Guild Wars 2

Nage.1520:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Yep, GW1 IMO was/is much better in many ways, there are only a handfull of things that blows, but, the good far outweighs the bad. It’s a shame these people tried fixing what wasn’t broken in GW1, the ONLY THINGS I find as an improvement with GW2 is the ability to jump giving us the abilty to traverse rocky areas, the ability to dodge incoming fire, the graphics and the ability to swim and have underwater combat(although it lacks enough of it).

Don’t forget the auction house!

Sorry I could care less about the auction house, IMO the personal trading is MUCH BETTER.

Warcry.1596:

Shadow Form did kinda happen over night, it was perfect the way it was, people needing a brain to use it before the health spike, but people begged for a change so it can be used for farming since many hated the way Assassins felt.

As for Glimmer and HB (Healing Burst I hope), Glimmer was just that skill I found and LOVED, we ALL have that one GW1 skill we love more than any other, don’t you guys deny it

New Starburst. 8-Player Starburst-way, only 3 PvE unique enemies use Can’t Touch This. If you’re looking to speed run campaigns for people, that’s the best way to do it.

I miss old of Ray of Judgement though, 105dps from a single immaculate and glorious skill. Now it’s the only reason to bring a smite monk. Then again I think I prefer Mesmers as Smiters over monks.

There’s a sequel?

Im Mudbone.1437:

Nage.1520:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Yep, GW1 IMO was/is much better in many ways, there are only a handfull of things that blows, but, the good far outweighs the bad. It’s a shame these people tried fixing what wasn’t broken in GW1, the ONLY THINGS I find as an improvement with GW2 is the ability to jump giving us the abilty to traverse rocky areas, the ability to dodge incoming fire, the graphics and the ability to swim and have underwater combat(although it lacks enough of it).

Don’t forget the auction house!

Sorry I could care less about the auction house, IMO the personal trading is MUCH BETTER.

Gah. Having to stand in Kamadan all day selling crap was the worst thing about Guild Wars 1 and the main reason I would never go back there. I don’t have anything against personal trading, I simply have no need for it.

I’m willing to bet that most of the GW2 players would fail in Shadow Form tanking, dungeon running, because it would require much more than pressing a single skill.

There’s NO build diversity in GW2 whatsoever.
Changing armor, weapon and retraiting doesn’t change your build.

I’ve been running same Guardian GS build since the beta, for almost 2 years. You know how boring that is?

The other side to that problem is that the meta in GW2 favours high DPS over all else. You can experiment with other quirky builds, sure, but if you try to use it anywhere other than open world PvE, you’ll be kicked pretty darn quickly.

Nostalgia Glasses

windows 3.1… windows 95….

wouw.5837:

Nostalgia Glasses

Did you genuinely think you could brush off the entire thread in two words?

Darkobra.6439:

wouw.5837:

Nostalgia Glasses

Did you genuinely think you could brush off the entire thread in two words?

It pretty much summed it up for me.

Just because a game’s older doesn’t mean that liking it is nostalgia. It’s like saying that Deus Ex isn’t better than Invisible War and anyone that says it is just has a case of nostalgia.

It’s a sweeping generalisation that proves nothing but how YOU feel. You can’t establish everyone’s love for the game with that. Nostalgia isn’t as powerful a pull as you think.

The grind in GW1 was horrendous

Darkobra.6439:

Just because a game’s older doesn’t mean that liking it is nostalgia. It’s like saying that Deus Ex isn’t better than Invisible War and anyone that says it is just has a case of nostalgia.

It’s a sweeping generalisation that proves nothing but how YOU feel. You can’t establish everyone’s love for the game with that. Nostalgia isn’t as powerful a pull as you think.

For the ones who were not around when this came out—-‘Soon there will be order again’—Classic!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zStn70Ot4r0

kokiman.2364:

The grind in GW1 was horrendous

The average player (not rich) could gear out a new character with the best stat armor and weapons PLUS get the max level in less than 4 hours.

Nick.6972:

kokiman.2364:

The grind in GW1 was horrendous

The average player (not rich) could gear out a new character with the best stat armor and weapons PLUS get the max level in less than 4 hours.

