Why WOW can't kill Guild Wars

Nice, thanks for the youtube link, best WoW vs GW video I've seen.

you can go lvl 60 in wow in a week or so..without grinding, just normal questing, you will need a friend tho,that way you can use the invite a friend option and gain +300% exp from quests/mobs.

i have, all of tbc with my bro. if you're into non stop grinding it's the perfect game, but pvp is completely based on gear there is no skill and raiding is fun i guess but i'm more of a pvper, not pew pew sit still for an hour vs one boss and hope he drops my leather gloves lolz, and if it does drop i have to worry about some other guy rolling higher than me. ooo fun!

pvp Balance... Can a Lock still DoT own 3 players at once?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA4teN2ZtAo

This is the best GW vs WoW youtube. Just for the music!
Also LOL at WoW and balance being in the same sentence.

Three players who aren't paying any attention to the guy that's singlehandedly tearing huge holes in their offense/defense, yes. Three players who have enough wherewithall to send a rogue or druid in to put a quick end to that guy or at least keep him disrupted enough to key down his attacks? No.

'lock is a DPS class. It's his job to kill opponents, that's not a balance problem.

Actually that quote sounded like an exaggeration based on the fact that there actually was a time when a lock could kill people with little effort and only 1,2,3,4,5 on the keyboard keeping the other player permanently feared. I don't know if this is the case anymore, as I recall things were getting better to the end of TBC regarding locks. I don't know how things are now, played till lvl 78 in wotlk and I quit wow and I'm happy about it. My story seemes very similar to that off GuidoNecromancer. Except that I wasn't a gm but a veteran raider, before wotlk that is.

WOW and balance have nothing in common, wow is simply constantly unbalanced and constantly one or a few classes are overpowered and better then the others (thus the word FOTM - flavour of the month), that is until another one takes it place and so on and so forth. That is regarding both PVP and PVE. But wow does have its good points, but they seemed to fail more and more as time passed, at least for me.

No, they haven't been able to do that in a long time, warlocks are actually quite bad right now. Hunters (yes really), pallys, and death knights are the top classes these days. These are the current top 3v3 and 2v2 setups on the ladder:

http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/team/3/all/all/all/all/
http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/team/2/all/all/all/all/

As for wow being decided by gear. Not really, everyone has practically the same gear, because it's so easy to get now (in previous arena seasons it was just as easy to get from arenas and battlegrounds). It's much more decided by the team's class setup, abusing whatever classes are brokenly overpowered at the time. Players stuck in the 1300 ratings aren't there because of gear though.

Unfortunately, unlike Guild Wars, you can't just insta re-roll a max level of anything you want to try out a new setup. So if you and a buddy or two want to play, but your class combo isn't viable, you're pretty screwed. For example, a buddy of mine played a warrior. Right now there's no warriors to be seen anywhere on any top team in 2v2, 3v3, or even 5v5, because they are pretty lacking. Can you imagine if warriors became useless in Guild Wars?

Guild Wars has the same sort Flavor of the Month problem in PvP, except that since everyone can insta-reroll, everyone gets to do it, instead of being stuck with a useless character they spent years playing. Arenanet also balances things more quickly (maybe because the entire playerbase switching to the FoTM at the same time forces them to do it). WoW's developers have left things broken for extremely long periods of time (e.g. Resto Druids in seasons 2, 3, and 4).

Lets not forget the graphics. GW has awesome graphics, if that screen shot of Jora doesnt get you interested I dont know what will. When I play WoW it reminds me of a very bad Disney movies sometimes. Not to mention GW AB is worth playing on its own.

Graphics are a matter of opinion, at least mostly. WoW's graphics are dated, not necessarily bad. They look cartoony because that's the atmosphere in which Warcraft has always been presented. The only real problem with WoW's graphics is that they are not optimized well, I could play GW on max setting except for AA with my crappy onboard video card and still maintain a constant 30 FPS. In WoW I'd have to turn everything down, and even then it'd be tough to tolerate as it would still lag. Then again, things render differently in each game, so it's unfair to compare them on even a graphical level.

I was able to run things at fairly max settings with a fairly consistently good framerate. Then came 3.0 - and then later, Dalaran.

Holy hell, it's worse then ORvR in Warhammer...

I agree, walking into Dalaran is painful! Getting in and out of that gargantuan lagfest is an adventure in itself. I made the mistake of making it my hearth when I got there, oh jeez did I regret that.

