Players. GW. And WoW...

I said Guild Wars (released in 2005):

http://www.guildwars.com/products/gu...es/default.php

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/faq/technology.html

WOW do support Mac thou.

Yea I cant find my GW prophecies box though. But I'm sure it wouldnt work very well on 256 meg, regardless of what the box says.


The graphics card differences are a lot more significant though, as I pointed out, ram is cheap, graphics cards are not.


Adding more ram to a system is the cheapest and easiest upgrade you can do for a PC. And you can keep your old ram whereas you would need to do away with an old graphics card.

And some people have runned wow on some box with lower than min required ram/cpu.

But, the problem of this WHOLE topic is still there: comparison of two things with wrong criterias.

Graphics don't count. Diablo 2 has shittier graphics than Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time and Half Life 2. However those 3 games are all excellent game.

Grind doesn't count, since it's not every game that has grind if we take Wikipedia's definition.

The first good criteria imo, when you compare two games, is which game offer more at a specific time (since price change with time). And if we use a little bit of common sense, it's clear that gw has more to offer to the casual player (like 2-4 hours per week). With wow, the more you play per month, the more you will receive for your money since wow should have more end game contents. Now we have to determine at which point both game are equal.

Grind in other MMO's to develop your character and get rewarding new items is actually fun. Grind in GW to gain nothing but meaningless titles isnt.

And before you say 'The grind is optional', what is there left to do in GW after finishing every campain?

Grind going epic going GRINDFEST!!!

I would really wish that people that complain about fun 'grind' in a usuall RPG could just go play an 8 hour long FPS instead that they can pay £30 and finish it in a day and think 'Wow! a whole days entertainment for £30, that was amazing'. I'll stick to typical RPG's which offer far more gameplay for my money. GW is really a funny game. I really do not think of it as an RPG at all. it is more like a 3D action based platform game. Take Sonic the hedgehog, add three dimensions, put in lots of skills and add some RPG peatures like EXP, inventory and items. Yay, we have Guild Wars!

Guild Wars is fun yes, but it no where near as good as a decent RPG like Elder Scrolls, Lotro or Baldurs Gate.

WoW on the other hand took all the best features that make RPG's great fun, and put them all together. They created one of the best ever RPG games on the PC's, and you only need to look at the critical reviews to see just how good it is.

Players that dont like WoW shouldnt actually like any other RPG on the market. Guild Wars however is ok because it isnt a real RPG anyway.

PVP? (now we has to discuss about is pvp a grind or not and blabla)

But grind is not a criteria for games in general.

You're right in saying that in most MMO, there is an inevitable part of grind. However, since grind is to do something repetitively to optimize the result and since repetitive is a very, but very subjective criteria, it's not a good idea to based a comparison on it. We have to admit subjective criteria, but something "repetitive" is hard know: is doing all quest repetitive? Theorically yes, since you are repeating an action: doing quests. But it may also not be repetition and bla and bla and bla....

The problem with grind: is when the time required to achieve a goal is too much for ones patience. And it seems that Korean have crazy endurance.

I dont enjoy PVP. I used to play it and got up to R7, but found the majority (80-90%) of other players to be incompetent pricks.

When they temporailly allowed H/H teams in HA after NF came out, I had a few week of heaven. I got to halls twice with a full run of 5 or 6 consecs with a R0, 0 fame monk who had all the skills unlocked and could actually heal really good. That was just the most fun blast I ever had in my 2.5 years of guildwars. I even beat a few top 100 guilds while I were at it.

Then when I try to join a R6+ pug, it just fails miserably. I were temporarilly in a HA/GVG blood spike guild during prophecies and factions that I enjoyed and was full of some good players. They mainly used blood spike, but tried just about everything. Once when the GVG ladder was frozen, we even rolled a full team of 8 Wammos for GVG and surprisingly won 3 and lost 4 unranked matches!

But for some reason that guild disbanded and I never found another PVP guild that was free from elitism and 'OMG you suck /kick'. So I went back to PVE guilds and worked my way up to high end ones. I carried on doing a bit of HA, but just mainly gimmick builds during double fame events.

The problem is that the majority of players in GW well and truly suck and make both PVE and PVP a complete pain to play. it is far more enjoyable to play it solo. This isnt the fault of the players however, but really the game design and how that if someone has the wrong skills, they are going to fail.

