Guild Wars 2

I just wanted to say, upon reflecting on my gaming the past few years, that Guild Wars 2 sits above and beyond all else, and for the years to come.

Thank you.

But it has 3 years.

To play devil’s advocate, the MMO market has been pretty terrible the past 4 years, so it’s not that much of an honor. For years to come is also iffy at best, unless Anet actually figures out a long term plan they are doomed to only appease diehard GW fans. Pre-HoT and HoT has shown that Anet doesn’t seem to know where they want to take GW2.

I also think its much better than much of the single player RPG’s. For instance, I was a big elder scrolls fan before skyrim came out.. then it did. after a few months i was done, but when gw2 came around i found my new favorite RPG for the next couple years and I’m glad it was able to fill the gaping hole skyrim left behind. GW2 is a great MMO as well as an RPG in my eyes.

BrooksP.4318:

To play devil’s advocate, the MMO market has been pretty terrible the past 4 years, so it’s not that much of an honor. For years to come is also iffy at best, unless Anet actually figures out a long term plan they are doomed to only appease diehard GW fans. Pre-HoT and HoT has shown that Anet doesn’t seem to know where they want to take GW2.

This, MMO’s seem to be dying out with fewer coming out each year. Black Desert and Blade& Soul being the the “most hyped” for atm.

Unless GW2 gets its act together only the die hards will remain and you cant run a b2p game off of just a few of your most loyal fans (and seeing as ANet could care less about loyalty its a surprise die hard fans put up with them)

Drakortha.6974:

I also think its much better than much of the single player RPG’s. For instance, I was a big elder scrolls fan before skyrim came out.. then it did. after a few months i was done, but when gw2 came around i found my new favorite RPG for the next couple years and I’m glad it was able to fill the gaping hole skyrim left behind. GW2 is a great MMO as well as an RPG in my eyes.

Even with ~1000 hours in Skyrim, it is the mix bag of the series. Regardless depending on what you are after, comparing the 2 really isn’t ideal. From an RP perspective Skyrim is much better than GW2 which is understandable when comparing a SP to a MMO, from a storyline perspective it’s a toss up personally. GW2 has a decent overall storyline, the PS was good up until Destiny’s Edge Arc, and the ending to the arc was lackluster, LS1/2 I cannot comment on, since I missed LS1 and never bought LS2 outside of select episodes.

However GW2 and ESO should have used the same overall gameplay concept as TES, but instead both went linear.

BrooksP.4318:

To play devil’s advocate, the MMO market has been pretty terrible the past 4 years, so it’s not that much of an honor. For years to come is also iffy at best, unless Anet actually figures out a long term plan they are doomed to only appease diehard GW fans. Pre-HoT and HoT has shown that Anet doesn’t seem to know where they want to take GW2.

Not only that but the word MMO itself this days has a bad connotation. Almost always used negatively or aggressively in debates. This has “MMO tier quest”, “MMO tier skills”, “MMO tier action”. Never used in a positive way.

Even some games go the extra mile to avoid being considered MMOs. Destiny is for all intents and purposes a MMO, yet you will never see anyone from their company calling it one. Because MMOs in popular culture are associated with “high quantity, low quality content”. And frankly I cannot blame the people who make that association.

MMOs are on their way out unless something really ground breaking comes in.

AXEL.8362:

Not only that but the word MMO itself this days has a bad connotation. Almost always used negatively or aggressively in debates. This has “MMO tier quest”, “MMO tier skills”, “MMO tier action”. Never used in a positive way.

That’s deserved. MMORPGs are bad games.

MMORPG players have taught developers that they don’t need to make fun games or good games. Players are willing to go through content they don’t even enjoy as long as they get some reward out of it, be it more gold, more levels or even more skins.

You begin with a rotten foundation – you don’t have to make the game fun, you just need to make it take a long while to get the best rewards available. From there it just gets worse – in order to fuel monthly fees or microtransactions, it becomes a matter of placing in front of the players as many roadblocks as possible, so it takes them even more time to reach their goals, or it incentives them to rely on the in game store to do so.

It eventually culminates with the scam-like lottery systems many free to play MMORPG use (in GW2’s case, the Blacklion Chests). You buy keys with real money that you need to use on boxes you grind for so you can have a small chance of earning something nice. Really, this is almost masochism.

The thing is, humanity has at least a small degree of salvation – there aren’t THAT many grinders out there. What the MMORPG boom learned is that WoW added a lot of players to the genre, but that’s pretty much all the genre will ever have; not nearly enough players to sustain the 10+ MMORPGs that were being released in quick sucession. It was little suprise that so many MMORPGs failed and continue to fail, leading to this decay of the genre.

And the irony is, no one is going to try something different. Whenever a new MMORPG is released, the stereotypical MMORPG players rush to it and begin demanding all the classic features of the genre – basically, the mindless grind its known for. Most of those players will leave within 3 months, but by then the damage is done: any inch of originality is gone and you’re back to another grind cesspool.

