Things you were surprised to not find in Guild Wars?

Logging out in the middle of a map and then logging back in the same place.

Expected potions and such. Did not find them, and later realized it's more fun without them. Sad about consumables, which are basically the same thing, coming to Gw.

Expected solo play from the box. (Prophecies and Nightfall boxes). Found that it was included, but I wasn't warned the henchmen had terrible builds. Realized they had terrible builds once I learned how to play the game properly. Not quite sure why they're here after all this time, not sure why heroes are limited at three either. I guess it's still preferable to no AI at all, but then, I wouldn't have lasted past the first three Prophecies missions if I'd had to keep PUGing it (I eventually gave up on them and used henchmen to travel to the Shiverpeaks and past that, the PUGs were just too terrible and rude, was not an enjoyable greeting from the happy PUG community).

Surprised that there isn't a lot of depth. I mean, I haven't played for months, and I come back but a lot of the stuff seems pretty linear. I love to mess around with stats and such and get the good gear, but I couldn't afford WoW. :P

Potions... thank goodness. And yeah, I can echo the whole "just me and the AI party" part. First few days of Guild Wars was "wow, this is really lonely, even with 7 people.."

I suppose depth. On two levels:

One being skills. I had played a lot of M:tG and expected the build system in GW to have a great deal of depth due to having so many varied skills, as well as the ability to work in the skills of a secondary class. Honestly, it didnt quite work out that way. A great many skills in GW are redundant or underpowered, and secondary classes are most often used for non-attribute based skills or in minor applications. The result is still a great skill and build concept with many viable builds, but it doesnt feel as flexible and as wide ranging as it could have been.

The second is in activity. Playing through the story line once is superb. Even a couple times. Farming can be fun for a while. With the level cap set where it is, and with max items so easy to get, their only difference being skins, new content was needed faster than I got it. Sure, I still spent a great amount of hours in the game, especially in Prophecies/Factions days, but it was really chapter based and I found myself bored in between them since the wait was too long.

that explain enough?

i was thinking more then one skill like takeing over other peoples bars.

I second that motion! When I first started GW, I picked Mesmer as my first character because I thought it would be akin to the Sorcerer from Dark Age of Camelot (emphasis on messing with the enemy's AI, crowd control, the ability to control monsters, etc.).

I didn't realize my folly until I got to Kryta...

open and persistent world

Damn ksers...thank god for instances...I'll be ksed soon in GW2 though... :P
Yeah many have said jumping...
Btw OP your profile picture is my desktop background

From Dr. Jones' post:

BiP lolz... was that a Mesmer skill once, that was later changed to Necromancer; or was it a typo in the manuscripts?

Mostly things around deeper character development:

Higher stats for rare and elite items.
Very limited usefulness for XP after lvl 20.

What I think he means is... Mesmers are called "masters of illusion" in all the manuels, etc. Yet for all that... mesmers have no real "illusion" abilities at all. Sure, they have degen hexes like Conjure Nightmare/Phantasm and an entire skill line named "illusion" but they don't actually create illusions, they just cause degen.

Really, mesmers could easily have been a "summoner" class by that definition. IE, stuff like Vanguard Assassin Support and the Polymark Summons (those skills being mesmer illusions would actually be a good RP explination for them).

The things I was surprised to not be included when I first started playing were:

1. Orr not being explorable (I REALLY wanted to fight hordes of undead on islands and in ruins).

2. Half the map not being explorable.

3. Not being able to explore more of the Mists/Rift (When I was reading the manual, I thought the HoH was going to be a storyline end-game. I was looking forward to going through all of the Rift and whatnot).

4. Something that was in the game that I didn't like: Weapon Attribute Requirements (but that's only because I played Diablo 2 too much with a necro weilding a kickass scythe/Crystal Sword+Bone Shield).

5. Mesmers not fitting their description fully.

6. Assassins being ninjas and not Arabiac Assassins.

I was confused too, but remember if they went ahead and called them Ninjas, the Narutotard count in Guild Wars would have doubled :P

I rolled a Ritualist expecting Binding Rituals to play a big part in the game. Silly me. I actually rolled one on the day of the temporary Exhaustion :\

I was surprised to not find that everyone was dependent on powerful items. Real power comes from the build and personal skill, now THAT surprised me after playing WoW and Lineage 2 for so long. What a breath of fresh air.

The other was as others said, that one magical world... Jump! I was hitting space when I first started to see what would happen, I noticed that I wasn't jumping. So I go into key bindings and get frustrated then go online looking to see if there was some magical way to jump that I was not noticing. Although I was disappointed in this, I got over it quickly.

