Guildwars really do dominate WoW...

What??? where are you getting your numbers?

And yes, i do know mine thank you very much and as the guild Wars Community rep for The Sanitarium i'm getting nothing from NCSoft and ANet (sorry martin, but its true) and I'm doing all the work for the show myself...

Hwever, i also know that Blizzard do an outhouse worth of marketting compared to the smattering of odd ads we see for GW and other NCSoft games...

Oh and as of last weeks figures, lineage currently has 24million active players, 12million active players in Lineage 2, WoW has 9.2 million players, and CoH/V has 4million odd players to name a few... 50% of the market? how in the hell can you lump that all in together

Whoa whoa whoa! Where are you getting your numbers!? Here, check this site out: http://www.mmogchart.com/

According to that Lineage never had more than 3.5mil subscribers at any point in time, and it was on a severe downslope (hitting 1.5mil last year). While WoW was on a severe upslope hitting nearly 7mil at that same time. Yes, WoW has at least 50% of the market.

updated last year...

and thats were i leave the conversation til you get reliable information that destroys the press releases i have on my desk at home

Ok... so you're saying that Lineage somehow gained 20mil subscribers since last year???

And these magic press releases would only be on paper, huh? Were these made before the time of the internet?

No, those that i'm allowed to publish i publish on the station website, and you can check them out over at http://forum.sanitarium.fm for more information

Some are marked, "internal press release" and are under NDA (and I posted a couple by accident and got a slap on the wrist for it), those that are posted as just "Press Release" I know put ont he station forum

Not gonna fish - but you seriously believe 24 million current subscribers for Lineage!? Show me proof, since that is seriously unbelievable. 24 million... subscribers... I would believe $24 million in revenue, but not total customers.

Haha, take it easy you two, the kids are watching. This somehow reminded me of Sonic VS Mario from the '90s. I'm sure you both likes GW as much as sunday roast, so what's the point of arguing over which game has a bigger kahuna? . So kiss and make-up already.

oh, no, not at all...

as i stated, GW has been totally let down by the total lack of marketting and PR push compared to WoW...

hell, WoW had TV ads, thats something i haven't seen since Final Fantasy 8 back in 1998 (apart from nintendo titles of course, the Wii gets uber TV time here in the UK), and if GW had half the ad support that EvE online and WoW get on websites, it would do better

Ok, evE has a daily player base of between 20 and 40k players a day, but some are loging in to change skills aswell... if ANet/NCSoft did one Advert click through offering an Epic trial code, they would add player numbers greatly

if your serious, jump over to my stations site, i'm recruiting community rep's right now

Singstar gets TV ads in Australia. Yes, Australian TV sucks.

I rather like GW where it is right now, popular 2nd choice (or 3rd, 4th whatever), an underdog if you may. Just think of WOW as a pop music or blockbuster movie and GW as alternative rock or cult classic movie. Keep it underground man! Ah well, I'll leave you 2 alone now.

Guild Wars to me is the cult movie like The Matrix, found by most too late to see it on the big screen

This explains a LOT. I couldn't have said better.


Since I bothered myself to reply, and believe me, replying in Guru is a very hard and boring chore, I might as well mention, once again, what would be another "good" flaw of guild wars, which is the fact that they are trying to put us through some gimmick to be able to get lore-related quests.

"Blablabla there's no problem, get a credit card, we all now everyone can get credit cards and buy online, we all know everyone has lots of money and everyone can buy online when they want, everyone is just being stubborn, etc etc etc..."


They are wrong. The game story SHOULDN'T be re-sold. I hope it goes wrong in every aspect.
Blizzard, on the other hand, doesn't sell quests. Yes, in Wow, there are also exclusive 'items', like a new mount that is supposed to be released in the trading card game, or novelty pets from mags, etc, but NOT STORY RELATED QUESTS. Imagine if they came up now with something like:

"If you want to know what happened to Thrall and the Horde, buy this or that. Remember you have limited time. If you don't do this you will NEVER KNOW!"

That's what they did to guild wars and it disgusts me.

What false information did I bring? So far, I have not presented any false information. If I did, then point it out to me. But its your own fault if you did not read my post correctly.

Dungeons such as MC\BWL\ Onxyias Lair, when you defeat major characters in the WoW lore seems pretty damn major to me. Now when the Expansion, you defeat characters like Illidan, who also had a direct story with WC3:Frozen throne.

You mean pay to move your character to a higher populated server? You start another character on another server so I can play?

