Quality of Guild Wars.

Let's just start by defining what 'quality' means here. I think the the word "effort" makes a pretty good mental image of what it means to make a quality work. You see it on small things. So small it almost feels subconscious. Color codes in item names, different modifications in items, different ways to get a task done. When you're holding a big hammer it "feels" like you're holding a big hammer.

Let's take an first-person shooter (FPS) game for example. Poor quality FPS makes no distinction of hit location. Either you hit or you don't. This causes vicious circle that leads to character having exactly one death animation, exactly one way to get damage, which depends on weapon damage. That's a sign of poor quality. I'd also like to make it clear that I'm not talking about quantity, ie. the number of different weapons and maps. The two concepts are easily mixed and it's not always clear if different character models for instance really add to quality or quantity sector of the game. Quality is small incremental additions on top of "meat" of the game. Some developers may think that bothering with small things - adding couple of extra animations and variations is inconsequential, but it has huge subconscious effect on players' minds.

Staying on the FPS example, good quality game takes care of the small things. There is distinction in hit location and the game code also places semantic importance of certain locations on body. For example getting hit on leg might reduce movement speed and result in tilt on camera balance, whereas getting hit on hand might result to unability to use weapon for a short moment. First part of making quality is thus making distinction.

Let's start with Guild Wars' quality. The game is very adjusted to PvP balance, namely nothing is behind long hours of work and all item modifications are close in balance. However, this seems more like necessity for a good PvP game (analogy of players having accessible weapons in FPS game). The actual quality of the game is rather poor. You have hundreds of skills (quantity) with a single purpose they can be used (quality). A Monk might cast Protective Spirit, but it's just the similar Protective Spirit as the one cast by Necromancer. There's short animation, but after that it ends up as white circulating cloud to signify that the character is enchanted with something. There are 19 different ways to do damage with a sword, but the method is always skillname - cost - recharge - damage - additional modifiers.

So why am I claiming that large number of skills is not quality? Let me express this clearly: what makes skills quantity is the fact that while you may have 200 of them to choose from, you can only choose 8 and when you pick 8 whatever skills the only thing that counts and contributes to interesting game experience is the quality of those skills. The skills (and areas) are competing with each other, so adding more will not improve the quality of the game. Nearly every skill's purpose is to do one of two things: red bars up or red bars down. The only purpose of the game is to get enemy red bars down so whichever skill does it the fastest is the winner.

There's myriad of other examples of poor quality:
- Characters move at same speed, have same dialogue and other modifiers
- Many areas of the game have monsters with same 3d-model.
- Quest structure is "go there, get/kill this, come back" always.
- There is little interraction with other players, emotes should be more usable.
- Only thing to do in general is to kill monsters or other players.
- PvP necessities extend to spoil the entire PvE portion of the game. I'm not talking about balance, but skills catered for PvE should do things that make sense in PvE world. They don't, because of the promise that everything doable in PvE should be doable in PvP and vice versa.

This all results to what we see here on Guild Wars Guru forums all day. Whining because there's little to do and what there is to do is not fun. I certainly hope that instead of getting new games and expansions with thirty new recursively similar areas we would get actual innovations in gameplay and enchantments that stack on top of existing game. It's much more than just changing variable values here and there on the code.

urm ok...

.. play a different game?

or

make one urself.

You get what you pay for.

To put it bluntly, this sums up GW.

ya pretty much, Its a free-to-play game, its not going to have every feature of every MMO ever created.
I still find it fun though,
If you don't, then don't play it.

Yea,, and obviously if Anet charged monthly for GW, nobody would play it.

I've been trying to make this point for years, with little success.

True MMO's have world PvP, which makes the game a whole lot more interesting. The AoC PvP players laugh at GW arena PvP.

GW done good for what it is, but as one of the devs said "it's a stepping stone into other MMO's" (prob not quite 100% quote, but you get the point)

I understand exactly what your saying. I'm glad you took the time to sum it all up and even include examples. To make a skill animation for every single skill and change it per class would take more effort, but it's not impossible. Guild Wars is not the only MMO that does this. The idea of "Go here and kill x <monster>" has been the same way it has been for a long time. That's why I like the quick leveling because the more levels, the more you notice the repetitiveness of the game. I think Guild Wars is also the first of it's kind to have the kind of game structure it does. You only pay whatever the price of a cd-key is once and that's it, which I totally support.

i thought the stepping stone quaote was from that bad article?

GW's an action RPG, and in that it succeeds marvelously. If you want an MMO, go play one. Some of us are very happy that this isn't one.

Not all skills are geared towards red bars go up, red bars go down. See Mesmers, Prot Monks, rangers, paragons and necros (to a certain extent) etc. Thats 5/10 of the creatable characters which are dedicated to preventing and reducing damage and shutting down enemies.