Lastly. Challenge in The supposedly great Destroyer. I expected some 80ft tall Destroyer that would put all other bosses to shame.

I was somewhat disappointed in the lack of Arabic armor for Assassins in Nightfall, especially for females. Think Mileena from the latest Mortal Kombat games, sans the teeth.

After being a Morrowind junkie, Fable quickly weaned me off these concepts.

Couple more:

- Old-school attributes: STR, CON, INT, DEX, Charisma... that you could modify yourself. Also stuff like Stamina, Vigor, PDef/MDef values (and not +20AL vs. elemental damage). I was really expecting a AD&D-like attribute system.

- A skill tree.

Things I was expecting and didn't see:

I really expected an RPG - that didnt happen. Maybe in GW2 it will. While we were given controlled story lines - they were linear, or so closely woven, as to merely be playing through plot points. (Very well graphicked plot points, thank you designers.) Having 30+ years exp in RP and playing computer games, I understand that there are limits to a computer game. There could still be more options for personality, with xp being appropriate - if establish a history of moral behavior - then experience for taking the Mission of Peace in Old Ascalon would be non-existent and you would have an option for turning the guard in to the king. But if you had a history of immoral behavior, then you would get full exp. If you had mixed - working both sides then moderate. That is just one example.

Another thing that has always irritated me is the lack of individual expression. Yes, units have colors - guilds have colors to show who is with whom. But in the same way, Feudal Lords had their own colors and flew them under their superiors banner. This is also part of the frequent and constant requests for hair salons. I KNOW many female players that have repeatedly offed characters because they got tired of the same hair. For most men, this is no big deal - we change our hair style maybe 3 times in a lifetime. For women, being able to change this to go with their most recent armor is a natural normal regular part of putting on shoes. I am disappointed that Gayle was never able to get this accross to the designers - perhaps too many of the designers have never taken a course on female/male miscommunications. This lack of indivudalism falls right in there with the lack of RPG.

It would have been nice to be able to make armors out of materials you wanted. Instead of being required to provide hides for this, leather for that, cloth over here, linen over there, and silk in between - what about being able to choose. This has a benefit of being able to dye the armor the way you want. And options for applying two dye schemes would not be bad - if MS can manage it on windows - why can't GW manage it on armor. The only Derv armor I like is ancient - but I want to be able to dye more than the hem. I ought to be able to dye both. It would be nice if we could get a wider range of colors to dye with.

Ok, continuing on appearance: I have always been irritated that things you get do not reflect who you get them from. I can buy the same weapons from crafters all over the world (ok, slight variation from continent to continent). Why can't I buy things from specific cultures where I am at? Why does a Kryton made weapon look exactly like a Dwarven or Ascalonian made weapon? If I had told an Italian Sword maker his poignards looked French I would have had said poignard stuck in my codpiece. Monumental armor has no relation to Ascalon whatsoever. Luxon armor shows no jade. Kurzick armor shows no amber. The weapons crafters of both make no weapons or shields appropriate to their area in style or materials. Collectors all have a limited number of skins regardless of the area of the continent they come from. How is it All collectors have the exact same supplier almost world wide instead of having things unique to their area? (Ok, the Lotus Staff is an exception.)

I was very disappointed after they announced in Factions we would be able to fight on the rooftops that it was running across shingled floors instead of a more verticle function. Supposedly GW2 will have jumping, climbing, and swimming - I guess. We could see scaling scanty ladders, climbing ropes, swinging from balconies to escape (with our new assassin characters) and then we didnt see anything of the sort. Yep, that was a flat expectation breaker.

I have enjoyed all 12 monsters created in GW - but just how many times can you reskin the same creature and the same armor? I think GW is running a record here. Plants from the Crystal Desert suddenly become frozen monsters in caves that maintain spirit after spirit - eah? And normally, when two birds, animals, etc have separate names and are treated with special considerations there is something different about them. I am still looking for something different between a strider and a moa. I am just sure it is there and I have not seen it yet. One is noticeably smaller - SOMEthing.

I understand they tried to have hippo pets -and couldnt cuz the body didnt work out - ok, that explains why no Elephants. But when I heard GW was going to be an African based campaign - I envisioned later producitons that would be Persian, Moscovite, Mayan, Polynesian, etc. I think more could have been done to differentiate between the cultures used and the expression of them in campaign. Vabbi is supposed to be based on India - and I see some of it, but . . .

