buy anything you turn it off to bypass the spam. But then THOSE EXACT SAME PEOPLE know that you aren't looking at that channel and spam BLEEDS into General Chat. Which gave you ANOTHER reason to turn off. So that is another channel off. You just have successfully bypassed 90% of the community right there. An Auction House could help somewhat, but THOSE SAME PEOPLE will STILL use the chat channels. (SEE World Of Warcraft for reference)

- Creating a team, you sit there waiting for people to join. This can take anywhere from 2 minutes to an hour. Once you get in, those SAME people WHINE about who's build is more effective while being killed from lack of preparation prior to the quest/mission. They blame YOU for not single handedly killing everything in their path and blaming other players for their fault. The team falls apart. This happens multiple times. In frustration You discover Guilds and Guildmates who are usually the nicest and most coordinated people in the game period. From then on, you vow to you guild loyalty and respect well earned by maturity and abilities.

Congratulations, you just bypassed 99.999% of the community. IS that a bad thing. Not really. Those people made you take actions that you didn't really need to take. Therefore making you anti-social to the general Guild Wars public.

From then on, you use Henchies when Guildies can't play with you. IF you can't do it with Henches, then you wait instead of playing with people who will constantly waste your time and energies trying to make things work. Because you've been down that road and never want to travel it again.

Sure a LFG system can help, sure an auction house can help. But it never really changes the attitude of people playing the game. ITs gonna be the same thing all over again. Sure the team aspect of the game might affect the stress level of the members, but it isn't the only online game that uses teams to accomplish things.

What they have been trying to do is make the game somewhat easier for people to get into it. But by now, most experienced players don't care much for PuGs by now. And the atmosphere of the game changes somewhere in the middle which leaves a lot of new people stranded because the PvP type of missions has kicked in. New players will find it incredibly hard and veterans will claim that its too easy.

IT was long winded but it had to be said..

Also what I've been seeing the community cope with this however is the Ally Effect. People who create guilds with people of the same interests/goals/maturity and then pair up with an Alliance with like rules and regulations. They create their own suburbs within the game to play with people that won't destroy their experience with the game. The Alliance Channel effectively becomes the new General Chat.


What I suggest is that:

1. ArenaNET gets some in-game GMs to curtail bad behavior. Or make an in-game solution to easily report it. Having to leave the game and report it separately discourages reporters to do it. Anonymity creates some terrible monsters, but showing them that they can't just do what they want and not face the consequences in the game either will kill that.

2. Create a better Tutorial area that teaches players about teamwork, roles with professions and how to create builds. Those small introduction areas at the beginning of the game doesn't cut it. IT teaches nothing about how to play in a team, and it teaches nothing about picking the right skills.

3. An LFG System and an Auction House to cut down on spam. It won't remove it but it might help.

4. Gameplay has to be changed to allow people to move at their own pace. That way, the veterans can play a challenging game and the new people can get through the story without worrying about messing up or showing people how bad their current playing level is.

Anonymity is the problem. If someone is an ass and gets a horrible reputation, all they need to do is make another character. Unlike other games, leveling in GW is quick, so a new character and a new name don't take long. Just seconds, in fact, if it's a pvp character. And no, hiring a billion GMs is not the solution, it won't happen, ArenaNet will not increase their costs that way, so forget about it.

For the most part guilds are similarly anonymous. A bazillion random guilds running around, whose tags you'll never recognise if you see them a second time. Compare this with a typical mmorpg, which has many separate server worlds (shards) with a much smaller population on each server -- the community is small enough that guild names are well known, and guilds take more in who they invite, to avoid getting a bad name in the server's small community. As a WoW comparison, when someone ninja loots, practically everyone on the server finds out about it (through the in game rumor mill, or the forums), then that person finds he can't get into groups any more, and weeks of playtime on that character are down the drain. It's also a big deal if guilds are known for harboring ninja looters. So as it turns out, ninja looters are quite rare, because there are serious repercussions for these actions. In Guild Wars there are none whatsoever.