Guild Wars 2

Let’s compare Guild Wars 2 with original Guild Wars and with other mmorpg games.

Guild Wars 1 – unique? Yes. It’s is pretty much niche game. I would say that Guild Wars 1 didn’t follow the standards, but created them.

1. Instance world – it’s not for wide audience – so GW1 was not following the standards!
2. Mobs have the same skills that players have – not following the standards!
3. Mobs are not staying like other typical mobs in classic mmorpg (gw2 included). In GW1 groups of mobs patrolling the whole areas, and can meet other patrolling groups, so moving through location was dangerous. So not following the standards!
4. Armor didn’t have any stats. Only defense option, that’s it! And they didn’t have any quality (white, blue, green, etc.). There was only about fashion. Not following the standards!
5. Build wasn’t depend on gear – not following the standards!

And so on and etcetera. You might say that GW1 isn’t mmorpg. And if GW1 are not mmorpg, as online shooters, that only means that GW1 even in that case didn’t follow the standards, and created their own online genre/style.

Guild Wars 2:

1. Open world – which is typical for classic mmorpg. Especially for theme park mmorpg. Such games like EVE Online, are completely different.
2. Trait system isn’t a new system. Forsaken World, for example, or eve LOTRO.
3. Builds depend on gear – which is typical for mmorpg.
4. Armors now have stats, and quality (white, blue, etc), with is typical for mmorpg.
5. Gear grind – no comments.
6. Dynamic Events isn’t new system as well!
7. Mobs are not patrolling the areas anymore, but staying just like in classic mmorpg.
8. Elite mobs/bosses have a lot of HP, which is typical for classic mmorpg.

And so on and etcetera.

GW2 is a shadow of GW1 and compilation of previous classic mmorpg. Yes, GW2 has something new, what they’ve made, not copied. But in general, GW2 isn’t as unique as GW1 was. GW2 is just a compilation of good things from other classic mmorpg, and GW1 as well. So GW2 is following the standars. It’s fresh, but definitely not something new.

And I wonder, what will happen, when GW2 will lose its freshness.

Entertaining analysis that ignores several important points.

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO, and the persistent world was intentionally introduced to make it an MMO.

Guild Wars 1 was completely unique for its time….eight years ago. There were how many multiplayer fantasy games it was competing with? When a genre is young, it’s much easier to do something no one else has done. You’re not competing against hundreds of games.

Dynamic events isn’t a new system but having a game with a dynamic event system with no standard events is a new system. Rift had dynamic events, but those events didn’t chain and didn’t have pass/fail paths that spawned different events. Rift also didn’t so away with the traditional quest hub system, but superimposed its deeply inferior Rift system over the traditional stuff, almost as if it were a second thought. Guild Wars 2 was the first MMORPG that made dynamic events the center of its open world content. No one has done that.

Any can rez is extremely unusual for an MMO, the downed state, unheard of in an MMO, and the combination of cooperative features that some MMOs may have had separately but no MMO bothered combining makes this game stand out about any MMO.

People think that making something new only means doing something that has never done before, but that’s not really the case. Doing something new also can be combining features that haven’t been combined before into something quite new.

As a veteran of multiple MMOs, this is something quite new. It’s not revolutionary, but it’s quite definitely evolutionary.

Stuff like lack of a trinity, no node and kill stealing, anyone can rez, combo fields, completely walking away from a traditional quest hub system combines into something quite different.

Kreslin.6832:

2. Mobs have the same skills that players have – not following the standards!

Only partially true. There were plenty of monster-only skills.

Kreslin.6832:

3. Mobs are not staying like other typical mobs in classic mmorpg (gw2 included). In GW1 groups of mobs patrolling the whole areas, and can meet other patrolling groups, so moving through location was dangerous. So not following the standards!

There are probably plenty of MMO’s that have monster patrols.

Kreslin.6832:

4. Armor didn’t have any stats. Only defense option, that’s it! And they didn’t have any quality (white, blue, green, etc.). There was only about fashion. Not following the standards!

That is not true. We had runes on armor, which made a big difference. We also had various levels of armor, providing different tiers of defense.

