GW: A Completely Solo Online RPG?

Hi there,

Just want to get a general discussion on how the updates to AI, farming/loot and heroes has affected the game. Please no flaming, I'd like to see a real-life debate with good views and things put forward.

I am currently trying to get my sin through Factions, but I'm stuck at Unwaking Waters. I much prefer actual people whilst playing, for company, chatter and, of COURSE, as everyone does, the chance to show off flashy weapons or shiny armor.

But, especially with "heroes", it is harder and harder to find a group unless you're in a large guild/alliance. Im in a small guild made of friends right now, but most of them play Prophecies, so I can't get help with Factions or NF missions from them.

So I turn to the outpost itsself. There's a Warrior over there near storage, clearly changing his armor to go farm those nice squishies outside. And then there's the Monk, as usual, standing afk with no group, just to taunt those without a Monk in their party. And finally, you have the necro who has spelt his name "Mister Kewlz" spamming "Experienced teleportor curse necro LFG", whilst adding everyone he can see. (NB; that name is a random one...sorry for any insults caused to the REAL "Mister Kewlz")

So you maybe try it with a couple of them. And oh gosh, what a suprise, you were the only one without a Monk secondary profession, and yet you are the only one who brought any form of resurrection, and you used it.

And so I turn to my friends list. Of the 20 people online, I shall take a random sample of 5.

1) Farming sorry
2) In UW with my W/Rt...sorry
3) Afk
4) lol Im farming
5) wtf is an unwaking water?!

So what am I to do? I take heros and henchmen, but then I end up in a position where they decide that actually, they're lonely and they want to huggle together around the Mesmer which currently has barrage and lava arrows being used on him.

So what do you think? When did Guildwars become a Completely Solo Online RPG for those without large guilds/alliances, or in different time zones to alot of people?

Well, my friends list only serves for good friends in real life, and people to trade with.I have been doing alot of soloing lately*cough hard mode*

Well, I'm in a small guild, too, so there's always the option of building an alliance of smaller guilds... It has the bonus of you being able to keep your "bubble" so to speak, but also have a larger pool of people.

I don't mind playing solo. There's a lot of days (if not most days) where I might have 20 minutes, and I might have 3 hours, but I never know which. The last thing I want to do is get into a group for a long mission and find out 20 minutes in "oh crud I have to leave somewhere" because that's the way my life goes.

I think part of the problem is that heroes/hench appeal more because they can't be jerks, and they can't ragequit, and any other number of problems that real people cause.

However, seeing that the situation seems to be getting worse, I'm trying to take time to sit down and play now and then with others. I met an awesome chick a couple days ago while doing a mission in Factions, and we had a blast slamming through missions and quests. Just two of us, enough that we can socialize and chat and have a lot of fun. We didn't need a full group for that.

I think GW became a game like that when people realized that there were many times that AI controlled teams were just less pain. Maybe someone's using a strange build (for instance, I'm currently playing an E/D that actually does use a scythe, which I'm sure many people would be annoyed by). I think some better attitudes in the playerbase would help. Also, I think how spread out people are is also a problem. I've considered putting together a group on a thread here to take on a mission each weekend, and everyone gets together there and gets people through, but then there's the logistics of where do you play, which mission, ect.

Not a lot of stunning insight, but some thoughts on it anyway.

yea i dont think it has but because of heros your party can be played with as many poeple *up to 8* as you want, basically ElinoraNeSangre summed up exactly my thoughts on heros, and i personally love them.

You raise an interesting few points there. I would have to agree it is very nice to not have some idiot monk with a completely enchantment-based build in a spot with lots of "Dissenchantment" rits and mesmers, or a Mending-Wammo mass-aggroing everything. It is also nice to be able to play GW at your own pace.

But it does sort of subtract from the team experience. I would happily play through missions with one other person + 6 heroes, and I did infact do so on my assassin with a Warrior from Tahnnakai Temple through to the followup of Sunjjiang District, but still it's nice to have a full group of 8 people.

And perhaps forming a large alliance of small guilds is pheasable, but the problem is again, peoples compatibility. I am the leader of my guild, and I know my members. None of us donate any faction to an alliance, and none of us ever will (unless for the title), yet if we join an alliance, there will be that lingering expectation to be donating faction.

But sometimes its just nice to get a group of 7 people you have never met before, forge some new friendships, poke fun at the ranger that hides behind the mesmer (a few people reading this will know EXACTLY what I mean <_<) and all share that moment of "woot" when you complete the mission with masters by either a few seconds, or 10 minutes.

Another advantage I would like to raise is that, whilst it can be nice being in complete control of your heroe's builds, a hero with the most awesome healing build ever can often struggle to match, say, that of a Monk running something with not quite as much healing output, but alot of experience using their build.

