Guild Wars 2

I was browsing the internets today and ran across an old website I found, chuck full of fantastic GW1 screenshots.

http://bloogum.net/guildwars/

There were so many things that game did right, and so many ways in which GW2 could have followed in its footsteps.

Also, even though the graphics here are better, I would still have to say that I find GW1’s graphics to be more charming and enchanting. What do you all think?

Gw2 will never be what gw1 was.

I spent hours in that game doing so many things that seemingly were not “diverse” but was content with it anyways.

Hell, I know I logged thousands of hours in iself just sitting in town trading and interacting with other people during my summers in high school. So fun. The game was very charming, and much more enchanting feeling.

The only things I like about gw2 are the graphics and the fluid combat system, but even then it’s not perfect. This living story content that comes out kills me slowly because it feels like a slap in the face compared to the reason I got into all of this in the first place.

I hate how loot in this game is like grinding in the real world. We are basically picking up gold and buying things with that gold that are so rare most of us will never see it drop. In gw1, even though we had to “grind” we did so and if we got lucky, we would see an awesome rare skin/item. Also, there are certain places these things would drop over others, ie frog scepters/ dragon bone staves whatever they were… so cool.

Not many dropped but the feeling they did was great, not something we can experience here in gw2.

I agree op, the first game was their crowning achievement, this version is not even close..

Nice website find by the way.

Most people are looking at Guild Wars 1 from the point of view of four products not one. Though Guild Wars Prophecies was a good game, it took many years before the game really came into it’s own.

That is to say, a lot of people liked Nightfall and Eye of the North more than Prophecies. Not everyone, but a lot.

Nightfall didn’t come out until a year an a half after Prophecies.

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

A lot of the stuff you see in Guild Wars 2 is an attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Guild Wars 1. As an example…the skill system.

Guild Wars 1 had to very big problems with skills. There were too many of them, and with the dual profession system it was literally impossible to balance skills. People complain about the inbalance in Guild Wars 2 but they never had to deal with the permasin, or even sabway. Guild Wars 1 had serious balance issues and less skills meant more control by Anet, which is what they wanted. But there was another problem.

Many people couldn’t figure out how to make a decent build. There really were too many skills and not everyone is capable of making a build. I’m a guy who loved to make builds. That’s what I did half the time. Make new builds. But at the same time I was doing an enjoying this, other builds were ruining the game for me, particularly because if you didn’t run Build A you weren’t going to be finding a group to do the Underworld. Everyone only wanted specific builds so they could do speed clears. It was pretty obnoxious.

So Anet lost a lot of people to the inability to have a build that worked. The solution was tie skills to weapons and introduce less skills at start. This way when they do finally have an expansion and they add skills, there’s more of a chance to keep it balanced and even a total noob can play a build because his weapons have the skills he’ll basically need.

Guild Wars 1 was a great game for a small percentage of the audience. Frankly I think Guild Wars 2 will improve a lot in the years to come, but it’s going to take another six months to a year before it’s the game it should have been at launch.

My biggest problem with GW2 is that I feel like it has set the stage in a non-recoverable way. The game is full of silly dialogue and content – and when I say silly, I don’t mean trivial. I mean downright foolish sounding. Quaggans (yes, they’re cute and cuddly) don’t belong in any self-respecting fantasy trope. The game doesn’t take itself seriously, and that’s one of its biggest shortcomings and one that can’t be undone.

Vayne.8563:

Most people are looking at Guild Wars 1 from the point of view of four products not one. Though Guild Wars Prophecies was a good game, it took many years before the game really came into it’s own.

That is to say, a lot of people liked Nightfall and Eye of the North more than Prophecies. Not everyone, but a lot.

Nightfall didn’t come out until a year an a half after Prophecies.

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

A lot of the stuff you see in Guild Wars 2 is an attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Guild Wars 1. As an example…the skill system.

Guild Wars 1 had to very big problems with skills. There were too many of them, and with the dual profession system it was literally impossible to balance skills. People complain about the inbalance in Guild Wars 2 but they never had to deal with the permasin, or even sabway. Guild Wars 1 had serious balance issues and less skills meant more control by Anet, which is what they wanted. But there was another problem.

Many people couldn’t figure out how to make a decent build. There really were too many skills and not everyone is capable of making a build. I’m a guy who loved to make builds. That’s what I did half the time. Make new builds. But at the same time I was doing an enjoying this, other builds were ruining the game for me, particularly because if you didn’t run Build A you weren’t going to be finding a group to do the Underworld. Everyone only wanted specific builds so they could do speed clears. It was pretty obnoxious.

So Anet lost a lot of people to the inability to have a build that worked. The solution was tie skills to weapons and introduce less skills at start. This way when they do finally have an expansion and they add skills, there’s more of a chance to keep it balanced and even a total noob can play a build because his weapons have the skills he’ll basically need.

Guild Wars 1 was a great game for a small percentage of the audience. Frankly I think Guild Wars 2 will improve a lot in the years to come, but it’s going to take another six months to a year before it’s the game it should have been at launch.

As long as there is more than one skill per type (bleeding application, direct damage) it will be impossible to balance.

Even if the developers only let each class have access eight skills and one elite, there would be specific classes that excelled doing particular things in game. (e.g. League of Legends).

Sorry, but Magic: the Gathering has many times more cards than there were skills in GW1, and MTG thrives because they DESIGN the game around the fact that certain skills will be next to useless. They take what would seem like a detrimental design feature and they turn it into a beneficial one.

All GW2 has shown me is that ANet was not up to the CHALLENGE of building upon the ‘collectible card’ like system from GW1 (which was one of the brilliant features of the game). Therefore, I am not up to the CHALLENGE of buying one armor set in GW2 for 1/6 the cost of a GW1 expansion.

To me ANet took almost every small, brilliant, and unique feature from GW1 and threw it out the window. They then replaced those small, brilliant, and unique systems with overused systems from other BIG MONEY games; games which I don’t play because of said systems.

Yes, they stated that there would be fewer skills in game so that it was easier to balance, but then they add a trait system. So now, instead of me having to actively use a skill on my skill bar to add a passive effect, it just happens automatically. They didn’t lower the number of skills in the game, they just converted a large portion of them into a passive trait system.

Good luck trying to balance that.

Sorry, but to me passive effects that require me to do nothing more than have them ‘equipped’ are extremely boring. At least you had to actively use skills in GW1 to get the effects.