Kreslin.6832:

5. Build wasn’t depend on gear – not following the standards!

Not true. While arguably gear was less important in GW1, there were plenty of builds that would not be possible without the right gear. Such as the 1hp BIP necro, or the 55hp Monk. Players weren’t hoarding those Totem Axes for nothing.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Elementalist_Flameforged_armor

That table looks an awful lot like a list of different armor tiers to me. Sure they don’t have different text colours but they do have different qualities. (And if anyone’s wondering Flameforged wasn’t an exception, this was standard for all non-elite armor.)

Also the base armor sets don’t have stats, but they have both prefix and suffix upgrades which give them stats. It’s basically identical to the system for crafting armor in GW2, but you add the insignia after it’s made, at the same time as the rune. (In fact the GW1 upgrades are even called runes and insignias.) If you want a popular combination the insignia could easily cost more than the armor itself.

Sure in theory you could use the armor without insignias and/or runes. But you’ll have a very hard time doing it. Your build might be defined by the skills you choose but you need your skills too or you’re just not going to do anything. You won’t hit hard enough, heal enough etc. no matter what skills you’re using.

Also we could just as easily pick points to reverse that list. For example:

1) GW1 is a trinity game.
2) You have to play PvE to be able to play PvP. You can create a PvP only character who starts at level 20 but you had to unlock the skills (and runes, insignias and weapon upgrades, ranger pets etc.) through PvE or (shock, horror) buy them from the in-game store.
3) It has traditional progression mechanics. You have to complete at least part of one area to unlock the next and complete most of the game to unlock the elite ‘end game’ areas.
4) It has a lot of grindy titles (Luxon/Kurzick, Eye of the North allegiances, lucky/unlucky, wisdom etc.) which give you tangible benefits like better skills and better chance of retaining salvaged upgrades. Some, like lucky/unlucky could take years to complete.
5) Loot is randomly assigned to a party member, if a party wants to distribute it fairly they need to design their own ‘need roll’ system like in traditional MMOs.

The thing about both games though (and any other game) is you don’t need to be completely re-inventing the wheel to do something new. There is nothing wrong with building on what’s come before, or picking and choosing the best bits to combine. It doesn’t mean your combination isn’t new and certainly doesn’t mean it’s not a good game.

Nage.1520:

Entertaining analysis that ignores several important points.

Dynamic events isn’t a new system but having a game with a dynamic event system with no standard events is a new system. Rift had dynamic events, but those events didn’t chain and didn’t have pass/fail paths that spawned different events. Rift also didn’t so away with the traditional quest hub system, but superimposed its deeply inferior Rift system over the traditional stuff, almost as if it were a second thought. Guild Wars 2 was the first MMORPG that made dynamic events the center of its open world content. No one has done that.

Not entirely true, Rift did have fail paths that spawned. If you didn’t close a Rift in time it would start spawning small bases, more and more creatures which would overrun nearby villages. There were also huge invasions which invaded a whole map, which also if not stopped in time would completely overwhelm everything.

Direksone.3867:

Nage.1520:

Entertaining analysis that ignores several important points.

Dynamic events isn’t a new system but having a game with a dynamic event system with no standard events is a new system. Rift had dynamic events, but those events didn’t chain and didn’t have pass/fail paths that spawned different events. Rift also didn’t so away with the traditional quest hub system, but superimposed its deeply inferior Rift system over the traditional stuff, almost as if it were a second thought. Guild Wars 2 was the first MMORPG that made dynamic events the center of its open world content. No one has done that.

Not entirely true, Rift did have fail paths that spawned. If you didn’t close a Rift in time it would start spawning small bases, more and more creatures which would overrun nearby villages. There were also huge invasions which invaded a whole map, which also if not stopped in time would completely overwhelm everything.

The zone wide events in Rifts didn’t actually have anything to do with the individual Rifts that spawned. You had a larger, more complex event, that was part of another event, and that’s all it was.

You’d never be able to fail a Rift and suddenly an event would spawn from the failure (where as a different event would spawn from your success). That never happened in Rift ever.

More to the point, the Rifts in RIft didn’t have anything to do with the world. They came from outside. They opened up from another dimension, creatures poured through, and you fought those creatures. They didn’t change the landscape.

There’s a town in Rift during your questing that’s burning. You have a quest hub near there and you go in and put out fires….but it’s always burning. It never changes.

And here’s another difference. An invasion in Guild Wars 2 has weight, because if you don’t fight it off, it stays. It doesn’t just evaporate in an hour because no one is doing it. In Rift, if you don’t fight of an invasion, the invasion just goes away.

