Tenton Hammer names Guild Wars 2 best MMO of 2013

[zed zebes]

The initial story of GW1 had a lot of the same problems as GW2. Prophecies and GW2 both continually start stories without truly finishing them, so you don't heavily invest into any plotline too much. By the time you're at the end of Prophecies killing the zombie version of fallen hero, you barely remember the long strange trip that got you there.
Gw2 has the same problem. You go through three or four different changes in story arc and focus, barely investing into each part. I thought they had fixed this problem with both Factions and Nightfall (which has one of the best MMO stories), but they returned to the same problem. From what I've heard, only the first 30 levels of story were mostly done in-house and the rest they had to go outside of the company a bit to finish the game in time. That doesn't excuse Scarlet though.

[Moon-Man]

2013's most boring MMORPG goes to Guild Wars 2.

It is my opinion though, I quit GW2 at mid september, I tried to play it again early December, still bored to death.

Personally GW2 does not deserves Best MMO of 2013. But there arent any MMO that does, so might as well be it GW2.

If I had to give away the Best Story in 2013, it would go to Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn.

[Lane]

I do disagree with the GW2 story being bad though, I quite enjoyed a lot of those short stories released on their website that tend to accompany the LS releases, but that's the problem it's a short story on their website not in game.

I don't bother reading lore on websites unless the game has already hooked me and I must know more. This hasn't been the case with anything in the LS so far and I'm frankly at the point where I just don't care anymore, I want it to be over with already.

Also, I hate Scarlet. She is quite possibly the worst villain I have ever been exposed to, and I like Harley Quinn (her most often used comparison). I usually root for villains too, but her... ugh. She does have some occasional cute/crazy dialog, but overall I can't stand her.

Plus, Cataclysm introduced so much more gag-reel stuff that it took a lot of the value out for me.

Cataclysm... *twitch* Single-handedly 'cured' me of my WoW addiction. It was so awful in so many ways. I have literally written essays on forums about how terrible practically everything about it was. (At least the 80+ content, the 1-60 zone revamps were mostly well done.)

WoW hasn't done anything to break the mold so to say - rather they make it easier for people to enjoy the content they already present. (LFR for example). So it winning MMO of the year for being a 10 year old game would be pretty sad for MMOs in general.

I haven't played WoW since Cataclysm (see above :P), but honestly if WoW had never killed my love for it with that god awful expansion then I would probably be agreeing with Zarc to some extent. There are a lot of 'quality of life' aspects of GW2 (and other MMOs) I would miss, but I think WoW was the whole package. I played it for 6 years (and would have played longer if not for... *shakes fist*). I haven't been able to stick to any other MMO longer than a year, although, it's been 1.3 years with GW2.

If WoW were still like it was in WotLK I think my bf would have had a lot easier time trying to convince me to go back, but Deathwing burned that bridge. :P

I remember listening to TotalBiscuit once during a Terraria clip & he mentioned J.Cox being a warcraft lore nerd.
Until then, i had no idea anyone took any notice of the lore in that game.
I played for around four years, althoguh most of my time was spent fighting my way to the next battle master or hunting other players, but even in between, the lore just didn`t seem to show itself to me.

Did you read the quests? o_O WoW was saturated with lore. I never even played any of the Warcraft games (I don't care for RTS), but I probably knew about as much about Warcraft lore as those who did.

[zed zebes]

Lore/Story in these MMOs are based around "we needed to stick a monster here and here's the made up reason for the monster to be here". Everything about the story in these games makes me so self-aware of their existence as explanation for content that I can't buy into or care about any of it. Very little feels character based and events that you venture out into lack any sense of the chemical reaction nature of a page-turning story. And the truth is it would be very hard to accomplish something like that when you're writing for a million different protagonists. If an MMO wants to tell an interesting story within the confines of an MMO's play then they'll have to build the story concept within the trappings of the MMO aspect.

