Guild Wars 2

Logged into Rift
Queued for a dungeon
Sat there for 30 minutes and no pop
Uninstalled

I’m enjoying The Old Republic a lot more than I did on release, I really missed the roles.

If you didn’t like WoW or got tired of it, Rift isn’t going to be a game for you. It’s more standard MMO gameplay, and if that’s not you’re forte Rift won’t bring anything new to the table.

But if you do enjoy the standard you’ll be rewarded thoroughly. Tons of class options, a fair amount of diversity, and a lot of content. Macros are pretty open-ended, and while seemingly make the game ‘easier’, there isn’t ever much ‘skill’ involved to skill rotations anyways (kind of like how GW2 streamlines things with autoattacks and limited skills).

Plus the ‘rifts’ themselves are neato. Think dynamic events from GW2 but bigger in scale.

Smith.1826:

If you didn’t like WoW or got tired of it, Rift isn’t going to be a game for you. It’s more standard MMO gameplay, and if that’s not you’re forte Rift won’t bring anything new to the table.

But if you do enjoy the standard you’ll be rewarded thoroughly. Tons of class options, a fair amount of diversity, and a lot of content. Macros are pretty open-ended, and while seemingly make the game ‘easier’, there isn’t ever much ‘skill’ involved to skill rotations anyways (kind of like how GW2 streamlines things with autoattacks and limited skills).

Plus the ‘rifts’ themselves are neato. Think dynamic events from GW2 but bigger in scale.

I agree with this to a point, except for the bigger scale thing. At least when I played Rift, dynamic events didn’t link to each other. Rifts were self-contained and repetitive, and zone wide events linked to nothing.

I find the scale of dynamic events, the longer chains like in Orr or Hirathi Hinterlands to be much better than anything Rift did with dynamic events.

In a way it did. I tried both SWTOR and Neverwinter after I played the BWE of Guild Wars 2 and didn’t like either of those. Ok I also played in the beta of SWTOR but that didn’t count. I won’t play an mmorpg ever again that is has some of the worst mmo features ever:

You need to do dungeon1 to get set1 in order to do dungeon2 to get set2… The so called Gear Treadmill. It’s horrible design that I don’t like and never will. Also, to add to the above, gear restrictions to do content. In Guild Wars 2 you can do all content in the game without the NEED for any specific gear, ok except for high level fractals.

“Cool” events restricted to high levels, I really don’t get it why you must first reach the cap before the game becomes good. Big boss events at low levels? check. Dungeons (that are important even to characters at the level cap) check.

Need/Greed rolls. Although the RNG in GW2 isn’t very… random, meaning it favors some people more than others, play with the exact same group for 100+ fractals and you will see, I still MUCH prefer it to Need/Greed rolls and ninja looting. However that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t love a “Master looter” system, so the party can share some specific “useless” mechanic-wise loot with friends, like Ascended Rings and Fractal Skins.

Open world pvp, aka ganking/griefing of lowbies, never liked it, never will, those who like it can stay in those other MMOs and have their fun there.

Escort/Defend/Gather/Assault/Boss-kill quests. The Dynamic Event system can’t replace all types of quests we see in other games, some types are better in the traditional system. However, I seriously urge all mmorpg developers to use a dynamic system over the traditional quest, for those above quest types. When mobs assault a village and I rush in to help, I should be rewarded too, when an escort quest is underway and I help (Even at the last part) I should be rewarded too, if a big boss is out there and I help kill it I should be rewarded too, all the above, even if I don’t have a crappy piece of text in my quest log that specifically instructs me to do so. The “hey it wasn’t in your quest log” mentality needs to go.

There are a lot more but I’ll stop here. Guild Wars 2 has its problems, but the pros far outweigh the cons, and playing some other MMORPG for a few days made me realise this.

Yes, it has. The fluid combat system has made me completely intolerant of old-fashioned tabtarget systems with 30+ abilities on your hotbars.

It could kill even ArcheAge for me, although that game has a lot more to the RPers than GW2 does.

