Your opinion on the difference between GW and WoW

Ok I dont wish to dig up some very old arguments on which game is better.

All I wish to know is the difference between the 2 games pls only reply if you have played world of warcraft, or have something constructive to add.

Now I've been playing WoW for a really long time now on the horde side. I love pvping. I spent months grinding my character to Lt. general rank and going through ZG, MC, BWL to get gear. After all those work i got better than tier 1 gear on my toon. I've seen most of the end game content already. The problem I have is I stoped playing for couple of months because of real life. And now I got back in the game, Everyone have better gear than me. And every noob out there is owning me no matter how skilled I am just because they have the newest gears. To top it off my pvp rank is meanningless now since the new patch, everyone one have high warlord gears, It made me feel like all of those months spent in frustation is a waste of time. Me and my friends was thinking maybe switching to guild wars. I have heard good things about it, so I'm here to ask your opinion on the matter. I dont want to judge on which is the better game and all that BS. And I dont care about the monthly fee and all that. All I wanted to know is which game is better suited for me. I've done a bit of reading on GW so here is the break down between what I read, and what I know of WoW.

1. the game map
WoW
the world is bigger, you can meet people all over the place not just in towns
no loading screen execpt in instances

GW
you can only meet people in towns, and every quest is an instance. Lots of loading screen.

2. Time wasted
WoW
Lots of time spent on traveling to places

GW
instant travel

3. Groups
WoW
you can have a group of up to 40 players

GW
you can only have a group of 5? (not sure about this one)

4. The skill factor
WoW
completetly gear based, no matter how skilled you are, its all about the gear.
And to get the top gears you have to join an established raiding guild. And once you are in that guild it feels like work, you play on a raiding schedule, and it would take months to get the top gears. It feels like showing up for work.

GW
not sure how this works, please some one clarify.

5. PvP
WoW
PvP have battle grounds where there is 40 man AV(destory the other side's base), 15man AB(capture bases and holding it), and 10 man WSG(capture flag and returning it to your base) which I love. And the rewards for winning battle grounds are nice.

GW
dont know how that works please explain.

6. Combat
WoW
I like the style of combat, click a shortcut bar to use a combat skill or spell, and cooldown for some of the more powerful skills.

GW
?

7. Trading
WoW
lots of selling and buying reagents, potions and mats. The auction house is nice for selling and buying items.

GW
please explain how this is done.

8. Items
WoW
tons of items. but to be competitive you need to have the very best gear. Which means eventrually everyone will have the same top gears.


GW
?


Feel free to add more comparisons. But my main style of play is PvP, and the problem I have with WoW is that to be competitive in PvP you need to join a good guild spent months of grinding out gear(which means work) and then PvP only in your spare time to have a little bit of fun. And when they decided to add more gear, your old gear is meanningless you start the cycle all over again. The game is more based on time spent rather than actual skill.


So please filling me in on how GW is played thanks in advance

Beginner or low level areas tend to be around 4 party max, the majority of areas are 8 people max, and the Elite Missions in Cantha or 12 people max.

[QUOTE=Tentacle]
1. the game map
WoW
the world is bigger, you can meet people all over the place not just in towns
no loading screen execpt in instances

GW
you can only meet people in towns, and every quest is an instance. Lots of loading screen.

True, but this eliminates the fight for loot and xp allowing less time spent to level up.

2. Time wasted
WoW
Lots of time spent on traveling to places

This allows different costs in prices in different shops to allow merchanting

GW
instant travel

3. Groups
WoW
you can have a group of up to 40 players

GW
you can only have a group of 5? (not sure about this one)

its a group of 8 and sometimes 3 groups of 8, this is kinda small, but manageable

4. The skill factor
WoW
completetly gear based, no matter how skilled you are, its all about the gear.
And to get the top gears you have to join an established raiding guild. And once you are in that guild it feels like work, you play on a raiding schedule, and it would take months to get the top gears. It feels like showing up for work.

GW
not sure how this works, please some one clarify.

