Guild Wars 2--Updated Impressions

That's what already happens. Isnt that proof that the current system is already a failure?

Problem is you are making assumptions that the GW2 party create system wont be any different than the GW version. Maybe we can see players' builds right off the bat, if we want to - we just dont know yet. Many things might be different.

Add to that, the reason that happens now is the immaturity of the pool of players that remain in PUGs. I blame heroes, myself, since its the only real change post-Factions that affected the mix of players playing in PUGs. PUGs were actually better prior to the introduction of heroes. I know. I was in many. I also played in many guild and friend-based groups, but I enjoyed the meeting and playing with stranger aspect that is almost non-existent now.

So, your example doesnt account for GW2 party creation differences that might be possible, as well as the fact that if we had to play with human players again (or alone, or with a single AI as I thought I read somewhere), the player base would actually work together again a bit more. Dont want to do that and want to try on your own? You at least can. At least without full AI party options around, there might actually be parties that can accomplish something. Heaven forbid.

Unless ANet makes some MAJOR changes to certain professions I have a feeling the trinity will be reborn and everyone else will be SOL. This is before we consider the possibility of racial bonuses or penalties.

this is freaking gau the game is not coming out until 2009 or 2010 we have to wait so damn long! =(
but i heard 4 months from now is beta time!!! i hope so because the sooner gw2 beta opens the sooner world of warcraft can start being sucked dry of there players.
a game way better than wow or anything else out there with no monthly fee.

Well, that's different. It would be folly to say there arent balancing issues currently.

I heard a 2008 beta as well, but I sincerely doubt it. Maybe late 2008, but not four months from now. At least I hope not. They have a lot to do. I dont want it rushed. I'd encourage them to take it slow and develop it smart. I'd rather play a better product a little later, but hey, you might be right. Beta might be soon.

I'm not understanding this whole companion thing.

Why would someone need a companion and if we choose not to bring one then we get some sort of buff. Why would we need to be buffed ? It makes me think that the mobs are going to be at a higher level than you. Not complaing or anything it just seems quite confusing at the moment :P

Hundreds of dragons, this is nice. Dragonslayer title anyone ?

My impression is that PUGs in GW are really, really bad. On the other hand, what probably makes them really, really bad is that it is too easy to do everything with HH only, so people are not ever trying. If they don't like your build, the ragequit - instead of explanations or discussions, for example. Thus also I played *all* chapters with AI only, trying only to PUG a few times.

The situation is different elsewhere. In LOTRO, PUGing is enjoyable after newbie levels (and before pure endgame stuff where you really want to go out with people you know and trust - that is, your kin/guild). You get to meet nice people, make friends, etc. Everyone is trying - I have had somebody quitting in mid of quest, but not more than 5-7 times in total, and often for understandable reasons.

So my guess is that having HH makes it too easy for people to play, and thus they really don't value human companions. Also, may be LOTRO has more mature players.

Also, having no AI doesn't mean you have to PUG. Group with your guildies.

maybe off topic, but in order to gain access to the HoM does your GW2 character have to have the same name? that would suck because most of my characters are profession specific names. im assuming no one knows for sure but from what we've learned so far i think that might end up being the case.

I don't have a single set of 15k, but from what I've seen, although conceited these players almost always know what they're doing presuming they haven't ebayed it all.

They were just as bad, if not worse, before heroes. At least with heroes the only people PUGing are the ones that want to.

I was skeptical about the heroes, but now that I've used them, I like them LOTS. And that's just GW:EN. I wish I could have a party of all of them (maybe not Vekk) because it's like we share something. I don't RP but I'd imagine Pyre's constantly pissing Gwen off, etc, lol.

Alas, 3 per person. D:

I've never minded pugging though. Never got to a point where I was insanely pissed off by a pug's inadequacies. It makes the game somewhat more interesting and I've met lots of friends that way, joined in hatred for noobs.

Dear ArenaNet:

I hear rumors of there being 100 levels of character progression in Guild Wars 2. I'm writing to voice that this is garbage. If you go through with this, you will be creating yet another boring fantasy MMO with the same exact setup as every other game.

Please stick to 20 levels. Please make GW2 backwards just like GW1. I like reaching max level immediately and having attribute points in place early. I like capping skills. I like doing the things I do now. Your formula works well now, so don't change it.

