Guildwars really do dominate WoW...

The Wow player base? Serious??? Dude, the WoW forums are filled with the most unserious and sarcastic people ever in the history of the internet.

And the article linked from the op, I'm pretty sure that it is (unfortunately) serious.

I'm not sure, what's wrong with what's in the link?

Why do you people try to compare the two? I suscribe to WoW and have over 2400+ hours on GW, so I know both games and treat them equally good. They're both good in their own ways, and I don't think one is better than the other because both have pros and cons. GW is great with syncronized PvP groups on a vent and the campaigns are great first time thru. WoW rewards you for crafting your character to be higher level and have better gear, and you feel better about your character because unlike GW, you gotta work for good armor, not just "Run to Droks/Kaneing/Consulate Docks for Max Armor"...

Besides, if you have a job and like WoW, you can pay it easily... $12 a month is really nothing that should be complained about. I spend more a month on fast food ffs...

Just 50 cents a day, really.

Zinger, posted about the OP's article on the WoW forums, using sarcasm. Some posters in the WoW forums took it seriously, see 2nd poster. I criticized Zinger saying even though he is trying to defending WoW, he got attacked by the WoW player base. Somehow Omega X is desperately trying to defend by saying sarcasm on the internet is hard to find.

I think you should see the whole thread.

WoW and Guild Wars are two diffrent games, they can not, i repeat CAN NOT be compared to each other. They are very diffrent in how they work, amuse, appeal and playstyle its like comparing a car with a bycicle.

That said there are some things the two games can be judged on. One of them being the effort put in by the companies, over the years ive seen A-net improve Guild Wars massively while WoW's quality has seen steady decline, although it has been improved with new content it did not nearly improve as much as Guild Wars, perhaps even ending up worse then when it started.

Aight, saw Zingers's and Omega's stuff, agreed with both.

Now what's with the link you posted?

The link, was backing up my point about WoW's popularity. Nothing of the link itself is bad, but players indulge themselves on about how big WoW is, and how popular it is. The link was making players more so indulge themselves on seeing how popular WoW is. But the actual population of WoW, is different than the one is seen by most of the public.

Thats why I had 3 points.
1. The WoW population in the U.S is around 2.25 million, not 8.
2. WoW population is broken up into servers, 100+ in the US alone.
3. You can play with the WHOLE world of GW, but not in WoW, which has less options in grouping with other people. eg. You can play with people in Europe and Asia but not in WoW. Its done, by servers.

QFT. It's like people arguing religion or politics, and equally non-productive. Some peopel (like myself) actually like BOTH games.

I would strongly disagree with ther above; I think that GW has actually gotten WORSE in many ways. Too many classes and skills have made balance impossible; constant nerfs have undermined whole classes and skill lines; new content has made the game less inclusive.

Even ANet realizes this, which is why they'ev said that they're doing GW2.

WoW, like all big MMOs, has a problem with stagnation as the population mean level edges higher. I'm having fun because I enjoy the journey, not the destination -- and my goals for level 70 are quite different from what most people are locked into. Like life, it's all in how you approach what you're doing.

I don't know what you're saying. You're telling me WoW isn't popular? Are you saying Blizz lied about how popular it is in the US? The announcement that you linked to said "8 Million Subscribers worldwide". So did you somehow assume that it was the most popular in the US? Or something? What?

This is not a problem because that's the price of persistant servers - and it's a price that I, like many, am willing to pay.

the problem that was posed with making everyone able to interact with one another on one massive server was:

1: lag lag omg the lag....try an imagine 8 million other people on one server...of course there would almost never be the entire WoW populace on at once but even more so the server would be overloaded the second it kicked on

2:the fact that it is a persistant world instead of fully instanced means that when doing quests that require killing a specific enemy...there would be be a line of people fighting to get the kill...and the group who brought the lvl 70 along would more than likely be the one to win. on top of that since they have the trade skill professions youde hafta worry about someone camping one mining node or one herbalism plant and thus youde hafta go way out of your way to find one.

