Is everything just nostalgia?

Over a lot of my time spent on many forums, I always see one thing about Guild Wars (and a lot of other games) that the " good old days" were better.

For people who don't know, nostalgia is a wishful desire to go to past events. It seems a lot of the veterans want to go back to the "good old days".

Looking back on it for me, I think of how fun it was. The whole prophecies storyline was great, I had the best guild I could imagine. But, looking back on it again, I see that it wasn't very good at all. I sat at THK on my warrior for weeks, all the pugs failed, henchmen were worse. I remember getting a +30pommel on a sword from a drop and the sword salvaged into a +X vs trolls mod. I was completely clueless on how to make money and was extremely frustrated because I couldn't afford armor and runes to do the a good way to get money (55 monk).

I guess that's my little rant, but I'm just wondering, is the old Guild Wars just nostalgia?

It is how often human memory works. Even if we have hated something at the given moment it gets idealized and blurred with time. Like people after a revolution/election always come back to the good old times which were actually often awful and the given time they wanted a change...

Most of it certainly is.

I recently acquired a second account and have been playing it as a "virgin" account - no money transfers, no materials, no runs, no power level.

And it has been quite fun, looking at the weapons in the floor and say "YaY this white spear is 7-11!".

I still dislike prophecies though - boring, long and dull - although I guess if I actually knew 0 about GW, the slower pace was probably better than the faster pace of factions and nightfall.

Curiously, most people used to talk about the Nightfall grinding and I haven't noticed any of it.

Seeing your character grow more powerful is always an interesting thing.

Guess that is why Anet is considering increasing the level cap or even get rid of a level cap.

i do believe it's a better game now, but we remember the old guild wars, because it was fresh, new and exciting. While the game keeps getting better, it will never be new to us again.

Nostalgia is a valid way to look at it, but that doesn't mean it's incorrect. The 'old' Guild Wars was simply better in our minds because of how we approched it.

Pamelf says it best. I remember when I had to buy the paperback game guide to help me navigate around guild wars. Old days were fun, new, exciting. Sorrow's Furnace is still the best dungeon...

but in terms of gameplay...armor, weapons, heroes, storage, and a whole host of things have expanded since prophecies, vastly improving the game.

The PvP community has heavily diminished, competitiveness is down, the meta is more stagnant, and there's less new blood.

It's not so much nostalgia for the old days, but a preference of the situation that was present then. The game, and the community, has changed.

There are two components of nostalgia:

1. The feeling of things when they were "new"; and
2. Wanting things to go back to the way they were.

Most of the nostalgia you see is #1 above.

Personally, I disagree with #2 on many fronts. I personally think the game today is much better than it was when Guild Wars was first released. There are many improvements that make gameplay so much better, and yes, there were a few changes along the way that I think made the game less than what it could have been in the long run.

But overall, it is my opinion that Guild Wars, in general, has moved in the right direction.

I just miss 55 monks and SoJ farming trolls. Made a lot of money and got a lot of cool stuff. I miss AoE not scattering. I miss how farming the same area over and over and over and over didn't affect your drops. I miss endless minions too.

i think if you didn't have 40 minions up you were considered a failure at mm'ing. insane...but it didn't seem insane at the time, it was just cool to be running around with a damned shipload of undead at your service

I don't think this is due to either the passage of time or changes to the game. I think this is because of how the PvP community runs itself.

+1 for nostalgia in the sense of fondly remembering the time when things were new and exciting. I'm not attached to a particular storyline, a particular set of items being expensive/fashionable, ectos being 15k, or a basically economy-free version of pre-searing. For me, it's simpler than that: The thrill is gone.

The only thing that I miss from the good ol days, was how I really enjoyed PvE and could play it by myself for hours on end. I miss PvP before heroes (though 1 man HA was great fun!). Other than that, I feel that the game itself has improved a lot.