You see that game over there? Yeah, World of Warcraft? Don't be like them. They bore the piss out of you and suck your soul into the darkness of Grenth's domain. Be different. Be unique.

They never said it will be 100 character levels. They actually said "100 or higher or UNLIMITED" character levels.

...not that I'm trying to calm you down or anything. XD

LOTRO has paying customers by the month thus you ARE going to have a more mature audience. Whereas GW has no monthly fee so you are going to have 8 to 10 year old little imps and even a shipload of teenagers who are immature as well. You can see it on this board with all the QQing and tattletailing on a daily basis here. You don't see this as often on the other mmorpg boards. They have some, but, not like the GW community which is really the worst of them all when it comes to maturity. But, there isn't really any reason to keep QQing about it, it's never going away as long as there is no monthly fee. It's a TOY to the little kids nothing more. It's just something to do with as you please and let god sort out the rest. It's really a form of chaos and to really show what young people are really like when there is no control or law.

I played Everquest for five years and in all that time online or on forums I only ran into about five total jerks. The rest of the community was helpful and fun to group with. Sure some couldn't play the best you ever saw, but, at least they would "LISTEN" that's something in the GW's community I find hard to find people that are new who will listen and even people who aren't new that you can help if they would just stfu and listen. GW has hordes and hordes of immature children on a daily basis playing this game. It's no wonder they invented Heroes so the more mature people could get away from this childishness.

The thing is from a marketting and sales point of view, the formula DOESN'T work

I can perhaps, at a pinch, accept that GW2 wont be instanced, although I'd greatly prefer for it to be instanced; but if GW2 *requires* grouping with humans I simply wont buy it.

The complete solo-ability is one of the biggest reasons I at all got, and stay with, GW.

The heroes/henchmen is the single best feature of the GW franchise, and if they're not in GW2... no deal.

EDIT:
You obviously don't read the World of Warcraft fora.

Well , i cant think of a game where PUG's arent bad from time to time :P. MMO's like WoW can have the worst ones: "lol that priest sucks. kick him/her and i'll bring a guildie." then 10min later "we're leaving, have to raid." - "LF priest and a tank" for hours until the group disbands. Depending how old the server was(is) because everyone only did stuff with their guild, hardly any pugs for higher dungeons and those that were formed broke up in minutes or because of loot drama, "noobs" - drama, "HEAL ME!!" yelling tanks etc.

Completely new game/servers dont initially have this issue because the content is new and everyone is enjoying the pugging but as time goes by that above "guild only" mentality grows. Those that want to pug or get help for a simple elite monster quest - cant form a reliable group or get any help at all.

On an older server only most popular dungeons had PUGs, lvl 20, lvl 40, 46 and then you're done but these days someone that knows people gets higher levels to run them trough those places. With luck there was a pug for lvl 50 dungeon that actually managed to complete it but after that it was mostly with guilds. At 70 if one was without a guild, he was pretty much out of luck if he/she wasn't a specific class (healer/tank) or without a proper gear (cant get gear without pugs, pvp-gear wasn't good enough for pve). (my expiriences).

WoW is a prime example how difficult it can be for a new player without a guild when playing on an older server (highly populated servers attract people). Hopefully we dont go there with GW2 though. For the record best PuG's i've ever had were in City of Heroes and they usually lasted for quite long plus it was wicked fun and easy to form them.

Trinity will ALWAYS be present in RPGs.

Its not because its effective or particulary fun, its gonna be simply imported by people who are used to it. All you need is classes being able to sustain healer role, tank role and nuker role, and thats kinda always possible regardless of game.

Unless you just use potions, D2-style.

P.S. No I am not suggesting they do this.

I have to agree with Numa's post that the Heros/henchmen are the single best feature of GW1. It'd be a shame to lose them. No other MORPG offers anything like this! A single "Companion NPC" seems like a real step backward from this system, in my opinion, although how this all is going to work is still awfully vague so I'm trying to remain hopeful. (Come on, ArenaNet, throw us some info. bones! A press release. Something! )

I do enjoying grouping occasionally, but I also like soloing, and I like being able to play through a mission or dungeon with just one friend or two (plus Heroes). Most of all, I like having the option of playing the way I want to play. When I read the article quote (which is really from PC Gamer's overview of games coming in 2008), my heart skipped a beat at the line...