Anyways, I could talk all day about what small and large design features kept me playing GW1 for years (and buying content to boot), but what does that really matter. In the end all I have is a game that I came to love abandoned and left to starve because it didn’t MAKE ENOUGH GREEN.

stayBlind.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Most people are looking at Guild Wars 1 from the point of view of four products not one. Though Guild Wars Prophecies was a good game, it took many years before the game really came into it’s own.

That is to say, a lot of people liked Nightfall and Eye of the North more than Prophecies. Not everyone, but a lot.

Nightfall didn’t come out until a year an a half after Prophecies.

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

A lot of the stuff you see in Guild Wars 2 is an attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Guild Wars 1. As an example…the skill system.

Guild Wars 1 had to very big problems with skills. There were too many of them, and with the dual profession system it was literally impossible to balance skills. People complain about the inbalance in Guild Wars 2 but they never had to deal with the permasin, or even sabway. Guild Wars 1 had serious balance issues and less skills meant more control by Anet, which is what they wanted. But there was another problem.

Many people couldn’t figure out how to make a decent build. There really were too many skills and not everyone is capable of making a build. I’m a guy who loved to make builds. That’s what I did half the time. Make new builds. But at the same time I was doing an enjoying this, other builds were ruining the game for me, particularly because if you didn’t run Build A you weren’t going to be finding a group to do the Underworld. Everyone only wanted specific builds so they could do speed clears. It was pretty obnoxious.

So Anet lost a lot of people to the inability to have a build that worked. The solution was tie skills to weapons and introduce less skills at start. This way when they do finally have an expansion and they add skills, there’s more of a chance to keep it balanced and even a total noob can play a build because his weapons have the skills he’ll basically need.
snip

As long as there is more than one skill per type (bleeding application, direct damage) it will be impossible to balance.

Even if the developers only let each class have access eight skills and one elite, there would be specific classes that excelled doing particular things in game. (e.g. League of Legends).

Sorry, but Magic: the Gathering has many times more cards than there were skills in GW1, and MTG thrives because they DESIGN the game around the fact that certain skills will be next to useless. They take what would seem like a detrimental design feature and they turn it into a beneficial one.

All GW2 has shown me is that ANet was not up to the CHALLENGE of building upon the ‘collectible card’ like system from GW1 (which was one of the brilliant features of the game). Therefore, I am not up to the CHALLENGE of buying one armor set in GW2 for 1/6 the cost of a GW1 expansion.

To me ANet took almost every small, brilliant, and unique feature from GW1 and threw it out the window. They then replaced those small, brilliant, and unique systems with overused systems from other BIG MONEY games; games which I don’t play because of said systems.

Yes, they stated that there would be fewer skills in game so that it was easier to balance, but then they add a trait system. So now, instead of me having to actively use a skill on my skill bar to add a passive effect, it just happens automatically. They didn’t lower the number of skills in the game, they just converted a large portion of them into a passive trait system.

Good luck trying to balance that.

Sorry, but to me passive effects that require me to do nothing more than have them ‘equipped’ are extremely boring. At least you had to actively use skills in GW1 to get the effects.

Anyways, I could talk all day about what small and large design features kept me playing GW1 for years (and buying content to boot), but what does that really matter. In the end all I have is a game that I came to love abandoned and left to starve because it didn’t MAKE ENOUGH GREEN.

You’re right, it didn’t make enough green. That’s it exactly.

And since Guild Wars 2 is a bigger budget game, with a staff five times the size, who would have expected them to keep everything the same. If they were going to keep everything the same Guild Wars 2 wouldn’t be a sequel, it would be another expansion.

Guild Wars 2 is still much easier to balance than Guild Wars 1. This doesn’t have anything to do with devs not being up to making the game you want, it has everything to do with the devs making a game that will make more money.

You thought maybe they should aim to design a game that makes less money?

Personally i loved Prophecies (and i think it alone was still better than the Whole Guildwars 2) i also loved Factions, i hated Nightfall which actually made me leave Gw1.

EoTN i bought but hardly played because the populations in GW1 had died by the time i got it, so i never really bothered with it much..

Pre Searing Ascalon is probably the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever seen.

It was a perfect color blend of blue, yellow, orange and green (with the occasional marble color for buildings)

Not only was it that bright and shiny scene, but it had it’s smudges. The Catacombs is a big example. Another is the Wizard’s Folly mountain, with the mysterious tower. And it’s those smudges that made Pre Searing Ascalon perfect

I have never, ever seen such a place (in a game) in my life as beautiful as that.

Sadly, they tried to recreate the same setting in the Charr Homelands in EoTN, but it wasn’t as good (I thought it was a pretty bad extension, actually)

I guess I’m the only one that is a little upset that they decided to do away with unique animations for each profession. I love how Mesmer’s in GW1 cast their spells and how Necromancer’s seemed to struggle a bit with its magic and the Elementalist who has complete control of the Elements. It is great! Every profession has their own style and i love it. I just wish they continued that with Guild Wars 2. I guess I’m an aesthetics nut but that is one of the many things i love about the first Guild Wars. Now most animations are shared by all professions if they use the same weapon.

Also it would be neat to have a charm animations for rangers instead of just walking up and pressing F. Or some rare pets that involve a interesting task like the Black Widow, Black Moa and few others that i can’t remember atm. I could go on but i will stop. I may be the only one that cares for that stuff. Even with out those small things Guild Wars 2 is still one of the best mmorpg’s i have played in a very long time!

Vayne.8563:

Most people are looking at Guild Wars 1 from the point of view of four products not one. Though Guild Wars Prophecies was a good game, it took many years before the game really came into it’s own.

That is to say, a lot of people liked Nightfall and Eye of the North more than Prophecies. Not everyone, but a lot.

Nightfall didn’t come out until a year an a half after Prophecies.

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

A lot of the stuff you see in Guild Wars 2 is an attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Guild Wars 1. As an example…the skill system.

Guild Wars 1 had to very big problems with skills. There were too many of them, and with the dual profession system it was literally impossible to balance skills. People complain about the inbalance in Guild Wars 2 but they never had to deal with the permasin, or even sabway. Guild Wars 1 had serious balance issues and less skills meant more control by Anet, which is what they wanted. But there was another problem.

Many people couldn’t figure out how to make a decent build. There really were too many skills and not everyone is capable of making a build. I’m a guy who loved to make builds. That’s what I did half the time. Make new builds. But at the same time I was doing an enjoying this, other builds were ruining the game for me, particularly because if you didn’t run Build A you weren’t going to be finding a group to do the Underworld. Everyone only wanted specific builds so they could do speed clears. It was pretty obnoxious.