Oh, and RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO lootscaling

oh I remember this

Guild Wars is a good game with a very solid PvP component.

Guild Wars is a very bad e-sport game.

To be an e-sports game, GW needs to attract professional gamers (with money rewards), those will attract amateur competitive and most important it needs to sell "GW product", not the game box but the "GW GvG match" as entertainment.

I've spent loads of time on WC3. A good portion of it was watching replays and following the competitions. Occasionally I still download or watch the competitions.

Guild Wars can't sell the "GvG match".

Then it can't attract players that make a living or at least make some money.

No replay function and a very crude observer function, with no skill bars, no pause, no slowdown function and rewind function, etc, basically it needs a replay.

In WC3 for example you can see the small tricks the players pull, like changing TP scrolls between heroes in the last second to save them, surround enemies, etc.

In GW those things are much harder to spot reducing the entertainment value of the GvG match.

While, in the first couple of years, GW had some of that attraction due to injection of money by Anet in the global tournaments, it had basically no following outside those, giving the game very small visibility.

No visibility no sponsors.

The PvE market is cheapest and more profitable to maintain and develop in those circumstances.

Yes, I remember being parked at THK and the desert missions took days to get through because PUGs died quick. And more bugs than your average rain forest.

But I also remember the challenge and the joy of accomplishment. When Prophecies first came out, even Pre was tougher. There must have been twice the number of mobs in Pre that there are now. I will never forget finally making it to Piken Square the first time. There was no helpful ranger to guide you in those days and there were more and meaner Charr.

Nostalgia erases the harshness, the grittiness, the frustration, the bugs from memory. Very true. Quite a different game these days, and I like all the improvements!

Mostly true. However, there are very few games that do make solid e-sports.

It is fully possible to have sponsored tournaments and third-party competitions without a full e-sports environment. GW isn't a good game for audiences: the game is too slow-paced and not transparent enough, but I imagine it could survive within its own community so long as there was incentive to continue competition.

That's all sort of beside the point that the drop in PvP support removed some of the most interesting aspects of the game.

It's always interesting to take a look at old screenshots or think about the past. I think in GW mostly because lots of your friends may have played (like mine) and things were great. And it was just prophicies which was a fantastic scenic game, almost everyone I knew played it. But yes if you dig deeper, lots of things have been fixed since than and going back you see how terrible the game deep down may have been when you wanted that +30 pommel or trying to do THK.

Most of my friends left in mid 06 for WoW but i stayed with GW. (And im glad, look at some of the things WoW does to people)

I also have a perma pre but it just isn't the same as when i was actually new.

Really the only people that I see wanting to go back to the "Good old days" are the people that have been involved with the PvP community for quite some time now. And with good reason too.

The matches weren't boring to play back then. It really wasn't always defense spike vs defense spike. You never knew what you were going to play against. Now that we have had multiple power creeps and the ability to obs matches, people find out what builds are most effective and everyone begins to run that build. The only build diversity you see are gimmicks, or people trying to theorycraft the meta builds counter.

Matches also take roughly 30 minutes to find. When the game first came out the community was obviously much larger and matches took maybe 5 minutes to find. Not to mention ladder actually meant something because you needed to place high on the ladder to qualify for a major tournament.

And that brings me to the loss of players. A lot of people think this is because the PvP community are elitist a-holes. This really just isn't true. The main reason we have a lack of players coming in is obviously because people are leaving faster than people are coming in. There are a multitude of reasons for that but I'll cover the ones I believe are the biggest reasons.

When competitive tournaments like GWWC and GWFC stopped, a lot of people began to lose interest. They felt like there was no longer anything to play for so a lot of them left. Obviously when you have a large chunk of people leaving you have large holes to fill. The problem is, Guild Wars takes time and dedication to set up. You need a leader who is going to be able to set up a schedule of time when all 8 members of your team can play. As people get older, they have less free time to do this. So less free time plus friends leaving equals loss of interest and more people leaving.

