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

[sacrypheyes]

GW was always about loot though, obsidian armor, chaos gloves/axe, getting that perfect combo, what GW did right is you were rewarded along the way.

yeah cause you definitely could loot obsidian armor and chaos gloves from any random chest right? not like you had to farm for weeks to get enough ectos to CRAFT them...

[Lazuli]

I was about to type down a WoW vs GW2 chart, but I felt it was unnecessary.
GW2 can't be compared to any of the current, nor old MMO "RPGS".
It's far more action originated than the rest.
I bought it on launch, played for a few hours and thought to myself "hey, this is just another dumbed down version of what's out there".
I just recently picked the game up again (about a month ago) and oh was I wrong.

PS. When ever you compare GW2 to WoW or any other "Original MMO", you may want to add Planet Side 2 into the equation. . . .

It is pretty dumbed down though, I haven't faced anything of heroic raid difficulty in this game - not even close. I don't really feel like grinding fractals to 40+ so maybe it's my fault though? :P there also isn't any strategy.

My tera warrior tank says hai...

yeah cause you definitely could loot obsidian armor and chaos gloves from any random chest right? not like you had to farm for weeks to get enough ectos to CRAFT them...

Yea what's your point? Ecto actually dropped in GW1... was easy to solo farm too

[Lane]

I play more than 1-2 hours, I'm hit with loot diminishing returns, I mean seriously how fucking pathetic is that? You are literally punished for playing GW2 in extended periods of time.

I'm still not 100% clear on how diminishing returns work. The GW2 wiki doesn't really go into detail about it. What does suck is I've read it's account wide, so basically even when I switch to an alt I'm going to be hit with reduced drops? That's messed up if it's true. I don't know what the 'cooldown' on it is either. I do tend to take a lot of breaks when I play, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that DR doesn't reset for hours.

[Clockwork Pinkie]

To OP, sure why not, not like you've got anything else to do with your time, it's one of those MMO's though that you could just hit max level and just stop playing. It's a complicated case of "There's nothing pointless to do at the end so instead you're doing other pointless things that have no kind of competition on your server and what not" AKA Endgame, PvP is still fun from time to time, I do a jumping puzzle here and there, but I see myself spending time on other games. :|

[Myrrar]

Probably not, and that's because I don't feel mmos are really tuned to players who want to be super casual.

I personally need to feel like I'm working towards something. In WoW I always felt making my character better was a plus when it came to raiding. Leveling alts was worth the hassle due to having my own professions and an alt for practice/alt runs...to further help my main. Now that I quit raiding, I find it hard to play at all. Unless I have a focus(challenge modes, pvp, something) I just can't bring myself to play it.

I felt the same way in Rift even though I absolutely loved the gameplay. SWTOR was fine due to having your own story but I found alting hard due to so many of the quests being exactly the same. In GW I felt the same way.

There are so many amazing things GW implemented but I hated the PvP and without a real endgame PvE to focus on I just couldn't bring myself to continue leveling.

If my friends wanted to game really casually I'd say play non-mmos. If they insisted on a MMO and had been playing WoW for a long time, I'd say just stick to it(LFR is by far the most rewarding when it comes to playing casually). If they were just overly bored with WoW, I'd ask what their favorite thing to do is(raid casually, farm vanity things, solo content or do old content, pvp, explore, whatever) and point them to the MMO out of Tera, GW2, TSW, Rift, and SWTOR that fits it best and play that until they got bored. I doubt any of them would keep their attention for very long.

I'm about to start playing GW2 again so maybe my opinion will change.

[Giants41]

Yes i would.

[sacrypheyes]

Yea what's your point? Ecto actually dropped in GW1... was easy to solo farm too

if you can't tell the difference between looting an item and looting the materials required to craft it, there's nothing much to discuss.

except for weapons, there is no gear you can loot from any place in GW1 and about everything had to do with farming the mats.
if you feel "rewarded" for looting ectos in UW or FoW, good for you, but i hardly see the difference with looting rares in gw2 which i'll salvage or use in MF for possibly an exotic item.
also, while you can go and farm mats in gw2 as well (by mats, i also count tokens you get from dungeons), you will also loot exotic gear (weapons/armor) here and there too.

i won't even comment about your point on gear treadmill which shows you don't even know what you're talking about (ie "zomg ascended items" syndrome) and not even worth replying to.

all i can agree about in all your points is the lack of highly challenging content in PvE encounters atm. all the rest seems like random whiny-whining if anything.