I much prefer WoW and Lotro where everything just works, you take another player(s) and unlike in GW they arent a burden compared to solo play.

Bring back farming fame points with heroes and I would love to play PVP again (with heroes yes )

Even just a TA like 4v4 hero arena for glad points would be awesome.

Yes I know we have Hero battles, but all that capture the flag shit well and truly sucks.

GW just tries to do everything, and while it gets it right for elitist and hardcore players, it misses out on the Fun aspect for me personally.

And you cant say that the fame title track isnt grind. I have not seen anything in any MMO or game that requires as much grind as the fame title does in GW.

I think the real reason people knock WoW is because of the subscription fee. Sorry, i just don't like paying for a game I already bought. That said, I have played WoW and GW. Yes, both games appeal to different groups of people. However, I believe WoW is a much better game. Games are meant for fun. Yes, Grind can be boring, but do you really want to breeze through a game that fast after spending $XX on it. Which brings me back to my original point. Grind=Time, and since your paying for the time, people think that it is just a waste of time. However, people wouldn't pay for a game that isn't fun. Hence, the 6million+ subscribers to WoW.

In GW, there are a majority of players that don't even leave town anymore. After level 20, most people feel that L.A is their home. Sitting in front of the computer waiting for good deals/sales. Why not ask Anet to have infinite levels? Its simple, after level 20, for everytime you gain another skill point(not attribute points), your level goes up by one.

In WoW, you actually have to work towards something. The problem with GW is that at this moment, it caters mostly to PvE, and doesn't even do a good job at that. Sorry, way too bland. Green=Uniques? Really? Whats so unique about them? Their name? Weapon skins determine prices? "Elite" Armor costing 15k when they do just as good as Droks 1k Armor? Amor Customization? Come on! The problem is that there is too little variety that the "best" items can be so easily obtained.

If..

GW required 15$/month...

WoW>GW.

Most people play this game because there are no subscription fees.

I checked out WoW but decided I couldn't play it because it was so ugly. Yes, I know it's shallow of me, but low production values do put me off games.

For me the monthly fee wasn't the decider, it just lowered the threshhold for me to try GW.

Exactly. This was me as well. I would have paid a monthly fee for WoW and possibly never even had tried GW if I got past WoW's graphical style and liked the gameplay (dont know if I would have, as like I say, I never even got that far).

Dont get me wrong. A game could go back to sprite animations in 2D and, if I liked the style, and then got into the gameplay, I'd have been happy playing it. I still play Genesis era games from time to time. WoW's style completely turns me off.

Maybe, but it didnt factor into it at all for me.

Which is funny because I actually love the look of WoW. It's not the same cookie-cutter "realistic" computer graphics that I've been seeing for the past 4 years on every MMO in production. It appealed to me solely for that reason.

I've said this before, Guild Wars is a game with little grind.

Instant travel, ease of leveling, no level limit on gear or skills, monsters only scaling in power so far so that once you reach 20 you are free to tackle everything in the game in any order.

But... where there is grind, it is poorly designed.
I do not have confidence that Anet knows how to make a game with longevity. It wasn't their original goal, and when they altered it to lean that way, they began to fail.

I can't understand why some people assume that something is not fun for everybody just because they don't that thing fun. Don't try to tell me that GW is less fun than WoW or Everquest or any other game just because you like them more. It can be less fun for you but not for everybody.

GW is my favorite RPG of all, and the main reason is not because it is free, it is because GW is different from all the others RPGs, because it does not follow the same old RPG formula about leveling and grinding. I like it because what defines a better player than other here is your inteligence to make builds and your ability to play them, and not your time spent to be higher level than another player and your time spent to get a ubber equipament better than other players equipaments.
It doesn't matter how much someone try to argue about title grinding and pvxwiki and observer mode making things easier, even with all the things helping the players you can find people that can't make builds on their own, that are stuck in a mission because they are not clever enough to make builds to counter the monsters there, people that copy builds but don't know how to use it and ever rank 10 Norn title playing ursan very badly.

But that is just me.

Are you one of those people who thought Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker sucked because it was cel-shaded?