If you have used a build for a long time, chances are you are going to know its limits and capabilities, and be able to use it very effectively, probably more effectively than a piece of AI. Proof? Doppleganger.

Good to see this turning into a decent debate, and not a flame fest.

As ElinoraNeSangre pointed out the play time is a major factor for most players. This ends up having those in your Guild/Alliance/Friend's List progress through the campaign at different rates.

This progression and eventual position within the campaign mean that for some players they are advancing a character along, and others have to step back to assist. Most of these players probably don't mind helping out through a particularly difficult mission or quest, but they also want to progress their characters along.

So for those players that can only play for fixed periods of time, they have to balance the playing with others and personal enjoyment of their character progression.

This is the reason Anet has given us the Heros and the result is more of comfort in that each player knows what their Heros have in skills and equipment and will most often only pair up with another player and use 6 Heros/Henchies.

Almost exact same thing happened to me when I was in Unwaking Waters helping my friend, I went to both the Kurz and Luxon side to just help him, but no one to be found, except for that spammer and afk monk.

When those people who have been playing long completed all the campaigns for the 7th time, bought their 5th set of FoW, and became able to do any mission with heroes in about 30% of the time it would take to use a PUG.

Yes I agree a lot of people seem to play solo now and I agree that a lot of it is down to the fact that it's been hard to find a good group, though not impossible and very rewarding when you do. If you don't have a particular build or are of a class that is numerous or undesirable it was nearly impossible to get in a group at all sometimes. I remember the outposts being flooded with assassins trying to get into groups just after factions came out and all the LFG but no assassins cries.

Heroes has made it possible for everyone to play in the class and manner they want and a lot of people enjoy this. It takes pressure off of having to perform and off of being called a noob if you're trying out a new playing style or class.

I enjoy solo and group play, living in australia the time difference with the US and Euro servers meant that finding groups in the evening here was next to impossible at any time so the addition of heroes has been great and renewed my interest in the game.

However it's meant that people who love to play in groups are now getting short changed when it comes to playing through the game. Just playing through recently, I have seen that there are very few people in mission outposts looking to play in groups in normal mode now, even at peak US times.

Back when guild wars was released, most people preffered to play with real people and most had fun with it. But with the game getting more popular the same happened, like in many other online games. The community got less friendly and bad experiences when playing with random people got more and more frequent. I someday hit the limit. I tried a full evening to get at least a semidecent pug for "Raisu Palace" and failed on every attempt. It was awful. Just plain awful.

In MY opinion there are several problems. Just to name the two I was thinking about first:

1.) Most parts of the game are of ultra low difficulty. While playing those parts you learn nothing about the game. You don't learn how to play your profession right, etc. I can't count the number of bi- and trielementalist, or other weird characters, I've encounterred. I've seen players, who scattered their attributepoints equally over all their attributes. People not knowing what "requirements" of weapons are. In my opinion this can be seen as a design flaw of the game. If the game then has a sudden increase in difficulty, like RoT, those people start failing. And if you ask for their skills, attributes and equipment you can be lucky if you get an answer and not a "shut up". I tried to explain (in a very friendly way) to an elementalist why the combination of heal party, lightning strike&orb, flare and fireball is not the best and I got told, that I'm a noob and have no idea about the game. I got told you have to spread over several attributes to get the most out of you're character...and that was in "Boreas Seabed". In my opinion people with such a low understanding of the game should not be able to get that "far" into a campaign.
I guess there are more players, who share the same experience. And what causes this? You retreat back into your guild/alliance and focus on playing with mates. I basically said to myself "That's it, I'm tired of it, I won't PuG again." This leads to another big problem of guild wars.

2.) The guilds
Although the game is called "guild wars", there is nothing outside of gvg you really need a guild for. They make things easier and you don't have to rely on pugs/npcs all the time, but that's all of it. Also there is no minimum requirement to open a guild. Roll a character, go out of the front door of ascalon, slay five critters and you have enough gc to open up you're own guild. That lead to an amazing amount of guild with just one or two members. Upon release there were some announcements that guilds will be more strenghtened. More options for them and more guildranks etc. But nothing, except maybe the traders for the lazy ones, has hit the shelves. Basically you have no benefit of being in a guild. They are not needed at all for playing 99% of the game. In most cases they just serve as some kind of "second friends list". If guilds had more options and would have great benefits if they have a certain amount of members (must not be a high number), then maybe there were less problems like people getting mad about not finding PuGs.

