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Guild Wars [?]

Hayden Kered

By Hayden Kered
in Ahto Spaceport Cantina

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Alkonium Newbie

Alkonium

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Guild Wars, in my opinion, is unlike any other MMO in many ways:

1: No monthly fees

2: No loot stealing

3: Less stupid players in comparison to smart players

4: A lot more skill involved

5: An actual storyline in each campaign

6: Standalone expansions

7: Unique models for each class

8: A lot of humour

9: No elves or orcs

10: Guild Halls

11: Customisable party NPCs

12: Everywhere is a good photo op

13: Every armour looks goo

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Ztalker Newbie

Ztalker

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It's quit a cool game. But the battle system is a bit...strange and static compared to WoW.

The whole cinematic experience and coolness makes up for the cons though.

It's my favourite MMO, and I have tried almost every other MMO. :D

 

Maybe you could simply try one of the games, and then decide if you want to buy the others too. The structure of Guild Wars works like a card game, to compare:

You can play every variant of the game (Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall) as a single game, no strings attached. But if you want to experience a 'bigger' world, you might want to buy the other two as well, so that your characters can travel there too, buy specific skills, armor etc.

 

There are three games of Guild Wars at this time. I'll describe the pro's and cons of them all, as I have experienced :)

-Prophecies (Core): +=Medieval styled. Long, long game. Many missions, side quests and outposts. -= All the players are at the new continent. No acces to several very powerfull 'foreign' skills.

-Factions: +=Japanese styled. Epic storyline, very neat PvP stuff going on, many,many weapons. 2 Factions only-classes: Assassin and Ritualist

-=Short. Very short. You get to lv 20 in a breeze, and you can capture 'Elite Skills' from the start. No real challenge there. Several mission suck hard too.

-Nightfall: +=Long game, good difficulty overall, Hero-system, African themed. 2 Nightfall-only professions: Dervish (Scythe) and Paragon (Spear). A huge load of new weapons and armors, whole new PvP stuff.

-=Missions...several suck..hard...again. It feels a bit rushed too. And the worst bit: The game stimulates 'l33tness' by it's latest update which adds an Elite area.

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Aash Li Newbie

Aash Li

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Factions, despite it being my favourite theme de jour, sucked immensely. The pvp sucked, the locks on every frigging section made the game simply grind to a halt, as you had to complete the missions just to get to the next area whether you want to or not. So you cant run anywhere and you cant explore worth crap.

Ritualist is the better class from this xpack. The assassin would have been good had they made it an actual rogue class instead of this watered down warrior with some magic skills.

Some of the missions were fun, others just made me want to b!tch-slap the devs til my hands hurt. Loved the giant turtle mounts... I still want a siege-turtle minipet...

 

Nightfall I think has a nice setting, even if it seems to be more of an african setting rather than an egyptian setting... or Arabian Nights. Which I think would have been neater.

 

 

No Factions or Orcs or Elves = win. Even though Id like dark elves in the game, Im sorta glad they arent in it.

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DarthMuffin Newbie

DarthMuffin

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GW cannot really be compared to WoW. Like someone said, there's no monthly fee on GW, so you can't expect it to have the same amount of content as WoW.

 

I have personally played them both extensively (bought no expans for GW though). Unlike many people, I actually moved from GW to WoW. What turned me down is the serious lack of PvE in GW. The missions are incredibly linear, and there is little place for exploration overall since you are confined to the "walkable" terrain. And once you've reached the end and unlocked the skills you want, it's basically done. GW is an arena-PvP game, nothing more.

 

Still, I did have a lot of fun with GW over summer 2005 (when it was released). I had a bunch of RL friends to play with, so the PvP was decent.

 

If you are willing to pay the fee, however, I see no reason to pick GW over WoW.

