Guild Wars 2

I still think GW2 have the best RvR. Had some fun big fights in Aion though back in the day, before they ruined it.

But talking about GW2 WvW: It’s always a problem when you implement big changes to a gamemode. Like the switch to condi meta. Once you have done it there is not turning back, even if there is a little voice in your game developers mind that says “kitten , this isnt turning out the way we intended”. So you try to patch things up by doing other changes, that turns out to have other unforseen consequenses.

Babysteps, always small but frequent babysteps instead of rare big strides.

I played ESO a long time ago, it wasn’t as good then. I have more recently played Black Desert Online, that wasn’t anywhere near WvW, although it had decent PvE gameplay.

The real problem with WvW is it was fairly well set up when it started, meaning that changes have a greater chance to cause harm to gameplay than improve it.

1. Eve Online – from lowsec smallscale pirate activities to full-blown nullsec turfwars, not as twitchy but took some skill, awareness and massive planning.

2. GW2 – I played from beta till just before HoT dropped but quit due to Ele disgruntlement and RL. The most fun I’ve ever had, the most fun class I’ve ever played. Downloading the client again now and looking forward to playing again.

3. LOTRO – It’s old and dated but for the time I played it I enjoyed PVP.

4. ESO – I’m done with ESO after 8 months, at the core it’s a good game but the development team are idiots. In the time I’ve played they’ve altered class mechanics, skill mechanics, weapon mechanics and gear mechanics. My biggest issue is the degradation of client and server performance. 20v20 in Cyrodiil is a lag-fest, boot from client, crash fiasco.

Qiraa.4130:

that wasnt my point, what i meant was that a game in alpha and beta stage today typically means the game is about 80% finished which is why players have this unrealistic expectation on game that is in real alpha stage of developement and thus leave dumb comments such as “the game looks bad and is buggy”

I have been playing CU for a while during their tests. Don’t care about the graphics or the bugs as they will smooth that out in time. What I don’t like is the “old school” combat. The game design plays like a game built 15 years ago. Some people like toolbar MMOs, I like action based MMOs. CU unless they plan on completely overhauling the combat (doubtful) is basically another iteration of DAoC for better/worse centered solely around RvR (a good thing IMO). I want to like the game but every iteration of testing just reinforces how old timey the combat feels. Basically macro the toolbar rotations and win.

Crowfall is my hope at the moment. It isn’t much of a hope but it is hope.

As a note, I didn’t like GW2 combat that much until the Combat Mod and later the Action Camera. I tweak the Action Camera but it makes GW2 playable for me.

Straegen.2938, imo hack n slach is the way to go, if i reccall that was one of ANet’s options instead the 11111 system.

Aeolus.3615:

Straegen.2938, imo hack n slach is the way to go, if i reccall that was one of ANet’s options instead the 11111 system.

Gut tab targeting, limit AoE, make sure every class has a built in counter ability like dodge (not a toolbar skill), short runs to fights and layer the gameplay so group organization matters. Make that game along with a fun progression system that has great loot drops and you couldn’t pry me out of it.

GW2 hit several of those but missed on tab targetting (mostly), too much AoE and created a loot engine that is one of the worst I have seen from an MMO.

MMOs have lost sight of the basics in PvP. We don’t need a complex environments for PvP/WvW/RvR. What we want is depth of play that feels rewarding. Bascially make a Team Fortress style game with leveling, loot drops and much larger maps.

ESO RvR is pure trash. The only thing super nice about ESO’s RvR on the PC is that so few people are playing it that it’s very easy to get a group into. There might be a small queue at times, but over all there’s low barriers for entry.

GW2 on the other hand isn’t bad, it ticks most of the elements offering good play for smaller groups and larger groups and after a number of changes is finally pretty rewarding. The big issue is there’s a lot of barriers to entry and for groups who formed after GW2 launched 5 years ago trying to get a group of 20 or even 5 people onto the same server usually means you gotta aim for a pretty medium/low WvW server.

I would list:

GW2
Planetside
ESO (maybe)

Not going do list discontinued games.

Straegen.2938:

Aeolus.3615:

Straegen.2938, imo hack n slach is the way to go, if i reccall that was one of ANet’s options instead the 11111 system.

(snip…)

MMOs have lost sight of the basics in PvP. We don’t need a complex environments for PvP/WvW/RvR. What we want is depth of play that feels rewarding. Bascially make a Team Fortress style game with leveling, loot drops and much larger maps.

