GW Still King?

I might want to add that FoW/UW and other Prophecies areas are over 3 years old. Not much has changed in these areas, whereas outside of them everything has changed. Heroes(!), PvE-skills, new skills alltogether, 4 new professions...of course these areas are easy now.

But you could not have done this 2-3 years ago!

Now try to complete the Domain of Anguish (only 1,5 years old). You won't get very far with this setup.

True, Anet could have invested time in reviving the old Elite Areas, but they chose not to. I can live with that, I am able to find my own challenges. And I know they are working on another great game, which I will cross over to in time.

Don't forget about Sab's 3 Necro's, makes everything much, much easier.

Cookie cutter builds are just as bad as Ursan. Even before Ursan was added, it was just a case of having to take a particular build or you wouldn't be accepted in groups. Not really much that can be done about that, in a game like this.

And one of the things I've always liked about Guild Wars, is the fact I can play it by myself. I enjoy playing it with a few friends I have in real life, instead of meeting random people online, and very few other online RPG's allow for that. I don't think it's something that should be, or needs to be changed.

I still prefer GW to WoW.

I am not a hater, I usually play WoW for roughly 1 month and then I am done with it and cannot stand it anymore. It is just that it is nothing more but EverQuest on steroids. I never liked this system, I prefer Ultima Online.

I am not playing GW much at the moment, but for playing one-two hours every other day it is perfect. I would not pay 15 bucks for that like in WoW.

And somehow I always come back to GW, despite them trying so hard to totally screw up the game. Erm I meant improve the game. I am in sheer horror that they will really implement some of their "most brilliant" GW1 ideas into GW2! ARGH!

- This is a good example of strange argumentation that I don't understand. You say that GW is a fantastic game BUT then add five conditionals. When your comparison pool of games includes only games that have to be online, free-to-play, RPG, must include persistent areas, released 2005+... sure GW is the best game since there's no competition.

Same reason why "free to play" is weird kind of argument for quality of good game. For some people like me it's a prerequisite: I would never even consider paying on monthly basis for any game. For others it might be slight drawback similar to dated graphics on otherwise good game. But it's not a positive quality for any game. No one buys a game just because it doesn't have monthly fee.

- This is the "beating dad" complex. "Well I guess this shittiness has to be tolerated for there's nothing that can be done about it". No. There's plenty of games which *actually* resolve around player skill and not grinding.

- Seriously? Can you name some games that can't be played alone?! Even Counter-Strike is a team game, yet you can play it without paying much attention to where your teammates are going in public servers. Oh sorry... it's not online RPG, the cesspool genre where it's rare that game doesn't suck too hard?

Ursan is far more broken. Maybe you don't understand, but 1 player should never, EVER be able to complete h/h elite area. FoW is still an elite area.

PvE-Skills... I used 2. Heroes are worse than human, even with the auto-pilot builds I used. And I had only 1 of those new professions, ritualist, but I could change the N/Rt to N/Mo.

Because everyone has r10 sunspear and r8 luxon/kurzick. Right.

But you didn't need to grind your ass on a stupid title to grind for higher level of stupid title in order to grind another title and grind that title higher, too, then finally go to DoA/UW/FoW. Don't you see how this fails? Back then you had to use your brainz. Now it's:

1. Spam your ursan skills.
2. Spam your ursan skills.
3. Spam your ursan skills.
4. Spam your ursan skills.
5. Spam your ursan skills.
6. Spam your ursan skills.
7. Heal/spam prot.
8. Spam heal/prot.

Woah. Complexity never ends.

Funny. Diablo 2 - alone, NwN - alone, WoW parts - alone, AoC - lol alone?, CS alone with bots, Starcraft - alone.

BORKEN ASS GOD DAMN HARD AREA LOL 55125215 MONSTERS DEALING 421841 DMG PER HIT AND HEALING FOR 412412!

Diablo 2 is not an RPG. It's hardly a cRPG. NwN is RPG.

Because character progression, random hit and damage calculation exists even in Warhammer 40k (strategy PC game), Quake Wars, Enemy Territory, Battlefield 2, Call of Duty, all Star Wars games including strategies and TPPs, Chronicles of Riddick and hell more games. RPG is usually either an advanced plot, on which people focus instead of slaying tons of monsters or a game where you can roleplay your character.

You hardly can roleplay if you have (Diablo 2 and Dungeon Siege) limited amount of character choices. I mean, there is a very high chance that 5 people standing next to each other look almost same except for armor. How to roleplay that? Oo

You shouldn't have to use player-made handicaps to make a game fun. The game should be fun as it is, in all cases, because it is a game.

