How did Heroes kill Guild Wars?

So what? That doesn't prove anything in this thread. Heroes CAN replace humans and humans CAN also replace heroes. It has always been much easier to succeed by partying up with a good human team anyway, compared to using H/H.

Hasty generalization again. Henchies can also beat many areas including your favorite, THK.

What damage are you talking about?

What singleplayer game?

What has that got to do with this thread?

Again you are trying to go OT and talk about other aspects of this game.

Really? I will give you a concession, you dont need to show me how you beat all of guild wars with heroway, why dont you just show me how you use 6 heroes to beat ALL of DoA HM.

I suppose that is why you are still stuck in the easy areas. Otherwise, you would know difficult it is to use heroes, versus a human team, for so many areas in this game.

Intelligence still matters, unless you havent been using intelligence to play. Heroes do not work well in many areas because they just dont have the intelligence to split or make good decisions on their own.

Personally, I think that Heroes did contribute to PvE's decline. Time withers anything away, but some things help drag it down sometimes.

Heroes came after humans as a replacement. Humans can't replace heroes because humans came before heroes.

You know as well as I that heroes are a big jump up from henchies. Stop fooling yourself.

The irreversable kind (like PvP).

Guild Wars.

Heroes contribute to game and challenge inbalance (which I've already explained).

I don't have to beat DoA HM. Its not the main game and if I wanted to do a side area I'd do an easier area for better rewards.

I'm not stuck. I simply don't play anymore because the game is stupidly easy. Its a farming game nowadays...everybody knows this.

If intelligence matters, why can I roll heroway and roll my head on the keyboard and beat 99% of the game? Stop naming the 1% and claiming my point is invalid because of that 1%.

That still doesn't stop human players from replacing a hero's position in the team.

No idea what you are talking about.

Nope they are different issues.

You did say ALL of GW. An easier area with better rewards, like Ascalon City? Right...

The harder areas are the ones with better rewards, not the easier areas.

Yeah whatever, chicken out if you must.

I dont believe you can roll your head on the keyboard with 6 heroes and beat ALL of DoA HM. It is the tougher areas of the game that matter because they have the better rewards. Who cares about the easier areas where people hire runners to do it for them anyway.

In a PvP perspective I agree.

But I don't think so much for a PvE perspective, given how much damage already existed for many PvE players.

The thread is about the problems with heroes. If heroes replaced humans in any way, that can be considered a problem to many people. Humans replacing heroes can not be a problem because heroes came later....I'm sure you can see that?

Then you haven't been reading the thread.

No they aren't. If Anet has to build areas around heroes (the same areas that human teams will play), that is a problem.

Which is why FoW has a large farming base and DoA has almost no base to speak of?

Chicken out on what? The game is easy...that is common knowledge.

LoL...you did exactly what I thought you would do (name the 1%). Some people just don't like how heroes have taken the game over and changed it. Its that simple.

Fair enough. From my perspective the entire game changed for the worse after heroes. PvP the damage done is irreversable and basically impossible to deny...I suppose in PvE the damage done is more on a person by person basis.

The PvE experience thus far has been an entirely mixed bag, but it's definitely set-up to be a nasty experience: leaving mid-mission cripples the party (especially if a monk), no way to replace them if they go, Rambo NPCs, annoying bonus objectives (mostly in Factions), strict party format, etc. etc.

If ANet want things to change in GW2, they're going to need to REALLY ease up on the strictness in PvE. Whiping should not be "mission failed" but instead a set-back. Something needs to be able to replace any players that ditch the mission half-way. Bonuses need to have more thought and not be confusing or "JUST DO IT FAST". And never have it rely on a "HURP DURP" NPC that charges at first sight.

The community is getting smaller, and it's spread out between 4 campaigns. Without heroes, there would be no way you'd be able to pug everything you wanted to. With heroes, you simply throw on a skill bar and go. I'd say heroes helped PvE much more than they ruined it. Without heroes, I know I would have completely quit a long time ago, and I know many people who would have too.