Indeed……but as a TF would be a poor deph :p compared with the dephness that some mmo’s have (dispise the issues they have, any mmo nowadays equals of beats gw2 in that).

When some one talk about game depth i see it has more options available to play, more tactics, innovation, freedom of choice(as in more choices).

To create depth into WvW they would have to;
-> End server system to stack communities in factions

-> Maps, if i recall it is hard for ANet spent time doing maps, Still maps are extremelly important for MMO’S(Imo i think ANet lacks a decent WvW structure and a ideas to help it, this could be tweaked with the ending of servers and each server would be a war zone with supodes 2 or 3 factions in war).

-> Mounts…wait wait.. dont rage, golems are already mounts, (there are plenty of mechanics that could imply map strucures and type of extre siege(mounts) guilds could built).

->Better structures design (atm some are ment to loose, to avoid stallness, its a cheap model ANet, most time its a zero effort or a stacked server will fall on top of your team).

-> reward more guilds that own and care about structures, create better mechanics for ground combat(better balance?).

-> less hide n treb/proxy cata and more openfield battles are needed,ANet as encouraged less and less over time figths, map design and strucutures need more objectivity than the lame excuse to hide n treb as a tactic.

for me knight online > gw2

now to sum up stuff, as f2p game it had a LOT of issues:

-Hackers
-Exploiters (some events could not be done without some exploits)
-Grindy, months to reach max level and even years to be elite plus the gear farming
-Language barrier (dominated by turks even it was NA server)
-Dumb company runing dumb “security software” at the point i got banned twice for usining stuff like xfire or even msn while playing.
-kittenty animations.

But baby even after that clusterkitten, it was pretty amanzing at the point i could spend 12h battling non stop.

1 zone just liek EB with the sole objective to wreck ppl, not contest keeps or some camps, just beat the crap of the enemy and their mothers.

Also 2 wars per week, where we had battles ala LOTR, the winner gets to invade the enemy nation, the loser had to gather their squads and defend their homeland, protect your npcs, and such.

Over it had a system that GW2 lacks and thats the scoreboard for that mode, you could see who is the strongest (perhasp more active) user per server and nation.

Yet it has a lot of nostalgia but hey, i spend years playing MU online from the early days without magic gladiators to castle sieges where is just a spam/glitch fest, so why not? almost every game is hyped by nostalgia.

Warhammer was much better at this, and it had a screwed up 2 faction system.

At least in Warhammer small groups meant something.

GW2 WvW can be fun in small doses, but it’s a pathetic version of RvR that wins because it’s the only current RvR game in town.

Grim West.3194:

Warhammer was much better at this, and it had a screwed up 2 faction system.

Better in the sense that it only had two realms, way more bugs, more lag (as in 100 players would just about crush the server), populations just as lopsided as GW2, ridiculous amounts of CC, class balance issues that were laughably bad, pointless melee classes and a client that wasn’t secured well making cheating/hacking super easy. It was an utter failure which is why it only lasted a few months.

Grim West.3194:

At least in Warhammer small groups meant something.

Sure people would gather four players together, kit them up nicely, roll out and run into one Bright Wizard that would park them in seconds.

WarHammer lasted a long time. I played there for a year. And my guild played there a lot longer than that.

It definitely had the issues you talk about the first few months. But they fixed many of them. But they couldn’t overcome the basic design flaw of 2 faction RvR games. Servers became overstacked with lopsided player counts that destroyed any chance of competition. So players either bandwagoned on to the winning side or quit the game. Usually they quit the game.

GW2 has the tech down, but the game design is seriously lacking. So much so that they have allowed a 3 faction game to become a pointless zerg fest where the server with the most players wins. You really have to screw things up to have that happen in a 3 faction game.

I hate to say it, but the PvP in Trove felt much more balanced.

In fact, while enjoy the WvW of GW2, truth be told the balance among the classes is a joke, while it kinda evens out when zergs collide, in duels or small scale, the balance problems become glaringly evident.

MMO pvp honestly have never been good tho, it’s simply not possible to make a class that balanced for PvP and PvE, so GW2, is par for the course, but looks really pretty.

Lots of good RvR experiences if you can get past the often lower game quality. Most of the issues of these games were due to lack of game budget but here is my list in terms of most fun RvR:

1. Dark Age of Camelot
2. Star Wars Galaxies
3. Mortal Online
4. Darkfall
5. Guild Wars 2

Kitty.1502:

Lots of good RvR experiences if you can get past the often lower game quality. Most of the issues of these games were due to lack of game budget but here is my list in terms of most fun RvR:

1. Dark Age of Camelot
2. Star Wars Galaxies
3. Mortal Online
4. Darkfall
5. Guild Wars 2

You really think DAoC did RvR better than GW2? Whenever I see this I can’t help but think the poster is looking at the past with ultra-nostalgic rose-tinted glasses. I understand Mythic pioneered the game-mode, and it was incredibly fun at the time, but GW2 improved upon every aspect.

