guild wars VS WoW

can anyone tell me ways that guild wars is superior to world of warcraft?

and can someone also compare the map size of guild wars VS WoW.

thank you.

Well that depends on your gameing prefrence..

i could go on for countless days.. i really could... but ill try to make it short

Less grind (if you play it right)

No fee ( who wants to spend $15 a month?.. not I, having friends who pay for games sucks, they never do anything because they want their $15 a month's worth)

Graphics (ok granted WoW is supost to be cartoonish, but at least make that big bad dragon my friend showed me look less like Puff the magic dragon)

Updates (ive seen more people leave that game due to horrible updates and junk than for any other reason)

Balance (all my friends complained about was "rouges are too hard to fight" "shamans got another boost, thats gay", obviously there are some issues)

Bullys ( id hate to start GW having the fear a big bad lvl 60 is waiting right out side to kill me)

No fee (wait.. didnt i already say this?)

anyways thats all i feel like saying right now, after all i do have a life outside of disliking wow you know..

as for the map size, i dont know, but all i ever heard was "yah im going to iron forge today" so i coulnt imagine it being too big

yeah...thanks a lot.

it would help if someone know bout the map sizes...and what about character diversity...

what is Guild Wars?
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...ars-id1290.php

You'd have to find someone who's played both a lot to know the map sizes. And the WoW map will always seem bigger, because in Guild Wars everyone gets teleportation. No world is going to seem smaller when you can remember spending a lot of real time running across of it. So, uh, that's also a point in favor of Guild Wars, in my opinion.

I've played both games for a couple hundred hours each. This is a long post, but I'll try to make it very comprehensive. Here's what I think of them:
If you want, scroll down the conclusion, which is in bold.

The strength of GW lies in its core gameplay. Combat mechanics and character development are done very well. There's a great deal of strategy and tactics, emphasizing skill over patience (players who grind for 100 hours aren't significantly more powerful than someone who doesn't do any farming). However, the world isn't as rich, the UI is less customizable, and there isn't that much content. There isn't much item variety and the economy is pretty simple.

WoW has an amazing, immersive world. The UI, the quests, the economy, and many other things are done very well. However, my characters never really had a very interesting selection of abilities and combat is pretty formulaic. However, the Auction House, crafting, instances, and other elements makes the game a lot of fun.

They're both excellent games, but they cater to very different play styles. WoW encourages grinding (spending several hours doing a fairly repititious activity, in order to obtain experience, items, or abilities) and tedious activities. Expect to spend a lot of time traveling. GW is the opposite. Even if you wanted to do something tedious, there isn't that much to do. Farming doesn't reward you with that much. You can instantly travel to any town that you've already visited, so you don't have to spend cash and time siting on the back of a Gryphon.

WoW started out as a great game. It is very fun for the beginning player. However, once I got to the midgame (about lvl30), it just got boring. I was spending more and more time doing the same things (Immolate, Curse of Agony, Corruption, Drain Life, Drain Life, Shadow Bolt, Immolate, Drain Life, Drain Life, repeat). GW is the opposite. My first couple hours were a lot of fun. However, up until about the 30th or 40th hour in, the game was good, but nothing stood out. It just didn't have the captivating setting or extracurricular activies that WoW had. However, once I reached the Desert, things became very interesting. The 8 skill limit, which started out as being annoying, became a mechanic that encouraged me to develop unique strategies. Enemies starting to require more attention and quick thinking. The very high end PvE areas force you to adapt on-the-fly, depending on what your team is doing. For example, Aatxes (a mob in the UW) can kill a tank in 3 hits and a caster in 2. They attack about once a second, maybe a bit less. When you're fighting 3 of them at a time, you really do have to think, in order to succeed. But, you know what? It's very possible. I'm not a good, but not great player, and I have had a lot of fun playing in the high end areas.

In WoW, I never got to experience the high end areas. It just takes a lot of time to reach time. On the one hand, this speaks for the vast amount of content that WoW has. On the other, it requires you to have a lot of patience.

