Guild Wars wins best MMO of the decade - Massively.com

As someone that has played GW more than anything, I'm still gonna call these awards a joke. As a MMO GW is pretty mediocre, if you can even call it a MMO.
And GW:EotN Best expansion of the decade? I finished the whole storyline in less than a day, and the dungeons are a joke.

Indeed, which is why it's fairly laughable to take these awards seriously.

WoW probably has more casual players who've never reached max level than GW has players.

Even when people agreed on things (for example, that both the 40 elite updates were going to ruin the game), it didn't have much of an effect.

lol who the hell is massively.com? hahah they don't rate anything. MMO of the decade would have to come from WELL KNOWN publishers like Gamespot or Gamespy or PCgamer, RPG-Codex those nationally and worldly known review sites. I've been gaming and rpg gaming for 20 years and I've never even heard of massively.com hahaha Someone independent might just as well put up a site and claim GW is game of the century as it wouldn't make any difference it can never come close to WOW, WOW's income and WOW's content and WOW's player base.

Success and popularity (or the number of active players) doesn't mean something is proportionally that much better in quality. Someone can be a longtime WoW player, but it doesn't mean said person thinks it's the best MMO. That logic doesn't work, and there is no logic in a fan poll. That's all I have left to say.

So, if this is all accurate... MMO's haven't been around all that long (Air Warrior being the first in 1986) wouldn't this make Guild Wars the MMO of the century? Then millennium? Of all time maybe

I should have highlighted the consistent and intelligent balances part of my statement. This is the key to it all.
Almost any time you make changes, there will be unintended consequences. The trick is to fix those problems quickly.
Balancing isn't a once-and-done deal. It's a constantly evolving process.

Lemming's statement covered a lot of the other things I would say here.
Asking for input with the intent of ignoring it and doing what you want to do anyway just so that you can say you had the community involved is not what I had in mind.
Beyond that, it would be relatively simple for a person who truly intended to create a consensus to cull the objective suggestions from the nonobjective and proceed from there.

I played GW for about a year and half when my guild decided to try out WoW for a change. About 10 of us migrated to WoW and played for about 4yrs. Slowly the people that all went to WoW began to quit playing and a few came back To GW. I came back about a month ago and I'm wondering why I ever quit.

WoW does have some really cool things for you to do. But, It is all a mindless grind to get anywhere. I really hated the thought of the new expansion coming out and having to start over again. Like an early poster said "Blizz knows how to keep you addicted". It felt more like a chore to get to where you wanted to be rather then good gaming fun.

As far as the community goes.. I find GW a much more helpful and friendly place to play. People in GW have a much more positive attitude about things. My last 6months of playing WoW i spent most of my time playing the ah and that ment sitting in town for hours on end. The people there were just plain rude most of the time. You couldn't ask a question in general chat without getting a tyrade of rude comments or being completely ignored. I do see the same in GW. But, not even close to what goes on in that other game.

Blizz also claims to have 6-8 million player base.. But, They have also said that They have a couple million bots, gold farmers that they are counting towards that total.

So, overall I would say that GW provides much better gaming atmosphere then other games and I'm really glad I've come back

Gratz GW

at first i was like tl;dr but then i was like, lol holy shit spot on brother. i currently play WoW and like you, i realized long ago that it's actually an extremely boring game with a grindset attitude, nothing is fun because like you said if you wanna pvp, i hope you like dying because you will be farming those random battle grounds for gear and die about 10,000 times in the process while having shitty nerds /lol at your corpse, sounds fun right? anyways i don't wanna add onto your extremely long wall of text but simply agreeing with you.. i play WoW because guild wars won't give me a decent update, at least blizzard does that once in a while. give this man a cookie btw i'm quoting this and putting it on the WoW forums when i get unbanned there.

Most people play WoW because Blizzard is a master of the "carrot on a stick" thing. Keep that shiny thing everyone wants juuuuust out of reach, and people will keep grinding away to try and get it, even if they're not enjoying themselves at all.

There is also the idea of seeing how much you have invested in the game in cold cash.
Once you start playing you don't want to do anything else because you already paid for the time.

I guess that's why I never really got into the wow thing because I like playing a number of games but I would resent time away from wow because the clock it ticking down towards my next monthly payment.