To sum it up. In my opinion the NPCs have nothing to do with the decrease of pugs. People who don't want to play with strangers never did it and never will. People who had bad experience with the dropping quality of pugs have at least the choice between "NPCs and a few more tries with PUGs now and then" and to leave the game. And not to forget: in a large and healthy guild there are no problems like "i have nobody to play with", but unfortunately ANet never managed to give any use for guilds outside of gvg.


duh, don't nail me on anything I have written. It's late night and I'm already awake for more than 24 hours. Those are just some not-so-well-written late night thoughts

Guild wars does not favour random grouping but it does not disuade grouping as such. Once you find the right guild, you'll never need to play alone again. Being in australia too, I faced similar problems, so I created a guild of Australian/NZ gamers who are 25+ and play on nightly basis. I don't remember the last time I stepped out into an instance alone except out of choice.

Heroes are a godsend and should definately remain, but guild wars could definitely do more to help players find one another through some sort of matchmaking service. And I'm not talking about a "Experienced N/Me curser looking for people to do hard mode" type match making service. I'm talking about a "30yo ns/sd gsoh likes long walks on the beach and sipping chapagne at midnight" type matchmaking service. One that helps players find other players with compatible playstyles and whose company they enjoy.

It's just the nature of the game, which is why henchies exist. Every mission area isn't going to be active all the time, especially later missions. As the game gets older and popularity declines, it's also just the case that fewer and fewer people need to do those missions. I mean even now, less than 2 weeks following the HM release, I've been in tyrian mission areas with less than 6 people.

Now that heroes are around to suppliment henchies, a lot of players simply don't bother with the unpredictability of pug's. Most of my pve pug experiences end up with penises drawn all over the radar and people running in the opposite direction of the the party show off their uber tanking skills with their Yak's Bend armor. It's just a headache, and while it was fun when the game first came out, it's just to the point now that if I'm bothering to pve at all I just want to get the job done with no hassles.

For an experienced player, pretty much anything can be done with heroes/hench, even a lot (or all, for all I know) of hard mode. That's small comfort for the casual player who just doesn't have the experience to complete a harder mission without help, but for those people there are PvE guilds still out there, and forums for players to come together.

Another biggie that people forgot to mention is that Faction is dying D: particularly when you reach the Kurzick/Luxon split the number of people you could have potentially PuG'ed with is cut in half. Unwaking Waters is ALWAYS empty o_o;; I had to solo it with my monk with heroes and henchies and that was really...interesting to say the least >_> I did it from the Kurzick side because I trust the Luxon npc team more than the Kurzick npc team <_<;;

When playing on my sin I've had to solo a lot of the missions as well, and that was BEFORE Heroes o_o;; Gods >_>;; There were more people on when I was on my sin (Factions was still the "new" thing but it wasn't really...new.)

Another reason for Factions death is Nightfall. Compare Nightfall endgame outposts with Prophecies and Factions and you'll see that Nightfall has twice the number of the two campaigns combined o_o;; My sin had to solo the Ring of Fire with heroes and henches too x_x;;

Now to bring up a point of how GW is *less* soloable...for some.

Of course, with hard mode I can't solo anything past the islands on my sin. I need more heroes =\ Mainly because a sin is not exactly the most important profession in terms of optimal party building. But seriously, the henchmen, though have better skills in hard mode, are not as great as heroes who could have all the skills that are actually necessary. Plus all of them, including monks and casters are on like attack mode, or at least guard, when some of them should be on passive >_o;; If i could have like at least 2 more heroes then I would be able to solo it.

Buuut I can't. Henchmen are the first to die, then my heroes, then me xD So in hard mode, I turn to my alliance (i'm one of those 2 member guilds :P But it's just me and my boyfriend cos we didn't want anymore guild invites and our constant 100k+ faction is rather impressive for 2 people XD) and we have more fun and more success.

I'm not the only one in my alliance having troubles with some areas soloing hard mode. Some of my friends who are like hard core veterans say they can't get through with just heroes and henchies alone. With 2 people and 6 heroes it's more feasible, with more people and less AI even better. But like I said, some primary professions have it easier and I know some people can solo hard mode, just some places are harder for some than others and blah blah blah. I did solo Shiro on hard mode with Heroes and Henchies Cake >_>

Anyway, I wouldn't say GW is becoming *Solo* per se. It's more like becoming less PuGable. In factions, you can get a PuG easy up to the faction split and somewhat easy after that. *somewhat* At least with another person or 2 and then filler up with heroes. Don't count on getting a PuG for hard mode though >_o;

I'm not sure what to say about the whole guild/alliance thing, because my alliance is a mix of PvE and PvP. I just find it nice to know there is at least another person that will be willing to help (if they're not ABing XD) me instead of just sitting in a place for an hour (or quitting GW completely to do something else for the time). It extended my list of friends by A LOT (i can't add anymore people xD) but I'd still PuG. Just harder to do in later parts of Factions than in Nightfall.

one of my favorite characters to play is my E/A - with shiro's blades, and a full sin build - with just burning spead for a run in/aoe fire and fireball for a finisher.-she can throw sin attacks all day with her big energy storage - takeing her into A/B suprise's the hell outta people.