People actually think Guild Wars is dead? What a laughable concept. Yeah, I suppose that's why I see new players about every day. :P

Guild Wars looks exactly the same as it did two years ago when I joined, people coming and going just as you'd expect them to. I don't see how anyone could say Guild Wars is dying and actually believe it =/

Some people on this forum and to be honest on every MMO game related forum have a blind obsession in calling the game they play "dead". Guild wars is not dead it is just experiencing a player base loss because it is quite old. It does not mean it will die it just means fewer players are/will be playing it. And considering how many people this game attracted it is not that big of an issue right now.

As long as you can go into an outpost and still see people, this game is far from dead and it has been established in other threads that it still has a pretty large number of active players (ofc you can see that for yourself by going to "spamadan").

Furthermore even if you are to compare wow vs gw. bare in mind that wow is based on servers that have no communication between tehmselves. While you get some pretty huge servers with alot of people, most of them are usualy around a few thousand people active on them. While in gw if I can't find something in the european district, I can switch to america, asian etc.

If you consider a game "dead" then stop playing it and spare us from this useless remarks.

Just go over to the WoW forums, the TF2 forums, or any other forum. There will be always people telling their game is dying/dead. Doesn't stop other players from enjoying the game though.

You must be a US server player, as compared to 2 years ago, Europe is most definately in decline.

Uh... I play Team Fortress 2 and I read the official forums. What "forums" are you talking about?

Valve just released a brand-new update less than two weeks ago that put in new Scout unlockables and achievements, as well as putting in certain fan-made arenas into the "official" circuit. If anything, Valve is adding new content with their game.

The TF2 forums were on fire for seven days straight because the new Scout unlockables change the profession so much that there's now arguments that waver between the unlockables are totally useless and the unlockables are extremely overpowered/game-breaking. Recently, the endless complaining has gotten stale and people have gone back to speculation about future unlocks.

=====

I really don't understand the OP's post. The idea that WoW is trying to "kill" anybody is ridiculous. That's like somebody claiming that every time some other car company makes a family sedan, it's a "Camry-Killer" or something like that.

Blizzard's Warcraft title is one of their oldest titles in the book. In fact, Warcraft more-or-less invented the entire concept of the real-time strategy game. Seriously, if there was a RTS game released prior to Warcraft 1, then nobody knows about it. Even *I* know about Warcraft and I was strongly in the Command & Conquer camp back in the day.

The point is, the game has a long legacy with numerous hits and massive financial backing. It should have been no surprise that a MMORPG based on it would have a huge fan backing and hype. Also, keep in mind that MMORPGs back at that time were literally trash. They just threw monsters out there and you jumped in and started grinding from the get-go. At least WoW had some semblance of a story and some varied quests.

What has been happening is that all these MMORPGs out there are looking at the huge amount of money that WoW is making and thinking... "I'd sure like some of that." As a result, the entire planet is flooded with MMOs. It takes about 10 seconds to surf any game-oriented website before a banner ad for some crap "free to play" MMO shows up. Most of these games are just playing off of a gimmick: We have a lot of hot looking girls in our MMO. We are using a famous movie/novel license as our MMO. Etc. In the end, the reason why people quit games like Warhammer or Conan is because those games doesn't offer anything special over WoW which has arguably the most content and the biggest fanbase.

I don't know why people even think about "WoW-killing" games because the real killer of WoW is itself. Eventually the game's graphics will get so dated, and/or fans will no longer tolerate the limitations in the game engine (e.g., the terrible PvP system), and people will move on to a new game. What changes the gaming world is when somebody actually applies some new innovation to games. Right now, nobody has come forward with any new ideas, just a bunch of gimmicks.

It's pretty sad because actually paper-and-pencil RPGs have changed, but video game RPGs have not. A lot of people make fun of D&D but it has a ton of innovation. Right now, if you want, you can play with four of your friends as a Fighter, Wizard, Ranger, and Rogue. And you'll say: Wait, where's the party healer? The answer is: You don't need one. Clerics are still powerful healers and are a definite boon if you have one. But what D&D wanted to avoid was standing around all day waiting for a "healer" to show up. Sound familiar? Go stand around any elite dungeon area and see how many people stand around waiting for a specific profession to show up. "LFG sin, bip, bond..."

Pretty much. WoW couldn't kill GW because GW wasn't in the same ring as WoW. ANet could, however, kill GW by throwing it in that ring.

(Which has pretty much already been said, but anyway...)

They said the right words, but on reading the plans for GW2, and on looking at the grindfest that EOTN was on release, one wonders if they truly understood what they were saying. They do appear to be backpedalling as much as they reasonably can on those counts, however, so we can hope...

There's certainly a lot less activity in the European English districts than there was before travel to different servers became unrestricted. What happened is, many people went over to the Americas to join up with another large group of english speaking players.