Heck imagine you had 4 or 5 games on your computer all with monthly charges, you would go nuts just trying to play them all to get value for money.

If I ran a game company I would want all games paid for monthly as a gamer I want the whole idea of payments to be scrapped and the companies involved to go bust.

Hell yeah baby!

I'm the same way, with the payment thing. If I were playing WoW or some other subscription-based game, I would feel obligated to play it else I'm wasting my money (and having to do something that you're doing for fun...isn't). GW is nice in that if I take a break from it, I'm not losing out on anything at all.

*cough*meaningless*cough*

Yeah and tell me you don't have cable or direct tv and tell me you don't have cell phone which you pay a lot more in monthly fees than you do in WOW and tell me it bothers you that you aren't watching the tv or talking on your telephone cause the meter is running?

I get a laugh out of those trying to justify why they play WOW like they HAVE to because of the monthly fee. What a joke and a laugh when I know the majority of them have pay tv and high monthly cell phone bills and some even land line bills to boot. It's a copout and just a lame excuse about the monthly fee of WOW or any other MMO that charges one.

Guild Wars doesn't offer the replay value that WoW has. That is one of the flaws in being able to just play the campaign as one class, see what the game has to offer, and having basically everything unlocked.

However, I preordered EOTN and say the game is well worth it. Where do most people spend their time? EOTN. Where do most people go to farm? EOTN. Where do most people go to face PvE challenge? EOTN (besides UW/FOW/DOA). I'd say people bought EOTN more than just the added heros and "broken" PvE skills. In fact, when I preordered it, I had no idea there were going to be "PvE" skills and more heroes. I expected that to be a NF only thing. I bought it for the content it provides, the content PEOPLE ASKED FOR, which you later complain about in your post.

One thing I tell people all the time and they seem to ignore is that just because they think something has an obvious solution doesn't in fact mean it has an obvious solution. Every move any game makes will have both positive and negative reaction, because it effects the game positively and negatively both ways. Believe me, it's a lot easier to say "hey do this it fixes this!" then actually doing it. One reason, especially with guild wars, is when a skill is fixed, people still find ways to abuse it. Shadow Form took a big hit, but it is still very popular in farming builds, and most people thought the SF nerf would absolutely kill the game, yet people still use it in popular farming builds. There is a lot more to just adding a skill into a game and fixing it by clicking a button. You may see things instantly added in games like WoW right off the bat, but then you see people constantly abusing it. If you ever went to play WoW, you would see that there are maybe 2-3 classes that dominate out of 8 in every new expansion. I don't know about cataclysm since I threw WoW out of my life (except bashing it :P), but in TBC it was Rogues, Druids, Warriors. Everything else was considered shit, or you had to be uber pro to have a chance. In WOTLK, Locks became the new overpowered thing. And the funny thing is, most of the content people ask for get added into the game. Hey guys, how do you like having double barrelled shotguns and motorcycles with tauren rockets in a fantasy game! Honestly, if you saw a charr charging after you on a motorcycle of hot rod you'd probably call Anet a bunch of crack addicts. That is what WoW does. I'll take the quality of fixes over quantity any day, because the more time fixes aren't properly "fixed", the worse things get, and the more people bitch about it.

One flaw in Guild Wars, as I said, is it has no replay value. I bought this game at launch, but I haven't played it consistently. I just returned after Christmas (like the day after) because I heard GW2 was coming in 2011. I am just now seeing all the trailers and gameplay that was posted in August. It doesn't surprise me that people leave Guild Wars because Guild Wars isn't as addictive as WoW. I could sit here and do what I did in my previous post and explain how WoW is just a giant drug that people play because they want to achieve, and as someone said, Blizzard continues to push their "Max status" back even more so people continue to play (or, as some of us like to say, AFK in the capital cities and sit around looking for shit to do until your guild wants to raid or your arena partner wants to PvP to get gear). Guild Wars doesn't have that achievement status really. I mean, they have titles, but are the titles worth getting? To some they are, but for players like me, I think we prefer to get an object at the end. Most titles don't give you an object except a statue or something for Guild Wars 2. Hey, it got me playing again! I'll probably stop when I get 50/50 in my HOM, or even 30/50 to get all the items since I couldn't care less about titles (in case you're wondering, I'm 25/50 atm). WoW has that way of keeping players playing, just so that players feel superior. You can't really get that with GW because, oddly as it sounds, it's one of the most balanced games.