I'm working on an E/A right now, too, although mostly for farming I admit. Along with finally giving into the 55 monk temptation, heh... :: hides ::

I do think that playing with people in groups can be a lot of fun. I've had some awesome pugging experiences, far more good than bad. It's just the time that usually bites me. On weekends? Point me to it! If I knew I could always get a fun group that wasn't so concerned with builds (hard mode and DoA aside) I'd be all over that every time.

Hey wait what's wrong with that?!? My brother draws penises on the radar, he's the master of the radar dick. It always makes me laugh and I think there's no harm in that.

hm, unwaking waters......did that with a group and failed....did it with 15henchies and got masters.....
( now eternal grove has me stumped for single play...but I have the solution...below).

but I degress.
yes there doesnt seem to be many people wanting to join up for groups anymore (unless its hard mode now)...and more people hero-ing it. I am one. I also have a tiny guild...3 people, one of whom has broken his computer and has no cash to get it fixed....the other is my husband. We play regularly together, but I have more time on my hands and have made more characters so I usually play alone. Do I enjoy it? welllllll have you played a mesmer or assasin looking for groups? I have 3 mesmers! I have no real choices sometimes, so I built a good hero set and buzz thru most missions and quests with them. When/if I need help I whine to my hubby and use my ring of spousal control....and he then plays with me

I have seen posts a while back echoing this same sentiment....guild wars has become solo wars.....or hero wars. Its sad, but since I want to play for a while still and will continue on with the first three chapters even when gw2 is released I have conceded to the fact that I will be doing a lot of heroing.

Guild wars is solo wars only because you make it so.
PuGs never were the social aspect in GW as you generally didn't continue any relation with the PuGmates you encountered.
Join a wider guild.
If you're in a small guild, take all your people with you and join a greater guild.
Join a greater alliance.
There are several guild/alliance recruting forums already, just browse them.
A second solution is to meet real-life friends on GW. As you see them in life regularly, you can organize GW games.
Also, don't hesitate to always TS/Messenger/SKype your guildmates. By always I mean: go on TS as soon as you're online, and advise your guildmates to do the same, even if you're actually not playing. Voice contact allows people to organize quickly games, and to keep social contact.

If you don't, if you "prefer" to stay in a tiny guild with few people, don't whine about the lack of players online.

GW is a "solo" game for all the people too lazy to socialize in game.

But is it really a bad thing? I for one am quite content with the heroes (Heck, I wish I could use 7 heroes in stead of just 3 ) and just play with other people when I want to and not when the game tells me I have to because the henchies will not be able to finish the mission. If I feel the need to really play with other people I'll play with my buddy from my 2 men guild.

In the past I've had some good experiences with pugs, but that was only 10% of the time. That's not what I bought the game for. So I wonder if it isn't for the better. To me it seems more a case of giving the players without big guilds a more detailed choice.

I've been playing for a little over 7 months now and one thing that did bother me in the beginning was the guild system. There is no way to search through the guilds and look for one suitable (atleast as far as I know) for newer mature people, but big and active enough to have fun. Of course I could just join a random one of all the guilds spamming in towns, but I don't know. The fact that they're spamming already lets me believe it won't be much of a guild. If people had easier ways to join big active (and most importantly fun) guilds, wouldn't that also stimulate teamplay?

There is a very simple reason why you solo more in GW: Math.

When GW started, there were 25 tyrian missions to play, with most of the people concentrated in the first ones. Then FoW and UW and SF were added, taking some of the best PvE's away from the missions. Then came along factions, with another 20 mission (and 3 new elite areas opened as well, Deep, Urgoz, Tombs). NF: Another 20 missions and a huge elite area.

So by now we have gone from 25 missions to 65 missions and 7 elite areas. Of course both Factions and NF also made new people buy the game, but not enough to compensate.

Hard mode at one swoop DOUBLED the number of missions to 130, while introducing another ~110 "areas" you might do. So we are roughly at 10 times the possible locations PvE's might do compared to when Prophecies came out, while I am sure that the number of active players has not grown by that extend since the first months.

That being said, I am currently doing HM missions with one PuG I meet searching for groups in Elona. 2 players and 6 heros will get you through almost everything.