Vayne.8563:

I agree with this to a point, except for the bigger scale thing. At least when I played Rift, dynamic events didn’t link to each other. Rifts were self-contained and repetitive, and zone wide events linked to nothing.

I find the scale of dynamic events, the longer chains like in Orr or Hirathi Hinterlands to be much better than anything Rift did with dynamic events.

A lot of the rifts, the more ‘massive’ ones, did have some basis found through talking to NPCs, they varied in theme, and each had unique characters/adversaries. This isn’t a whole lot different from GW2. And while many invasions are relatively meaningless, GW2 events can lose their meaning due to how beneficial it is to farm them.

Ultimately it’s picking hairs. Not to say they’re not hairs that shouldn’t be picked, but the gameplay for both games in this regard is solid.

Guild Wars 2 has ruined other games for me because of one, simple thing – combat. I’ve always been a fan of WoW’s open world where it’s theoretically possible to walk from one end of a continent to another and never see a load screen. I sorely miss that. What I don’t miss is buffing up, auto-attacking a common mob, leaving the computer to use the bathroom and coming back to finish the fight. And I did that on a priest. That just shouldn’t be possible. I also don’t understand why so many people loved the first Guild Wars. Granted I have a… sorted… history with the game do dating one of their network managers and that relationship ending very badly. However, I found the combat to be no different than WoW. I stood still and pressed a few buttons in a specific order. It was so “engaging” that, even when under-leveled, I fell asleep no less than 3 times getting from Kaineng’s docks to the city’s center.

This game also has a far better leveling system than any other I’ve come across. I LOVED City of Heroes but it took me 3 years before I got 6 characters to max level. Here it took 6 months.

And then there’s the music! Need I say more?

This game does a lot of things wrong. Temporary content that isn’t seasonal, RNG used to cultish levels and the devs in charge of profession balancing are the biggest issues. However, it’s getting close to a year and I’m still here. I only played WoW for 7 months.

Smith.1826:

Vayne.8563:

I agree with this to a point, except for the bigger scale thing. At least when I played Rift, dynamic events didn’t link to each other. Rifts were self-contained and repetitive, and zone wide events linked to nothing.

I find the scale of dynamic events, the longer chains like in Orr or Hirathi Hinterlands to be much better than anything Rift did with dynamic events.

A lot of the rifts, the more ‘massive’ ones, did have some basis found through talking to NPCs, they varied in theme, and each had unique characters/adversaries. This isn’t a whole lot different from GW2. And while many invasions are relatively meaningless, GW2 events can lose their meaning due to how beneficial it is to farm them.

Ultimately it’s picking hairs. Not to say they’re not hairs that shouldn’t be picked, but the gameplay for both games in this regard is solid.

A rift that opens up and if no one does it closes by itself, just like the invasions. That’s no hair, that’s a major difference.

You’d see an outpost that was taken over by invaders and you didn’t have enough people to take it out, so you made a cup of coffee and waited till they evaporated.

Rift was better in beta 4 when those changes were permanent. But the company couldn’t make them permanent, because they left traditional questing in the game. And those quest hubs are where people needed to go to turn in their quest rewards. So the invasions have no weight at all to them.

At least in Guild Wars 2 if a temple is taken, it remains taken until taken back. It should have stayed that way in Rift too.

The quality of GW2 is beyond reproach, indeed. It’s the systems in all MMOs at the moment, that leave a lot of room for improvement. Beyond that we have the hypercasuals Vs. hardcores debate in this genre… The only thing we all agree on is outdoor events are great.

I consider the whole MMO genre ruined in general atm, it can only go up or die from here.

Vayne.8563:

A rift that opens up and if no one does it closes by itself, just like the invasions. That’s no hair, that’s a major difference.

You’d see an outpost that was taken over by invaders and you didn’t have enough people to take it out, so you made a cup of coffee and waited till they evaporated.