With the way things are, people know that MMORPGs are for grinders, and no one else. There aren’t enough grinders around to sustain many MMORPGs. Thus the genre will decay until it’s incredibly niche or it dies completely, like space simulators and point and click adventure games did for a time.

Despite everything I dislike about Guild Wars 2, I must agree. It’s held my attention longer than any other MMO. This includes that MMO whose name shall not be spoken.

ANet has done an excellent job overall.

I agree that GW2 is the best recent MMO. It’s not my personal taste, and I’m not even playing… but yeah, if I try to be objective, I think GW2 beats everything else that’s out atm.

That said, I don’t agree with you people about the dark future of MMOs. I think the future is in fact bright. There are lots of games in the making right now that do things different, and focus on a quality game rather than one that sucks most money out of people. Pantheon, Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, Shroud of the Avatar… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I look forward to what the future brings to MMO-land.

No doubt GW2 has a lot of room for improvement.
That being said, it is still kilometers ahead of any of ist competitors.
It is the best MMO I have played ever.

It’s hardly the best, more like among the better options out there, but still riddled with too many glaring flaws and dumbfounding decisions that it can still be stomped IF someone makes all the right calls in designing an MMO, but so far, I swear they’re intentionally sabotaging their own work just to keep it mediocre. In the end, GW2 is still an on-rails grinder with the option to repeat content and still progress from it, so an improvement, but further begs the question as to why leveling exists in an MMO in the first place if the goal is always inevitably “get to max, THEN gear out.”

Honestly, out of all the MMO’s I’ve played, GW2 is the most qualified to ditch leveling entirely. It’s got more than enough little check boxes on the to-do list to offer a sense of progression. But I digress – that’s just ONE problem I have with Guild Wars 2’s design direction, but I hate leveling in any MMO because it really does boil down to “get to max, THEN gear out.” Every. Single. Time.

Guild Wars 2 is no exception. Only it swaps out the gear grind at max level (I don’t count ascended here, it’s just ONE step) for grinding out prestigious items to look cool. That’s… and improvement I guess… If you’re okay with the price of on trans-crystal per armor piece.

I think the only MMO I’ve played that actually railed against the norm and is actually still making bank off of it is Mabinogi. Though that one is more setup to be a perpetual grind for new skills and power with a heavy emphasis on selling fashionable outfits. You can literally play that game in it’s entirety with a naked, bare handed character. But likewise, you can make a very powerful character if you don’t mind risking blowing up the best equipment and enchantments you can get your hands on.

Test.8734:

You begin with a rotten foundation -

The thing is MMORPGs have moved away from the foundation, and has moved into what you described. The foundation of MMORPGs was to have a RP based game in a MMO environment. This means that the role is up to the player, and the world environment is generally shaped by players. However now it’s structured to be linear and static, where devs now need to add walls and grinds to spread out content since almost all content is dictated via whatever new stuff the devs can push out compared to how fast the player consumes it.

Granted WoW did balloon the MMORPG market probably more so than what it can sustain, and now it is normalizing itself. Doesn’t mean the market is dead, just that it isn’t where it was at its peak.

It is interesting though, Devs usually don’t want to take chances when it comes to investing in something outside of the box, yet continuing to do the norm can be just as fatal.

E: Also +1 to the post above me. GW2 needs to scrap levels and leveled zones, it doesn’t need it and limits the games potential.

Insane calc nerds are killing MMOs to a certain degree.

Consider the ridiculous contortions GW2 goes through to determine what your stats are for a zone, while at the same time totally removing any kind of actual RPG simulation feel to your character’s stats. Any sense of character has been replaced with ‘big number good, don’t bother your pretty little head about the maths anymore’.

All for nothing more than to ensure “progression” happens at some theoretically acceptable rate.

Add to that a game design that ultimately is focused more or less around ‘what color circle is on the ground right now?’* that creates a laggy visual eyesore with too many players zerging around, and some of the worst writing and voice direction ever (It is PAINFUL to hear some of the best V.O stars in the business have to deliver the lines they have in GW2. PAINFUL.)

And yet it’s still, very strongly arguable that this IS the best MMO in the last four years.

Things are bad now, and the genre might be dying, but it’s only because the development has become inbred and terrible. The genre itself still has the most potential out of any videogame thing anywhere.

*Honestly I still can’t believe they removed the skill system from GW1, which was sheer genius, replacing it with ‘weapon swapping into far too many weak random placeholder skills’.

To be frank, it would be frikkin amazing to be able to play GW2 or Diablo3 or anything with characters from League of Legends**. That game’s simple, tight, four button design still murders anything any current MMO has to offer in terms of fun gameplay. And that’s truly said.

• Yes I know the LoL community is hella toxic don’t @ me.

Every MMO has its faults and challenges, but I agree 100% with the OP.

BrooksP.4318:

The thing is MMORPGs have moved away from the foundation, and has moved into what you described. The foundation of MMORPGs was to have a RP based game in a MMO environment. This means that the role is up to the player, and the world environment is generally shaped by players. However now it’s structured to be linear and static, where devs now need to add walls and grinds to spread out content since almost all content is dictated via whatever new stuff the devs can push out compared to how fast the player consumes it.

