Players. GW. And WoW...

That's funny, on my server Horde wins AV EVERY SINGLE TIME. I could do it like 100 times in a row and maybe win once... and I'm not exaggerating.

Many factors decide how quick you get faction, just like the many factors that decide how quickly you get honor/arena points. The chiefest among them being skill.

No you don't. I went straight to S3 gear from S1 in just a couple of months, and not through constant game time (back in the day S1 could be gotten in a couple of weeks, and these days it's easier now that it's purchasable through honor.) It'd be slower, and I wouldn't have my rated gear, if I was in a bad team though.

There is no more honor and rank grind for PvP items. This does not apply to the WoW of today.

Good skills, max runes, and max item stats are required "grinds." I'm sorry I didn't emphasize.

Notice that I keep quoting the word "grind" due to its subjectivity.

Guild Wars: Factions - Released in 2006.

Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch - Implemented June 7th 2005.

Only things that have changed have been balancing issues.

Both of my battlegroups are 90% Alliance. Depends on the servers more than anything.

Shouldn't I do that with Guild Wars time instead?

Who are you to judge which period of time of my life is wasted? I played WoW for 5 months and I enjoyed every single second of it (otherwise I wouldn't have played). I don't regret any of it even now. For GW, I regret that I've bought the game THE MOMENT GWEN and GW2 were spilled (by the Inquirer).

But that's JUST ME. Other people might've played Guild Wars for 5,000 hours and enjoyed every single second of it. There's nothing wrong with that. Nobody, and I said NOBODY, has any right to judge how people spend their time.

Teamwork is far more important than skill, something that can be considered a skill, but as far as WoW is concerned, the majority of players gain their PvP power through grinding honor/arena points for gear. Best skill available really, the only skill necessary in WoW teamwork, is a good healer.

Only a couple of months? How many days/hours spent farming that honor would you guess? Have I mention PvP packs yet? . . .

Oh, you also forgot to emphasize that for a few dollars, you have Zero grind. PvP packs etc.


I'll just assume you are still a noob at AV. Not having played long enough to have followed all the changes. The changes have been far reaching and extensive, the most recently implemented version: Aterac Valley does Guild Wars, but can't quite get it up. They've done a horrible job on the latest overhaul, thus a new fix is in the pipe, sounding like they'll be heading back to the layered "Onion" formula. I'm actually optimistic about this Old/New direction they'll be taking with AV. I might even re-install WoW for a few weeks. It's a great idea really, the more commanders you kill, the less Buffed the end Boss is. Being that you would not be able to kill the end Boss with all the buffs, kinda like Zul Gurub. But you see Blizzard is just prolonging the pain, as gear and stats will outstrip their attempts at PvP content.

If you got good teamwork but no skill, where will that get you? And if you think teamwork is lacking then I highly recommend that you avert your attention to 5v5 arenas. Can't comment a whole lot on 3v3 though since my team hasn't had a whole lot of trouble and I consider 2v2 to be somewhat of a joke.

Then again, I consider PvP in WoW a joke as much as I consider PvE in GW a joke: They're not the most well developed portions of the game, further proving that it's a completely moot "apples vs. oranges" argument between the.

What honor? I did arenas, not battlegrounds.

I bolded the important part. While it's cool that it can come at such a convenience, it's also having to pay more for a game that you already purchased, which is a huge reason why people don't like the pay-to-play model and why people prefer Guild Wars' model.

I stopped playing it when it was no longer "old-school" AV (due to a bit of spite I'll admit, I miss old-school AV ), but got back into it after I got 4/5ths of my Arena gear.

In terms of it "going Guild Wars," are you comparing it as though it's WoW's varient of the GvG battles with the guild lords?

Because Guild Wars has been more successful than StarCraft, Diablo, and WoW, right?

Actually GW2 is going to be a WoW clone. GW1 and its playstyle will die right after that. No one is going to copy a game that fails at PVE.

Dont forget that GW is a free to play game and only has half as many people playing it as wow. If GW had a fee I doubt it would even have 1 million players right now.

QFT. You gotta be so delusional to think that a company would CLONE a less successful game.

Improve on a concept: possible. But to clone? lol, please.

You gotta be idiots to clone a game, period - successful or not. I don't think Anet are idiots. As you say, improving on concepts yes, but not clone. I think both WoW and GW could improve on each other's concepts, regardless of who is more successful.