3:the economy. guild wars is run off of an npc economy with a supply/demand basis when it comes to the material traders and the dye trader and what have you. WoW does not possess this but it does produce a better player to player economy structure by using the trade skills. example being on one server you may have more plate armor wearing people than cloth...so an armorsmith can sometimes be a great decision to make lots of money whereas on another server you may have more leather wearing people so a leatherworker would thus work. then you count in "rare" recipes,patterns,formulas, etc etc that can only be attained by the faction opposite to your own so when you come across one of these its a huuuge money maker. in GW the only real way i can see a flexible player economy is the way certain items are being farmed, how many are on the market, the stats and rarity of the item, and the difficulty of farming the item. i.e. ghails staff when it first came out only a few people really knew how to farm it and they were selling at an average of 50k since a lot of other people could only 3-5 man farm ghails. after a while the builds got out, it got easier, and more ghails staff's showed up in the market so the price dropped to an average of 30k ish. if the entire WoW world were able to interact with eachother this is pretty much how the player based economy would turn out. basing off of the stats, rarity, and difficulty to attain the item would be.

as it is right now even in a full server (which i have characters in) you seldomly run into other people and really disrupt them with the exception of a popular farming/grinding area.

dont mind the long posts...im at work and have nothing better to do =D

New press release: WoW hit 9 million

WoW has "less options" of grouping with other people?! It has 5 man, 10 man, and 25 man groups, plus a global LFG channel. I have no clue what you are talking about.

I like WoW's persistant world with respect to grouping rather than GW's "you-must-stay-in-the-town-spamming-endlessly-for-a-group." You can do other things while looking for a group in WoW, yet in Guild Wars, you have to spam LFG in Gate of Madness....

this is a valid point and hopefully GW2 will do something similar

in GW,
being stuck at an outpost to LFG is annoying


I enjoy both games but I do wish WoW was less gear dependent

WoW is a grindfest.. it's all about grinding for better gear. And PvP is a joke in WoW.. class balance > gear > luck > skill. WoW also as a monthly fee.. and the devs are a bunch of imbeciles who never listen to anyone else.

... Ok, if you really do not understand, I'll simplify for you.

If, I got a player base that enjoys being a part of a popular game. And Blizzard releases a report towards the public thats it getting bigger. And being WoW, I'm sure Blizzard get a lot of coverage by the media. That will get a lot of attention, yeah?

Nevertheless, the population that is seen by the public is the big number, 8 million... well 9 now, thanks to Zingers posts. But the actual population is that people play in the US is around 2 million, for numbers sake, however that population is further downside with 100+ servers. So... how many do you play with?

Like, how you are willing to pay for WoW servers that have downtime once a week for maintenance that go for 6 hours a time. Not to mention at the Prime time for Australians.

Yes, it does have less options. Its population is set by servers which aren't connected for the 5 man, 10 man or 25 man groups. If I got someone in the U.S, that person cant connect to someone in the Europe at all in WoW. Let alone to another server for a dungeon. However in GW you can, And you can change your home territory in GW too.

In regards to that, I see what you mean. But is Guild Wars really a whole lot better?

Yes, Guild Wars isn't seperated by servers. Cool, right? Not really. Instead it's seperated by outposts. In order to find a group for anything, I need to stay seated in an outpost and spam my heart away. This wouldn't be so bad if the party search feature was global, so I could put in party search "LFG - HM Sanctum" while I go out and farm. But unfortunately, it's only usuable in outposts, so it doesn't solve the problem, just makes it easier on the spamming.

Let me ask you this...If finding people in Guild Wars was so much better and easier, then why were heroes implemented?

(I just realized ANet is saying the same thing, as well: 3 million campaigns sold worldwide.)

