Why not as popular?

[Gray_Matter]

That's what people always say, but I think it's a bit of a false statement. WoW and GW2 both have enjoyable leveling experience, but because WoW has A LOT of endgame content (at least when I played years ago), people forget about the leveling and want to rush to highest level.

GW2 doesn't have as much of a focus on endgame, so people tend to focus more on the 'leveling experience'.

Doesn't mean that experience doesn't exist in WoW, people just forget about it and rush to max level.
I mean, I personally enjoy GW2 more, but I don't think it necessarily has a better leveling experience than WoW.

I bought WoD and tried to play WOW again for a bit and you are really punished during leveling. I like to complete a zone in it's entirety. You can't do that in WOW. If you do the amount of XP that you earn in the zone is reduced so much that it's almost pointless. In my case it dropped from over 10k XP per quest to something like 100 XP or 200 XP. You don't really get a chance to experience the content because the game forces you to skip half of it. You can't use an alt to complete the zone because part of the quests are chained and you would have to redo other quests.

[Svifnymr]

I bought WoD and tried to play WOW again for a bit and you are really punished during leveling. I like to complete a zone in it's entirety. You can't do that in WOW. If you do the amount of XP that you earn in the zone is reduced so much that it's almost pointless. In my case it dropped from over 10k XP per quest to something like 100 XP or 200 XP. You don't really get a chance to experience the content because the game forces you to skip half of it. You can't use an alt to complete the zone because part of the quests are chained and you would have to redo other quests.

I was playing an alt on a different realm than my normal one, so just took gathering stuff to sell the mats off. I overleveled reallllly fast for a zone by gathering everything as I went about the quests. As you say, once you've overleveled you're pretty much told to move on via xp reduction, useless gear, et cetera.

Another thing I liked with GW2 was getting the skills pretty quick, but then they changed that. WoW/ TOR, you earn your abilities over dozens of levels, the way you play at max has almost no bearing on the rest.

Everything about WoW makes it feel like leveling is nothing more than a long tutorial to get you to the "real game" at max level.

[Biggles Worth]

After playing World of Warcraft for so long, I got hooked, not wanting to play any other game besides World of Warcraft. I found it a bit difficult to enjoy other games, MMO or not. Even if the game was good I just didn't feel like playing it. Besides being PJSalty, it's entirely due to not jumping ship on World of Warcraft sooner and being strung along hoping the game will get better. For everything they did right, they did 5 things wrong and left gaming in general very stale to me cause I expect way too much. I've mentally cleansed myself of WoW and am now enjoying gaming much more and rediscovered the fun I was missing out on in Guild Wars 2 and can not wait for the expansion to come out. Best advice I can give anyone is to just let WoW go, forget about it, you know your guildies are tired of it, tell them to let it go, it may take you a while, you might hop on MMO champion and see some Blizzcon updates, stay strong, don't give in to nostalgia, past addictions can be strong, just let WoW go, forget about how Legion looks like it's the last hope. Go have some fun in Guild Wars 2, get your guildies if you have any left to come play too. The core game is free after all.

[Deleted]

WHy I didn't like it as much as other MMOs:

- boring skillsystem: it's mainly based on cooldowns, most classes have no ressources, no procs, no dots where you have to manage uptime, etc. In addition a lot of skills have quite long cooldowns like 30s+, so you end up a lot of time "autohitting" (spamming button number 1)

- most weapons and their skills are not interesting enough to use. You get five skills from your weapons, but if two or three of these five are boring, using the weapon is just not fun. I only found two weapons on two classes really nice (greatsword on warrior and greatsword on guardian) whre I actually liked all five skills. A system like GW 1 whre you had a larger number of skills to customize your skillset would have been better (maybe 10 skills per weapon, where you can choose 5)

- boring heart-system, they tried to replace the "kill 10 of these, collect 15 of this"-quests and created something even more boring

- the pve/pvp-zergs that were already mentioned a lot

In the end GW2 is game for me, that I always wanted to play because it looks just so nice, but I always ended up being disappointed and only managed to get one char to 80.