As for policing the game. Please tell me one online game that doesn't have a report system. As for challenge missions, I once held the daily best. I tried to go for it and succeeded. I see actual players there trying to get the hero armors all the time. Would really suck if someone was pro enough to actually get a high score and get banned because you claim they're botting. Ever occur to you that some of the people actually did play the game and got those high scores and consistently do so? And which Challenge mission requires you to play 10 hours? The ones I've seen have a time limit, and unless you're REALLY good, you won't even be in there for 20 minutes.

EOTN could have been a much better game. Remember EOTN was not the intended expansion but it was Utopia. EOTN was the end result of ANet dividing its resources so it could focus more on GW2 so its not surprising people think EOTN is shit because it is kind of half assed. To me EOTN could have been better if they nerfed the perma sin fully so there would be some variety in people doing the dungeons of EOTN which is a big part of the game. They never touched the perma sin because all the permas at the time would have raged like 12 year old girls and shoved a direct tv remote up their butt so shadowform never received the full nerf that it deserved. Same could be said for NF, I and so many other people seriously hated NF. The whole problem here is GW2 is taking so long to release, it should have been out by now and there is just no more content to keep players busy as they wait for the few morsels of content for gw1 Anet has spread out over long periods of time till GW2 is released.

Moving on to the point that WoW is better than GWs is just based on pure opinion. I played WoW for 4 years and yes it was fun as hell... at first. The reason I quit WoW completely and sold my account is WoW never changes in its content and the end of the tunnel keeps growing longer like its a cruel dream. WoW offered some minor new things but was still the long grind it had always been and lets also not forget about the massive guild drama in the hardcore raiding guilds. My point is both games have their good and bad sides and the more money you spend the more content you get. Also some people have been paying Guild Wars since 2005 because they find the replay value in it themselves and not let the game devs give it to them by patching in mindless quests and raids to grind out for shinny objects to make your e- peen look big. So if u want this tell ANet you want to pay them $15 dollars a month.

The only solution here is GW2.

Can't speak for the person you quoted, but I know in my case - no, I don't have cable, I don't have Direct TV, and my cell phone is a pre-paid with the absolute minimum minutes possible.

I canceled my GameTap subscription because neither I, nor the friends/family I made sub-accounts for, was using it. Same thing with Rhapsody... not using it, I'm not paying for it. I got rid of my land in Second Life because I wasn't using it enough to be worth paying for. I would pay to play Guild Wars because I'm using it, but I'd only go on a monthly payment plan because no, I don't like paying for things I get no use out of... and if I got bored with Guild Wars, I'd hate knowing I'd paid for a 6 month access and only used a month of it.

My best friend pays to play WoW... he gets on it once a week with another friend of ours (who pretty much plays it whenever he's home/awake)... and part of why he keeps playing is because he's paid for it... not because he sits there thinking, "Gosh, WoW is such fun, I can't WAIT to get logged on." He's bored with it, he got the expansion because his guild did, and he keeps playing because he doesn't want to let our other friends down. And I highly doubt he's the only person playing WoW for the same reason.

GW he can come play when he wants, and otherwise leave it be... it's not going anywhere, and it's not costing him any money... which do you think he thinks is "better"? Hint: It's not WoW. But with all the time and money he's invested in WoW, he's reluctant to abandon it completely, even though it's NOT giving him the pleasure it SHOULD.

I know many people who feel the same... they keep going because they don't want all the past time/money to go to waste, NOT because they're enjoying what WoW has to offer.

Maybe GW isn't the best MMO of the decade, but neither is WoW - and if you think for one second that Blizzard doesn't have an entire segment of their staff devoted solely to the task of a) marketing and b) using psychological tools to influence people to continue paying and playing no matter what, then I've got a bridge to sell you... really cheap.

People keep playing WoW because they've been manipulated into it... and most of them don't even realize it. They're sheep who think they're lions, because Blizzard told them their bleat sounds like a roar.

