Did GW spoiled others, more traditional MMO for you ?

PvP for fun 12charrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I must say GW really spoiled me. Even after I grew kinda bored of GW and tried other MMOs nothing really worked for me. Wow was and LotR where "too open","too free" for my taste. I what I really like about GW is that you have this nice storylines and Main Quests, which lead you through the game.This can well be because, I never play a traditional MMO before GW.
The 3rd MMO I tested was Warhammer Online, but after just 2hrs, I unistalled (the graphics gave me a bad case of eye cancer...).
Furthere more I like the element of Soloplay unlike many players. Hey if I can get GWAMM and watch all my fav. TV series at the same time! Also many people are stupid (ok not all, but u guys get what I mean ;P). Its just nice to have the option to H/H something.
Well Pvp in GW is nice too and the pvp char option is amazing. And yes Ra can eb annoying but is just a nice PvP for fun format, same gos for FA, JQ and AB. And if 1 wants to some High End Pvp (GvG or HA), I have always alot of guilds who also take and teach these to the noobs.
Well just my 2 Cents.

that is just so wrong on many levels. In other mmos, if you kill xxx or collect xxx, the only way u can level is by pure grinding. On the other hand, you dont even have to do any of those quest to reach max level and experience content. The moment u create your char, do the char quest, u can start with the missions that has objectives other then those which u have mentioned.


None of guild wars grinding are required to experience the main focus of the game, which is the content of the game.

OF course it spoiled me.

I can play exactly the way I want, whomever I want and when I feel like doing it.
I can have more than one hi-level char with decent stuff just playing a few hours per week.
No grind.

GW has just the best of two worlds: online and offline. It will be always remembered by that.

Since my first game, Mu online, a long ago, Ive never stopped experimenting other games. I wanna know something funny? Ive never spent more than 2 weeks on any online game but GW. As far as Im concerned, I will be one the dudes logged when they shut the servers down.

Yes and no.
Never been a particular fan of RPGs in general; 9 out of every 10GB of games I've played more than once can be attributed to either Epic, id, Valve, DICE or Westwood/EA. You get the picture. No sub fee and the promises of skill over grind & easily accessible team-based PvP were the main draws. There was an alpha trailer interview featuring Wyatt, Strain and O'Brien I saw which also left a good impression.

First and only other mmo experience was Ragnarok Online. About 2.5 yr's worth of on-off subscription over the course of 5 years with some dabbing in the private servers circuit as well. However, as bad as ANet may or may not have been, Gravity (those who own RO) makes pretty much everything here look as exciting as El Clasico and 100% balanced. Almost nil balance as far as certain classes go, only just saved from a complete collapse by the fact that it's pretty much all item-based so no such thing as a metagame of any kind and they're thankfully they were somewhat constrainted by the source material. They also fail hard at making any sort of new mid/end-content that isn't either lackluster at best or completely breaks the game mechanics at worst.
Seriously, I couldn't believe how they ended up turning it into a glorified chatroom with 2d avatars. The only reason I forced those 6 months' sub was to basically shut up shop and sell off my stuff & account to recoup some of the cash I had dumped into it.

Wow, what a rant

GW ≠ MMORPG (although it's advertised like one). WoW, WAR, AoC, etc are a different genre, and a completely different style of gameplay. GW2 is supposedly going to be an MMORPG to compete with WoW and LotRO.

Believe it or not many of the things you listed as cons are actually the very reason people enjoy those games, and why the genre is so popular today.
Having a character that cannot be changed gives people a greater sense of identity. Being restricted to one server can be limiting, but it creates a more closely-knit community.
Having people killsteal your boss sucks, but like everything in a persistant world rpg, it reminds you that there are other people you are sharing the world with - certainly a turnoff for some, but a high point for those seeking 'immersion' into their game.
And grind...well grinding is can be very tedious, but it does give players a reason to play longer and a greater sense of accomplishment. Some people don't want to beat the game in a day, but would rather spend the next two months enjoying it. People are still playing guild wars because Anet threw in titles and other time consuming goals. Admittedly grind is used to make up for lack of content, but one look at mainstream MMOs apparently the average player doesn't mind.

I have never considered GW an MMORPG true to the classical principles and just enjoyed the qualities both types of MMORPGs bring with them.

About a month ago, I felt like taking a trip down memory lane by playing Dark Age of Camelot for a week. Having 75+ skills at a time and worrying about maximized equipment never seemed so daunting. And I won't even start on skill chains...

Sense of accomplisment? its like "look at me, I have no life!" ?

And just to keep noted, the GW player base is somewhat ABOVE the average player. So yes, we care about grinding.

Surely I dont wat to beat the game in one day. But HAVING TO play dozens of hours per week, during months, just reach a certain level is plain mindless stupid.