Yeah I already knew that you didn’t play GW1 since release

Nick.6972:

I’m willing to bet that most of the GW2 players would fail in Shadow Form tanking, dungeon running, because it would require much more than pressing a single skill.

There’s NO build diversity in GW2 whatsoever.
Changing armor, weapon and retraiting doesn’t change your build.

I’ve been running same Guardian GS build since the beta, for almost 2 years. You know how boring that is?

I’m willing to bet most Guild Wars 1 players would fail it too. You seem to think bad players only exist in this game. They exist in every game, usually in the majority. That’s what makes players like you in demand.

kokiman.2364:

The grind in GW1 was horrendous

What grind again?

aspirine.6852:

kokiman.2364:

The grind in GW1 was horrendous

What grind again?

HoM.

Various title tracks to fuel associated skills.

Those were the only sources of grind I encountered, but others might have more.

aspirine.6852:

kokiman.2364:

The grind in GW1 was horrendous

What grind again?

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_PvE-only_skills
Just to name one of those grinds

kokiman.2364:

aspirine.6852:

kokiman.2364:

The grind in GW1 was horrendous

What grind again?

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_PvE-only_skills
Just to name one of those grinds

Sorry but that is/was just easy stuff, for me it was atleast. But then again I loved vanquish and dungeons.

aspirine.6852:

kokiman.2364:

aspirine.6852:

kokiman.2364:

The grind in GW1 was horrendous

What grind again?

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_PvE-only_skills
Just to name one of those grinds

Sorry but that is/was just easy stuff, for me it was atleast. But then again I loved vanquish and dungeons.

So my point is not valid?

Now tell me…

If GW1 was upgraded to GW2 graphics, got smoother combat and animations, jumping, action combat, upgraded PvP and upgraded skins… wouldn’t we all be playing GW1 then?

I mean… GW2 scrapped all the good things of GW1 and simply copied all the lore and made it a WoW copy. It’s in no way a decent successor. GW1 was the better game in terms of user-friendliness, PvP, story, combat balance, expansions, grind and so much more. The only problem is that it is dated: graphics, animations, combat are all anno 2005.

I see many people never realized GW1’s real end content was actually the pvp (however the pve side was also spectacular) & I also notice many ppl think they know it all after having played the game only for the HoM, or only the last 1-3 years.
You do realize the game’s heydays are long over, don’t you? And that you missed out on a true gem in the gaming industry.
The game is obviously still fun to those of us who have a solid network of players going, but a newcomer who only wants to pve will never be able to appreciate the game for what it was, and what it sometimes still can be under certain conditions.

Moreover, the sheer amount of players inable to appreciate genuine team-oriented combat and quality pvp may exit back to WoW or whichever typical mmo they emerged from. Or just be happy GW2 has come to the rescue, and enjoy that instant, skin-deep fix.

It should be noted that GW spoiled its players with gourmet food for many long years, so most of us cannot stomach very well the LQ Mcdonalds burgers wrapped up in fluff that GW2 is trying to shove down our throats. But people who are used to eating fast food, while altogether ignorant of gourmet-level dishes, will still be able to appreciate the burgers. The same applies to those who only got breadcrumbs falling down from an empty gourmet table, I suppose.

P.S. Shadow Form should have been reworked ages ago, because it really does completely trivialize the whole of pve. Moreover, pve-only skills were a mistake alltogether, but that’s already a different story.

Sirendor.1394:

Now tell me…

If GW1 was upgraded to GW2 graphics, got smoother combat and animations, jumping, action combat, upgraded PvP and upgraded skins… wouldn’t we all be playing GW1 then?

I mean… GW2 scrapped all the good things of GW1 and simply copied all the lore and made it a WoW copy. It’s in no way a decent successor. GW1 was the better game in terms of user-friendliness, PvP, story, combat balance, expansions, grind and so much more. The only problem is that it is dated: graphics, animations, combat are all anno 2005.

I’m not sure. I’d be torn, but I’d probably stick with Guild Wars 2.

Sirendor.1394:

Now tell me…

If GW1 was upgraded to GW2 graphics, got smoother combat and animations, jumping, action combat, upgraded PvP and upgraded skins… wouldn’t we all be playing GW1 then?