Heroes didn't kill anything. I have a few reasons why. I don't have to wait around for a party full of arrogant a-holes only to have our party wipe and have to redo the whole process anyway. I don't have to wait around for hours when I work all day and can only game in twilight hours for a team of over-caffeinated jerks that would be kicked out of a normal party during the day. I can FINALLY have some control, however feeble, over the pathetic friendly NPC AI that Anet has seen fit to grace us with from their oblivious perch in the heavens. We can FINALLY get a party underway by filling that one last oh-so-aggravating empty party slot rather than waiting for the right profession to come along with moderate sense. Last thing is if I really want to get a real PuG, guess what? I don't have to add the heroes, they will still be there in that magical dropdown menu land when I get done so I can suffer an irritating PuG to remind me why I am grateful for my half-witted heroes.

Heroes do not replace humans, humans choose between heroes, humans, and henchies. I still dont see what the problem is except that we now have more choices in the game. That is a good thing.

There are still some people who farm DoA. FoW is being farmed by SC teams which are human teams rather than H/H teams. Using FoW, which is predominantly farmed by human SC teams, to support your point that heroes are destroying GW is ridiculous.

People don't group that much because of heroes. However I would not play without them now since I only have an hour or two a night to play (and not all nights) and don't have the time to wait for people to group and such.

I decided to bring this back full circle.

Even in 2005, there were empty outposts.

I'll let that sink in a little bit....

Even when the game was most focused on one area, with no heroes, and henchman AI was shoddy at best, there were places where it was hard (or impossible!) to find a group.

ArenaNet had to implement Heros in Nightfall, or people would just quit playing. There was just not enough Humans available in every mission of the game at all times...


I'll reiterate what most people are saying: Heroes didn't kill GW, they saved it. I'm sure I wouldn't be playing GW if not for Heroes.



(EDIT: Fixed start date)

People dont group that much because there are not many people in the outposts/missions areas, outside of the zquests, to start with. Even if there are people, most of them seem to be afk.

If it is because of heroes and henchies, I would see lots of people entering the outposts, getting the henchies, then disappearing into the mission. But I dont see this happening. The outposts are just pretty much dead, rather than people entering and leaving frequently.

That is indeed true, being one of the first few mesmers in GW, it was really difficult to find a group. There were many threads in the forum about profession discrimination and how people prefer eles to mesmers because PvE was basically a nuke them all game and at that time, the monster AI would just stand in Meteor Shower until they are dead. I remembered someone posting that the "best shutdown against an enemy is to kill them", thus, eles make more sense than mesmers in PvE.

At that time, I didn't have a choice because if nobody wants to party up with me, I had to resort to henchies that suck most of the time. And in some quests, e.g. the Titan Quests besides DDF, henchies are just too low level to succeed. I decided to quit the game after Factions, if it hasnt been for the announcement from ANet that Heroes would be provided for NF which kept me interested in the game till now.

I just find it ironical that some people are suggesting that we go back to the old times without heroes (i.e. I can only assume that they must not be mesmer players back then ), because they want to party with other human players.

I find that people in this game, form their party based on what makes it easiest and most likely for them to succeed, not because of socializing, helping out, and all that crap excuses anti-heroes posters keep bringing up. This was why mesmers weren't popular with PUGs then. If you want to play in areas where human players, pve skills, and cons are most needed due to the difficulty, then the end game content and SC teams are where you want to be.

More choices is not necessarily good. Some choices are not good.

You are missing this point. Let me simplify things. You keep saying heroes are ok because humans have the potential to be more powerful. That is not necessarily true and you need to understand that.

Lastly I'd like to comment on the people who keep saying "I would have quit this game if not for heroes". Who cares? That isn't the point of this thread. The question is were heroes good for the game. If you quit the game Anet doesn't lose and the game doesn't die. Perhaps more people wouldn't have quit the game had changes not been made to it? Saying you would have quit means nothing in the context of this thread.

DreamWind,

Just as I told Daesu that his Corolla vs Ferrari is only focussing on a few things I can also say this to you.
There are so many forces at work that it's very hard to determine how heroes impacted Guild Wars.