That is absolutely right, if the OP really thinks that all skills are solely devoted to making red bars go up or down, he obviously hasn't played guildwars for very long. Also, I really disagree with the main point of the OP, that guildwars is a 'low quality' game. Low quality? Seriously? How many people have played and enjoyed this game? Sure, it may not have 'fishing' and 'mining' or any other number of jobs like WoW, but tbh if that is what you are looking for in a video game you shouldnt be playing a f2p game in the first place.

Why does it seem that people want every MMO to be like every other MMO?

GuildWars provides something that other MMO's [i'm using the word MMO for simplicity here] do not... A casual game, in which it's possible for everyone to gain want they want in a decent amount of time.

Every MMO doesn't need massive amounts of grind, little fishing professions etc.

Ignore that guy's post, he has trouble reading anything longer then a sentence.

I for one agree with your post, lets just hope Anet adds the extra few man hours to make GW2 a truly unique experience.

Nope, hes right, and this is just like every other game practically but free.

I only play it to calm myself down killing the same thing over and over again.

Presearing Does miracles for calming you down. PvP does wonders for pissing you off.

- How many people have seen Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend video on YouTube? 84 million dude. Must be about 70 times better than The Beatles' Penny Lane with only 1.2 million! Is this sound argument to you? Please don't bring numbers to discussion of quality...

- Fishing and mining is content, quantity in WoW. What significance and how well made those professions are is the quality I'm talking about.

I agree with OP
I'm putting all of my hope into Guild Wars 2. A-net better not mess it up.

With quality comes cost. You can't expect 5 star quality food at a bed n breakfast, the same principle applies here.

What you're after isn't going to happen. Anet doesn't charge a monthly fee, so their only revenue is selling the game, and the ingame store. After 3 years, the profit from game sells will have tailed off to very little, and the ingame offers very little once you have your mule slots, and PvP packs.

GW2 prob won't offer anything new in terms of gameplay either.

If you dislike this, then you will absolutely hate WoW. I believe its a great game tahts cheap and fun to play with. Yes it obviously died down to little more then a whimper, but still when prophecies first came out it was the best experience of my life (i couldn't even finish it in a few months!). Factions was a letdown, while Nightfall redeemed GW, but the damage was done from factions. With the modding of the items from GW so that high end powerful items are easy to obtain made the game easy to beat and quick to be forgotten.

Even though it does have its bad points, a good arguer would bring up what good points there are about the game. You obviously posted a bit for this game otherwise you wouldn't have that title "Krytan Explorer". Why would you play the game this long because it has those terrible qualities?

HAHAHAHAHAHA! "Well made". ALL time-wasters created by unimaginative bores at Blizzard. All of the little interactions in WoW don't really count as quality, just lack of imagination...

You left out the part where all of the zones in WoW are effectively pre-searing copies. Not to mention how WoW has the very same "Kill X monsters" "Collect X objects" quests. Too much emphasis on "quality content" like fishing and mining maybe?

So much emphasis on "quality content" like fishing and mining that the game is a boring grindfest to level 70, and then the only remaining points are raids/pvp?

Also, if you'd like to compare games like WoW to GW, why don't you compare the "private" WoW servers to GW. "Private" servers are free-to-play, just like GW. However, "private" servers on WoW are buggy and mostly unplayable.

Concerning FREE content, when you compare GW to the other free-to-play MMO games, GW is the king of the hill.

Because there are still redeeming qualities of GW. Besides there is GW2 to look forward. Will it be better? We won't know til we try it out.

I thought we already knew guildwars was subpar? Whats the point of this thread? To recap on things we already know? Guildwars is the swapmeet special of the mmo world, we know this already. But its free to play online, so we play it until something better comes along.

I havn't played in over a week due to the hack drama, and honestly I do not miss it at all. I see now that you endlessly work in guildwars for Nothing, Yes nothing. You cap skills you will never used, You buy items that are exactly the same, only they look different, same with armor. You spend hours and hours grinding titles that dont have any benefit to the game. Guildwars is like a ratmaze with no cheese at the end.

I'v been playing d2 lod, almost level 92. And have been having more fun leveling up and getting new gear than I have in gw. Just bought gta4, the storyline is 100% more interesting than gw's simply because of the acting, gta4 has some emotion behind it, gw does not. CoD4 has high action, keeps you interested and locked in place for hours trying to beat your highest level score. GW gets dull after 30 minutes if that. Once you have played one quest or mission in gw, you have played them all. Only difference is the later missions and quests become more tedious and anal, requiring limited skills and equipment to beat each one.