I agree with you, and I think that’s a great point.

Let’s face it – sandbox games are niche games. The kind of creativity and inspiration you need to play one of those is not for everyone.

But is that a bad thing? Must a game be played by 5 million people to be successful? Because when trying to make a game catering to millions, you’ll have to use resources that require your game to have millions of players in order to not be a failure, and it’s hard to achieve that without playing to what the stereotype wants.

It’s the same discussion about having levels: could GW2 simply not have levels at all? Definitely. Would that actually make a better game? IMO, yes.

Does that likely mean that the game would have less players, because way too many MMORPG players are used to the idea of levels? Hell, yeah.

I think that’s the entire conundrum with GW2’s design, really. The original Guild Wars was a far smaller game; but it was still a great game, and successful enough to fund a sequel. Guild Wars 2 is a far bigger game with far, FAR more players, but I can’t help but feel that the game got worse when trying to cater to more players, losing many of its unique aspects (the complex skill system, the very low level cap, how fast people got weapons with maxed damage, and so on).

And I’m not sure, ironically, if GW2 is that more successful than GW1. It has bigger earnings but it also costs far more; ArenaNet is around three times the size it had when releasing the original Guild Wars. I wonder if all this – increasing the scope of the game from GW1 to GW2 but losing so much of the original in the process – was worth it.

I think GW2 is probably the best MMO I’ve played (as far as pve games go) in the last four years.

I do feel it’s at odds with itself in a lot of places. It phrases cosmetics as its primary reward method, yet offers far more cosmetics in its cash shop than the game itself. It often gives gameplay a back seat to story, and then turns around and creates gameplay focused elements with no story connections.

It claims to value accessibility and challenge in equal measure and ends up pushing a lot of content that is neither truly accessible or truly challenging rather than making a hard separation between the two. There are difficulty spikes and cliffs randomly interspersed everywhere in ways that frustrate the low-skill players and bore the challenge seekers without warning or signposts to let them know where their preferred type of content is.

It touts itself as a highly social game without taking the time to invest in social tools for players, or creating compelling incetives for people to form social interactions with others in its crafting or core open world systems. Requiring the presence of, but not the interaction with, other players. It then implements a guild hall model designed to foster that connection but misses the mark by providing no incentives for guilds to interact with each other

It attempts with WvW to create a mass battle pvp experience, but robs it of the consequence, risk, and player agency and ownership that make such experiences compelling and meaningful in an attempt to make it accessible, while simultaneously making scaling power through grind mechanisms like guild tactics and wvw ranks that make it extremely inaccessible.

HoT is a big step forward in addressing many of its problems, but GW2 has a long way to go if it truly wants to be the amazong of MMOs, selling three very different types of players on one shared product.

So, what came out four years ago that was better?

Personally I think it is the best MMO on the market, perhaps the best MMO made to date.

I agree with OP the fullest. And from every MMO I have played and forums I have read I always read that MMO-X, X and X will be the downfall of this MMO… We are talking Guild Wars now and it survived, SWtor, Wildstar, EsO and a number of expansions to different MMO’s that has been said to be the downfall for GW2.

One more thing to keep in mind is that GW2 is a game that once bought you will always be able to play it. I have have a few guildmates who rarely plays but they are very happy to pay money for gems to buy fluff.

Despite whatever gripes I may have with this game, I still enjoy it far more than I don’t and there isn’t any other current MMO that I would be as interested in. Now if Anet were to screw up so badly that I couldn’t stand playing anymore, I would probably move over to ESO. I have it and it’s nice. Just isn’t as good.

I am a little worried for the future given a long string of high profile failures in the genre. Those kickstarter MMOs may carve out their own niche and I hope the best for them, but I like the big budget MMOs. My first was EQ1 and it was a mindblowing experience logging into the game for the very first time all those years ago. The big 3D world with many people running around made me feel like I was in another world. I don’t think a smaller MMO would capture that feeling.

There isn’t anything to look forward to besides more GW2 expansions. People are going to hype up the latest Korean MMOs but I can’t even care about those at this point.

GW2 has it’s niche.
I started playing about two/three months ago, something like that. My first impression was it felt like a single player RGP adventure that had been converted into an MMO. I was also amazed by how fast you got to cap, certainly the fastest cap I have played up until now. Had HoT not come out, I would have left pretty quick. Not enough progression for me.

Some of you refer to it as a game for casuals. I would say that’s it’s niche. For people like me who require more solid progression and more depth, it will never be top of the pops, but good it is.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I agree with op, it is the best mmo.

Up until HoT that is.

Unlike other MMO game expansions, this ones uses a metric ton of recycled assets and then called new. I know no other MMO expansion that makes you go back to old world stuff I have been doing for three years; it’s always completely new stuff, with new loots/rewards/etc. But not so in HoT! Here I am, in new expansion farming the same junk I have been doing for years. Instead, all the cool stuff is in the gem store; frankly, I am not impressed with this new direction they are going where less is supposedly more.

keth.1836:

GW2 has it’s niche.
I started playing about two/three months ago, something like that. My first impression was it felt like a single player RGP adventure that had been converted into an MMO. I was also amazed by how fast you got to cap, certainly the fastest cap I have played up until now. Had HoT not come out, I would have left pretty quick. Not enough progression for me.