Rift had to do this. Why? Because those were quest hubs. Sometimes, if invaders took an outpost, you couldn’t continue to play your character at all, because that outpost was no longer available.

In Guild Wars 2, there are no quest hubs, so events can have weight. None of them are permanent. They all ping pong back and forth along tracks, but those tracks make a huge difference. If centers have taken Ascalon Settlement and you don’t take it back, you don’t get to go into Ascalon Settlement.

The zone wide events that Rift ran every hour or two were self contained. They weren’t, however, part of the story of the zone. That was all left to the traditional questing system.

What we have here is very very different. I can’t imagine how anyone can play the two games and not see how vastly different they are.

Well then that must be changed, because at launch, when I played it the smaller Rifts did invade towns etc. etc. around it if it wasn’t stopped. I also did not say the invasions and smaller rifts were connected, I gave two examples.

I can remember certain maps after an invasion being occupied by creatures from the Rifts if there was inactivity in that map. If that has changed then you can disregard my comments, but those were my experiences in the beginning of the game.

Direksone.3867:

Well then that must be changed, because at launch, when I played it the smaller Rifts did invade towns etc. etc. around it if it wasn’t stopped. I also did not say the invasions and smaller rifts were connected, I gave two examples.

I can remember certain maps after an invasion being occupied by creatures from the Rifts if there was inactivity in that map. If that has changed then you can disregard my comments, but those were my experiences in the beginning of the game.

As I said, zone wide events were single events. Normal rifts did send out invasions but those NPCs did nothing> They had no story. They were tied to nothing. And they did evaporate.

The change that saw the creatures that take outposts vanish without anyone attacking them occurred right after beta 4. I was both an alpha and beta tester for Rift, and I remember very well when they made that change (which I fought against btw). The fact is, it was simply too hard to tell people you can’t complete your quests because this outpost is taken, and there aren’t enough people online on your server when you happen to play. So you’d sit and look at an outpost, unable to continue leveling.

It didn’t help that stuff like the Scarlet Gorge events were bugged so badly, that the creatures that spawned there were too hard to kill for anyone at level either. That event would spawn and people would simply have to wait for it to go away.

But yeah, the change I’m talking about was made after beta 4.

Again, here’s the difference.

A rift spawns. If you don’t close the rift a few NPCs run out and run around until they’re killed and do nothing anyway. They’re just guys running around to kill.

Compare that to the event chain to open the Temple of Balthazar, or even a very simple event chain in somewhere like Caladan Forest, where the lights have gone out. The first event you pretty much encounter out of the Grove. You collect firefly luminsence to light the lamps, but once you light them, a second event spawns to skill the mosquitos they attact.

There are quite a few events in Guild Wars 2 that mean something. Fail an event at Morgan’s Spiral and you lose access to the jumping puzzle there. You have to complete the event to get it back. There’s a part of Maguuma you can’t explore until you do a quest. There are minidungeons that don’t open until you complete a quest chain.

When you compare the dynamic events in Guild Wars 2 to the dynamic events in Rift, you can clearly see that one is a tacked on system that was nothing more than a gimmick. The main PVe thrust of Rift was dungeons and raiding and everything else was just a momentary distraction to get you there.

The main PvE thrust in Guild Wars 2 remains the open world.

True true, though it was still refreshing at the time what Rift brought for me at least, compared to WoW. I guess only the Invasions held camps and stuff, it’s been a while since I played it.

All of this being said, Anet themselves are treating Dynamic Events like a thing of the past, hence why they’re never updated or fixed anymore outside of LS. Sure, Dynamic Events were interesting and a nice innovative thing, but considering they’re being abandoned already, that sort of has to mean something. I personally think it means that regardless of how neat or new the idea is, some people don’t like the fact that if the map hasn’t done a particular event, you might not be able to reach certain content alone.

I think GW2 is innovative in its gameplay, wanting to give players more control over the fight, which is the highlight of the game to me. Most of everything else they have done in the game, outside of trying to eliminate the trinity, doesn’t really seem like its all that unique.

Also I’m not hating on the dynamic events or anything, they’re great and it’s what drives this game and keeps leveling alts fresh. The other day I was leveling with someone and I started doing all these events that I had never done before on previous characters because they weren’t spawned back then or no one to do them with. Makes the same zone nicer to level through.

Danikat.8537:

Also we could just as easily pick points to reverse that list. For example:

1) GW1 is a trinity game.
Yes it was. It wasn’t your typical tank n spank either when they fixed mob AI.