You say, "Some true points" But I wonder what point weren't true. So you are trying to say that WoW is more open that GW is? But it doesn't matter about if the multi-server districts aren't persistent because do you honestly think that if they weren't enough players in a district to make a 2nd, then you wouldn't be able to play? But then again, you got the party feature in which GW has, which shows the players name, district and reason for trade\party, whatever.

What do you mean, you won't ever meet him again? You got a friend list in which you can contact the player, and just because you meet someone there in a persistent world, doesnt mean he will be there again. You are making a far to subjective point and makes a useless point.

So blizzard got over them after the game has been out for 1 and 1\2 years? Sounds like a slow learner. But blizzard doesn't have all the world timezones, you think that Europe servers are the in the U.S? As well as the ones in Asia? All blizzard has the worry about is the U.S and Australia\NZ and it seems like that blizzard likes to play favorites.

Sure I can, see me now? I can discriminate as much of WoW in which the experience I had with for a long time. And the main points I've made is still with WoW on having divided servers.

Oh yeh and troll me more...

Fine, if you don't want to say anything more on it, but I can say it when there are international districts that are in PvE too. It isn't just PvP only.

But it would be pretty pointless if you got a huge amount of people playing the game, but can't connect to anyone. That would be a shame wouldn't it? If you limit amount of people you are connecting with or playing with, then population doesn't really matter. Its more important to me with connecting because you are not only limited to the amount of people you are playing with.

But that depends on the server, yes? I'll be interested in people who play on a (Low) population server will say about it.

Whole game as a failure? I never said that WoW was a failure. I said I like GW "better" because of that *tiny feature* as you say. There is a difference you know. But for the record, I did play WoW a decent amount, probably more than you. I had 3 level 60s and a level 40. I also did play burning crusade a little bit. I played from open beta to 1.9. It was really the warlocks worse time up to patch 1.8, but I'm sure you know this, since you are as you say "more experienced".

So a game gets more of the public eye and its a better PvP game? Hah. I'm sure a lot of pop music artists make better music because pop music is more "popular".

WoW receives a lot of press because its the largest MMO in the U.S. It had a boost of fans because it was made by Blizzard. It also appeals to a large audience in which the cartoony looks might be liked by a larger amount of people.

I think you have your logic a bit backwards... pop music is more popular because it has better music. that would be more applicable logic.

...Which is sad. (The first part )

Btw, why is this thread even still open? -.- WoW vs GW threads are worse than PvE vs PvP threads.

Different strokes for different folks!

"Guildwars really do dominate WoW..."

Is that hood talk?

He's actually being very considerate and polite. It would be nice of you to show the same.

Not people you party with, per se, but just any random person. For instance: There's this Tauren guy who I danced with at level 12, and I kept running into him when I was questing, and now whenever I see him, I dance with him (I'm Alliance, btw). In Guild Wars, the chance of meeting someone familiar is very slim, since a large majority of the time you're not in an outpost - so you don't "bump into" anyone.

That's obvious. His point was that it's much more likely to run into someone familiar in WoW than it is to run into someone familiar in Guild Wars.

...Now that I think about it, I've *never* partied with the same person twice.

It's not that I don't want to say anything more about it, there's nothing TO say about it.

And how many people are ever *IN* an International District for a mission? I'd say about zero to two, excluding roleplayers and bots.

This sounds anti-Guild Wars.

Population ALWAYS matters.

...And this sounds pro-WoW.

How 'bout I just tell you right now, since half of my characters are on a low server: We're much more connected, since there's so few of us. It works out better than you'd think. But then again, experiences vary.

.....

This thread is so pointless lol. All this thread has is a bunch of people from both sides pointlessly arguing, since no one is going to change their mind.

Shall we refer to it as modern pop music then, the most disgraceful noise I've yet to hear?

So very agreed, my forum senses tell me that a lock is coming.

ohh no its not pointless.. WoW seems to be winning the argument! *Just to add wood to fire*

where you getting that COH/V number? its GROSSLY overstated

heres my source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Heroes

Ahh, by telling me that I've brought in false info? Nice way of putting it. But I do wonder in which of my posts have I said that was "false information"

If you haven't had that type of experience or lack of in GW, then what can I say.. that sucks for you. */face palm*But do you know why you see the same people again and again? Maybe it could be the way WoW has set out its servers?

And again its far to subjective. But you've never ever partied with someone else twice in GW? Like whoa, thats insane.

So.... there aren't many people in the international district, but that really depends where you go. But what does matter is that friends\family can connect and play from overseas.

Anti GW?! Are you trying to say that GW is divided up upon its outposts? Because its really not. You are still playing with the WHOLE population who are in the American territory who are mostly U.S\Australian\NZ.