And what happens when s.o. reach a certain level? theres always one more level do get..well...time to kill more 100 gazilions (name the mob here), back to town, repot, rebuff, trade... ad infinitum

What is the fun of it? What sense of accomplishment can come from slaughtering a crap load of sprites exactly the same way,over and over? "Oh yes, you are very good at doing some tedious and repetitive that requires no skill"

C'mon! We, players of Guildwars, are proudly better than that.

The thing I love about GW is that I'm basically free to do what I want. Sure, I can repeat missions if I want-especially if it's a Z Quest. Or I can grind titles. Or, I can just go out and take my day's frustrations out on hapless monsters.

There's no program other than what I decide feels good to me at the time...

I see your point, but it still isn't the same as say in WoW.

Farming for collectibles to get prizes is optional, it's not like it's a quest you need to do to advance in the game.

I agree with everything the OP said. I feel extremely spoiled by GW. Especially when I try a new game and the first thing I do is look at how many different abilites and tactics there are to those games. I was raised on the value of patience though so I tend to play them through to see how end game goes with a max level character. 4 year Guild Wars player.


That last bit is something that needs to be slammed into the faces of a number of people it seems. Wake the hell up people! You're not going anywhere so stop complaining.

I agree with nearly everything the OP said and where my opinion differs it's to small a difference to warrant discussion.

One more;

*Map Travel. Because any form of travel in an mmo that isn't instant (say a griffin for example) is an unnecessary time sink.

(and no it's not immersion breaking, walking to my senseo for coffee because I'm travelling on a damn griffin, that is immersion breaking ;-) )

I have to agree as well. I have been playing GW for almost 4 years now, and I have yet to find any other MMO that gives me the same feeling of belonging that GW gives me. I'm a PvE player who likes to go around solo (with my heroes), and both the customizable Hero system the Instance system allow me to do just that... so I don't have to worry about angering my party members if I have to leave in the middle of a mission.

Plus, as my spare time is often limited, I never know when I will have time for GW... sometimes I can't play for weeks, sometimes I can play days in a row. With GW's pricing mechanism, I can do this without having to worry that my month of purchased game time is running out without me ever logging in, or if I still have enough game time in my account to play through the day.

They announced major changes in the instancing system for GW2... I definitely hope that GW2 still allows for solo play with a party of heroes, without having to worry that other people already killed the creature that I'm hunting for, 10 seconds before I arrive at the scene.

As I recall (and I'm hopefully wrong) most areas are still instanced, there will be some that aren't BUT you won't be going with heroes.. or even henchies the game will be solo oriented

In fact, it is better than that. You are getting collectible drops even if you to not have 'quest' and it is quite common to get enough of trophies by just playing game without focuing on farming.

Compare this to typical wow-drop quest where:

1) drops drop only from handfull of monsters in limited area.
2) drops only drom when you are on quest.
3) you are rarely ever goign to fight those monsters before of after quest.
4) co-quests are fairly rare (i.e quest to kill 30 rats and quest to bring 10 rat tails)

Basically, wow makes sure you can't complete quests 'accidentally' and that you can't multitask much and that you have to hed out specifically to kill those mobs.

Ah, you got a point there, zwei.

I pretty much disagree with you entirely.

When doing a dungeon where every boss drops good, usable loot that is almost always an upgrade from your current gear, this system is necessary. It means that when that awesome Frog Sceptre drops but only the person who wins the roll can use it, they can't sell it, the warrior and ranger can pass on the roll and the people who can actually use the sceptre can roll on it. This means people who want items actually have to do dungeons, actually play the game instead of commit raptor genocide for a million hours until they can pay a SF sin for the sceptre he got. People actually did dungeons in groups in games with bind on pick up and did them with balanced groups as intended. Because of the crappy loot system in GW no-one does dungeons in groups, most people just solo farm until they can buy something and then moan about how they can't get into a group or how little content there is.

Sure every class can do something, but that's like saying a level 1 monk that can cast orison of healing can do something. Players understand opportunity loss, if not in those terms, and know that if they bring your Word of Censure monk instead of an elementalist, or your daggers ranger, the group will move through content much slower and possibly even not complete it. In hard mode even viable builds such as a restoration rit aren't so overpowered they can keep braindead players alive and thus people will not bring one if they can get a monk. Elite areas show you how imbalanced the classes are, let alone viable builds for each of the classes own schools.

I agree with this, respec in Guild Wars is awesome, even if the equipment system and limited inventory space doesn't lend itself well to it. They don't need to nerf a skill tree into the ground because 3/4 of them suck balls anyway. Also, see Paragon shortly after the release of Nightfall.

Two separate issues. Level caps are great for RPGs. They are what makes fighting that scale outside Ashford Abbey exciting and then fighting that Ettin in the Shiverpeaks exciting and then fighting Glint exciting. Level caps aren't code for grind, they are a medium for experiencing content and scaling your encounters. There is a reason why players from Cantha and Elona didn't bother with most of Prophecy missions and it wasn't only because they had done them before. If people are already max level, there is less incentive to explore Kryta or Maguuma or Vabbi. How many people have the optional outposts in Tyria or Elona? Level caps give you incentive to explore certain areas more than you otherwise would. Grind is when you need to kill 5,000 wolves after finishing all the quests/dungeons and exploring before you can move onto the next area. Higher level caps make casting Blizzard exciting but Blizzaga really exciting.