Let's go back to the days before heroes and see what happened there (on PvE side).
Oh, we got Factions release. And with that we got titles. Awesome!
But Factions spread the player base. Between Proph and Factions but also in the Factions storyline. Introduce some elite areas where many people try to team and you will create somewhat empty outposts along the way.
On top of that titles made this problem worse. It encouraged single profession play and the thinking of: "why do certain things twice when there is no benefit (either gold or title progress)". Individual people were probably about as busy as they were before only doing a lot of different stuff.

The introduction of heroes can be seen in this light. It somewhat solves the empty-outpost problem and it enables people to achieve certain titles a little faster.

After Nightfall we got Hard Mode. Spreading players even more and creating a new problem. Full outposts where people would seek NM only to find out that most players were there to play HM. HM players don't tag along with NM players, thus slowing down experience gain for new players.

Somewhere around this time (earlier/later?) we got the message that GW1 was no longer receiving expansions and focus was put to GW2. We got EotN as last sales boost for A-net because it's a bridge-chapter because of HoM.
And because everyone should be able to have a decent HoM various overpowered skills were introduced for human players. And we got consumables, you can almost buy your titles nowadays if you ain't good enough to get them by playing.

I doubt that heroes destoy GW.
Where human teams gain huge benefit over hench/hero teams they will get together.
That's mainly in farming areas. Dungeons, UB craze, nowadays the various speed clears.
It's just that the average benefit of (random) human teams isn't enough compared to that of playing H&H for a lot of stuff. When taking heroes you are managing risk.
This means less downward risk (d/c, afk, human error, waiting for players) but also less upward risk (faster times, being able to do stuff a H&H team cannot do).

I think that other things besides heroes had a far more negative impact on random teaming (and even teaming in guilds for unorganised stuff).

Uh...Obviously I would say heroes are good for this game (read numerous posts above for supporting points), which you should be able to imply from my "I would have quit this game if not for heroes" statement.

Each make has its own advantages and disadvantages, if anything else a Corolla is still cheaper, but someone who buys a Ferrari obviously value the other advantages more than just the price. Similarly someone who chooses to form a human team obviously value the other advantages that a human team can provide, more than the shorter waiting time in town if he uses H/H instead.

Since each option has its own advantages, then heroes and humans dont compete with each others in the same vertical "market" (similarly for compact vs luxury cars). Players are free to make different choices based on the areas and whatever they fancy at a particular point in time. Having that choice available to players, is good for the game.

And that was what I have been saying.

If not for heroes, people would quit the game.

Groups need people to play.

Ergo, Heroes saved Group Play.


(the reason this works is because very few people are exclusively H/H or Group. There is considerable overlap, in my experience).

jUST TO REINFORCE YOUR POINT so Dreamwind wont do a sneaky on you.. heroes did not provolke decline in playerbase..we all know why.

Heroes helped one set of people (prefer to H/H), and didn't help another (prefer to group). It's way too late to change it now, because the people that don't like heroes have already left the game, and the people that like them will leave if you change it.

I assume that's what you meant.

But it's hard to get exact numbers on the player base, unfortunately.

^ yes indeed you are correct =)

No its not. We definately see ways heroes have impacted the game. The only thing we don't know is the extent to which they have affected certain things.

That is true, but its what I have been telling Daesu: That doesn't matter. If humans teams only get together when they have a distinct advantage (particularly a speed advantage) over AI, that is a problem in itself. That means people would play with AI in any case except the cases where the inbalanced things humans provide that AI doesn't provide is required.

If we had a situation where people are teaming up because human intelligence is needed because AI can't beat an area, that would be fine. Instead we have a situation where humans are only needed for the inbalanced things they can use that allow faster speed clearing and farming, and AI is still able to beat 99% of the game.

Possibly...but that isn't the whole story. We know that they have had SOME impact on random teaming, but heroes have impacted the game negatively in many ways other than random teaming as well.

So? We have many people claiming heroes are good for the game because they would have quit if not for heroes. That statement adds nothing and nobody really cares.

Most players just want to have fun, and are willing to go a bit to get to that fun. To look at L4D again, we'll see tons and tons of servers of four people hauling ass through zombie town. All of those players would have a much quicker time just loading up a campaign by themselves solo, but still we see players going out of their way and wanting to play with people and it's not because the AI is a little incompetent: it's because it's fun.