If you divide up the whole population, like WoW has. I really do believe population becomes very much less important. You are not playing with everyone! You are playing with the limit amount of people on your server.

Pro-WoW? *sign* ok, I dont think my point is being understood. There is no way for me to explain this other than what I already am. The whole population of GW is divided upon territories. Divided, meaning forced into groups. Anet has set on how many times you can change your territories, this is how they force them into groups. You can change though! But players can still play with each other in PvP and PvE, international district ect. So players are connected and can stay connected to other people across the world. So now, everyone can play GW, the same GW everyone else is playing.

The whole population of WoW is divided upon regions again but has absolute force on where players are divided into regions. Meaning if you buy WoW in the U.S\AuS\NZ you can only play in U.S servers, Europe can only play on the Europe servers ect. So you can't choose which region you want at first. Now that population is divided again into servers, around 100+ in the U.S alone and the only way that population is connected is through PvP in which you have around 5-10 servers are connected. (I am unsure about the amount, It could be smaller) You cannot PvE with another server, you cannot communicate in a PvE environment to another server, nor is the economy connected either. You can however start another character on another server, or you can pay to move your existing character to another server. The restricting that apply to character transfer are on the WoW website.

I'm pretty sure you know this already, but can you please see the difference that im trying to get at. If I'm playing a game, I don't want to to be limited to a certain population where I cannot connect to other players. I want to play the same game as everyone else, which GW does!

Errr...? Are you really trying to tell me that pop music is better because its has more people behind it? My point was just because it is more popular than others, it doesn't mean its better. Yeah... group thinking ftl Although some people like being a sheep, where they don't have to think.

way to not read what I wrote at all. I'm saying something has more people BECAUSE it is better, not the other way around like you keep trying to say.

I'm actually on the fence about buying WoW or not

yeah, i got that one wrong, I was typing and having a vent conversation at the same time whilst reading the figures, Loki pointed it out to me afterwards but i couldn't be bothered to change it

plus, my wording should have read, "Copies sold", not active players...

I apologize, but i am a humble man and cannot multitask

Yeah. It's a good thing, actually.

So you're just going to pick on that and miss my point? k I'll be a little more specific: I've never partied with the same RANDOM person twice.

Right. So, you don't really connect with more people around the world in International district. They're there more for people who know each other

Yes it is divided among it's outposts. And it's territories. And the U.S, Austrailia and New Zealand does not equal "the whole world".

[QUOTE]I am not saying I'm playing with everyone in the world in WoW. My Horde server isn't very large. But it is so easy to communicate with everyone on my server, and that's what's important.

Like I said, if I can play with the whole world, I don't care as long as I'm able to connect with them. Guild Wars does not provide that.

Only six times. If you could switch as many times as you'd want, I'd be on your side and agreeing with you completely. I too would be saying "You can play with the world!" But you can only switch six times. I really would like to say that you play with the whole world, I really do. But it's just very hard to achieve, and not worth mentioning.

Yes, there's PvP, but how many people pick up this game for that?

I recommend for anyone to try wow

can always quit later
(I've quit WoW 4 different times myself after hitting max level )


I prefer GW but I like both games

DreamRunner, please, spare me... I feel I am losing patience with you.

I won't start digging up posts like a forum shrew, but isn't that you who said things like: In WoW you need to sit in Stormwind or other major city and spam LFG to get a group, which is a COMPLETE BS totally, speaking straightly... Or Outland being instanced... Or inablity to find a random party outside cities. Make some self check, will you?

I still give you a benfit of a doubt, seing that you obviously played WoW, but at the same time I politely point out that your information about WoW is very outdated and your arguements based on it hold no water.

What is annoying is that you are obviously unaware of the changes that happened recently in WoW and spread information about how WoW felt and looked in 2005, which is quite simply false for 2007.

And that all while glorifying the "connect to the whole world" ability, which is possible in theory, but fails miserably in practice (everyone prefer home districts due to latency and language and there is pretty much no real player activity in international district, except for gold farmers/sellers and bots of course).

Your arguement about mostly instanced enviroment with "option" to connect to the whole world being superior to the static, persistent worlds of WoW is laughable at best. Social-wise it is a very well-known fact that a limited player amount persistent world is far superior to any kind of instanced world.

Even Anet realises that and wishes to have persistency in Guild Wars 2, as it is far superior to the current system where the life exists only in cities and everything outside is a dead, playerless desert.

You can, of course, try to prove with foam at your mouth that WoW sucks and that it is worthless and that GW beats it to dust, but seriosuly... do you honestly believe that a game with 9 million fully active subscribers is that bad? Is it simply Blizzard inventing some mind-control techniues which cause people to play their game? Heck no! People play WoW because it is an exceptionally good, well thought-out game!