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Rogue Nine Newbie

Rogue Nine

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I have personally played them both extensively (bought no expans for GW though). Unlike many people, I actually moved from GW to WoW. What turned me down is the serious lack of PvE in GW. The missions are incredibly linear, and there is little place for exploration overall since you are confined to the "walkable" terrain. And once you've reached the end and unlocked the skills you want, it's basically done. GW is an arena-PvP game, nothing more.

I beg to differ. I'm play PvE exclusively, to the point where my only PvP experience is the mandatory battle to get from pre-Searing to post. In Prophecies (the original GW), there is a ton of PvE content, with seven distinct regions to play through. The missions are linear in that you must complete a primary objective with an optional secondary, but each differs in what you must do and how you need to accomplish it. This is especially prevalent in the later missions, which usually require all human groups. As for exploration, the continent of Tyria is quite large and to be able to reach all visible areas is really pointless. But if you must try, there is an explorer title that you can pick up by visiting every nook and cranny in the land. I've been playing since it came out and gotten four characters through the whole storyline, but have only gotten to uncover 60% of the continent even on my most accomplished character. And I've still not unlocked all the skills I want, and I've beaten the game quite a few times. There are some people that like to go through the game with just one character and focus on making that character the best. I'm not like that; I like variety, so I've made several other characters with different class combinations to experience the game in a whole different direction.

 

Like I said, I don't do PvP, yet I'm still going strong with PvE. So there's no need to generalize, saying that GW is purely for PvP. Yes, the PvP is a very strong aspect of the game, since it requires skill and ingenuity, but it is not necessary to fully enjoy the GW experience. I'm part of an excellent PvE-focused guild and we enjoy playing together and helping each other out through the storyline.

 

If you are willing to pay the fee, however, I see no reason to pick GW over WoW.

I beg to differ here too. I'm pretty well set with money, so the fees are not a bother. Yet I've picked GW over WoW for a good set of reasons. One, I dislike the cartoony graphics. Two, I hate grinding. Three, dungeon raids are exceedingly boring. Four, I actually like having a real social life, not one that is relegated to Ventrilo, with some monotone voice directing me when to cast Holy Fire and all that. Five, since I'm not paying for it, I don't feel obligated to play it religiously to get my money's worth.

 

Now, I could go on ad nauseum about this stuff, but I think it'll suffice to say that different folks like different things and thus, the only way we'll find out what's good for us personally is if we try it ourselves. I tried WoW and didn't like it at all. I tried GW and fell in love with it. So don't make it seem like one is inherently better than the other.

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DarthMuffin Newbie

DarthMuffin

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I beg to differ. I'm play PvE exclusively, to the point where my only PvP experience is the mandatory battle to get from pre-Searing to post. In Prophecies (the original GW), there is a ton of PvE content, with seven distinct regions to play through. The missions are linear in that you must complete a primary objective with an optional secondary, but each differs in what you must do and how you need to accomplish it. This is especially prevalent in the later missions, which usually require all human groups. As for exploration, the continent of Tyria is quite large and to be able to reach all visible areas is really pointless. But if you must try, there is an explorer title that you can pick up by visiting every nook and cranny in the land. I've been playing since it came out and gotten four characters through the whole storyline, but have only gotten to uncover 60% of the continent even on my most accomplished character. And I've still not unlocked all the skills I want, and I've beaten the game quite a few times. There are some people that like to go through the game with just one character and focus on making that character the best. I'm not like that; I like variety, so I've made several other characters with different class combinations to experience the game in a whole different direction.

 

No matter what the objectives are ("go rescue Mr X" or "Go break the siege there!"), it all comes down to going from point A to point B in a completely linear world. More often than not, you can't even stray from the main road. So the missions consist of killing small groups of enemies one at a time as you make your way to point B.

 

As for exploration, I know that there are quite a lot of "non-mandatory" areas. The big problem is just that: there's nothing to do there except walk along the path, killing baddies over and over again. And watching the small exploration percentage going up.