And last - I don't PvP. My disatisfaction with PvP was due to two things. One, I was still on dial-up when is started playing. (It was the only thing available here.) By the time I would load, all of my team would be dead and the opponents waiting at my gate to kill me. I suggested that something be done to ensure that didnt happen. The other was the lack of respect between players - the infantile shouting matches about sexual orientation, descriptions of each other's mothers, etc. I would have liked something more honorable. Something where as you prepare to enter, and after your skill bars are committed and unchangeable, you salute/bow to each other and then load into starting position. Then when the match is over, meet again in middle of arena and salute/bow before leaving. Any disparaging remarks to victor or vanquished resulting in a ban. People who fight one another may brag a little - but if they are truly competitors in the same arena - they hold a comradeship and respect those who do not compete cannot be a part of. That needed to be reflected and I have always been disappointed that it was not.

I still remember when there was a certain amount of role playing. Those of us who are role players get it. Those who weren't never did. When I play my Mesmer, Mrs. Arannel Rinley - I have been told, "Ok, mOm!" by fellow players - that means I played her strict, motherly side well. A friend played a direct spoken (tactless) female warrior - the height of compliment was her being cussed at and called various names, because of her direct and frank critticisms of players failures (but she was equally quick to praise their good work, btw -with the same roughness). The lack of support for that kind of role playing has been disappointing also. For those that do not want to do it that is fine, but when asked for RP districts or something to help separate in order to make less friction - then the RP was dropped and GW became an MMOG not an MMORPG. That the game never lived up to this initial advertisement (MMORPG is still in my original instructions from 3 years ago) has been disappointing.

Why didn't they call Warriors Knights?

Knights are supposed to be glorious (knight in shining armor?).
Warriors in Guild Wars, on other hand: http://www.crithitcomics.com/botmanga04.htm

Elves.

Thank god for that.

A Z axis.
.....

I'll add a few more that admittedly surprised me:

Character customization.

You simply could not do enough within character creation to modify a character's looks: sliders for color choices and body build type, as well as facial proportions, eyebrows, etc; more hair styles; more anything. Important, as you will potentially use this character for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours.

Once you got out of character creation you could do even less. Change your hair? No. Change anything? No. Add jewelry, tattoos or other customized items? No. You could change your your armor, but there wasnt enough of it per class and in many cases seams between armor types were not well constructed/considered to mix types pleasingly.

I might as well add, why if you can strip down to dance in your undies was not the type and color you chose to wear an option also in character creation? I mean really, I've played enough of these types of games where SO much more was done in terms of character creation.

I was hoping for all of this to be addressed in GW2, but I recently read in another topic a quote from Regina I think it was that this was brought to the developers' attention but that it was simply too technologically demanding. Was that meant to mean that it wasnt possible? Surely not. I can again point to a number of great character creation schemes on YouTube from other games right off the top of my head that go beyond even what I describe, and these were games I played before GW with lower specs. Was it meant to imply that it was too demanding on development resources? Probably. It a real shame though. I think Anet underestimates vastly the importance of this. Something I at least will be looking for in the next game I play.

Dye.

What was up with dye in GW, anyway? When you went to dye something, you got mixed results at best. At least with the Dye Preview Window we could see the unpredictability inherent in the dye system before we committed to it.

Why was dye applied to a base color already on a given piece of armor? Why didnt armor come pre-dyed, but when you tried to dye it, the base color for all armor was some sort of neutral light grey, so that EVERYTHING dyed the same way per a given mix?

Storage.

Why so many things to collect and own and so little storage space? All my other characters became mules that I could no longer play due to my focusing on my monk for title pursuit and her penchant for armor collection, which should NOT have been discouraged, given it is the only way to customize your character's looks in the game (see Character Customization above).

Where was the Armor NPC, similar to the holiday hat NPC? Why didnt more things stack? Why have all those collectibles if you're going to make it a nightmare for players? I began to hate logging in to play knowing 20 minutes of my time either when I logged in or when I logged out, or both, was going to be shuffling between characters to move things around.

Hero Admin.

Why did Heroes not have a place where you put runes and weapons etc for them that swapped in and out as needed when you changed their builds? Oh. My. RED ENGINE-ing. God. Another thing that began to wear on me and got in the way of simply enjoying the game was the infernal shuffling of hero crap all over the damn place.

Good enough I guess lol.

yes there was that kind of aspect that i some wut looking for but more so i was looking for actually being able to make illusions and stuff like that which would make the other player become confused, i don't know exactly how that would work but i think it would be something like [Madness Dart] from Jokanur Diggings mission. where it changes how you have to play the game.

also from a pve stand point i thought they were going to be able to take over some monsters for a sort time. they wouldn't be able to take over boss or like 90% of the monsters on the map, it would probably be more like one or two are converted to your control until they die or until the hex would ware off.


