Guild Wars 2

Here is my problem. I do not come from WoW background never played it have no interest in playing it.

From what I have been reading here in the forums is that people that come from WoW.
Want something different but then they ask why didn’t you put mounts in like WoW.
Why isn’t armor drops like WoW.
Why isn’t combat like WoW.

Is what you really want something different then WoW or just a different clone of WoW.

Please help me to understand.

Nah, they want what they’ve become accustomed to. WoW has written the MMO rulebook. To some, it’s just a reference. To others, it’s scripture.

If they’re asking that then they didn’t bother looking into the game.

Mounts weren’t included because they let you skip past content that you might have actually wanted to see. Waypoints were included so that players could easily get around, without missing any of the content in between the points on their first time through.

Armor drops aren’t like they are in WoW because that’s the gear grind. Anet didn’t want players to feel like they had to do Dungeon A a hundred times to get a full set of gear so they could move on to Dungeon B. They designed it so you do the dungeons to get the rewards that you want, not that you need.

Combat was designed to be more interactive. Instead of standing in one place and spamming a quick chain of attacks to maximize damage they wanted combat to be fluid and for you the player to feel more involved as you kite and dodge attacks while using your own attacks to move the target into the most strategic position.

It’s a known fact that people don’t like change, but will continue to ask for it regardless. If they wanted a WoW clone then they can go have Tera, SWTOR, Rift, or any number of “WoW clones with a twist”.

rook.4625:

Na, I think what they want is a sense of a reward.

This is too subject to be the answer.

They want the comfort of the WoW way of doing things, but don’t want to play WoW anymore.

WoW took a lot of what previous MMOs did right, made it a bit better, more casual friendly, and hit upon a formula for success. Most MMOs since try to copy what WoW did but they don’t quite get it. Some are bad, some are ok, and some are pretty good and will be “successful” in that they will find a niche following that allows them to keep the game running on their sub model for a few years.

Anything though that is different has people who played WoW always compare it to WoW. What they want is what WoW gives them but better and I’m not sure that’s possible. Sure you can make some improvements to WoW but a lot of people like me hate raids and always have. People who like raids will always want games to have raids and the carrot on a stick raids provide.

It’s in ANet’s whole “mission statement/manifesto/whatever” that they try to be as different as they can.

For people to come here and then complain that’s it not enough like WoW, it’s like going on holiday to Dubai and complaining that the weather’s hot.

Yeah, it’s different, that’s why we’re here.

Ordika.9513
“They want the comfort of the WoW way of doing things, but don’t want to play WoW anymore.”

That’ll be the (upto) 10 year time investment some people have put in but can’t walk away from. What was it all for!?

These are games. You’re the fool if you’ve put in so much time that you can’t walk away from it. Normal people do that with women and mortgages, not with games.

That’s a little bit weird.

flippa.9043:

Is what you really want something different then WoW or just a different clone of WoW.

It’s a paradox. On the one hand, a lot of people have become burnt out on WoW over the years. They feel that each expansion is just making things worse and they yearn for the “old days” of earlier WoW eras. Being frustrated with WoW’s current content formula, they complain that they want something “new” and “fun”.

Then on the other hand, a new MMO will come out that is “different”. From a non-WoW perspective, it’s usually a mix of “good different” and “bad different”. Inevitably the burned out WoW players rush to this new game in hopes of reliving what they considered to be the prime years of WoW. However every game is unique and these various differences aggravate the WoW players since the changes aren’t what they are used to. This leads to massive complaints, which then leads to developers changing their game during the Alpha / Beta / Live game stages. Due to these accomdations, many of the unique features of the MMO become lost. At the same time, many of the ex-WoW players are still unsatisfied and ultimately leave the new MMO to return to WoW.

This cycle has been repeating itself for probably the last 3-5 years. As WoW continues to show its age as a MMO, the frustration of its players is increasing. However the viscious cycle of MMO hopping and returning to WoW hasn’t slowed down. Most new MMOs implode as a result (though many of the contributing factors are that MMO’s own fault) and the gaming industry awaits the next MMO to continue the cycle.

Nope, players don’t say that. Other players say you are saying that everytime you make a suggestion.
Even more, 9 out of 10 times they say this, the feature that is beeing discussed comes from other games long before wow

I agree with you OP and this is something that really irks me. People coming into the game forums and making suggestions threads about adding features that WoW has. They might as well ask for the playable races of Orcs, Tauren, and Aliens from space (dranei?) while they’re at it. It’s ridiculous.

(end rant) Anyways, gamers need to start thinking of ideas that build upon what ANet has created and not only that but play the game that ANet intended it to be. It’s their world, their stories, and their characters so love it or hate it.

Players coming up with this argument are much more stubborn than the players they accuse of this.

Almost everytime I see this argument, the other poster hasn’t said a word about wow.
It’s always:
-it would be better if…
-go back to wow!

rook.4625:

Na, I think what they want is a sense of a reward.

I remember a time when recreation was considered a reward in and of itself.

Now, people want cookies for eating cookies.

SpectacularYak.6518:

Now, people want cookies for eating cookies.

But… C is for Cookie and that’s good enough for me.