Why would Strain and Phineas wish to make GW2 a WoW clone?
They left Blizzard because they wanted to try something different. What they tried actually did well enough to continue their direction.
They're not going to drop everything they believe to create a game running off the gameplay of 8 years ago.
Blizzard may have done a good job with WoW, but people are going to get bored of gameplay like that over time. It only took me a few years before I got sick of it.
Two of my friends who played GW, left to play WoW and they recently stopped playing WoW. Someone has to make something different to get the attention of the players who are at that point.
People who got bored of both GW and WoW aren't going to come back for more of the same.

This is why I'm soooo looking forward to GW2: It's taking some of what's the best in the RPG genre and putting it's own twist into it. In the end, I know that I won't be paying for two versions of WoW.

Also if Blizzard makes WoW 2 in the future, it's not going to be a WoW clone either! They would be crazy to do that. Companies who make sequels that are just fancy versions of the first have to rely on the franchise name to sell it. Mmorpgs make their money from long time playing, so it's important to keep players interested long enough.
Starcraft 2 can be just a glorified version of Starcraft and it'll do well, but WoW 2 won't have the luxury of only needing to sell the box to make money.

What kind of game do you think GW2 would be if it's not a "fancy version of the first"?

StarCraft Universe would be win, imo. Hey, they did it for Warcraft!

Also, my crazy "out-of-the-air" prediction is that something will happen in SC2 that'll make it more viable to lead off into an MMO. Whether it'll be something with the Zerg, who knows.

If GW2 is just a fancy version of the first, it'll only sell copies and not keep people interested. People get bored of gameplay over time. They may buy GW2 because of the franchise name, but once they play it, they'll quit and never bother with the franchise again.
Some people are worried Anet only cares about selling the boxes and not making something new. I worry sometimes about that too.
But if Strain is sticking to his idea of bringing new ideas into online rpgs then the franchise could grow.
Resident Evil for example started to get really stale. I seriously started getting bored of it. But RE4 gave the whole series a facelift and it blew everyone away. The franchise name sold it, but the new game design brought the series back into popularity.

The thing is, I haven't heard of any "new game design" in GW2 other than "High or no level cap", or "persistent area", or "solo-friendly" and many other things, most of which sound seriously similar to stuff in other games, namely WoW and "insert the name of a korean mmo here".

"Anet only cares about selling the boxes"? What does the "We sold 5 million units" advertisement tell you? Isn't that obvious enough?

Now, this is what could very well be the thing that truly makes it seem WoW-like in comparison: It will do little that's innovative or new, but instead borrow good ideas from other games and achieve a quality and design that surpasses them. Now, what it decides to borrow we have yet to see. All I know is that the new "sidekick" system sounds awesome.

That's why I said I was worried.
But I'm not going to sentence a game based on knowing very little.
I'm only going to wait and see how they do things in GW2. If it's just stuff they've done to death in GW1 and popular stuff ripped from other games, I see the franchise hitting hard times a year after it's release.
We have no idea if they are doing persistant zones or high level caps in a way that's even been done before.
Also I truly have no idea what they meant by emergent skill system. I hope it's different.

I hope it works better than the ones currently in CoH/CoV though (not that I know how to improve it, or that it should be improved. But to copy it? hmmmm...please don't).

The game must be more than a year away if they haven't expanded on what they first said would be in it. Also I remember people saying GW1 game play changed a bit in the last weeks of beta testing.
I would like to take part in the beta. In EQ2 PvP beta, I was not liking a lot of what they did. I made a lot of noise on the beta forums. lol

Well, they have mentioned something about real-time events that players can become a part of, such as the dragon/bridge example in PC Gamer.

Other than that, if they disclose too much information on new features/gameplay elements, other companies could steal those ideas for their own games, and if they're successful because of those elements, GW2 will have less of a chance since it will appear to have copied, despite being the other way around. So most of the information we're going to get up till beta will probably sound like improved versions of features everyone already knows about, be it from GW, WoW, Everquest, whatever. It's been done, so there's nothing to hide.

Jeff Strain hit pretty right-on when he wrote that "How To Make An MMO" article, so I'm pretty confident in what they pull out : )

But the thing is is that's exactly what WoW did, and chik-chik BOOM 10 million active accounts. It wasn't so much that WoW "ripped" it rather they used things as a template and built on top of it.

I was gonna write a lot of GW2 stuff here but I think I'll spare the thread. That said, I'm totally confident that I'm gonna like GW2 due to one name: Jeff Strain. He knows his shit.

You're right Bryant. But what WoW did worked because nobody took the tried and true mmorpg formula and streamlined it like that, and set it in a hugely popular universe like Warcraft.
But developers often make the mistake of thinking it can be done again and find that players don't receive it as well.

