Thoughts on GW/EOTN from an ex-WoW player

A considerable number of those problems stemmed from the engine choice. It was probably the single biggest mistake made on that project.

I play both WoW and GW. WoW is waaaay more based on gear than skill. However, it does require some amount of skill to play your class well. GW is based on skills because of the limited skill bar.

While WoW has thousands of armor and item skins, GW has a few. I like how GW has 15k armor. It's like showing your wealth I suppose...Both games have massive worlds. I enjoy both. Although, I believe GW's PvP is superior. There are AB's just like WoW has Horde VS Alliance Battlegrounds. GW has GvG and WoW doesn't. Endgame in WoW is either raid raid raid, or do arenas.

The profession combination in GW is amazing. You can have hundreds of different builds. WoW only lets you use one. To end this post I'm just going to say that WoW and GW are both amazing in their own ways.

You missed the whole part of the 6600 GT being minimum spec for AoC lol.

Tell me just how many people that play games nowadays dont have one of them or better. Hardly anyone. You wouldnt be able to play any current game at all without a 6600 GT as a minimum TBH.

A 6600GT today is like a Geforce 3 when Guildwars was first released, which was the minimum spec for GW.

Nothing different about AoC with system specs then GW really.

Just about everyone, and anyone that plays games as a hobby will have a system with a capaple graphics card of playing AoC. It will not sink. A 6600 GT is like 5 years old or something, and just about eveyone that I know that plays GW has one of them or better.

You are remarkably narrow minded.

but it takes a helluvalot longer to hit level 70 then it does 20.

also I want to be able to kill stuff, I don't really care how "nice" I look doing it.

I've never played WoW, but I can say this... GW is the first game that made me stop doing whatever I was doing just so I could look around. Pre-searing Ascalon, the first look over the wet shimmer of the Jade Sea... the Asuran lands with dinosaurs roaming about... I've actually stopped to follow a butterfly in this game, followed it until it landed and got a close-up of it.

I've yet to find another game with similar effects on me.

You remarkably underestimate the PC's that gamers have nowadays

90%+ of people that play games today will have a 6600 GT or better. Hardly anyone has a PC that cant play games that are more graphically demanding then WoW and GW.

If they do, then they dont really fall into the 'gamer' category if they arent actually playing current games.

And more good news for AoC's publicity:

http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/...able =CONTENT

And PC gamer dont just make a cover story out of any Game unless its going to be good

lolWUT??? WoW has the same amount of artistic aesthetic visual pleasingness as a 2 year old having explosive diarrhea on a chalkboard.

i've never heard someone actually say WoW has better graphics.. im seriously stunned...

i herd upgrhedz r guud.

seriously though... its not that demanding at all.. not even the slightest. i think the medium-low settings for AoC are the same as GWs medium settings, and overall, why would a "gamer" be playing on a Commador 64?

i crossed over from WoW when gws was announced, and never looked back. then again.. i didnt really like WoW all too much before GWs was even a thought anyhow lol... so repetitive, the "graphics" (if you can call them that) is the biggest amount of visual vomit i've ever seen, and the story (if you can figure out what it is) is sheer awful for being a RPG of sorts.

so yeah...

im saying it...

WoW freaking sucks.

I played guild wars for a little over a year and quit for a few months. Then I went to WoW and now I'm back.

I'm extremely competitive with games so I quickly went into the PvP scene on WoW once I got the chance. But I was amazed to find it not fun at all. You could be better than this person but he has +1000 health from his armor so you have no chance.

WoW PvE is nearly as bad. The quests are mindless even if you are going to different locations. I was using the same 5 skills on WoW and occasionally some others. It seems like I would be bored of doing the quests but keep playing till I leveled up - apparently the only thing that kept me playing for that month and a half period. Basically the only fun thing about WoW was when you would level up, get new skils, equip new armor, and...that's it. Start grinding again!

In all seriousness, WoW is terrible. The people in general act horrible which lead me to be shocked when I came back to gw and started seeing the gg's after PvP things instead of "LOL u got ownedz".