So Anet lost a lot of people to the inability to have a build that worked. The solution was tie skills to weapons and introduce less skills at start. This way when they do finally have an expansion and they add skills, there’s more of a chance to keep it balanced and even a total noob can play a build because his weapons have the skills he’ll basically need.

Guild Wars 1 was a great game for a small percentage of the audience. Frankly I think Guild Wars 2 will improve a lot in the years to come, but it’s going to take another six months to a year before it’s the game it should have been at launch.

As a GW1 player still playing GW1 from time to time, you hit the nail on the head. +1

Vayne.8563:

stayBlind.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Most people are looking at Guild Wars 1 from the point of view of four products not one. Though Guild Wars Prophecies was a good game, it took many years before the game really came into it’s own.

That is to say, a lot of people liked Nightfall and Eye of the North more than Prophecies. Not everyone, but a lot.

Nightfall didn’t come out until a year an a half after Prophecies.

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

A lot of the stuff you see in Guild Wars 2 is an attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Guild Wars 1. As an example…the skill system.

Guild Wars 1 had to very big problems with skills. There were too many of them, and with the dual profession system it was literally impossible to balance skills. People complain about the inbalance in Guild Wars 2 but they never had to deal with the permasin, or even sabway. Guild Wars 1 had serious balance issues and less skills meant more control by Anet, which is what they wanted. But there was another problem.

Many people couldn’t figure out how to make a decent build. There really were too many skills and not everyone is capable of making a build. I’m a guy who loved to make builds. That’s what I did half the time. Make new builds. But at the same time I was doing an enjoying this, other builds were ruining the game for me, particularly because if you didn’t run Build A you weren’t going to be finding a group to do the Underworld. Everyone only wanted specific builds so they could do speed clears. It was pretty obnoxious.

So Anet lost a lot of people to the inability to have a build that worked. The solution was tie skills to weapons and introduce less skills at start. This way when they do finally have an expansion and they add skills, there’s more of a chance to keep it balanced and even a total noob can play a build because his weapons have the skills he’ll basically need.
snip

As long as there is more than one skill per type (bleeding application, direct damage) it will be impossible to balance.

Even if the developers only let each class have access eight skills and one elite, there would be specific classes that excelled doing particular things in game. (e.g. League of Legends).

Sorry, but Magic: the Gathering has many times more cards than there were skills in GW1, and MTG thrives because they DESIGN the game around the fact that certain skills will be next to useless. They take what would seem like a detrimental design feature and they turn it into a beneficial one.

All GW2 has shown me is that ANet was not up to the CHALLENGE of building upon the ‘collectible card’ like system from GW1 (which was one of the brilliant features of the game). Therefore, I am not up to the CHALLENGE of buying one armor set in GW2 for 1/6 the cost of a GW1 expansion.

To me ANet took almost every small, brilliant, and unique feature from GW1 and threw it out the window. They then replaced those small, brilliant, and unique systems with overused systems from other BIG MONEY games; games which I don’t play because of said systems.

Yes, they stated that there would be fewer skills in game so that it was easier to balance, but then they add a trait system. So now, instead of me having to actively use a skill on my skill bar to add a passive effect, it just happens automatically. They didn’t lower the number of skills in the game, they just converted a large portion of them into a passive trait system.

Good luck trying to balance that.

Sorry, but to me passive effects that require me to do nothing more than have them ‘equipped’ are extremely boring. At least you had to actively use skills in GW1 to get the effects.

Anyways, I could talk all day about what small and large design features kept me playing GW1 for years (and buying content to boot), but what does that really matter. In the end all I have is a game that I came to love abandoned and left to starve because it didn’t MAKE ENOUGH GREEN.

You’re right, it didn’t make enough green. That’s it exactly.

And since Guild Wars 2 is a bigger budget game, with a staff five times the size, who would have expected them to keep everything the same. If they were going to keep everything the same Guild Wars 2 wouldn’t be a sequel, it would be another expansion.

Guild Wars 2 is still much easier to balance than Guild Wars 1. This doesn’t have anything to do with devs not being up to making the game you want, it has everything to do with the devs making a game that will make more money.

You thought maybe they should aim to design a game that makes less money?

If GW1 didn’t make enough money we wouldn’t be here right now. Why change the scope of the project unless you want some fat IRL loots.

GW1 was art.

GW2 is business.

They should have brought all the things that were great from GW1 to GW2.

Kryptonite.9376:

Gw2 will never be what gw1 was..

Let me correct that.

Vanilla GW2 will never be what GW1 was after 3 expansions.

And I agree to that. But GW2 is already leaps and bounds beyond vanilla GW1. I have good hopes for expansions.

stayBlind.7849:

Vayne.8563:

stayBlind.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Most people are looking at Guild Wars 1 from the point of view of four products not one. Though Guild Wars Prophecies was a good game, it took many years before the game really came into it’s own.

That is to say, a lot of people liked Nightfall and Eye of the North more than Prophecies. Not everyone, but a lot.

Nightfall didn’t come out until a year an a half after Prophecies.

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

A lot of the stuff you see in Guild Wars 2 is an attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Guild Wars 1. As an example…the skill system.

snip

As long as there is more than one skill per type (bleeding application, direct damage) it will be impossible to balance.

Even if the developers only let each class have access eight skills and one elite, there would be specific classes that excelled doing particular things in game. (e.g. League of Legends).

Sorry, but Magic: the Gathering has many times more cards than there were skills in GW1, and MTG thrives because they DESIGN the game around the fact that certain skills will be next to useless. They take what would seem like a detrimental design feature and they turn it into a beneficial one.

All GW2 has shown me is that ANet was not up to the CHALLENGE of building upon the ‘collectible card’ like system from GW1 (which was one of the brilliant features of the game). Therefore, I am not up to the CHALLENGE of buying one armor set in GW2 for 1/6 the cost of a GW1 expansion.

To me ANet took almost every small, brilliant, and unique feature from GW1 and threw it out the window. They then replaced those small, brilliant, and unique systems with overused systems from other BIG MONEY games; games which I don’t play because of said systems.

Yes, they stated that there would be fewer skills in game so that it was easier to balance, but then they add a trait system. So now, instead of me having to actively use a skill on my skill bar to add a passive effect, it just happens automatically. They didn’t lower the number of skills in the game, they just converted a large portion of them into a passive trait system.