Once Night Fall was released the game was arguably the most imbalanced it had ever been. Dervishes and Paragons were extremely broken and this irritated a lot of players. You add to that how poorly implemented the mAT's were and you have a lot of players who are upset with the games direction and then they leave.

And then finally, the lack of attention toward the PvP community. No one can argue the fact that we are really just being ignored. Whenever a major issue pops up (the most obvious example would be ineptitude mesmers farming VoD) they take the easy way out of the problem. Rather than fixing VoD which was a key part of the game, they get rid of it all together and give us a terrible tie breaker. It has been said time and time again how terrible this tie breaker is. That kind of treatment, plus breaking the game with horrible updates of elite skill buffs where they spend the next 4 months fixing that stupid update is the last straw for some players. And then again, you have a large chunk of players leave.

If people just left the game in a steady flow, we would be able to fill those holes with a nice steady flow of new talent. The problem is, new talent takes a few years to train up. When you have large chunks throughout the history of guild wars just leaving, then you really cant fix it. You can't just go to Kamadan and say, you you and you, you're my new midline for GvG. The game takes a lot of time to learn and when there is few people left to play with, it is hard to even have the opportunity to learn.

The community died due to lack of attention and terrible balancing on A.Nets part. Not to mention terrible solutions to broken game mechanics. There really wasn't anything we could have done to fix it. But A.Net could have, and they chose to let it die and focus on PvE.

Everyone always uses "The good ol' days" excuse as a scapegoat to boredom and the fact they need to move on. It's not just with guild wars.

Yes and a bit of ePeen.

Have you seen anyone telling you Halls (aka Tombs) became better over the years? But, somehow people still play there and many will in future. The sole motif behind this campaign is to prove (foolishly) that when one received his/her tiger emote (and that "one" is NOT you), it was done by fighting the "worthies". Now, it is done by fighting against "lesser" beings. So, if you are looking for your tiger emote now, you are not worthy!

That said, I must add Halls simply became a trashtown full of trashy lil' scrubs second after I got my tiger but, it was so Goooooooooooooooooood before..... NOT!

How can a sword have +% vs trolls mod AND +30 hp? :/

Imho, when most people talk about the "good old days" with GW, they're mostly referring to the community. Chatting in towns and joining a PUG was a mostly positive experience. Now local chat is mostly cybersex and flame wars, and forget pugging anything. That's what I miss at least.

I don't remember. It might of been a 20/20 hilt I tried to salavage, or I might of been a crap pommel I got instead of a +30hp. It was a long time ago.

"Old Times" were horrible.

Just looking at it vestiges in Prophecies makes you shiver.

Skipping lots of Missions, entire areas of nothing, having to go through PvE to enter PvP areas...

Geez... luckily all that is far away.

Yes the main reason why I keep playing is for nostalgia's sake and ofcourse you have to admit, it still is a pretty good game to play.

Heavily agreed.
Like I keep stressing:
"Good ol' days" is just a scapegoat people use when they don't realize they've played too much.

Impressive. You can trivialize the entire diminishment of PvP to an armchair psychiatry statement.

Um.

I've had my fair share of nostalgic moments and also an equally fair share of people I never want to meet again in PUGs, and all those were from before NF came out.

I do think that 'first playthrough' will always be more nostalgic, though. Experience and skill power creep dulls the next playthroughs somewhat. Seriously, finishing Glint the first time was epic. Finishing Glint in HM now just feels more routine.

Nostalgia's a bitch. It flavors your perception of quality and thus it becomes difficult do differentiate the difference (hm, "diff diff diff"...) : Was PvP actually much better than it was back then, or was it because we were all new to the game? Did heroes really have such a drastic impact on the game, or was it the game world getting bigger and older?

It's instances like this where we throw opinion out the window and look at what we got as opposed to what we have now - and that's where we get our answers: In regards to PvP it got totally, massively butchered. It's a bit harder to figure out what happened in regards to heroes, though.