/endsnip

Actually, this is a valid question. Truthfully, the answer would have to be no, I would still not say it’s a better MMO. Just different. Not only that, it would still be an instanced game in which I would never see another person in the zone if I solo. I don’t know about you, but seeing other people in the zone (even if it’s rare) is still better than not having the chance to see anyone at all by design.

Nick.6972:

kokiman.2364:

The grind in GW1 was horrendous

The average player (not rich) could gear out a new character with the best stat armor and weapons PLUS get the max level in less than 4 hours.

This is a true statement. One could level to 20 in a very short time, especially if you leveled to 10, and then went to EOTN and did the punchout game. Then, you could gear out with the best of the best armor for a pittance, IF you didn’t mind using generic armor skins(equivilent to crafted lvl 80 exotics in GW2.) If you wanted the “good” skins such as Obby or Vabbi, you could grind for months before you got enough mats to have the NPC build one for you (or buy the mats for stupidly high prices from another player.) If you wanted Faction armor, you had to grind Influence, and if you wanted Racial armor, you had to grind racial influence points.

GW2 is really no different in that respect. Yes, it takes longer to level, but it takes the same amount of time to level from 79 to 80 as it does to level from 5-6 (unlike most other MMOs out there with no monthly fee, where it can take weeks to go from one level to another without any quests/story/events to help…True grinding at it’s worst…)

You can still gear out your character on the cheap, and still be viable in PvE and WvW. If you want the truly “prestigious” armors and weapons, then be prepared for a grind for either mats or gold, just like any other game, INCLUDING GW1.

Summary:
GW1 and GW2 are similar in some areas, but the core games themselves are different styles. One is an MMO (GW2) and one is purely instanced (GW1.) Comparing the two and saying one is “better” than the other is purely subjective. The one area that I still agree with is that GW1’s PvP is miles better than GW2’s, but then again, it’s my opinion, not yours.

If GW1 was better you would be playing that game atm and not trolling the forums here….You play and"grumble" here because GW2 is better. If there was any other game which you would have found better, you would be playing and grumbling there. Soo in your cases Better Game = one which you play and grumble at.

Guildwars2 is the better game..
Then again i never had server down time in guildwars.. never had a combat system that was utterly broken never had a dull moment in spvp because of interesting and well made maps. never was upset by cheese builds because there was always a way to recognize them and build a appropriate counter for the next match, and so i never had to guess a build like gw2 makes me do. strangely guildwars had interesting and engaging dungeons that could fail pretty easy if you didn’t know what you were doing..
IOW. guildwars had non of the happy go luck stuff guildwars2 is shoveling.

kokiman.2364:

aspirine.6852:

kokiman.2364:

aspirine.6852:

kokiman.2364:

The grind in GW1 was horrendous

What grind again?

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_PvE-only_skills
Just to name one of those grinds

Sorry but that is/was just easy stuff, for me it was atleast. But then again I loved vanquish and dungeons.

So my point is not valid?

No not really :/

I was a low level & it was the day of a new living world content release. I had started getting the ball rolling on my main and the video release of the new content had me excited. My heart started to pump as I loaded into an intense war zone, eager for an epic battle with giant mobs involving intense game play with people screaming on vent. I was new, I was the under dog but ready to take my sharp reaction times built in pvp to carry me through.

I find a large group and i’m instantly invited to a party, the enormous mob spawns and we charge into battle!!

I’m dodging and casting skills as skillfully as I can, I haven’t been hit by anything yet & i’m pumping in the damage but something feels off. This enormous monster has paid me no attention, I decide to stand still, my heart rate lowers. I auto attack, achieving the same damage and still not being hit until eventually I even stop attacking. The mob goes down, I receive gold. At this decisive moment I realize, it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter if I’m afk or going ham this thing is going to die and I’m going to get gold. I was so disappointed and haven’t pve’d since soley because there was a complete lack of a challenge in the content that I thought was supposed to be the new end game.

Now this obviously isn’t the true experience of difficult content in gw2 pve but how do you expect people that experience this to have motivation to see it through to the end.