(I’m sorry, but the set up was too good to pass up.)

Ronin.8095:

Ordika.9513
“They want the comfort of the WoW way of doing things, but don’t want to play WoW anymore.”

That’ll be the (upto) 10 year time investment some people have put in but can’t walk away from. What was it all for!?

These are games. You’re the fool if you’ve put in so much time that you can’t walk away from it. Normal people do that with women and mortgages, not with games.

That’s a little bit weird.

I agree, they want to give up the game, but can’t so they look for something similar but with all the same trappings.

I am probably in a small subset among old (age wise) gamers in that I ignored MMO’s untill 2009, my only multiplayer coming from FPS and RTS. Every other genre I played solo and at my leisure. For me giving up on an MMO is no more difficult then turning in a copy of Assassin’s Creed after I beat it. Once I have gotten all I could get out of the game I moved on.

Humans are biologically and genetically designed to seek out change. They become frustrated if they are stuck with the same thing and never given something new.

When they’re given change and provided something new, they invariably complain about it and immediately want to return to the old and familiar rather than giving something new a chance.

Humans are psychotic.

Wiser with Age.3714:

flippa.9043:

Is what you really want something different then WoW or just a different clone of WoW.

It’s a paradox. On the one hand, a lot of people have become burnt out on WoW over the years. They feel that each expansion is just making things worse and they yearn for the “old days” of earlier WoW eras. Being frustrated with WoW’s current content formula, they complain that they want something “new” and “fun”.

Then on the other hand, a new MMO will come out that is “different”. From a non-WoW perspective, it’s usually a mix of “good different” and “bad different”. Inevitably the burned out WoW players rush to this new game in hopes of reliving what they considered to be the prime years of WoW. However every game is unique and these various differences aggravate the WoW players since the changes aren’t what they are used to. This leads to massive complaints, which then leads to developers changing their game during the Alpha / Beta / Live game stages. Due to these accomdations, many of the unique features of the MMO become lost. At the same time, many of the ex-WoW players are still unsatisfied and ultimately leave the new MMO to return to WoW.

This cycle has been repeating itself for probably the last 3-5 years. As WoW continues to show its age as a MMO, the frustration of its players is increasing. However the viscious cycle of MMO hopping and returning to WoW hasn’t slowed down. Most new MMOs implode as a result (though many of the contributing factors are that MMO’s own fault) and the gaming industry awaits the next MMO to continue the cycle.

A very good summary of the cycle!

I started playing mmo’s when D&D Stormreach came out because I grew up on paper D&D.
I still play D&D online, GW1, Star Trek online, Aion, SWG if it wasn’t shut down.
I never complain that this or that game would be better if it had things like this other game.Their different games yes same basic genre.But that’s why I play so many the differences.

The easiest way to understand is basically understand WoW. It started out as a great game and with every single expansion they just started giving stuff away to players, with every expansion the players got more and it was easier to obtain things. Now it started out in BC with some minor things like being able to get HW pvp with minimal effort and get the same items people literally played months to get up to the absolute disgrace of WotLK where they basically handed people the best armor from the past expansion for just running dungeons which people could do in their sleep. I mean stuff that raiders spent months to get

So now they are all used to getting stuff for doing next to nothing. And they are preprogrammed to expect it, or be entitled to it.
Everything has to be like it because they don’t have any idea what anything else was like.
They have pretty much plagued every game with their whine posts. And sadly alot of gaming companies cave into them because they are a large subsection of the marketplace. And games become easier, people lose interest in them and games fail. All you have to do is look at gaming history. It is so apparent.

And look at the last past notes. Take out the dungeon changes and how many “changed difficulty” do you see.
And you know what the dungeon changes are the best, but look at the dungeon section and see all the complaints.
Why? because cof was an absolute snoozefest easy mode which people were running constantly, now it got changed and they cant get the same rewards for minimal effort and hence the complaints
It is sad even after 7 years of them I still can’t believe some of their posts

rook.4625:

Yea, like basketball? That’s a game right? But I’ll be d*mned if there are kids that wear ankle weights to increase their vertical so they can jump higher and play more athletically.

What about tennis? My dad has a ball hitting machine so he can improve his game, so he can play better against his friends. Is that a sin? He wants no cookies, he feels rewarded in his effort that he applied to this recreation you speak of.

Wait, no, I get it. This is a computer game, right? Nothing physical, all fun, except you see all the competitive sports leagues now, and why were these things even created? It should just be fun, really, right? But I guess it’s just that competitive nature that makes the game just that more rewarding.

No, I do not want this game to just to appeal to the hardcore stance, you have misjudged me. I simply believe this game has the platform to appeal to the masses.

Well, a couple of things about this…

No one is stopping you from “getting better at the game”, which includes making faster decisions, thinking more tactically, understanding the mechanics better, having better reflexes, etc, etc. That is the correct analogy for people training at a sport.

I expect when you complain about “reward” you’re talking about numerical progression. That does not sit well with a sports analogy. Numerical progression in sports would be, say, a team winning a game, so they get to play with an extra man in the next game, so they can win easier.

If you have a competitive nature, you should want a flat field of competition, so that your personal skill determines the outcome, not your “rewards”.