A 'World of Warcraft' Player Reviews 'Guild Wars 2'

[DreamCast]

WoW has has many good competitors, several much better but.........

I do agree the blizzard name still pulls a lot of weight, like for instance if the game d3 was released by lets say trion under the name "Demon Slayer" it would of been lucky to sell 100 000 copies.

[Deatheryn]

GW2 has never wanted anything more than to challenge WoW.

^From this^,....To this------>

Why do ya gotta bring that into this? Arena Net's goal has never been to kill WoW.

I may be wrong but those two statements seem to pretty much contradict each other!, huh?

Anyhow, GW2 is awesome game and while its focus is mostly PVP based(which it does fantastically), the PVE lvl'g content if fun. I have planned to purchase the game but am currently on the fence. The problems I see for myself playing the game (not others) are as follows

1.)The account security. I don't care what ppl say about hackers getting email info from other games that were breached, while that may be a a part of the cause, it is not the entirety of it. I think there was a database breach at Anet and either it went unnoticed or at the very least unannounced. There are security issues that need to desperately be addressed by Anet.

2.) The Nepolean Complex of Anet(Getting extremely carried away w/in their power trip) and their overzealous banning/suspensions for the dumbest shit. To pay $60 and spend hours working on a character only to get banned/suspended for a first minor offense is ridiculous. I understand that they want a good clear atmosphere for the whole family, which I completely agree w/ I might add, there needs to be some sort of reasonable leeway. Like a anywhere from a few hour suspension for 1st time minor offense to a 24-72 hour suspension for a moderate 1st time offense. These things need to be clearly stated as in a separate Code of Conduct that is agreed to by itself not buried in an EULA chock full of shit you have to hire a lawyer to interpret.

3.) Almost nonexistent Customer Support. This one is merely hearsay, as I do not own the game, therefore have not had any problems myself in which I had the need to deal w/ Anet's CS first hand. If what I have heard is true, their customer support has been horrible at best. It is a vital part of any product, and keeping your customers happy and consuming your product is job 1. If you fail at that you will not only lose customers but fail to attract new ones through the best advertisement known, which is word of mouth, or recommendation. Now to be fair, this very well may be due to being spread thin at the moment because it did just get released and they are working on many things/bugs that have since reared their heads. This issue may be absolved in time, and I really hope so.

Those are my issues w/ the game! Not w/ how it plays or the game play systems which I find to be fantastic, but w/ the company itself. I am waiting and hoping that these things are all just a result of it being new and will all be smoothed over as time goes on. Great game though and really looking forward to playing it.

[Window]

what if blizzard merged with wow oh yes i was missing cartoon graphics and horrible looking armor

[igame]

Rebuttal:

Graphics... the better graphics are, the more exclusive they are to other players. The quality of graphics in GW2 forces some of my good friends to be unable to play. World of Warcraft wins in this department because it includes a wider audience. Both games should meet in the middle.


Again, the more character models, the more loading time that occurs. This is part of the graphical issue that causes GW2 to fail. Adjusting individual history causes quests to be different which, if you dig deeply, means that you can't play with friends who pick different history on some quests! MMO is supposed to be multiplayer, but questing in GW2 feels very single player.


Scenarios will provide the same, and Blizzard's recent blue post boasts about 25 man scenarios. Keeping them out of the world helps so that you aren't running into these and forced to pass through or around them. Even without scenarios, LFR provides a location for players to work together to overcome easy bosses. When playing GW2, I found that when I ran into the same DE again and again, I was forced to participate. After doing the same one 3 times, I got bored.

Not to mention the engineer bug where you can leave turrets right where DE bosses spawn to get XP from them! Cool...



Death Knights and Druids both have this ability in MoP. Death Knights steal from enemies, while Druids borrow from allies. It only adds dynamic to PvP combat for a thief, so this point seems to be moot if we're comparing GW2 to WoW, which this article is pretty much doing.



Rotations exist to do maximum damage in any PvE content. No game can avoid rotation! Just because you add the word "jump" as a synonym for dodge doesn't make 3 different things that GW2 has that WoW doesn't. Dodging attacks is the same as pushing the "special action button" in Dragon Soul to go into the twilight. Dodging attacks is why nobody ever dies in GW2 in high end PvP battles.



This is the same as specs in WoW. Different specs give you different abilities. Talents and glyphs do the same thing! The "rigid" combat system is GW2. I feel like I only have a few buttons which are constantly changing what they do in GW2. I use one abilities 5 times, and suddenly, it becomes something else!