In Guild Wars 1 I remember being motivated enough to go all the way to end game pve. I remember farming extremely hard areas and even positioning was critical. I remember being an asset to my group.

I just want that feeling back

aussieheals.6843:

I was a low level & it was the day of a new living world content release. I had started getting the ball rolling on my main and the video release of the new content had me excited. My heart started to pump as I loaded into an intense war zone, eager for an epic battle with giant mobs involving intense game play with people screaming on vent. I was new, I was the under dog but ready to take my sharp reaction times built in pvp to carry me through.

I find a large group and i’m instantly invited to a party, the enormous mob spawns and we charge into battle!!

I’m dodging and casting skills as skillfully as I can, I haven’t been hit by anything yet & i’m pumping in the damage but something feels off. This enormous monster has paid me no attention, I decide to stand still, my heart rate lowers. I auto attack, achieving the same damage and still not being hit until eventually I even stop attacking. The mob goes down, I receive gold. At this decisive moment I realize, it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter if I’m afk or going ham this thing is going to die and I’m going to get gold. I was so disappointed and haven’t pve’d since soley because there was a complete lack of a challenge in the content that I thought was supposed to be the new end game.

Now this obviously isn’t the true experience of difficult content in gw2 pve but how do you expect people that experience this to have motivation to see it through to the end.

In Guild Wars 1 I remember being motivated enough to go all the way to end game pve. I remember farming extremely hard areas and even positioning was critical. I remember being an asset to my group.

I just want that feeling back

:)
Like Urgoz’s warren, the first mob’s man nothing was more fun then seeing your group wipe within the first seconds of battle and then blaming the necro for pulling the mob’s instead of dying like he should..
Or generally any solo farm spot where one keystroke 1 second off would result in a wipe.
Then again every area needed a specific build and you could create those builds without much investment ( since most investments were in skins) and you would be able to switch builds without having to move zones, talk to a npc, pay gold, buy expensive armor, buying expensive buff’s etc.. you would simply click a button, look up your preset build and .. click again..

I am posting this because apparently Guildwars2 doesn’t know what the game they got their name from was about.

Wish they could bring back Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry type battles. And random arenas as well where the focus of the game is to wipe out the enemy team. Feels so good when a random team of 4 players reach the 25th battle. Maybe they could add elements of MOBA games, such as “minions”, towers, and earning gold/battle currency to buy buffs?

Warhammer online was much better game than GW1. It was real mmo and it got real PvP.

Junkpile.7439:

Warhammer online was much better game than GW1. It was real mmo and it got real PvP.

Yeah, except that it wasnt.

Mega Messiah.1734:

GW1 sucked and I only played it for the 30 HoM points rewards.

If you want to play it, it’s still there in all it’s glory.

Then you didn’t play it right. That game is by far more in depth. Even if you could only play human.

Mazreal Blackknight.1564:

Mega Messiah.1734:

GW1 sucked and I only played it for the 30 HoM points rewards.

If you want to play it, it’s still there in all it’s glory.

Then you didn’t play it right. That game is by far more in depth. Even if you could only play human.

The fallacy here, and I see it all the time, is the depth automatically makes a game better. That’s not necessarily true. It doesn’t necessarily hurt a game, but it doesn’t necessarily make it better either.

The depth in Guild Wars 1 turned it into a strategy game. Something like magic the gathering (even the devs made that analogy). Build Wars. And if you like that type of game, that’s all well and good. But it’s still only an opinion.

As many people tried and walked away from Guild Wars 1 because of the depth, as there were people who were busy enjoying it. It wasn’t friendly to get into for a lot of people. It wasn’t accessible.

A lack of accessibility can certainly make a game better or worse. Guild Wars 2 is more accessible than Guild Wars 1 ever was, and that is another criteria by which to judge a game.

I only played guild wars 1 the last 2.5/3 years. I did more in that time then gw2 has offered. You can’t judge a 7 year old game in the short time it takes to obtain 30 HoM points. Don’t get me wrong my option is just that mine. And yours is your; his is his. It’s all good just when you only play long enough to get 30 HoM point ( which is easy) then say it sucked I dunno someone didn’t play it. The game had WAY more depth then this one does. Not to say it won’t get there, I just hope it gets there soon… :/

Nage.1520:

Mazreal Blackknight.1564:

Mega Messiah.1734:

GW1 sucked and I only played it for the 30 HoM points rewards.