This game is based on skill combinations, players tactics and skill usage

5. PvP
WoW
PvP have battle grounds where there is 40 man AV(destory the other side's base), 15man AB(capture bases and holding it), and 10 man WSG(capture flag and returning it to your base) which I love. And the rewards for winning battle grounds are nice.

GW
dont know how that works please explain.

Havent gone to GvG yet, but normal PvP, theres cap the flag that gives morale, theres tickets for killing people until a certain score, and there is just kill everyone.

6. Combat
WoW
I like the style of combat, click a shortcut bar to use a combat skill or spell, and cooldown for some of the more powerful skills.

GW
?

Only allows 8 skills equipted this gives full range of tactics and strategy, no skill is a lot better than the other, its all the way a person uses it.
For example, searing flames could kill everyone easily, but a cheaper spell is meteor and liquid flame which could beat people with searing flames if used right.

7. Trading
WoW
lots of selling and buying reagents, potions and mats. The auction house is nice for selling and buying items.

GW
please explain how this is done.

Just shout, but now, theres a search function to allow players to just post and wait for a potential customer.
NPCs are always avaliable to buy but they often offer the lowest possible price.

8. Items
WoW
tons of items. but to be competitive you need to have the very best gear. Which means eventrually everyone will have the same top gears.


GW
?
Best gear is bought from 1k-1.5k a piece without counting prophecy in(i dont have prophecy) and the most expensive armor is about 100k a piece and yet they provide same defence, so it is more fair for PvP by putting technique as the main influence.

And you mentioned spending months to become competitive, well in guild wars, i spent about 1 month to get a 38 consequtive win in random arenas against people who plays for much longer time. This game is great for playing for hours at a time or for 1 hour or so at a time. Its not about level tinkering, but skills of player.

Watch this video to understand more
http://media2.yahoo.com/player/games...ldwars/6123668
Good luck

I won't call myself a veteran of either game, but i've played both World of Warcraft (17 months) and Guild Wars (19 months) quite extensively. I'm no ArenaNET/Guild Wars fan boy but in my opinion Guild Wars is a notch or two above World of Warcraft in terms of playability, fun factor and enjoyment. Don't get me wrong i had a blast playing WoW back in the day but Blizzard has since lost their way, and begun butchering what once was a cool game. The expansion has fixed? a few of these problems, but only time will tell i suppose.

1. the game map

WoW's game world is indeed quite large but you will find that travel times is what makes it feel so large. If you put together all 3 Guild War's chapters, you will have a game world very similar in size but will feel smaller due to instant travel.

2. Time wasted

You already answered your own question here. There was a lot of time wasting in WoW due to travel times, battleground queues and forming large groups for raids. Guild Wars time wasting is reduced due to instant travel times, and almost instant arena queues. Also forming groups is much quicker on GW depending on time of day/mission/etc.

3. Groups

Max group size in Guild Wars is 12 (3 groups of 4, in alliance battles) but regular missions/explorables are capped at 8. One of the reasons i quit WoW was due to the best gears only dropping in 40 man raid dungeons. I don't have the time nor patience to put up with 39 other people.

4. The skill factor

WoW is definitely more based on gear, with smaller focus being on actual player skill. GW is ALOT more based on skill of the player, and group builds due to the best gear being readily available.

5. PvP

World PvP in WoW was definitely the most fun for me. Battlegrounds and the Honor System took away most of that fun for me, i did however persist and reached Rank 11 on my Warrior before giving in to the ridiculous honor grind. Guild Wars PvP is readily available from day 1 via the creation of PvP-Only characters which are already max level. GvG battles are also alot of fun.

6. Combat

Combat in Guild Wars is very hack and slash like Diablo 2 or NWN, but alot better balanced. You also have a skill bar like on WoW, but skillbars are capped at 8 skills maximum. You cannot add additional bars like on WoW. This is to preserve balance and the need to focus on builds, and not just anything. Skills also have cooldowns, etc just like on WoW. To see combat of GW, check websites such as http://www.youtube.com

7. Trading

Trading is also a big thing in Guild Wars. Whether it be Weapons, Shields, Consumables, crafting materials, etc. Armors are crafted via NPC and are customized to your character though. They can be traded but they cannot be used by anyone else but your character. There are no trade skills (blacksmiting, alchemy, etc) in Guild Wars.