Now I'm no big fan of PvE on guildwars either, but the system was put up for the PvP to work, so I won't complain for it to be changed. In fact, I'd recommend gw2 to keep PvP similar to what it is even if the PvE would have to be left with a lot of instances.

You really need to speak so some other people than pc-tuning forum goons or so.

Between my family, friends and coworkers, i know about grand total of ONE person that has pc at home that can play AoC. Were talking about total of ~100 people. They do play games, of course. Diablo2, Hoham3, Civ3 ... (not counting my internet pals thou, they pretty much all have nice rig.).

You want to know why? Even if people play games, they realize that throwing out prefectly working thing is stupid. One people leave college and parenting funds dry, it is pretty hard to justify getting new PC anytime developers decide that you really need shaders version X to play. And once you are removed from peer pressure of having to have "t3h l33t gfxx c4rd", there is just no reason.

You no longer need to have brand new PC to play quality games. So people are not getting them.

And since we are talking about MMOs:

Developers that spend funds making MMO fun to look at are not speding funds to make it fun to play. Given that any MMO sooner or later becomes rather abstract tactics, math, cratography and goal gulash in players head ... that makes gameplay very important and graphics pointless (at best, graphics becomes thing to lure newbies in or thing that you make screenshots off.)

Soory, no.

The people in GW are far worse then the people in WoW. In my first week of playing WoW, I found a level 70 that ran me through an instance and let me have every blue drop. He / she even checked the loot and pointed out anything that I had missed.

I have never in my 3 years of playing GW found someone as helpful as that. The GW community just sux.

glad to hear you're enjoying the game mate. See you in Gunnar's hold ^^

I gotta agree with behavv, the WoW community is much friendlier then the GW community.

I run people through instances on my 70, my 46, etc.

only 1 thing EVER happened like that to me on GW and thats because I stopped them from making a costly mistake. they gave me a totem axe when I first started thanks to my honesty.

I give people items all the time. I never see that on GW.

Oh its not just the running. People crafting things for me was also nice. I also made a few things for other people too. One person who wasnt a tailor wanted his woolen cloths turning into bolts, so I did quite a lot of stacks for him without asking for anything as it levels up my tailoring skill anyway.

Too bad I couldnt stand the graphics or the combat though, but the player interaction in WoW and other 'real' MMORPGs is far superior to GW.

I crafted free copper rings for everyone in my guild as well. I had a few characters with all the crafting abilities between them when I played, but I moved onto lotro pretty fast, and just cancelled my Lotro subscription which ended on April 26th because I will be playing AoC soon.

On the other hand, I've experienced completely the opposite that you have.

I struggled through WoW because nobody would help out. Joined many, many crap guilds and finally just quit the game.

But GW, any question I had or help I needed was there almost instantly. Before my first character had even made it to Droknar's Forge, my second character was there because a friendly person ran me all the way there from Ascalon. They even helped that character get max armor and taught me a few things about the game.

contradiction?

GW quests are more interesting. They just are.

It's really subjective because it's about taste. WoW is far too cartoony for me to think it's graphics are appealing, and it didn't really look all that great on either of my computers. :P GW on the other hand looks pretty awesome (so does Tabula Rasa, which is what I play to get some variety). It's really just a matter of what you like, and what areas you're using for comparison.

This thread somehow lost track about what is being discussed.

I am playing WoW (again) at the moment. Guess I have already played enough GW and do not really appreciate the direction the game is taking.

But in general I deem GW vastly superior.
The level system will rear its ugly head and all drawbacks with the next expansion (Wrath of the Lich King) in WoW even more, and the world will become larger but whole zones and tons of content useless. Silithus? Argent Dawn Reputation? Who will care about some Outland factions with WOTLK out and pre-level 60/70 areas? But I like the more seamless integration of casual PvP into the world.

What GW does totally wrong is making endgame content optional title things like: Drinking 10.000 beer, opening 10.000 chests and so on. This ist all? This is not really a fun thing to do. If the best way to make money is farming a few spots over and over, something is wrong, too.
Their neglection of PvE balance is also not good for a primary pve player. Instead of adding interesting and challenging content, they add a win button for stupids, called Ursan Blessing.