If you want to play it, it’s still there in all it’s glory.

Then you didn’t play it right. That game is by far more in depth. Even if you could only play human.

The fallacy here, and I see it all the time, is the depth automatically makes a game better. That’s not necessarily true. It doesn’t necessarily hurt a game, but it doesn’t necessarily make it better either.

The depth in Guild Wars 1 turned it into a strategy game. Something like magic the gathering (even the devs made that analogy). Build Wars. And if you like that type of game, that’s all well and good. But it’s still only an opinion.

As many people tried and walked away from Guild Wars 1 because of the depth, as there were people who were busy enjoying it. It wasn’t friendly to get into for a lot of people. It wasn’t accessible.

A lack of accessibility can certainly make a game better or worse. Guild Wars 2 is more accessible than Guild Wars 1 ever was, and that is another criteria by which to judge a game.

On the flip side of this you felt ‘apart’ of guild wars 1. Your character was important, I can’t help but feel detached from this games pve environment. Even the living world feels like just a biweekly intro scene into a basic console action game where no matter how much you try you cannot die. Or even worse, you can die because someone you cannot control or choose to fight by your side can’t stay out of an obvious bright red round circle.

I love the movement, I love the combat, I love the music and the sights. I just feel a disconnect. I hope season 2 fills this gap.

aussieheals.6843:

Nage.1520:

Mazreal Blackknight.1564:

Mega Messiah.1734:

GW1 sucked and I only played it for the 30 HoM points rewards.

If you want to play it, it’s still there in all it’s glory.

Then you didn’t play it right. That game is by far more in depth. Even if you could only play human.

The fallacy here, and I see it all the time, is the depth automatically makes a game better. That’s not necessarily true. It doesn’t necessarily hurt a game, but it doesn’t necessarily make it better either.

The depth in Guild Wars 1 turned it into a strategy game. Something like magic the gathering (even the devs made that analogy). Build Wars. And if you like that type of game, that’s all well and good. But it’s still only an opinion.

As many people tried and walked away from Guild Wars 1 because of the depth, as there were people who were busy enjoying it. It wasn’t friendly to get into for a lot of people. It wasn’t accessible.

A lack of accessibility can certainly make a game better or worse. Guild Wars 2 is more accessible than Guild Wars 1 ever was, and that is another criteria by which to judge a game.

On the flip side of this you felt ‘apart’ of guild wars 1. Your character was important, I can’t help but feel detached from this games pve environment. Even the living world feels like just a biweekly intro scene into a basic console action game where no matter how much you try you cannot die. Or even worse, you can die because someone you cannot control or choose to fight by your side can’t stay out of an obvious bright red round circle.

I love the movement, I love the combat, I love the music and the sights. I just feel a disconnect. I hope season 2 fills this gap.

You’re preaching to the choir brother. Guild Wars 1 did a better job of that for sure.

GW1 was the worst game i ever played. Bought it just to get HoM achis and i was prepared for crappy graphics, but was definatelly not prepared for a game wholly designed to be a major pain in the backside.
-Having to switch builds with nearly every map, why on earth would i want to do it all the time? I find good build i want to play it end of story.
-Extremely small inventory. With all the trash that drops that suddenly turns out to be usefull when you find some npc vendor who trades for it. Seems you need to carry everything you loot with you for such npc vendors yet there is no room for it.
-Grouping… major pain in the backside. Use fast travel and group is gone.
-Exploring, yeah forget it, millions of enemies everywhere that cant be skiped, succesfully kill any will to do that.
-Lvl cap of 20 yet you end up fighting lvl 30 npcs all the time.
-escort missions with 0 control over npcs you escort.
-Lack of trading post, as new player buying anything or finding out if the offer is right and not overpriced is impossible.
-No alt-tabing support. Well you can alt tab if you like to watch npcs teleport all over the map.
-Always stuck in party, can never do anything on your own, you will always have a group which you will always have to micromanage to get anything done.
-micromanaging, micromanaging, micromanaging, micromanaging, all the time, everything.