- Xeeron

Here are a few links that might help:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Categ...ing_PvE_guilds
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Categ...ing_PvP_guilds
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Categ...ing_PvX_guilds

- Xeeron

you picked probably the worst mission to base your ideas around. Unwaking Waters has been dead and empty for a long time now and I personally rarely see people there. I myself was able to finish the mission with heroes and henchies and then moved onto the next one where....surprise surprise i was able to get a pug group.

as for the guild....I myself am in a guild with about 12members that all knew each other from other games. We all have pretty much every town unlocked on at least one of our characters and we get through everything ok....all in all i am glad we are a small guild....but a small guild in alliance with other small guilds would be perfect

I think there are several reasons why missions like Unawakening are abandoned.

Reason one: Factions and general GW:
First of all, it's a mission with two sides, meaning people have taken one side and played that storyline. That means the number of players is about half of all-sided missions.
Second, there has been a move from player from Proph and Factions to NF.
Third, drops are better in NF.
Fourth, the mission is near the end of Factions, many have given up because the rest of the missions before this one are also quite abandoned.

Reason two: heroes:
Now, there are people that use Heroes/Hench.
Main reason: they don't run 'stupid' builds, don't quit, don't complain.
Second, if you don't have time to finish mission, you can always quit without no-one complaining.

Reason three: Shift of focus.
I have not been in Factions for quite some time, because I was working on GMC of Tyria on two characters.
We, as a guild, moved to more PvP for a while and now shifted to Hard Mode.
Meaning we won't be that much in Factions, except for HM missions and Vanquishing. This takes time.
The only missions I sometime help with outside my guild are Prophecies' missions. I enjoy those the most.

Finally, my own experience:
I enjoyed PuGs in Factions.
But, many don't have the experience needed to finish the mission fast.
You will not find experienced players in PuGs that often (I have 4 protectors -pre heroes- , so I think I know the missions). Most move on with the game, finish and do something else.
When I would do it again, I'd take a part guild team and fill with PuG.
If we can't find people quite fast (like 10-15 minutes), take heroes/hench.

I think creating an alliance with guilds that have the same goals as your guild helps a lot.
Ask alliance leader to tell a lot about the alliance and the people in the various guilds.
Our guild recently joined the 'The Mirror Of Reason [SNOW]' alliance because I noticed they have the same goals as we have, only they are US and we are Europe. They are recruiting on Guru, so are we, I just asked their recruiter to look at our recruitment post and if they had room in the alliance for our guild.

Perhaps you should post a 'looking for alliance' post here on guru with details what you are looking for and see if you can team up with some other guilds.

I dont think focusing on guilds is the answer. Nobody has a large enough guild to support casual play after Hard mode came. Guilds are capped at 100 members, alliances are capped at 1000 members, friendslists are capped at much less than that.

Throw in the fact that people have lives and arent playing guild wars 100% of the time, and maybe a third of the alliance is online at the same time.

Also, its worth adding, polling my alliance, it seems that their is a fairly large group who either (1) only want to do hard mode, or (2) hard mode has zero appeal to them... which just adds to schism of a Guild wars which is already split between a pvE game with three campaigns, and a good pvp minigame.

Then figure that Hard mode adds almost 200 missions and vanquisher areas. Nobody had done any of these areas, and they are all non-linear sandbox so the population of guild wars is spread thin over all of the areas, which take 15-30 minutes (factions and nightfall missions), 40-50 minutes (prophecies missions), or 100-160 minutes (vanquishing most areas) and a good amount of the guild and whole population of guild wars is out of commisssion for a good amount of time.

Say what you will about bad pugs, but most hard mode pugs I find to be of good quality. If you get even one other player, your team is 100% better because you dont have to use henchmen who ball up and get owned against stuff like holy wrath.

Probably the best approach is the pvp approach: grind to find pugs and add good players from sucessful groups to your firendlist, because finding players is impossible due to lack of enough players to support 200 new areas (with over one hundred 2 hour+ areas).

Like said before, why people play solo:
1. missions are to easy
2. pugs are 8 out of 10 bad players with crazy skill bars
3. there are to many mission and not enough players to fill the outposts
4. over time more people left the game then people that joined the game
5. 15% more or less only does pvp and never plays pve
6. the majority of players gets online between 18:00 – 22:00, rest of the day is more or less deserted
7. Hero’s are better then your average pug
8. lately people only come online to see if there is GvG planed that day, in the meanwhile they do other games

If there was no such thing as GvG / Ha u could have soled GW as a singe player game…

I kinda share the same feeling as the OP. I haven't played factions or NF much since the HM release (trying to get my main character through Prophecies first).