As a pve player I now understand that pve was just added as an optional play mode, its not the main focus of the game, if it were we would have more variety to choose from, PvP is the main focus, its how you win prizes and get famous, Nether of which i care for much. So GW turns into a one a week game, pop on, play some pvp, log off. Weekends are the lure to catch us, the fish who dont normally play daily, we come back, play the event, then leave til the next one.

The game is seriously lacking, but for those players who enjoy it, thats fine and dandy, I am glad they can enjoy gw and find the fun in it. For players like myself, gw is very shallow, once you get past the pretty cosmetics its just an empty husk with nothing inside. Not to meantion the almost complete lack of customer support. Their "its not our fault and we dont care" approach just makes the game less desirable to play.

Overall I give gw a 3/10 score, because its pretty, its got little funfactor and the sounds isnt bad, but after the novelty wears off, its just another wanna be surrounded by games it wishes it could be.

GW deserves a 7/10 for originality. They broke the mould, and made a playable F2P game.

However, times change, and people now expect said F2P game to have P2P content. In comes GW2, F2P and will have many options that were originally only open to those that were willing to play. But, by that time the P2P world will have moved on, leaving GW in it's tracks once more.

You want Armani, but get George of Asda. (unless your British, you prob won't understand this)

Wow I haven't hear something that good in a long time. I needed that :-)

AoC/WoW World PvP (if that's what you want to call it) is all about running around ganking unsuspecting noobs with your uberleet gear.

Guildwars PvP was built for the competitive community that wants skill, teamwork, and tactics to decide the outcome of a match. Hence you get arenas and balanced equipment and unhappy kids. Its what competitive people want ... sorry...

- You are correct. GW has indeed improved a lot during support phase of game's lifetime. Quest location markers, material storage, skill selection window improvements, skill templates, lip movement and traders are the kind of quality things that I've been very pleased with. They don't "add" anything per se, but make gaming experience in general more enjoyable one. Game is fun to play through, but it has little replay value. When suggested to repeat same content, the quality of content becomes critical. It makes me wonder why they made minigames like Polymock, but left them on obviously unfinished state. It's not like Pokémon, where there would be market for Polymock pieces, different builds, genders and breeding etc. (i.e. quality) in addition to obvious PvP capability. People play through the questline to get those summoning skills, not for the minigame itself. Once you learn the trick to beat AI the game loses appeal quickly.

^^^you just flamed the op, who was disagreeing with the statement (as were you).


and Huntmaster, this game is old, you forget that.

GW is not FREE. It is the only MMORPG that has an initial cost but no monthly fee. Therefore, since its the only RPG in its class, you can't really compare it to other RPGs. So of course it's going to be less featured than MMORPGs that require you to pay monthly (i.e WoW). It is lacking in several areas, but its funny how people like you are crying over legit criticism. Doesn't hurt to point out the bad things of GW.

I like how they cater to the competitive people, but some of us (alot of us) like to just mess around. They should have included "normal" PvP and competitive PvP. Those of us who just wanna F around play casual, while there is the competitive PvP area that is very structured for tournaments/contests.

YouTube doesn't even begin to sum up the amount of people that have listened to and enjoyed (key word there that you may have missed) The Beatles. That idea is laughable. Numbers has nothing to do with quality? In some cases it doesn't, but when you're bringing something new to the market you need quality to sell your product well. I wouldn't have bought two more campaigns and an expansion pack if it sucked.

Guild Wars is just not the right game for some people. Anyone who argues that this game is not fun is ignoring the amount of people that really enjoy playing the game. Is WoW (or MtG, or D&D, etc.) not fun? Obviously not, but I wouldn't play it because it's just not the type of game I'm into.

If Guild Wars were truly of low quality, the fansite boards would not be infested with so-called "retired" players who nevertheless seem to be ever active on the forums and in-game. I'm not pointing my finger solely at Guru.

Also, GW1 has been end-of-lifed for over a year. If you still want to complain about it, feel free, but no one really cares, least of all Anet.

I think MMO's are garurenteed to fail, they are fun at first, but eventually every nook and cranny is known and everyone is incrediblly good at it, you know, the stage where an offline game would be traded in or become a coaster. But not a MMO, for an MMO you are suggested to get to this stage as quick as you can to be able to "compete" in both a pve and pve setting, to end the fun and reach the grind is the goal and still playing a game at this point is what leads a game WAY past its normal life time and leads people to be highly critical of any little feature of the game, like would you ever critisise GTA4 for having a gun clip though the hand a tiny bit when you shoot it. For a game without a fee guild wars is increbley well updated but people will never be happy with it.