[Fencers]

- most weapons and their skills are not interesting enough to use. You get five skills from your weapons, but if two or three of these five are boring, using the weapon is just not fun. I only found two weapons on two classes really nice (greatsword on warrior and greatsword on guardian) whre I actually liked all five skills. A system like GW 1 whre you had a larger number of skills to customize your skillset would have been better (maybe 10 skills per weapon, where you can choose 5)

This hits home for me too. I play GW2 on/off but I never get it's particular teeth sunk in me largely because of how removed I feel as a player from it all. GW1 is stark, 180 contrast to this feeling regarding GW2.

- boring heart-system, they tried to replace the "kill 10 of these, collect 15 of this"-quests and created something even more boring

Hearts are not quest or even the main motivation of a map's dynamic events. Hearts are pointers. They point you to an area, you do the heart, and explore out from the heart. Not run to another heart, per se.

If one were thinking of hearts in terms of a bar one must necessarily fill that is short of the design philosophy.

[Kazgrel]

Since there's no data (that I know of) from Arenanet to note how many people are actually playing the game, there's no real way to determine how "popular" the game is. That is, if popularity is soley determined by number of active players, which seems to be the most common metric. A game could be wildly popular among a particular demographic, yet in the grand scheme it isn't so.

I'm just going to sit back and laugh if Anet manages to introduce decent raid content at a faster rate than what Blizz churns out for WoW.

[Synadrasa]

GW2 combat is no where near the fluidity and smoothness of WoW's. GW2 leveling actually really fun though, with all the events, although I've only done it once. But when I played I wouldn't say the the game wasn't popular in fact the amount of people I saw in GW2 out doing events while leveling was like 10x wows. At one point fighting a boss with seriously 100 or more people, I think partly because of GW2 down-leveling feature to let max level char participate as well.

[Kazgrel]

GW2 combat is no where near the fluidity and smoothness of WoW's. GW2 leveling actually really fun though, with all the events, although I've only done it once.

Do what? GW2 is pretty much the only MMO that is even remotely close to the fluidity of combat/animation present in WoW. SWTOR (at launch), TSW, and FF14 (a game I thoroughly enjoy) don't come near as close to that. Dunno about Wildstar, but I may find out about that soon enough.

[Synadrasa]

Do what? GW2 is pretty much the only MMO that is even remotely close to the fluidity of combat/animation present in WoW. SWTOR (at launch), TSW, and FF14 (a game I thoroughly enjoy) don't come near as close to that. Dunno about Wildstar, but I may find out about that soon enough.

Don't know how it is now. I remember jumping off a wall in GW2 and not being able to charge a mob until I hit the ground, among other things.

[Thrif]

WHy I didn't like it as much as other MMOs:

- boring skillsystem: it's mainly based on cooldowns, most classes have no ressources, no procs, no dots where you have to manage uptime, etc. In addition a lot of skills have quite long cooldowns like 30s+, so you end up a lot of time "autohitting" (spamming button number 1)

- most weapons and their skills are not interesting enough to use. You get five skills from your weapons, but if two or three of these five are boring, using the weapon is just not fun. I only found two weapons on two classes really nice (greatsword on warrior and greatsword on guardian) whre I actually liked all five skills. A system like GW 1 whre you had a larger number of skills to customize your skillset would have been better (maybe 10 skills per weapon, where you can choose 5)

This sums it up for me as well. While the game had many things going for it, and I've never wanted a weapon in a game as bad as I wanted Twilight, I just couldn't get past the boring and unintuitive combat system. It honestly felt like it was thrown together in a random generator.

[Kazgrel]

Don't know how it is now. I remember jumping off a wall in GW2 and not being able to charge a mob until I hit the ground, among other things.

I don't ever recall being able to charge in mid air in GW2 with any class. I don't see how this affects fluidity; I mean, does it really make sense for a warrior to be able to execute charge while falling in mid air (coming from someone who did that countless times to snipe mobs or gank people in WoW)?

[Fencers]

I feel the weapon/skill system is made even more unbearable and removed due to the inability for a player to move any of the skills on their 1-5 hotbar.