My experience (especially of Factions) before the HM release is that of a single player MMORPG. The only areas that "might" be "busy" are Cavalon and House Zu Helzer. I usually play on the European server (eng distr). Strangely whenever I'm doing some of the end-game factions missions like Unwaking Waters I usually go to the german distr. As that's the only semi-active distr.

Note: "busy" and "semi-active" means there's more than 5ppl in that distr.

Weekends are a different story, but even then, PUG-a-phobia has become a bit of an epidemic. Alot of players are playing through the game with a group of henchies or heroes. I personally enjoy the randomness of a PUG, and would choose to play with real people above an AI team anyday. Because people are unpredictable. They might agro way more then we can handle, and yes, the challenge then is to get out of the poop. But it's that randomness that makes playing with real ppl fun. (for me anyway). And sadly, that element of the game is dying imo.

Think about it: How many ppl would go for the random uncertainty of trying to beat the game with a PUG, opposed to playing through the game with AI teammates, using the basic "Lure, Tank, Nuke, Next target" teqnique of finishing the game?

*Gets out banners*...Let's march brothers

SAVE THE PUG, SAVE THE PUG, SAVE THE PUG!!

Anet wont be adding hero's to GW2... wanne bet.

Thanks, but I'm not looking for a big guild myself as I'm happy where I am

I was talking more about ingame features to browse through available guilds with their description for new players to quickly find a good group.

Were they SO bad to do with AI?

Mission and Bonus on Ring of Fire can be done with a full AI team quite easily once you get the hang of it... even a full AI team of spellcasters suffering the wrath of the Ether Seal's energy draining.
I've done it both front door and back door on different occasions just to see how I'd fare (well technically I was doing the back door to cap a skill, and figured I might as well go the rest of the way for mapping purposes).

Unwaking Waters I can beat with my heroes and henchies, and I couldn't even attack Kuunavang myself (Assassin). For that matter I didn't bother fighting the Afflicted much in the mission either. My heroes could take care of all of them quite easily.

This might sound a bit rich coming from me... but if you want to know some of my more efficient Hero builds.... I could tell you... ^_^


Kill the PuG! Cut her throat! Spill her blood!

personaly. i like npc's, i rareley pve and when i do its for a sole reason, ie for amour or a mission, non of this afk crap in towns. however i very much see where having a party is good, i realy enjoy chatting to folk during a mission and it can make a boring mission enjoyable, i dont enjoy factions, i started a new account with a necro and played through almost all of it with a single pug that me and him sticked togther for the duration of the day getting through all the missions. it was great, he knew what he was doing and he had obviusly done it before. the thing is that for it to work there has to be a combination of both, and no1 will ever agree. unfortunitly

I enjoy playing on Teamspeak with 2 close friends and when they are not online I do occasionally help out guild members. My guild is very small and we do have some allied guilds as well. A lot of the time I have no friends or guild members to play with so I like the fact that I can play with heroes and henchmen. I have favourite henchmen type and often use very similar heroes for all my characters. I think that not having Teamspeak makes the playing harder. I will do PuG's occassionally and I really try to keep them as impersonal as possible, although I have made friends in groups before. There are some missions that need to be done with peeps and so I have pugged them. It would be nice to be able to have all you characters and heroes available for a party but I can see that that would be a little bit out of character with the game at present.

WoW: A Completely Solo Online RPG?

You can solo 1-70. Totally.
But LIKE GW, there is stuff you need a party for. That is raiding and doing instances of your own level.
In GW that is GvG, TA, HA and some harder "elite" PvE areas.
I did not include RA since like WoW's PvP, you can try solo and be even succesful, depending on the other soloers there.

Yeah, I've done UW 5-6 times (always from the Kurzick side) with heroes and henchies on several different toons (Necro, Ele, Ranger, Rit, Sin) with no trouble at all. The only times I've ever really had any trouble with it were the few other times helping others when I had real players on my team and/or on the other team.

Some tips (of which most are already aware) would be to take ranged damage dealers almost exclusively and pack plenty of interrupts. Erys Vasburg is a good henchie to take in my experience. If you are having trouble with the afflicted take a MM. Don't get in a hurry and let the afflicted come to you at the doorways and you should easily get masters. And if you are playing a sin and want to get in on the early action against Kuunavang, go secondary ranger and use the critical barrage build.

