Guild Wars 2

Test.8734:

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.

Which is very interesting seeing as rewards are poor, gold is being nerfed constantly, they’ve done away with levels and the one thing left you need to get your credit card out for…

By far GW2 is the best MMO ever created. Arenanet did an MMO correct and they deserve all the success they have been getting with this game. I tried to play some other MMOs since GW2, and all of them pale by comparison, even ones that have been out far longer than GW2. Developers/publishers want to make a successful MMO, they should be looking at GW2 as their inspiration.

eisberg.2379:

By far GW2 is the best MMO ever created. Arenanet did an MMO correct and they deserve all the success they have been getting with this game. I tried to play some other MMOs since GW2, and all of them pale by comparison, even ones that have been out far longer than GW2. Developers/publishers want to make a successful MMO, they should be looking at GW2 as their inspiration.

This is why we can’t get nice things…

AXEL.8362:

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.

Phantasy Star Online 2 is a great game, good characters, excellent character customization, and while the weapon upgrading system certainly isn’t the best (need to buy grinders with real life money, needing a yen conversion to buy the codes for the cash and extra skill trees) and while dodges have no endurance bars (thank goodness!) the game is designed in such a way where even with it challenge can still be there. Missions are fun and you can buy or find rare skills. You can also buy (or win via scratch) house decorations, some of which actually play music and there are crossovers with Border Break and even a Sonic Anniversary event. It’s just unfortunate that the game never made it to the west. Sega is focusing a lot on mobile stuff but who really wants to play Sonic on a train on a tiny screen anyway when you could watch Youtube videos instead mentally complaining to yourself how it isn’t the same as watching on a real computer?

It isn’t a perfect system but it’s a step in the right direction. Guild Wars 2 took some steps there (active dodge) but also some back (In WoW you could bind all your abilities to your keyboard like A for hemmorage, W for backstab, F for ambush, Z for shadowstep, B for smokebomb, etc.) Their PvP system with everyone having equal stats is great, but then again only being limited to teams of 5 isn’t. Alterac Valley was one of the best experiences in MMO history due to the rich strategic and tactical potential. There’s a chokepoint where the Horde could stop the Alliance (if you were lucky other participants would know and not just zerg the bosses) while Strand of the Ancients and Isle of Conquest were really fun too. I didn’t care much for Eye of the Storm although shamans with their knockback made that great fun (not sarcasm).

People at Anet knew these were fun, but stronghold is missing a certain something those other battlegounds (Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest) from another game had. Anet gets credit for the effort and I’m sure there will be better stronghold battlegrounds in the future. Maybe bumping it up to teams of 20 vs. 20 and making the battlegrounds much bigger and more spacious in areas? Guild Wars 2 with its soft trinity means anyone can have okay healing if they spec for it so everyone loving you for queuing as a healer is gone.

As far as soft trinity goes I think Guild Wars 2 made a great decision. I remember raiding in SWTOR as a DPS spec on a scrapper but finding myself needing to heal. It was the one where the floor gives way and before that everyone had to be on a certain mob. It was a hard trinity game so such improvisations aren’t optimal, and your epics being from PvP rewards means there’s some stat hit, but being epics you still have plenty of extra stats (but not the right ones for healing if you go DPS obviously) but GW2 is set up much better for such a play style.

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.

To play devil’s advocate to your devil’s advocate, if the MMO market sucks so badly maybe there’s a reason for it. Maybe it’s actually harder to make an MMO that everyone enjoys than people seem to think. Do you think it’s a coincidence that so few MMOs succeed or become popular?

Every MMO that comes down the pike faces the same problems. They have to have the capital to make the game. They need the time to make the game. They need the to appeal to audiences that have vastly different ideas of what even makes a good MMO. They have to make money but not look greedy. They have to satisfy some very high expectations and they have to launch smoothly because it’s very very rare that fans give an MMO a second chance.

I mean you got some big companies making these games that came out with games that weren’t well received. There was SWToR made by EA and Bioware. Not well received. You’ve got ESO based on the Elder Scrolls game, not well received. You have Wildstar and Archeage with terrible launches.

But the question is why are all these launches bad? Maybe it’s because all these games face the same issues, and those issues are largely unsolvable.

I predict future games are going to face the same problem.