Some of the other language districts in Europe are still going quite strong.

WoW can't kill GW because GW has no monthly fee.

How does your personal preference in one of two unlike things say anything about the quality of either?

Creepy.

And it doesn't look the same to me at all. Difference is, there are actually some numbers that suggest my perception may be more accurate than yours: Guild Wars sales are in pretty steep decline, which lends some credence to the idea that the game's active population may also be shrinking (also, in before somebody ignores "my perception" and "may be" and turns that last sentence into an absolute statement I never made).

Did you even bother to read the thread?

Just like the author of that article, I only got GW recently. The Trilogy came out right when I got broadband. I chose GW over WoW, even though I had a WoW guild invite from my coworkers. I had three reasons.

First off, the graphics for WoW seemed too cartoony, like anime. The more realistic GW graphics were way more appealing.

Next, no monthly subscription for GW. ("So I have to buy your game & then pay you every month to play it? I don't think so...")

Last, I heard about Blizzard's shenanigans with its search & destroy programs that would search your PC for bots or other illegal 3rd party stuff. Sorry, I'm not going to allow something on my network that can't behave itself. I also had friends who played WoW on Linux for quite a while, until Blizzard decided unilaterally that they couldn't use that OS.

I'll get GW2 as long as it doesn't have a monthly fee, and doesn't do any anti-social stuff like Blizzard (highly unlikely if ANet keeps to their current security model). Some of you might feel bored by GW, but I'm still really enjoying it.

True. I blame it largely on the use of party search as a trade medium. Trying to determine who is selling/buying, and what they're selling/buying, in at least 6 different languages that you don't speak is just no fun...

I honestly prefer GW to WoW simply because of the time factor. I haven't played WoW since TBC, but at 70 you needed a couple of hours for most of the endgame content, and had to "schedule" things for enough people to show up.

GW (which I haven't seriously played since June) is easily possible to just put "Anyone wanna do _____ HM?" "Sure" "Yeah" and then fill in with heroes and get going, and most likely be successful.

Oh, look, someone who played GW for 2 days and probably hasn't gotten out of presearing noticed that it's different form WoW! Stop the presses!

you and I have been over that before and i don't feel like...debating....it again, but I will post my thoughts for those who didn't read that thread. Guild Wars sold 1 million units in a year without any significant new content (what did we get, MOX?) I consider that pretty damn good.Peter Moleyneux is a loud mouthed buffoon, you cant compare all game designers to him.

On topic, GW and WoW are to different to be compared and barely compete against each other. They both can, and are, extremely successful. If you want to compare GW against a game, you should choose something that isn't extremely dominate in the market, like FF11 or LotRO (both rumored around 600,000 paying subscribers, I believe SE put that in a financial report a year or two ago and I don't remember where I saw that for LotRO).

For everyone talking about GW2 being a WoW clone, if the guys leading ANet wanted to make WoW, they wouldn't have left Blizzard. Mountains of RPGs in the past have high level caps (usually at 99) and that didn't indicate lots and lots of grind. You just play through the game and if the devs are good an paced it right you should be the right level for some new mission and/or boss when you reach him.

I liked the article.

Damn you beat me to it. Not suprised at the post..considering the source..Need a yawn icon.

Took their departure from Bliz as them wanting to try to do something DIFFERENT, being tired of the same old type of games that bliz has offered. Nothing but Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft since 1998. I can see sticking with what works but damn, need that yawn icon again.

They finally got their heads out of the sand on that and now most dungeons can be run pretty quickly. I guess they finally realized that not many people want to sit in front of the computer for three hours to do a quarter of a dungeon that gives a 10% chance at the reward they're going in for.

Still not as casual as GW though, because of the lack of henches and heroes.

That's because there was nothing to debate. Sales declined, I pointed that fact out and clearly stated that I was of the opinion that it was neither interesting nor relevant since it compared the release year for EotN to the following year in which nothing was released.

You just tried keep arguing with me for the sake of it about something I wasn't even discussing.

I've actually moved on to WoW, have for quite awhile now. GW just got stagnant and boring for me. There's nothing left to hold my interest in GW anymore. I don't even think I have enough interest in GW2.

This. I still poke around the community to play around with build ideas, but Anet's skill balancing is terribad.

I'm sure PvP is more fun if that's what you're into, but for PvE, GW is pretty horrible, because once you hit level 20, you'll find yourself asking yourself "what's the point?"