PvP is very different in both games. WoW's PvP works in battles from 1v1, to 45v45, or even more. However, you succeed or fail based upon your class and your items, not really on your skill. A player with trinkets that protect against Charm or Fear, or an Undead Rogue, will absolutely decimate a Warlock. Paladins have a huge advantage against Warriors. Priests usually beat Mages. Druids beat Rogues, unless the Rogues have a Spider Belt, which gives them an advantage. It felt too much like the battle was over before it started. However, large scale battles were more balanced because of the vast number of players. Defending the Redridge Mountains can feel epic, at times. GW is opposite, again, in the PvP system. You only have the option of 4v4, 8v8, 8v8v8, or 8v8v8v8v8v8. There's no 1v1 or 2v2. There are no random encounters with enemy players in the countryside (that also means that, unlike in WoW's PvP servers, a lvl60 Orc won't happen upon your lvl30 Human and destroy you). However, it is supremely well balanced. You win or fail based around the strategies and tactics that you and your team execute. You win based upon your skill. It feels like it's actually you that's playing, rather than your items or your character. It's pretty easy to acquire the abilities and equipment in order to compete at a high level of play, but it is still takes intelligence, organization, and quick reaction times to master.

WoW and GW have different types of servers. In WoW, there are 50 different servers. If you make a character on one server, you won't encounter anyone on another server, with that character, ever. This means that you may end up on a server with 4 Alliance for every Horde (or vice versa). However, it also means that there's only one copy of the game. If Orgrimmar is under attack by the Alliance, you can't just switch to another district and avoid combat. You either have to retreat to another town or fight. You also can happen upon players while you're adventuring and communicate or help them out. It builds a greater sense of community. However, it also means that you could be ambushed and outnumbered by enemies who delight in killing easy targets (this is only on PvP servers; on the other servers, PvP is purely consensual). This system does make WoW prone to lag. GW has only three servers (Europe, America, and Korea). However, everything is instanced. This means that only a certain number of people can occupy a given area at any one time. Thus, there can be 50 different copies (districts) of Ascalon City. On the one hand, this makes it easy to find friends or guildmates ("meet me in district 27"). On the other, GW has less of a sense of community, because of it. While you're out in the field, you will never encounter other players, since a unique instance of the game is reserved for your party. This cuts down on the lag. You also never have to worry about another player killing the object of your quest, forcing you to wait until he respawns. Since nothing respawns in GW, you can take it slow, or safely wait in a previously cleared area for someone to go to the bathroom or grab a drink. It's much less annoying.

It's pretty easy to solo in WoW. Everything except elaborate, time consuming, optional dungeons, can be done by yourself. However, you rarely encounter more than one or two mobs at any given time and it is almost impossible to kill anything more than 4 levels higher than you.

It's very difficult to solo in GW. You have to build your character specifically for it. Even then, certain types of mobs will destroy you. However, free, AI-controlled henchmen are available in every single town in the game, so you will have no problems filling out your party if you can't find any real players or just don't want to play with real players.

In WoW, there's no real direction to the story. You aren't special "chosen ones" who follow a linear path. You're just another adventure, making a name for himself. Because of this, everything is optional. No quests are required, although certain ones will nudge you in the right direction, so it's hard to feel lost. In GW, it's the opposite. There is a strong (but crappy, in my opinion) plot that carries you through the game. In order to progress, you have to complete Missions that require anywhere from 30m to 2h, to complete. Still they're a lot of fun and have some interesting mechanics that you don't find in WoW's equivalent (instance dungeons).