Completely agree. I have direct tv but bc I actually watch tv when gws gets boring and I probably pay a lot less then you think for it. I have a very low cell phone bill bc I also have the least amount of minutes I can get on a phone plan and that's it. The whole thing about paying the WoW subscription is that it adds that extra $15 to the stack of monthly bills and I say this bc the addicts think of WoW as a necessity. I finally knew I was being manipulated into playing that retarded game when my ICC guild raged at me for being 5 minutes late bc I got stuck in traffic. The next day I found myself guildless. Many ppl deserve to be manipulated bc they are so ignorant its not even funny. Its hilarious bc they are probably turning into golum while killing pixels in their moms basment. warcraft... my... precious... lulz

I'm the same way. No cable TV/direct TV/any of that because I don't watch TV. I have high speed internet but I'm online all the time - I do work as a graphic designer, so I'm at my computer a good chunk of the day. My cell phone has a small plan on it (except for texting and data - because unlimited was a better deal, relatively speaking, and I use them both very frequently). I only pay for my Xbox Live subscription when there's something out that I want to play online, which is rare.

And of course Blizzard has a huge marketing department. Every company has some sort of marketing department, and with them being as big as they are, they'd have a rather large one. Though, frankly, they don't really need it. You say "Blizzard game" and everyone goes "Where?!". And personally, I think they're banking too much on their reputation these days.

Same experience here. Do we share the same friends perhaps?
That is pretty much what is happening to some of my old friends (whom I don't meet anymore mid-week, since they always have some raid or other WoW-related crap to do, and when they meet on saturdays they just keep rambling on their lvl60 shamans/warlocks or whatever).

I'll add here some of the /facepalm interactions with some of the "WoW-addicts" during last Christmas holidays.

"Wanna go to the pub/club/pickupgirls tonight?"
"hmmm... well I have this raid, I have to be there"
"dude, yesterday you were on another raid, come on..."
"yeah I know, I would like to come, really, but there's [insert WoW stuff to do]"
(why am I not surprised he is still a virgin at the age of 32?)

Another one, while I was showing him the great deals on steam winter sale told me "Oh my gosh... all those games are great, I would really like to play them but, you know, I don't have much time for other games, how could I? I am already paying for WoW."

And another one
"Wanna try Borderlands? We are having lots of fun over teamspeak while hunting for the Vault on Pandora."
"Do you have a fixed day you play?"
"No, we are just casual... if two of us meet online on the steam chat client, we phone someone else and get a party going..."
"I am already paying for WoW, I don't want to pay for another game and I can't manage it timewise" (Borderlands was on sale with a price tag of about 8/9€)
"Well, I have a spare copy on Steam, I'll gift it to you we rarely play more than once every ten days, you can spare an hour every ten days, do you?"
"I don't know... I'd have to juggle between raids and other stuff, and besides that, if I miss a raid, I'll be left behind from the guild"

No wonder that they are slowly alienating all the other folks we used to hang out with, and the girls in our social circle taunt them, but that is beside my point.

My point is: do you see the trend? They never speak about FUN or ENJOYMENT, but always mention WoW as "something they have to do", and is something that gets in the way of things that are more fun (and healthy).

Only one of the WoW players I know personally told me once "I had fun playing WoW the other day". Only one.
And even then he left WoW after paying for 6 months, logging in only on Saturdays, he left because he got bored.
So, in the end I see people in two categories, the ones that play it and act like in an addiction, and the ones that don't play it anymore and have unpleasant memories about it/feel they wasted money/time/both.
GW is not like that.

QFT.
That sounds pretty much like all the WoW players I know.
(One is delaying his marriage because he won't be allowed to play by the wife, another one refers to WoW as "that black hole that killed three years of my life")