Good luck trying to balance that.

Sorry, but to me passive effects that require me to do nothing more than have them ‘equipped’ are extremely boring. At least you had to actively use skills in GW1 to get the effects.

Anyways, I could talk all day about what small and large design features kept me playing GW1 for years (and buying content to boot), but what does that really matter. In the end all I have is a game that I came to love abandoned and left to starve because it didn’t MAKE ENOUGH GREEN.

You’re right, it didn’t make enough green. That’s it exactly.

And since Guild Wars 2 is a bigger budget game, with a staff five times the size, who would have expected them to keep everything the same. If they were going to keep everything the same Guild Wars 2 wouldn’t be a sequel, it would be another expansion.

Guild Wars 2 is still much easier to balance than Guild Wars 1. This doesn’t have anything to do with devs not being up to making the game you want, it has everything to do with the devs making a game that will make more money.

You thought maybe they should aim to design a game that makes less money?

If GW1 didn’t make enough money we wouldn’t be here right now. Why change the scope of the project unless you want some fat IRL loots.

GW1 was art.

GW2 is business.

GW1 was business too…but it was a first product and a smaller business. There are many times during Guild Wars 1’s life when fans rose up to condemn decisions Anet has made. This is nothing new.

People even complained about skill packs being sold in the cash shop as being P2W. You just have rose colored glasses about a game that wasn’t as well received as you believe it was. You liked it. I liked it. Most people tried it and didn’t like it. That’s the sad truth.

And it was a business. You want your business to grow. You want to do something bigger. Even artists experience that. They wanted to stretch their wings. You have some idea that they made Guild Wars 1 as a public service project for art alone. This isn’t true. They ran out of money, they went to NCsoft, they got funding, and that deal was sealed. Even before GW 1 came out, NCsoft owned Anet.

Guild Wars 2 is as much art as Guild Wars 1 is. You just don’t like the art style.

It’s called nostalgia. There were numerous things that wasn’t right wit GW1 either. Just remember that Prophecies had only 60 skills, no templates (you had to change builds manually EVERY kittenING SINGLE TIME), no dungeons, no heroes, only 6 professions, no crafting, no gathering, everything instanced, clunky cut scenes (they didn’t even had facial animations, no moving mouths etc.) no hard mode etc etc.

I can’t stress that enough: Do not compare a 8 year old game, that grew over the years with a 10 month old game. There will many, many things be added and changed over the years.

Next thing you know, people will be saying that Alesia was awesome. lol

I think as far as balance goes what they should be doing is giving the other abilities 2-5 much shorter cooldowns and the #1 abilities the cooldowns the rest have right now but with bigger attack chunks, people wouldn’t feel like spamming the #1 ability because they’d be so much more powerful than they are now. But this would take some major testing and their current system just won’t cut it sadly, they are in desparate need of a PTR I’m afraid if they are to make appropriate changes to the combat system.

As it is they are struggling to do something about the glaring problems of condition damage. (like how each class does a different amount even tho they claim they don’t and how conditions like poison aren’t really deadly they are just a butter knife booboo instead of serious business)

GW1 stimulates much more than GW2 does.

GW2 basically is a clichee of what GW1 is.

GW2 uses cheap carrots and rat behaviour mechanics which where a reason why the founders of Triforge/Anet left Blizzard to not create a game with cheap addictive mechanics but to make a real game.

Unfortunately the rats won the monetary race and here we are with GW2.

All this “yeah but the skill where too many to balance” crap is nothing more than a political excuse for those who dont have any idea.

Just like the ones who defend the name of this game being justified just by its lore, even tho the game itself doesnt reflect anything that name stands for.

GW2 is a good game, yes, but it doesnt deserve to be called a successor of GW1.
It just has the name so Anet/NCSoft could lure as many as possible from GW1.

It worked, they got the money and dumped GW1 fans soon after.

Now ppl say “but its still young” and “blabla potential”.

Currently there is no game mechanic which could be called as unique, or exceptionally innovative or anything like that. There are just improvements of mechanics which existed already for a decade.
There is nothing really new in this game.

GW2 will most likely never be Guild Wars….it is Carrot Wars.

Just take a look at that insane achievemet list…..they dont even deserve to be called that 90%.

And the next big step is still ahead of us…..levelcap raise with more carrots.

Yes, I am almost done with this game.

I wanted to give it a last shot with that new dungeon, which, because of Anets excellent testing, had to be ….shut off.

I cant remember anything similar happened in GW1 btw.

“Easier to balance”… Q.E.D.

Maybe not the pve, but the pvp was spot on from day 1. Can’t really say that with gw2.

Also, no skill system can ever be truly balanced. The problem in gw1 wasn’t that some skills were op, it was that it took anet months to address any problem in the game. Took them half a year to overhaul the dervish and then a year to fix all the op skills they had introduced with that update. That’s what got people mad at anet.

Yea, the skill system in gw1 wasn’t perfect, but it was this very skill system that created so many memorable moments in the game, both in pve and pvp. People remember when iQ brought glyph of sac + meteor shower in the GWFC. People remember when rawr brought 4 monks to the mAT final and then when they created rawrspike. People remember IWAY. People remember Sway, Bloodspike, Eurospike, Dervspike, Cakesplit, Sinsplit, Sabway, Discordway. It even goes down to specific builds. Shock Axe, Cripshot ranger, Boon prots, Toolbox Ele, 55 Monk, 600 prot. All these beloved setups and many more will never be possible in gw2 and imo, that was the best part of gw1.

Why did this thread become a discussion about gameplay and mechanics?!

It was about graphics and aesthetics at first glance reading the OP...

Vayne.8563:

Most people are looking at Guild Wars 1 from the point of view of four products not one. Though Guild Wars Prophecies was a good game, it took many years before the game really came into it’s own.

That is to say, a lot of people liked Nightfall and Eye of the North more than Prophecies. Not everyone, but a lot.

Nightfall didn’t come out until a year an a half after Prophecies.

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

A lot of the stuff you see in Guild Wars 2 is an attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Guild Wars 1. As an example…the skill system.

Guild Wars 1 had to very big problems with skills. There were too many of them, and with the dual profession system it was literally impossible to balance skills. People complain about the inbalance in Guild Wars 2 but they never had to deal with the permasin, or even sabway. Guild Wars 1 had serious balance issues and less skills meant more control by Anet, which is what they wanted. But there was another problem.