The idea that parts of the game as they come will not be fun unless you as a player do something first should be a huge warning sign of bad design.

Guild Wars definitely falls short in that regard. Its PvE was never the best on the market, not even close - and with the decline of PvP support and emphasis, Guild Wars has nothing to set it above anything else.

Like it matters? You have got to be kidding. R8 Sunspear is easy enough to get, making TntF! plenty imba; and SY! is imba at r0. You use these skills, and you don't realize this?

At least you finally admit it.

Advanced plot is a bit subjective, huh? It's like saying a racing game can't be called a racing game if the cars aren't going over a certain speed. Besides, I thought D2 had a fine plot, and I don't see why I can't role play my Barb. Besides, Doom has an "advanced plot" and you can even role play your character if you're mental enough.

The fact that it's subscription free is the only reason you are coming back to GW.

If it required subs, i can't think of 1 good reason why another MMO out there wouldn't be a better choice.

FoW is part of learning curve. Before HM it was step between normal PvE and Elite PvE. Something you would do after conquering SF and likes, before you are ready for UW. As such it needs to be easy enough to allow decent-ish team to progress and hard enough to punish obvious stupidity.

You cannot have "zomg easymode" and "zomg waytoohardqq" without any inbetween steps. Side effect that minor elite stuff is comfortably H+H able by imbagon with 6 similary imba builds in tow is hardly wrong if it was designed to be easy-ish to begin with.

My friends play in the WOWscape server(privater server for WOW). But it doesn't appeal to me. I guess it just proves that even if there is a no monthly subscription for WOW I still would play GW. But if GW would have monthly subscription, then I wouldn't play both

GW is the king of free online games, but for the overall genre, no.

WoW still holds that crown. As much as people hate the game, the simple fact remains that profit made is the important factor. WoW has sold the most copies, WoW has the most active subscribers, therefore WoW wins.

Argue among yourselves all you want, but you facts will always beat you.

Diablo 2 or Doom have advanced plot? Good God, you have watched too many C class Hollywood movies.

Diablo 2: Zomg the hero was corrupted and Diablo 2 tries to free his brothers!! Kill him and his legions of evil lol!! Same with the add-on.
Doom: You are a marine, you go and kill a bunch of monsters then kill the biggest monster in the game.

I admit, D2 has some great videos and it could be a great movie, but would be something like LotR (fights vs 512516 monsters) + Uwe Boll as the director (crap in every other way), but it's plot is... Well, nobody even cares about it. Sure, you can roleplay in it. But same as you can roleplay using 2 stick figures and talking to yourself.

Why do I think that SY at r0 doesn't exist?

I said ,,HARDLY''. It means that in an alternative universe, where Diablo 2 is like twice shorter, the plot would be advanced. But the rest of the game would be boring and too short.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_and_slash

Here you go, enjoy lecture. Read especially the part about boring and mindless killing. Describes both Diablo 2 (where it's not that boring, it's actually damn fun) and Guild Wars (where it is boring).

Played there, my friend too. We both were god damn bored, because ANY private server with rates higher than x1 gets boring faster. Try trial. I played over 3 times longer on it than on private server, my friend plays WoW now instead of GW (he used to play gw). DON'T base your opinions on beta/demo/trial. It's like with... I dunno, Fury. It was a great game during beta, then the retail was out... And you probably know the rest of the story.

When on Wind Rider, one has a few minutes to spare...

So... what part of that makes it not an RPG? You still fail at proving that, despite referencing a wiki article which clearly states:

Note the bolded part. Case in point, RPG. Sub-genre or not, they are all RPGs. You really love arguing whether you're wrong or not, don't you?

Also, I was wrong about r0 kurzick/luxon, so sue me. Doesn't change my point, which is what you should've addressed. Oh wait, unless you couldn't address it...

If you read more about Diablo, you'd notice that it's not RPG, but action RPG, which is often considered more of an Action-Adventure than an RPG. Read few more links on this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_role-playing_game

So in RPG's you have one or more avatars, attributes in numeric value (so instead of bars like in GW or Diablo, there are only numbers like XX/YY).