[Gray_Matter]

...
But don't dare think for a second it's a better game. It's not. Wow is miles better and the graphics are miles better. Note: I don't play wow.
...
YOU CANNOT COMPARE WOW TO GW1/2 - THEY ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAMES.

You just did. It's a matter of opinion. Some people will think one is better and other people will prefer the other.

To answer the OP's question. I don't feel obligated to play GW2 where I did with WOW otherwise I would fall behind. I have a lot of fun playing GW2. There were times when I first quit WOW (before GW2's release) and I felt like playing. I resisted because it's a time sink. I haven't felt like playing WOW since I started playing GW2. Be warned, though, don't expect GW2 to be like WOW, it's not. It's different and the goals are different. The answer will ultimately depend on what you enjoyed about WOW.

[Kouki]

Good lord no. The games are worlds apart, very different.

Wow is very continuous - you need to go somewhere (and blizzard need to make people go to more places, more often) and it's a trek. You can be playing on one continent, and someone you know, guild person or not is needing you, you make the journey. And on top of the journey there, you might meet others.. or enemies and a fight starts up. It's an open world.

GW.. well allegedly has better graphics. And some nice introductions into MMORPG game style. Yes it does, some nice new interface/announcements. But don't dare think for a second it's a better game. It's not. Wow is miles better and the graphics are miles better. Note: I don't play wow.

Ultimately GW made some good new features but I'd rather not go there. I bought GW2, I played about 2 hours. Here is the bottom line for all MMO players:

YOU CANNOT COMPARE WOW TO GW1/2 - THEY ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAMES.

Do you know what compare means?

Gw2 Has Better Graphics.

This is a Human Female Warlock Her Armor is painted on her skin model. There can't Ever be new armor just new colors and patterns, The shape never changes.
Humans in wow have dots for eyes, As do most races sometimes its a coloured dot.



This is a Guild wars 2 Female Elementalist, Her Armor is not painted on to her skin frame. She has full 3d Eyes, They blink they look at her target.
They have an iris and details that of skyrim mods.



This is how you compare something.

[draykorinee]

Do you know what compare means?

Gw2 Has Better Graphics.

This is a Human Female Warlock Her Armor is painted on her skin model. There can't Ever be new armor just new colors and patterns, The shape never changes.
Humans in wow have dots for eyes, As do most races sometimes its a coloured dot.



This is a Guild wars 2 Female Elementalist, Her Armor is not painted on to her skin frame. She has full 3d Eyes, They blink they look at her target.
They have an iris and details that of skyrim mods.



This is how you compare something.

using old character models from 2004 instead of newer pandaren/worgen ones is a cop out, either way better graphics is subjective not just down to finer details.



Oh look iris's..

[Maarius]

using old character models from 2004 instead of newer pandaren/worgen ones is a cop out, either way better graphics is subjective not just down to finer details.

Oh look iris's..

There are new human-models in Pandaria?

worgen have still the old human models as far as I know

[Kouki]

using old character models from 2004 instead of newer pandaren/worgen ones is a cop out, either way better graphics is subjective not just down to finer details.



Oh look iris's..

Read What i wrote again, I said even new races have Coloured dots for eyes, and at a close look pandaren have hexagon eyes like the rest.

Your saying Graphics are subjective? So then Donkey Kong Atari has better graphics than Games in 2025?

Your also not adressing Armor, Stated by blizzard they have a limited number of options with design for armor.

All Robes Are either, The Puffy sleeves, Normal Sleeves and the Sleve less.

The colour and Patterns of each tier of Mage lock Priest robes changes, but the shape is one of the 3.

[Deleted]

Your saying Graphics are subjective? So then Donkey Kong Atari has better graphics than Games in 2025?

You're saying graphics are not subjective, and you could use the GW2 engine and art style to make a better-looking Tetris, Bejewelled or Limbo? There is a bit of absolute quality in there, but these days it's mostly subjective. There are a lot of games whose look is timeless.

[Lazuli]

You're saying graphics are not subjective, and you could use the GW2 engine and art style to make a better-looking Tetris, Bejewelled or Limbo? There is a bit of absolute quality in there, but these days it's mostly subjective. There are a lot of games whose look is timeless.

WoW characters graphics are pretty terrible, especially when it comes to gear being painted on. There is nothing timeless about having incredibly outdated models with a total of 5 pixels in them. We have been asking for new models for idk how many years now, always goes ignored and never a top priority even though it has made a few quit. People like their characters to look nice.