I don't feel that Guild Wars has the same pay-off. If playing with others in GW was fun I think we'd see more people striving and aiming for that.

Playing with other people is fun.

The problem is, despite what the nay sayers say, GW is a complex game and it has bitchy roles.

Who the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO wants to play the bitchy roles? Everyone wants to be either a melee, some kind of nuker or a monk.

Who wants to be an orders dude? Or some random support char. Who wants to change some damage skill to a remove hex skill? Who prefers to run Empathic removal over Cruel Spear?

Then the hard bits of the game can be a pain in the ass (gogo Repressive Energy and Shroud of Darkness, 2 of the most stupid things in the game) unless u abuse the AI and a pair of skills.

SC crap isn't exactly playing in team, now is it? It is playing solo or in duo in a area with 6/7 more other players.

Very very different from all being in the same place and chatting in TS or Vent.

Compare it to something like Diablo II. In Diablo II you there with your build, there are good builds and bad builds, but it is your build and the other guys do their stuff. One or 2 abilities will make someone else more effective but that's it. You are completely independent from the other players.

Now in GWs before you even go in -
- Do we have enough hex removal?
- Anti-block?
- Someone bring condition removal?
- How are we going to kill the group with 2 protector monks and 1 healing monk?
- Hey drop that fireball cause it sucks ass!
- Hey resurrect is bad bring something else, like flesh of my flesh!
- But I don't have rit sec.
- Go get it!
- We need a second backliner!
- My monk isn't here.
- I only play ele!
- Me too!
- I've a monk but no elites!
- Can you eles play ER?
- What is that?
- Erm that gladiators defense is bad!
- NO IT ISN'T! I'm ubber leet tank!
- Why Balthazar derv?
- Because of the armor!
- But that guy spams SY!
- And holy damage!
- But AoHM also converts damage into holy!
- No it doesn't.
- Check wiki!
- Wiki lies!
- Lets go check against undeads then!
- No, you suck and lie!
- Sorry guys but I need to go...
new guy joins in and he is a warrior, so the warrior go load his para to be imbagon, but by then someone else is gone.

So after 1 hour people are ready to go in. Half an hour later in a 2 hours area the guy that joined 10 minutes ago:

- Sorry I need to go! It is late.


Or maybe the variation where the frontliners over aggro or hide behind the squishies and are afraid to take damage. Or whatever. We all know loads of stories.

That is why people like heroes and henchs. And 2 people + heroes is just great.

Heroes give freedom.

Freedom is great.

So all the anti-heroes can go die far away!

Long live freedom!

Hahahaha great story , it happened to me so many times .... cool thing is that not only happens with new players ( less than 1 year on the game ) , it also happens with 3 or 4 year ppl that is playing a char that created long ago but barely used since then ( cough cough *A/Efarmers playing any other role *cough ) . 4 years and played 80% of the time with 1-2 chars and when they make a new one they act like they have been using that prof 4 years and you see their builds .... way of speaking .... way to use the build .... and you just pray for the mission/run/vq to be over lol .

In the strict context of this thread title, it does matter as this is the current reality which you are too stubborn to accept.

This second part also happens, because heroes are too dumb to run many of the builds right, otherwise I am very sure we would see lots of Anton/Zenmai SF heroes.

You still don't get it, that doesn't matter at all in the context of this thread. The fact remains that humans can perform certain functions (which you call imbalance or whatever), that heroes can't, so humans are still needed for many of the areas in this game. And stop with the exaggerations of 99% unless you prove to us based on mathetical calculations that it is really 99%, instead of keep pulling a meaningless figure out your ass based solely on your prejudice, obviously designed to sway and mislead.

On ALL the areas, it is always possible to use human teams and ALL the areas, a good human team is still the BEST (i.e. fastest and safest) way to accomplishing a mission/quest. The only drawback is the longer wait in town to form the team. In other areas, the difficulty is great enough that people dont mind waiting longer in town to ensure success.