As long as I have days left on this Earth, I will never bind a charge or dash skill to the #2 key. However, Guild Wars 2 forces this state of being upon me without a single fuck given. Maddening.

I have never felt so incidental as a player to the game I am playing as when I play Guild Wars 2.

[Notshauna]

This sums it up for me as well. While the game had many things going for it, and I've never wanted a weapon in a game as bad as I wanted Twilight, I just couldn't get past the boring and unintuitive combat system. It honestly felt like it was thrown together in a random generator.

I find that aspect varies heavily depending on the class and weapon. Some weapons really work others are pretty meh. In general though I found that I enjoyed the game a lot more when I spent less time rigidly following rules such as dual wielding the same weapon type. It's honestly quite the overwhelming system but I can usually find at least a full set per class that I enjoy, even with Rangers which are notorious for having boring skills.

I don't ever recall being able to charge in mid air in GW2 with any class. I don't see how this affects fluidity; I mean, does it really make sense for a warrior to be able to execute charge while falling in mid air (coming from someone who did that countless times to snipe mobs or gank people in WoW)?

The non targeted charges can be done in air. But, honestly I've had so much more can't use that skill in regards to charging in WoW than Guild Wars 2. Like I've had it happen but mainly with targeted stuff, such as Guardian Sword 2 and Judge’s Intervention, but never with straight forward charges (like Ranger Greatsword 3).

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I feel the weapon/skill system is made even more unbearable and removed due to the inability for a player to move any of the skills on their 1-5 hotbar.

As long as I have days left on this Earth, I will never bind a charge or dash skill to the #2 key. However, Guild Wars 2 forces this state of being upon me without a single fuck given. Maddening.

I have never felt so incidental as a player to the game I am playing as when I play Guild Wars 2.

It's a consequence of the system, but you can rebind them out of order in to make the play experience better. It's not uncommon to see some really weird keybinds at top level play.

[Fencers]

It's a consequence of the system, but you can rebind them out of order in to make the play experience better. It's not uncommon to see some really weird keybinds at top level play.

Rebinding doesn't really work. First off, it's a pain to do per character and/or per weapon grouping. Secondly, if you rebind the keys for one class using one weapon set and swap weapon sets those bindings usually mean nothing.

If you are playing a button heavy class such as Engineer or Elementalist it becomes even more unfeasible to rebind for every iteration of skill flips, weapon swap and stance. That's even assuming you only use two of a class' weapon type as well.

It's just not feasible.

[Usagi Senshi]

Do what? GW2 is pretty much the only MMO that is even remotely close to the fluidity of combat/animation present in WoW. SWTOR (at launch), TSW, and FF14 (a game I thoroughly enjoy) don't come near as close to that. Dunno about Wildstar, but I may find out about that soon enough.

Don't agree with this at all. FFXIV combat is more fluid and has combos and complexity that make sense, same with TERA, and Wildstar (lesser extent here tbh). GW2 is good and all but man, I sure hope my character is facing my opponent before I get animation locked or my charge doesn't goes past my target again, etc. All of that happens too often for me to even consider this game in the top tier of combat systems. I still enjoy it though and its very responsive but no where near other action MMOs.

[draykorinee]

Yeah, I didn't play FF14 a lot but the combat was more fluid imo, both are really good mind.

[draykorinee]

FFXIV combat more fluid?

We're clearly using different definitions of the term here. :O

There's only one and it's mine, which is always the right one

[Valeron]

FFXIV combat more fluid?

We're clearly using different definitions of the term here. :O

Indeed, I can understand people thinking WoW has more fluid combat (even if I don't like that combat, it still has its good points) but FFXIV?

[Deleted]

Despite how much I love FFXIV, it is not at all fluid.

At least it's not as bad as 1.0

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I prefer Gw2's combat system over a lot of others because it's fast paced and most of all because it doesn't lock you in place for every skill that has to charge.

Playing WoW or FFXIV (fu wanderers minuet) after Gw2 is always a huge slap in the face for the first couple of hours.

[Deleted]

fashion wars 2

sums up the game.