I’m glad i did not play GW1 before playing GW2, would definatelly not give GW2 a chance if i did.

Getting together a group in GW1 sucked, and since a lot of missions required group synergy you couldn’t just hop onto a character and take skills you like, you had to be a specific class and (often cookie cutter) build. Because of this getting a party could take ages, as well as creating the issue where some classes were required and in short supply while others did not fit a niche and were often left out altogether. Add to that if someone in your group was bad and didn’t know what to do you could end up wiping faster than it took to group up to begin with.

In my very subjective humble opinion I enjoyed Guild Wars 1 more. Yet it’s very difficult to compare the two games as they are in so many ways different. And therein lies the rub for some folks, as Guild Wars 2 is not the true sequel that we were promised and/or hoped for.

I still visit the classic game from time to time but alas my friends have moved on to Guild Wars 2 and almost all new content and development for Guild Wars 1 has ceased.

I’ve played GW1 on and off since its initial release and to this day, it’s still one of the most tedious games I’ve ever played. The skill collecting, forced grouping just to proceed further, lots of encounters that can’t be bypassed because the way mobs were laid out… just really obnoxious game design all around.

The only thing I ever liked from it was the game world, everything else was inferior to successor we have today.

Lucyfer.9517:

GW1 was the worst game i ever played. Bought it just to get HoM achis and i was prepared for crappy graphics, but was definatelly not prepared for a game wholly designed to be a major pain in the backside.
-Having to switch builds with nearly every map, why on earth would i want to do it all the time? I find good build i want to play it end of story.
-Extremely small inventory. With all the trash that drops that suddenly turns out to be usefull when you find some npc vendor who trades for it. Seems you need to carry everything you loot with you for such npc vendors yet there is no room for it.
-Grouping… major pain in the backside. Use fast travel and group is gone.
-Exploring, yeah forget it, millions of enemies everywhere that cant be skiped, succesfully kill any will to do that.
-Lvl cap of 20 yet you end up fighting lvl 30 npcs all the time.
-escort missions with 0 control over npcs you escort.
-Lack of trading post, as new player buying anything or finding out if the offer is right and not overpriced is impossible.
-No alt-tabing support. Well you can alt tab if you like to watch npcs teleport all over the map.
-Always stuck in party, can never do anything on your own, you will always have a group which you will always have to micromanage to get anything done.
-micromanaging, micromanaging, micromanaging, micromanaging, all the time, everything.

I’m glad i did not play GW1 before playing GW2, would definatelly not give GW2 a chance if i did.

From this post, you can tell that GW1 was a niche game that only appealed to a minority of the mmo gamers. It was not a simple “jump in and start thwacking monsters” game.
GW1 came about six months (Apr 2005) after WoW came out (Nov 2004) and people were still warming up to the game. WoW eventually took off setting up standards for future mmogs. GW1 remained fairly niche but gained a little buzzed compared to WoW. GW2 is just Anet “catching up with the times” of mmo gaming…
We won’t see a return to GW1 mainly because the the mmo gamer pop of today consists of players with experience in WoW or the plethora of similar F2P games (Chinese/Korean/Japanese).
Gamers of today have been nurtured/cultured to learn and understand certain mechanics, that you now see in GW2.
The fact of the matter is…GW1 wouldn’t succeed/survive in today’s environment.

Also GW2 is not a genuine successor to GW1. Only in name and lore.

TurtleofPower.5641:

I’ve stumped and cheered for GW2 forever. All the ideas sounded innovative on paper.

Now maybe I’ve got rose-colored glasses on but I realize GW1 was superior at a lot of things.

1. Why Groups Were Better In GW1

So you had to wait around LF monk in Guild Wars 1. Yep, I was there, I complained about how stupid it was to take 20 minutes to get a monk in GW1. Here’s the reality though, it was an inconvenience, but one that ALLOWED for the group to actually work together once they went into action. I’m not saying group play was hugely dynamic or anything. You did play your static roles and it could be repetitive.

What it was was something real however. When the group succeeded or failed, boy did you feel that.