About Age of Conan: I am a huge fan of Robert E. Howard and Heroic Fantasy in general. But they are just making big promises of being different and whatever, but it just seems to be Dark Age of Camelot boiled up again. Nothing new, nothing revolutionery But with very high hardware requirements, and this will be breaking their neck. This will cost them more customers than bad visuals, I agree to the previous posters.

I also take advantage of this. If I am party leader, I'll kidnap my friends and bring them to Italia with me. Then I impress them with my abilità dell'italiano!


If your Monk has Meteor Shower and your Warrior has Flare and Inferno, they deserve to be kicked. Warriors are body shields, and Monks have to follow their circle rule just as well as the midliners do.


It's sad that EotN did this, but you can still be good without Ursan. None of my characters even have the Ursan Blessing skill learned.


I too was scared at first because I couldn't put skills all across my screen like I could in WoW. However, I was excited to be able to change my attribute distribution simply by entering a town!

I'm getting deja vu with this thread (and Zinger's "Litany of")

Very subjective. Personally I love games that have a strong style, it doesn't have to be realistic, and as I love animation I'm more than happy to play cartoony games and still appreciate the art style. I was messing about with the old Warcraft the other day and despite the argument that 'WoW' was made that way to make it easy on low spec PCs' it's obvious to anyone that the Warcraft style was in place long before WoW.

I think where WoW really shines though is in the later instances / Outland.

That said, I still think GW knocks it into a cocked hat in terms of art direction.

That sums it up for me. The WoW argument is relevant because players make it relevant. People who play WoW/MMORPGs come to GW and see "potential": the "you know; if you guys made the game work like ours, all my friends would want it" argument.

Only problem with sentiments like that is...does anyone here really want them? I know; Anet wants their money but does it want the hassle of dealing with them? Every MMO I've been in is full of jerk pre-teen 85 IQ snotnosed losers. More than not, sadly. its why I left EQ. its why I got sick of EQ2 quickly. its why I got out of Silkroad, why I avoid WoW with a passion. If the few people who publicly profess to play that game here are any clue...there are very few people in that game that I want to deal with.

I bought GW because it was different from other MMOs. Not the pay structure (though that was a factor). The 8 skill-per-bar req required thought on the part of a player when going out of town. The low level cap put players on an equal footing. The most customized player in this game is only marginally better than the worst equipped level 20 anywhere. We don't have to deal with our avatars as pokemon pocketpets; no care and feeding of magical creatures required to use your skills.

Its how Anet marketed GW. They were something different. Catering to WoW markets will do something worse than lose that.

GGs

edit: why do you people keep feeding bhavv? You know he's a troll.

I too enjoyed WoW for a time, but if anything was realized from Blizzard's years of success it was the small team of top level developers who saw things differently and left to form Arena Net and thus give us Guild Wars.

Too me, the greatness of the early Blizzard franchise still lives on in what Arena Net is now creating.

GW players aren't grown up either, its kinda awkward to have 12-17 year olds talking about boobies and [censored] and 2 girls 1 cup in +300 member alliance chat :\

I played WOW for 6 months and its not a bad game but it is no Guild Wars. Guild Wars is unique in a way that it has no monthly fee and you do not feel obligated to play every single day for hours (though I am sure many do!).

For me it is the story that attracts me to the game, the more detailed look of the characters and the gameplay. Guild Wars believe it or not is an inspiration to some new games such as Hellgate and Age of Conan. Hellgate liked the way Guild Wars was instanced and chose to make it as such. Age of Conan's pvp mini games are an exact replica of Guild Wars RA and TA pvp types.

Guild Wars 2 will only appeal to the greater masses out there who play mmo games and I am sure most Guild wars players can't wait for Guild Wars 2.

Why hello there, Bhavv. I was wondering where you went in the alliance.

I have a neutral opinion over this debate, as I have never played WoW, but from a standpoint, I would say that you shouldn't judge the games by their communities. There are horrible players and there are awesome players in GW, and I bet it's the exact same in WoW. Just because a single person ran into a better person in one game and a worse one in the other does not define the entire community of either game as a whole.