I agree with Inde about the graphics. WoW has a much more aestetic appeal, while GW is just nature, nature, and nature.

Also, GW chokes my computer just to get it to run at a good graphical level (I guess that's what happens when your GPU has 64 MB VRAM.)

I found that the graphics in both games don't deviate enough in style. I got bored of the style of both within months. Same with the sound too.
Can't stand combat sounds in GW and WoW anymore. They drive me nuts.

I've been playing blizzard games since warcraft 2.

When I got tired of warcraft 3 and dota (mod for wc3), I had 3 boxes in my hand- 1 WoW box and 1 prophecies and 1 factions on the other.

Why did I take GW?

Cause I knew it was level limited and not item based.

This means that I can be a level 20 warrior with a crappy short sword and buckler and 1k armor or a level 20 warrior with a crystalline sword (and I dont like that skin, prefer a fellblade or more realistic swords like longsword) and obsidian armor with a torment shield, and what I can achieve depends on the selection of my skills, the usage I give them and the battlefield decisions I take.

Sure, in WoW, the decisions and the way u use ur skills determine if u are good or not, but you need to be lvl 60 to kill lvl 60 area monsters.

Sure u also need to achieve lvl 20 in GW to take on the harder areas, but its very fast when compared, and the grind to get the equipment is rather small.

This extra free time means, isntead of being stuck with one or 2 characters, you can play completely different characters, and each of those characters have loads of different playstyles, that can be switched in 5 minutes or less, to start with.

So while, yes GW doesnt have that much high-end content, you can do it from at least 10 different perspectives.

Saying that, yes, GW need more high-end content and less "learn ur character" content.

So that is what GW players have- the opportunity to play in a field that wont make u more powerful because z player can spend x more time playing than y player and will allow u to experiment the game from different perspectives.

And if you want to grind, nothing prevents you from spending 300 hours farming for that shinny expensive armor or skin, or maybe that cute mini pet, or to be able to get a skill that is slighty more powerful, but wont make u better or more desirable because most pve skills arent necessary and those that seem so, like "There is nothing to fear" and "save yourselves" are useful and usable with very low amounts if grinding.

And lets not forget, GW players, enjoy what probably still is the best PvP in online rpgs.

I just hope Anet, especially considering some had Bnet experience, dont throw away all good they have done and try to rediscover the wheel.

Time to try Lotro then?

P.S love the new avatar redfeather.

@ Nyree I also enjoy the skill aspect of GW to a certain point. That point is that I can only use 3 heroes and the rest of my team has to be filled with sucky henchmen. In any other MMORPG I am not disadvantaged in any way if I choose to play solo.

Also if you like GW1 because it is different to other RPGs, are you really going to like GW2 when it is literally just copying other RPGs?

Fast travel is required in GW because every area is designed in such a way that you cant travel through it. Other games that rely on adventure based gameplay allow you to travel along main roads and even use horses and in wow griffons for fast travel. GW truly has no sense of adventure at all. You just run around and kill things for the main story line, and thats pretty much it.

Adventure is a very powerful aspect of RPGs that GW misses out on. For example, Gandalf didnt just double click on the Mordor icon on his map, fast travel there and drop the one ring into the volcano.

I still could never class GW as an RPG. It has absolutely no RPG quality to it at all. It is however an immensely fun skill based action adventure with some role playing elements, but it is far from what an actuall RPG offers in terms of gameplay. Is sonic the hedgehog an RPG because I role play sonic? No it is not. There is no character development or adventure in GW, therefore no it is not a real RGP.

You know, we don't think WoW is a bad game. Clearly, the numbers speak for themselves. For ten million or so people, the formula works.

But it doesn't work for everybody. For some people, the focus on grind is the part of the formula that doesn't work... and GW is one of the alternatives that, at least when it was launched, didn't have that focus.

As for GW players complaining about grind in their game, even when that is much less than in WoW and similar games: The reason is because they've specifically chosen GW because it doesn't have the grind. Games like WoW did not include a grind-free nature in their advertising. Guild Wars did. Thus, everything that increases grinding-for-mechanical-edge is going back on one of the main selling points that caused some of us to choose GW over, say, WoW.