I am not sure how to best explain this. The Secret World has an interesting story, but it plays very much like a single player adventure game at times. It does at least allow an in-game narrative for the reality of a multiverse of protagonists in that you're just another agent for some super secret group, but then it goes the hero route with making you feel chosen. An MMO story that works would have to face the player with the reality that they aren't a specially chosen savior and that there's a hundred other like you milling around doing the same thing. From then on, the story would better work under the everyday soldier sort of arc. If your character is just another soldier experiencing the same war as others, what makes your story special?

[Achaman]

The story itself is bad because there is no plot yet which is coming next apparently. They just presented it in the wrong order - her goals and ideals should of been presented months ago and more depth of it come after but instead they are doing more depth first and her agenda last.

If they fixed that the story is actually really fucking good. She is a crazy mary sue but that only gets old if people see that a lot.

i doubt plot will save it since all i hear on every new update is people bitch about scarlet or whatever her name was
i dont know since i did the aetherblade thing once then lost interest and havnt done anything other than CoF, the odd guild mission and fractals for the crappy weapon chests

oh and check out the latest update content unless its doing the same activity over and over to collect tokens for a pet/toy/skin

[Svifnymr]

I don't bother reading lore on websites unless the game has already hooked me and I must know more. This hasn't been the case with anything in the LS so far and I'm frankly at the point where I just don't care anymore, I want it to be over with already.

I don't, in general, read the game novels for stuff. I look to in game, with the occasional short story linked off the launcher. That's for WoW or GW2, I don't recall any TOR short stories, but that game's story focus is well known.

I did read Sea of Sorrows just recently, since I was trying to hit free shipping on an Amazon order of small stuff for a gift card. I enjoyed the book well enough, but it doesn't sync with the lore, so it's sort of useless in "furthering" the ingame lore, IMO.

[quote]Also, I hate Scarlet. She is quite possibly the worst villain I have ever been exposed to, and I like Harley Quinn (her most often used comparison). I usually root for villains too, but her... ugh. She does have some occasional cute/crazy dialog, but overall I can't stand her.
I like Scarlet, there's just too much of her. The living story needs multiple villains, multiple plots. The world cannot revolve around one outcast Sylvari for a year. It also fails in that no defeat really "takes". We crippled the Molten Alliance! But they're still there. Aetherblade's defeated! Except for the ones that aren't.

Hopefully they're still finding their groove and everything will keep improving. (Though, Halloween this year wasn't as good as last year, I do think Wintersday is better.)

Cataclysm... *twitch* Single-handedly 'cured' me of my WoW addiction. It was so awful in so many ways. I have literally written essays on forums about how terrible practically everything about it was. (At least the 80+ content, the 1-60 zone revamps were mostly well done.)

Ah HA! So you don't like WoW lore! You used to like it. (Or rather "oh, okay, we're mostly on the same page". The 1-60 did suck though, you might just not remember due to the over-suck of late game.

I haven't played WoW since Cataclysm (see above :P), but honestly if WoW had never killed my love for it with that god awful expansion then I would probably be agreeing with Zarc to some extent. There are a lot of 'quality of life' aspects of GW2 (and other MMOs) I would miss, but I think WoW was the whole package. I played it for 6 years (and would have played longer if not for... *shakes fist*). I haven't been able to stick to any other MMO longer than a year, although, it's been 1.3 years with GW2.

I'd still be playing TOR if they hadn't hit a big slump. You may like the gameplay of Wildstar (Mostly WoW with some GW2), but the aesthetics/ lore of it... don't know. It really wasn't what I wanted.

If WoW were still like it was in WotLK I think my bf would have had a lot easier time trying to convince me to go back, but Deathwing burned that bridge. :P

I joined during BC, was good, Wrath was my pinnacle (and I assume a lot of folks), and Cataclysm the downward stride. When I saw the Mists release trailer, I knew it wasn't going to be what I wanted again.

Did you read the quests? o_O WoW was saturated with lore. I never even played any of the Warcraft games (I don't care for RTS), but I probably knew about as much about Warcraft lore as those who did.