This is partly true.
Let me take you back to what I was told early 2006:
PUGS SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyone with more than 2 braincells was already supposed to play with friends and guildies back in 2006. Only stupid people like me, being with RL friends in an inactive guild, were playing PUG often.
At least, this is what the mentality on Guru has been since I got to the site (and I registered a couple of months later than I started reading).

This is where the problem started, ages ago.

However, there was one advantage.... at least guildies, alliance and friends didn't suck....

So? My guildies and me when having a full human team with the right professions are able to beat 100% of the game.
Even worse, for a long time we've been playing with several of the high end PvE guilds that are around.
And you know what happened at a certain point and we never fixed completely afterwards? Several guildies refused to play with allies because of their 'bad skill'. They could only play specific farming builds (or Ursan when the craze was going on). Profession and build discrimination all over.
We didn't join up with such guilds only to get shooed away by people thinking they know better but in reality didn't understand shit about the game.

You are right that heroes negatively impacted the game in many ways.
But you completely fail to see that the problem isn't with heroes.
It's with human players. Part of it is the problem Improvavel described. Just the time to get something 'random' started is huge.
If I schedule something and know who's joining on what profession it's possible to do about anything. But retarted titles made people play only one profession so I get stuck with 5 eles and 2 warriors. Well, that's kinda annoying except when learning those eles to play ER monks... And we probably still can't do everything in the game.

Next it's that player skill got to an all-time low because of all the PvE only stuff A-net introduced in specially EotN.

Nowadays people can do all kinds of crazy stuff without even understanding what they are doing (the so-called Ursan way of playing, just smash some buttons). Sure, you need somewhat more skill to perma-tank. But it's not rocket science or even closed to balanced play.

It's in this environment that people prefer heroes. Not because heroes are better than all human players. But they are more relyable and do what they are supposed to do with their limitations. Somethings too many players failed to deliver. I'd rather see this different. And I know there are guild around who managed to overcome those problems. One collapsed and only invited players back who others would regard good players.
The bad ones moving to other guilds and alliances (I've seen this happen) causing trouble there.

But I will not blame heroes for this. I blame titles, content that forces players apart, cons/PvE skills and farming mentality. To put in in other words: players.

However.... We joined a regular alliance a while ago. I doubt many there know about the existence of guru. Maybe they learned that wiki exists, most likely not of PvXwiki.
And for some reason they are doing rather well (we are also expecting less from them than previous alliances tbh).

But we've also seen a couple of bad guild floating around with people who lacked the slightest bit of common sense. And to be honest, I'd rather take a hero with me than a player who:
- has a bad build relying on the build of someone else (a guildie)
- demands to play that build
- starts complaining the moment we start a HM dungeon (frostmaw) about our monk's builds (he should have done that earlier)
- his guildie leaves halfway making the guy completely useless (that's two down)
- We struggle further and manage to get to the next floor where he decides to go AFK because he doesn't have time anymore

And you are really trying to tell us that heroes are the problem?

Yes, I refuse to accept a reality of inbalance where humans can use things that let them roll over anything that AI can't roll over fast enough. You are back to taking the position that anything Anet does must be good. If you think everything in Guild Wars is peachy, you have no reason to be posting in this thread.

LoL. So humans are required for their "intelligence" because heroes can't run an inbalanced farming build. You aren't understanding what I've been saying for the past X pages and this really shows it.

Does the exact number really matter? I know I can beat nearly everything in the game with heroway, and so can most people who know what they are doing. If the number is 95% am I any less correct? If you can name 5 areas that AI can't beat, I could name 100 that they can beat.

You continue to use the PUG example to support your case. Who said anybody has to wait in a town? What about guilds, alliances, friends, etc?

I understand what your post is trying to say. You are saying that humans are the real problem...

Heres the thing though...even if heroes didn't CREATE problems (which I argue they did but lets put that aside), heroes are still an issue because they allow IGNORANCE of all those stated problems instead of actually attempting to fix the problems. Heroes are nothing more than a patch by Anet to fix problems they didn't want to deal with. This ignorance has led to countless problems over the years, all the way to the dumbing down of the game into a mere farming game.