• They need the to appeal to audiences that have vastly different ideas of what even makes a good MMO. *

Balanced PvP with challenging yet fair PvE content with intuitive mechanics that don’t require prior research on a Wiki. Deep and responsive controls, flexible and diverse playing styles, and a sense of progression (e.g., lower level zones feeling easier because you far surpassed them. Bears were once dangerous and fearsome but you are no longer a level 5 average Joe but a level 80 superhero) are important too. Fair crafting and a reasonable economy helps a lot too. Exclusivity of some items but most stuff being tradeable on the TP is good. If a skin can only be obtained via certain achievements or PvP then they should not be tradeable, but everything else should be fair game.

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.

I’m actually glad Guild Wars 2 is European; that’s what’s held me to it so long, as quite a few MMOs are Asian in style and content. I love European castles, villages, houses, creatures, etc, and the Scandinavian Norn style was pretty epic too. It’d be nice if Anet came out with expansions with different cultures (e.g. Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall), but the European-style fantasy setting is really the reason I joined. Even though my main in Guild Wars 1 was a ritualist, I primarily roamed Ascalon and Norn lands.

But still, I wouldn’t mind expansions with different cultures.

Yeah, the necessity and drive for zergs to form and roam is a bit… so-so. But don’t ask Anet to stop them – if patterns from the past prove anything, it’s that Anet will stop zergs by removing champion/veteran loot from the game!

Vayne.8563:

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.

To play devil’s advocate to your devil’s advocate, if the MMO market sucks so badly maybe there’s a reason for it. Maybe it’s actually harder to make an MMO that everyone enjoys than people seem to think. Do you think it’s a coincidence that so few MMOs succeed or become popular?

Every MMO that comes down the pike faces the same problems. They have to have the capital to make the game. They need the time to make the game. They need the to appeal to audiences that have vastly different ideas of what even makes a good MMO. They have to make money but not look greedy. They have to satisfy some very high expectations and they have to launch smoothly because it’s very very rare that fans give an MMO a second chance.

I mean you got some big companies making these games that came out with games that weren’t well received. There was SWToR made by EA and Bioware. Not well received. You’ve got ESO based on the Elder Scrolls game, not well received. You have Wildstar and Archeage with terrible launches.

But the question is why are all these launches bad? Maybe it’s because all these games face the same issues, and those issues are largely unsolvable.

I predict future games are going to face the same problem.

The issue is that devs don’t seem to be looking at new ways of doing things, but rather are reskinning old business models based on old market information.

And then, next game – same problem.

And again.

I honestly thought Guild Wars would be breaking standards to try and steal the MMO community, but it looks like it’s actually settled into a downhill trend instead. It really wouldn’t take many tweaks to send it back uphill, but they don’t seem to do that.

This is…

My number 3 preferred MMO.

Which bothers me because the lore of Guild Wars is my favorite.

At launch I was in here with Vayne defending everything about this game and promoting it here and all over my social media and blogs…

But the game mechanics are not complex enough. They had all the indications at launch that they would be, and that you didn’t need a trinity system to have complex group MMO combat. GW1 even did it with a duality, and they hired a D&D dev: a game that in tabletop had complexity without a trinity since at least 2000, while other table top games have had it since the 1970s… So there is no reason for this failure other than… failure to address what popped up soon after launch as critical bugs in the system allowing people to kitten mechanics, stack, glitch through walls, and so many other things that either were never fixed or took more than a year to fix (like the old CoF wall glitch to skip most of the dungeon).
… They just dropped the ball on patching issues in their system. Leaving combat here “OK”, but not even as dynamic as WoW’s tab target and cycle a rotation system.

They have not been faithful to the lore of their world. They have neglected 2/3rds of the core world, acting as if it doesn’t even exist. In what few nods to the world’s lore we have gotten, its been in stereotyped like references such as they was Shiro is handled for Revenant, or that the only Asian female character in the game thus far is basically the classic “dragon lady” racial stereotype from Hollywood. Makes me darn right scared to see how badly the current team would mess up an NPC from Elona… They’d probably put him in a purple suit with a fedora, a gold cane, and elevator shoes with goldfish inside… They have completely lost the amazing ability they had in GW1 to do diverse cultures filled with individuals rather than stereotypes, and it just frustrates me…
… Its almost as if they have D&D writers doing their lore now… all ethnic stereotypes and no depth…

They have given up on developing good organized small team instanced play… Dungeons. I asked for a citation to this in another thread and need to go back and see if anyone provided it… but even without proof the evidence seems there: no new Dungeons or Fractals in HoT, and old dungeons sitting lately unpatched for their known exploits.
Open world PvE has essentially embraced the same zerg that WvW embraced… WvW got this from, in my opinion, design flaws that made the idea of small tactical units inefficient… PvE has had Zergs from day one, but was only recently actually designed to favor them…
The current model favors playing alone in a crowd… You with a hundred other players you don’t know, don’t talk to, and don’t bother with. If you want to group… you are actually better off staying to pre-HoT and pre-Silverwastes/Drytop content.