WoW lore was there in many ways, if you looked. GW2 lore is there in many ways, if you look. A lot of folks don't really look though and nothing wrong with that. I have a friend that complained that FEAR made no sense (never listened to an answering machine) and Bioshock was confusing (never listened to a recorder). Halo3 lacked story (if you ignored the terminals entirely).

It's a trade off for some things, if you're making a game, some folks hate the story being front and center, others want the story but fail to look. SW:TOR for example, plenty of folks wanted to spacebar through stuff even on first playthrough.

(Me, I can sit in Lions Arch for an hour listening to the little Asura kid and the Charr)

[Lane]

An MMO story that works would have to face the player with the reality that they aren't a specially chosen savior and that there's a hundred other like you milling around doing the same thing. From then on, the story would better work under the everyday soldier sort of arc. If your character is just another soldier experiencing the same war as others, what makes your story special?

It doesn't have to be special, maybe that's the problem. I don't like being the #1 hero, it's unrealistic. I was frankly shocked it didn't end up that way in GW2's personal story, but even then I still ended up second in command over all 3 orders when I was barely out of being a new recruit, which was also highly unlikely. I know a lot of people complained about Trahearne stealing the player's thunder, but I felt the opposite about it. I should have still been a cog in the wheel, not a leader.

I don't need to be the "hero" to be immersed. I can just be Joe Schmoe who lives in the world and cares enough about it and its characters to do something when asked.

I like Scarlet, there's just too much of her. The living story needs multiple villains, multiple plots. The world cannot revolve around one outcast Sylvari for a year.

Ugh, I just realized how long it's been (and going to be) with her. You know what really bothers me about it? Ever since I saw the GW2 panel at... whatever it was, PAX? And I saw that Angel person who's supposedly in charge of the living story and her admitting she's a big time Sylvari fangirl. So, I feel like instead of giving us a good character and story we're basically being subjected to her fan fiction. I could be totally wrong about that, but it's what I think of every time there's another Scarlet-based LS update.

Ah HA! So you don't like WoW lore! You used to like it. (Or rather "oh, okay, we're mostly on the same page". The 1-60 did suck though, you might just not remember due to the over-suck of late game.

WoW lore was great until Cataclysm. :P Are you talking about 1-60 lore or gameplay? I had the loremaster title from before the revamp, so the gameplay of the zones was vastly improved. Unfortunately, they did kill a lot of the mystery of some areas, like Azshara. Even though it was fun to play they still basically made a theme park of it.

Admittedly, I didn't get through much of 1-60, but I liked what I did of it.

I joined during BC, was good, Wrath was my pinnacle (and I assume a lot of folks), and Cataclysm the downward stride. When I saw the Mists release trailer, I knew it wasn't going to be what I wanted again.

Wrath was damn near flawless. I really felt like Blizzard had learned from previous mistakes, bad design decisions, etc. and made a fantastic game. Then they did Cataclysm, which basically took everything I loved and **** all over it. Totally unforgivable. I frankly refuse to believe that WoW's drastic loss in subscriptions during the Cataclysm era was from anything but it being a horrible expansion that ushered everyone who loved Wrath right out the door.

My bf told me MoP was supposed to be a return to the style of WotLK, but I've been hesitant to go back. There's a chance I will return for Warlords of Draenor(?) simply because I would love to see it pre-destruction (Terrokar/Auchindoun especially). However, we do have our eye on Wildstar and with both games being subscription it will be one or the other, not both.

GW2 lore is there in many ways, if you look. A lot of folks don't really look though and nothing wrong with that.

Where are you supposed to look? Most of the NPCs in GW2 have one-liners that don't have anything to do with anything. I don't really like reading books inside the game. It's almost as bad as having to read it off the website because it's still not integrated into the game itself, it's a side item.

What I wish they'd do instead of LS is expand on the personal story every month. The PS is their best vehicle for getting you involved with the NPCs and informing you of the story without you being bored to death (usually).