I will use your example of players being bad and only being able to run farming builds...how to heroes solved this problem? If anything they have perpetuated the problem, ALLOWING people to be bad in a game where only AI is needed to succeed.

Guild Wars was supposed to be a skill based game. The ideal situation in a skill based game is when somebody brings a bad build and gets rolled, they learn from their mistakes before they can continue. Instead we have a situation where players are allowed to be bad by going heroway and beating that 99%, often when using bad builds (good builds and skill aren't necessarily required anymore with OP skills consumables etc). The other bad part is that players will not play with better players where they can learn from their mistakes from those better players.

I understand the idea that heroes are good because of their convience. I am simply saying that the convience is really just the ignoring of problems, and in this ignoring, more problems with the game as a whole have been created. Game design that has moved away from team based strategy and more towards single minded/speed based farms and bad players using inbalanced skills in a singleplayer game are examples of things that heroes have allowed complete ignorance of.

Then you simply refuse to accept current realities.

I only argue based on current realities not your fantasies.

If you dont know the exact number then stop saying it is 99%, like as if you do. That is misleading.

Heres the thing though...even if heroes didn't CREATE problems (which I argue they did but lets put that aside), heroes are still an issue because they allow IGNORANCE of all those stated problems instead of actually attempting to fix the problems. Heroes are nothing more than a patch by Anet to fix problems they didn't want to deal with. This ignorance has led to countless problems over the years, all the way to the dumbing down of the game into a mere farming game.

So in your fantasies all farming builds are bad, right....

Going heroway is pretty good. I am more impressed by players passing certain HM missions using heroway than relying on a human team.

Lol! Your scenario:

Average Player: Hey Mr. Better player would you party with me?

Better Player: No, I want to party with a Better Player than myself! Hey Mr. Best Player would you party me?

Best Player: No! I will only party with myself since I am the best player! I am going with H/H.

Heroes provide more team based strategies than you think.

Um...yes of course. Why do you think I'm posting in this thread? I believe the current realities are garbage. This thread asked for my input.

Precisely...you simply accept the current reality as good even if better options exist.

The number doesn't matter. All that matters is its a very large number.

No. The game being a farming game is bad however.

Sigh...why do I still post here.

I agree that implementing heroes and having fixed nothing else with the game is indeed a sign of ignorance. But I still can't personally put any blame on heroes.

If playing in PUGs was actually fun then even allowing 7 heroes wouldn't change much, hell you could probably also allow them to use PvE skills and players would still prefer to look for others.

In a more improved PvE gameworld, heroes would only be appealing to those who just want to play by themselves, and that's fine; that should be an acceptable playstyle. If we're seeing a lot of players wanting to go solo, then it's less heroes that should be pointed at and more how the game itself is designed.

I feel that this problem applies both to H/H and non-H/H players. Guild Wars is a very build-based game, and builds are pretty easy to prepare for and *really* easy to copy from PvXwiki.

Bo basically your idea of fixing people skill is gimping them with bad players?

Instead of letting them use a hero with a decent build, that uses those skills somewhat well (well it uses some skills better than humans, but sucks with many others and it is very incompetent at melee) you force them to use players that are even worse than them?

And then you are naive enough, that you believe that those 8 players will stay there for hours, failing at a certain area, changing builds and adapting strategies?

But, you can do all of that OFFLINE with MANY of the THOUSANDS of RPG Scenarios for NWN or NWN2 or DIABLO or DIABLO 2 have you tried TITAN QUEST GOLD yet?

My question would be why do you want to play solo in an ONLINE game that 99% of are directed toward multiplayer and grouping? GW surely isn't the most fun of all RPGs out there by a long shot. Heck Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion have it beat in that catagory alone. But, if you simply must have a group of non-sentient life forms to play with then NWN, NWN2, Diablo 2 to some extent if you play the necro or druid and thousands of others off that.

You can't even be leet in GW as it has low level requirements, everybody has a +15^50 and +30hp mod weapons by now. There's nothing you can get or have in GW that everybody else can't get or have that makes any difference as far as POWER goes or the ability to fight something. The only think you can get that really nobody but you cares about are stupid silly childish titles.. like Drunkard. lol Tell me now what does the Drunkard title do for you in the game? How much of a bonus to combat does it give you? Does it increase your skills? lol NO!