But its still up to number 3 because despite the above there are things that I love still in the game, and the play, while simple and easy to master, is catching.

My top two choices would be Wildstar and then FFXIV… But Wildstar, also an NCSoft game, was horribly mismanaged and is now just coming off of lifesupport. If that patient lives is still an unknown. And FFXIV… is just too slow… thanks to supporting console players actions have slow-ups on them and it feels like you’re a “keyboard turner mouse clicking through molasses” when you play it – If FFXIV could survive cutting off its console players it’d be a great game…

I’m sure my list above reads like I hate this place or am trolling it… But I actually do love this game, and am rather constantly coming back and hoping some of my concerns could get addressed and fixed so I could bump GW2 up to the spot in my choices that was once held by GW1.

Swift.1930:

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.

I’m actually glad Guild Wars 2 is European; that’s what’s held me to it so long, as quite a few MMOs are Asian in style and content.

GW2 Is American developed. Not European.
And the world of Guild Wars has a full diversity to it already established as Canon since 2005. The theme here should be more global – as that is what is in the Canon.

We’re actually, predominately, in Kryta, which is NOT a Caucasian region… but somehow “became that” in GW2 despite the Ascalonians still being a separate ethnic group from the Krytans. The best ‘earth like’ description for a Krytan would probably be a Polynesian or South Asian – they seemed a hybrid of this originally.

Kichwas.7152:

Swift.1930:

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.

I’m actually glad Guild Wars 2 is European; that’s what’s held me to it so long, as quite a few MMOs are Asian in style and content.

GW2 Is American developed. Not European.
And the world of Guild Wars has a full diversity to it already established as Canon since 2005. The theme here should be more global – as that is what is in the Canon.

We’re actually, predominately, in Kryta, which is NOT a Caucasian region… but somehow “became that” in GW2 despite the Ascalonians still being a separate ethnic group from the Krytans. The best ‘earth like’ description for a Krytan would probably be a Polynesian or South Asian – they seemed a hybrid of this originally.

I always thought the Krytans were more mediterranean than anything else.

None of you know what devil’s advocate means…

Kanner.8523:

The genre itself still has the most potential out of any videogame thing anywhere.

Not from the business point of view. The investment needed to make an MMO is massive, the chance of financial success is rather low. Its much safer to make tight little games like Hearthstone or Overwatch at a fraction of an MMO budget and reap rewards comparable to what successful massively multiplayer games have earned. Developers and publishers see that and act accordingly.

Everyone thought that WoW was going to get taken out by a competitor.
In the end, it simply committed suicide as soon as the first full-Activision xpac [Warlords of Draenor] came out. I’m sure as heck not touching Legion unless I want those demon wings for my D3 character from the deluxe edition.

As for GW2, obviously there are some things that would make the game more fun [gliding everywhere, mainly :P ], but even though I can’t mount up on a frost wyrm and suck a demon lord’s soul out after bashing his head in with a frosty sword, I can fly around Verdant Brink and Ley Line Confluence with a coldfire/spiritfire sword [Cobalt] as a freaking vampire lord and smack bad salads and chak in the face with a frosty, blue flame-covered greatsword – WHILE USING MUH FROST SHOUT LIKE IN SKYRIM o.o. While sucking their souls out, too. So yea. Each game has its place, but GW2 has never kittened me off as much as WoW has. GW2 has so much that WoW lacks, and it makes it a chore to log into WoW and an addiction to log into GW2 and fly around aimlessly with my fully-leveled gliding.

tl;dr: GW2 and gliding rules, WoW and their anti-consumerist crap drools.

P.S.: Vampire lord > undead dragon. :P

I wouldn’t say that it’s the best MMO, but it’s definitely the only one in the last four years that I would ever play for any length of time.

WoW had some interest to me because they let me fly a phoenix. But, they’ve decided that flying isn’t a valued part of the game anymore and decided to cut out any sense of verticallity rather than tying it into the gameplay like Arena.Net did with gliding.

They’re so stuck with that mentality they think they don’t need to improve, because GW2 is ‘THE BESTEST PC MMO OF THE LAST 141231251231 YEARS!!!!!’ Or maybe they don’t WANT to improve, because improving means more work for them.