I can only hope that GW2 makes PvE more... rewarding

I like the graphics point. I am not a fan of how cartoony the graphics are in WoW. that was one of my decided factors in choosing. I could not stand to stare at a cartoon for along ass time.

gw and wow are very different games


wow is deffanitly better for pve, and the amount of things that you can do.

but wow pvp is not so good, who ever has the best weapon wins

gw pve, however is good when you first start playing but then there is not much to do and it becomes very boring

gw pvp however is great but bad at the same time

the skill level needed, learning to spike, catch spikes all that stuff is great

but anet has kind of killed pvp


besides the monthly overall wow would be a better game, because pvp in gw is pretty much dead

but I am positive wow will be no match to gw2

WoW has vastly more content, but after playing the beta to lvl 20 and then trying a 2-week trial, I couldn't really get into it. Soloing stuff means you beat on the same one or two mobs at a time for quite a while, which really puts the "grind" into MMO. "Solo" Battles in GW go faster and are more intricate because you're never solo. Then you have all those "kill X" quests, waste alot of time walking around, and the death penalty is literally making you walk 5-10 minutes- all of this in a world where things are constantly respawning and the quests rarey accomplish anything that feels important. GW while often corny, at least has a dynamic story/narrative that holds your attention, gives you a definite direction, and is easy to follow, and the quests usually are more involved too.

So while WoW definitely has more PvE (and you pay more for it), I'm don't buy the oft repeated mantra that it is "better" PvE - it's not for everyone (even if it's sold much more.) What's more troubling for me is that 99% of MMOs were ripped off or rip off wow, duplicating all these same fundamental aspects that I don't care for. Companies need to stop investing in the next WoW-wannabe failure a la Age of Conan, and start looking to duplicate GW's success.

Why WoW can't kill Guild Wars.

I've actually have a copy of WoW on my computer that I can play anytime. But I don't want to, cause that would mean someone has to pay the monthly fees for me. I did have a server filled up with character all level 19 lol not gonna level them cause i want to play at the lower end PvP.

I also recently play a F2P game called Rohan. Downloaded Anarchy Online (over night), play for 5 minutes and uninstalled the damn thing, too ugly, instruction are too hard too follow, I want to play a game not read game manual

My very first MMORPGs is Guild Wars. so I inevitably compare all these to it when I play them. Comparing those game to Guild Wars.

i find all these other MMORPG lack:

1) A main storyline to carry your character through the game with primary quests and missions with the usual side quests of collecting X numbers of items or please talk to that guy 3 feet away cause i can't move over there quests :P~
2) Re-adjustable attributes points
3) Secondary professions
3) Skill Chain effects (the most other game has that I've notice are stun and frozen, you don't see them having, if foe is hex with water magic, then you use steam, your foes will be blinded type of skills chaining.)
4) Skills that are easily distinguishables between profession.
5) Do not have distinguishables areas with different monsters.

explanations:
Number one explain itself, they tell you the story, some only on their webpage, wow at least has an opening intoduction cinematic, and that's it. the others simply don't have any cinematic to speak of, weather or not you move on to the next area does not matter because there's no continuation to the story after the opening cinematic. When I play in Rohan Online, i'll just proceed to the next area with the "correct level" creatures and start hacking them. if you arrange your skills on the skill bar nicely. you can simply just 1.2.3 your way to the end. With the availability to acquire cheap mana and health potion, one can filled up their bags, goes out hunting and not return forever, seeing there's no missions and quest that need done to progress to the next area.

number 4, for instant, all profession/race in these games has almost the same type of skill set. meaning they have buff, heal, attack skills, with mana and health potion. although using different type of weapons they are actually doing the same thing just using different names. You do not need a support line, for instant, healer and theres no interrupt skills .... to begin with. (i think wow has thou)

all these features that guild wars has is why new player still coming and old player still playing. and I suspect skills balance plays a very important part in the whole scenario, (ahem, arena net) without which your game will surely die. skills update does not means that the game is so broken that it need fixing (off course thats part of it) but it provide "hope" for players, and after each balance, there are new builds that comes out. Which makes the game "new" and not "stale".

when you travel around Tyria or Cantha or Nightfall, you encounter different creatures, different locals, have different weapons sets, different skills, have different armors. unlike some game, all area have the exact same type of creatures. and as long as you grind your butt you'll get to the top end skills regardless if you have don't and complete the whole game or not.

If the creatures are level 1-5 they must be imps, level 7-8 they must be lycans.. for all towns outposts, i nearly die laughing when I see that. why would anyone do that? You build a marvelously beautiful gamescape, come up with beautiful class of characters, and you couldn't put in just a little bit more effort to make the monsters distinguishables in various areas?