First, I play with other people.

Actually I rarely play alone.

Most of the time is just with another person, though.

Second I dislike Morrowind and Oblivion advancement/lvling system and not big fan of NWN systerm either.

Diablo and Diablo II isn't about teams, and DS and DS II fall far shorter from what GW is.

I don't care about titles. I got the playing ones and occasionally eat the sweets or whatever keeps dropping.

Feeling leet because you were lucky or spent hours grinding to get some +30 health mod or whatever item/armor is stupid too.

Feeling leet happens when someone is doing urgoz with you and they wisps you "you frigging ruled in there" or "wow great job getting us through that", or when someone that has been failing a mission over and over asks your help and you go there and smash everything in your path.

Feeling leet happens when you are with 7-11 other people on TS laughing and joking while u play.

Feeling leet happens when you have a guild/alliance meeting in London and meet the people you have been spending so many hours and go out having drinks and stuff.

Everyone likes to play with GOOD PLAYERS and/or FUNNY PEOPLE. Very few like to play with BAD PLAYERS and/or IDIOTIC PEOPLE.

If they aren't good players then they need to be funny/interesting people. Funny/interesting people, of course will hear the suggestions of people that are better players than them, so funny/interesting people are probably even rarer than good players.

Who wants to play with people that not only are bad players but are also idiots?

And other than that, GW is still the best regarding team party, even with AI. Would be much better at that with 7 heroes, but oh well.

YES, that is precisely what many people want to do and we have said this many times already. We want to be given a CHOICE to either find people to party with or go with H/H. Having a choice is good, not having a choice to solo means waiting in outposts for 1.5 hours to form a group for an unpopular quest. I dont see how you can call spending hours to LFG in town as "having fun" in an online game. Why should people who just want to complete all the quests in their quest log be punished? Therefore, having a CHOICE is good.

Thing is if there weren't henchies and heroes it wouldn't take an hour an a half to find a group. I played EQ, DAOC, Anarcy Online and several others and because those are group oriented games it never took an hour and a half to find a group. EQ had such a wonderful grouping system (broadcast over the entire world not just an outpost) that it was so easy to get a group and get going and making experience and profit. The others near the same as grouping is pretty easy when you take out the solo elements in them.

Now everybody I want you to look above at the typical FANBOI for GW. Everything is bad except Guild Wars but if you go look back at those games I mentioned everyone of them won GAME OF THE YEAR awards in some catagory. While GW did the same the year it came out it hardly competes with the others as BEST of them ALL. Diablo II was the clear winner as BEST RPG of them all a couple of years ago when GAMESPY had the contest. GW didn't even make it past the first chute of rpg games. hahahahah

Wrong again. Before heroes, back in the prophecy days, it still took a long time to find a group. Groups had specific skills they looked for and if you didn't run those skills you didn't get in. Henchmen have always sucked regardless of the tactics used to make them strong. So people were generally looking for pugs and even with thousands of pugs it still took forever because very few people found playing a monk, fun. So you had to wait for a monk.

Removing henchies and heroes would not make finding a group any faster.

It sounds to me that grouping in EQ worked not because you didn't have AI, but because you had an efficient grouping system.

Wrong! I tried to form a PUG for the Titan Source quest back in 2005 before heroes even existed, and it took me more than an hour to form a team! And I seriously doubt people would prefer to take the low level henchies against the Titans anyway.

Thankfully for heroes, I dont have to face that any longer. There are also lots of unpopular side quests (e.g. Double Dog Dare), that it would be hard to find a group with real players. Plus, finding real players depends on your time and district, which you anti-heroes people never ever address or take into account.

Face it, after 4 campaigns, there are just not enough players in each outpost to form a team without very long waits, outside of the zquests. Stop QQing about heroes and do a reality check on the number of non-afk players in far flung outposts that do not have a zquest of the day associated with them. Out of that small number of people, find out how many of those are actually interested in completing side quests and you would know why heroes are important to this game.