8. Items

As said previously, the very best items are easily accessible to even the most casual of players. The main rares in Guild Wars aren't the stats on an item, but the look/skin of the weapon/item. Drop rate also plays a part in the rarity of an item. Pretty much everyone at level 20 has the best items you can get, which makes PvP'ing rely more on player skill and group builds rather than the rarity of your weapons and armors.

Conclusion

If your main focus is PvP, then i highly recommend Guild Wars. Guild versus Guild battles, Arenas, Hall of Heroes and now Hero Battles. A lot of variety. The only thing missing that i enjoyed more on WoW is world PvP. But not to worry.

Hope this helps.

Guild wars pvp fairness = intention.
wow = more rpg "lifelike" (like traveling and lots of lvling etc)

thats all i see is the difference.

Why compare two wholely different things to eachother? Let's compare rice to potatoes? I'm surprised this thread is neatly yet.

Yes, the main difference is the fact that WoW is an interactive world, and GW is instanced. It's entirely up to preference which kind you like the most. I've played both WoW and GW, and while it was fun to meet other people when you were out exploring, it was equally annoying when you wanted to kill something or complete a quest only to find it occupied by some farmer.

This one is hard to judge. I believe your feelings toward this depend strongly on what generation of gamer you are. I'm from the days of early Everquest where travelling somewhere could literally take hours. My opinion is that the middle thing is the best, such as WoW where travelling doesn't take very long, but is still something you have to do and not just accomplish with the click of a button. It adds a bit more flavor and immersion.

There's a very fundamental difference. In WoW, 40 people is not a group, that's a raid, something that you only need for a small percentage of the content. GW is built around smaller groups (8 is the max) and doesn't have raid content that requires mass amounts of people. The grouping aspect of GW is not that different from WoW, except that you can choose to bring NPC heroes and henchmen if you don't want to group with other players.

Both games require skill, but GW is more focused on your skill so it's what matters more. WoW is very gear-based, your equipment can matter a lot more than how good you are as long as you're not bad. In GW, your equipment is a very small part of the game, and any player can get what is considered "the best" without much trouble. However, I feel that there's little room to evolve in GW, there's a definite limit to how far skill can get you since the game has a lot of boundaries. The game mechanics work in such a way that you probably won't see a lot of people who are vastly better than anyone else, both because this game emphasizes on teamplay rather than individualism, and because you simply have a limited amount of things you can do, and finding out which works best isn't that hard. You don't see "pwnage videos" the same way you do in WoW, where people single-handedly dominate battlegrounds and such. At least not to the same extent.

When I was playing WoW, I felt that PvP was dominated by gear and class imbalances. The two main factors when you met someone were: "Is his equipment better than me, and is he a class that my class can't beat?". An example is the old hunter vs. rogue, a match where the hunter will have to screw up more than humanly possible in order to not win without breaking a sweat. There were also a lot of annoyances with the battlegrounds system, especially AV which felt half-PvE and way too random. GW has many options for PvP, most professions are roughly equal and you have so much freedom in customizing your character so that the rock-paper-scissors problem is almost eliminated. There are real PvP tactics and team builds, whereas WoW is about having the best gear and knowing how to exploit the map.

The concept of a skillbar, cooldowns and so on is very similar in WoW and GW. I personally think that WoW's combat system is superior though, the main reason being that GW has a lack of any real aggro system, meaning that players have to react to pre-determined AI behavior rather than having their skill influence the outcome of a battle. It's easy to see that ANet focused on PvP.

It is fundamentally the same, people trade money or valuable resources for items and such. There are some major differences though: Armor is not traded in this game, only weapons and various item mods, along with certain utility items and components for making items. Getting items with "max stats" is relatively easy though, so most of the market consists of the rarer weapon mods, as well as items with rare and highly wanted skins.