i know how you feel with the *if i am paying monthly i'm obligated to play..* but you really aren't. it's 50 cents a day, and even on my near-minimum wage budget i can easily afford 15 a month.. i'd also like to point out that yeah everything pve wise in WoW is a complete and total grind so are battlegrounds other than arena. arena's are something most people don't even touch because they think it's hard and are afraid to fail, when in actuality they aren't hard at all, not at the lower brackets. only when you are high rated do you start facing better teams. so people look at WoW's pve which is utter failure especially leveling, and battlegrounds which are extremely unbalanced and unfair to anyone that isn't fully geared, and say damn that game is just not fun. when in reality WoW has something for EVERYONE and when i say everyone i mean everyone. you just have to find it, and have the patients to grind through all the trash that you're forced to. that's my opinion anyways... i have a lot of rl friends that ask me why i play that "piece of shit game" all the time and it's funny they all quit after getting owned in a few bgs (at level 20 lol) even though gameplay is balanced around the max level. WoW attracts a lot of wannabe pvpers but what's sad is they never make it to arena's because it's just too tedious of a job to get max lvl and geared enough to even start them. my point is, you can't judge a book by it's cover. you've all heard that, right? tell me, is arena grinding? have ANY of you actually gotten even 1 rating? have you experienced pvp in WoW? or are you just pulling what little you experienced out of your ass and shoving it in everyones face and saying it's a bad game, because that's what it seems like. a wise man once said, qqing about grinding in an mmorpg is like eating shit and complaining because it tastes bad. guild wars is a very non-generic mmo and a lot of you can't seem to grasp this, go ahead... try all of the other mmorpgs out there.... ALL of them are grindy. guild wars is a special case... there are none other like it.

My point being that NORMAL people have cable or direct tv and unlimited cell phone plans. I figured you guys that are UNUSUAL would jump in and say you don't have this or you don't have that but you aren't a NORMAL consumer so your input doesn't count. Those that are normal though try to make up excuses why not to pay $15 a month for WOW when they already throw away money into the wind for cable/direct tv and unlimited cell phone plans and I would also wager extremely high broadband plans. On the other side of the fence are those gamers that justify the cheap low cost $15 a month vs going out to eat or to a movie just one night. So, it's all rather funny to me in these silly justifications on either side when they pour money into the system on other things without complaining about them. Thus the monthly fee for a NORMAL consumer shouldn't even enter the picture of the discussion about MMO's it's trivial to the average normal consumer.

Which is exactly why I like GW. I have tried other MMOs - WoW, FFXI, FFXIV, Aion, LOTRO, DDO, Ragnarok...I couldn't stand any of them. And the grind was a huge part of it (the fact that I'm not a fan of persistent areas because I don't like dealing with other people messing around didn't help either). I don't like grind in games. If I did, or at the least didn't mind it, I'd have a GWAMM or two by now. And GW being as atypical as it is is a large part of why I started playing it and stuck with it.

Agreed. I however really enjoyed NF and EOTN, but yet, I love storyline, and the whole apocalyptic theme really interested me. I do agree EOTN was half assed, but it added a lot of what people wanted. The only problem is heroes hurt the chances for "Dungeons" to be successful in my opinion. Dungeons should be an interactive event, but most can be H/H'd or have a single player run it for everyone. However the damage was done when players demanded heroes, and now completely want to replace henchmen by going 1/7.

As for Guild Wars 2, well, from what I've seen the game looks incredibly badass and filled with content. It seems to be a game with every popular MMO into one with a Morrowind/Oblivion Twist. They're aiming on putting everything good into one game. If that happens, I can be patient, but they are completely ignoring GW1 and that kind of hurts.

Here's the difference in those grind games though. I know eventually I'm going to get something better in them the more time I put into them. In GW the limits are easily reached and there's nothing else to get or even play for. If I'm going to slap around the same boss monster over and over I'd at least expect something BETTER for all my time and troubles. Guild Wars NEVER gives you that. Once you have that +15^50 weapon and that +30hp rune and that whatever offhand you prefer most or even a handful of them you are done with Guild Wars. All those other little runes are trivial and a dime a dozen or 100gp if you want to be technical. Everything else is nothing but vainity and you can even get all that stuff if you BUY the gold online for it or grind for the gold ingame. Looks are worthless though in a game. That's why GW will always be just a romper room for 8 year olds boytoy game.

sure if you're a pve hero, in that case go play WoW. i've always seen guild wars as a pvp based game, where no grinding is required to get into 100% skill based gameplay. none of that "go grind 10 boars that may or may not carry a liver and don't ask me why some boars don't have livers." questing in guild wars is actually enjoyable and isn't tedious. i LOVE guild wars pvp, but without regular updates it just isn't what it could be. one thing has ruined this game, and that's arena net for it's lack of attention towards it. the idea that built this game has so much potential it's mind boggling to think about, yet they're steering more and more away from it because tards like you want to jump and gank others that are trying to quest.... very sad, i hope they keep funding guild wars 1 servers because gw2 will most likely be a disappointment with a few interesting features.