I dont complain about grind in any game other then guildwars. No other game has a 'title' where you have to kill everysingle enemy in the game. The character development in other games is what makes them an RPG. If you dont like or enjoy that, then dont play RPGs. I dont complain that FPS's are too short, or that they dont offer enough gameplay for my money when all I do is run around shooting things, I simply just dont play them.

If RPGs arent your cup of tea, then you dont have to play them. WoW and Lotro are quite simply the two most amazing role playing on the market today. Guild wars does not come near to competing with them for genuine role play gaming, but Guildwars does do its own unique skill based Action game thing very well.

If you CARE enough to read those 2 threads (instead of just searching for "Guild Wars" and posting it here to make a pointless reply), you'd see that.-

In the first thread (GW copying WoW), most replies say that "and Wow didn't copy other games?" or "WoW copies from both EQ and DnD" or "EQ copied from DnD" or "Nobody cares about GW".

You see, none of those DIRECTLY attacks GW in anyway.

And in the second thread (This isn't GW, this is PvE game), the OP is saying that WoW isn't a PvP-based game like GW, it's a PvE game. Most replies in the thread are either about "WoW PvP is good too" or "WoW has both PvE and PvP which is why it's a good game" or "Personally I don't like GW because I can't jump" (notice how it says "personally"? It's his own opinion and I don't think he tried to attack the game with that).

All in all neither of the threads is a GW-bashing thread in anyway.

Did I mention neither of them goes beyond 4th page?

Yes guildwars is a PVP game. That is where it excells over any other MMO on the market. But for players that dont like PVP and are purely interested in PVE (like me), other games are far better. They just have fees.

bhavv, the avatar change is some silly joke from another forum.
I asked if two applicants had exactly the same qualifications, except one had an eyepatch, who would you hire.
Then I changed my avatar because I found out eyepatches are an advantage in the corporate world.

'

The person I quoted said that the people on the WoW forums don't even bother to talk about GW. So I proved him wrong. I never said that they were threads that attacked Guild Wars.

So in conclusion, my thread examples are perfectly legitimate.

Edit: Yes I did use the search function and I read the first page for each thread. X)

Oh yeah, the WoW official forum's search function, in my opinion, is worse than Guru's.

Your threads were made, what, last September? Last December?

I believe there's a statue a limitations there...

I wouldn't say so. My point was, that on the WoW forums they talk about Guild Wars. I proved my point with those thread links.

Also, they aren't to terribly old. It's not like they are a year old or something.

Regardless of what someone likes, they'll eventually get bored of it.
Then they suddenly like something else. I don't know of anyone who has escaped that.

We "talk" about Wow in this thread (as in, the "Wow" doesn't stay just a subject name OR a reference).

GW was used merely as a reference in those threads. Nobody "talks" about it. Even though the first thread's OP tried to bash GW, nobody cared to discuss the matter and changed the subject to "how WoW copied other games" instead.

How we "talk" about Wow here on guru is different from what they "do" with GW there. I think that's the point AuraofMana tried to make.

And obviously it's true. You can't even stop yourself from bashing WoW forum's search engine.

Again, how sad?

This is my final input on the matter.

1. AuraofMana said, and I quote "No one talks about GW on WOW forums because they don't give a shit about you.

I proved him/her wrong with my first link. It doesn't matter how little or how much they mention/reference GW in those links. The point of of the matter is the obviously care enough about Guild Wars to mention it, even reference it. Despite the fact that there are tons of other games to compare to WoW.

2. I didn't bash the WoW forums.

I was never attacking the search feature there. I was merely stating the fact that the search function is worse than Guru's. Hmm do you count that as bashing? How about I put a more positive spin on it...

The Guru search function is better than the official WoW forum's. Is that better?

Apparently you have never used it or you would know what I am talking about. You are just mentioning it to make me look bad. And apparently you failed miserably.

So I did in-fact prove my point with my thread links, despite what you and others,who only seek to make me look bad because you support WoW or don't like me, say.

/nomorepostsfromme

..To make "you" look bad?!

Please. Who are you? Britney Spears?

GW vs. WoW just reminds me so much of the Mac vs. PC debates. There are far more PCs out there than Macs, and they have much more support (games, apps, etc). So, Mac users feel they have to retaliate against PC every chance they get, while PC users generally don't care about Mac. Then there are those who say each have their uses and can't really be compared - Mac is better for multimedia, blah blah blah, and PC is of course better for gaming and business application. The quality of both computers may be (and probably are) equivalent, it's just that PC was way more successful. They can't be faulted for good business, but they can't have their product judged based on it, either.