This exemplifies the problem with underwater combat. You're forced to use specific specs (or weapons in this case!).


Another reason that GW2 feels more single player than multiplayer. I am not truly effecting the world.



This is because it's fresh and new. It's only a matter of time before they're completely deserted.



They were eliminated because after playing them for a year, you never really felt a sense of accomplishment. I absolutely loved AV in the early days... going to work, coming home and the battle would still be raging. But after a year, you just never felt like you were helping in the battle. I felt insignificant as I pushed for Stormpike GY for hours on end. Now, I can be there for the entire battle, the reason for victory or come up short in defeat. If WvW was truly rewarding for the fun factor, what makes you think people wouldn't be doing it in WoW?

This is a pretty apt rebuttal. I am currently in a "I love it-love it not" relationship with GW2 and have decided to level to 80 before I quit or stay for good but while questing in WoW, the one thing I really used to look forward to was the upgraded gear rewards that made leveling easier. In GW2, nothing except class quest gives gear and class quest is grossly overtuned at places.
I could but gear using karma but people say it's like 10k karma to buy anything at top level so i am not wasting any karma.

There are a lot of things I like about GW2 but one thing I dislike is how extremely grindy it is, from the get go.
I will finish leveling, I have quit once and then started playing the next day again lol. I think I will level this time.

On topic of how, they had everything, great characters, amazing story plots (titans, argus, old gods etc) but they decided to make pandaland with pokemon so there's no going back to that either.

If GW2 does not work, I am really glad Skyrim is adding more content.

[Contravene]

GW2 hasn't reached the level of WoW yet imo. My advice is don't compare GW2 to WoW just play Guild Wars 2 and be happy. I realized when I bought GW2 it wasn't going to measure up to the mechanics I have been challenged with in WoW.. GW2 challenges you with Zerg Fest/Knock Down Fest/One Shot Mechanics. And you can't say you didn't know there'd be this play style in the game with all the videos available long before purchase. Any video you watch shows all of the above. (And I still chose melee)

Simply put they are two very different games. WoW is a level of "team" strategy I am not seeing with GW2.. As a melee player by preference I can tell you if you are looking to be challenged GW2 is the right game though. We can all cast and run, dodge, elude and etc.. But there are some mobs in this game I will not melee, there is no point. First comes the Knockdown, then a powerful aoe, then continued aoe so you have no chance to fight for life in downed state.. So after saying that I love the challenges of GW2 I want to qualify that by including; I am not afraid to pull out a rifle and go ranged.

P.S. If you die at the last minute of a big event boss, you don't get experience/reward, even if you lay there dead still.. So being melee for a 10 minute fight can really tick you off if you die in the last seconds. (So much for the day of taking one for the team.. It is every man for himself in this game)

[TheSerialSniper]

counter rebuttal in different shades of green

Rebuttal:

Graphics... the better graphics are, the more exclusive they are to other players. The quality of graphics in GW2 forces some of my good friends to be unable to play. World of Warcraft wins in this department because it includes a wider audience. Both games should meet in the middle.

Any computer that can run wow mop can run gw2 on lower settings

Again, the more character models, the more loading time that occurs. This is part of the graphical issue that causes GW2 to fail. Adjusting individual history causes quests to be different which, if you dig deeply, means that you can't play with friends who pick different history on some quests! MMO is supposed to be multiplayer, but questing in GW2 feels very single player.

You can lower this setting

Scenarios will provide the same, and Blizzard's recent blue post boasts about 25 man scenarios. Keeping them out of the world helps so that you aren't running into these and forced to pass through or around them. Even without scenarios, LFR provides a location for players to work together to overcome easy bosses. When playing GW2, I found that when I ran into the same DE again and again, I was forced to participate. After doing the same one 3 times, I got bored.

I have been able to ignore many DE's

Not to mention the engineer bug where you can leave turrets right where DE bosses spawn to get XP from them! Cool...

Better than hunter pets spawning at 0 hp and getting gibbed or vanish not working

Death Knights and Druids both have this ability in MoP. Death Knights steal from enemies, while Druids borrow from allies. It only adds dynamic to PvP combat for a thief, so this point seems to be moot if we're comparing GW2 to WoW, which this article is pretty much doing.