Some of you refer to it as a game for casuals. I would say that’s it’s niche. For people like me who require more solid progression and more depth, it will never be top of the pops, but good it is.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Many play games for different types of reasons… I have noticed that many who leaves the game very early and who grinds the game to death has another view of what makes a game entertaining. I have noticed that many players in MMO’s are just after a few special typhical things for the usuall MMO’s and that is; Max level, end game gear and end game content. I have spoken to many friends and community friends who have left GW2 and there is nothing I can say to get them back to play GW2. They all think that GW2 lacks content and that it gets booring as soon as they have gotten what they had their eyes on, some left after they got level 80, some left after they crafted or bought their Legendary of choice and some left becouse they did all dungeons, fractals and Story. What they all have in common is that they all rushed through the content as fast as possible to get what they wanted, no one stayed in the game for more than 3 mounths, they didn’t enjoy it they did what they had to do.

When I play GW2 I always play it to enjoy it, I do dungeons with my guild and friends when they want to, I play PvP when I feel like it, I do Guild missions with my guild, I log in just to talk with my Guild and friends, I do the story with my alts together with my Guild and friends, On my alts I explore the world wih my Guild and friends and I enjoy every bits of GW2 (Very little WvW actually) with my Guild and friends. I love the LS as it even gives me story to play almost every two weeks ( I can’t wait for next LS ).

I may have not played GW2 as much if it where not for my Guild and friends but there is so much to do in GW2 that you can enjoy so it has kept me online almost everyday since the game released. I played Lotro before this and I was almost as hooked in that as I was in GW2 but… GW2 offers what Lotro gave and so much more for me.

Oh and should I add that I have played around 4-6 Hours a day since expac released and I havent farmed or havent been standing still and I still havent compleated the story yet.

I am an oddball but I play to enjoy not to be the best of first one to show of the new fluff.

fixit.7189:

I agree with op, it is the best mmo.

Up until HoT that is.

Unlike other MMO game expansions, this ones uses a metric ton of recycled assets and then called new. I know no other MMO expansion that makes you go back to old world stuff I have been doing for three years; it’s always completely new stuff, with new loots/rewards/etc. But not so in HoT! Here I am, in new expansion farming the same junk I have been doing for years. Instead, all the cool stuff is in the gem store; frankly, I am not impressed with this new direction they are going where less is supposedly more.

You need to recycle things so you can put all your new shiny toys in the gemstore for more profit! It’s actually laughable how we’ve seen more skins in the last couple of weeks than that in an entire expansion.

It’s a good MMO, but that’s not saying a lot given most are horrendous. As for comments about best RPG, wow. That’s a stretch.

Yea, they give us two new armor sets that are ugly as sin.

Look at the bladded medium armor chest piece where it looks like I am the front grill of a Mad Max car.

Or the leyline one that looks to be an old skin recolored, it’s a patchwork moo moo that steams like a pile of poo poo. Super low quality yet this is an ‘end game’ reward. No, no it is not. Who in the world would even wear that ugly set anyways, it’s absolutely hideous and looks like it took them 5 minutes to come up with. :S

And then you look in gem store and see all these high textured/high polygon armor pieces that look like they spent some time on them for 10-20 bucks a pop. It seems all good ‘content’ you have to pay gems for past the box price I guess.

In the end, was I just spoiled by stellar expansions like the The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King where the shere amount of new landmass/content was so staggering it kept me going for years then? Is my expectations just way to high? Compared to MMO expansions like the ones I just mentioned, HoT is incredibly disappointing. It’s not an expansion, it’s a larger than usual DLC for full price to me.

Last thought before I head off: IGN, one the biggest gaming sites out there has not said much about HoT. It’s not being reviewed nor is it even mention as being released. This is same site that will review retro 8 bit indie games made by dudes in basements yet they are totally ignoring GW2. lol?

Sicarius.4639:

fixit.7189:

Unlike other MMO game expansions, this ones uses a metric ton of recycled assets and then called new. I know no other MMO expansion that makes you go back to old world stuff I have been doing for three years; it’s always completely new stuff, with new loots/rewards/etc. But not so in HoT! Here I am, in new expansion farming the same junk I have been doing for years. Instead, all the cool stuff is in the gem store; frankly, I am not impressed with this new direction they are going where less is supposedly more.

You need to recycle things so you can put all your new shiny toys in the gemstore for more profit! It’s actually laughable how we’ve seen more skins in the last couple of weeks than that in an entire expansion.

Right?