I can understand this. I kind of wish GW2 had something in the same vein, because it’s disheartening to follow a DE quest chain in an underpopulated area only to have it end with a champ spawn. You can ask your friends or people in map chat to come along but the call doesn’t always get answered.

Vayne.8563:

Rift was better in beta 4 when those changes were permanent. But the company couldn’t make them permanent, because they left traditional questing in the game. And those quest hubs are where people needed to go to turn in their quest rewards. So the invasions have no weight at all to them.

At least in Guild Wars 2 if a temple is taken, it remains taken until taken back. It should have stayed that way in Rift too.

Very true, but that ‘weight’ can disappear when the events reset numerous times a day. I can understand that as well, though, since it allows more people to experience the content.

Both games are very rewarding to farm, though, and that’s the biggest, overarching issue in both of them regarding suspension of disbelief.

You know what ruined MMOs for me?

Going back and playing the old games on emulated or restarted servers. Once I tried to go back to some of those old systems I realized just how much my games had changed over the years.

. . . also, that Minecraft with enough mods tacked on can do anything except curved walls/floors.

I’ve only every played WoW, WAR, EVE and GW2, but GW2 is the most addictive.

I gave up on WoW and WAR long ago, they got stale quickly. GW2 is more modern than WoW, and better balanced than WAR. I can’t see why I would bother with another 3rd person fantasy MMO ATM.

EVE is just… different. It’s so much slower than most MMOs, but much more involved. With training queues, and sell orders, and long running manufacturing jobs, I can play EVE every few days, or every few weeks, and still keep “in the game”.

Smith.1826:

I can understand this. I kind of wish GW2 had something in the same vein, because it’s disheartening to follow a DE quest chain in an underpopulated area only to have it end with a champ spawn. You can ask your friends or people in map chat to come along but the call doesn’t always get answered.

Don’t worry. With the change for fitting rewards for every champion in the game many champion events will be done daylie.

Wanderer.3248:

EVE is just… different. It’s so much slower than most MMOs, but much more involved. With training queues, and sell orders, and long running manufacturing jobs, I can play EVE every few days, or every few weeks, and still keep “in the game”.

I’m glad you put the “in the game” in quotes, because what you just desrcibed is not a game, it’s a kitten spreadsheet you pay a monthly fee to twiddle about.

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

Thanks for all this feedback.

I guess for me, I like to be able to play A game for as long as I like which I found I couldn’t do with other mmo’s.

Once again I will use DC Universe as an example.

When starting off in DC Universe, the storyline and gameplay is terrific. However, when that ends you are pretty much forced to do instances and such with other people.

Here is where the problem begins with that system. EVERYONE has to play their role in order to advance. Well, everyone would not always play their role as they should which would result in huge in game arguments which would pretty destroy the mission you all were doing. Now when I say, PLAY YOUR ROLE this meant the healer would have to heal, the controller would have to give power, and the tank and dps would have to, well you get the idea. If one of these roles weren’t played correct, the mission is null and void.

I have yet to run into that playing GW2 because there are no specific roles. You don’t have to depend on a healer to stay alive. People can’t leave you hanging as easy as I have noticed in other mmo’s like, Yes you guessed it, DC Universe.

If DC Universe took on the same game mechanics as GW2, the game would be just as great.

Well, unfortunately this game does not have any defined roles. Before purchasing, you should have done research into the game and realize that you can complete any with any class or build. You can complete any dungeon with 5 thieves, or 5 zerker warriors, or 5 support guardians. It might take a while, one way or the other, but it won’t necessarily be painful or difficult.

You form in some survivability based on what YOU need. If you are the player that goes down a lot, take out some of the dmg and replace with some survivability. Build in some group support. My warrior is wearing Knights gear, but using a ‘zerker spec and weapons. The knight’s gear gives me the little bit of added survivability that I need so I don’t go down in one punch.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You know what ruined MMOs for me?

Going back and playing the old games on emulated or restarted servers. Once I tried to go back to some of those old systems I realized just how much my games had changed over the years.

. . . also, that Minecraft with enough mods tacked on can do anything except curved walls/floors.