Maguma Jungle called.

Same thing happened in GW. GW solved this by adding heroes. WoW solves this through level mechanics, where most of that content is/will be soloable. 20-man instances down to 5-man, etc. With next expansion, all of that will be soloable and farmable.

Different names, same thing.

Agreed. The tasks themselves are barely passable, but the means of achieving them are one of the lamest I've ever seen.

AoC is all hype. High demands on the system in today's PC gaming market spell the doom as well.

Reasonably low hardware demands are reason for both, GW's and WoW's success.

Oh I wasnt juudging the game by its players, I was countering someone that said WoW community sux, GW community rules with examples of it the other way around

But I never play with anyone else in GW now, i'm just fed up of lame people groups when my H/H is waaay better and less stressful.

Wait a minute... The last time I even H/Hed anything was in.... *Gasp* March???

Wow this forum is very active. It's been less than half a day and it's already a five-pager. I've read through everything and have some more thoughts.

Any time you log 1000+ hours on a game, you will break it and it will no longer be fun. It is impossible to design an endgame that will not eventually go stale, whether that endgame entails titles, dungeons, pvp, raids, whatever. This is maybe why ANet is considering an infinite level cap in GW2.

Of course there is gear elitism in GW - but I meant it in the sense of actual statistics. Skin elitism aside, the actual performance of the weapons is pretty much egalitarian.

I think many of the things people dislike about GW are fundamental design choices - the 8-skill limit, the way weapons can be modded, the weapon plateau, etc. Just because you dislike them does not mean the game is "bad." The game implemented them with the intention of being different.

Questing, which takes up a bulk of playing time, becomes completely mechanical in WoW due to the lack of scriptable events. GW's instance-only approach gives quests and missions an individual flavor which is extremely refreshing for a WoW player.

I agree that the storylines for neither game are particularly strong or memorable. But at least GW's instance-only, scripted approach give a better sense of immersion.

I have been reading the AoC previews. I wish I had time to play it when it comes out but I won't. I was in the beta weekend. My computer is less than a year old but can't run it on max settings. My personal policy is to play only one game at a time. I think I will stick to GW unless AoC is something truly special (maybe taking a slight detour for Starcraft 2).

When we talk about graphics, we need to distinguish between the technical and the artistic. GW's technical engine is three years old. It's still good but obviously not cutting-edge today. But what makes the graphics really shine is the artwork - the quality and talent of the artists to use whatever tools they have. In that sense, I think WoW also has good artwork, and I think the next expansion will have some great looking stuff.

In short, GW is great because it was innovative and took gambles that paid off. But ANet realizes that the money is not in the "avant-garde" but in the mainstream, so in GW2 they'll try to go for the persistent feel of regular MMOs. I think there is still an enormous amount of innovation left in the MMO. I really hope GW2 will continue to innovate and surprise people by doing new things rather than settling for some tried and true formula.

I have yet to encounter an MMO where the storyline rises above the usual camp and melodrama. In particular it breaks immersion to see thousands of heroes all running around saving the same world over and over again. In other worlds, the "game" (fighting mobs, tactical choices, etc) is completely separate from the storyline. You can do the former without being aware of the latter. Basically I would like to see an MMO borrow devices from games like the Witcher and implement some kind of a morality system: i.e. NPCs will behave differently around you depending on what you've done in-game. Then things will get really interesting.

While GW has a story line, I never found it to be a good one. I cant remember or recall any of what happened in any of the chapters even though I watched and read every cinematic. The story line was too weak. I couldnt have cared less if the game hadnt had a story line, it would have felt exactly the same to me.

For the second point I would love to see great solo RPG's become multiplayer with nothing changed. This just means, for example, Oblivion as a multiplayer game - The exact same game but with everyone playing it at the same time. Even the original Baldurs Gate 1 + 2 redone like this with a modern graphics engine would be awesome, but not like neverwinter nights or DDO, they just ruined D+D entirely in my opinion.

I havnt played the Witcher yet, but I will try it after it goes cheap

The hype around AoC reminds me of Hellgate: London.