My point is, it's entirely common for the smaller, less known/used brand/product to attack the more popular and widely used brand/product. We're lucky that it's only the users attacking, and not the company itself like Apple does. Yes, it's a fact that WoW is hugely more popular than GW. Does that fact make it a better game? No. Does that make Blizzard better than Arenanet? Yes. But to be fair, they did have much more money and a highly established franchise to base their game on.

Any developer who sets out to do "WoW but better" is going to fail, designing a good game should be the goal, let Blizzard take care of WoW.

That's what Strain and Phineas have said in the past. That's why they think so many mmorpg developers fail. Because they are only trying to take something popular and try to make it better. It's how genres become stale too.

Yup.

Everyone at ANet said this, be it Phinney, Strain or O'Brien. We know the interviews in magazines and video interviews/audio interviews where they tell this over and over.

To sum up the gist, they always repeat this Mantra:

1. They want to do their own thing, something different.
2. And be good at it.
3. Most games trying to just copy WoW fail, because WoW is very good at what it does.
Back to 1: So they want to do their own thing... and what do they really do?


Redfeather said it some postings above, GW is simply not designed for sustained grinding. We have no progression in power in terms of levels or items.

But this actually IS why some GW players here chose to play GW, and not WoW. Different graphics styles or fee/no fee are not the deciding factors for me. I wanted to get away from the old Everquest-style of level- and itemgrind based gaming. I have already done this for years before, and this gaming principle has the unfortunate drawback to consume a lot of time.


One could think ANet knows their own promotion and statements.
But they added tons of options and things you can do, and they all involve the most horrible and monotonous grind ever seen. I doubt even followers of the "EQ/WoW-formula" enjoy that overly much, as killing 10 wolf cubs, later 20 wolves and then 30 dire wolves is almost a gameplay revolution compared to Remains of Sahlaja wurm runs for LB/SS.


ANet should abandon this idea of givin people something to do for ages. They said GW was designed to be played for a while, then to go away, come back, go away... the idea is that players come back.

I personally did not believe this could work, believing that players stick with a MMO till they are fed up and then move to the next. Which might take some time. - But it seems to have worked, GW was/is doing quite well.



Now let's see is they create GW2 as the low cost fee-free alternative to WoW and similar games and borrow heavily from it, or if they really do their own thing. I would prefer the latter, nobody needs a slightly less attractive "WoW for the poor". Maybe they learnt something from GW:EN and iron out the bad parts. GW:EN was not much more than a testing ground made from the remnants of a scrapped chapter, after all. And it had some good ideas, too. The implementation was not always done well.

Well, no. He couldn't safely carry the Ring himself, so he had to run Frodo there. When he failed in the Mines of Moria, with the resurrection shrine in a part of the map no one else had explored, he obviously mapped out. Aragon would've run them the rest of the way, if not for Boromir ruining the game for everyone by being an asshole and causing the party to split up and everyone to make their own way to their destinations in small groups.

You obviously haven't played many CRPGs, if you think it's far from what 'an actual' CRPG offers. Most, due to the requirement of allowing the player to choose different classes (and, at times, races) have either no character development or just very generic development. Most just stick with stats progression - though that tends to involve permanent choices, unlike in GW.

Plenty of adventure, too - both in the cutscenes and in what you do in between the cutscenes. Or do you consider that to be just mindless killing and roaming around to no purpose other than to get XP? If you do, you have my sympathy.

You are so, so wrong. The (MMO)(RP)G genre is all about looking at what the others are doing and doing one better. It's probably the most derivative genre there is these days. "WoW" in "like WoW, but better" is just a template that refers to the current market standard.

WoW is actually just a few months older. It's contemporary to GW, not an "older generation".
It's just got intentionally weak graphics to run well on very old and very weak machines.

It depends on how far into reality you want your game to be.

Personally, I can find myself "getting lost" in GW because the graphics, characters and textures can, at many times, seem very "real".

Whenever I dabbled in WoW, I was constantly reminded that I was playing a game based on the cartoonish nature of the landscapes and characters.

