Ok, please don't bash me people!

Having played some MMO's including Guild wars (which isn't defined as a MMO anyway), I've come to the conclusion that the future of Guild Wars is rather weak. Please don't bash me since this is purely a personal opinion. Let me explain why. The reason Guild wars has been (and still is) a success are mainly due to these reasons; the beauty of the game in graphic sense, the well-balanced PvP part, the non-monthly-supscription-free system, stable and reliable networking system and nonetheless the skills which is the heart of the game. These factors have made Guild wars a known game in the Online gaming arena, however these factors alone will not keep the game interesting and immersive in the long run - even new continents and contents are being added for every major update/chapter. The major weak point of GW is the instancesation. This is the part where I in my humble opinion think Guild Wars will loose its stronghold. The future of online gaming is headed towards the openess, being able to travel to everywhere, to meet people on your travel, to fight with people or against them (yes it does sound like wow). The instancesation results in the restrictions that make players will leave Guild Wars in the near future when other games arrive. Why? Because more online games are getting better in graphic, they will look as nice as Guild wars, with efforts and a good implementation the PvP should be as good as in Guild wars, the networking issues will be handed better due to better technology and infrastructure and well-thought skills will also be possible. With these factors in place added with the non-instancesation nature any games could outdo Guild wars by margin - yes even it is a subscription based system.

What im trying to say is that I love Guild Wars, and these are my concerns since I really can't see any future for Guild Wars with the instancesation system. The world of Guild Wars as it is now can remake to be non-instancesation. Of course it will be a challenge but not impossible. A Guild wars without instancesation will k.o. any MMOs out there even WoW.

Many people in here will treat what i just wrote as nonsense and are happy with GW as it is. Yes, Guild wars isn't WoW, it wasn't meant or will be as WoW, but it doesn't mean it should meet it's doom by staying the same and stubborn course. The future is freedom, not instanced.

Non-instantiation, if that's even a real word, is a bad thing because it creates areas where people are constantly ganked, bosses are always surrounded while people attempt to kill them, and groups become meaningless. It would also completely break every game mechanic along with destroying the game balance. GW wouldn't even be close to the same game, it'd just be another WOW clone.

In conclusion, play WOW if you like those sorts of things.

have you ever been ganked?
have you ever had someone 50 levels higher than you take all you have on you and laugh because they can do just that?
have you waited an hour in a line to get a quest?

welcome to your openness i will take instances

this is a new type of game and it seems to be the choice of many people who do not enjoy the *openness* that you and others want.

hopefully that wasnt too much flame

I could equally say that gw is great because of the instanciation. Players are free to go and explore without having to deal with all the losers on the net and all the problems that come from said interactions.

Perhaps you should find a game that suits your playing style and leave gw to the millions of people that love it this way.

Two things drew me to this game: No monthly fee and the instanced gameplay.

my friend i have already debated on this topic about gw on other fourms!

hence I think this why anet and ncsoft are making a bigger up date. I wouldn't be suprised that other compies have taken some of my ideas.


I have talked about the hack and slash to real rpg's and the mmorpg's out there.i have given the reasons why must mmo even wow will fall in the long run. I go as the bomb, balckman on other fourms.

In fact i have notice that the new game vangaurd has some of my ideas like "ships","homes" and "mounts"( i have talk about how this game needs mounts) other things that i have stated on fourms from long ago. I have even seen aion that ncsoft is working on has my ideas in it with climbing too.


even the linar story, i have also debated about! By the way I don't agree that a story needs to be linar by the way.

I also don't agree how charactors being made tanks and damage dealers as well. that kind of setup is bad and lacks freedom.

Maybe to quench some of these non-instanced wanters, Anet could create a 12-24 man area. Think about it, 24 people all ganging up on one boss/mob as a team, but the monsters would be much stronger, so it evens it out. It would be very interesting to see how this would work in the GW universe. Similar to the difficulty or maybe more difficult than DoA. Mobs would drop 3x as more loot so that evens out also. Just maybe an area with more than 8 people, would be pretty cool. Sortof like an all-out war type of thing, 2 armys charging towards eachother, evenly matched. Idk, thats just my take on the topic.

