Is Guild Wars 2 REALLY an MMO?

[Deleted]

Whats the point of this thread? Its an MMO and thats it.

[Swagman]

Well you do know that the letters mmo actually stand for words. Massively multiplayer online. I may be speaking out of school here but massive means really big, multiplayer means more than one player, and online means connected to the Internet.

So is guild wars 2 a really large game world that multiple people can play on at once while being online? I would say yes it's an mmo.

It might not fit your idea of what you think an mmo should be, but that is your opinion.

[Tekkommo]

You can say the exact same thing about WoW, you know. This means, by your statements, WoW is not an MMO.

MMO does not mean "I group with other players, or else I can't get stuff done"

Good luck getting the best gear in WoW solo.

[Artorias]

Good luck getting the best gear in WoW solo.

Kinda this as well. In most games you HAVE to end up grouping up with people in order to do anything productive. In GW2 you really don't need to.

[RüneRS]

GW2 is...a bare bones MMO. It doesn't have as many features as the current p2p MMOs and tries to make up for it with a very hefty pvp content, which we all know is much easier to make as it only involves an area in which players are dropped to duke it out, basically. The amount of quests is abysmal compared to the other MMOs and makes up for it with so called "events", this seems to work though and players don't realize these events came out of of the laziness to make proper quests.

You think that making dynamic quests that can change a zone and chains with multiple other events is lazy? I'd say your completly gaga O.o

[Nikijih]

I guess what I was trying to say is that despite all of those people, you still feel like it is your own personal adventure. Despite there being many other people doing the same things, you feel like it is YOU making the difference in the game. I think?

Yeah but thats by design and has nothing to do with being a MMO.
1) There are masses of players on the same persistent world as you
2) There are online group events such as PvP or dungeons
3) There is server vs server warfare

If this does not match the definition of a MMORPG, none ever did.

EDIT:

Kinda this as well. In most games you HAVE to end up grouping up with people in order to do anything productive. In GW2 you really don't need to.

You are looking at this completely upside down. What is your goal? Is the point to get gear, or is the point to run dungeons and do PvP? If all you want is gear, then you have a point. Congratulation you just missed the point of the game. But in the case that you are not some immature epeen-flexer from the WoW generation, then you will understand that if the goal is to actually play the game, you will be grouping.

P.S. What is "something productive" to you? Nothing you do while playing GAMES is productive by definition, as you are PLAYING. Productive means getting off your ass and cleaning your house, or advancing your living situation through financial gains for exemple. Video gaming is not productive: its entertainment.

[rhandric]

Good luck getting the best gear in WoW solo.

Kinda this as well. In most games you HAVE to end up grouping up with people in order to do anything productive. In GW2 you really don't need to.

So? Just because you're not forced into group content for gear progression doesn't mean there isn't group content with (cosmetic) gear progression. Get out of the fucking mindset that if its not a EQ/WoW-model game it's not an MMO. Hell, GW2 is the first game that actually encourages playing with others outside of instanced content (and the occasional group quest that 99% of players skip, woopty-fucking-do), since they can't steal kills, they can't steal nodes, the only way they can "harm" my experience is if they make it easier for me to down a (probably champion) mob I'm trying to solo -- the rest of the time (ie, 99.9999999% of the time) seeing other players is a good thing.

[Vintersol]

Kinda this as well. In most games you HAVE to end up grouping up with people in order to do anything productive. In GW2 you really don't need to.

Valid argument if you pull out the most fun in geargrind to feel stronger than others. But thats not the Definition for a mmorpg.

[DrakeWurrum]

Good luck getting the best gear in WoW solo.

His statement didn't mention anything about the best gear, it simply had to do with getting to max level. It's worth noting, btw, that while I've been "grouped" with people while raiding, I have not necessarily been communicating with them or interacting with them in any meaningful way that couldn't be replicated by an NPC. So WoW is not any more special than GW2 in this regard.

Factually speaking, "MMO" does not mean "You require being part of a rigid group structure to do things."

It just means "massive multiplayer online," all three qualities of which have been more than met by GW2.

[Ravenblade]

In my opinion a good MMO shines through balancing singleplayer vs. multiplayer aspect by keeping both mandate and option in an equilibrium and in my opinion GW2 exactly seems to aim at that. You could nitpick on the details but I have seen a lot people referring to WoW as sort of an anchor when even WoW has been shifting and wiggling around. Now I am saying WoW is actually a good anchor if you want to start somewhere with a reference but its design isn't based around lack of self-criticism either so what they chose over time was something they iterated on based what their view of a MMORPG called World of Warcraft is not what a MMORPG in general is. Even their own producer had to say this in late 2009. Clearly when even the makers of the most popular MMORPG themselves say their own approach to the whole MMORPG thing isn't the end-all-be-all then all other established alternative approaches are valid as well, aren't they? So why not just call it a draw and say, yes, GW2 is a MMO because it covers all the ground a MMO is supposed to cover sans what you know of WoW and think as adopted must-haves but were really must-haves for WoW. A lot of ambitious MMO games run into early troubles because they convolute their design by trying too much, losing focus and then achieving nothing when even the original game has had a hard time to achieve its own design goals.

[Deleted]

MMO:

Massive: yes
Multiplayer: yes
Online: yes.

How is this even a discussion?

[Deleted]

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Play Game
Is it a massive map? yes, it takes hours to clean 1 zone
Is it Multiplayer? Yes, half the time I'm within spitting distance of atleast 2 other players just exploring the world.
Is it Online? derp
Are there roles? personal story, world story, instance story, players role playing.

How exactly is it not a MMO?

Close to nobody is claiming it is not, most people are claiming it doesn't feel like an MMORPG...wich is also true. They could have changed it into a single player game and nobody would know the difference.

[DrakeWurrum]

most people are claiming it doesn't feel like an MMORPG...wich is also true

Cannot agree with that as being "true"

The "feel" of the game is extremely subjective. If they changed GW2 into a single player game, I would most assuredly notice a major difference.

[rhandric]

Close to nobody is claiming it is not, most people are claiming it doesn't feel like an MMORPG...wich is also true. They could have changed it into a single player game and nobody would know the difference.

Go play a character in WoW, disable all chat, and don't do dungeons/raids. Then go do the same in GW2. I can promise you that GW2 will still have more player interaction than WoW (even ignoring the emptiness of zones in WoW).

So by your logic, nobody would notice the difference if they changed WoW to a single player game.

[Valeron]

It feels more of an mmo than any other I've played, and I've played a butload of them.

[AiAtola]

I stoped playing the GW2, the game doesn't feel like an mmo-rpg to me. PvP is horrible, it just like a fps lobby, here everyone is equal, so boring. WvWvW... fighting anonymous red/green/blue people.... unbelievable bad, feels like playing against npc/bots ...

[DrakeWurrum]

here everyone is equal, so boring.

What. How is that a bad thing?!

[rhandric]

What. How is that a bad thing?!

Didn't you know that gear stat progression is the only way to make an MMO?

[Valeron]

What. How is that a bad thing?!

It's interesting how simple features can make opinions vary so much. What he sees as pretty much game breaking for him, I see as one of the games best features.

[Deleted]

Technically, yes.
Play-wse, also fricken yes.

Just because it doesn't have raids in it doesn't mean it isn't an MMO. I state raids because it has everyone else most MMO's have. Anyway, raids and dungeons are essentially the same multiplayer wise; the differences between them are the size, difficulty and rewards.

You do the same stuff to level when it comes to interacting with other players in GW2 and you do any other MMO.

Guild Wars 2 is definitely an MMO by any definition. Guild Wars 1 wasn't but that's just a very different story.