Yes GW is better. Because you can not only change your territory, but you can also also connect to everyone in the world. It doesn't limit people as a whole to different branches of the same game, like WoW does. If I play a game, I want to connect to people, especially friends, without having to pre-organise anything.

But as to your second question, maybe the same reason why henchies were implemented? However, with Heroes its the next level up to henchies with customization.

How are you connecting with "everyone in the world"? The International District? I rarely see anyone in those, unless we're playing completely different games. Changing territories? I would agree with you there wasn't a limit to territory changes.

I really don't see how you could play with people in different territories without pre-organizing something.

I'm guessing we are playing two different games. Because as you should know, people who do PvP, fight people in other countries across the board all the time. TA\RA\GVG, god damn, even the whole HA who people fight over favour for their territory! So yeah, I am connecting to many people in the world.

The international district is just a way for people who have friends can play with each other. But it doesn't really matter if you see anyone there, its a way for people to connect and I'm sure if Anet did take it away, then a lot of people would be against it and make a huge amount of people in the player base angry.

And, what if I meet someone new? I used an example before about meeting someone new and find that we both play the same game, but unfortunately WoW doesn't have the option of us playing together with our current characters unless one has to pay MORE money. Even with paying each month as well!
People meet new people all the time through the internet, as well as outside. So, why limit that? Nevertheless in GW, you can even be in the same guild as people in different territories.

WoW PvP is not single server as well, you know. They made battlegroups of 10 servers each for it and people PvP in a battlegroups. 10 WoW severs is a friggin lot of players! So? You are also connecting to many people in the world there.


There is an option for server transfer. Yes it costs money, but it is there.


Overall I think you fail to realise that the WoW limitations you try to show us so hard are based on a simple fact - their world is persistent and only a small bit of it instanced. This fact by itself beats all of your player interaction agenda.

In GW your only chance to launch an active interaction with a new player is by sitting in the outpost as that is the only place where you can meet each other for a first time, unless you use a help of some outside forums, chatboxes or whatever other mass contact means. Even worse - heroes and henchmen while an amasing tool - reduce the chances for player interaction even further. You can basically storm through all the single player without grouping another player once and many many people do just that of convinience, like me...

All the life in GW is concentrated in outposts - get outside and it is a dead wasteland of NPC's only...

In WoW on the countrary you can basically meet and group people all over the game - would it be some town or a simple wilderness grind mission or whatever other outside activity you do. Based on my WoW and GW experience - it is MUCH easier to gather a good friends list in WoW, just because of persistence advantages and lack of the hero/hench.


Also viewing Wow maintenance as something bad is plain wrong - it is no brainer there - WoW ingame/outside Customer Service and Tech Support are much better than GW (that's what we pay them for each month, after all).

Scheduled weekly maintenance is a blessing - it prevents many problems that otherwise would occur and eliminates many problems existing - that's why you don't see all the mass lag issues in WoW - those are being hunted down and fixed the moment they come up. Of course there are still personal problems but you hardly see things like in GW when people are forced to switch regions because of lag.


*EDIT* Also we don't have to deal with 3rd party forums and their problems there as well. A living, supported by developer game forum is wonderful both for support and player interaction there.

PvP and PvE are two completely different aspects of the game. Hell, they're basically two seperate games, when you think about it.

...But I thought we were talking about PvE? Because there's nothing wrong with finding people for PvP. Be a little more consistant.

How do you make those friends? How do you meet new people? That's the gist of this.

The two main things that hooked me on GW from a conceptual viewpoint are the facts that you have a balanced system and that you have character flexibility. What I mean is this:

The GW world is fully integrated to the level 20 cap. Without it, GW wouldn't be what it is. Depending on class, you get a certain amount of health and energy, same as everyone else. Because of that, skills must be limited in range to the damage they can do, armors must be restricted in how much protection they offer, etc. Everything ties to the cap, and it's done so elegantly that people don't even see it for the most part.