"Oooooh, you'll be able to do FPS or melee and it will be very interactive and..."

Too bad they forgot to make the game not suck when they released it. AoC seems to me to be following the same path of the "psuedo-interactive" MMO where there are a handful of "moves" you can make, but there's not much point in actually making them for the most part.

I think of all the semi-active combat systems, Eve Online does it best. They completely eschew the notion of complete interaction and instead make a nice compromise between tactical interaction and computer-controlled battle mechanics. You don't actually fly the ship to dodge or aim, but you do have to manipulate the ship in order for it to do those things for you in an effective manner.

I'd be that half who would leave. If it's free, I play it. Otherwise, I'm not wasting money for subscription fees.

Oh please. Do me a favor and Visit the forum.

It is like over 100 times more active then Guru has ever been. You make a thread and it is buried under three pages of new and current threads in less then 5 minutes.

AoC is going to be a success. It isnt just the hype, plenty of people have been waiting for it foryears, and lots of WoW and GW players are looking for something new and brilliant. AoC is new and brilliant.

and yea, if other MMO's lost their monthly fees OR if GW had monthly fees, NO ONE would be playing GW right now.

Anyway, for people who really want to see just how great AoC really is, there is an awesome video on the combat and spellweaving sytem right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU

Things I miss from WoW...

Large raids against bosses that felt like bosses.
During such raids, the strategy in how to do them was always fun as well.

The auction house. Though in all honesty, I REALLY liked how Lineage2 dealt with their buy/sell thing. People set up shops to either sell or buy a certain amount of items, then could afk.

Open world with instanced dungeons. This made it so immersive for me. I've never had as much fun exploring an MMO as I did exploring the world of WoW. There was always the chance of running into some horde douche. And that made it exciting. Also, there were set paths where you could ride so you wouldn't get torn to shreds.

That's the definition of hype. The game isn't out yet and there are thousands of fanboys for it. You can't judge the quality of a game before it is even released.
AoC won't cipher off too many fans right away. If the game actually good and fun and there is good word of mouth, then people will move over too it. At the moment though, there are probablly a lot of people with a "wait and see" attitude who are unwilling to put down the money until they know the game will be successful. People don't want to be stuck playing Auto Assault or HGL, they want to join successful communities.
I'd be more worried about already established franchises (like Starcraft II) that will have much larger starting fanbases then AoC.

The beta has been out for months, and the NDA has been lifted. All the gossip is good so far

The game is being judged on the beta. It is being judged as awesome.

Ahh... alright that is a little more fair.
Still, I (and a lot of other people) are in that "wait and see" camp.

Most MMOs are utter crap. Keep your expectations low.

You have most obviously missed all of the hype and information from the AoC beta. It is the total opposite of crap lol.

It didnt win a whole list of E3 awards if it is utter crap either.

Just look down the right hand side of the official page under the recognition column if you do nothing else. Look furthur into the site for more information as well if you want to:

http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/...&template=main

Minimum requirements:

3.0 Ghz Pentium 4
1 Gb Ram
Geforce 6600.

How are those high demands on todays computers? Anyone that has bought a new gaming PC in the last 3 years will be able to play AoC comfortably.

Microsoft are also heavily promoting the game under their 'Games for Vista' scheme, it is currently on the top of their list for that as well.

Oh, and I just remembered a perfect example of a game with great graphics and what some would consider high system requirements at the time of its release that has done extremely well - Oblivion.

Wait, lots of people actually bought a game that wouldnt run on DX8 cards in 2006, but you dont think they arent going to do so two years later in 2008? lol.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2
not everyone seems that happy about it.
(ps:thread was not about Aoc)

No, we really need another 'ZOMG GW rules!!!1111' thread on guru without any critisism of the game or comparisons to other games, I think not.

And not everyone is happy about GW and / or WoW. Your point being?

And the forum right now is flooded by people trying to access the beta, probably not the best time to judge what people think when they are just posting along the lines of 'omg I cant play the game yet'

This thread (only one I can find as I posted it elsewhere) gives some insight into what players think about AoC:

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=71986