[Svifnymr]

I don't need to be the "hero" to be immersed. I can just be Joe Schmoe who lives in the world and cares enough about it and its characters to do something when asked.

My issues with Trahearne wasn't that he was the leader and I was under him, it was more that he rarely did anything of note. Hell, my sylvari quested for that sword and then he gets it? He's a necromancer!

I think player characters should be something of an independent special forces team. You're not in charge, you're not #1 guy, but the folks that are your "lords" know that you're better used with a hands off "aim at the enemy" approach. I don't need some fighter trainer acting like I'm a new recruit, and I don't need to feel like I"m the leader. GW2 does an okay job of explaining why you're above average (snaff price winner, hero of shaemor, whatnot), and why some mentor would take notice of you. It does a decent job of "right place, right time" mechanics (you just happen to be on Claw Island and meet Trahearne, impressing him and becoming second in commmand), but it fails in the scaling of encounters (okay, so the orders will send their entire armies to work under Trahearne? what? Oh, Scarlet has some pirates... wait, she's got an army of them? huh?) and it fails to personify some of the npc's as actual authorities. (Trahearne's authority mostly)

Some of that is just due to brevity of material of course.

Ugh, I just realized how long it's been (and going to be) with her. You know what really bothers me about it? Ever since I saw the GW2 panel at... whatever it was, PAX? And I saw that Angel person who's supposedly in charge of the living story and her admitting she's a big time Sylvari fangirl. So, I feel like instead of giving us a good character and story we're basically being subjected to her fan fiction. I could be totally wrong about that, but it's what I think of every time there's another Scarlet-based LS update.

Well, it works both ways, I guess. If they're not fans of the specific material they're putting forth, you tend to get errors of varying noticeability. If she's a Svlvari fan, we may see too many of them, but at least they'll be done well, theoretically. It's just that Living World should be more world based rather than a singular isolated story, imo.

WoW lore was great until Cataclysm. :P Are you talking about 1-60 lore or gameplay? I had the loremaster title from before the revamp, so the gameplay of the zones was vastly improved. Unfortunately, they did kill a lot of the mystery of some areas, like Azshara. Even though it was fun to play they still basically made a theme park of it.

Admittedly, I didn't get through much of 1-60, but I liked what I did of it.

Probably shouldn't side track too much with the WoW specifics, but I only played Alliance and most of the zones are either bland (1-10 zones), comical/ caricatures (human areas), or just depressing (darkshore). The background lore was mostly lessened since pre-cata, with little added and what IS added got neglected soon enough (gnomeregan, dark irons). Overly linear questing made it difficult to just avoid some bad areas. They didn't even pace the quests very well.

My bf told me MoP was supposed to be a return to the style of WotLK, but I've been hesitant to go back. There's a chance I will return for Warlords of Draenor(?) simply because I would love to see it pre-destruction (Terrokar/Auchindoun especially).

I've played a few week long trials and the MOP beta for a bit. The elements that were added were not to my liking. Pandaria has a lot of lore... of it's own. It's another sign (IMO) of the "screw what is written, lets just make something new and cram it togethor" style that WoW has taken. WoD looks even more of it. They came up with a cool setting idea and just crammed it in.

As Zed said: "Lore/Story in these MMOs are based around "we needed to stick a monster here and here's the made up reason for the monster to be here". " IMO, WoW doesn't even TRY for a good reason anymore.

However, we do have our eye on Wildstar and with both games being subscription it will be one or the other, not both.

I keep thinking of Secret World, but just don't feel like investing the time. I'll keep an eye on EQN, but Wildstar drove me off, same with ESO. Not my aesthetic.

Where are you supposed to look? Most of the NPCs in GW2 have one-liners that don't have anything to do with anything. I don't really like reading books inside the game.

Many NPC's have dialogue when talked to, and many things are said when passing. In addition, events usually have something to them, Scouts give an overview and yeah, there are even some books in game (though they're a lot thinner than WoW's books even).