In GW2 there’s no connection to anything. Even when they try to get us to coordinate for world events, it doesn’t feel much different that herding sheep to a spot. Nobody knows what’s going on in terms of success of failure. It all seems to be happening outside of us, in a dream, while way too many particle effects contribute to the haze of “what exactly is any of this?”

I miss groups that are playing “the mission” or UW or DoA. Back then we weren’t people trying to follow a Dulfy guide, but figured it out together. (Or sometimes failed pretty badly.) It used to be in Guild Wars that any intrepid group of adventurers with a decent use of our skills could make it through all sorts of devious opponents. And, though ranging from mild challenges to extreme ones, it was usually pretty engaging gameplay.

2. Expansions Are Awesome

I’m getting pretty jaded by the GW2 pay model. They’re making lots of money off the store, but the content we are getting is actually very very basic in the gameplay department. I honestly can’t pimp this stuff to people who don’t play. “Ok guys so with this new Lion’s Arch content what you do is basically just run around spamming your bar.” They’ll wonder if I’m crazy and why I play.

We need a revolution for this revolutionary game. We need an expansion that makes grouping real again, and brings a new continent’s worth full of amazing adventures.

In a word, no. Now I realize many people do like GW1 but me personally when I hear or see GW1 mentioned I am reminded of my early teen years when I saved up 50 dollars to buy an “MMO”. After buying the game I was severely disappointed by the it in every sense of the word, I was expecting a real open world MMO without paying the $15 montly subscription fee(granted GW1 wasn’t technically advertised as an MMO, but it was directly compared to WoW, and it was one of the only alternatives to it on the market at the time). I ended up playing the game regardless because I didn’t want my $50 to go to waste so eventually I got to level 20 and sold my account. I hated every second of it. Why was I disappointed by this game? Multiple reasons:

-The fact that you you can venture out of a city with only eight people, otherwise you roam around absolutely alone except when you are in a city. Made the world feel dull and lifeless.

-Extremely linear quests, and story.

-The fact that you couldn’t jump (Yes I know this isn’t a “real” reason).

-No sense of exploration, wonder, or hidden secrets.

-The static look and feel of the world, absolutely no interactivity with the environment around.

-Many more reasons I can’t recall.

After playing GW1 I had an extremely bad taste in my mouth I literally hated the franchise, and when I heard about GW2 I was extremely biased against it. Then I tried the beta, and I immediately saw that everything I hated about GW1 was improved upon. I was pleasantly surprised and ended up buying the game as soon as it came out. I am still in love with GW2, and the more I play it the more I love it. I think it is a superior game to GW1 in every single measurable aspect. Now yes I realize it is lacking a bit of content in its current state, but give it some time it has only been a little over a year. There will be an expansion, I don’t have a doubt in my mind. These things just take time, and yes it will take significantly longer to get permanent content out because GW2 is so much more complex than GW1 is. Furthermore if you all think GW1 is so far superior, then please go and play it.

GW2 by far is the superior game. This of course is my subjective opinion.

Yes….GW1 was better…it was player oriented in a way, not a zergfest.

Lucyfer.9517:

GW1 was the worst game i ever played. Bought it just to get HoM achis and i was prepared for crappy graphics, but was definatelly not prepared for a game wholly designed to be a major pain in the backside.
-Having to switch builds with nearly every map, why on earth would i want to do it all the time? I find good build i want to play it end of story.
-Extremely small inventory. With all the trash that drops that suddenly turns out to be usefull when you find some npc vendor who trades for it. Seems you need to carry everything you loot with you for such npc vendors yet there is no room for it.
-Grouping… major pain in the backside. Use fast travel and group is gone.
-Exploring, yeah forget it, millions of enemies everywhere that cant be skiped, succesfully kill any will to do that.
-Lvl cap of 20 yet you end up fighting lvl 30 npcs all the time.
-escort missions with 0 control over npcs you escort.
-Lack of trading post, as new player buying anything or finding out if the offer is right and not overpriced is impossible.
-No alt-tabing support. Well you can alt tab if you like to watch npcs teleport all over the map.
-Always stuck in party, can never do anything on your own, you will always have a group which you will always have to micromanage to get anything done.
-micromanaging, micromanaging, micromanaging, micromanaging, all the time, everything.