I'm going to have to go with a "No shit!" on that one. Seriously, GW is 3 years old, and had many flaws at launch, of which most were fixed, but some were added. AoC is brand new, so it will be a while before its flaws are found. But I do agree that for a new developer, GW was a monumental stepping stone proving two things: PvP/PvE balance can somewhat be achieved (hey, they tried at least) and that AAA free-to-play titles can work. And to also comment on the "if GW was pay-per-month", I don't think many people would have bought GW period if it wasn't f2p, but that is not what the GW business model is, now is it?
ADD: Keep in mind also that the MMO market was still kinda young at that point (read: WoW was not run-away popular yet), and GW probably could not have entered the market today as succesfully as it did.

To add about the numbers issue, think about this: GW over all three games and expansion has sold more copies than Diablo II, Civ IV, Warcraft III, Age of Empires(I, II, or III), etc. Think about the success of those games. Take it with a grain of salt though, as GW is really 3 games, but still...moving 5mil+ over three years is phenomenal and only beaten out by the likes of WoW, Starcraft, and The Sims. In a supposedly "dead" PC market, that's pretty great, especially for a first time developer (in comparison to Ensemble (AoE I: 4mil) and Blizzard (WCII: 2mil)). [info taken from Wikipedia]

Anet just needs to learn from their mistakes. With all the problems we seem to have with GW1, it simply made sense for them to start from scratch, and I am glad they had the insight to do so. Now just gives some GW2 info to chew on, and I will be set. (It's been a year, Anet......)

It's better than anything else out there that doesn't have a monthly fee.

Until you show me something better with better PvP, I will play GW.

Or Starcraft.

The game you're writing about doesn't exist yet. Either get a hand in making it or look elsewhere for your kicks.

So what exactly is your point? That you agree with Anet's decision to go ahead with GW2 instead of letting GW1 spin out of control?

Probably because a lot of EotN (most everything other than the terrain, voice acting, cutscenes and primary quest chains) is sloppy, at best. Really feels to me like something that was rushed out the door to meet an arbitrary deadline set by the higher-ups instead of giving the people who actually had to do the work the time they needed to get the side content right...

Totally agree. The whole point of this thread is aapo basically saying "I don't like GW anymore. I think Anet should make GW2. Thank you for your time."

Worthless thread.

- It had something to do with qaul...quliat...difficult word, some WoW fanboy probably, this is FREE TO PLAY and NOT MMORPG and we don't need fishing here. Somebody tell him that. So yah, I can't read that wall o' text.

So, OP stated that number of features = quality.

IMO that's simply wrong. Of course, there's a bit of truth there but it's not as simple as that.

Following this logic I can state that chess and checkers are low quality games.

And speaking of quality in FPS games (widely used as an example by OP). Take "makes no distinction of hit location" for example. And look at Unreal Tournament (yeh, that old game from 1999). Did it matter where you hit your opponent there? No. Sniper rifle and ripper out for now Did the game know where you hit him? Yes. Why doesn't it matter then? Because that's the part of game design.

Yeh, GW is far from perfect but trying to say that it's low quality based on lack of features is flawed logic example.

- I was talking about depth = quality.

Making those NPCs acknowledge that you are/aren't the world-saving hero of people.
Allowing free target by mouse cursor for that Firestorm.
Ability to stop, save, rewind, fastforward observer mode match.
Seeing what hexes, conditions, skillbar, energy levels players have on observer.
Trophies that have some purpose in the game, not just collector stuff.
Experience not being meaningless after level 20.
Fun minigames and other events with other people. Standing on Guild Hall all day gets boring.

That's quality!

- Chess and checkers are the epitomes of quality games! Show me a person who can make a game that remains popular thousands of years, can be ported to any system and played IRL. Where rules are so simple to learn and there's nothing arbitrary about them. The game offers vast tactical depth and even helps to alleviate symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. I tell you the one who discovered Chess is a fricking genius.

So what is your point, then? If it isn't that GW is of poor quality, and you want higher quality described as:
Then perhaps I missed it, and I apologize.

Saying something is of poor quality does not make it so. You want certain features that you personally think the game should have, and therefore cry poor quality. That means you just don't like the game currently, and your suggestion is for Anet to fix this so that it meets your specifications of what you want in a 'perfect video game.' Been there, done that, worthless thread.

That's a different game! I personally suggest you go buy this perfect (for you) game, and stop complaining that GW doesn't live up to it. Hell, I wish GW had AI that was more advanced than the best players, completely customizable armor and weapons (design our own), and could be connected directly to our brains so that we don't have to use the keyboard and mouse for input. I also wish it gave me real money for killing mobs who also bleed Coca-Cola and crap cupcakes. That is quality. That is my kind of game. Do it, Anet! ARRGH!

- *sigh* I guess you're right after all. If you want cheap and fast car you want two cars. Quality costs money, servers cost money, support team costs money. No monthly fee means that the company doesn't have much. They're hiring newbies there and the selling argument after all is "no monthly fee". But it's a strange thing, I've never paid more than 50€ for any game I can remember and you can see how different the effort has been for some.