The thing that makes me the most sad about GW2 is that it’s not really improving. Time and time again, ArenaNet is making decisions that have clearly been made to benefit them to the detriment of their players. Such as:

• Releasing VERY few new skins with HoT, but then following with a deluge of new skins in the gem store. There really isn’t any excuse for this – it’s obvious that they had the manpower to make the new skins, but they chose to not add them to the game because they knew they could just sell them apart for a bigger profit, despite how expensive HoT is. The fact they weren’t even trying to hide it speaks a lot about how ArenaNet doesn’t even care.

• Things like the Bifrost collection that, as described, require players to do something completely dependable of pure RNG such as being locked inside one of the Shatterer’s crystals. The collections as a whole are a bunch of RNG and grind that are meant to be endured, not enjoyed, but to add something like this, in what was meant to be a system to reduce the RNG in acquiring precursors, is just a slap on the players’ face.

• Reducing the value of things in the core game right when HoT is released. Not only the dungeon nerf, but also the many things that used to be part of the core GW2 and were moved to HoT – a huge number of guild buffs, for example, and even earning many rewards in Fractals that are now gated by the Fractals mastery. Removing things from the core game in order to drive people to get HoT is far from being something done for the players.

• Locking progression on the Living Story by masteries, and locking the elite specializations – which we all know was one of the features players were excited the most for – behind grind gates. This was obviously meant to artificially inflate the longevity of HoT by forcing people to grind before they could reach the end of the story or unlock their specializations.

People often quote the ArenaNet’s MMO Manifesto for the line “We don’t want players to grind”. But at the end, ArenaNet said something else:

“The most important thing in any game should be the player. We have built a game for them.”

And no, that’s not true. The game has been built against the players.

Is this the best MMO around? Maybe. Which is proof of how bad MMORPGs are, not of how good GW2 would be.

Arcadio.6875:

I am a little worried for the future given a long string of high profile failures in the genre. Those kickstarter MMOs may carve out their own niche and I hope the best for them, but I like the big budget MMOs. My first was EQ1 and it was a mindblowing experience logging into the game for the very first time all those years ago. The big 3D world with many people running around made me feel like I was in another world. I don’t think a smaller MMO would capture that feeling.

The way I see it, those Kickstarter games are simply going back to the roots of MMO design. After all, those early games of 10+ years ago didn’t start big either. Back then, there weren’t millions of MMO “nomades” who were flocking to every hyped release. Those early games started small, and increased in size and playerbase over time. Kickstarter MMOs have an opportunity to do the same. Start with a small dev team, make a quality game with a niche target audience, and build from there if it turns out to be succesful.

Test.8734

Is this the best MMO around? Maybe. Which is proof of how bad MMORPGs are, not of how good GW2 would be.

This, the genre has gone stale and mmo devs across the board are not even trying now. Goal is to get you to buy box, cash shop items, and or a sub for a few months then they expect you to quit/move on. The concept of actually retaining customers past the first few months is long gone and now entirely focused on micro transactions while recycling old assests to further save money. To me, the MMO genre is now dead. It’s too bad, MMOs have been my favorite game type for over 20 years but not any more.

My criteria for what makes a good MMO, and where I think GW2 sits with regard to those criteria, follows:

• Story: GW2’s Living story has its great moments, like the Battle of Claw Island, the attack on the Vigil Keep and some of the pre-Zhaitan Orr episodes. It also has its downsides, like the Zhaitan fight — reworked or otherwise. LS S1 consisted of fairly interesting plot points hindered by “click 50 of X” achievements. LS S2 just lacked something, tbh. I had a hard time getting into DE V 2.0 to be honest, and both the pacing and rationale for the story chapters seemed thin. Overall, C+

• Immersion in the game world: For a lore fiend, there are plenty of references to the original game in the vanilla world. The struggle with the dragons and its effects are both believable and compelling. However, there’s also things like Quaggan backpacks, Quaggans in general, bows which vomit unicorns (which to my knowledge have never been a part of Tyrian lore) and a myriad of other things which break immersion. C-

• Combat: GW2 combat fluidity is, afaik, unrivaled outside of shooters. While some other MMO’s get in the ballpark, none are as good in this regard. Challenge: I’ve managed to find plenty of challenge in GW2, whether it be through dungeons (without speed run easy mode), soloing Champions, soloing group events, etc. However, fights against most solo persistent world mobs are easy, as intended (imo). Combat fluidity is arguably GW2’s best feature. A-

• Build Depth: Since ANet has advertised its intent to simplify build possibilities to make balancing easier, it should be no surprise that GW2 is sadly lacking in build depth. This is a major issue for plumbers (those who like to plumb mechanics). D-

• Intangibles: Things like individualized nodes and heart objectives, no kill stealing, etc. make this the game in which I’m least likely to not want to see other players. A+

• Game Economy: It took me a long time to come to grips with the idea that I’d never be likely to get a “good” drop in this game. It took me a long time to appreciate the fact that, though I hated Asc. crafting, it has added value to a lot of materials that were previously vendor trash (silk, anyone). Honestly, I’ve come to appreciate that the GW2 economic model is really well designed for what it is. I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer the economy from GW, say, but I do have to appreciate this game’s economic model for accomplishing what it set out to. A-

• Fun factor: Fun is subjective, so I can really only speak to my own experience here. That said, the original game offered tons of fun, but recent (well,, 2014) additions to LS and HoT have left me cold. C

Overall: Vanilla game B: Updates: C-

No idea why some people are saying MMORPGs have been terrible the last few years solely because they came out with a new way to make money.

fixit.7189:

Last thought before I head off: IGN, one the biggest gaming sites out there has not said much about HoT. It’s not being reviewed nor is it even mention as being released. This is same site that will review retro 8 bit indie games made by dudes in basements yet they are totally ignoring GW2. lol?