GTA3 only had to make GTA a 3-D game and it became huge. Vice City sold well, but franchise interest was dwindling. They realized that for San Andreas they had to reinvent the experience in order to excite players again. And that game became a monster.

Developers often stumble across a simple combination that ends up making a hugely popular game, but then fall into the pitfall of thinking that it's simply the game play people loved. It was more the experience of something new that made it so great.

Exactly, add to it a well known franchise name and the reputation of Blizzard plus the ability to spend in the region of $35 million to make a game and its paid off big time for WoW.

Being unique and/or groundbreaking might earn you kudos as a developer but quite often it also doesnt sell a product very well, GW was able to both be innovative and relatively succesfull for a first product from a new company.
No, they havent sold as much as WoW and no, they dont generate $150 million a month in revenue but then its not all about being #1, its about building a franchise and becoming stronger and better with each product. Just like Blizzard did.

I'm still waiting for the lock



This thread is full of bullshit.

There is grind in WoW and GW and both cause addiciton. End of the story.

And 5: I play both games and appreciate both of them for their unique qualities.

Some things I love in GW, I miss in WoW. Fast travelling, not having your bosses spawn camped and able to do all of it alone.

But there are also things that I love in WoW that I wish GW would go for. A lot more variety in items. Items being slightly stronger than they are for PvE use only. (I also hate how WoW's PVP is so item based. A level 40 twink warrior took out my paladin when I was level 45. I did all my usual. Stuns, heals, seals, he didn't use a single skill. He didn't need to.)

Oh, and GW2 is going for one thing I really wanted Guild Wars to have: A persistent world. I know, it goes against the whole spawn camping hatred I have, but it makes me feel like I'm actually exploring the world. I love it in Oblivion, I love it in WoW, I can't wait until the artist of Guild Wars makes a whole map of beauty.


Just because you personally don't like a game doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the people who play it.

Neither causes addiction.

I agree more with this statement than any other spectulation from a GW fan.

The last Dev response regarding GW2 was Gaile relaying a message by M. O'Brien stating that (paraphrase) "Much of the info/features suggested in the early GW2 articles has changed"

Represents my prediction that Guild Wars 2 will far outstrip WoW, and the Evercrack genre, in game systems and innovation. Systems which will be unique and pioneered by Arena Net, and ultimately adopted by Blizzard for their next MMO.

Nothing wrong with cloning, Blizzard is making billions on it. . . But for PvP, WoW has done an amazing job at improving Evercrack game grinds. Once they realize Stat Itemization is borking their PvP systems. . . Oh, wait, Blizzard has already stated that they'll be providing Max Level characters. The Cloning War has begun.

Best chance Activision/Blizzard has at staying #1 is to buy out NC Soft while they still have the clout; And shelve GW2.

How long will it be before Anet ruin their own game again?

IFYPFY. . .

And because of that, you cannot point fingers at either of them.

I'll raise you with:

Starcraft and Diablo are stretching the MMO definition. . . Yes Bryant Guild Wars is an MMO. Recent articles, etc even Arena Net Devs claim so. To claim otherwise is blatant ignorance. Don't be blatantly ignorant. Or I'll tire of our debate over the Mindless Lemmings that populate the WoW servers.

Who developed Diablo?? And where exactly are those developers Now? Very few at Blizzard can claim such an achievment, you need a hint?? Think Blizzard North? . . . "cough" Arena Net <<Click Here.>>??

Best of Blizzard has move on to better things, Bryant. I'm guessing many jumped ship when Blizz top brass hired a slue of Evercrack groupies to head WoW development.

WoW has Blizzards name and clout, but is the brain child of Evercrack. What's in a name?? A Grindfest by any other name is still a Evercrack clone. Sorry fella, you have brain-lock for the best version of Evercrack ever cloned. Yep, Cloned, WoW is an Evercrack Clone on steroids. Design specifically for No Lifers who pay a heafty price in Time spent, and life wasted, a small price to the Evercrack pusher.

. . . especially if your prediction of a Starcraft MMO comes true.

Sorry Bry Bry, your claims of Blizzard Greatness fizzle as do your other arguments. You'll need to add a bit more depth, and be less casual about your claims. Had Strain, O' Brien, Wyatt and others left with the Blizzard clout as well? . . . we wouldn't be having this debate.

Without Gerbil Wheel Stat Grinds, WoW would be a hollow game.