2) You have to play PvE to be able to play PvP. You can create a PvP only character who starts at level 20 but you had to unlock the skills (and runes, insignias and weapon upgrades, ranger pets etc.) through PvE or (shock, horror) buy them from the in-game store.
You could buy your pvp runes, insignias weapon upgrades and etc with balthazar faction which you earn from kills, wins and what not from PvP. Not to mention the ability to unlock different pets was added so late in the game it’s well pointless to bring it up (the default ranger pet for a pvp char is/was a hearty wolf). At one point all the default PvP builds were set to what I think the winners of the GWFC (guild wars faction championship) wanted them to be and they were arguably the best pre-set builds in the game (the ones now are horrid) because they were part of the “meta” hell even with all the skills that came out since nightfall/eotn I’d say half of the bars would still work to this day. Shock axe is still being played in gw1 pvp believe it or not.

3) It has traditional progression mechanics. You have to complete at least part of one area to unlock the next and complete most of the game to unlock the elite ‘end game’ areas.
Most of the “elite end game” content was unlocked by basically finishing the story mode missions which took you maybe a few hours if you rushed straight through them (timed myself one day took me 8 hours to rush through factions while going to nightfall to cap searing flames and a few heroes and beat factions on a brand new character)

4) It has a lot of grindy titles (Luxon/Kurzick, Eye of the North allegiances, lucky/unlucky, wisdom etc.) which give you tangible benefits like better skills and better chance of retaining salvaged upgrades. Some, like lucky/unlucky could take years to complete.
luxon/kurzick -grindy, eotn titles – grindy to an extent, lucky/wisdom titles could just be bought with gold if you had enough of it.

5) Loot is randomly assigned to a party member, if a party wants to distribute it fairly they need to design their own ‘need roll’ system like in traditional MMOs.
Heroes and henchman basically made this pointless and no one partied with each other because of them, outside of speed runs. Not to mention this “loot” you speak of was more or less being traded to gain money. Randomly assigned worked well imo.

My thoughts from a person who played gw1 for ages till gw2 came out.

The original premise, that something has to be original to have quality, is flawed. GW2 is probably one of the more original MMOs to be launched recently and if it doesn’t look particularly different then it is simply because the market has matured since GW1 and there is less scope for innovation.

The evidence for originality is flawed as well.
- The oldest MMOs had many more wandering creatures and the modern trend has been to reduce those wanderers. GW1 wasn’t original here and neither was GW2.
- GW2 does have the open world event system and it was innovative at launch. Events supersede wanderers since they give purpose and story to movements, to the point that the wanderers interfere with the event scaling and events are better without wanderers.
- GW2 mobs still use class skills. If you can’t see that then the designers have only done a better job of masking it.
- There is gear grind but all players can still be competitive with exotic gear which is very attainable. In fact competitive is the wrong word since if you want to compete you can play SPvP with no gear grind.

“All of this being said, Anet themselves are treating Dynamic Events like a thing of the past, hence why they’re never updated or fixed anymore outside of LS. "

All new content has been Living Story so that statement is meaningless. New zones like the tower of nightmares are still event based. New raids use open world event chains. There is no evidence that the game is abandoning events.

Kreslin.6832:

Let’s compare Guild Wars 2 with original Guild Wars and with other mmorpg games.

Guild Wars 1 – unique? Yes. It’s is pretty much niche game. I would say that Guild Wars 1 didn’t follow the standards, but created them.

1. Instance world – it’s not for wide audience – so GW1 was not following the standards!
2. Mobs have the same skills that players have – not following the standards!
3. Mobs are not staying like other typical mobs in classic mmorpg (gw2 included). In GW1 groups of mobs patrolling the whole areas, and can meet other patrolling groups, so moving through location was dangerous. So not following the standards!
4. Armor didn’t have any stats. Only defense option, that’s it! And they didn’t have any quality (white, blue, green, etc.). There was only about fashion. Not following the standards!
5. Build wasn’t depend on gear – not following the standards!

And so on and etcetera. You might say that GW1 isn’t mmorpg. And if GW1 are not mmorpg, as online shooters, that only means that GW1 even in that case didn’t follow the standards, and created their own online genre/style.