Swift.1930:

Vayne.8563:

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.

To play devil’s advocate to your devil’s advocate, if the MMO market sucks so badly maybe there’s a reason for it. Maybe it’s actually harder to make an MMO that everyone enjoys than people seem to think. Do you think it’s a coincidence that so few MMOs succeed or become popular?

Every MMO that comes down the pike faces the same problems. They have to have the capital to make the game. They need the time to make the game. They need the to appeal to audiences that have vastly different ideas of what even makes a good MMO. They have to make money but not look greedy. They have to satisfy some very high expectations and they have to launch smoothly because it’s very very rare that fans give an MMO a second chance.

I mean you got some big companies making these games that came out with games that weren’t well received. There was SWToR made by EA and Bioware. Not well received. You’ve got ESO based on the Elder Scrolls game, not well received. You have Wildstar and Archeage with terrible launches.

But the question is why are all these launches bad? Maybe it’s because all these games face the same issues, and those issues are largely unsolvable.

I predict future games are going to face the same problem.

The issue is that devs don’t seem to be looking at new ways of doing things, but rather are reskinning old business models based on old market information.

And then, next game – same problem.

And again.

I honestly thought Guild Wars would be breaking standards to try and steal the MMO community, but it looks like it’s actually settled into a downhill trend instead. It really wouldn’t take many tweaks to send it back uphill, but they don’t seem to do that.

People associate compromise with capitulation. I’ve seen very little capitulation. For example, the level cap hasn’t been raised. The way the jungle works is very different from any other MMO I’ve played.

What you have is in your head, a list of very specific things that you specifically associate with the genre. I see those things too, but I also see other things. This expansion is very very unlike any MMO expansion I’ve ever played.

It doesn’t mean that there’s no grind.But grind is still only one aspect of the equation. And I’m not grinding and I’m making progress. I’m running around doing all sorts of stuff, the way the game was designed to. I’m not worrying about getting every mastery today because long term goals are okay to put into an MMO. It is account bound after all.

In fact, I’m not seeing this Guild Wars 2 is turning into every other MMO at all. Maybe we’re looking at different things.

ReaperStriker.1982:

They’re so stuck with that mentality they think they don’t need to improve, because GW2 is ‘THE BESTEST PC MMO OF THE LAST 141231251231 YEARS!!!!!’ Or maybe they don’t WANT to improve, because improving means more work for them.

Yes obviously a single forum post gives them that mentality. lmao

Maybe they have improved and some people can’t see it because it’s not what they think of as improvement. I suppose you think the programmed the entire jungle in two days.

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.

Same here. GW 2 is by far the best MMO I’ve played and my favorite game period. I’ve spent more time on it than any other that’s for sure. This is a result of game creators that have not only done such a great job, but continue to improve and really care about making the best game possible. It’s all in the details.

Although I do enjoy Heart of Thorns to an extent, I have to say Guild Wars 2 seems to be going on a downward slope ever since its release. I admire and hate Arenanet’s “evolutionary” mechanic when it comes to MMORPGs, but the game has significantly declined in quality since I first got it near its release. Certainly the game has introduced some interesting mechanics since its inception, but in my opinion, Guild Wars 2 is definitely not a 9/10 MMO anymore.

The Living Story is behind a gem paywall. Dungeons and fractals have completely been stripped of their rewards to ensure players will not feel rewarded in items or gold when they complete them; they also leave players with no real way to earn money to buy armor or weapons. Items that could have been released via gemstore or as a new mechanic in-game are very RNG based and near-unobtainable unless gold or converted gems are used to purchase them. The game’s expansion seems to focus more on a grinding philosophy to progress through the story, urging players to earn a full mastery level before they can progress. Arenanet no longer listens to player requests for gemstore items that they want back in for holiday or special events. It’s interesting that a multitude of players request a specific item or skin which is a prospective way of earning money for Arenanet, and yet they choose to ignore the requests and wonder why players aren’t buying things from the gemstore. The Guild Wars 2 Third Anniversary Sales were a huge disappointment, as well as the tedious Mordrem Invasion event the following weekend which was a huge embarrassment in the history of Guild Wars 2. There were several pointless changes to audio, idle poses, hearts, and a multitude of other things within the game that never made any sense to be messed with. There have been more outfits released than armor skins which hinder players’ desire to customize their own character. Several PVE-based armor skins have been removed for little to no reason. Arenanet chooses to remove instead of add, which to me sounds like a puzzling choice.

