GW vs WOW

I am thinking of buying guildwars, but I want to know how it compares to wow first. I have played world of warcraft for about six months but when I got my characters to 60 the game started to suck. I do not like sitting in instances for four hours a day grinding for gear. PVP was not really that great either.

I have heard a lot of good things about guild wars, but at the same time I have heard some people say it gets boring fast and they quit after a month. Any thought on this?

if you like pve, guildwars has a decently long storyline for ya ( presuming you dont get run anywheres). after you get all you want there, the pvp is awsome if you ask me. its very different that WoW IMO simply b/c there are no lvl 60 mages runnig around owning everyone. its very strategic, fast paced yet drawn out to its fullest extent.
iv played the game since the WPE and still love it. just make sure you get a good, active guild and the game will be a blast for years.

There are many threads on the rave about GW vs WoW.

I've never played WoW past 5 minutes of a demo, so I can't compare.

What I can say is I've played Guild Wars for almost a year now, and am still excited about Factions!

I use to play WoW and completely switched over due to several positives notes. For this being a free to play game with no monthly fees, this game is extremely extensive and interactive. And the best part, no darn queue to be placed on to wait to get into the game. I really hated the idea that I am paying every month to wait to get into a game.

Now, in GW your characters top off at level 20 versus 60 in WoW. But unlike WoW you still technicially grow after you level off. You still gain skill points to learn other skills and learn new secondary professions till your hearts content. In short, your character in GW never really stop "learning and growing".

And I agree with Lt. Crumpet on the guild thing. That is what really makes this game unique is the guild aspect. If you find a guild that is farely large and active you will never before cause there is always something to do with guildies.

http://www.purepwnage.com/forums/ind...howtopic=19786

maybe that will help you decide

guild wars is based upon talent and skill instead of "uber l33t godly omgz" gear. GW is about working as a team and having a balanced abilities to help you through the missions. As said, GW actually has a storyline, albeit the PvE is less hardcore than WoW, with less gear, and the lack of "godly" items. But, I like it that way, and so do the other GW players apparently.

Guild Wars pve is weaker then WoW as far as the sheer volume of items, and it does not have crafting yet. It has a lower level cap, so you can realisticly casually get a few characters to max level in pve. The thing i like is that almost everything in PVE can be done solo if you have the right build and skills. There are no boring 3-5 hour instances in guild wars. Most missions can take 10 minutes to around 2 hours on the most advance. There are alternatives to just about every item.

PvP is where guild wars shines. It lacks the wondering around and killing random people, though WoW didnt really shine in that aspect either. PvP in guild wars does require alot of skill. There are no over powered class's. Now i've played most of the major mmorpg's out there, some longer then others. There is little fruit of the month in guild wars, and there is always a couple of skills that huge certin class's more then others. One of the things i love about guild wars is if you pick random class's and skills you can still do very well in pvp if you have the skill. There is no 3-11 hour wait to get into a pvp. I can jump on for a 4 on 4 match in 30 seconds or less, where each match lasts between 3-15 minutes. There are no "7 guys jump you while your unprepared" as well, it's all pretty much equal. There are multiple types of pvp, so you don't really get bored till atleast 3-4 months in of non stop pvp. At that point you there is still guild vs guild, which never gets boring. It's highly strategic 8 vs 8 pvp with members of your guild vs members of another guild. It's more of a DAOCish realm war with catapults and such, without a zerg force. It is also highly competitive, and really fun.

Guild wars tends to be about skills and builds. You can constantly change your characters skills any time your in town, as well as your sub class's after your ascended. The subclass's means that you get 2 class's worth of skills to use. The main limits on this is that you only can have 8 skills on your skill bar and 1 can be an elite skill. This is because guild wars has lots of skills that combo well with others.

To be honest i think arena net does a good job on this game. There are always constant updates, and they love to put new stuff in. It costs 50 bucks and no monthly fee. There is no patch day, as they update daily through there new system, which means no downtime. There is never a wait to play, and it's one world, so your not limited to servers. instead of putting in a ton of useless crap to waiste your time, they perfected there systems. Where in WoW you would get bored trying to get all the cash for your new weapon, and then push the level grind, and farm materials to increase your professions, here you can spend the same amount of time testing out new and differnt builds. The difference is in guild wars nearly everything is fun. There are very few things that are boring, tedious, and make you want to log, or fast forward time. Also the mission system in GW makes PVE fun for even the pvp only people.