What I wish they'd do instead of LS is expand on the personal story every month. The PS is their best vehicle for getting you involved with the NPCs and informing you of the story without you being bored to death (usually).

The Personal Story lacks any sort of future-proofing. The 21-80 quest is all against Zhaitan, though maybe the Order stuff could be more of a generic "vs the dragons" feel to it. If you expand on it, do you remove current to advance the world? If you add another series of quests, do they get the full instancing/ cutscenes thing? Does it detract from or is it in addition to the Living Story?

I think there are plenty of plots left that the DUNGEONS could expand on. I think we could use some more Story Modes to dungeons that take place at some later point. But I also think we should get some scaling to the dungeons (maybe not solo mode, though that'd be fine). Especially Zhaitan, you're a group of 5 among a fleet. Would you being alone among that same fleet really somehow be less realistic?

[Valeron]

Probably shouldn't side track too much with the WoW specifics, but I only played Alliance and most of the zones are either bland (1-10 zones), comical/ caricatures (human areas), or just depressing (darkshore). The background lore was mostly lessened since pre-cata, with little added and what IS added got neglected soon enough (gnomeregan, dark irons). Overly linear questing made it difficult to just avoid some bad areas. They didn't even pace the quests very well.




As Zed said: "Lore/Story in these MMOs are based around "we needed to stick a monster here and here's the made up reason for the monster to be here". " IMO, WoW doesn't even TRY for a good reason anymore.


I keep thinking of Secret World, but just don't feel like investing the time. I'll keep an eye on EQN, but Wildstar drove me off, same with ESO. Not my aesthetic.
Many NPC's have dialogue when talked to, and many things are said when passing. In addition, events usually have something to them, Scouts give an overview and yeah, there are even some books in game (though they're a lot thinner than WoW's books even).

I'm with you on WoW's story and lore. I found it a bit bland as well. Some parts I enjoyed (I really liked the Onyxia quest chain in vanilla wow) but most of it seemed cliche and their tendency of turning previous lore heros into villains by way of insanity is a bit off-putting.

I will agree that traditional questing can provide a good avenue for story and lore background. The problem is the fact that it is an mmo. That means anything you do won't change the world in any way unless they use phasing (and then you run into the problem of splitting up the player base). That's what I mean when I say that an mmo is a poor game type for a good story.

TSW is great just for the investigation missions alone. Plus you can find it on the cheap a lot of the time. The voice acting is superb and there are some interesting mini stories in there.

[Sainur]

Best Community - The Lord of the Rings Online

Aye.

The LotRO community has to be the most mature, nice and helpful community I've ever seen. I don't think any game would be able to top it.

[Deleted]

Aye.

The LotRO community has to be the most mature, nice and helpful community I've ever seen. I don't think any game would be able to top it.

I'd love to play lotro, but both times I downloaded it it actually destroyed my external hard disk. Last time apparently permanently.

[Valeron]

yikes, how did it destroy the hard disk?

[Deleted]

yikes, how did it destroy the hard disk?

Dunno
I'm not an expert but since I downloaded lotro on it everytime I plug it it takes ages for the computer to "recognise" it and when it does and double click on it, it goes I/O device error. Pity as I had all sorts of private stuff in it. Picture, videos, music...
Maybe a coincidence but I remember having similar issues of "taking ages" to recognise the program when I downloaded it the fort time (not on external).
Mind you, as you might have noticed, my knowledge in this field is pretty limited

[Zephyr Storm]

What a joke.

Seeing as how I've never even heard of tentonhammer (and I know and have been to many, many gaming related sites), I would say it's pretty safe to ignore their obviously biased opinion on the award. Hell, the things they say and the way they say it screams fanboys or that they are getting bribed by Anet (or both).

And the fact that GW2 is even in the same sentence as the words "Best MMO" makes me laugh and cry at the same time. If GW2 was the best mmo 2013 had to offer then shame on all game devs everywhere.