In my opinion, the game has taken a turn for the worse, and definitely is no longer a 9/10 grade MMORPG anymore. There are plenty of disappointments Arenanet has delivered over the past year, but it’s still not enough to take me out of the game yet. I still remain somewhat hopeful for what Arenanet chooses to introduce in the future. Guild Wars 2 still remains one of my favorite MMORPGs out there, but Arenanet is really pushing me on edge.

Oblivion.9032:

Although I do enjoy the Heart of Thorns to an extent, I have to say Guild Wars 2 seems to be going on a downward slope ever since its release. I admire and hate Arenanet’s “evolutionary” mechanic when it comes to MMORPGs, but the game has significantly declined in quality since I first got it near its release. Certainly the game has introduced some interesting mechanics since its inception, but in my opinion, Guild Wars 2 is definitely not a 9/10 MMO anymore.

And I have felt like it’s stayed the same great game that I started playing back in the GW1 days. Actually I think it’s gotten better since it’s not stagnant.

WoW was the best MMO for its time, and i believe the successor of that formula was FFXIV, who have mastered the formula that Blizzard created. If you want a gear treadmill, FFXIV is the best MMO out there.

GW2 is the current “WoW” due to the innovate things it is doing. But the difference here, is that as soon as another publisher re-skins GW2 completely, adds better drop rates on things (aka, makes the time to acquire fetch items much shorter), and includes either a sub, or a better F2P store, GW2 is done.

What will keep this genre alive, is addressing both the “MMO” aspect and the “RPG” at the same time, which GW2 has done.

WoW, and FFXIV, have centered their game around the RPG aspect, more so that the MMO aspect. The need for social participation is just missing from those games now. Sure, there are raids, but the level of involvement past that means you’re paying to play a single player RPG.

Blizzard did a great job of using other MMORPG mechanics and strategies from other MMOs, to build WoW. From there, it rested on its laurels, and tried to cater to the foundation it had built, along with some very bad design decisions. If Blizzard re-evaluated the market, and started pulling ideas from GW2, I believe alot of us would be discussing this on the WoW forums right now.

Aenesthesia.1697:

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.

There’s a reason WOW’s PVE servers in total have a lot more players on them than PVP servers, that’d be the same reason games like GW2 and LoTRO don’t have open world PVP.

slamfunction.7462:

Blizzard did a great job of using other MMORPG mechanics and strategies from other MMOs, to build WoW. .

What MMOs that preceded it did Blizzard copy from? I see little in comparison to the large-scale MMOs of the late 90s, UO, EQ, in WOW.

WOW was the huge success it was BECAUSE it presented something new on MMOs, a break from the 1990s group-or-die mechanics as the only way to level a character or do most/all the content in the game.

Well i agree this WAS the best mmorpg in the last 3 years but sadly hot changed all that with it’s grind now this is a good game if you like Korean grind games but if you want a fun pick up and play when ever you want game This is not it any more
this is stay online all day and grind and maybe maybe get 1 mastery level … maybe
or go find a grind spot ….

WoW Legion seems to bring a lot of new features judging from what it was presented at Blizzcon. And after playing HoT for 2 weeks I’m inclining to go back to WoW in the near future.
The expansion just simply feels shallow to me and the recent shady practices from ANet kinda made me lost faith in this game. It slowly turns into a cash grabbing machine.

I payed for the skins and upgrades in the gemstore more than a WoW sub would cost me anyway, waaaayyy more.

VaLee.5102:

WoW Legion seems to bring a lot of new features judging from what it was presented at Blizzcon. And after playing HoT for 2 weeks I’m inclining to go back to WoW in the near future.
The expansion just simply feels shallow to me and the recent shady practices from ANet kinda made me lost faith in this game. It slowly turns into a cash grabbing machine.

I payed for the skins and upgrades in the gemstore more than a WoW sub would cost me anyway, waaaayyy more.

I might give it a try again in patch 7.1/7.3 or whenever when the flying achievement is available for completion. But, as it is, it sounds like they didn’t learn anything from WoD, they’re pulling the exact same thing.

Guild Wars 2 ruined other “classic” MMOs for me, which leaves it as the best by default.

I’m both pleased and displeased by that. Pleased because I love the game and really like ArenaNet as a company. Displeased because whenever they screw something up, they’ve screwed it up in the only MMO I can bring myself to play.

Fortunately, they tend to get it right more than they get it wrong, and when they realize something’s wrong, they tend to be pretty good about “iterating” and making necessary changes.