Guild Wars 2:

1. Open world – which is typical for classic mmorpg. Especially for theme park mmorpg. Such games like EVE Online, are completely different.
2. Trait system isn’t a new system. Forsaken World, for example, or eve LOTRO.
3. Builds depend on gear – which is typical for mmorpg.
4. Armors now have stats, and quality (white, blue, etc), with is typical for mmorpg.
5. Gear grind – no comments.
6. Dynamic Events isn’t new system as well!
7. Mobs are not patrolling the areas anymore, but staying just like in classic mmorpg.
8. Elite mobs/bosses have a lot of HP, which is typical for classic mmorpg.

And so on and etcetera.

GW2 is a shadow of GW1 and compilation of previous classic mmorpg. Yes, GW2 has something new, what they’ve made, not copied. But in general, GW2 isn’t as unique as GW1 was. GW2 is just a compilation of good things from other classic mmorpg, and GW1 as well. So GW2 is following the standars. It’s fresh, but definitely not something new.

And I wonder, what will happen, when GW2 will lose its freshness.

Not actually true. GW2 is a refresh of GW1. It is more unique since:

1. It doesn’t have the Trinity (like GW1 did).

2. It doesn’t have Hero or Henchmen NPC to make the game solo able. you have group up or solo as you feel like.

3. Many of the bosses have unique mechanics which make them difficult and the HP is scale-able depending on the number of players fighting (no other game does that).

4. One can do many roles in this game, if one wanted to – a Mesmer can tank, support, DPS, etc. as an example. One does not get that from a typical MMO – as you are not stuck in rigid roles, such as HEALER, TANK DPS.

5. You don’t have to grind gear if you don’t want to – different gear is horizontal progression not vertical. You don’t gain much and it more for vanity than anything else. You think your gear has influence, it does somewhat but not as much as you think. small numbers from bigger numbers fools you into thinking that.

6. Depending on area, yes the mobs do patrol. Try saying the don’t in Orr and they also have a huge agro circle.

7. You point out EVE, which you are just playing a spreadsheet game. There is nothing unique or fun about it. You never really see your foes and it is still based on gated areas (what do you think the travel time is for? It is the exact same thing as zoning in GW2).

You assumed too much and many of your points are flat out wrong or half truths.

Travis the Terrible.4739:

My thoughts from a person who played gw1 for ages till gw2 came out.

I think you missed the point of that list.

It wasn’t supposed to be a comprehensive and flawless list of everything in GW1. It was supposed to be a way of illustrating that the OP had carefully picked certain points to make their argument but we could just as easily pick opposing points to claim the complete opposite.

Neither list is a true representation of the game, but then that’s the point.

Travis the Terrible.4739:

Danikat.8537:

Also we could just as easily pick points to reverse that list. For example:

1) GW1 is a trinity game.
Yes it was. It wasn’t your typical tank n spank either when they fixed mob AI.

2) You have to play PvE to be able to play PvP. You can create a PvP only character who starts at level 20 but you had to unlock the skills (and runes, insignias and weapon upgrades, ranger pets etc.) through PvE or (shock, horror) buy them from the in-game store.
You could buy your pvp runes, insignias weapon upgrades and etc with balthazar faction which you earn from kills, wins and what not from PvP. Not to mention the ability to unlock different pets was added so late in the game it’s well pointless to bring it up (the default ranger pet for a pvp char is/was a hearty wolf). At one point all the default PvP builds were set to what I think the winners of the GWFC (guild wars faction championship) wanted them to be and they were arguably the best pre-set builds in the game (the ones now are horrid) because they were part of the “meta” hell even with all the skills that came out since nightfall/eotn I’d say half of the bars would still work to this day. Shock axe is still being played in gw1 pvp believe it or not.

3) It has traditional progression mechanics. You have to complete at least part of one area to unlock the next and complete most of the game to unlock the elite ‘end game’ areas.
Most of the “elite end game” content was unlocked by basically finishing the story mode missions which took you maybe a few hours if you rushed straight through them (timed myself one day took me 8 hours to rush through factions while going to nightfall to cap searing flames and a few heroes and beat factions on a brand new character)

4) It has a lot of grindy titles (Luxon/Kurzick, Eye of the North allegiances, lucky/unlucky, wisdom etc.) which give you tangible benefits like better skills and better chance of retaining salvaged upgrades. Some, like lucky/unlucky could take years to complete.
luxon/kurzick -grindy, eotn titles – grindy to an extent, lucky/wisdom titles could just be bought with gold if you had enough of it.