IGN spoiled something about HoT 2 days before it was supposed to be announced by anet and now reddit makes fun of them by saying you dont spell IGNorant without ign… i doubt theyre on good terms with the game/studio. dont be surprised they arent praising HoT after such a big public relations faux pas.

Eddie Mo.7169:

No idea why some people are saying MMORPGs have been terrible the last few years solely because they came out with a new way to make money.

Nah, it’s not just about the way they make money. That really is a personal beef from player to player. What’s really telling is how the MMO genre is stagnant in that nearly every single MMO plays virtually the same:

Tab targeting.
Grab quest and do it.
Level up and move from zone to zone until max.
Simply run the “end game” until you get the best gear.

Sure, there are games that try to do different things, but their core boils down to the same formula. TERA, ACTION combat… but still has 2, 3, and 4. Guild Wars 2? 1, technically 2, and 3. 4 is also technical if you consider ascended gear, though that isn’t absolutely necessary to have to do and see everything. Most games do all 4. And that’s a really watered down list, there are also other “side” mechanics, like crafting that is either the method of getting the best gear, or something you likely wasted time and gold on.

Really, the MMO that breaks away from 2, 3, and 4 and delivers an experience LIKE GW2’s living world… only procedurally generated and influenced by player actions as well as NPC faction interactions, will revolutionize the genre (like what Everquest Next promises..) Basically, MMO’s need to be built to be worlds people want to virtually live in and have some influence over, not crappy little themeparks with a thousand goal posts that change nor accomplish nothing upon clearing each and every one.

It’s quite ironic, but single player RPGs, which have zero incentive to keep players playing long term, release with more compelling content and they can keep players playing for hundreds to thousands of hours.

Something about MMO design is so fundamentally broken that it will take throwing caution to the wind and daring to make a huge loss on producing a truly unique MMO experience to break it out of its rut. People want to complain about reused assets in their expansions? The MMO has been essentially a reskinned, lightly modded variant of World of Warcraft/Everquest for a while now. WoW and all the other nomadic player bases are proof people want a good MMO… it’s just too bad developers/publishers can’t seem to think outside of the box and stick to tired old concepts that have long since needed to die. …Like leveling. Seriously, stop developing worlds only for 3% of it to see regular use in the end. And if you’re implementing some deleveling/power balance system for visiting lower level zones, why have leveling at all? It’s a self defeating concept.

if you don’t like subs based game, GW2 is the best at the moment…

Timbersword.9014:

Eddie Mo.7169:

No idea why some people are saying MMORPGs have been terrible the last few years solely because they came out with a new way to make money.

Nah, it’s not just about the way they make money. That really is a personal beef from player to player. What’s really telling is how the MMO genre is stagnant in that nearly every single MMO plays virtually the same:

Tab targeting.
Grab quest and do it.
Level up and move from zone to zone until max.
Simply run the “end game” until you get the best gear.

Sure, there are games that try to do different things, but their core boils down to the same formula. TERA, ACTION combat… but still has 2, 3, and 4. Guild Wars 2? 1, technically 2, and 3. 4 is also technical if you consider ascended gear, though that isn’t absolutely necessary to have to do and see everything. Most games do all 4. And that’s a really watered down list, there are also other “side” mechanics, like crafting that is either the method of getting the best gear, or something you likely wasted time and gold on.

Really, the MMO that breaks away from 2, 3, and 4 and delivers an experience LIKE GW2’s living world… only procedurally generated and influenced by player actions as well as NPC faction interactions, will revolutionize the genre (like what Everquest Next promises..) Basically, MMO’s need to be built to be worlds people want to virtually live in and have some influence over, not crappy little themeparks with a thousand goal posts that change nor accomplish nothing upon clearing each and every one.

It’s quite ironic, but single player RPGs, which have zero incentive to keep players playing long term, release with more compelling content and they can keep players playing for hundreds to thousands of hours.

Something about MMO design is so fundamentally broken that it will take throwing caution to the wind and daring to make a huge loss on producing a truly unique MMO experience to break it out of its rut. People want to complain about reused assets in their expansions? The MMO has been essentially a reskinned, lightly modded variant of World of Warcraft/Everquest for a while now. WoW and all the other nomadic player bases are proof people want a good MMO… it’s just too bad developers/publishers can’t seem to think outside of the box and stick to tired old concepts that have long since needed to die. …Like leveling. Seriously, stop developing worlds only for 3% of it to see regular use in the end. And if you’re implementing some deleveling/power balance system for visiting lower level zones, why have leveling at all? It’s a self defeating concept.