 

The later missions certainly do not require all-human groups. I started playing GW a couple of weeks after my friends, so they were ahead of me for some time in the very short PvE "story". I ended up doing the last missions (Ring of Fire, Abaddon's Mouth and Hell's Precipice) all by myself because finding a group as a mere Ranger was a pain in the behind. And that's another touchy subject; I don't know if it has changed since then, but back when I played it, the professions were brutally imbalanced.

 

I'm actually a lot like you, in the way that I don't like to spend 100% of my playing time on a single character. I started the PvE portion of the game with a few other classes, but I simply couldn't get myself to get pass Kryta again. At that point, I really had enough and simply focused on PvP, which I still believe to be the point of the game.

 

Like I said, I don't do PvP, yet I'm still going strong with PvE. So there's no need to generalize, saying that GW is purely for PvP. Yes, the PvP is a very strong aspect of the game, since it requires skill and ingenuity, but it is not necessary to fully enjoy the GW experience. I'm part of an excellent PvE-focused guild and we enjoy playing together and helping each other out through the storyline.

 

All I can say here is that different games appeal to different people :) Like I said above, I simply found the missions to be too boring to go through them a second time.

 

I beg to differ here too. I'm pretty well set with money, so the fees are not a bother. Yet I've picked GW over WoW for a good set of reasons. One, I dislike the cartoony graphics. Two, I hate grinding. Three, dungeon raids are exceedingly boring. Four, I actually like having a real social life, not one that is relegated to Ventrilo, with some monotone voice directing me when to cast Holy Fire and all that. Five, since I'm not paying for it, I don't feel obligated to play it religiously to get my money's worth.

 

Cartoony graphics, I agree. I personally liked the WarCraft 2-style of setting much better that WC3 (and therefore WoW). Still, I got used to it.

 

For the rest, you assume too much. Many people dislike grinding in the game; they simply do quests instead. I belong to that group. There are enough quests in the game to get you to 60 with next to no grind. My main character, a mage, go to the mid 50s without doing the extreme grinding that some others do. At that point, I ended up doing area-of-effect grinding because I would need to do elite and dungeon quests at this point and I simply did not have the time. As far as raids are concerned, I'm not a big fan either. But nothing forces me to do raids. I ran a few instances, but not many. Rest of the time I simply focused on regular quests (which give lots of gold at 60) and PvP. Oh right, I don't have all of these "uber" items, and my belt only gives +10 to intelligence instead of +20. Do I care? Certainly not!

 

Number 4 is the worst, really. You assume that all WoW players are simply obscure addicts who live in their basements with headphones on. Some are, but most aren't. I am not, and *gasp* I still managed to have a lot of fun in the game and get a character to 60. Saying that WoW players have no life is a pretty big stereotype. And I could tell you that one of my friend with whom I played GW used to be on from roughly 10 AM to 4 or 5 in the morning the next day, then go to sleep, then play again. There are some no-lifes in GW too. These people are everywhere. Number 5, it's more of a personal taste.

 

You are right by saying that the best way to find out about a game is to try it. But we are all giving our opinions here, and I simply acknowledged how I thought GW had poor PvE content.

 

The only "big" complaint I have about WoW (and it's what contributes to the "WoW-players have no life" cliché) is how long the dungeons tend to be. So if you do want to indulge in the raid content, you need to have a lot of time for the game. I don't, but that doesn't mean that I can't enjoy the game. Blizzard seems to have understood that, since many of the new instances in the expansion are broken down in "wings".

 

But like I said, I *did* enjoy GW a lot. In fact, it's quite possible that I would never have started to play WoW if my friends hadn't stopped in the first place. At that point, the guild we had formed started going downhill and I ended up leaving instead of trying to find a new guild. The point is, WoW costs more money. A lot more. You can't really compare, in my opinion, a game that costs $40 with one that costs the same + $15 each month. And there wouldn't be 7 million players if the fee wasn't worth it down the road.