Completely different in fuctionality. Armor is not dropped, you buy it from armor crafter NPCs. It's easy to get items with the best stats, the thing most people struggle for is getting rare skins and saving up for "prestige armor" which is basically eye candy with the same stats as the cheap kind. ANet obviously decided that they didn't want the game to revolve around equipment, which is great for casual players, but means that the game might not have as much longevity.

So in conclusion, here are my thoughts:

WoW is better if you enjoy PvE primarily, and don't mind investing great amounts of time into getting to the top. As a WoW player, you probably know what it takes to be a part of a high-end raiding guild, and that it can often feel like a job rather than a hobby.

GW is all about fun and doing what you like the best. It's very casual player friendly, you don't need to play very much to compete against fully committed players, and it's relatively easy to reach the max level (20) and get what is considered "max equipment". However, unless you really enjoy farming or get deeply into PvP, it's probably not a game that you can continue to enjoy for years like you can with other MMORPGs such as WoW and Everquest. I can see GW being a game venue that you can exhaust in under a year, doing everything there is to do, but the upside is that it's free so you don't get that feeling of having wasted a bunch of money when you quit.

Well, potatoes are a root, rice is not.
you can eat 5,000 pieces of rice for every 1 potato you eat.
potatoes are often garnished with sour cream and cheese which would be very strange on rice
Potatoes are usually baked or fried, rice is steamed or boiled
potatoes come from ireland, rice comes from china

guild wars is a much simpler game. its nice and easy to learn yet for those who put the effort in they can still dominate the battlefield with the right skills. GW also looks 100x better than WoW blocky graphics.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Main_Page

The Guild Wiki is a good read too.

and remember, friends dont let friends play WoW

XD
Is it true potatoes come from Ireland? I thought potatoes where something dutch...

Found it: they come from South-America somewhere in present-day Chile or Peru.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato
And rice was first found in Madagascar, but could be that it originated in China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice

Hmm, well they may be dutch. I just assumed they were irish because I always here Potatoes and Ireland together.

Yes you are and let me answer this question for you GuildWars is the better game WoW sucks.














Now if you go to a WoW fansite it will be WoW is the best GuildWars sucks.
Understand it?

You tell people not to reply unless they have played WoW yet you havent played GW?How does that make sense?You read about Guildwars, you havent played it , thats the reason you are comparing them to eachother,if you played it you would notice you cant really do that.

If you have a question dont hide it in between lines saying which game is better then the other in your opinion.

From the last lines part you wrote alone i can almost guarantee you would like Guildwars more then WoW ( see ?I didnt say which game is the best one, i said which seems better for you)

Whatever any of the PVE people come in here and say Guildwars is a PVP game all the rest is just a way to fill it up and to get more people to play the game, in other words PVP is guildwars strongest material.
I doubt there is anything anywhere close to how good GW PVP is.

About what you didnt like in WoW pvp about new items and stuff like that that make you obsolete after you were the best, there is no such thing in GuildWars, the one thing that would make you not usefull anymore in pvp is if you didnt have the new skills when new chapters came out, but seeing as you love pvp and you would be doing that alott , you woudnt have problems with that cause you would have all skills unlocked very fast.

GW PvE < WoW PvE
GW PvP > WoW PvP

That is the most important difference.

I hardly, very hardly play PvP, and I'm playing for about a year and 1700 hours now, still ain't bored nor ready with PvE.

Have you tried WoW PvE? It took me about 2500 hours (19 months) to get bored with GW's PvE. I have Nightfall too but it is something like 50% complete.

There is some fun in PvP but leeches ruined it. This is sad because WoW's PvP is unfair crap. It has nothing to do with skill if you have used to play GW's PvP.

BTW Njaiguni, Zakarr didnt say GW pve sucks, he just said that in his opinion WoW PvE is better then GW PvE.

They are both good, he just thinks WoW's PvE is better

I never said that

This is not the place to discuss which game is better.

Thread closed.