"My Loyalty Passed The Test. What About Yours?"

I'll be honest:

I am a Blizzard-game person. I was there for the first installment of Warcraft.

I was there for the Diablo series + expansions. I played Starcraft until threatened with military academy.

I read the Warcraft and Starcraft novels that came out.

I got my hands on some of the action figures for nerdly purpose.

I am a true fanboy.

The thing is, I got my hands on Guild Wars, BEFORE I got my hands on World of Warcraft.

THIS IS NOT A BAD THING.

No, this is not about wow versus gw. This about magic, and how I survived mind burn from Blizzard.

You see, no matter what anyone says, Blizzard knows games. They make great games. Two nights ago, I got my hands on World of Warcraft and a 6 month game-card wad as a gift. I installed the game, and 6 hours later, I realized that I in fact live in Texas, not Azeroth.

But you know what? All that razzmataz ia great and good, and the colors and the sheer VOLUME of material is staggering to me, but, well, it ain't guildwars!

Therefore, Blizzard, you did good, as always, and you made this older than usual gamer swell with pride, but you have not stolen my devotion.

To Anet and Guild Wars, game on!

/sign

Guild Wars rocks, WoW = grinding boredom...

You know Anet is that part of blizzard that broke off right?

This means almost nothing.

It can be interpreted as such that the team who made Blizzard games good was the team that is now ArenaNet

It means that ANet are a bunch of experienced, professional developers that have worked on high quality projects in the past with one of the most renowned companies in the history of gaming, as opposed to brand new developers whose first game ever was Guild Wars. It definitely means something.

if you think WoW = grinding boredom, you haven't played any other MMORPG's.

GW rocks, yes, espically I can have a team of henchmen to play with for majority part of the game. but GW's player community is very bad compared to other games.

In other games I've played, players won't advance too far without being somewhat skilled, somewhat mature. In GW, we see stupid players who act like 9 year-olds (don't want to offend 9 year olds, but that's what most 9 year olds are like, annoying and don't listen).

And another thing I miss from other games is, raid. I don't miss the drama, and I don't miss the long setup time for raids, but I miss the raids a lot.

nicely said comments with regards to ANet, and I love the above comment

Diablo (I+II) is the only thing made by Blizzard I can stand. Blizzard RTSes could never hold my attention. It also always puzzled me as to why Blizzard were considered story-telling gods.

omg StarCraft is still the best RTS game today

If you havn't played true Real Time Strategy games, then yeah, that's probably the best out there. Still holds its weight today.

Try Europa Universalis II, Crusader Kings, Victoria, HoI/HoI2(all made by Paradox Interactive, same company thats putting out the new Diplomacy computer game). TRUE Real Time GRAND Strategy games. Games where where there are over 100 nations on the map at once. Not the tactical sims that pass for RTS's.

Starcraft is a GREAT game, don't get me wrong. But its isn't Strategy.

*cough*Homeworldftw*cough*

To read the novels and collect action figures that sure is a hell of a lot of loyalty. :P

Agreed, WoW is probably the easiest, pick up and play, instant gratification, casual gaming experience for a MMORPG. Being that grinding is relative to a persons personal tastes there are far more time intensive grinding MMORPGs out there.

Personally I play both. The beauty of GW is it's free. There are other MMORPGs I'd like to play but they are time consuming.

In the last few years most of my gaming time was taken by three games.

First was Final Fantasy XI which I went to level 54 as a Black Mage/White Mage.

In World of Warcraft I got a level 60 Warrior and Level 51 Priest.

Lastly, Guild Wars, I got to Thunderhead Keep with my Warrior/Monk (He's deleted now, got tired of War/Mo) and Ranger/Necro. With my Monk/Mesmer and Elementalist Mesmer are in the Ring of Fire, I've never went past that since my primary concerns are unlocking. I don't care a lick about the storyline, just digging up the burried skills and fortunately there is little I want in the last couple of missions.

Final Fantasy XI was a soul crushing experience that I never care to return to. I just mentioned it as a point of reference as a more fitting MMO grindfest, WoW is not.

Since this seems to be the vanilla WoW vs Guild Wars sort of experience, I'll compare my experiences with the. I started on Guild Wars October '04 and World of Warcraft this January..

World of Warcraft might take longer, but the incentives are more balanced and the "grind" feels more natural in my opinion.

That's not saying I don't like Guild Wars or place WoW above it, I don't.

I like World of Warcraft for it's PvE and I like Guild Wars for it's PvP.

On the other side of the page, Guild Wars' PvE feels really clusmy and the skill acquisition is needlessly long and frustrating. As for Warcraft's PvP, it feels like a massive scale head butting contest. (Or the fact that random dudes can roll up and kicks you in the nuts if you're on a PvP server) Warcraft is prone to nearly kill my computer when I'm flooded with a large number of people who have a large variation of skins and armor. Which, oddly enough, makes Guild Wars' limited amount of skins beneficial to me.

I played Warcraft III and one of the reasons I didn't buy WoW was becuase of the fan base. I only met around 5 intelligent players in the intire 2 years I played the game; everyone else was dealing with purberty or post-puberty immaturity.

Sure, I met a few history buffs while hosting games about the Roman Empireal era.. But then they would latter resort to cries of "OMG ROME IS GAY ~~ HAX".

And latter finding out that almost 90% of those players bought WoW I realised that players in the game would be summoning level 100 infernos on people and then chanting and taunting at the level 8 players they massacred.

Oh, who could live a day without a "Yo mama" joke? After two decades that still hasn't gotten old.

To be honest, I've seen more illiterate smacktards in Guild Wars than World of Warcraft.

yeah, I agree that there are more bad players in GW than in any other games I've played.

Yes, FFXI is the most time comsuming MMORPG IMO, but for me atleast the most satisfying to date. When you complete a big mission or camp a NM, you feel like you've earned it.

But I just don't have the time anymore. Alot of people don't like FFXI, but I had some good times...and that's all that matters dammit :P But if there ever was a grind...that's the one

WoW is just fun- GW yea, but starting lose interest quite a bit. I agree with Sanji I've met far worse people in GW than in WoW (and the stories I've seen on this forum makes me like henchies more and more).

But I'm glad there are people who enjoy GW like Sot.. cheers! Find a game that you like, and enjoy.