Edit:
I also thought of something else that's quiet important that others don't have. Because of the nicely written stories, and allowing us to take part or party up with the character inside the stories itself is genious. I think this adds another level to the RPG part of the game greatly. Its also why Gwen is so popular, and why thread like this exist. It is also why having mini pets that does nothing is so fun. like you are part of the story.

Anywho, playing others mmorpgs has made me appreciate Guild Wars even more! I hope they don't turn into one of these other mmorpgs in GW2 thou... keep fingers crossed. and in them mean time I am also drooling over other un-reachable mmorpgs lolol.....

This thread is a festering pit of bias, misinformation, and in some cases, downright idiocy. Can't believe it's been permitted to go on this long. May as well throw in a post though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein And WoW has its share of useless skills too ... all that "L1 Firebolt / L2 Firebolt / ..." means that in WoW 4 out of 5 skills are useless. And no "there is use for them". Plain useless.

Classic example of uninformed misinformation. Go play WoW, report back when you know what you are talking about. Thanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ctb Still not as casual as GW though, because of the lack of henches and heroes

WoW has no need for them. Casual players of mediocre skill can solo almost all world quest content. Players of a somewhat higher skill level can solo quests designed for three to five players, assuming their class has the ability to effectively snare opponents, which most do. GW is designed around group gameplay, hence the need for H&H for casuals. WoW is designed around solo questing and group dungeons, so H&H are entirely unnecessary for anyone who isn't terrible, even super casual players.

GW is still more casual than WoW, but for reasons other than the lack of H&H in the latter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pumpkin pie wow at least has an opening intoduction cinematic, and that's it.

WoW has deeper lore and a more expansive story than Guild Wars will ever have. It just doesn't carry you through it like a pop-up children's book, à la single player adventure games, like GW does. You actually have to read quests and pay attention to what's going on. Most quests in WoW tie into a plot line of some sort, be it small or extremely large and spanning many areas and time periods. In contrast, most quests in GW are just once-off menial chores for you to do that don't really tie into anything important. GW has a single, short story to tell you in each game, and those stories fit together loosely. WoW has many stories, large and small, all around you, and plots that tie into plots that tie into plots that tie into more plots of epic proportions (for example, there is a long line of quests for one Faction that starts almost as soon as you roll a character and leads up to a massive betrayal and epic battle in the latest expansion).

And in direct response to the thread title, Blizzard could probably crush ArenaNet any time they wanted, with the right paperwork. But why bother? There's no threat for them to worry about.

WoW does not need to kill GW.

ANet does it themselves, with announcing the successor YEARS before it is released and many great ideas implemented badly.

Maybe they even inspired Blizzard, who will steal/copy the idea and polish it, as they always do. And boom, Blizzard invented something new, and people will love it, smash hit.

Thank you, ANet... :>

Go to hell, ad hominem arguments are crap and are just insulting.

Just tell why you think that lower rank damage spells have a reason to exist, now that the new downranking rules even made healing spell downranking rather useless?

I believe I don't play WoW that much to argue as to weather the story is good, bad or what not, ... (this be another topic).

I agree WoW has a much complex story than that of Guild Wars, but it does not give you the impact the way Guild Wars does with its missions and quests and eventually you arrive at the end of the chapter, even with it less complex storyline.

Most mmorpg has a background story, actually i think all of them have one, but where do you find it? is the game play dependable on this story/lore. Its how the developer use this to their advantage, and guild wars did, i also don't see it in any other (only a few) game that I've play. How does one find out about WoW's lore? and How does one find out about Guild Wars' Lore? WoW, you go to their webpage to read the story. With Guild Wars you fignt (play) and become part of the story without having to read the quest, off course if you want to read it, thats a plus. I probably might enjoy Lord of the Ring ... hrmzzz... if only the client doesn't take forever to download.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc Just tell why you think that lower rank damage spells have a reason to exist

I don't have time to theorycraft or explain in great detail the mechanics of a game other than Guild Wars on a Guild Wars forum, but in short, downranking is not as effective as it was before patch 2.0.1 (and more recently 3.0.2 due to the switch from set mana costs to base percentage costs), but there are still plenty of uses for downranked skills, mostly relating to speed and specific damage output.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pumpkin pie WoW, you go to their webpage to read the story

No, you pay attention to quest text and NPC chatter while playing the game (EXTREMELY small amounts of additional info are found on the website, and supplemental information can be learned from related literature from your local library, or previous Warcraft games). WoW is like a novel, GW is like a picture book or a movie. One expects you to read and make mental notes, the other expects you to sit back and let things be shown to you directly.

WoW cant kill GW - and vice-versa - just like beer cant kill wine - and vice versa.

Different flavors for different tastes. Pick yours and enjoy.

Peace!