To me it's good that way.
If I want entertainment in a game, I shouldn't have to slap the same boss monster over and over. Not even to get something better.
A game that extends its longevity by forcing the player to repeat the same action over and over in order to proceed to the next "stage" is just BAD. To gear up in WoW and to enjoy the game to full extent you are somehow expected to grind. In GW you can enjoy all the campaigns till the end without having to repeat the same task, unless you really want to. That's more variety.

No game is supposed to last forever. Once one is completed, move on to explore different things.


Can you elaborate, please? Are you done with GW once you have some pretty maxed gear?

I played GW to follow the story, see and explore the fantasy digital landscapes, have fun with friends, like I would do with a normal RPG, I would never play it to slap the same boss over and over to get gear (which would be useless anyway).

Since someone compared WoW's monthly fee to going out to eat, I'd say it is a matter of personal tastes. I prefer spending 13€ on an evening out with my friends, than on a month in WoW (I'm not saying you should have my same tastes, I'm just stating mine)
Since we are talking about games, I'll tell you... during the Christmas sales on Steam I bought the following stuff:
- The "Indie fright pack" containing Zombie Driver, The Void, The Path, The Scourge Project: Episode 1 and 2 and Burn Zombie Burn. All this for a total of 4.50€
- The Witcher: Enhanced Edition for ~4€
- Titan Quest for some 3€
- Dragon Age Ultimate Edition for 20€
And a bunch of other extremely good deals.

With the same money I could have paid on WoW what, two months and a half? Three months? Then, after that what happens? My toon is locked out, unless I pay more. And if I want to finish just one particular quest? If I'm busy for an entire month, I have wasted my money? Really?

Those other games, instead, are there, I can launch them whenever I want, play as long as I want (and I know for sure they'll entertain me for more than 3 months). No time constraint, and to me that is one of the most important things. I feel I'm getting a better deal than WoW.

There are also people who just wanted a fee-free MMO who never cared about pvp and are a little dissapointed that the level cap is 20. Still love the game tough. Yet, i hope there will be infinite room for character growth in GW 2. Otherwise i will be forced to play Diablo 3 instead.

I disagree as Diablo 2 can clearly last forever as there are boundless items and trinks and specials to find and use in the game. With that Horadric cube the sky is the limit on what you can construct which keeps the game NEW & REFRESHING no matter how many times you REPEAT an area there's always NEW DROPS which there aren't in Guild Wars.

I barely play GW anymore. Usually I'll look at where Nick is on Monday's and look in my storage box and get the required amount of resources, go find him and get my 5 gifts. But, then I look at the gifts and wonder to myself what are they good for? I have everything already that is "useful" to me. There's nothing better to get or even trade for. Hell you can't even trade armor items to one another in this silly game, now that's pretty ridiculous since you can trade weapons and offhands and inscriptions and everything else but you can't trade armor. lol

You can FEEL all you want to but the FACTS of the matter is you get MORE VALUE out of the $15 you spend playing WOW for a month than you will one silly meal or one stupid movie that's just plain facts. A meal only lasts a couple of hours max, a movie the same. WOW is 30 days of entertainment and enjoyment so WOW is the better value always will be when you figure the amount of time you can play it vs a meal or a movie.

I dont really care about the cost of WoW, I just can't stand the look and feel of the game. If it was more like GW is right now I would switch in seconds.

It's only a better value if you enjoy how you spent that money more. Personally, I don't consider it a better value to blow $15/month on a game I have no use for.

I'd rather go to McDonald's once with my husband and spend an hour chatting with him about our day.

That's a better use of MY time and MY money.

Obviously, you find it better to spend it on WoW. Congratulations, you've found something you like to do. Shouldn't you be making use of that valuable asset you've acquired, instead of wasting your time on a fansite for a game you've said you no longer enjoy, lecturing people who are not interested in WoW on how much "better value" they'd get for THEIR money and THEIR time?