[Meledelion]

I'm still not 100% clear on how diminishing returns work. The GW2 wiki doesn't really go into detail about it. What does suck is I've read it's account wide, so basically even when I switch to an alt I'm going to be hit with reduced drops? That's messed up if it's true. I don't know what the 'cooldown' on it is either. I do tend to take a lot of breaks when I play, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that DR doesn't reset for hours.

Lane DR works very similar to GW1, they simply added some other things to it that didn't exist in gw1 (dungeon "loot" "karma" "xp").

The DR (usually referred to as anti-farm code) checks a couple of things. How long have you been in this area, how many of X creature have you killed,...
Most people can't distinguish between having hit DR and having a bad hit of RNG. This is a big problem since RNG is quite common and people (sort of) understand it, whilst AFC is something "new" so people falsely attribute bad drops to DR and not RNG.

As most people know, ORR is the designated place to farm for most people. If you hit AFC here the best way to "get rid" of it is to go farm somewhere else with different foes (elementals in FS for instance).

Link to AFC from GW wiki.

[BlairPhoenix]

You're saying graphics are not subjective, and you could use the GW2 engine and art style to make a better-looking Tetris, Bejewelled or Limbo? There is a bit of absolute quality in there, but these days it's mostly subjective. There are a lot of games whose look is timeless.

Saying the graphics are better is not subjective no, what is subjective is whether or not those graphics makes the game look better. Just like movies that are in HD have better picture quality, but one could argue whether or not that makes the movie look better.

[Deleted]

Hmm, surely the only quality in graphics that matters is whether it looks "better", which is subjective. I honestly can't think of an objective measuring stick that one would use, other than whether a piece of graphic is doing its job functionally (a matter for the UI designer) and artistically from a beauty point-of-view (the art director's call). And that's having been technical director on several AAA PC games...

There is a lot of marketing bumpf that goes on around graphics - feature checklists, who does the most sophisticated shadows, texel density on the terrain, all that jazz. And when you're comparing two very similar games, say Call of Duty and Medal of Honour, these things matter. But really for many game comparisons it's smoke and mirrors, what really matters is the user experience, how the graphics affect you and whether they give you that 'awesome!' feeling. How you get there as a dev team is the tricky part

[draykorinee]

Read What i wrote again, I said even new races have Coloured dots for eyes, and at a close look pandaren have hexagon eyes like the rest.

No you didnt, nothing about new character models. Comparing graphics from release of 2004 and not using graphics from 2012 is a cop out regardless, the quality of the newer models is obvious straight away.

Your saying Graphics are subjective? So then Donkey Kong Atari has better graphics than Games in 2025?

Nope, your just pushing it a little there, the difference in graphical quality of the mists of pandaria and GW2 are not quite to that extreme.

Your also not adressing Armor, Stated by blizzard they have a limited number of options with design for armor.

All Robes Are either, The Puffy sleeves, Normal Sleeves and the Sleve less.

The colour and Patterns of each tier of Mage lock Priest robes changes, but the shape is one of the 3.

Well, again armour design is subjective imo, I dont particualrly like WoWs armour designs most of the time but then GW2 didnt blow me away either, I just know that graphically WoW was overall more appeasing to my eyes than GW2

There are new human-models in Pandaria?

worgen have still the old human models as far as I know

Wasnt my point, Worgen are the new character models not the human side.

[Deadite]

Well, again armour design is subjective imo, I dont particualrly like WoWs armour designs most of the time but then GW2 didnt blow me away either, I just know that graphically WoW was overall more appeasing to my eyes than GW2

You can say you prefer the style of wows graphics more than GW2 but to say wow has better graphics than GW2 is absurd. I also prefer Wows graphical style to GW2 but on any technical level they are prehistoric compared to GW2.

[Myrrar]

I think the main problem with GW characters is:

1. The green outline around anyone near you. It completely takes them out of the world and 2ds them. Awful awful choice.

2. The way they move on the ground. It's not done well and I know it was a huge complaint from beta/launch. It looks like they are running across a 2d screen instead of in the beautiful world they created.

Pandaria and Pandas are gorgeous, but it's still the same engine from 8 years ago with only so much it can do. GW2 is on a newer engine and due to artistic choice didn't really use it to max efficiency. Graphically GW2 is obviously better because it's not on an ancient engine. Whether artistically you think it looks better, that's all up to opinion and also not really comparable. WoW = Cartoon. GW = Realistic.

I think GWs foliage is divine and artistic choices for areas are pretty. I think their buildings look awful(WoW actually probably has higher poly buildings in MoP...) and as soon as you put people there it looks worse. WoW pandaland looks great and so do pandas. Old models in the world take away from it and you have to like the cartoony look to appreciate it.