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Aash Li Newbie

Aash Li

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No matter what the objectives are ("go rescue Mr X" or "Go break the siege there!"), it all comes down to going from point A to point B in a completely linear world. More often than not, you can't even stray from the main road. So the missions consist of killing small groups of enemies one at a time as you make your way to point B.

 

As for exploration, I know that there are quite a lot of "non-mandatory" areas. The big problem is just that: there's nothing to do there except walk along the path, killing baddies over and over again. And watching the small exploration percentage going up.

 

How is that not like that in Warcrack? Ive been playing wow since June or July, and theres loads of quests where you have to do fedex'es through mobs, or escorts where mobs run out of no where. And as for non-mandatory exploration areas... well theres loads of areas in both games where you can go exploring. GW might be linear, but its a story based game all the main missions are running you towards the completion of that story. Theres alot of side quests that are voluntary, and some that are sorta-mandatory as they help your chara out.

 

Warcrack most certainly does have quest grinding, Ive experienced several dozen quests where you had to run around a certain area grinding on the same mobs for an hour+ because the drop rate for the quest item is abysmal. Like killing 50+ centaurs just to get 10 medallions or whatever. Then theres all the moronic running and flying you have to do... you spend lots and lots of time on your feet or mount of flight-mount back travelling. Certain classes of course have advantages over this in the form of travel forms or teleportation or moon-ports...

 

But were trying to compare apples and oranges here. Warcrack has more content, though Blizz could reduce the subscription fee to 9$ and still make a killing, and still provide content... though their content recently has been in the form of nerfs... GW is free, less of the useless content that wow has, and more story-specific content...

 

I think once you strip them both down to basics, guild wars and warcrack are almost equal... with warcrack having a definite edge because of more things to do.

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DarthMuffin Newbie

DarthMuffin

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First off, I would ask you to stop calling the game "warcrack". It's really useless and derogatory.

 

Yes, there are grind quests. Lots of them, and that's how the game is designed. But there are others too. Killing bosses, finding hidden items, etc. Dungeons also require a lot of teamwork, and if the warrior doesn't know how to do his/her job, it's mostly game over (the whole aggro concept). The missions in GW are *always* about reaching the end of the track. It doesn't matter if the player 1 or player 2 knows his stuff or not; the point is about killing the bunch of enemies that get in your way as fast as possible. Only the monk has to think. PvP is a whole new story, where classes like mesmer and ranger in particular actually get to do some interesting stuff. That's why I think that GW is a game for PvPers, while WoW is more for PvE. Most of the strategic elements in GW are in the PvP part. WoW's PvP is much more superficial, and usually involve running to the center of the battleground and randomly killing enemies while the druid runs the flag.

 

I will quote myself from my first post:

GW cannot really be compared to WoW. Like someone said, there's no monthly fee on GW, so you can't expect it to have the same amount of content as WoW.

 

It's obvious that they are both great games. But they are different. And by being much more expansive, WoW obviously has more content. Otherwise, there wouldn't be 7 million players paying the fee.

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Aash Li Newbie

Aash Li

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Umm.. whatever... you shouldnt assume that Im calling it warcrack to make fun of it. I call it that because its addictive...

 

Warcrack, or to not affend your sensibilities... wow, is a pve game with a side of pvp. GW is a pvp game with an offline-style RPG game element (similar to Icewind Dale 2).

 

With that, I think Im done with this thread...

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milo Newbie

milo

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Ok I jut got Guild Wars and am playing right now. Any one here online that could help me out?

Niner is pretty knowledgeable. Which game did you get? I'm playing Nightfall right now. ^^

 

By the way, does anybody know a way to remove the death penalty? Besides going into a town or using map travel I mean.

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Aash Li Newbie

Aash Li

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Ive got all three of the games... I have a dervish named Jasmine Almeeri, an elementalist named Saionji Torchwood (dr who reference, hehe). a Monk, Shiori Nakamura; and a ritualist, Hana Inoue... Ive been considering going through the Factions blahness again as a Ritualist (again), but going through the kurzik side, since I did luxon last time. :)

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