With regards to PvE and Prophecies....*this is based on my experience today 03 May at 23:00 (11pm) GMT+1.. I only need a handfull of mission in HM to get my Guardian of Tyria title. I don't intend doing it with an AI party.. Sadly, there aren't any people in these mission outposts. I need all the Maguuma Jungle missions, and the last 2 on the Ring of Fire island. The Ring of Fire is filled with Normal mode PUG's and the Maguuma Jungle is really empty. It seems that the Mursaat did a really good job of whiping that place out. My GW experience the last few days went as follows... "Look for PUGs, can't find any===>minimize GW, open Firefox, open GW forums, read forums and play Freecell while forum pages load" What's happening!?

The "team experiance" needs to stay in Hardmode, Elite Missions and PvP. I dont want to HAVE to Team up to get every small thing done. PArt of why i hate GW PvE is because I HAVE to grab 7 stupid AI dumb***es and go do w/e. My rit isn't Pwning. Hes no cause of massive destruction. Hes just sitting there, Putting up a few spirits, healing a bit. Its STUPID. I want to see some F***ing destruction. Monsters die when i press buttons. Team PLAy is fun , but not 100% of the time. And i count dragging 7 computer players as team play so please dont anyone say that "but you dont have to do team play, play with henchies"

And i am aware of solo farming and i do plenty of it. The only reason i even PvE at all is to solo farm.

I'm sayings its plain not fun to get pwned in .0001 seconds by monsters and not be able to d oanythign to them. IN Diablo 2 crappy geared players would get pwned in .0001 seconds as well but at least they could hit back.

SO please. SUper social PvErs aside most peopel don't enjoy the fealing of being weak and surviving only because your exploiting AI and Being super invinci protted by 2 monks.

I believe I said No Flaming? This is a discussion, not an accusation fest. Everyone else is doing fine. Get the hell out of my thread.

Anyways back on topic. I can see the same main points being raised over and over, and I'll just drop em in here, with my thoughts on each.

Speed
Yes I agree here. Heroes and henchmen are very quick, as they don't need to go fiddle with their gonads every 35 seconds. Infact whether or not henchmen even HAVE gonads would make an interesting discussion. Anyways...it can be great fun to whizz through mission after mission, and I think most of us remember the thread in the screenshots zone of missions being completed as early as 12 minutes before the 20:00 Masters Cutoff point with heroes. But remember, two or three people with heroes can be a great too. Maybe not PUG people with no heroes and who will, as was mentioned, draw penises on the map.

Reliability
I agree with this point too. It is nice to know you can fall back on some good solid muscle with well-ordered skill bars and very calculating brains, but there are problems with heroes, as with alot of the AI. One example; kiting. Its very dam hard to kite with heroes without flagging them to your current location. Try running three steps behind Koss to transfer the 2 angry Stone Summit warriors, and he decides to break off his attack and follow you too.

Whilst they can be unreliable, players can be worse. Once again, I think we all know the type. "Sorry lol friend just asked me how many times I had sex with my gf last night and I said 10". And he is typing this whilst being thumped away on by an angry Tundra Giant, and he has no protection up, nor is he attacking.

Additional note: Heroes also make dam GOOD meatshields!

Finally...Being there when nobody else is
I think we've all had one of those "Well Koss buddy...it's just me, you and a really really bad hair cut" moments whilst looking for a team. And frankly, heroes can be AWESOME for coming to your aid when nobody else will. Just 2 button-pressed will give you a loyal person who won't go "wtf no hu mayd u partee leadur? I dun wunt 2 go tht wai" when you order them to rush 2 mobs of enemy and tank.

Green flags ftw.

But...
The major downside to heroes? Its lonely. As I said in the topic title, it brings you back to this idea of being solo. By choice, I often even find myself ignoring the 4-5 party invites I recieve in a PACKED FULL mission area, in favor of going in with my good ol' heroes.

But you can't exactly ask Melonni what she's been doing today, or ask Olias how his office-job-day was, and how his wedding plans are going. Its a lonely business, even if it's fast.

Save the PUG, save the world?

Well, i wouldn't blame too much of it on Heroes. I remember early on in GW's life, porting into Droknar's and seeing 60+ available districts on an average day. But people move on, play other things, and before I knew it, the number of districts was reduced to about six less than a year later...Factions wasn't even out yet and it was near impossible to find any kind of PuG forming in the late-game. You could stand in the final mission area for hours and see maybe 3 or 4 new people port-in. It wasn't that players were just running the mission with guild groups or henchway, there just weren't any players doing the mission, period.

The math argument is the best and most logical explanation..you take a decreasing player base (sure, it spikes when the new campaigns hit, but it nose dives pretty fast) and spread that over an increasing game space and what you have is...empty districts. Heroes, if anything, have been a boon, filling in for the many players who just don't play anymore or who don't happen to be in a particular outpost at a particular time.