My husband plays WoW, and of all the things I dislike when he talks about it, it's the "I was just clearing out this area when a lvl-questionmark-questionmark Rogue came in, ganked me, and took the quest items I needed!" that I hate the most.

He got ME playing GW simply because he told me it was possible to play completely by myself, I didn't have to interact with weirdo gamer people.*

How can you like everything about GW and not like this feature? The game would not be the game without it.





*yeah, you all are weirdo gamer people... not me, I've only been playing since May 2005, no no, I'm not one of you....

By the way Anet knows and I am sure they are maybe working on stuff. I have proven by facts on different fourm.

AMEN to that Brother, AMEN!

Would you care to show us these facts?

I love the instances, and my husband was thrilled when he started playing and found out about it. It allows you to put together a group that you'd like to adventure with, or hench if you're feeling like just sticking in a quick quest while dinner is cooking and don't want to have to go AFK with a party of people.

Instancing also helps perf if I understand correctly, because there's not a bunch of other people's actions constantly going on, just yours and the stuff around you.

Additionally, instancing helps remove the concept of servers. When everyone's playing in the same space, that's got to be broken up somehow, thus the servers you get in WoW. The reason I didn't pick up WoW was because everyone I knew was on a different server, and it sounded time consuming to play with them all. Plus I'm not big on monthly fees since I'm a pretty casual player. The way that GW is structured is that it's much easier for people to get together with their friends - there are no server bounderies. Even if they're on another country's servers, we have international districts to meet up in. You couldn't do this if not for instancing; the logistics are a nightmare from where I'm standing. With no concept of "servers", how would each "copy" of the world work? How do people get together into the same "copy" (for lack of a better word) to party together? Sure, they could have to choose one, but then again, now you've got a bunch of people running around all affecting the world at once, and you end up again needing to break out into servers all over again. I might be missing something as I'm no network expert, but I think this was part of the point of instancing, to avoid server bounderies that stopped people from playing together.

I won't bash because you're just stating your opinion, but I will say that if GW became a WoW-style game with no instancing and tons of people all running around ganking or whatever else it is they do, GW would lose a lot of it's appeal to me. I like getting a copy of the world that reserved for me and my friends/guildmates/party members/henchmen.

I think the bottom line is that there's different strokes for different folks. :: shrug ::

To the first two responses:

Ganking is an event that only occurs in open-pvp systems, durrrr


Blame the non-creative people playing the game then. It's honestly all your/my/our fault, not ArenaNet's.

Wouldn't work. Bosses in Guild Wars are incredibly lame. Besides, people would just look to exploit things to kill it with only 4 people anyway for better green chances (*sigh*). If GW had a boss format like WoW, where they actually DID something and required strategy to beat, then I could possibly see your idea working, but until then, no. And even then, like I said, people will just try to do it with as few as possible.

Instead, I think they should do the reverse. Tough to do, but try to create areas for only 1 person, and keep it balanced in a way so that every profession is viable for the mission (and thus everybody can complete it.)

sure moving over from WoW is a pain with instances but you get use to it... i know i have after almost 2 years... it definatly doesn't take away from the game... if anything it brings use together because no longer do i have to run to point x to run to port to point be to meet with player B. I can just port us together to do things together. The main reason guild wars life is so short is because of its lvl cap at 20 most games you have to grind up to high lvls 70s or 60s or higher before you make ur next char. In guild wars you can get to lvl 20 on all your chars in a short amount of time.
The main in guild wars is in the pvp... but this aspect of the game is only left open to small percentage of players that excel in pvp. PvE gets old fast sure making money customizing weapons is fun... but in the end it gets old... pvp is renewable but only for so long. All they need to do to win over a major part of guild wars players is to get rid of their old maps of HA and just make new ones... instead of spending weeks on the next elite mission

Okay.. i see where your coming from but these "restricted to party only" are not only a great feature but a reason why this game is free monthly. They dont need to run heavy servers becasue each explorable area is indivdualized, so enemies dont have to reappear after a certain duration.