You make very good points. Better than the people here who only talk about the way that MMO’s make money. I assure you there are people who don’t care about the points you made and solely focus their attention on the business schemes of MMO developers.

That being said, money does play a big role. No MMO wants to not make money. The MMOs right now exist for a reason: because people like them and are willing to spend money on them. There were some MMOs that were released that had no zones, no levels, and was basically a virtual world. I can only think of two successful ones: Second life, and The Secret World.

There were others but I guess they weren’t being played enough to usher in a new form of MMO. Then there’s the question: If someone truly creates an MMO that has never been seen before, are people going to go for it and spend money on it?

Then there’s the age related questions: All of the MMO veterans play EQ, L1, L2, WOW, RS, UO, DAoC, etc. These certain veterans find MMOS stale because basically they played them all. But to someone who has never played those games before, games like WOW and GW2 are by no means stale and stagnant. I, for one, having played most of those MMOs still find that most MMOs are the same, but I still find them to be great. I live in the story, and their world.

GW2 is far from the perfect MMO, but it isn’t the best today solely because the MMOs of today suck, at least not in my opinion.

Eso and ff14 did very well and still are.

Issue with ff14
Log in
Run 2 speed run dungeons
Log out.

Or there version of a raid once a week/primal battle if needed.

Eso
Ok actually from an mmo perspective not elder scrolls view this game was fantastic, but they had veteran ranks which simply just require way too much time.

GW2 did so well because it’s perfect to hop in and out any time you please, never have to worry about your weapons or armor, and even in a quick 20 minute play you can get something done between some map completion, a world boss, story, or a few events. The game just really shined for me

GW2 is the best MMO thanks to Colin.

Also thanks for Reddit user XephyrGW2 for the pic

Test.8734:

Sicarius.4639:

fixit.7189:

Unlike other MMO game expansions, this ones uses a metric ton of recycled assets and then called new. I know no other MMO expansion that makes you go back to old world stuff I have been doing for three years; it’s always completely new stuff, with new loots/rewards/etc. But not so in HoT! Here I am, in new expansion farming the same junk I have been doing for years. Instead, all the cool stuff is in the gem store; frankly, I am not impressed with this new direction they are going where less is supposedly more.

You need to recycle things so you can put all your new shiny toys in the gemstore for more profit! It’s actually laughable how we’ve seen more skins in the last couple of weeks than that in an entire expansion.

Right?

The thing that makes me the most sad about GW2 is that it’s not really improving. Time and time again, ArenaNet is making decisions that have clearly been made to benefit them to the detriment of their players. Such as:

• Releasing VERY few new skins with HoT, but then following with a deluge of new skins in the gem store. There really isn’t any excuse for this – it’s obvious that they had the manpower to make the new skins, but they chose to not add them to the game because they knew they could just sell them apart for a bigger profit, despite how expensive HoT is. The fact they weren’t even trying to hide it speaks a lot about how ArenaNet doesn’t even care.

• Things like the Bifrost collection that, as described, require players to do something completely dependable of pure RNG such as being locked inside one of the Shatterer’s crystals. The collections as a whole are a bunch of RNG and grind that are meant to be endured, not enjoyed, but to add something like this, in what was meant to be a system to reduce the RNG in acquiring precursors, is just a slap on the players’ face.

• Reducing the value of things in the core game right when HoT is released. Not only the dungeon nerf, but also the many things that used to be part of the core GW2 and were moved to HoT – a huge number of guild buffs, for example, and even earning many rewards in Fractals that are now gated by the Fractals mastery. Removing things from the core game in order to drive people to get HoT is far from being something done for the players.

• Locking progression on the Living Story by masteries, and locking the elite specializations – which we all know was one of the features players were excited the most for – behind grind gates. This was obviously meant to artificially inflate the longevity of HoT by forcing people to grind before they could reach the end of the story or unlock their specializations.

People often quote the ArenaNet’s MMO Manifesto for the line “We don’t want players to grind”. But at the end, ArenaNet said something else:

“The most important thing in any game should be the player. We have built a game for them.”

And no, that’s not true. The game has been built against the players.

Is this the best MMO around? Maybe. Which is proof of how bad MMORPGs are, not of how good GW2 would be.

Agreed. You forgot a key element, though: the deconstruction of WvW with the roll-out of the HoT expansion. Automatic upgrades (one issue, but plenty more exist) have taken away a massive part of the risk/reward of defending places you’ve upgraded, and have also made it much harder for small groups to take places on abandoned servers (in other words, little raids are now timesinks even when noone has personally put effort into upgrading).

I’ve been big on Guild Wars for years, but I’m watching updates come out with increasing alarm: I’m not sure why the development team has now decided to gradually deconstruct its game and dissolve its player base.

Totally agree. I would say there are two others out there that are decent, but GW2 takes the crown.

GW2, yes. Hot, I don’t think so. It could be possible that even core GW2 might suffer due to changes HOT implemented.