Because no matter what way you look at it, pvp was bad prior to battle isles?
It wasn't until battle isles that GW pvp was actually any good since you were locked into pve characters prior to battle isles. And you know what that meant, right?
The person with the 100k +50 hp inscription, +30 sword pommel, and +30 shield handle, as well as vampiric sword haft always won. And there were no balance.
Sure, factions introduced the unbalanced ritualist and assassin. But no climax is without its flaws.

PvP characters have been in GW since the beginning.

It's mainly PvPers that are nostalgic and for good reason. PvEers got more areas, more skills, pve skills, mini-games, more festival events, pve titles, and more skins/armors. The addition of heroes was a double-edged sword, but the daily z-mission/z-bounty has improved things on that front.

THK pugs, Tank n' spank, UW trapway, and terribly high prices are some of the things that I certainly don't miss.

I'm guessing you've never watched PvP, played PvP, heard about PvP, or even KNOW about PvP.

If you do, then you MUST know how ridiculous your post is.

Sadly once you lose your mmo/mmorpg virginity on one mmorpg none of the next ones will ever feel the same or give that initial excitement the first one did.

I started out with Everquest as a Halas Barbarian Shaman and I will never forget that experience and that daily urge to get back and play it day after day night after night weekend after weekend it was so addicting. Every waking spare time moment was spent in the world of Everquest.

I remember it taking me 5 hours of playtime to get from Halas to Crushbone. Not knowing the maps are the best parts of these games. Fear is another major issue as back in the "good ole days" they didn't have romper room babyfied death penalties like GW has. Man you died and you lost a lot of experience and could even lose a level and if you didn't get your body back in 7 real days you lost everything corpse and your stuff. That was exciting too. It also made for keeping good close friends and not being a rats ass like players in GW are because there are no consequences.

Many times players needed HELP to get their stuff back. Get known as a jackazz in Everquest and you pretty much assured yourself of losing everything. See EQ REQUIRED pugging moreso than not. Oh sure you could solo some things, but, most of it was PUG/Group oriented and some azzwipes would try to solo that stuff and then die and then expect everyone around to give up their play time to help them get their stuff. lol

And now EQ has romperfied itself with some graveyard location that if you can't get to your body within the 7 day limit it puts your corpse there WITH ALL YOUR STUFF <what a stupid decision and cost the loss of players> Then they went and made this POP [planes of power] expansion that you can get to from practically any NEWBIE zone and zone around the world without any effort on your part at all. Gone are the travels of FEAR past giants and zombies and bandits and all things that could stomp you in the dirt if they saw you. Just POP into POP and go from one newbie location to the next FREE of charge. See, back in the "good ole days" you had to PAY for stuff like that ... either a high level druid or wizard had to teleport you to those places, but, POP ruined that fun of the game for those that liked to transport people around for pay.

It seems all mmorpg games have gone to the candyland romper room kiddified way of play. Easy simple no real loss death penalties like GW. The ability to transport yourself clear accross the world at NO COST.[stupid] The ability to play with AI as your party members now instead of real people and easily march through 99% of the content like it was still newbieland battles.

So yeah nostalgia play is and was better for a lot of us. You had to be a good player and you had to be a nice player back "in the good ole days" cause you needed friends and people to help you from time to time. GW is not a game like that until you get to the very hard part like the Elite areas and even those are being conquered by solo sins and 55 monks. GW is a gimmick game now really you win by playing gimmicks not by skill. By not eliminating and nerfing the 55 monk back "in the good ole days" it was the beginning of the end for GW from that moment on.

Haven't read the entire thread but,


I agree that most of the nostalgic feeling is simply missing the fact that everything was new.


