I agree 100% with this review. Good read
The key difference is that most other MMOs change the way the game is played by design once you reach max level, whereas GW2 by design does not. Sure you can argue that you could play, say, WoW at max level by only doing every quest you didn't do while leveling up, but that's not how the game was designed. It was designed to be a questing experience up to max level, then instanced co-operative gameplay, leading into instanced co-operative gameplay on a larger scale than is reasonable while doing the pre-max level gameplay. I'm not saying this is a bad way of doing it, I'm simply saying that's how it's designed. GW2 on the other hand was designed to let you do everything there's to do at max level while you're leveling. In other words, if by some reasoning ArenaNet were to implement, say, 25-man instanced PvE content in GW2... there'd be plenty of occasions where you could do it long before you reached max level, following their game design.
So you can't really say "but you could do anything in X game as well", because the way the games were designed are vastly different.
That's just a marketing line Arena.net made up. It's not even logical.
However, the spirit of what you are saying; that GW2 isn't some other game at l80 apart from what it was at l9 or l52 is accurate to the franchise.
edit: Or what Jigain basically said above this post. Essentially, not a bimodal endgame. Take a drink.
Why would you do that when there is so much else to do?
Unless you're talking about the game not having raids. The running of one instance over and over for months on end.
The reality is that is an old concept, it's tired, it's boring and not very many people are looking for that from a MMO.
Just look at WoW for instance. For their last tier with 10 million subscribers, only ~670,000 were raiders. GW2 is not going for that tiny sliver of a market.
But that doesn't mean there isn't a ton of stuff to do once you reach max level
Valar morghulis
How do you know there were only 670k raiders in World of Warcraft?
Also, technically. GW2's design style is older than instance based raiding. Most MMOs were more like GW2 back in the day than like WOW/TOR/whatever.
Valar morghulis
You are taking into consideration only those who actually succeded.
How many tried and failed? The wannabe raiders?
Many, many more. The backbone of WoW.
The same guys that say "GW2 has no endgame", but never went past 2nd boss in FL.
Imho, the carrot & stick system still works. It's easy and it works.
Erm. There are literally thousands of guilds for that tier listed. I stopped looking after 4 thousand or so guilds that were just 8/8. I think your "evidence" is a bit flimsy.
Edit: I kept looking. At over +6k deep in the guild listings for 8/8(H) alone.
Edit: Unless I am reading this incorrectly. Does not WOW have like multi-mode raids of the same tier? I don't play WoW. Many things about WoW seem strange/nonsensical to me. But if wiki is correct that seems like a good deal more than 670k players. Which is massive enough to dwarf like the entire sub base of other MMOs. Like just Blizz's raid population if so.
Last edited by Fencers; 2012-10-04 at 02:34 PM.
For the first boss, 54,842 10m guilds + 4,832 25m guilds.
No need to count, multiplication is your friend.
Valar morghulis
Not sure what you mean by multi-mode raids.
The first boss on normal mode went down if you sneezed. Obviously if people were working on that for 9+ months and didn't get it, they weren't a raider.
---------- Post added 2012-10-04 at 07:47 AM ----------
For just as many people that are sitting on a bench, you have people that are running alts in another guild.
Really, raiding isn't the end all be all to MMOs. GW2 is fine without raids
Valar morghulis
Again, I may be wrong here but as I understand it there is; Normal, Hard and LFR modes of 10 and 25 man to a single raid.
So like
Normal 10
Normal 25
Hard 10
Hard 25
LFR 10
LFR 25
6 modes as I have come to understand it.
Wanna stress when I played WOW many of these things didn't even exist. No doubt a lot changed. I may not understand it all correctly.
Well, I agree. But seems like it's pretty big/popular thing within World of Warcraft. If that site is anything to go by [dubious as is], literal thousands of guilds completed at least the hard mode to 8/8.Really, raiding isn't the end all be all to MMOs. GW2 is fine without raids
How many more thousands did other modes or partial progression?
Or desperate players who raided but may not have had unified or consistent guild participation?
Like 10 million people is a lot. And even if only say 1% of their population raided to even a casual degree- it'd still dwarf the total subscribers of many MMOs. It's even more than some F2P MMOs unique logins.
I was counting both 10 & 25 man. You have to complete the first boss on Normal mode to do any Heroic versions so that includes all the raiders except for anyone that's not a raider that participates in LFR. LFR people are perfectly happy with the mass event World Boss dragon events in GW2 - it's perfect really.
Valar morghulis
Well, the point that you seem to be missing is that WoW and many other games do not have level downscaling mechanics. If you are level 90, it doesn't make much sense to go back to lower-level content save for that zone completion achievement. No problem with this in GW2 - and you even get level-appropriate reward. For casual players GW2 is much more attractive in this regard.
As far as raiding goes... well, its an interesting thing, really, because raids (and dungeons) are in fact, not a MMORPG content. Rather, these are instanced (as opposed to persistent) PVE scenarios. Its very interesting to see that one of the most popular MMO mechanics actually goes a step back from MMO essence. Strictly spoken, GW2 is more of an MMO, as it offers you persistent boss fights. Of course, this is a moot point as the instanced scenarios offer more opportunities for fine-tuning and interested design. But then again, not that many people raid. When I was playing WoW, I couldn't really get into it because grinding gear bored me to death. I find GW2 dungeons much more interesting than any dungeon I did in WoW, simply because there is so much more opportunity of team-play in GW2.
One thing I find a bit annoying about the whole downscale argument is, it's not the only one in the genre. EQ2 does an excellent job at it. Every 'named' mob in dungeons or outside mobs or whatever gives you AA exp, alternate advancement, think of it as a more extensive talent tree.
Your downscale works by 2 methods. Mentoring, which you level downwards to a selected party member's level, or chronomancy, which levels you down in decrements of 5, and you pick whatever you want. In order to get the AA exp from the named mob (and for it to even count in your 'kill count'), you have to down level to the proper level. Now this is all manual and you get the same award and get a mark for being completionist (if that was your goal). Now this also isn't the only method to get AA, which makes it optional and for those more casual players you can do this for giggles or for completing or just to explore the content.
Yet for some reason everyone views EQ2 as a very hardcore game when there's both raiding, then there's things like chronomancy, personal housing to mess with, guild housing, dungeon creations and many others to mess with for the casuals and hardcores.
It does amount to exactly what Bovinity said, for the whole "TON"s to do yet every time people treat it differently for some magical reason.
Note, I was in no means a hardcore raider in EQ2. Most of the time I did things in EQ2 was chronomancy / mess with old raids, dungeons, finding named mob, outside raid bosses, etc. Especially housing, <3
Also, the whole griefing argument is moot. Anyone can just aggro a gigantic train and go right next to you and run off and you'd suddenly have a lot of mobs on you from someone.
It's pretty much the same across all tiers by a percentage or 2.
---------- Post added 2012-10-04 at 12:06 PM ----------
Not true!
This morning I did the Swamp Boss in Caledon Forest and got a lvl 80 rare Carrion Verdant Dagger of Air.
I also did the 4 Champion event there with a few other people, got a mix of low & high level loot - nice for mats
Valar morghulis
Oh? I wasn't aware of that. Indeed, it sounds a bit broken. I also agree with you on the jute problem.
Actually, when I heard about GW2 for the first time I was expecting it to have a new kind of crafting system, where every item you craft is relevant independently of the level. Something like how EVE Online works. I was disappointed that they still decided to go with that tier-based crafting system (where one tier makes the previous redundant). At least they could have implemented something like that for the materials (e.g. most armor recipes needing copper, regardless of the tier).