Possible Downfalls I see are, Lack of attention to the PvE crowd, Lack of difficult areas. No new experiences.
PvE is a huge stablizing factor for recreational players. I consider myself somewhere between PvE and PvP, as do 75% of players. If they do not do minor catering to this area they will overtime loose more customers. PvP has many things to tweak and fix constantly so theres no overbearing issue there since they are 90% PvP and 10% PvE.

Lack of Difficult PvE Areas: To be completely honest I find this game to be a "breeze" of sorts to figure out PvE wise. Reason being, the first 75% of the game is a no brainer, basic hack/slash/nuke/heal. I'd like to see more areas like DoA.

As for New experiences these come per chapter. I really enjoyed the addition to Prophecies (before Factions) with Sorrows Furnace and I'd like to see something along those lines added per chapter. These things shouldnt havent a "acension" requirement but should be difficult enough that a specialized build and players would have to be used.

However, I dont see this game falling through anytime soon. I constantly see new players (actual new ones) and as a seasoned GW player I'm completely satisfied (played since beta).

they are in the gw online fourms. Can't remeber the thread none the less alot people seen and have read them. I am sure anet has too.

I beleave this maybe why we are getting the big updates. anet is looking to make a better gw and to make sure there is more stuff to do in gw.

The OP is correct, I would only add that Guild Wars' "future" is weak only if ANet fails to change some things in the next campaigns.

I have discussed this ad nauseum in my thread topic here.

ANet can start using a more sustainable approach to their campaigns and more importantly stop spreading out their playerbase. Because instanced areas are fundamental to the game, those areas should be placed in adjacent locations to population centers as much as possible.

Additionally, ANet should consider a global explorable area as part of a unique approach to get players together in a PvE scenario.

Instances in Guild Wars have their benefits but they also create a very lonely play experience especially when combined with Heroes and Henchies.

Ganking isn't an issue that should be seriously discussed because that can be controlled by design. I played WoW for 2 years, ganking only occurs in contested and hostile areas...it comes with the territory.

creative I am,thinking out side the box i do very well. The whole idea of having tanks and damage is limiting for charactor setup.

I don't wish to share what i know up on these fourms.

Guild Wars is great if you like instances and balance.

I'm tending to lean to the side of the more traditional world, with ganking, freedom to explore,, mounts, unlimited farming without fear of having the way i play being changed or me being banned...

GW has served me well and i don't regret buying two prophecies accounts, a factions and a NF account.

There is no denying the fact that Guild Wars has filled a niche in the genre and become very successful, but like the OP mentioned, graphics are getting better all the time (Age of Conan for example) and Guild Wars needs to move with the flow, or risk becoming stale bread.
This goes for gameplay too.

As for being "free", lets not start that one again :P

I just disagree. I think Guild Wars has done more than other games to lessen the pigeonholing of character classes. I mean, my MM Necro doesn't need a warrior to "tank" and neither does my ranger.

What truly limits a player character is the game world itself. The Tank, Healer, DPS is the holy trinity of gaming, but it's based on very real concepts. Look at modern warfare and the roles that the machines of war have to play in combat. Hybrids exist, but the same trinity is the core of it.

Your not thinking it out. If ANet designed a 12-24 person instanced area the Bosses and Mobs would be designed accordingly for the challenge.

I am not that keen on raids myself, but it could be relatively easy to add to Guild Wars.

Simply put, the game needs to have some randomness added to it. Re-playability is an issue, the low player interaction is an issue, the lack of semi-useful "filler fluff" <think player crafted items/trade skills> is an issue.