However, logically thinking, I can say that I REALLY mis how loot was pre-lootscaling. I say if a solo farmer kills all the same monsters as a group of 8, he should get all the drops of that group of 8 combined, he killed them alone, after all. Solo farming was a lot of fun and effective, I always felt a sense of powerfulness by killing things alone. But nowadays its just grab henchies/heroes and go, no use for an interesting farming build.

I believe NF (heroes ) is what removed most of pve's difficulty (then pve skills) , preventing the oh so common situation of getting stuck at THK. Losing missions repetitively never bothered me, because beating them always gave this greater sense of accomplishment back then.

edit: and I agree that there is the nostalgia for the previous status of the community. People always seem to complain about PuGs, but I always loved to PuG, nowadays someone looking for a group gets laughed at "lol just use heroez".

I started playing when Factions came out, and I thought everything was nice and balanced.

This means I may have had a seizure if I had been able to PvP prior to the release of silly Shadow Steps (RTL is fine), Weapon Spells, and other imbalance mechanics. The thought of it makes me jealous.

There have been many improvements though, such as the addition of PvP characters. The PvE content is still as hard as you make it, and you will obviously not have a similar challenge as back in the day if you bring heroes, PvE skills, or lame garbage.

If we had all of the improvements we have now at the beginning of the game, that would have been awesome. The improvements we have now were definitely necessary (many of them should have been there from the beginning).

I think that what destroyed PUGs was the time and money it takes to get skills. People talk about how GW was supposed to be a game based upon skill, but the irony is that to be skilled you needs skills (in addition to knowing how to aggro or not, etc, of course). If everyone could easily get all of the skills, then I think there might have been better PUGs (maybe). Seriously, even with a group of not-too-bright Necromancers, with 8 of them, everyone could just run Discord, and all they would need to do is follow the called target (assuming they are smart enough to do that...) Or for example Searing Flames... or Ranger Spike, or Paragon Spike, etc. I have seen a bunch of skills that would be awesome to run with 7 other real people. I would love to try more builds in PvE, but to experiment can require way too much money.

Also, one reason I think why PvP has so few people now is that many people who would like to PvP are instead spending so much time playing PvE. I would love to play PvP, but my personality is such that I want to complete something before moving on to the next thing, and so I am still working on getting every PvE character to where I want them to be.

And as others have said, it takes awhile to get people good enough to be able to play PvP. They need to get skills in order to use those skills so they can understand how they work. If it takes a long time to get all the skills they need, then they cannot play PvP effectively, and if they cannot play effectively, they won't want to play. I generally don't play PvP until I have all the skills I can get, so I won't be kicked from a group when someone asks me to run with a certain skill and I don't have it.

My 2 cents

hai gaiz this is wut self ownage looks like lol

PvE characters did have pretty sizeable advantages prior to battle isles (armor swapping, more than 2 weapons, etc) but you're blowing things out of proportion.

You would still get stomped by someone who knew how to play the game, using a PvP char.

Not to mention that pretty much all the top players would have decked PvE chars of the classes they most commonly played, anyway. They still do. Go observe a HoH match and count the number of fissure armors and tormented shields. It's always been that way, even in 2005.

Nostalgia is often a factor...but when it comes to Guild Wars it is not.

I could go on and on about the differences in PvE but that isn't necessary. To me PvP was the best thing this game ever had going for it, and it is clear that PvP has taken a beating in terms of community, support, gameplay, and balance.

Guild Wars used to be a better game...I have absolutely no doubt in my mind.

The game has certainly improved since release, the only reason people prefer the guild wars of 4 years ago is because they have played it too much since, i have no doubt that if i was new to this game again i'd be absolutely hooked but the 4 years of play has removed all enthusiasm for me.

PvP isn't any worse now than it was 3 years ago, top 50 gvg was always the same teams facing eachother every night with stale builds.
People like to think there was a huge variety of players and skills being used but thats memories for you.

The one thing that made the game better to begin with was the surge of new players and unknown aspects of the game, its the same as watching a movie for the second time, its still a great movie but not what it was first time round.