The thief ability does not really on spells being casted or allies being around

Rotations exist to do maximum damage in any PvE content. No game can avoid rotation! Just because you add the word "jump" as a synonym for dodge doesn't make 3 different things that GW2 has that WoW doesn't. Dodging attacks is the same as pushing the "special action button" in Dragon Soul to go into the twilight. Dodging attacks is why nobody ever dies in GW2 in high end PvP battles.

1. You always have dodge and being able to roll adds another layer of skill
2. Healing in GW is extremely limited compared to wow
3. Nobody ever dies in high end wow pvp either
4. In Gw pvp you actually get to play your character and attack stuff and not just spam cc or be cc'd which is a huge difference between it and wow pvp

This is the same as specs in WoW. Different specs give you different abilities. Talents and glyphs do the same thing! The "rigid" combat system is GW2. I feel like I only have a few buttons which are constantly changing what they do in GW2. I use one abilities 5 times, and suddenly, it becomes something else!

Rigid being you do not have to respec everytime you want a different play style and the game letting you play with each ability before getting the next. got it.

This exemplifies the problem with underwater combat. You're forced to use specific specs (or weapons in this case!).

Underwater combat does not exist in many mmos because it does not work. GW made a system that works. Yes it does require adapting to the new playstyle, but it is well worth it if you enjoy the game.

Another reason that GW2 feels more single player than multiplayer. I am not truly effecting the world.

I have yet to see an mmo pull this off yet

This is because it's fresh and new. It's only a matter of time before they're completely deserted.

I have to agree with this one. WvWvW requires people specifically from your server and two others to be playing and in equal amounts to work right. I avoid WvWvW because it is really not fun or balanced (whoever has more people wins)

They were eliminated because after playing them for a year, you never really felt a sense of accomplishment. I absolutely loved AV in the early days... going to work, coming home and the battle would still be raging. But after a year, you just never felt like you were helping in the battle. I felt insignificant as I pushed for Stormpike GY for hours on end. Now, I can be there for the entire battle, the reason for victory or come up short in defeat. If WvW was truly rewarding for the fun factor, what makes you think people wouldn't be doing it in WoW?

[Ironmonster]

im sorry but wow isnt the biggest MMO out.... I can name around 5 MMOs that are bigger.... and now that wow caters for children and is like an old wreck of a car

like others have said.... you want to compare it to pong? or everquest? these games are way too old now

LOL
Go ahead name 5

[Beefhammer]

Thankfully, you're one of the few WoW players who seem to get it. GW2 has never wanted anything more than to challenge WoW.

Whether they will or not, remains to be seen. Even WoW took a while to really ramp up in popularity.


What I've found myself wondering lately is: What would happen if Blizzard and ANet came together, combining their strengths? Blizzard is obviously experienced in encounter design. ANet is obviously experienced in designing questing content.
And while I don't want to bash on Blizzard's combat, I want to say that ANet really knows how to make MMO combat exciting again, and innovate on the possibilities.

I would love to see some kind of raid content in GW2, but only if it were done right. Obviously without the gear progression... it would just, essentially, be Explorable dungeons with a larger group size.

Roughly 3 months after release it had the most players. It was pretty popular early on. They only expected to have about 350k and they got over 500k and had to scramble to get and brig online more servers to meet the demand.

As for GW2 questing content, I found it pretty repetitive after level 5 except for the story quest. All the dynamic events play out the same, kill x amount, do x amount of things, reduce moral/ranks of enemy, then or kill the big bad guy. The main story is pretty good so far for my human guardian. I focused on it too much early on now I am so far below the level required to move on I need to grind out a few levels to catch up. I am not at the level 30 needed for the actual dungeons but I have not found a reason needed to group up.

My opinion about GW2 and competing with WoW is that it won't. I am not saying that from a fan boy perspective. I want competition so all games can be better for all us gamers. I just feel it is too similar in the SWTOR style of a giant single player game with a massive multiplayer lobby. I do not think it is a bad game at all I just do no think it is in direct competition with WoW. It will pull in the old GW1 players, people burnt out on WoW and raiding type MMOs. But I think it will be like rift and Warhammer with its Dynamic events and WvWvW style PvP that will only attract a niche player base.

Just my opinion. Things may change if I get up to the dungeons and higher level events. If that happens then I will be surprised and hopeful that there may be some competition to push up the quality of all MMOs in the future.