Nowhere on the Guild Wars web site does it claim to call itself an "MMO." As is was stated by the devs, it is a "competitive online role-playing game."

Ignorant? You've made quite a few baseless claims in the past, most ridiculously about me having a "bitter hatred" for ANet, and you are calling me ignorant?

Do you not think even for *one* second that people are actually enjoying the game, the world, killing monsters, killing bosses, and developing their character? Are you firmly set in your belief that there can be no enjoyment in the World of Warcraft in any way, shape, or form? That everyone is stuck in a "gerbil wheel," and that Blizzard has made an otherwise terrible game? Is that truly what you believe?

If all of that were true, WoW would not even break the 2 million account figure, let alone maybe the 2 million copies sold figure. But that is not the case. People are in WoW because they like/enjoy/love the game, not because they "zomg have to." There are people who are exceptions to this, of course, but they are not WoW exclusive: They exist outside in so many other games. Blizzard cannot be held accountable for them, just as Bungie can't be held accountable for people playing Halo too much.

What Blizzard has done with WoW has not been "tricky" or "untruthful game design." It has been *good* game design. This is why they've been able to keep so many players and acquire so many new ones. All the advertising and hype would be non-existent if WoW wasn't a good game.

You may not like it for whatever reason, but don't take that same reason for logic. It is one thing and one thing only: opinion, and you need only know that not everyone will accept it.

The leads of Diablo and Diablo II went to Flagship Studios.

Balan all of your claims about other companies copying GW are worse then fizzle. They are more like turd then anything else.

If Anet were not even copying other games in the slightest, then just why are they changing to an open persistant world?

You can put as many unique features in a game as you like, but as soon as you completely change one of its more unique features just to copy what every other game has, you lose the originallity and you get a clone.

I currently find it hard to believe that (gameplay wise) one persistant world RPG can be completely different and unique compared to others. We will just have to wait and see just how GW2 manages to seperate itself from other games, but IMHO it isnt going to be vastly different from other persistant world games. Also they are raising the level cap. Another unique feature of GW was the low level cap and that you could get max level in a day or two. However they are increasing the cap, which really is just doing the same as other MMO's (Moar levels = better, not)

I most likely will be completely wrong, and GW2 will be extremely original. But untill it is released I would rather not speculate that it is going to be unique and original when it dropping just about all of GW1's unique features and taking on the features of just about every other MMO on the market.

well based on what we saw from Factions and Nightfall with classes and skills...

I give it until about 3 days after release

I stop giving people's opinions any credence the moment they start name calling to make their point, be it no-lifers, lemmings, gerbils or even girbles.

Balan, you make some good points but haranguing everyone who doesn't share your point of view and continually making them out to be idiotic level junkies really pulls your argument down around your knees.

Many people enjoy large worlds, explorable content and character development without logging in for 24 hours a day. I can tell without even looking I've spent over 2,500 hrs on GW and less than 450 on WoW.

And no I don't see why I should staple that to my forehead for you or anyone else. How people play their game is up to them, not you and not everyone is a red-bull-addled-levelling addict. Some of us just like the game.. you know.. kill shit, explore, do the odd instance yadda yadda.

Well after watching this one for awhile I'll throw my 2 cents in.

I personally think it's silly to be quantifying GW & WoW as though they are identical products. Despite both being MMORPG's GW & WoW are massively different games. WoW is the current pinnacle of the tried and true MMO formula; GW on the other hand is using a very new and different strategy for MMO's.

The fact that other companies are taking note of GW and looking at using some of it's features in their future projects shows how big of an impact ArenaNet's new MMO formula has made on the industry. GW hasn't outsold the big names of Warcraft, Everquest, etc; but it's the fact that the very first product from a new company with such an "odd" set up for a MMO has been successful enough to even be compared to WoW that makes any company looking at making an MMO consider all the features GW used that made it so successful.

So all in all GW is a very different game from WoW, and as for the players of each game all I can say is each person is their own person, they aren't defined by what game they play. They only become that if they choose to be. If you really like what GW offers as opposed to WoW then you will likely find it hard to understand why people prefer WoW and vice versa.

WoW and GW both have positive and negative aspects.