Character creation in GW is superior to that in WoW, in my opinion. WoW offers more options, like crafting, a larger selection of items, and races. However, it's difficult to make your character feel unique. Every single Priest in the game plays similiarily to every other Priest. Every Mage feels the same. There isn't that much to differentiate how you act. GW is different, yet again. There isn't any crafting, or extraneous mechanics, and the selection of items is mediocre. Still, it does feel like you are making a unique character. There is a tremendous amount of strategy in making a build, yet it's a simple and rewarding process. Every character customization choice makes a difference in how the character plays (except for cosmetic issues, like hair color). A Minion Necro will play differently than a Blood Support/Damage Necro or a Debuff Curse Necro. A Knockdown Hammer Warrior/Elementalist will do great damage while hindering the enemy's ability to do anything. A Sword Warrior/Monk will be able to survive tremendous amounts of damage. The greatest part about the game is that everything can be easily changed, except for your name, physical appearance, and primary class. If you feel like your Sword Warrior/Monk isn't doing enough damage, then you can switch to a Knockdown Hammer Warrior/Elementalist, although you may have to search a bit to find a good Hammer and do a few quests in order to get some Elementalist skills. WoW is the opposite. You have to pay a LOT in order to switch around your build. Most things take a great deal of expense or effort to change.

GW has better community-developer relations than WoW. ArenaNet releases patches more often and fixes problems earlier, although it is about equally communicative (Blizzard employees post a lot more frequently in forums, but ArenaNet grants an interview to a different fansite every week).

So, if you're a combat-oriented person who likes lots of strategy, tactics, and skill, and can stomach a lack of out-of-combat niceties, take GW. If you like all the extra features that WoW has, like mail, crafting, an Auction House, an immersive world, and all that, and you have the patience for somewhat rote combat and a bit of tediousness, take WoW.

Did I mention that GW has no monthly fee?

edit== to the above poster == excellent post dude... I am now totally sold on WoW (I am all about PvE in this game, and RP in games in general) I won't abandon GW since I don't see games as vs each other (elitist attitude, only play the best game, all others are teh suck?) but I'm going to start pulling some strings till I can finally figure out a way to get my account

I've asked the same question, because I have WoW but have no payment method... I can only comment on 4 things (3.5)

map = I heard that the WoW was many times larger than GW, and they don't have a map travel feature (they have ferry and air travel systems at designated ports) so even if it were the same size it would feel far larger anyway.

fee = gw is free...

fee = 15 bucks a month is piss change. If you get a 6 month membership it's around 10 bucks a month, little higher. That's nothing. You'll buy another game for 40 bucks and beat it and get bored of it within a month... If you bought any game and stopped playing it in under a month then try WoW for a bit.

graphics = yes, it looks cartoonish... that doens't make it bad in my opinion. There are a million reasons not to like Disney and several not to like particular anime features, but being cartoonish is never one of them.

I think it comes down to
1) are you rdy for a serious comitment to a game. If not GW is for you. If so then consider WoW
2) Monthly fee. If you dont care about sheling out 15 bucks a month take WoW. If you do take GW
3) Up keep of the game. How offen does WoW update mabye 1 a month. GW=almost every week

My thoughs on WoW vs. GW

Also look for free trails of games, WoW has a free trail in PC gamer right now, i dont know about GW though

free trials still require credit cards though... so does the free month you get for buying the cd

Fear not, there's a solution:
http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product_id=645985

You can buy WoW Game Cards, that work just like Gift Certificates. No credit card required. However, it is a tad more expensive.

Umm I'm going to avoid repeating what everyone else said, and just say that theclam nailed it. One thing I'm suprised no one mentioned is that wow will take your soul. It will suck going away and coming back later.

I agree with Ultimate Gaara, on everything, lol.

GW does have a considerable less amount of grinding(levels). I stoped playing my hunter on wow at lv 53. Just got sick of trying to look for an instance group at my level. Heh and sick of stupid groups when i did. =P

No fee is a major plus, heck i even admit i shouldnt complain about most of the things i do just becuase it has no fee. And for this i salute anet.

Like Ultimate said, yeah... they made WoW cartoonish on purpose, but gw has pretty awesome graphics, and life like features like your char blinking every couple of seconds, and omg... have you ever tried turning on post process effects in glints portion of the cave? Wow....

Updates- Eh... no comment... but yeah, some people did leave due to mis balances..which was another issue when i left, shamans and rouges were basiclly demigods :P in my opinion of course.