Why? Because it sounded like henchmen/Heroes might ... possibly ... still be around in GW2. People who would prefer that the h/h be eliminated really should just play WoW; WoW is the perfect game for players who are looking for mandatory player grouping for all instance content.

...Now, if GW2 wants to be truly groundbreaking, they would add a feature allowing players to play their alts as their Heroes for all instanced areas. This would allow a group of two players (or even one player), the option of getting through, say, a five-man instance dungeon as you might find in World of Warcraft on their own.

The difficulty here is that the dungeons in WoW are considerably more complex, requiring five players to act individually, than anything in GW1, so I do not see how you could balance things out equitably. Trying to get through a WoW-like five-man dungeon with one player and four AI/Hero NPCs, for example, would be extremely difficult, I think, and would require a lot of micromanagement.

Still, the beauty of using alts as Heroes is that you (and a friend or two) could choose which of the characters you wanted to play as your primary toon and there would never be an issue of the endless and tiresome "LF for healer and tank for XYZ Dungeon!"

I'd rather see much slower leveling, but leveling that included you and your alts. So, too with faction. Let's have it accrue very slowly but have it apply accountwide. If soloing means getting less xp than grouping, as stated in the quote above, I'm not sure I would care about that. As long as I can still solo with an "AI party" whenever I want to, I'll be a happy camper.

I think, or at least thought the reason they were getting rid of heroes was because they wouldn't be needed. It sounded like GW2 could be entirely and completely soloed - not in terms of 1 human player in a party of AI, but just one person in the party.

That's why I'm a little worried about that statement.

I wouldn't worry; it's probably not accurate. Then again, this is from PC Gamer, and PC Gamer has run special issues, cover stories, etc., on Guild Wars 2 in the past, so, who knows? Maybe they "know something".

Correction, it's from PC Gamer UK, and there are several discrepencies in the copy.

Keep in mind, the PC Gamer US that had the special issue and preview is now edited by Kristin Salvatore an admitted GW fan... I don't think she would approve of the UK copy!

(and for the record, the review of GWEN in PC gamer that got a 68% I believe, was not written by Kristin, probably b/c she knows she's biased).

But they are sister publications, no? The line I quoted is also in the PC Gamer UK text. (I'm not sure what you mean by "discrepancies.")

Just out of curiosity, why do you think she would not approve of the UK copy? It's very pro-GW2.

Are you saying she betrayed the BFB club?!

BURN THE WITCH!

"Fans of Guild Wars have been sated with expansion packs - three so far (Nightfall, Factions and Eye of the North), compared to WoW's one. "

Correction: Guild Wars only has one Expansion. The rest are distinct games, each playable on their own, unlike both GWEN and the Burning Crusade for WoW.


"If you're just grinding, you'll be able to join up with an AI party, but playing with real-life online humans will net you more experience. "

If this is true, it goes against everything else we've heard, including from PC Gamer US. Personally, until I hear otherwise, I'm gonna trust PC gamer US over UK. (even though they are "sister" publications, they each have their own staff, content, etc.)

"From day one in Guild Wars you could take any character into one of its deathmatch arenas and fight competitively."

You could create PvP only characters, but you could not take any character to an arena at the very beginning of the game. (even if you count the short PvP nonsense exiting pre-searing as an "arena" (I wouldn't), it's not available from the very beginning, and a level 1 certainly would not be "competitive.")

I'm not saying it's not a positive review, it's just a very quick collection of "notes", some of which are inaccurate, thus leading to lack of trust.

I swear I read or heard somewhere that GW2 would have Companions BUT for Missions you would have the ability to have a full AI party... so there wouldn't be this step backwards.

I think that's a bit nit-picky myself. But, yes, technically, you are correct.

What, exactly, does this statement "go against"? I bought and read the PC Gamer special issue pretty carefully, and I still feel ArenaNet has been pretty vague about the balance of needing to team up with other players versus the option of teaming up with AI companions in GW2.

Understand that I am not challenging you over PC Gamer vs. PC Gamer UK, but I'm not sure they are actually "duking it out" here. I have read about the "NPC Companion", but I don't recall reading that Heroes/Henches will be categorically eliminated from the game. I am just wondering where that idea is coming from. Was it in the special issue and I just missed it?

If you can find that link, I'd be eternally grateful.