I know this may come as a shock to you - but people actually like different things, and place different values on various activities. My father-in-law thinks gaming is a waste of time... doesn't understand what hubby and I see in it. I think his golfing hobby is silly as all get out... but he enjoys it, and would rather spend his money on green fees than on a game. Be kind of silly for me to tell him that my $20 ONCE for a game he wouldn't like is a "better value" than his $20 each time he hits the course. To him, it obviously wouldn't be. We've begun compromising at holidays and birthdays... we give each other Visa gift cards... that way he's not buying us a "pointless game," and I'm not buying him "silly little balls he'll lose in an hour."

Value is relative, not absolute.

Try to understand that different players like different things. While to you, and many others, eternally grinding for better gear is the point of the game, to me and many others, it's not.

Just like you like to PK and see the option of PKing in the game as a point of attraction, while it's practically a deal breaker for me. EVE online trailers make me drool - until I'm reminded what the game is like from the inside.

You see it as "Playing the game is pointless since you get no reward". We see it as "Finally I can play the game where I don't HAVE to grind".

There are tons of grind games around. Go play those. But at least admit that many people don't like those and are very happy to get GW as a game for them.

Actually, the low-grind gameplay is attractive to older players who have less time to spend playing. Also, the more mature players are the ones who don't seek as much self aggrandizement and e-peen in a game and instead focus on the game itself.

As you can see, it's a matter of taste.
Getting "new drops" won't keep me interested into a game I've already completed several times.
Once I completed Diablo 2 (with the expansion) four or five times, the game became repetitive.

To you, getting new items is "content", and is enough to keep playing forever.
To me it doesn't add anything to replayability. (TBH, grind subtracts enjoyement in a game, since I prefer to invest my time into better things than repeating the same boring task over and over just to get fancy pants for my virtual avatar).
A game is over when all the new things it has to offer me are just different drops.

BTW, even if a game has got a bazillion different droppable items doesn't mean the game is good.


[email protected] "facts".
You extrapolated the phrase from the context. Please re-read the post you took the quote from.

I wrote that with the price of 3 months of WoW I've got a bunch of good games that will entertain me for MORE than 3 months, ANY time I want, WHEN I want... without any time constraint. This is just plain fact.

Hell, I got Oblivion Digital Deluxe during the Steam Summer Sale for 13€, the price of 1 month in WoW. 7 months from then, I'm still playing Oblivion, at my own pace, completing quests, doing non-repetitive tasks, and getting all the nice gear in the game (and I don't need to farm over and over for it, LOL). And I've yet to complete my first playthrough.
That is MORE VALUE, a better deal indeed. FACT.

Absolutes, lol...
Talk for yourself, please.

I got so bored in WoW that my money is better spent on a single evening meal than a full month in WoW.
WoW didn't entertain me the least.

Claiming that WoW is all about grind is about as factual as claiming that GW offers players nothing to do after hitting level 20.

agreed lvl 20 is where the game begins imo

Is anyone else bothered by the fact it took them more than a year after entering the new decade to determine the Best MMO of the old one?

Most people saw that as a graze on an arm that had been cut off. Massively really did a poor job on this poll in many different areas.

It amazes me the amount of people who are delusional about the grind in Guild Wars. Sunspear and Lightbringer farming is the precise definition of grind. The amount of War Supplies required to get a decent chance at a mini Salma etc from those retarded rewards is a huge grind, the same goes for Coffer of Whispers. Factor in Eye of the North faction title grinds (which were linked to some of the most powerful and useful skills in the game) combined with the pure grind based game design they did with Sweet Tooth, Drunkard (lolololololol that one was designed stupidly) and Party Animal (you want evidence of grind, look at Casey Carpenter and the number of Snowmen that were rubbing up against him non-stop for the entire duration of Wintersday.

Guild Wars had very limited content because it was a buy to play game with no subscription fee. There was no Live Team for the first 4 years of the game's life (or was it 5 years?) and thus there was no content updates outside of expansions. The developers wanted to create quick and dirty "content" or objectives for players to obsess over so they reduced the drop rates for Dryad Bows, Bone Dragon Staves and Voltaic Spears to near miniscule chances which expected 30+ runs of the same dungeon before you could realistically expect one to drop. Throw in a bunch of pure number based titles and you have a way to occupy the grind happy for thousands of hours of repetitive min max game play. You weren't rewarded for doing quests - a few hundred gold and a random collector item that can be traded in for a salvage kit? The actual rewards were less than 2% chance drops from chests that took around an hour for a balanced team to get to. This encouraged the min max gameplay to get a realistic shot at any kind of reward in the game before you die of old age.