Many people couldn’t figure out how to make a decent build. There really were too many skills and not everyone is capable of making a build. I’m a guy who loved to make builds. That’s what I did half the time. Make new builds. But at the same time I was doing an enjoying this, other builds were ruining the game for me, particularly because if you didn’t run Build A you weren’t going to be finding a group to do the Underworld. Everyone only wanted specific builds so they could do speed clears. It was pretty obnoxious.

So Anet lost a lot of people to the inability to have a build that worked. The solution was tie skills to weapons and introduce less skills at start. This way when they do finally have an expansion and they add skills, there’s more of a chance to keep it balanced and even a total noob can play a build because his weapons have the skills he’ll basically need.

Guild Wars 1 was a great game for a small percentage of the audience. Frankly I think Guild Wars 2 will improve a lot in the years to come, but it’s going to take another six months to a year before it’s the game it should have been at launch.

I really enjoyed GW1, as you did. I will admit that I joined in the fun around the time of the Nightfall expansion. As such, I’m sure that the game already had time to evolve into a more robust and complete product versus when Prophecies was first released. I will agree that GW1 was more of a niche game. To me, it was like an indie project that had a cult following. Once you would introduce your friends to it, many would like it. However, chances are they had no idea the game even existed. (Great product not mainstream)

The great selling points for me for GW1 were 1) no monthly fees and 2) the skill system. I loved both of these things so much that I was able to look past the game’s shortcomings (ie lots of player pathing instead of a true open world, instanced game world, no Z axis, etc). I’m a fan of CCGs. So, I was drawn to the skill hunting and experimentation. I was (at the time) playing another game which required a monthly fee, so the one-time-purchase model of GW fit nicely into my budget.

While you believe that the skill system in GW1 was one of its shortcomings, I saw it to be a major selling point. You say that there were too many skills, and the system was impossible to balance. However, when I try to think of what GW1 would have been if it didn’t have the complex skill system… I just can’t imagine myself enjoying the game if that were true. GW1 would have been only been a shell of its niche glory without this system. (my opinion, yes, I know) I’m sorry that other people ruined the game for you with their skill build requirements. From your post, I can only assume that you did not have a guild or a group of friends that would allow you to pilot your own creation into the depths of UW.

I certainly hope that GW2 will release/include more skills with its next expansion. This would imbue a breath of fresh air for me into this more restrictive system. Perhaps then I will enjoy GW2 much more than I already have. That being said, I do worry that a new expansion does not seem to be on the horizon for GW2 anytime soon. Anet seems more focused on releasing monthly story updates. With the skill & trait tweaks released yesterday, maybe I’ll get just a tiny taste of more build diversity.

As a side note, It shocks me a bit that you are willing to admit GW2’s shortcomings, but seem quick to jump at those who would compare it to its predecessor.

Anyway, good hunting.

Atryue

On a somewhat offnote from the above discussions, I actually liked GW1’s style of graphics better (though they are kind of old and would need to be updated). GW2 has a really cartoony feel to it that makes everything feel a bit sillier. The effects just don’t seem as mesmerizing to me when they have a drawn look to them.

I love GW2’s more fluid casting system. It’s enough to keep me away from other MMOs that have to stop to cast skills.

GW1’s build system is something I also liked, although sometimes making builds took more time than player :p Once you had enough saved builds though, it let you switch around your character enough to keep things fresh. GW2 has the concept somewhat present in the trait system, although the weapon/utility skills keep combinations kind of low (I’m expecting more later on though) and it really needs a build saving feature.

Finally I liked that in GW1 I could play some challenging content that was still in short time spans. The problem with “casual” play is that everything is too easy, but “hardcore” stuff tends to take really long amounts of time. Most hard mode missions as well as some other challenging content in Guild Wars 1 can be completed in fairly low chunks of time if you don’t die, although this was more apparent near the end of it’s life with the guild wars beyond stuff. And if you didn’t want it to be hard? Just do the normal mode versions instead.

Oh and I can’t believe I almost forgot to add this. I loved how GW1 characters could get max level/gear in a very short time period. It made switching professions when you got bored of one or just needed something else for a missions very easy.

In the end though, I don’t play gw1 anymore mostly because I have to stop to use skills :p Even then I used a dervish half my skills were instant anyway.

After 7+ years, I still find plenty of fun things to do in Guild Wars 1.

After only 4 months, I can no longer bear to log into Guild Wars 2.

GW2 feels like a cheap knockoff of GW1, albeit with better graphics. It doesn’t even feel like both games were created by the same developer.

The ‘Living Story’ has failed, in my opinion. It seems to be driving players away from the game rather than attracting them, from my personal experience anyway.

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

I think that GW2 has tried so hard to maximise profits as much as possible with the minimum effort possible, while trying to hype itself to as many people as possible, that it’s fast becoming a smaller niche than GW.

What they’re doing now, and have alluded to for future content, they should have been doing since the beginning. I fear they’ve completely driven off a large chunk of the once loyal GW playerbase, and pretty much annoyed many others into leaving.

I think if they’d just focussed on making a solid game, and then marketed it for what it was, they might have found that all that experience they got from GW would have been priceless. But they don’t appear to have learned from that at all. They ignored the great things about GW, and have adopted some of the bad things, and even made them worse! (grind, RNG, ugh).

Too little, too late. It’s going to take one hell of a makeover and PR campaign for ArenaNet to have a prayer at getting all those players back, and I don’t think they are capable of that.

Edit: I really enjoyed your link, OP

Looking at those pictures makes me remember my Canthan Mesmer . I really wish they could bring back stuff from GW1 to GW2 like the guild halls and duels and arena .

GW1 had a ton of skills, and while there was definitely balance issues the game didn’t have skill swapping once players left a lobby/outpost. So skills like hard counters, and supplements to niche strategies were virtually useless unless they could potentially beat anything. So people were constantly motivated to find a golden build synergy that could beat anything that was being regularly played. If GW1 had the skill swapping system that GW2 had, things would have been different.

One thing GW1 did have, that helped make a ton of its skills useful, was that defenses in the game could be bolstered quite heavily making direct damage less valuable. It made energy denial, interrupts, hexs, and many forms of indirect offense viable.

I would still be playing GW1 if it actually still had a decently sized gaming community.