That, to me, is a very significant reason as to why I stuck with GW and not with WoW. If GW had kept the original cartoonish graphics shown in some of the screenshots (and on youtube), I most certainly would have moved onto something else.

Actually, I don't think Inde was inferring that WoW had some sort of aesthetic appeal...I think he simply was commenting that it was "different", and sometimes different can be refreshing if you've played a ton of games that attempted to look "real". Kind of like playing the Wii's Mario Bros after playing Playstation 3's Call of Duty.

1. GW having "skill > time" and "low level cap with no grind and effort" sounded great, except you hit max so fast you have nothing else to work for. So, what do players do? Grind, grind, grind, and grind some more. Titles are optional, but too bad that's all you can do after you beat the game.
Yes, PvP is another option, but you can't get in a "good" PvP group with ranks first. Joining a random one is really fun isn't it?

2. "OMG anime/comics/old-school games doesn't look real, they must suck!"
It has always been a Blizzard standard to have games run well on midstream systems, and the fact that Blizzard has always used cartoonish looks on SC and WC series. Diablo series employed a more realistic/gothic/darkish look, mostly because it was done by Blizzard North (aka different styles).

3. Anet can say anything they want about what they are doing. Anet had this "vision" thing ever since the first year of GW release. All I have been seeing is more grind, horrible balancing, and more random crap. Now they realize it isn't working, so they want to go WOW. "We are being unique and making the REAL GW this time"
You know, a lot of Korean companies that copied D2 back then said the exact same thing.
What Anet needs to do is stop copying WOW and adding grindfest. Stick to what the original GW had and GW will be unique and enjoyable. Right now it's just a bunch of badly mixed elements and horrible balancing.

As for whoever played DotA on War3, I have to say DotA is kind of like WOW. People bash DotA for having a lot of ladder/melee abilities and multiple windwalks/impales, and how it's item driving, and not all the heroes are balanced. But you know what? It's fun, and that's what truly counts in a game. It is also fun that makes 90% of Battle.net's population play DotA. Anyone can say anything they want about a popular game, but until they can tell me the popular game isn't popular anymore, all their "theories" and "visions" ring false.

The "raise my integer" addiction has been a core basis of RPG along with story element and gameplay. MMORPGs like WOW throws all 3 at you, but most of all it's the leveling addiction. People play it because they are addicted to the fun part. It isn't because they can't stop, it's because they don't want to stop. If it's fun for them, I see no reason why they can't keep playing it.
As for GW, it tries to suck players in at first through PvP, which turned out more people are interested in PvE, which it had done a poor job in. So, to remedy that, instead of actually making good PvE contents, it threw in titles and all those other grindfest events in PvE (such as goldsinks) to keep people playing until Anet release its next expansion pack. However, even with the expansion pack, GW can't add anymore levels/powers or it will horribly imbalance the game (wish Anet also know what else they are doing that is screwing up the balance), so they throw new continents and throw more and more titles. Now they realize it doesn't work, so they decide to do GW2, and this time, this time they will make it with a great PvE content from the beginning (aka WOW-clone), so people will actually keep playing.

Yeah that's true, but it's pretty much Goldeneye for the N64 that i'll remember. It probably also has to do with simplicity. You could easily learn how to play Goldeneye in about 10 minutes and play with your friends, but these days games are complicated and you'd need to play tutorials and learn the 20 buttons to do well. Goldeneye was just pure fun because it was as to the point FPS that had good multiplayer options. You can't just play Gears of War with your friends if you've never played it before. It'd take a lot longer to learn it.

No, it does not use typical PC-style graphics, it uses typical console-style graphics, as seen in pretty much every console game except for the most recent generation of games for the PS3 and XBox360, and for the same reason: until the most recent generation consoles had extremely weak hardware, and made a virtue out of their inability to pull off semi-realistic graphics.
The cheery color scheme, complete lack of detail, small texture size, low polygon count, and omnidirectional lighting, are not due to a stylistic statement, they're due to technological constraints.

By "complete lack of detail" I hope you're referring to the engine's capabilities, since nearly every room and area in WoW - most especially in the inns and houses - are filled with many props and accessories, showing a good care in making the places look authentic.