5) Loot is randomly assigned to a party member, if a party wants to distribute it fairly they need to design their own ‘need roll’ system like in traditional MMOs.
Heroes and henchman basically made this pointless and no one partied with each other because of them, outside of speed runs. Not to mention this “loot” you speak of was more or less being traded to gain money. Randomly assigned worked well imo.

My thoughts from a person who played gw1 for ages till gw2 came out.

1) GW1 wasn’t a Trinity game because it didn’t have a “standard” agro management system (with hate).

2) You could unlock skills and gear in PVP but that would’ve taken some more time than unlocking them in PVE (for most skills, there were also some notable exceptions). A fresh PVP character is at a serious disadvantage and it was important to finish the campaign (or progress enough) before you would be super effective in PVP. Or buy the skills from the shop

3) Factions was the shortest Guild Wars 1 campaign, you could be level 20 (max) in just 20 minutes. Nightfall was significantly longer and Prophecies was the most time intensive of them all.

4) The titles used to be grindy until Anet “fixed” them and allowed players to have max power skills with far lower tiers for example, Lightbringer required just a single DoA run to be at max efficiency. The higher tiers are just so you can show off. But a huge part of the grind in GW2 is also about showing off (Ascended Weapons / Armor excluded)

Kreslin.6832:

1. Instance world – it’s not for wide audience – so GW1 was not following the standards!

Guild Wars 1 is CORPG, not an MMO. There’s no such thing as an instanced MMO.

Kreslin.6832:

2. Mobs have the same skills that players have – not following the standards!

1. Not entirely and 2. Most MMOs do that. Ever fought anything in WoW? I feel like every second mob that I fight is an Ice Mage, just like my character, because they’re using the same skills as me.

Kreslin.6832:

3. Mobs are not staying like other typical mobs in classic mmorpg (gw2 included). In GW1 groups of mobs patrolling the whole areas, and can meet other patrolling groups, so moving through location was dangerous. So not following the standards!

Same in WoW. I don’t think that there’s a single MMO where mobs are completely stationary.

Kreslin.6832:

4. Armor didn’t have any stats. Only defense option, that’s it! And they didn’t have any quality (white, blue, green, etc.). There was only about fashion. Not following the standards!

And yet unless I was wearing good gear I would be pawned moving trough PVE in Gw1. If it was only for fashion I shouldn’t have had to spend all of my money on armour.

Kreslin.6832:

1. Open world – which is typical for classic mmorpg. Especially for theme park mmorpg. Such games like EVE Online, are completely different.

Open World is required for a game to be an MMORPG. And Eve doesn’t have open world? Those massive fights over galaxies with 3000 players? Yeah… Not open at all!

Kreslin.6832:

2. Trait system isn’t a new system. Forsaken World, for example, or eve LOTRO.

every MMO has something similar to a trait system. GW1 had it too. Or did you forget investing points into trait lines?

Kreslin.6832:

4. Armors now have stats, and quality (white, blue, etc), with is typical for mmorpg.

GW1 armour also had stats and quality -_-

Kreslin.6832:

5. Gear grind – no comments.

What gear grind? Exotics are available for karma, dungeon tokens, money and you can craft them and nowhere do you require ascendeds, unless you’re running level 50 fractals.

6. Dynamic Events isn’t new system as well!

It’s new enough. Very few MMOs agree to try anything dynamic or changing.

Kreslin.6832:

7. Mobs are not patrolling the areas anymore, but staying just like in classic mmorpg.

Erm, yes they are. Ever tried to walk trough Orr? Or find a single mob for a guild mission?

Kreslin.6832:

8. Elite mobs/bosses have a lot of HP, which is typical for classic mmorpg.

Guess what! That was true in GW1 as well! Elite mobs had more health than regulars.

Guild Wars 2 is meant to not compete with GW1. Instead of catering to the same audience again, they went for another, broader audience. This is a management and shareholder’s decision though.

GW2 is unique in the fact that it promotes accessibility over everything else. You can play whatever you like, whenever you like at the cost of depth if compared to other MMOs. One example would be that balance iterations are cut in favor of frequent short term entertainment patches (living story).

I personally didn’t like it and I don’t think it’s the way to improve the genre. As much as I want to get away from WoW clones, GW2 – while not being compareable to WoW and other MMORPG- wasn’t as much of mean a step ahead as GW1 was for me.