I certainly miss having total control of my skill bar. Now, I’m shoehorned to a degree. If I pick a weapon because I like skills 1, 3 and 5, but hate 2 and 4, I’m stuck with them unless I also drop 1, 3 and 5. I can choose my utilities but slot 10 only holds elites, even if my class has none worth the spot.

GW may have had skill bloat, with many skills never being used, but GW2 also has skill bloat, just to a lesser degree.

LumAnth.5124:

Pre Searing Ascalon is probably the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever seen.

It was a perfect color blend of blue, yellow, orange and green (with the occasional marble color for buildings)

Not only was it that bright and shiny scene, but it had it’s smudges. The Catacombs is a big example. Another is the Wizard’s Folly mountain, with the mysterious tower. And it’s those smudges that made Pre Searing Ascalon perfect

I have never, ever seen such a place (in a game) in my life as beautiful as that.

Sadly, they tried to recreate the same setting in the Charr Homelands in EoTN, but it wasn’t as good (I thought it was a pretty bad extension, actually)

Came here to post pretty much this, exactly.

While I believe the Charr homelands weren’t without charm, they simply can’t compare. Still, I find it enchanting that if you tilt your head correctly, and let your eyes space out for a bit, certain parts of GW2’s Ascalonian lands rekindle the magic that was GW1.

….Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go log into GW1 and die horribly because I’m going to be mashing a non-existent dodge key. ;_;

AngryCat.4825:

LumAnth.5124:

Pre Searing Ascalon is probably the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever seen.

It was a perfect color blend of blue, yellow, orange and green (with the occasional marble color for buildings)

Not only was it that bright and shiny scene, but it had it’s smudges. The Catacombs is a big example. Another is the Wizard’s Folly mountain, with the mysterious tower. And it’s those smudges that made Pre Searing Ascalon perfect

I have never, ever seen such a place (in a game) in my life as beautiful as that.

Sadly, they tried to recreate the same setting in the Charr Homelands in EoTN, but it wasn’t as good (I thought it was a pretty bad extension, actually)

Came here to post pretty much this, exactly.

While I believe the Charr homelands weren’t without charm, they simply can’t compare. Still, I find it enchanting that if you tilt your head correctly, and let your eyes space out for a bit, certain parts of GW2’s Ascalonian lands rekindle the magic that was GW1.

….Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go log into GW1 and die horribly because I’m going to be mashing a non-existent dodge key. ;_;

I did this yesterday! I logged into GW1 and just went through tons of different locations for the nostalgia. I kept trying to move during fighting, which as a ritualist was about the most ridiculous thing ever -_-. /jump!

Vayne.8563:

Most people are looking at Guild Wars 1 from the point of view of four products not one. Though Guild Wars Prophecies was a good game, it took many years before the game really came into it’s own.

That is to say, a lot of people liked Nightfall and Eye of the North more than Prophecies. Not everyone, but a lot.

Nightfall didn’t come out until a year an a half after Prophecies.

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

A lot of the stuff you see in Guild Wars 2 is an attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Guild Wars 1. As an example…the skill system.

Guild Wars 1 had to very big problems with skills. There were too many of them, and with the dual profession system it was literally impossible to balance skills. People complain about the inbalance in Guild Wars 2 but they never had to deal with the permasin, or even sabway. Guild Wars 1 had serious balance issues and less skills meant more control by Anet, which is what they wanted. But there was another problem.

Many people couldn’t figure out how to make a decent build. There really were too many skills and not everyone is capable of making a build. I’m a guy who loved to make builds. That’s what I did half the time. Make new builds. But at the same time I was doing an enjoying this, other builds were ruining the game for me, particularly because if you didn’t run Build A you weren’t going to be finding a group to do the Underworld. Everyone only wanted specific builds so they could do speed clears. It was pretty obnoxious.

So Anet lost a lot of people to the inability to have a build that worked. The solution was tie skills to weapons and introduce less skills at start. This way when they do finally have an expansion and they add skills, there’s more of a chance to keep it balanced and even a total noob can play a build because his weapons have the skills he’ll basically need.

Guild Wars 1 was a great game for a small percentage of the audience. Frankly I think Guild Wars 2 will improve a lot in the years to come, but it’s going to take another six months to a year before it’s the game it should have been at launch.

At one point in it’s life GW1 had well over 5 million players and was competing with WoW for the king of mmos title. How is that niche?

Guild War 1 devolopement team valued Ranger class and its pet.

Here

You can see the diffrence.

This class has long been forgotten after….

The Great Legend of Time

Guild War 1

The Lover of the Ranger

Burnfall.9573:

Guild War 1 devolopement team valued Ranger class and its pet.

Here

You can see the diffrence.

This class has long been forgotten after….

The Great Legend of Time

Guild War 1

The Lover of the Ranger

Bunny thumper ftw

Vayne.8563:

Next thing you know, people will be saying that Alesia was awesome. lol

Now that you mention it … according to the usual GW2 practices she was ahead of her time by 250 years with the combat ressing. So from a GW2 perspective Alesia is pretty awesome compared to the GW2 NPCs and even some GW2 players.

Vayne.8563:

Next thing you know, people will be saying that Alesia was awesome. lol

What was wrong with Alesia?

Tell you what when we start the NPC hate list Trahearne pops to mind far faster than Alesia lol

FlamingFoxx.1305:

AngryCat.4825:

LumAnth.5124:

Pre Searing Ascalon is probably the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever seen.

It was a perfect color blend of blue, yellow, orange and green (with the occasional marble color for buildings)

Not only was it that bright and shiny scene, but it had it’s smudges. The Catacombs is a big example. Another is the Wizard’s Folly mountain, with the mysterious tower. And it’s those smudges that made Pre Searing Ascalon perfect

I have never, ever seen such a place (in a game) in my life as beautiful as that.

Sadly, they tried to recreate the same setting in the Charr Homelands in EoTN, but it wasn’t as good (I thought it was a pretty bad extension, actually)

Came here to post pretty much this, exactly.

While I believe the Charr homelands weren’t without charm, they simply can’t compare. Still, I find it enchanting that if you tilt your head correctly, and let your eyes space out for a bit, certain parts of GW2’s Ascalonian lands rekindle the magic that was GW1.

….Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go log into GW1 and die horribly because I’m going to be mashing a non-existent dodge key. ;_;

I did this yesterday! I logged into GW1 and just went through tons of different locations for the nostalgia. I kept trying to move during fighting, which as a ritualist was about the most ridiculous thing ever -_-. /jump!