Bullys - dont even get me started... thing i hated most was getting ganked just for thier ranking pleasure, and then i just continue grinding and leveling, get ganked by same people, repeat process. Sure pvp is pvp, but heck, one would think they would stop after 2 hrs :P

Yeah, GW rocks... in many ways, and is much more balanced. Ill admit though i had fun in WoW up to the point i left.

I am currently enjoying a free month on CoH with no credit card

The thing that made WoW less fun for me was having to go into PvP lands alone and trying to avoid people 20 levels higher than me who were in parties and ready to kill me

whoa Theclam, that was extremely helpful

it seems to me that if WoW was free of monthly charge, i'd go with it because of the huge immersive world, and the fact im a warcraft fan, but since im not that old, and dont have a job....15 dollers is good money.

so im leaning towards guild wars....of course im still faced with the intel extreme intergrated graphics controller graphics problem....

If your a noob to the MMORPG scene, then go with guild wars, and for the graphics card problem, to and grab a Radeon 9800 128mb for like $150, that might seem like alot, but work on you mom and dad for it

WoW = crap
GW = decent game

/endthread

HAve you ever played WoW i doubt it, each has its advantages

Hell, one of these is as powerful as a plain 9800, at almost half the price:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...m it=Property

If you're going for $150, the Geforce 6600GT is the best card on the market in terms of bang for your buck:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc... mit=Property

Your right, i was just reciting from memory from a best buy price i saw, and yes the 6600 is the best for you money

Oh and if for some reason you stop playing WoW. they will continue to charge you till you contact them and DEMAND they stop billing your credit card. In the end I had to CANCEL my Credit Card because they absolutely refused to stop billing me. even though I had not played the garbage game, and sent it to the landfill once guildwars came out. And as far as game playing done after a month. well hell I still play Kings quest 5 that I bought 20 years ago. Can you say the same of online pay as you go game? hell no cause your $50 was a waste of time and money cause it is gone forever.

Buying a game is something to KEEP and replay when YOU want too, not just for the perceived honor to get charged out the butt for it regardless of your playing it. I may not have played guildwars as much as some, But I know my account will still be there if I take a break from it for a month or so. that's what makes the system great. You can play it as fanatical or as casually as you want too... and its not problem either way.

As a guy that beta tested WoW, Matrix online, EverQuest 2, StarWars Galaxies, URU, and any number of others. GuildWars is the only one I stayed with beyond launch. Why? Cause it was free to continue to play for your initial $50. and Stays that way as long as the service exists. Can you imagine the amount a player would be charged playing all of those per month. Its outrageous. If I want to buy more chapters in Guildwars it is an OPTION, not a requirement. And as such, I probably will get them, cause I like options. treat your customer base good and they come back. treat them like manure and you loose them for life. See ya , No loss too the gaming world we can do better without ya. Guildwars is a testament to that.

that's a lot of beta tests....lucky....

ok...you've made up my mind that im most liekly to buy guild wars....ppl even say that you CAN play it on my graphics controller...although barely.

i wish i could work my parents for some money for a graphics card...but they wont. my birthday IS in just under a month though...so ill probably make up the defeciet of buying a card then...

htingram how DID you get to test all those?

You're seriously asking on the wrong forum for an unbiased view of these games....you know that right?

I picked up WoW about a week ago and the world just seems alot more alive to be honest, I logged in tonight as my lvl12 orc to see like 10 duels going on at once in a small city, so I sat down and watched people duel while the moon rose in the background of the fighting. Very cool.

15 a month is chump change if YOU believe you're getting what you pay for, to this point I'm not cancelling it. I've yet to see any whiners either at any point at all during the game, granted I'm new to it, but if I log into GW right now and hit up temple of the ages I'm willing to bet at least 1/2 the districts have a flame war going on about something or other right now.

i wont't metion everything, because i've only gotten a few hours on WoW and a bunch on GW, but fear not, i still have great reasons why WoW is an amazing game.