I’m glad i did not play GW1 before playing GW2, would definatelly not give GW2 a chance if i did.

Yes. Thank you. I thought I was the only one. I did play GW1 before GW2, and I honestly hated everything about GW2 after GW1 until I tried the beta. I completely did a 180.

I don’t miss being told I need a full stack of summoning stones to get into Underworld.
I don’t miss how unless you were running a farming build, you couldn’t even find groups for some dungeons (I’m looking at you SoO and UW).
I don’t miss people being able to skip 90% of the content in Prophecies (There’s a Jungle? There’s a Desert?!)
I also think people look back on the writing of that game with HUGE bias. Prophecies was a disjointed mess of ‘chase after this new villain’ every five minutes. Shiro Tagatchi going from ‘dumb as a sack of bricks’ in every flash back cutscene you see to a mastermind smart enough to plot his own resurrection.
I don’t miss how certain builds were absolutely useless in some areas (You want to MM in a map with no exploitable corpses? Good luck with that). Oh yeah, you CAN swap your traits and skills really easily. But you still need an entire second set of runed armor and specific weapons for different builds. So that hasn’t changed. My necromancer had 4-5 different armor sets, each with a different rune set up based on my build.
You want to get up that ramp but you have to walk all the way to a corner that isn’t higher than your shin to get up it? Have fun walkin’!

Was GW1 a good game? It was a great game! I loved it. I sank more time than is healthy for somebody to sink into a video game. However it had some very glaring faults. I have great memories of it, but ultimately I’m not likely to ever play it again.

Inimicus.7162:

All the potential I see in Guild Wars 2 is being squandered on living story and gem store money grabs.

^This. (changed ‘personal story’ to ‘living story’ cuz I think that’s what Inimicus meant)

GW was an awesome game, IMO. GW2 is an awesome game, as well. They both have their pros and cons, neither is perfect, and neither will ever appeal to everyone. However, I would love to see ANet take some of GW’s features that made it long-lasting, update them, and then implement them in GW2. To be specific, here are some examples of things that GW2 could learn from and adapt/reuse:

Expand the skill system and buildcraft potential to something closer to GW’s. Right now, GW2’s character build system is incredibly lacking in comparison.

Limit the use of the gem store to a significantly smaller portion of new item releases (50% or less).

No dailies. There’s no need for them whatsoever.

No pressure to play specific content in a given timeframe. The vast majority of content should be available to any player, and at any time. Festivals would be the obvious exception.

Rewards were linked to specific types of content, NOT ACHIEVEMENTS, so the content itself always felt rewarding. Tormented weapons were eventual rewards for DoA. FoW armor was the eventual reward for UW and FoW. This was implemented and even improved in GW2 with the dungeon token system, for example, but has not been used effectively since.

Drop rates were low, but reasonable. For example, players knew that they probably weren’t going to walk out of UW with 6 or 7 ectos, and usually got excited over having even one drop. However, it did happen occasionally where you had a great night and picked up multiples. This goes along with making content feel rewarding and not having all new items in the gem store.

Gameplay types missing entirely from GW2:
raid-style PvE (UW/FoW/Deep/Urgoz/DoA)
Alliance Battles
GvG

Three massive continents were great for exploration. Obviously, these wouldn’t need to be done all at once for GW2, but gradual geographic expansion would be a really nice addition to the game.

The boss hunting elite skill system made elite skills feel ‘earned’ and somewhat special. Elite skills were also typically central to buildcraft, and most were actually useful.

Meaningful achievements that took dedication to achieve. Achievements weren’t just thrown in for every single possible piece of content.

Yargesh.4965:

Darkobra.6439:

wouw.5837:

Nostalgia Glasses

Did you genuinely think you could brush off the entire thread in two words?

It pretty much summed it up for me.

Me too.

The GW1 had its own growing pains at the beginning. It developed and changed over time – adding heroes and dungeons and new skills and mechanics and PvP maps and structure. The game you played to get the 30 HoM points was not the game that we saw from the beginning.

I think GW2 has improved and will continue to improve over time.