LOL no thanks its a game and i have never seen that sort of thing in a pvp environment, in any game. and if they were to add this now i think a lot of people wouldn't like it because 1 it would take time away from playing. most people are old enough that they can handle getting bad remarks because they got owned. getting bad for saying something i still think is simply stupid policy wars have been fought for the freedom of speech blah blah blah.... i am not going to go into that seeing as that isn't really on topic.

guild wars style was suppose to be more of a campaign style story from the start. Regina even said this some where and if i were less lazy i would find it and quote it.

as for roll playing i think that it would be more of the game if when making ur ch you chose were you started from and wrote in a back story. i like roll playing and all but i don't think a hole district for it would be needed.

lastly i agree about the customization or the lack there of.

Guild wars.

Yes, there are battles, but the titular wars? Nope, the game is mysteriously named after an event that happened in its past.

Hahaha...that's mine too. I really thought there were little fileds and thst's what people meant by 'farming spots' I realized my mistake before I left pre though, so that's not too bad


I'd never played on online game before GW. I don't think I'd ever actually even played an RPG or similar either, so I had no expectations when I first logged on. And when I did first log on (only a month or two after it's release) I was all "oooh," and "wow, this is cool." lol

It looked wonderful to me, and having no expectations, and not being jaded about MMOs (or co-op games, or whatever you want to call GW) meant I could enjoy it without picking faults, or without having previous ideas about what should be there or not.

The only thing I wished I could do way back then was fall off things and jump. But that wasn't so much being surprised that I couldn't, as just wishing it was able.

EDIT: Ooh, one thing that DID actually surprise me is that's there's no monthly fee.

An auction house..and mail system..

After beating all of the campaigns my GW life tends to be split in half...farming items and standing around SELLING those items in town...

I missed this in GW:

AUCTION HOUSE FTW!

I remember going out and fighting those first few skale, getting hurt, and then wondering how I was going to heal. I didn't have any potions. Then the regeneration kicked and I was like "Wow, you heal on your own. That's pretty convenient"

I was also shocked by the wand/staff attacking animation. I was expecting to walk right up to my enemy and bash them in the head, not shoot orbs.

Was also kind of surprised at the absence of orcs/elves/other typical fantasy things. Pleasantly surprised though. Made the game feel different and a whole lot better than other ones. Very unique.

Please god no. This game was marketed as a competitive game. Competition doesn't involve any namby-pamby bowing.

[frenzy] has no place in roleplaying, except where Charr rip Gwen's face off.

Guild Wars 40,000

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only PvP...

Couldn't resist.

Oh, speaking of surprises, the pop culture references in Nightfall both surprised and pissed me off.

hard quests. i was always so excited when i got to beacons and there were those quests for skills, and then yak's had that whole drawf quest chain.

those died out quickly after that...


i was also surprised by wands and staffs doing ranged damage. havent seen that much before but i like it.

Yes, because it's impossible to be competitive and have a sense of civility at the same time. Go toss a football or something...

Agreed. I hate it when certain quests, dialogue, etc. have blatantly obvious pop-culture references. It detracts from the whole fantasy experience. Subtle, obscure references are appreciated, however.

I like the references also Fantasy LOL gg there.

Eh? Last time I checked, Guild Wars had a fantasy theme. I don't recall seeing cars, planes or tricorders anywhere.

Agree, can't understand why there isn't any. It would be cool if you had a Fiery Bow that the string would be on fire. Icey would look frozen..

I also agree with Jumping, be nice to stopped getting blocked by little logs and rocks.

In case you haven't noticed, Guild Wars wasn't made to be a super RP heavy game. Competitive game is a game centered around competition.

I never said anything about role-playing; while the game may be centered around competition, as you so colloquially put it, it's still fantasy-based. You may as well say that guns don't matter in Counter-Strike because it's also centered around competition.

Perhaps. It would do a lot better without the needless and all too common insult fests, however. That and lack of patience towards newer PvP players was why I never got into PvP on any grand scale despite a fair amount of interest. I dont play first person shooters due to that sort of socially tactless environment being the overriding norm, and I wont play it here either if I get onto team speak and all there is is a whole lot of players screaming at each other while my chat is overloaded with insults. Those sorts of things werent even directed at me, and I was a relatively new monk to the PvP arena. No, it was just that sort of environment in general that made me drop it anyway. Fine though if that is what everyone who does play it actually wants. In that case I'll simply do without it.

One thing that might have been nice would have been an environment where newer PvP players could earn their wings so to speak with a bit of care before diving into an insult-ridden impatient everyone for themselves rank-oriented discriminatory affair. Not that all my PvP experiences were like that. I simply can see quite easily where Fitz was coming from.

Char customization... and blood/gore (not some shitty bleeding cloud); that missing 'feeling' that you are cutting/piercing/bashing through flesh.