If they could be convinced to integrate quality assurance more directly into their design and engineering processes, they would rob me of the vast majority of my complaints. Which allows me to say…

ArenaNet, please. Rob me.

Vayne.8563:

Yes obviously a single forum post gives them that mentality. lmao

Maybe they have improved and some people can’t see it because it’s not what they think of as improvement. I suppose you think the programmed the entire jungle in two days.

OK, I may have been a bit bitter when I posted that. They did some good/great things that’s considered “revolutionary” in the MMORPG genre, such as the Living Story episodic approach. I wouldn’t be surprised if the WoW devs are taking notes of GW2’s improvements and may incorporate them in future expansions. What I’m trying to say is, if GW2 is the best MMORPG out there, then their aim now is to out do themselves.

Absolute can’t say I agree. I liked the core game. I really don’t like HOT. I play it because my friends play it but honestly, I’d rather spend my time elsewhere and usually do. I’m in GW2 now probably 1 to 2 days a week.

Xirus.9675:

Everyone thought that WoW was going to get taken out by a competitor.
In the end, it simply committed suicide as soon as the first full-Activision xpac [Warlords of Draenor] came out. I’m sure as heck not touching Legion unless I want those demon wings for my D3 character from the deluxe edition.

Just because youre not going to touch it doesnt mean it commited suicide. The problem is not so much WoD as an expansion as it is the fact once again the players are left for months without new stuff at the end of it.

But thats fine. Keep in mind people’s attitude to WoW changed a bit over the years. For many its no longer a game they play constantly. Instead its a game they love going back to with each new big instalment of content. A lot are actually quite hyped for Legion. Ill certainly spend 2-3 months on it.

Kichwas.7152:

Swift.1930:

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.

I’m actually glad Guild Wars 2 is European; that’s what’s held me to it so long, as quite a few MMOs are Asian in style and content.

GW2 Is American developed. Not European.
And the world of Guild Wars has a full diversity to it already established as Canon since 2005. The theme here should be more global – as that is what is in the Canon.

We’re actually, predominately, in Kryta, which is NOT a Caucasian region… but somehow “became that” in GW2 despite the Ascalonians still being a separate ethnic group from the Krytans. The best ‘earth like’ description for a Krytan would probably be a Polynesian or South Asian – they seemed a hybrid of this originally.

Global, yes, that would be fine. Regarding Kryta, however, you may have missed the whole migration lore where Ascalon pretty much up and moved to Kryta. The culture is predominantly European now (although I’m not quite sure about the monsters). When creating a character it certainly is possible to appear South Asian, though, so those ethnicities (whether predominant or not) are still true to lore.

When a kingdom as large as Ascalon commits to a mass exodus, the culture and ethnicity of a region it moves to is completely prone to change. Australian people, for instance, are no longer dark-skinned as a majority. The U.S. is not predominantly American Indian now, either. Certainly don’t have a tent as the white house…

At least that’s my take on what happened. And since we can’t spawn in human Ascalon, I’m personally glad the European culture/style migrated. I’d hate to have to spawn as a Charr to have my home area look vaguely European…

Furthermore, Lion’s Arch used to have the South Asian (Canthan) vibe you mentioned until it was destroyed. Now I’m not exactly sure what it is.

Kraggy.4169:

Aenesthesia.1697:

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.

There’s a reason WOW’s PVE servers in total have a lot more players on them than PVP servers, that’d be the same reason games like GW2 and LoTRO don’t have open world PVP.

yes, there is a reason. but they could have added dueling as an option to limit open world pvp to the people that want to open world pvp.

Ideally, team dueling would be great and open a lot of possibilities for role playing reasons.

BrooksP.4318:

Pre-HoT and HoT has shown that Anet doesn’t seem to know where they want to take GW2.

+1 to this.
But maybe they saw the big success of Wildstar and thought : hey .. we must make
our game more hardcore because a MMO where casuals get stuff that only belongs
to hard working raiders, is doomed.

Or we blame it on NCSoft .. lol.

Tere.4759:

Absolute can’t say I agree. I liked the core game. I really don’t like HOT. I play it because my friends play it but honestly, I’d rather spend my time elsewhere and usually do. I’m in GW2 now probably 1 to 2 days a week.

I simply ignore HoT .. it only makes me a little bitter that i not even can play
the new specialisations really .. yeah my Dragon Hunter without grandmaster
trait is playable .. but …

Oh .. and actually i enjoy Might & Magic X .. finally again a good old fashiond
round-base RPG with block-mode and 90 degree turns