Guild Wars is all about strategy and builds. You can only take 8 spells with you at a time!

I feel like I can hop on Guild Wars for an hour and get something accomplished. Try that at the higher levels of WoW.

The environment is no where near as complex as WoW, but to play the game and play the game well is probably more complex, because as I said above it requires much more strategy.

Try it out, you can find new copies of GW on Ebay for 30 bucks. Or find someone who can give you a free key to use and try GW for 10 days.

according to mmorpg.com guildwars has outrank'd wow and its 1 of the biggest websites for mmo's that actually makes accurate votes and lets their members votes i found alot of mmo's on that site and use it alot and know alot of other people do and according to that site it's guildwars > world of warcraft

You can? How do you do that? I have the game but never saw any free 10 day trials

Would have been absurdly useful, still could be...

The preorder package for Factions contains a 10-day trial key for Prophecies.

Two words for WoW: Monthly fee. Guildwars hasn't got a monthly fee.. that is what makes it great. Well, if you don't count all the excellent gameplay.

Oh.. ha-ha

Oh aaand GW has lower specs, not that it matters in this comparison. My video card doesn't have hardware T&L (evil laptops ), but can run GW mostly fine

Personally I think GW is better. I bought WoW about 3 days ago and now im trying to sell my account to friends cuz I dont like it.

What kind of games do you like playing besides MMORPGs ? Could you name a few that you spend a lot of time with ?

hello, I have played over 500 hours of guild wars. and sadly, my time with it is over. really nothing to do anymore(PvE, not really into PvP). had a blast while playing, and never had gotten so much enjoyment out of $40. gw is great, but all good things come to an end. now Im in the process of selling everything and looking for a noob to hook up(with 250k in cash).

Hey, funny you posted this. I was in the same position a while back. I played wow since the open beta, I currently have 2 fully epic geared lv60 characters on wow. A druid and a warlock on the Warsong server. I got exalted with most BGs in many characters (both mine and helping friends on others). Always been a PvP addict, and I bought wow because Blizzard promised quality group PvP on it, which was what I was looking for. PvE is a nevessary evil on my eyes, I hate doing it. If you have the same mentality as I do. Then go GW, you won't regret it. This game's PvP system is light years ahead of WoW. When I log back in WoW now from time to time to chat with friends, it's like comming back to stone age. That game's PvP system will take century to develop to the point where GW is today.

GW PvP is skill based. WoW is not, most of the current rank14s are ebayers who hired a chinese farmers to grind PvP on their account. Farming reputation requires only play time, if you are a terrible player who only loses it only takes longer but you still get there. The only fun I had left in WoW was ganking multiple ppl on my overpowered warlock. But it gets old. I wanted to fight skilled groups of players and win because my group was smarter. That is unexistent in WoW, BGs are a joke. Raid groups just farm PUGs and play arranged games vs other groups all day to farm honor/rep. That is ridiculous. WoW PvP = joke.. and that is why I quit.

I still log on WoW every weekend to hang out with my guidies on BWL or MC. But aside from that GW is way more fun, more fair and more competitive than WoW.

Basically. WoW is for carebears.. simple as that

I'll be that "noob"


I've had around 300-400 + hours of gameplay. I get bored every now and then, but it always drags me back. The good thing is you can return whenever you want, not having to worry about monthly fees, unlike WoW.

Theres also a fact that there is no real "over and over and over again" grinding in guildwars. You don't really need to grind to level up, or get rich(Unless you want a few million )

Ashleigh.