Drakortha.6974:

I just wanted to say, upon reflecting on my gaming the past few years, that Guild Wars 2 sits above and beyond all else, and for the years to come.

Thank you.

Without you listing the games you’ve played it’s possible you simply haven’t seen the better ones.

Test.8734:

That’s deserved. MMORPGs are bad games.

MMORPG players have taught developers that they don’t need to make fun games or good games. Players are willing to go through content they don’t even enjoy as long as they get some reward out of it, be it more gold, more levels or even more skins.

Oh, I don’t know. WoW was, during the 3 years I played it, fun most of the time. Specially the raiding (and probably because i could try to beat my own dps marks in the content we were repeating)

It sure had a lot of boring stuff that was there just so lazy people could waste their time, but except fishing while waiting for the raid to assemble, i completely ignored the boring-by-design stuff.

What wow is definitely guilty of, is leaving player interaction with the environment out of the picture. In wow all you can do is kill the environment, and it respawns, so nothing changes.

GW2 took it to the extreme and erased player interaction. The only thing you can do to another player is resurrect him and buff him. But not attack him. Keeping the pve and pvp appart wastes a lot of potential, since the pvp maps have no lore and are pretty boring.

I don’t think gw2 is the best mmo of the past 3 years. All i see is people farming this, or farming that. i had a heck of a lot more fun with wow than with this game. (i quit wow because i could no longer commit 2 hours a day, everyday, for raiding, and wow is a lousy single player game)

I don’t know if I’d call it the best MMO, but it’s maybe the “best” within the no-subscription MMOs. It feels annyoing at times to have limited bank slots and character slots, but I’ve arranged myself with it and have found again my fun with GW2 after a few years of MMO burnout.

Although in contrast to maybe a large amount of players, the leveling part is for me (depending on the MMO, to be fair) the most fun part. Don’t ask me why, but “grinding” – unless it’s the first character – for levels seems strangely more enjoyable than grinding for better gear/money/cosmetics to me. Exceptions are pure asia grinders where leveling takes a guts-based eternity. That’s why I liked WoW, and the personal story during the level process in SWTOR. But to be fair, I’m hardly someone who has much of a brand loyalty. If I’m too bored/annoyed, I simply look for something else and hop back on when I feel like it. Not a a loctus swarm burning through content in a fast pace, though.

More skins, armor sets, hair and faces, rework lazy reused animation, be less european, be less zergish, revive dungeons, make condi builds viable. And I will tell everyone that GW2 is the best for me and probably for them.
Until now it is korean p2p BnS, which really isn’t so bad for Arena, since NCSoft owns them.

flman.6057:

More skins, armor sets, hair and faces, rework lazy reused animation, be less european, be less zergish, revive dungeons, make condi builds viable. And I will tell everyone that GW2 is the best for me and probably for them.
Until now it is korean p2p BnS, which really isn’t so bad for Arena, since NCSoft owns them.

Out of curiosity … what is so European about GW2?

symke.3105:

flman.6057:

More skins, armor sets, hair and faces, rework lazy reused animation, be less european, be less zergish, revive dungeons, make condi builds viable. And I will tell everyone that GW2 is the best for me and probably for them.
Until now it is korean p2p BnS, which really isn’t so bad for Arena, since NCSoft owns them.

Out of curiosity … what is so European about GW2?

Visual style, like architecture – starting from traditional housing and finishing with char’s industrial London.
Enemies – dragons, trolls, elementals, griffons, basilisks, I don’t know if its european but i’m gonna blame Holland, flowers
Armor – boring, from medeval courts and themes, historical, covers alot of flesh, especially heavy armor, I mean, I already know it protects me good, give me some swanky or elegant visuals ^^

Archage was much better game. Is a shame Trion killed with so much p2w cash grab

Great MMORPG, best MMO of the last 4 years?Not so much.

Mobas claim that crown.

vicious.5683:

Archage was much better game. Is a shame Trion killed with so much p2w cash grab

Tbh even if they did not, I doubt it would have been a huge success. Too much gold spammers, botters, hackers, and general griefing / toxic community. And then there’s poor design decisions such as including Hasla weapons at the western launch. So I agree that the payment model kinda ruined it, but a lot more than the payment model would need to change for it to be as great as it should have been.

Archage had so much potential. But it wasn’t just the OTT money grab, the ideas, particularly the “you own land” was ruined by shoddy implementation and high monetisation intrusion.

They just got to greedy.

Veldan.4637:

vicious.5683:

Archage was much better game. Is a shame Trion killed with so much p2w cash grab

Tbh even if they did not, I doubt it would have been a huge success. Too much gold spammers, botters, hackers, and general griefing / toxic community. And then there’s poor design decisions such as including Hasla weapons at the western launch. So I agree that the payment model kinda ruined it, but a lot more than the payment model would need to change for it to be as great as it should have been.

WOW had all of the above and yet was very successful. But I agree on the hasla weps, and a lot of other poor decisions taken by the publisher. Well, bad for people, they only care about the money, not the players.