Ha ha! Although I do occasionally “dodge” in GW1, I press space bar to attack more often in GW2, ending in an awkward jump…. (I’ve almost gotten rid of this habit if it weren’t for me constantly going back to GW1!!)

Anyway, yeah, Pre-searing. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you take a look at those screen shots the OP posted.

It is way to marvelous, and I get lost “RP-ing” by myself in their. I pretend I’m a village Wizard or some random merchant. Sometimes I sit by the river in Regent Valley and just marvel at how extravagant the view is.

Dante.1508:

Vayne.8563:

Next thing you know, people will be saying that Alesia was awesome. lol

What was wrong with Alesia?

Tell you what when we start the NPC hate list Trahearne pops to mind far faster than Alesia lol

That is probably because you’ve been playing GW2 much more recently than you’ve have had need to bring Alesia. By the time you meet Trahearne on a non-Sylvari character you should be pretty much trained to know that NPCs are basically useless and Trahearne has some annoying lines but when you have Alesia in the party there was a reason for that.

The problem with Alesia was her skill priorities. She had a tendency to try to res people in the wrong time. The middle of a battle where your party is taking enough damage for someone to be killed is not the greatest time for your only healer to stop everything she is doing and start casting a slow ressurection spell. If you weren’t playing from release it might not be as noticeable, there were a bunch of updates to henchmen and hero AI. In the Crystal Desert section of the game I believe she has(or had, there were also some updates to their skills too) Healing Touch on her bar as well which meant she would try to charge into the thick of things when trying to heal.

Khisanth.2948:

Dante.1508:

Vayne.8563:

Next thing you know, people will be saying that Alesia was awesome. lol

What was wrong with Alesia?

Tell you what when we start the NPC hate list Trahearne pops to mind far faster than Alesia lol

That is probably because you’ve been playing GW2 much more recently than you’ve have had need to bring Alesia. By the time you meet Trahearne on a non-Sylvari character you should be pretty much trained to know that NPCs are basically useless and Trahearne has some annoying lines but when you have Alesia in the party there was a reason for that.

The problem with Alesia was her skill priorities. She had a tendency to try to res people in the wrong time. The middle of a battle where your party is taking enough damage for someone to be killed is not the greatest time for your only healer to stop everything she is doing and start casting a slow ressurection spell. If you weren’t playing from release it might not be as noticeable, there were a bunch of updates to henchmen and hero AI. In the Crystal Desert section of the game I believe she has(or had, there were also some updates to their skills too) Healing Touch on her bar as well which meant she would try to charge into the thick of things when trying to heal.

That and she had the tendency to try to do so while standing in a pool of lava, too. Which didn’t help any.

fellyn.5083:

Vayne.8563:

Most people are looking at Guild Wars 1 from the point of view of four products not one. Though Guild Wars Prophecies was a good game, it took many years before the game really came into it’s own.

That is to say, a lot of people liked Nightfall and Eye of the North more than Prophecies. Not everyone, but a lot.

Nightfall didn’t come out until a year an a half after Prophecies.

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

A lot of the stuff you see in Guild Wars 2 is an attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Guild Wars 1. As an example…the skill system.

Guild Wars 1 had to very big problems with skills. There were too many of them, and with the dual profession system it was literally impossible to balance skills. People complain about the inbalance in Guild Wars 2 but they never had to deal with the permasin, or even sabway. Guild Wars 1 had serious balance issues and less skills meant more control by Anet, which is what they wanted. But there was another problem.

Many people couldn’t figure out how to make a decent build. There really were too many skills and not everyone is capable of making a build. I’m a guy who loved to make builds. That’s what I did half the time. Make new builds. But at the same time I was doing an enjoying this, other builds were ruining the game for me, particularly because if you didn’t run Build A you weren’t going to be finding a group to do the Underworld. Everyone only wanted specific builds so they could do speed clears. It was pretty obnoxious.

So Anet lost a lot of people to the inability to have a build that worked. The solution was tie skills to weapons and introduce less skills at start. This way when they do finally have an expansion and they add skills, there’s more of a chance to keep it balanced and even a total noob can play a build because his weapons have the skills he’ll basically need.

Guild Wars 1 was a great game for a small percentage of the audience. Frankly I think Guild Wars 2 will improve a lot in the years to come, but it’s going to take another six months to a year before it’s the game it should have been at launch.

At one point in it’s life GW1 had well over 5 million players and was competing with WoW for the king of mmos title. How is that niche?

Guild Wars 1 probably never had 5 million people playing at the same time. Don’t confuse 5 million copies sold (a landmark they didn’t hit till like year 4 or 5) with 12.4 million subscribers (and many gamers would even consider WoW niche).

12.4 million subscribers, has nothing to do with boxes sold. Boxes sold includes people like both my sons who played it briefly, and left for WoW.

You can’t use box sales to say whether something is niche or not. Only concurrent players. I seriously doubt Guild Wars 1 had more than 1 million concurrent players at any time.

The word niche only works when you compare pontential players to people playing. Niche doesn’t exist in a background. There are currently according to some estimates 200 million gamers. MMOs by most are still considered niche. Only WoW is close to being not niche.

Consider this. Diablo 3 sold 6.8 million copies in it’s first week on existence, more than Guild Wars 1 sold in 7 years.

Niche is niche.

I thought the OP’s intention was to talk about how nostalgic it was to see old screen shots and wanted to discuss the aesthetics of GW1 and GW2. Not about who’s game play/mechanics are better and what in the world a niche game is.

Vayne.8563:

fellyn.5083:

Vayne.8563:

Most people are looking at Guild Wars 1 from the point of view of four products not one. Though Guild Wars Prophecies was a good game, it took many years before the game really came into it’s own.

That is to say, a lot of people liked Nightfall and Eye of the North more than Prophecies. Not everyone, but a lot.

Nightfall didn’t come out until a year an a half after Prophecies.

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

A lot of the stuff you see in Guild Wars 2 is an attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Guild Wars 1. As an example…the skill system.

Guild Wars 1 had to very big problems with skills. There were too many of them, and with the dual profession system it was literally impossible to balance skills. People complain about the inbalance in Guild Wars 2 but they never had to deal with the permasin, or even sabway. Guild Wars 1 had serious balance issues and less skills meant more control by Anet, which is what they wanted. But there was another problem.