WoW...well, compared to GW, as the above poster stated...just seems more alive. there's always something or another going on, people out in the world with you killing monsters. of course, GW was not made like this...sometimes i regret it, sometimes i don't.

mounts. WoW has them, GW doesn't. teleporting is a great thing in GW, but mounts are just cool, and...cool.

and, if you've seen ANY actiony videos in WoW, you notice one thing...the groups. they're HUUGEE. you'll see a huuugee group, all getting ready, preparing to take on the next challenging room. search for "elite chaos: blackwing lair"..its a movie, watch it. and then play guild wars, and tell me you don't wish for mobs that size, while your group is that big.

I've played both GW and WoW, and I think they're excellent games in their own respects. WoW has more of the "MMO" aspect, has lots of great community and economy features, stylish and creative graphics, and instanced dungeons second to none. Guild Wars is more like a multiplayer RPG than an MMO, has a much more balanced set of classes, and an interesting new implementation by allowing Primary/Secondary professions. It also has a good team that listens to the community, and a solid PvP system that can only get better. I eventually left WoW though, the grind got to me, as did the more PvE-centric gameplay with focus more on uber-gear than pure skill and creative and cunning use of spells and skills. Of course, that was after logging some 400 hours of gameplay. Guild Wars just appeals to my tastes in gameplay more, but they're both top-notch games worthy of acknowledgement.

Guild Wars has superior pvp. After beta testing wow and playing into release, I can honestly say that WOW's pvp is a mess. No tactics no strategy, just an awful hack and slash.

But WOW does have the volume. More explorable areas, more towns, bigger world, and more interactive. But Guild wars is free. In the end, I chose Guild wars solely because its free. Guild Wars is still young and with time, it will catch up to WOW in terms of content.

I think I can really only echo above sentiments. I play both WoW and GW, and it depends on what I'm after. At the moment, WoW is what rocks my boat because it's where all my friends are and I get a lot of RP satisfaction out of it - something I was never fortunate enough to find in GW. I won't reiterate the other good things about WoW because people above already have.

However, I DO like GW, and eventually I will start playing it once WoW starts to fade into monotony again. It's a fantastic 'pick me up' game - WoW is a commitment for another few hours or so. GW is fantastic for a 10 minute 'let's blast a quest' run. GW also comes without the immensely depressing 'half of my guild are 60's and I'm level 46' - the community problem with WoW is that everyone is badly split up all over the map. It's also very nice that I can hang up on GW for a month or two and not go nuts about wasting sub fees

All in all, it's whatever I currently fancy. At the moment it's WoW. A few weeks later, I imagine I'll be playing about with that E/Me again

/Off topic

Are there any other half-way decent MMO's that don't charge a fee besides GW?

/On topic

I would love to play WOW. I love pretty much everything I hear about the game. I just don't want to make the financial investment required to do so.

I just hope that GW allows skirmishes in GvG, and increases the number of combatants for all the PvP/GvG areas. I think this would really make it the hands down winner in a lot of people's eyes who may be on the fence at this time. IMHO

I too am interested in if any other mmmorpg's are free of monthly charge such as guild wars...

Apples and oranges. I wonder why some WoW players feel so threatened by GW (even before the release there were people who said "OMG GW SUX LOL") and why some GW players need to categorize the game. Ignore genres and what others say, play what YOU want!

Personally I'm shallow enough that I chose GW instead of WoW because the graphics of WoW are so goddamn ugly. And no, it's not ugly because it's meant to be, it's low-polygon with stretched textures because it's intended to run well on very low-spec machines. I've always wondered if WoW wasn't designed for console, due to the graphics.

I will also note that while $15 a month is small change, that's still $180 for a year. You can buy three full-priced games for that. Plus that WoW _is_ a full-priced game to start with, so total price for the first year is in the region of $230.

I have to agree with what other people said about the fact that these games are somewhat incomparable to another. I never tried WoW but I would love to give it a shot. Not because I am a PvE only fan, but I like the best of both worlds.

PvP in Guild Wars provides you with that satisfaction of being able to beat other players using skill and smartness. Don't you just get that grin from ear to ear when your team-mates thank you for doing a superb job in dealing with that last battle?