A friend of mine that I actually met in a PuG in the hey-day of Prophecies told me he doesn't play anymore because you just reach a point in GW where all that's left is farming for vanity items (15k/Fissure armor, pretty weapons, etc).. This is pretty much why I don't do PuGs much anymore, running out of things to do..i'm either farming or messing around with builds, neither of which is very PuG friendly. So, to attempt to answer the OP's question, i think primarily GW becomes a solo ORPG when people run out of things to do and stop playing. You can't fix this entirely - it's the fate of every game- but Anet could do some things to ensure that there'd be more PuGs to fall into:

I've done the missions (across just about every profession), and, you know, they're not really worth doing more than once - most of them are nothing but explorable areas minus the rez shrines. Would it be too much to ask if Anet actually did something to make the Missions stand out? Provide some sort of obective-based mission structure that involved more than grinding from point A to B? Because as it stands now, all missions are are speed-bumps on the road to me pretty-ing up my new toon. The reason i mention this is because if you make missions more than mandatory, if you make them fun, maybe you have more people wanting to do them (more than once, even) and therefore have more PuGs forming. Furthermore, by giving them more complex objectives, you're encouraging a level of teamwork that is very hard to duplicate with henchway, encouraging the formation of PuGs by default.

The same goes for quests..not only do quests also tend to suffer from the same failings as missions, but the rewards for doing them are completely ridiculous. Go out there and slay a bajillion Margonites and i'll give you 10 lightbringer points! Ten whole lightbringer points?! Gee, thanks Mr. Wilson! If you're anything like me, you just avoid them entirely, let alone any thoughts of actually forming a PuG for them. Remember when they patched Villainy of Galrath to give 4,000xp? At the time, that sort of xp reward was unheard of this side of the Rifts and there were suddenly tons of PuGs forming in LA and ToA for it..while i think xp rewards are kinda lame at this point, Villainy is a great example of how just tweaking rewards can increase PuGing.

As it is, I love to PuG..i just can't think of a reason to at this point..

I do not think heroes have much to do with it - like some others have said AI players will not group with people, PUG players still want to pug. The only thing heroes hurt is *full* teams of 8 - you can now easily fill a few slots with decent AI. Two human teams got the largest boost.

What is mostly is is that GW is a "mature" product - not mature in that it has x-rated content or older players, but mature in the software life cycle. Note, this isn't my theory, it is a standard one in software engineering.

Effectively software ages, at first there is little out there about it and everyone is learning. Usually lots and lots of focus groups created, lots of people coming together and sharing ideas - effectively lots and lots of PUGS. In human terms this person is in their teens.

At some point the major bugs are worked out, there start to be books or guides written, and the community bonds from before strengthen and the groups pretty much split up. There is a lot of communication within the groups but not between them. At this point what the software "is" is pretty much set. GW hit this stage while prophecies was still out, one of the things factions did that ticked so many off is that they changed part of that core that made GW an adult. In human terms you are looking at college age to a little after.

Now we are in the "mature" stage - the vast majority of people there know what they are doing, are set within their spheres, and do not like change in that sphere or to go outside of it. They now have a small group of friends that everyone knows everyone in it and all others are outsiders - while you can still get into those groups new people have to put up with being on the outside for a long time. Chances are that you are not nearly as social as you were once were. Think of this as a 50 year old (note, this is also why changes such as the soul reaping and loot scaling are so much more hated than early major changes even though they tend to be lesser - your moving something that "Is" - notice the capital letter). To a great extent GW hit this stage during prophecies, fully so not too long after factions release.

Now, GW is in the last stage I listed (there is also the next one where it is dieing and then, of course, death). Most software hangs around in that stage for most of its life if it is successful. Someone above me said something about most players have beaten the games and know how to blaze through it - why use a PUG? That is a symptom of a game in the "mature" stage, unfortunately PUGs are anathema to that idea so are discarded. You will note that even though those of us who blew through factions in about two weeks were able to solo the whole thing (I did - most of us had plenty of unlocks and gold to kit out heroes) there was *still* a huge amount of PUGing and general socialization. That is because, for a short period of time, Nightfall was back into that first "young" stage. It wasn't so much that we were good (in fact, I bet most were not - they just didn't suck), but that how to beat some mission wasn't set in stone and you *better* do it that way or else. Now, because the whole system is so well understood it matures a WHOLE lot faster.

Add in that Unwaking Waters is one of those missions that *forces* you to PUG and you have a widespread dislike. It is like forcing a 50 year old to go party with a bunch of 15 year olds. They are all human and as such they are roughly of the same intelligence - however that 50 year old knows how "things are done" and doesn't thrive on that social interaction. That person may, or may not, be correct - but that is irrelevant because that is the way things are done (and they are usually correct).