Character flexibility... attribute points. Any old Diabloists here besides me? You had to decide from the outset what your character was going to be and spend your attribute points accordingly. You can't get them back. In GW, if you don't like your attribute arrangement you can change it however you see fit. This means that any one character can be anything depending on your mood and not locked into a specific build (Javazon anyone?)

This doesn't even go into the world itself, graphics, PvE play, etc. Just two of the most basic parts of the game that make it truly unique (in my experience, which is limited). These two things are the very heart of GW, and like the heart they tend to beat on without us even noticing them.

In WoW, there's a fee you have to pay that starts out cheap and gets higher every time you reset your attributes (called "talents" in WoW) and reaches a cap of 50 gold.

Keep in mind that respeccing wasn't much of a problem in Diablo because every class had one purpose: Kill things. In WoW and Guild Wars, in order to be successful in the group, you have to have a very specific build for the situation - and it's unlikely that as a new player you'd know what this "specific build" was.

International Alliances such as GEAR

I'm going to take a safe bet and say that those aren't terribly common since guilds are made of friends and friends are most commonly made by PUGing.

Oh, great you are trying to slide track this into a pve vs pvp. If not, why oh why would I only talk about PvE? Thats a pretty big assumption, so unless I said I only talk about PvE, which... I'm pretty sure I haven't. You should read what I said, when I said Guild Wars, which means the WHOLE game.

If you are having trouble socializing with others. Thats your own problem. People meet and get along all the time when they do quests, missions, RA, TA, HA, GvG. They meet and socialize because of a common interests between two people. People create a guild, people join a guild and meet more people. People can socialize outside of Guild Wars and then meet more people in inside Guild Wars through connections through those connections.

No, you are not connecting with people around the world. You are connecting with people in the U.S servers. Unless they changed something that i'm unaware about. You only connect to people on the U.S servers and if you are in Europe, you only connect to people in Europe.

Yeah, it costs MORE money which you already pay for. More money, for MORE service huh? But you really mean, only a small bit instanced? Thats funny, because as I found, the world has two continents, then the Outlands, and then all of the dungeons. Seems like two major parts, the Outlands part and then all of the dungeons. Doesn't seem a small part at all.

Oh please, are you seriously trying to tell me that people in WoW majority meet people when they are out doing quests? Hell no, they majority meet new people when they are screaming LFG in Ogrim or what ever city to do a dungeon or what quest. And so what if you can use henchmen to complete the game? I found that you can level to 70 without any human contact at all. Seems like people just use the henchman as an excuse for as more and more people finding out that PuGs suck ass. But I find the Henchman as an convince, and a good if that. I remember when guilds had trouble finding people for MC.

Nevertheless, I think you are totally gone in the wrong direction in what I have said. Twisting my words as it were. I did not mean it anyway "I find more people in GW than in WoW". If you somehow interpret that and I don't for the life of know how. But I said, you connect to people across the world. MEANING, you meet people in Japan, Korea, Europe, Australia, Singapore, Philippians, U.S and now, GW is release in China.

I don't see how tech and customer support is relevant to what I said. But thats your brain, and i'm sure it makes some sense in there somewhere, however I just don't see it here.

I assumed we were talking about PvE because we are comparing Guild Wars to WoW, a very PvE based game. If we're comparing finding people for PvP in Guild Wars to finding people in WoW for PvE....then wowwie. Very different.

So you can connect with people worldwide in PvP. Okay cool. Now let's focus on the larger playerbase, PvE, where there is little to no worldwide connectivity.

It still broadens with how many people you play with, which is always a plus.

Instances are a fraction of the game. He is correct.

Um, yeah they do. That's how I've made all my buddies. If I'm doing a quest in a certain area I'll ask in the area's general chat if anyone would like to help. If I'm LFG, I set up the Grouping feature (which will have you join a LFG chat channel, too) and go about grinding or doing my quests.