Guild Wars has a more insane and intense grind than anything I did in WoW. Sure I got to "max level" really quick on several characters, all that did was make 70% of Prophecies irrelevant. Grind is optional, but hey, so is reaching max level, or doing dungeons, or getting good gear or hell even playing the game is optional. Saying something is optional does not change the fact that the end game play design of Guild Wars is almost 100% grind based. Grind and optional content are not mutually exclusive. If playing the end game means participating in grind, you are playing a game designed to make you grind and GW meets that criteria. You don't get rewarded for completing content, you get rewarded for completing content over and over and over and over until that chest at the end of those hundreds of FoW runs finally drops something that's not offensively useless.

Any game that claims the game only begins at max level is a really shitty horrible game.

I do believe guild wars has some kind of grind too. I know many people do play for fun , but let's be realistic. 90% of players still play for over a year now because they made an assassin level 20 and now only use it over hours and hours to farm their item. In WoW you might have to grind to max level , but here people as well do the same actions 24/7 , and i don't really believe it's that much better...
Remember at begin , when you had to complete campain ( factions , nightfall ) to get a green weapon... Now like dancing gnome said , you need to do the same dungeon 50 times to be rewarded...

Will your character will be significantly weakened by avoiding those activities?
Will you be unable or hindered in your game progression without a mini Salma or a mini Mallyx? And will you be weaker in PvP without Sweet Tooth, Drunkard and Party Animal?

If you don't grind in GW you will miss just some rare items that won't hinder your advancement in the game (just aestethical value), in more traditional MMOs if you don't grind you will be penalized being weaker. I never understood GW players who kept farming for days the same spot in order to get an item that adds nothing to your gameplay besides a different weapon skin (which probably only them will see while playing in an instanced area with heroes and henchies).

The enjoyment I got in completing the storylines and exploring even the most remote areas of GW is THE REWARD I got from of the game, not the virtual gear.

On the contrary, when I played World of Warcraft, getting stuff was mandatory, my guild told me to level up fast (go kill/farm dozens of monsters) in order to go do raids with them to gear up for harder raids. I felt like I was being held back in the game by the lack of gear, while GW never gave me that feeling.

Any kind of reward? Oh, please.

I have played my ranger for about 600hrs, and I don't have any of the "rewards" you mention. And I couldn't care less, since I'm not missing out on anything. I had fun playing the game. I completed all the campaigns and dungeons, explored the maps, experimented lots of builds, did some hard mode and other stuff with friends, then played some AB and RA. Didn't farm or do farming runs. That kept me busy and entertained for 600hrs, I wouldn't define it as "very limited content".

I've seen people with 2k+ hours on /age complaining that GW hasn't got enough content. No game is meant to entertain forever, so to please the ones who weren't able to go past GW Anet added artificial life support: grind. When it is obvious that there is nothing new to do in a game, why not try a different one?

Exactly this: grind and optional are not mutually exclusive. In GW more so, since all the grind IS optional.

I consider as PVE endgame the elite areas and hard mode (replay stuff you already did with stronger mobs to get a harder challenge), perhaps endgame could be getting better at PVP after having completed all the pve stuff.
I don't consider "endgame" the act of farming rare items, which you will sell right away or forget in the storage chest after a couple of days.

Why, don't you still get the green item at the end of a campaing? Are they no longer "perfect"?
In a game like GW it all depends on what people set as "reward" for themselves.
To me beating the dungeon and reaching the end chest, no matter the content of the chest, is a reward in itself. To someone else the reward is winning the AT, to someone else is holding the halls, and so on.

But consider this: what if every dungeon chest dropped a Voltaic Spear, a Dryad Bow or a Crystalline Sword? They would be no longer considered "rewards", so those people that now complain about the grind in GW will go vocal on the forums complaining that the game isn't rewarding enough because every Tom and Dick has got the same items they have.