While GW2 undoubtedly added features and systems that all MMOs should have going forward (like no mob tagging, being able to do events without grouping, etc), it still ultimately failed as a whole on its own. The SERIOUS lack of content since release has been simply inexcusable. And no, that joke of a thing they call living story does not count. They should be announcing an expansion by now, or at the very least adding some more elder dragon content. And the complete lack of ability on the devs' parts to fix/balance the game is down right laughable. It's like, once the game was made, they just said "good enough" and stopped trying.

And the fact that they have committed several shameless acts on the gem store is ridiculous. Human tier 3 light armor anyone? It's blatantly obvious they are concerned about gem sales and nothing more. Hell, the living story updates pretty much revolve around the gem store, trying to get you to spend money every two weeks for "limited time items" and gems to convert to gold.

And don't even get me started on how they pretty much abandoned/ignored every thing they said in their manifesto. Anet are complete sell outs, end of story.

So we have an MMO that has a serious lack of PvE content to do and PvP that is in shambles. So what the hell is this game suppose to be? Because it's failing pretty hard as an MMO right now.

I had such high hopes for this game, but alas Anet has failed me and countless others.

[Huehuecoyotl]

Still an opinion. Should still be ignored if you don't agree with it. Move on with your life.

You used this quote in another thread. Maybe it's time you listen to your own advice?

[Slant]

I had to smirk, wenn I saw the article. It's clearly not based on reality. About GW2, the mechanics are nice and the artwork is also pretty good in places. The problem is that the developers didn't really make their mind up about what it's going to be: Theme park (it doesn't have enough content for that) or sandbox (there is not enough freedom for that). So basically it's a rotten, ugly mutation between the two and that makes it pretty much stillborn. It's a shame, since as I said, the mechanics are rather nice. It should've been a real sandbox. Alas, it's going to stay in its niche with irrational fanboism keeping it alive on boards and reviews.

Also, it seems kinda ridiculous to cut WoW and Blizzard out like that. The titel should've been "Best MMO except WoW" or something like that. Sure, praising WoW year after year gets boring, but that's what you're going to get if nobody else is able to produce a quality game that lasts for more than 2 months.

[Darksoldierr]

Planetside 2 is fricking amazing game, if you didn't tried it out yet, go and play it for free.

[draykorinee]

What a joke.

Seeing as how I've never even heard of tentonhammer (and I know and have been to many, many gaming related sites), I would say it's pretty safe to ignore their obviously biased opinion on the award. Hell, the things they say and the way they say it screams fanboys or that they are getting bribed by Anet (or both).

Its a pretty popular website, I don't personally go there much but it has a heck of a lot of traffic, something like 500k hits a month, that being said the spiel they put out for this award is laughable.

[Davins]

Maybe it is just me but GW2 as best mmo? Really? I got to lvl 40. Max!!! And after that it was unbearable, the leveling was utter crap and if you got 2-3 adds on you at the same time, oh boy, you were dead after like 10 seconds( played thief and mesmer). In the end its still personal opinion that matters and i really enjoyed Tera and I am surprised it wasn't mentioned anywhere. For the lotro community I can't judge it really, i have a few nice friends who are playing it so it might be true that the community is nice since I haven't heard them bitching about anyone they met ingame.

[Fencers]

What a joke.

Seeing as how I've never even heard of tentonhammer (and I know and have been to many, many gaming related sites), I would say it's pretty safe to ignore their obviously biased opinion on the award.

It's one of the largest MMO related gaming sites. And have been around for about 10 years of so.

TTH get a lot of big exclusives too. So one would have to like not be reading MMO news for the past 4 years or so to have not been directed to at least one of TTH's articles in that span.

Of course these "Best of.." lists are purely opinion pieces regardless of publisher or outlet. Rather it be a website one never heard of or a major American newspaper. They are editorials of a sort.

TTH have no lesser or greater credibility than any other such outlet when it comes to editorializing a "Best of..." list.