So now that you've had time to gather your thoughts...

[melodramocracy]

Also the speed of Warcraft was a revelation at the time. The game [WoW] moved and reacted at a pace simply unprecedented in the genre.

I'd wager that anyone who played Asheron's Call would argue this point. It wasn't nearly as graphically interesting as WoW, but the game play, movement speed, etc, were all a good deal faster. No idea how it is these days however.

[FREDREX]

I really dont recomend this game,bored me to death, i am an ex-wow player, and a future rift one , and my idea of MMORPG is not exploring and doing solo missions, for that i have one of the best games ever Dragon Age Origins.

Here are some points i really hate of GW2, this is only my point of view

-No mounts, sure we have waypoints, but i dont really want to pay and or see a loading screen..., btw every region has to be loaded.

-Dungeons are boring abd there is no raid, allmost all bosses are humanoids, there is no trinity sistem so the whole sistem is quite chaotic, and there is no loot incentive, all is cosmethic.

-Few many creatures, there is no variety.

-So few skills.

-Quest sistem is the same thing whit another style, you still have to gather X, to kill X, to scort that, the only diference is you dont have to talk to to a questgiver.

-This a cassual MMORPG, simlified stats, no much character progression.

-The AH is too weird for me, i love the old sistem

Good things are excelent graphics and perfect customization of your char

[sacrypheyes]

most of your cons tell us how you're the type that jumped into the hype wagon without even trying to know where you were going and then complaining about the destination.

also :
-mounts have nothing to do with having loading screens between each zones
-the lack of more challenging content is something i do agree on, but the no trinity system is anything but a con as it allows to set up groups so much faster
-we must not play the same game or you limited yourself to your first race starter zone
-do you refer to the number of skills you can put in your skill bar or the total number of skills you can choose from? if it's the former, i'd say you don't really need 100+ keybinds to make a good game (see LoL), if it's the latter, i'd more or less agree but it's to be expected to get more as xpacs will come out
-quests will always be quests, this is something that cannot change much no matter the game. main differences though are players are not put in some sort of competition against each other but rather have them work together, also that with the removal of mob tagging which is such trivial detail but helps a lot too.
-moar stats don't always make a greater game, and atm there is no need for more. as for character progression, once again a matter of perspective, if you expected to steamroll everything once you got full ascended/exotics and got yourself your legendary, then obviously you picked the wrong game. gear helps but is not mandatory to clear most of the game content.
-TP being "weird" to you being a con is what seems weird to me.

[Deleted]

I never post on mmo-champion but I thought I might give my opinion on GW2, and the reason I havn't logged in to the game for a couple of months. Imma apologize in advance for this long ass, boring post. I've just been thinking alot about vidya gayms and how they're designed lately. I'm not saying that GW2 is flawed. I am just trying to explain why I disagree with certain design choices.

I think that WoW and games that follow the same formula are addicting due to one simple fact; the gear/level treadmill. Blizzard's got some sharp phsycologists. They know just how to get you worked up for that carrot just out of arm's reach, and how to make you repeat the same activity over and over again (dungeon farming, questing etc.) in order to get said carrot. I think that this is the basic business model, and after several years of WoWing I kinda feel cheated. The spell probably still works on me, though, and I bet I'd enjoy the fake-enjoyment of WoW again and again, being the manipunable dumbdumb I am. Sometimes being manipulated is okay!

Before I played WoW, I used to play the HELL out of a game called Star Wars Galaxies (before the notorious NGE patch). It was a sand-boxy type of MMO. You can argue that the combat sucked and the controls were bad, but what made that game VERY special to me was the fact that it relied on player created content rather than developer created content. What I mean by this is that there simply were no tiers of gear, linear leveling, scripted quests/dungeons etc. At launch, the game world, consisting of nine or so VAST and alien planets, was completely devoid of civilization except for cities required by SW lore (Mos Eisley etc). In place was an incredibly fleshed-out system for players and/or guilds to acquire plots of land and start building cities from scratch. No zoning in or out. The player cities were there whether you wanted them to or not. Everything in the game was crafted by players. Weapons, armor, clothing, housing, vehicles etc. Being part of a guild with a thriving city gave crafters the opportunity to set up vendors. Business alliances rose and collapsed. Guilds waged all-out war on each other or tied connections all around the galaxy to strengthen their reputation (no BGs in this game). The game was based around player interactiong without players having an ulterior motive of getting from point A to B gear- or levelwise. I did not hang out with my guild because they could help me get the "top tier gear", but because they were crucial to my social survivability, reputation and safety if I actually wanted to be someone of social importance in the game world. It's mind-blowing how invested people were in their characters.

This is what made SWG so addictive to me, and this is what, in my opinion, games like WoW lack. In it's place is the gear/leveling treadmill. It is a simple A to B grind, but due to it's manipulative nature it can be very addictive.

Now to Guild Wars 2, lol. The game has great production values and is nicely crafted and packaged, but as game I feel that GW2 lacks in both the departments I've talked about. The gear/leveling part has already been discussed to lenght here, so I wont go into that.

The game feels strangely mechanical and static to me. I feel almost a little bit cheated by all the talk of the amazing dynamic events-system. Dynamic events, which in reality are simply branching questlines that repeat infinately no matter the consequences of the previous run-through. This is not a flaw, it is by design. But I recall big talk about innovation and dynamic story-telling. Yet it's the same-old to me. I have always felt that the main purpose of a video game is not to blatantly tell a story, but to get the player actively involved in telling a story without the player feeling forced into or even noticing the transition. Killing X mobs 'til there are no more mobs to get the next cutscene is just lazy game design, in my opinion. This is what I credit games like SWG and EVE online for, even though they might be overly complicated or too hardcore or unfriendly towards casual play (atleast they don't manipulate you with cheap trickery of the mind, like WoW). Intense drama has played/plays out in those games each and every day, without the need of voice actors, cutscenes and A to B questing. I know GW2 never set out to be SWG or EVE online, but the game disappointed me based on the promises during promition nonetheless.