It is also worth to mention the huge ammount of former WoW players I find in the same situation that the 2 of us were, playing GW now. At first I thought that I was making an unusual decision to trade WoW for GW. But on my first levels I started meeting WoW players, when I would ask stuff like "Can you share this quest?" someone on group would always say "Hey you are not playing wow anymore". I also often see people screaming "LEEEROY JENKINS!!" around, or claiming something is "clearly a hunter weapon" and yesterday I was watching a match between 2 top guilds and one of the players was called "Minus Fifty D K P". And many other jokes that only wow players would understand. Obviously a huge ammount of players are migrating from wow to GW.

Not to mention that WoW is slowlly dying. Due to several issues. They introduce thousands of new bugs every patch. The servers perfermance always get worse and worse (most servers have been close to unplayable in the last 3 months). The long queue lines.. The TERRIBLE community and support. WoW is slowing losing subscribers and I don't wanna be there to watch it.

I'm not trying to drag players from WoW, as it wouldn't be very gamer-like.
WoW is a good game, for those who like that sort of thing.
You will think they are similar, but the fact they aren't one bit.
WoW, you have to "que" if you want to kill a certain monster, but in GW you simply form a party and off you go.
Pvp is usually alot more organised, so you don't get "ganked" by alot of players and stand no chance, but sometimes some people leave so you don't have a choice.

Ashleigh

You beat me to it. I usually try and link to that vid when ppl bring this up.

You're in luck! These are the exact things that make Guild Wars tower over WoW in quality. Guild Wars is about aquiring skills, not aquiring lvl, so there won't be any need for grinding to your max lvl. You may come across people asking for a power-lvl in Guild Wars, but that's because they are loonies. For gear, you can always craft good gear at the traders. As you advance farther in the game, the traders will sell gear that gradually improve in armor level and variety. By the end of the game you have access to all the armor options. Guild Wars does sell very expensive gear that it takes time to aquire as far as amassing the funds and crafting material, but this expensive gear only costs more for its looks, not for uber power. This game is all about teh PvP so there's no problem there.

Not really loonies, probably just people who need certain attribute points. Most of these "powerlevelers" are usually people who already have higher level characters, looking to make a certain build.

Ashleigh

Well it was their first try at a MMO style, and they did pretty well for it. Hopefully though they'll start work on another pwnage RTS. I'm trying to get back into RTS but can't find much info on good new ones coming out. Or they could just stop messing around and release Starcraft:Ghost so we can see if it's worth getting or not. But they could fail there too From what I've read about the Multiplayer of Starcraft:Ghost they've already failed in that aspect.

There is another thing you might want to consider when joining an MMO, the community. In Wow the horde and alliance players are set up from the outset to hate each other, while this makes sense from a story telling point of view this can cause lots of ... "friction" between the two sides. There was an article on blue yonder about the angryness of WoW players (while this is probably a bit of a generalisation, im sure theres plenty of nice WoW players).

Also there have been a few funny but not realy that funny events that have happened in WoW, like two people led a dragon into a huge city where it proceededto kill everysingle person there, while this does sund hilarious you got to think of the annoyane tht it caused. And there is the issue of the serenity now guild. A player died whilst playing the game (im not sure what actualy killed the person) players held a memorial service to her, however the Serenity now guild gathered in full force and killed all the mourners and videoed it, a virtual "happy slap" to the people at the funeral.

While im sure this does not represent the vast majority of WoW players and im by no means saying that the GW community is perfect (there will always be those nasty troll-like players that seek to destroy everyones PVE life in any game) however some of the things like ganking lowbies just arent possible in GW.

I hope this helps, sorry for the rant (didn't plan on it being this long XD)

Istari

Hmm. Didn't know that. Never though about using a power-leveler purely to earn skill points. I may just do that for my ranger since I don't have many skill points on him and I'll need em for factions.

I don't mean skill points are account based. I mean people make new characters to aim towards a certain build.

For eg: A level 20w/mo wants to make a Minion master. So he makes a Necro. He needs certain attribute points to use his skills efficiently, so he gets powerleveled.

Hope that helps.
Ashleigh

If I may drift back over to the topic of WoW players migrating to GW, I definitely agree.

I spend alot of time in low-level areas helping out new players, and I'd say somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 are WoW migrants.

Here's a bigger thread on this...
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=73258 628 replies and closed
Please refer to the thread above for reference.

-Closed-