Ugh I know to each his own…but minecraft..I’ll never understand why people are in love with that.

Ive got a RL buddy…hes stuck to WoW like flies to poop. Old cartoony graphics. He says “I dont care about graphics…never have”. He played minecraft for a while, and I poked fun at him…he says “I dont care about graphics”. When I started playing Firefall, he joined me for a few hours and said “I dont like the graphics…” lol.

GW2 has spoiled me, that’s for sure. I can’t believe I used to see Wednesday as the day I had to start running LFRs to get gear to do real raids to get gear to do the next raid before the nerf and if I was lucky I could reforge by the weekend and don’t forget the dailies in the meantime. Argh.

I also like the dynamic combat, and it’s hard to believe I used to have a 20+ bar of different abilities, just to only use a few of them because “if you aren’t using the correct rotation your dps sucks.” Omg. I actually used to spend hours pressing the same keys in the same order to make imaginary numbers go up high enough so strangers didn’t yell at me. Seriously, what?

Sitkaz.5463:

GW2 has spoiled me, that’s for sure. I can’t believe I used to see Wednesday as the day I had to start running LFRs to get gear to do real raids to get gear to do the next raid before the nerf and if I was lucky I could reforge by the weekend and don’t forget the dailies in the meantime. Argh.

I also like the dynamic combat, and it’s hard to believe I used to have a 20+ bar of different abilities, just to only use a few of them because “if you aren’t using the correct rotation your dps sucks.” Omg. I actually used to spend hours pressing the same keys in the same order to make imaginary numbers go up high enough so strangers didn’t yell at me. Seriously, what?

One can only hope there is a special torment in the underworld reserved solely for Parse fanatics. Parsing is a good tool.. but.. some of those people… shudder. Kill a tough boss, everyone rocks, everyone is happy.. and some lunatic goes off on the troub for killing his “parse” by throwing cap on someone else.

Sitkaz.5463:

GW2 has spoiled me, that’s for sure. I can’t believe I used to see Wednesday as the day I had to start running LFRs to get gear to do real raids to get gear to do the next raid before the nerf and if I was lucky I could reforge by the weekend and don’t forget the dailies in the meantime. Argh.

I also like the dynamic combat, and it’s hard to believe I used to have a 20+ bar of different abilities, just to only use a few of them because “if you aren’t using the correct rotation your dps sucks.” Omg. I actually used to spend hours pressing the same keys in the same order to make imaginary numbers go up high enough so strangers didn’t yell at me. Seriously, what?

This the disconnect, that’s really hurting MMOs. LFD/LFR and WoW in general after Early LK, was/is really horrible compared to MMOs before then. So many got their MMO start in WotLK, so moving forward is nearly impossible.

I wouldn’t say ruined, but definitively has changed how I see them.

One quick anecdote… right before GW2 I was heavily playing The Secret World, which I still really like. When TSW went B2P, I went in to give it another go, there was an event going on where people would have to do protect events in several areas of the game for points (a certain number of people with the most points would get a new pet), I saw a group doing one of the events and the one of them was about to die being mobbed by the amount of mobs that had spawned, my char was specced as tank so I ran in, grabbed aggro on the mobs and started doing AoE attacks to keep aggro while they killed them…. which resulted in getting a whisper telling me to stop grabbing their mobs or they’d report me for harrassment… which is when it dawned to me I wasn’t playing GW2 and whoever tagged the mobs first got the full credit.

Being able to attain top level gear without having to grind dungeons with elitist jerks, this is priceless.

Actually for me didnt killed at all, cause i prefer good game mechanics overall than graphics and a roll each 10 seconds, still playing some betas atm with simmiliar mechanics.

Aeolus.3615:

Actually for me didnt killed at all, cause i prefer good game mechanics overall than graphics and a roll each 10 seconds, still playing some betas atm with simmiliar mechanics.

Yes, me too. I prefer good game mechanics over graphics too. That’s why I hate the trinity…possibly the worst game mechanic ever made (in my opinion).