It's just so refreshing to play a game where time spent doesn't make a huge difference and the fact that it costs nothing makes me wonder why the servers are flooded with people.

PvE on the other hand provides you with something to occupy yourself with. The PvE in WoW sounds like loads of fun to me since there are tons of skills and items to occupy yourself with. I just like the variety of things you can fight and find in all PvE MMORPGs and WoW sounds like a game where I can go to every little corner of the map and find something new.

"so im leaning towards guild wars....of course im still faced with the intel extreme intergrated graphics controller graphics problem...."

My laptop which has intergrated graphics runs this game beautifully with no hiccups if. I think just check the drivers your using and you should be able to run this game with no problems

Im out

gw vs wow...

It really depends on you. Those of you willing to forego some snacks, food, or heck, a date with your g/f, can play WoW. $15 is piss change some say? That's $150 in 10 months.

"that's nothing" you say? That $150 can be $1500 if you use said $15/mo in smart investing.

I'm an adult who doesn't throw money away... usually. I have something most adults have to deal with too. It's called bills. Bills from real life.

In my eyes, if you have tons of cash and don't care how you spend it. WoW is fine for ya. I've seen it. I didn't play it due to too many turnoffs. I'm a former Ragnarok Online junkie and my g/f loves that game. [someone else is paying for her though, go fig] WoW is the 'standard' MMORPG. I made a post poking fun at WoW through Vgcats comic strip.

GW I think is for the person who sees gaming as just that. Gaming.
WoW is for the one who wants to live elsewhere cause their life sux0rs or something...

I haven't played WoW, but from what my friends tell me it sure sounds better. TheClam had the best reply here in my opinion; weigh it heavily. I've got to go with guild wars though - no monthly fee. Others prefer it because of the lack of a monthly fee. So whether you don't want to pay monthly, or simply don't want to pay a fee every month, the choice is yours.

sorry, but, it wont work friday because, well ever since i started playing WoW..


you guys have provided great comparisons, but i am going to buy Guild wars.

grievous maximus, when you play guild wars, in larger battles, does it ever just....lag, or is it always smooth?

As far as I can tell, the only lag I've ever experienced in Guild Wars was due to spotty internet, never graphics. I don't have the worst system by any means, but it seems like Arena Net tried really hard and succeeded in making a pretty game that runs well on relatively "poor" systems.

to the person/people with the intel extreme graphis...just...on low settings...do you get cut up by others because of bad frame rate...or...is it playable really so it's FUN not just playable.

From someone who has seen both games, graphic-wise and short gameplay tour-wise...


The worst graphical setting on Guild Wars (which I use) still far surpasses the best on World of Warcraft.

It has nothing to do with frame rate. You have more to worry about with lag than frame rate in this game (and that's only if YOU have problematic internet--it affects no one else). I'm personally running the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM requirements with an unsupported graphics card--and it runs just fine.



World of Warcraft works for people who enjoy PvE that has no real direction and has a lot of things to take up their time.

Guild Wars is for those who like the idea of going through as a character in the storyline (just me, but I got a kick out of playing through the scene the manual gives) and a PvP system built from the ground up instead of thrown in there for slightly extra content (like World of Warcraft).

The thing that made me buy wow (The only blizzard game I like was Diablo 1 - I really disagree with their design philosophy...) was that tons of my friends were playing it.

The things that made me quit wow, was the combat, which had very little variety, the fact that so much of the game is specifically designed to make you waste time repeating the same content over and over, and the very boring spell and combat graphics.

The killer was the fact that all my friends were split up over a bunch of servers, and there was no way I could play with most of them.

My friends still play and enjoy wow. The things they are enjoying are currently: Big scale pvp battles, like a full on battlefield.
Making gold. They enjoy the feeling of making a good trade in the auction house and watching numbers go up. (Sigh, commerce students).

Things that currently piss them off: Maintenance Downtime, Queues to log in to a server. (one reported waits of up to 1 hour on BlackRock, a heavily populated server) Class imbalances.