In fact the only reason for me playing GW over WoW currently is that WoW is not casual friendly, but even then I acknowledge the progress Blizzard made in this field - Burning Crusade is much more casual friendly than original WoW and knowing blizzard - they will go on and make it better.

I've recently gone to WoW myself and all I can say is that each game has their ups and downs. Some things I like better in wow over gw, and some things I like gw over wow. Don't expect them to be similar because they aren't. It's 2 different games with 2 different play styles. If you are thinking about trying WoW you should. You can get it for just $20 and play for a month before you have to pay any subscription fees. If you don't like, cancel before fees kick in. Don't bash it till you've tried it.

With all that said I'm really looking forward to GW2. I hope they are able to combine the best of both worlds.

I'm 30 years old with a full time job and a 5 person family to support. I tried WoW 2 different times at the behest of 2 different life-long friends. A 14 day trial each time.

I'm a lifelong gamer also. Had lots of different gaming experiences, tried every genre of game out there on practically every gaming system made since the Commodore64.

The season of my life where I can get involved in a computer game of the caliber of WoW, or SWG (back in the old days) or LoTRO, are gone. While these games offer very enjoyable and very involved content, the accessibility of the truly entertaining content is such that it is beyond me, and I believe my demographic, to dedicate the level of commitment inherently required in these types of games.

There were other factors that entered in to my decision to never play WoW. Paying a subscription fee is subversively asking for a higher level of commitment to the game itself, if on nothing more than a subconscious level, because of the innate human requirement to get your money's worth out of the things that you pay for. The effect is to increase the amount of time people are dedicating to the game, and the result is that people are more highly invested in the outcome. That sets all players up for an inexorable day of reckoning where something in the game changes and they just snap and decide they've had enough.

Putting these type of requirements on their players and then not even giving them aesthetically pleasing graphics added insult to injury. If you want me to spend hours in your game, give me something to look at already! If I wanted cartoons I'd turn on cartoon network!

And then there was the camping. My 2 WoW trials happened months apart, approximately 3 and 8 months after WoW originally hit the market. each and every time I got on to play, whenever I took a mission/quest/whatever I spent around 20% of my time in town prepping, selling, etc. 20% of my time travelling to the objective locale, and 60% of the time camping the pet-kitties that were the spawn that the 8300 noobs and I were there to kill. NOTHING ABOUT THIS EXPERIENCE SUGGESTS GOOD DESIGN OR GAMEPLAY.

Admittedly I never got any of the characters I tried beyond level 8, but I'm an experienced enough gamer to know when I like something and when it doesn't hold my interest.

On the other hand, I've played Guild Wars 2000 hours over 24 months, and I'm still going back for more. Heres why.

The time commitment fits my needs better. - The vast majority of the content in GW can be accepted from the offering NPC, prepped for in town, Travelled to instantaneously, attempted multiple times, and completed in 2 hours or less. Get in, get ready, achieve, get out. That's a recipe I can live with. There is more hefty content... I've never cleared out the Underworld or the Fissure of Woe, nor killed Mallyx, nor experienced a victory in the Hall of Heroes, but I'm ok with that. Those things are for players that have longer to spend in the game than I do, or who achieve better results than I do with the time they spend on it.

My point is that GW is renovating the genre in ways WoW hasn't begun to fathom. Non-subscription based MMO, Awesome graphics AND content in the same game, instantiated zones to minimize spawn camping, map travel to eliminate superfluous travel time. All these things contribute to an optimized gaming experience. And no I don't want to hear about the high level dungeons that are instantiated in WoW, nor hear mention of the griffons that save so much time travelling across Azuroth or whatever the freak the continent is called. Good concept, weak implementation.

And I grow weary of the 12 year olds that complain about the "level cap" in guild wars. The concept of character level inarguably comes from the good old days of PnP DnD. It was a mathematical cornerstone of the D20 gaming system. The undeniable facts of the matter are that such a system is ill-suited for a straight-across-the-board video game implementation. In PnP DnD encounters where not repeatable like video games require them to be. That fact meant that if you survived the encounter, you were meant to have the xp, loot, and character levels that went with that success. Farming, boss camping, and virtually every re-use of the same encounters hyper-inflates and ends up falsifying what the "all-seemingly important" character level number is supposed to represent in that traditional PnP DnD fashion. Need proof? Tell me how many level 60 characters you've grouped with in WoW outside your guild that totally sucked crap and doing their part to keep the team alive? Tell me how many level 20 characters have come out of pre-searing in Guild Wars. Now answer me how many of those power-leveled farmers knew JACK about how to play in such a way that actually represented their "so called representative" character level number.