Many people couldn’t figure out how to make a decent build. There really were too many skills and not everyone is capable of making a build. I’m a guy who loved to make builds. That’s what I did half the time. Make new builds. But at the same time I was doing an enjoying this, other builds were ruining the game for me, particularly because if you didn’t run Build A you weren’t going to be finding a group to do the Underworld. Everyone only wanted specific builds so they could do speed clears. It was pretty obnoxious.

So Anet lost a lot of people to the inability to have a build that worked. The solution was tie skills to weapons and introduce less skills at start. This way when they do finally have an expansion and they add skills, there’s more of a chance to keep it balanced and even a total noob can play a build because his weapons have the skills he’ll basically need.

Guild Wars 1 was a great game for a small percentage of the audience. Frankly I think Guild Wars 2 will improve a lot in the years to come, but it’s going to take another six months to a year before it’s the game it should have been at launch.

At one point in it’s life GW1 had well over 5 million players and was competing with WoW for the king of mmos title. How is that niche?

Guild Wars 1 probably never had 5 million people playing at the same time. Don’t confuse 5 million copies sold (a landmark they didn’t hit till like year 4 or 5) with 12.4 million subscribers (and many gamers would even consider WoW niche).

12.4 million subscribers, has nothing to do with boxes sold. Boxes sold includes people like both my sons who played it briefly, and left for WoW.

You can’t use box sales to say whether something is niche or not. Only concurrent players. I seriously doubt Guild Wars 1 had more than 1 million concurrent players at any time.

The word niche only works when you compare pontential players to people playing. Niche doesn’t exist in a background. There are currently according to some estimates 200 million gamers. MMOs by most are still considered niche. Only WoW is close to being not niche.

Consider this. Diablo 3 sold 6.8 million copies in it’s first week on existence, more than Guild Wars 1 sold in 7 years.

Niche is niche.

Diablo III’s level of fan anticipation was somewhere between what people felt for SC2 and what they are feeling for Half Life 3.

If GW had made two other amazing games that had a cult following instead of being the flagship, mold breaking product from a new company, they would have sold a helluva lot more copies than they did.

One thing that site doesn’t convey is the music. The music plus the particular scenery. That’s what gets me going.

(Yes, I know Jeremy Soule did GW2’s music too.)

Meret.5943:

One thing that site doesn’t convey is the music. The music plus the particular scenery. That’s what gets me going.

(Yes, I know Jeremy Soule did GW2’s music too.)

Don’t get me started on Factions ingame music. Ohhh the Main Theme of Faction…

I find the achievement point system in GW2 very stressful. Even when I am bored of the game and don’t feel like playing it on a particular day I force myself to do the dailies because I don’t want to end up with a lower achievement point total than my friends. The living story content only makes this worse for me because they keep releasing new stuff every few weeks and quite frankly I do the living story achievements only for the points and rewards, I don’t find the tasks themselves any fun at all, just tedious and the worst part is that they keep releasing new stuff like this regularly without fixing any bugs. The party system, friend list, guild list and instance bugs have been prevalent for several months now and this makes the game less fun to play with friends. They’ve also made dungeons too hard in my opinion, it’s incredibly stressful to do dungeons with friends who haven’t done them before. People say GW1 had too many skills which made the game hard to balance, well with this game they claimed to have done away with the trinity of tanks, nukers and healers but Guardians, Warriors and Mesmers are just so much better than other professions in pretty much every way to the point where people only want these classes in dungeon and fractal teams. Even among these classes only people running specific builds such as zerker builds are accepted for speedruns so it’s not as if speedclears don’t exist in this game. Most parties avoid necros, rangers and engineers and only take them if they couldn’t get anyone else. At least in GW1 you ahd the option to pick one of the stronger professions as your secondary to make up for your primary profession’s weakness but GW2 doesn’t give you that option either, furthermore GW1 gave you henchmen and heroes which meant you didn’t have to rely on finding players as we do here. This gave you more freedom to run whatever build you want and pick henchmen/heroes to make up for whatever your team lacked.

tldr; Dailies and Daily PVP shouldn’t give achievement points. They force completionist players like myself to log in and do them everyday even when I want to take a break from the game. Either make living story content more fun to do or stop releasing them altogether, they only add to the stress of doing dailies and monthlies and please fix the existing content in the game instead of releasing new content every few weeks.

I can’t take mister Vayne’s posts seriously. He/she is blindly protecting GW2, and only GW2. But the truce is that GW2 maybe not so good as he/she think so.

Vayne doesn’t realize that GW1 was game of ART and GW2 is a game of COMMERCE.

Why is that? Well, first of all because GW2 is a mmorpg, not corpg as GW1. Were devs decide to create GW2 because GW1 had problems? No. Actually it’s other way around. They decided to create GW2 when GW1 had success. It’s because of GW1 NCSoft allowed Arena working on the game and release it when Arena decide it’s done.

Why they created GW2, a mmorpg, when CORPG GW1 had a success? Why they didn’t create GW2 in GW1 style? Because GW1 had problems? No. Why then? Because mmorpg genre is more popular? Exactly! And why they decided to do that? Think about it.

And please, don’t tell me that GW1 was a commerce game too. Of course it was. People create games to gain money, it’s obvious. It’s payable entertainment. But there are different kind of products. A product with a good quality, and with not good quality but with good advertising and other tricks.

They can fool you, and you even doesn’t notice it and remain happy and don’t get, why so much people are complaining about GW2.

It’s business.

Kreslin.6832:

They decided to create GW2 when GW1 had success.

Anet decided to move on to create GW2 because the business model they outlined for GW1 wasn’t feasible in the long term. Two fully fledged campaigns per year was far too ambitious a project.

Sorry but I disagree. I don’t see the problem. They could do something better and stay on the original business model.

Meret.5943:

One thing that site doesn’t convey is the music. The music plus the particular scenery. That’s what gets me going.

(Yes, I know Jeremy Soule did GW2’s music too.)

He did, but whoever at ArenaNet that chooses the music kind of randomly threw it together with no care or effort…it usually doesn’t jive with the location or what’s going on. Moreover, most of it is recycled GW1 music….

For example, hearing the Nightfall theme in the Cliffside Fractal is way out of place…

So Jeremy Soule’s music is fantastic…but there was no effort into making it fit, and that kills immersion…well…that and a zillion other things about GW2….

Kreslin.6832:

Sorry but I disagree. I don’t see the problem. They could do something better and stay on the original business model.

Developing and releasing an entire games’ worth of content in only six months is a tremendous feat, even for the largest of developers. In fact, they didn’t even make their six month deadline for Factions or Nightfall.