All I've heard is that Heros / henchies will NOT be in GW2, replaced with a single optional companion.

I guess some could construe a single, optional Companion could constitute a "party", but that's going a bit far IMO.

tmr819 I wish I had the magazine in front of me, I'm pretty sure that the orginal issue talking about GW2 (the infamous "Guild Wars campaigns cancelled!" one), said specifically there would be no heroes / henchies in GW2, but it would be soloable.


Of course, things are subject to change, and if PC Gamer UK has new information, than that's great, but I'd like to see it in another source, and not just take it for granted from one line in a short preview of games in 2008.


I'm also not implying that PCGamer UK is intentionally trying to mislead, I think they may have just gotten their facts wrong. It happens, especially when talking about a game that is so different from the orginal.

I for one am not looking forward to GW2 until I get a hands on play. Of all the MMOs I've tried GW is the one I love and it all sounds like GW2 is going to be less like GW and more like the other more common MMOs. So, I'll be in beta if we can, reserve it and buy it, but if its not like a super charged GW then screw it, back to GW I go.

Remember they said at one point that GW2 is going to be like GW on steroids, well, they said the same thing about polymock.. it would be like pokemon on steroids.. and well, much like pokemon, polymock is boring little suckfest that is about as much fun as DCing on the last thorn wolf.

I want GW2, I want it to be good.. but my faith that it will be is perma set to zero.

I actually think this would be an awesome idea; it would definitely one-up MMOs like WoW, whose weakest link is the finding of good and balanced groups when and where you need them for instances.

Many features of WoW are pretty cool, as I've mentioned in other threads, and I could do with some of that in GW2 even <<gulps hard and ducks>> the introduction of a lot of persistent explorable areas.

But what is absolutely SUCKOLA in WoW is the grouping mechanic for instance content. Waiting and waiting and WAITING for that healer or tank or maybe even ANY fifth player to fill out a group is just ... heinous. If anything like that dynamic gets grafted into GW2, I'll be very .

A large factor is that LOTRO is new; pugs were by-and-large nice and friendly and everyone on a reasonably equal footing also in GW when it was new too.

it sounds like the game will do good or be a complete disaster. i dont know which it sounds like. i think they should keep the current game and add more expansions with new skills and other features instead of making a whole new game.

That is true what Numa says. Before just about everyone because a recluse or an elitist GW was a huge fun PUGGING community. But, those days are gone and all the great players have left for WOW or LOTRO and there's just the aftermath of birth like in child bearing left anymore. You know that plecentha (sp) sort of thing.

I hope they don't get rid of the heroes, I hate doing things with real people unless I absolutely have to.

You've never tried to get a group for Urgoz/Deep, have you?

In WoW, you only need 5 people for a PuG. In the Elite Missions, you need 12.

Of course, a global LFG channel, like in WoW, would help GW a long way. (but would get spammed to hell)

Nope. Actually not. I'm still too much in therapy from my LFG WoW days. If they made henches/Heroes available for those areas, I'd be there in a heartbeat to at least give them a try, though.

Granted. Needing 5 people is better than needing 12, but needing no (other) people? Ahh, sweetness. The problem is not that I don't like playing with other players -- some of my best online times EVER were running instances in WoW, particularly. I just hate being dependent on other players to play certain parts of the game.

Basically, in GW you can pretty much ignore the relatively few player-group-only areas (e.g., Urgoz) if you want to. Those elite areas in GW are just icing on the cake for "groupies", so I don't feel terribly deprived. I don't like PvP either, but I am not unhappy that PvP is a part of Guild Wars. However, if major chunks of GW2 are structured that way, i.e., requiring player groups for instance content, I'm gonna be majorly bummed.

I just don't think ArenaNet would do that, however. Virtually everything I've read from Jeff Strain leads me to believe GW2 will be very solo/casual player friendly. I sure hope that means keeping my uncomplaining, always-ready-to-go AI pals, but we'll see.

Plenty of time before even Beta. If a problem is THAT bad it will most likely be resolved before release day. No stress ^_^

Correction: In the elite missions you need 3 people all of whom can bring their own ai.

When I did the WoW trial no one ever responded on the global lfg channel. In fact when I used the party seeker thing I sat for 20 mins waiting before just giving up and logging off. In the end I just camped near the boss(the infamous Hogger) and waited for someone who needed to kill him too.