The reason it was assumed you were saying GW is better is because the only way it could be better would be if you were able to find more people, and as it is now, you do not. People won't care if you can connect around the entire world, what matters is if you can find people to play with, period.

He brought it up because you did:

And? It's not like I log on to the game and straightly connect to the whole world here in GW... I also connect to Europe only... Or are you implying that everyone sits in International Districts with their horrible latency? Sure international district is a theoretical option to connect to people around the world, problem is that people hardly use it for daily use because of latency and because home districts have more people you can socialise with in a long run anyway.


Outlands are not instanced for one... Dungeons, while important for a character progress are really only a small fraction of the game and require you to cooperate with another players anyway (which means more... interaction?)!


Don't insert words into my mouth, I am seriously trying to tell you that a very significant amount of players meet each other by doing out of the city activity. Not majority, but there is a very high amount of spontaneous cooperation while doing simple outside PvE. For instance I found my first WoW guild while actually trying to do some PvE quest - in the middle of it I met guild officer doing it as well - we played together, then went on another quest and after some time we gone to some dungeon and I got my place in a guild.

Live example...


It's not GW, you can look for a party to any dungeon or quest easily while being outside... In fact in WoW there is pretty much no need to stay in "outpost" and whine LFG whatever for hours thanks to the LFG tool and global channel.

And yes you meet a lot of people this way, but it's not like the majority you make it sound (judging by you - you really think like it is 90%+ of all the player match-ups in the game).


There you shoot yourself in a leg, mate... Of course you can complete a GW game with hench only (basically solo) and that's good... Now in WoW you can level to 70 solo... True...

Now grasp the difference between "complete the game" and "level to level x".

In WoW you will eventually HAVE to interact other players to accomplish more than a mere "Level 70 Whatever" line under your name in character screen.

And there is a lot of things to do for a fresh level 70 out there with a good group.

In GW on the on the other hand - once you are level 20 and got max armor (all soloable easily) you basically have nothing left to do except for PvP really or going to the 2-3 dungeons for basically no reward except for yet another max armor set with a bit of reskin.

You can beat the game easily in GW... And what is left to do after you do it? PvP is the only GW's saving grace here and even there it's not like there is a huge variety of PvP activity in GW.


So you do meet more people in WoW after all, eh?

Yet again, you fail to grasp the reality of GW... I'll rephrase you to make it sound more realistic: You have an option to connect to people across the world... It is a mere option, which is majorly unused due to problems with international districts (lags and latency) and then most of the people prefer home districs anyway so you won't be connecting to the much of the people there anyway.

There is no point in glorifying a practically useless option. Theoretically it is a cool option, but we live in a cruel real world here.


You started it by bashing WoW maintenance - I merely responded to your line. It's not like based my arguement here around maintenance you know.

I never said or meant to which games can find better people, as I said in my previous post. But, just because WoW is a very PvE based game, it does have some PvP, and not only, if you were to criticize a game, you criticize the flaws of the game, the whole game. And please, don't say you are comparing two aspects of the game, you didn't bring this up before, so why now? Did you expect me to be able to read your mind?

Instances, as in dungeons? Because I thought thats where the major parts of the story (if there is one) is held. Not only that, but where biggest bosses for raid groups are too. Seems, pretty major to me.

I really do wonder where people do meet. Though, its based on purely subjective, I actually found most people that I use to play WoW with within stormwind where they were advertising for people to join there guild. Not only that but also for LFG in IF. I actually played on a low-medi populated server and it was the only way for people to interact together, since it was difficult to meet anyone outside cities.

And first of all, I think you are wrong, I do think people care about connecting to other countries, and especially when they are playing against them. But, are you trying to tell me that population is more important that connection? Then I guess then it must suck for all of the people who are playing on low population servers with WoW's big popularity. But you are right, what does matter is that you do find people to play with, and point is, GW is more open to that than WoW is.