Take away the negative aspects of both, add the positive aspects and you have a terrific game in the making. *Crosses fingers for GW2*

diablo III is in development as we speak, with a select number of blizzard employee's working on it.

you seem to be under the impression that WoW is not enjoyable and seems to be some sort of fix for a gamer junkie. No. It is not. Don't dare say wow is simply a stats grind, as i can very very easily say the same thing for GW. Why are people still playing gw? Titles? PvP(rewards)? faction? whatever it is, the content in gw expires a 10th of the way to wow. Now thats not saying GW is fun, it is a great game. One thing you need to grasp is that people pay a fee because they enjoy the game so much, or it is just to their liking. I play games to relax. I have a lot of responsibilities and things to do in my day, and gaming helps me to relax. I do not do it to waste my time, believe me i need all the time i can get. I simply play games such as gw to have FUN, which is the aim of a game.

Wow is not a clone of everything. I have been a great admirer of them ever since the first Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, and the universe that they have created is very original. The gameplay too is original...in so many ways.

Your arguement is flawed, and to insult others such as bryant because they do not share your ideals and views is just ignorant. Don't be ignorant.

One thing which separates GW from pretty much all other MMORPGs is that each chapter has a definite end. You can actually complete it, like it was a single-player game. The grind in GW comes when people have completed the game, but want to continue playing anyway.

What is a Lemming, or a Gerbil, or even a Girble? We seem to have a solid "Clump" of WoW players enjoying this thread. For your entertainment:

Lemming--a small furry creature, of rodent intelligence, sometimes noted for its mass drownings, being prone to following of popular trend unto its very demise.

Gerbil--A small furry creature, of rodent intelligence, that loves to spend its entire life treading endlessly on an gerbil wheel, grinding it's life away.

Gerble--A WoW player?

WoWs success does, in part, boil down to an undeniable "Lemming Factor". Would so many have ever considered playing it had it not been a Blizzard Game, using the Warcraft franchise? It's intuitively obvious that their past success garners their present following. WoW success clearly benefits from the shoulders of much better games, designed by much better Developers who are no longer employed at Blizzard. WoW is an insult to the quality and value of Blizzard's past games.

Blizzard made a questionable, but obvious choice. They chose to exploit human nature, by using a formula of Evercrack addiction, rather than providing a good wholesome gaming experience. Thus the departure of the best of Blizzard, spinning off to Flagship and Arena Net. Though it has never been stated publicly, it seems obvious that many felt Everquest III a poor choice for a Blizzard game. When I first heard WoW was bringing in Everquest groupies . . . brilliant move, just brilliant. (see Guild Wars design philosophy, less greed better experience.) Blizzard is no longer the company it was. Because of the exploitative nature of Evercrack, we now have lemmings recruiting their friends insisting that their having the bestest most fun time of their lives, waisting away on a "Gerble" wheel of Evercrack in their parent's basement. The fundamental core of the WoW system is rotten, without endless Stat Grind, and the accompanying addiction, WoW would be a hollow game.

If it's not an addiction, oh Holy WoW fans, then stop. Stop for a couple of months. Too much fun, I can't stop, I need to keep up with my gear, so I won't fall behind my raiding friends, its fun, I need more E Peen so I can gank that Noob horde, its fun, All I can do when I'm not in WoW, is think what I'll do when I login to WoW, and well, its fun! . . Delusions and Tricks, using souped-up pixels and sophisticated stimulus response code (evercrack); all for your enjoyment. I watch kids hyperventilating in paper bags filled with Krylon spray paint, when I asked them why they did it? Its fun, man.

Tragically the Southpark WoW episode is closer to truth than any defender of WoW has yet to argue in this thread. It demonstrates perfectly what a No-Lifer is.

Perhaps posting all those gruesome WoW U-Tube Vids is the only way for it to "Click" in the mind of an aborted life waisted in front of their computer screen. Seems WoW has a plethora of these Vids, dysfunction and idiocy runs as rampant in these Vids, as it did in the guilds and players I came into contact with in WoW. These Vids are far from isolated cases. In my experience it was the rule not the exception. Many, many of them were, in fact, "Idiotic Level Junkies."

Sorry for tearing at your delusions, WoW and what it did to the players around me was one of the most "Twin Peekish" experiences of my entire life. Of course there were some good folk in WoW, but they didn't last once the Girble Wheel began to Roll.

Seems GW wins again, when you compare WoW U-Tube loser vids Vs. . . None yet, least to my knowledge.

I'd also contend, per dollar spent, Guild War far outstrips WoW for a successful MMO, for quality, content, and experience--not greed.

WoW 45 Million
GW guestimation 15 Million.

Very comparable games considering these threads keep popping up, WoW loses three times over if you consider those numbers.

To the OP, Guild Wars, and what it represents, is a much better game compared to WoW. When Arena Net finally gets around to spending 45 million developing Guild Wars 2, you'll understand why.