Oh, and in GW your character hardly evolves during the game - after like 1/2 of the game (Factions 1/4, Nightfall 1/3, Gwen... at the start) you can have any skill, elite skill and weapon in the game. Only the oldest and the best game, Prophecies, has SOME kind of evolving of the character. You are level 20 after like 3/4 or 4/5 of the game, so that's quite far. Most of the elite skills were very late in the game, too. Same goes with good armor and weapons. But then each add-on was making the game worse.

Ask any true fan of RPGs or Hack'n'slashes and he'll tell you what's the difference between RPG and HnS. It's just that both fangroups hate when someone thinks their game is the other genre.

That on r7 sunspear and r1 kurzick those skills are not THAT good? 3 seconds of one thing, barely 25% reduction of the other and not even 1/3 of upkeep. If I had like r6-8 and 2 seconds longer SY, I would admit. But I have very little choice as a paragon (in pve) - attack using adrenaline attacks, so you can't cast SY, or just auto-attack all the time to power SY. Oh, and I have barely any hex-removal, only one character with one. Recharge 12. So pretty much if hero casts it on wrong person, my team is screwed. In Ursan, you have no counters, as only your monks maybe target of potentially dangerous hexes. In h/h, you are usually the target as the person with lowest armor (AR gives you a team full of tanks).



And let's not get crazy, because in theory EVERY game on my shelves or hard drive are RPGs. In Hitman you get upgrades, in Rayman you get more health (DUNGEONS!!11), in Crysis you get more weapon upgrades, in Gears of War you advance in rank, in Psi-Ops you get more powers, in Rune more health and energy, more weapons in Assasin's Creed and more health. In every game you get something during the game. That makes the game NOT BORING. Because you have a reason to go on, play more and finish the plot. So in theory every game is an RPG...

Guild Wars lost it for me. I played for the fun of playing with others and exploring new content, as well as for a time to save vast fortunes to buy various skins in the game, be they armor or weapon. Played on and off for almost three years.

Every time a new expansion came out there were new areas to explore, new missions to try, and new skills to acquire. That always prompted a surge of play for at least a month. Originally longer, as I had many characters to get through all the new content, but, with the release of titles, I only focused on one character and therefore only one got through new content. There's no more new content of this sort coming and it didnt come often enough when it was coming.

Play with others diminished drastically once heroes got released simply because there was no more need to group with anyone to get anything done, compounded by consumables. Most experienced players play alone or with a friend or two along with heroes and a large part social aspect of the game nearly vanished.

Inscriptions wrecked a large part of the high end trading market and caused a number of the players I played with to leave the game as that was their fun. I had eventually gotten away from trading and high end collecting since I finally got weary of the fact that everything was just a skin anyway.

Ursan and consumables made PvE silly easy, but select other skills can do it as well. Thing is, unlike some suggestions in this thread, making it harder for yourself isnt a solution. The game should be properly balanced so you dont have to handicap yourself just to enjoy playing.

The level cap eventually made the PvE game boring, since at a certain point there simply is not anything to do. Enter titles, which didnt help matters any since they all amount simply to busy work.

Dont get me wrong, I love the game. There's just so much you can do with it for the way it was designed that you eventually tire of it. It was never meant to be a sustained PvE game, hence most of the additions to the original model I listed above. Its just none of them did any actual good imho.

Attributes in numeric value is a defining factor? The bars you see are simply visual representations of numeric values. You're kidding yourself if you think that is sooo much different to warrant even mentioning.

My point is, which is also enhanced by your own wiki source, that an "action RPG" is still an "RPG." Confirm/Deny? Seriously, how can you argue that when the term includes the acronym? Are you really that thick?

Yes, they are. Period. If you don't think so, why use them? Or is it just: "Oh, well they're better than all the other skills the Imbago... I mean Paragon has, but they ain't no Ursan!" Well, can't argue with that logic! Keep abusi... mean using it. No, you're not being hypocritical.

Of course, except that the features I mentioned earlier (character progression, loot, dungeons, and random hit and damage calculations) must all be present in order to be considered an RPG (though dungeons are optional). Other features include quests, plot, etc. Do any of those games have all these features? Does Diablo or Guild Wars? There's you're answer.

Is someone who loads powerfull skills and uses powerfull build hypocrite too?
Some of few builds that do not suck completelly?
Maybe someone who uses PvX ones?
Maybe everyone who is not spamming power attacks, orsions and flares?

In my day, we had to play on dial-up -- lag everywhere! While wearin' a hat made o' cement, ya 'ear!

/win thread.

QFT

Edit: If you don't like GW anymore. Then please stop bitching about how much you hate the game. Please only post constructively.