But If Giadax wants to quote on something I said 3 posts before his, then he quote it, not my latests quote. As I said. It wasn't relevant to what I said. But you seem eager for me to really wants bite on what he said. Then fine.

You do realize that GW does do maintenance checks too, but they manage to keep the game going just fine mostly. Yet, we don't play a single coin for these. But I didn't say that the maintenance itself is bad, just poorly, or could be better. Australian players pay as much as everyone else and yet the maintenance is on their prime time too, Why? GW servers seem to have an extremely good info structure and have no problem with having any downtime at all. Yet WoW servers have had a terrible history of bad lag! Hell, do you wait inline to get into the server, you pay for that service too?
Look at Blackrock, which had also a terrible history of server resets. Maybe thats why, they posted a picture of a 486 with windows and saying "BLACKROCK SERVER" Guess you didn't start when WoW was first released, with all of the server alerts and articles of how poor WoW servers are that went on for almost an year, even Alt Ctrl Delete posted a comic called "The Rouges" on WoW servers lag issues.

This is what happens when you bring over false information - people jump on that instantly and divert the thread to that point... That is natural forum behavior and it is a good one, actually, as it keeps BS in check.


There is no permament story built in in WoW. It is a world which advances slowly (content patches) forward revealing more and more information over time. It started as a clean warcraft world with a backup lore and history and slowly advanced forward each content patch - Deathwing plots, Scourge invasion, Dark Portal re-opening, Illidan and Sargeras struggle and it will go on (Nightmare Realm, Lich King, Maelstrom, Creators). Story slowly unfolds and dungeons, while providing players with an option to participate in key events - do not really push the story forward for most.

Dungeons look major and you base your arguement around people speding 24/7 in dugeons, but it is not true - most game time is spent outside in persistent world and it is majorly a persistent world player contacts and match-ups that allow you to go to those dungeons in the first place!


That was an ancient times before LFG channel and tool came to be. Nowadays it is pointless to LFG in cities and people are much more spread outside because of that. Also bliz made a smart move intorducing Shattarath city with portals to other major cities, but without Auction House - it made people more spreaded through out all the cities and regions now.

Also you could always choose med-high populated servers as well... no one takes that right away from you.


This statement has some true points and some problematic ones. While theoretically it is easier to find people to play with - in reality it requires you to be rooted to an outpost to do so. Multi-server district system allows you to dig other servers for players easily, but it has a side effect - those districts are not persistant as well.

If you find a player and play around with him - there is a good chance you will simply never encounter him again. I find this to be a huge disadvantage, as you can't really make long term in-game friendship this way. WoW server setup with persistent world on the other hand is really playe friendly in that, as is actually one big district, thus making specific people much easier to find and play with again.


Yes GW definately has maintenence, it is there and it is done quetly without layers noticing it. That is the adantage of non-persistent world - you can just close a server for maintenence and others will back it up with their districts...

Such thing is hard to do in persistent world servers.


Because the world is round and has many timezones maybe? You can't satisfy all... Besides, current maintenance bliz does is not always several hours of downtime like it was previously.


Past is past... present is present... Yes there were issues, but bliz got over them and this is a very big plus for them in my book.

-------------------------

You know, I see you using a lot of "was" "were" had" and other past time words... I think you should get updated a bit - a lot of disinformation spread about WoW faults is based on fact those faults were true a year+ ago - game has changed and you really can't talk aboit i based off the year old experience of it...

..And likewise, if you were to praise a part of the game, you praise the whole game. That leads me to this. You cannot say "you're connected to the world when you play Guild Wars" if it can only be applied to PvP. That's all I'm saying on this.

Yeah it is, actually. It's pretty pointless to be fully connected to the world if there's no one to play with, or if it's incredibly hard to find people to play with. If I'm able to play with the whole world in the game, cool. But it's much more important (to me anyways) just to find people for a quest or dungeon.

Outposts.
Instanced.
No global party search.