[Kaariana]

Rebuttal:
*snip*

I can agree with most of your points on this rebuttal. I never mentioned this game was going to be for everyone. And I do mention that I will be playing this with WoW. I only hoped to give some people insight into the game before they decide to buy it. As mentioned it was my first reactions, and I can see some of your points as I continue leveling my thief. Currently level 47 in Harathi Hinterlands. Thank you for taking the time to read it.

[Beefhammer]

The fatal mistake here is that you think I'm comparing the game to WoW. I'm not.
I'm judging it on it's own merits.

This so much. If you take any MMOs on its own merit most of us will have no issues at all. This constant comparing to WoW sickens me because no game is nor will ever be WoW. And it is possible for a few to exist and do well.

The ability to have multiple skills for each weapon type is very nice, and the the earlier poster is nothing like having different specs.

[Kaariana]

Yea, I can also confirm the temple bosses are for the most part not mechanically complex. The nature of DEs almost never changes from level 1 through 80. The game is fairly singular in that regard.

Have you been able to see if low level areas give different DEs at max level Fencers? This was one of the things I read about features in GW2. Was hoping that would be the case. In terms of boss mechanics, I can agree as well. Hopefully it will increase as more dungeons are added.

*EDIT*: In terms of why I posted this on the GW2 forums, I wanted to see what people thought about my input from this article. I wasn't the author of it, Carol Pinchefsky was. I really wanted to do something like this since gaming is a big part of my life. I figured the community of MMOC could give their thoughts on the article. Even have it as another tool when someone is doing research about whether to play the game or not. In any case, thank you to all who read the article and added their input here!

[Defect]

I really wish Blizzard would release some friggen content for you guys so you'd go back to your game and quit posting on a GW2 forum ;-)

The same way you go into every wow thread to bash it? Oh lol.

[Beefhammer]

minecraft
runescape
free realms
blade and soul
witcher and madden NFL 13



if you discount the highly inproportional china subs (how many ppl can they have anyway)

wow western has 5 million and ALOT of games beat this... so there

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...on-Xfire-EVAH-!

minecraft alone has 36 mill registered users and thats not counting pirated copies with all these games

i bet ya facebook games also have a higher population...

sorry to burst your bubble

If you are counting subs you need to count all of them not just the NA/EU accounts. The eastern pay per min/hour/day players still count and actually have a few world firsts under their name. They are not all farmers and bots.

[DrakeWurrum]

This so much. If you take any MMOs on its own merit most of us will have no issues at all. This constant comparing to WoW sickens me because no game is nor will ever be WoW. And it is possible for a few to exist and do well.

Has nothing to do with trying to make any other game WoW. Comparing one game to another within the same genre/industry is important for picking out a game's strengths and weaknesses.

For example: If you consider story to be the most important quality of all, you'll probably enjoy SWTOR more than GW2. I don't have personal experience to qualify said judgment as I've never played SWTOR, but I've seen enough people praise SWTOR, and have played KOTOR 1 and 2 enough, that it would not surprise me to find that SWTOR's story is actually good.
GW2's story-writing, in my opinion, and that of many other regulars around here, really isn't too amazing, even as far as MMORPGs go.

That's not bashing, that's not hating, that's just being factually observant by comparing games against each other. In much the same way, if you strongly prefer WoW's raiding over other forms of PvE content, you should obviously stick to WoW, or at least look for other reasons to play GW2.

In much the same way, you can't look at how well GW2 forces player interaction, on it's own, and go "Oh man, it sucks."
Because, compared to other games, it's par for the course.

Hell, since most of you absolutely hate the LFD tool with such ridiculous passion and complete disregard for what's good about it, you should probably be saying that GW2 has more emphasis on player interaction than WoW, since I have to go back to the old TBC method of helping people realize I'm not bad (and in many cases, have more skill than them) before we can group together.

[Dylamoo]

[QUOTE=Wait so it's bad to do an entire worlds worth of content for 8months, but it's good to do a single raid for 8 months because you get gear? Just checking to make sure I'm reading that right cause it sounds kinda off.[/QUOTE]

Another case of reading what you wanted to read, i only state that you are doomed to face the same thing in every game you play. All mmorpgs follow this model and that's exactly a part of the mmorpg experience. If you think about it the goal is always the same thing, you grind something for long periods of time until you get it. The method about doing it is no different, you grind it period.

[Stellan]

This is pretty funny and apropos to this topic. http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/03/wo...ch-other-mmos/

[draykorinee]

This is pretty funny and apropos to this topic. http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/03/wo...ch-other-mmos/

That is a great video