Leveling is about earning access to content, loot, encounters, and prestige based on how well you know your profession's strengths and weaknesses, and how skillful you are at playing them. In a world where guildmates help their noob friend shoot up the character level number and farmers can reach the "top" by repeating the same kill 9700 times, that little number next to your name means NOTHING about how well you play.

GW hints at this by shifting gears after level 20 to skill acquisition and encounter variation. It's all about having a good skill repetiore and being able to switch up for varying circumstances that may come up during encounters. The Character Level number is tertiary... nearly insignificant.

So why all the pussies begging for validation that they don't get from their parents in the form on an interminably escalating character level number? Go play tetris already! I don't want misrepresentative numbers jackin up the gameplay in my game!

/end rant
/end the need for character level number
/end the madness that is WoW

And yet you never corrected Lineage having 24 million subscribers... Interesting.

There's actually very little spawn camping in WoW, since respawn times are so quick. The one time that I did have to spawn camp, I only had to wait about a minute, and in that minute I got another quest done.

How bout I tell you about all the low level instances? They're really cool, too.

On the topic of fast-travel: There's also these items called Hearthstones that can teleport you back to an inn or city in an instant. You can only use them every hour, though, but I use that hour for questing and the like.

It's a well-known fact in WoW that level 70 =/= Highly skilled. The only thing that truly shows your skill is your gear, which can only be obtained by doing instances, which can only be completed by playing well.

Basically, it's easier to "fake it" in Guild Wars than it is in WoW.

It doesn't matter if it takes no skill, though. It's old school, it's traditional, it's fun!

I also want to add that you can't judge WoW when you've only leveled to 8.

I played WoW for over 900 hours, 700 of which were before the expansion. I was two days from level 60 when the exp came out and all those end game raiding and epics became useless. Which is why I find GW funner (or more fun). You can grind and grind for the green items and they are still useful once the new expansion comes out (in my experiences at least). They both have pros and cons, but GW is just easier for me to stay playing over time, and I don't have to worry about grinding up again just so I can stay on par with all the rest of the people on the server.

Sorry, no offense, but with that kind of "logic", you won't get very far: you can't judge the president until you become vice-president, and vice-president until you become minister, and so on ...

I feel very close to jkyarr's position, GW is definitively a more subtle and flexible game than WoW, where the scale of things may be impressive but it is too repetitive. (and I haven't tried it, though read a lot about it, and I'm still allowed to have an informed opinion)

Both games are really good, GW is just some bit better.

Uh it's actually more like giving a full review on Guild Wars when you've only made it to level 4. I think you're going a little far with that.

I'm saying that a game needs to be played more before you judge it.

I'll once again say that the breaking point for a opinion, not a full review! is lv. 20 and/or you have done the Deadmines instance. The Deadmines instance alone was one of the key impressants back in 2004.

Well now, what a compelling and well-researched argument! Your attention to the detail between the two games is astounding!

Seriously, if you want to make a relevant post in this thread, as many other have, post an argument in favor of Guild Wars...

I tried WOW - lasted 15 minutes and never went back however LotRo is pretty good

I probably should have mentioned that I played 7 different characters to level 8, deleting and remaking different races, professions etc. SO 7 X 8 = 56 character levels... Given this isn't the same as a single 56 level character, but now long do you have to taste crap before you spit it out?... oh wait... that might be candy... no I think it's crap.... or is it cinnamon? ... no definately crap >----spit----<.

I mean come on fhqwhgads! I'm no rookie when it comes to understanding quality PC gaming. WoW is great for folks with the time and money to burn. Peeps who demand more for their investment are revolted by the pay-to-suffer ...er play model.

I'd like to hear a list of innovations to the genre that are all WoW's contribution. Popularity is great, but irrelevant to innovation. I want to believe that WoW has done some great things to better the genre, but I've never seen anybody put an explanation forward.

As for these low level instantiated dungeons in WoW... that's truly news to me. I dare say they were retro-fitted, not in the original game, right? Were they added with patches or added with Burning Crusade?

I'm ready for Starcraft 2! I could have done entirely without WoW. Starcraft 2 should have been first in the queue... but I suppose they need a little more exploration of the Starcraft storyline before they make "World of Starcraft" I just hope they don't feel like they have to wait until the "Zergie Throne" expansion of StarCraft 3 before they do "WoS".

Me likey the swimming in LotRO! What is it about swimming in video games that's so cathardic? Did you notice they listed it as one of the things definately included in GW2? How funny is that? Hurray for swimming!

/exhalesmoke