It's much more harder finding people in Guild Wars than WoW.

Sorry it is a fact that Guild Wars is better (I think that is mentioned in the Bible somewhere towards the back :P)

This is very true. I hardly, if ever, group in Guild Wars. Me and my husband play with 6 heroes and haven't come across a single area we haven't been able to beat, except elite missions we haven't been into.

In WoW however, whether we're playing together or apart, if one of us is doing a quest and there happens to be someone else doing the same quest in the area we almost always party up and do it together. It's a lot quicker, and my friends list is growing because of it (my ignore list is still pretty small).

I/we hardly ever see anyone LFGing in the major cities unless they're doing a difficult instance, and even then it's minimal. Most people use the General channel outside while they're questing or the global party search. It's a damn good system, and when GW2 comes out Arena.net would do well to look into a similar method.

End of day, both games have their plus and minus points. Although I play WoW, I still love GW and it's my preferred game, I like the immediacy of it.

if its in the Bible then its obviously fiction...

Trolling - Trolling - Trolling (of course I think this whole thread is troll bait)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Molock Wow... the World of Warcraft fanboys should get of this forum now....

We have just as much right to be here as you do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muspellsheimr http://www.southparkzone.com/episode-vid-1008.htm World of Warcraft = OWNED

Interesting how World of Warcraft gets a slot in an extremely popular television program, while Guild Wars receives no such attention... I guess it depends on which way you look at it. Who is really getting "owned"?

The answer is neither, but hey, what can you do? Fans will be fans.

DreamRunner is redefining the term "strawman argument." Just because one game has one little teeny-tiny feature that another doesn't have doesn't mean the entire freaking game is a failure. I also suggest you actually play World of Warcraft a decent amount (level 40, at the least) before you judge it, as the rest of the posters (i.e. Bryant, Gaidax, and myself) have obviously had experience. I just hit my first lv. 70 two days ago.

On the topic of WoW on television...WoW actually had a spot tonight on CBS Sports showing the WoW Arena Championship Finals.

And yet there has not been such press about Guild Wars, which everyone on these forums claims Guild Wars to be the "superior PvP game," and WoW to have horrible PvP. Those people base WoW PvP on 1v1, which, as in Guild Wars, is not fair. World of Warcraft is balanced around 5v5 and at maximum level. And yes, almost every possible class spec has a role in Arena PvP.

Not even Guild Wars fanatics can deny the press WoW receives. It receives so much press for a reason...

Maybe that's because the creators of SP have played WoW. Or perhaps because it is the most popular video game now and offered enough materials to make fun of all the people they wanted to.

I actually agree with Zinger about the experience bit. I have a level 50 character in WoW, same with Lineage 2. I can say that at least from my experience Guild Wars sacrifices a lot to keep its play style fast and easy.

But its still my preferred game of the 3 for that reason. It is really all about what you are looking for, and willing to pay for in an online game.

This brings up another counter argument about who is actually the better games company, blizzard or NCSoft...

personally, i actually believe that ANet and NCSoft have failed GW by simply not pushing it in the press... As you say Zinger, where are the live Guild Wars TV feeds? Where are the radio shows? (well i can tell you where they went, they died because of lack of help from NCSoft and ANet, hell, i'm doing mine on pure love of the game alone)

So the true question is: have the games failed, or is it the games companies that have failed the games

Pssh, you can't have failed at a race that hasn't ended. Besides, WoW has over 50% of the online RPG market - that means all other games are failing when compared to it. This is a testament to several factors, and it doesn't necessarily mean WoW is that much better than all the other games on the market. What it means is Blizzard knows how to make a game that their target audience wants, and they know how to market it well.

Arenanet is doing just fine for this being their first game (franchise). NCsoft is doing quite well, actually. Right behind WoW in the online RPG market is Lineage and Lineage II, believe it or not. With Guild Wars on their belt, also, they have roughly 25-30% of the market. That's not bad at all.