As far as everyone being equal stat wise for PvP, this is good. Too bad about /rank.

I've never had this problem with other games before so it doesn't feel like this is a +1 for Guild Wars.

This is true. Some of those UIs you see for other games are ridiculous. It sounds like GW2 will give us more options while keeping the game simple.
Tonnes of bots in GW. I never had a queue for WoW, maybe if you chose a populated server for a free MMO, but what did you expect? It's free. Different servers for the entire player base is vital for minimising lag. Imagine everyone in GW2 sharing the same areas? Fighting for scales and all those spell animations. Your computer would explode from lag. People in Europe wouldn't be chuffed to be forced to use the same servers as America for the same reason. Charging people to pay to change servers is taking advantage of addiction and should go, and it sounds like GW2 will allow seamless transfers, but GW1 did have limited server transfers between America and Europe before the barriers were lifted completely.

This never happened to me in WoW but I understand the shared spawns thing can be annoying, another reason why different servers are important.

I don't even know what this means. Are you referring to no animation when you cast an elementalist spell? Because I personally though that was a flaw of GW1.

I played WoW starting when it first came out. Still do off and on. Played GW starting the day Prophecies was released, all chapters EoTN, one of each all up, all skills, except Rit and Necro. Still play GW off and on, waiting for GW2! And, few years back I played EVE Online for six months.

Of the above, best game play overall is: EVE Online! But EVE is not merely a second career, it eventually becomes your real career and the rest of your life just shrinks away slowly; really just requires too much time.

So, no. GW has not ruined other mmo for me. If anything it has made WoW a better experience when I do play. And vice versa.

What I look for in any online game is a "world" where I can set my own goals and do my own thing. GW crowds me a tad with the mission backbone, but not enough to run me off. Of course, others are just the opposite; they like clearly defined goals and a big sign at the end saying "You Have Beat the Game!" To each their own, and developers know they will maximize their players if they provide a place for everyone.

GW didn't spoil me.

It's the other games, they are pretty badly messed up. I tried many other games, and they all just end up frustrating. An 'e-peen' feast in which you either have to dismiss personal life to progress in the Game, or just be PK fodder.

What kind of multiplayer game is one in which you are punished for helping people on your same side?
What kind of multiplayer game is one in which you have to play countless ours alone to reach the same level as others?

Totally AGREE with you ! I play GW ever since 2005 May the game release. So I got bored 4 months ago and finally decide to try another online-game.

I'm playing ahh... the game with "blood-elf" not sure if I can name the game here.

Anyway, I enjoy AH system where I don't have to sell items in trade chanel for hours. The flying/ground mount system is fancy. More animated-spell graphic is good. (but seeing gw2 is even better I have nothing to complain)

Sub-profession is also good~

Other features in those online games? NAH! hate it~

-Rolling item system was a total shock for me when I first tried other game, why can't we just save money and BUY armors ourself?

-The DPS meter system? Absolutely HORRIBLE!! This only gave some immature youngster reasons to act-up in any groups or team dungeon/raid etc.

-No henchmen? No heros? Very very very sad for me.... if all I ever got is jerks or impolite players or guilds that doesn't help out new players..... solo play without a small army just aren't cool!

-Line up for dungon? Well... this system is yes or no for me. At least I don't need to shout out in town to find a group.

-Traveling? AHh its a pain when u don't have map travel. The flying/ground mount is cool and fresh for the first month, then u instantly got bored.

-Re-skill cost 5K 10K or even 50K each time? Duel Spec cost 1000k?? This really make guild-war free skill system shine!!

-Spells doesn't go through walls etc. Melee dmg require player to control their toon to FACE the enemy. Guild wars doesn't have all those problems.....

So yeah I guess Guild-wars is just wonderful, I only switch to other game for a short time just to wait for GW2! Once GW2 is out, I'll be a faithful GW player spoiled with all the wonderful features again! ^_^!!

GW spoiled us with versatility and convenience. The ability to change attributes and skills, and later on a secondary class? That's great! While the system is far from perfect they should be tossed some slack considering they only had so much money and people to work with, and clearly did not intend for people to become so obsessed with their game, the reason for titles and "endgame" zones. Again, the game isn't perfect, but it's still damn good in many areas.

I know I asked for you guys to toss Anet some slack, I also know it won't happen because you feel that they owe you everything they have ad infinitum.

I think GW and Eve are the only two MMOs I can stand to look at anymore. After playing WoW for years and moving to GW initially because of money issues I just have a hard time going to any other MMO, they all feel like the same worn out game.

Gw's stopped me pumping rl money into Flyff's cash shop, and for that I am grateful!

Fees ruined MMOs for me, and MMOs ruined traditional RPGs.