-DAoC 1v1 and small scale balance was 10 times worse than GW2.
-Its zerg v. zerg was simply Mez PBAoE/Melee Train vs. zombies standing there unable to react.
-90% of the action was either in Emain or the 20-24 BG (Thidranki).
-Have fun being PA’d out of the frontier keep.
-The RvR maps were far larger than GW2’s DBL, like over 4 times larger, and only a fraction ever saw anyone step foot on outside of people PvEing.
-buffbots – you were a coward if you used this “tactic”
-ToA gear stat modifiers making mage-classes obliterate you in less than 3 seconds
-ToA gear in general…

I loved that game. I spent so many years loving that game. It died, better games came along each step of the way. And even though those better games didn’t provide as much fun as I remember DAoC did, I can at least look back and realize just how terrible RvR was in comparison to WvW.

Anybody here have the misfortune of playing Ace Online? That was a 2 faction game where my “brigade”(guild) got transferred 4-5 different times by the GM’s to try and maintain balance/stacking.

I will give it credit as having potentially the most fun faction based PvP, though in a very different dog fighting style atmosphere.

Guild Wars 2 has done a decent job here, and I think it plays better than other options on the market for fantasy.

It doesn’t even start to hold a candle to Eve, that game is an entirely different monster and a sandbox, whereas this is a much more casual endeavor. It could learn some things from more hardcore titles though.

Giving credit where credit is due, when things go right in WvW, it’s really an awesome game and does a lot of things well.

kurtosis.9526:

When GW2 first launched, WvW was commonly considered one of the best RvR implementations at the time.

This is an opinion, not an opening statement or fact. You also used RvR which is a term used by Mythic’s game, DaOC. Not GW2. Furthermore, GW2 took great strides to clone interesting parts of DaOC original launch rules and merge into WvW. Orbs for one example.

Most people who play this format of play tend to agree DaOC set the standard. It doesn’t matter how GW2 fairs it is pretty much the only game in town that allows the format of play.

GW2 is the main game in town for this format of play…not because it is the best or top number of your choice, just that it is playable, today. I’d put my money that it is a dying format. If nothing is changed (and nothing appears to be in the new exp pack) people will leave.

AA was more fun than gw2 before they started making a cascade of mistakes that ultimately ruined the game

shadowbane was fun DAoC was good too

Gw2 is smoother / prettier mainly due to it being released later. I’m interested to see what CF / CU do in terms of mechanics and gameplay.

Turk.5460:

Kitty.1502:

Lots of good RvR experiences if you can get past the often lower game quality. Most of the issues of these games were due to lack of game budget but here is my list in terms of most fun RvR:

1. Dark Age of Camelot
2. Star Wars Galaxies
3. Mortal Online
4. Darkfall
5. Guild Wars 2

You really think DAoC did RvR better than GW2? Whenever I see this I can’t help but think the poster is looking at the past with ultra-nostalgic rose-tinted glasses. I understand Mythic pioneered the game-mode, and it was incredibly fun at the time, but GW2 improved upon every aspect.

-DAoC 1v1 and small scale balance was 10 times worse than GW2.
-Its zerg v. zerg was simply Mez PBAoE/Melee Train vs. zombies standing there unable to react.
-90% of the action was either in Emain or the 20-24 BG (Thidranki).
-Have fun being PA’d out of the frontier keep.
-The RvR maps were far larger than GW2’s DBL, like over 4 times larger, and only a fraction ever saw anyone step foot on outside of people PvEing.
-buffbots – you were a coward if you used this “tactic”
-ToA gear stat modifiers making mage-classes obliterate you in less than 3 seconds
-ToA gear in general…

I loved that game. I spent so many years loving that game. It died, better games came along each step of the way. And even though those better games didn’t provide as much fun as I remember DAoC did, I can at least look back and realize just how terrible RvR was in comparison to WvW.

I see your points, but there is a timeline to the many faults. You want to know why it is better? Simple truth is the Camelot Herold. Plain and simple. Player portal, stats, by guild, by class, by alliance. Top 25, rest followed. A game that dates back years put a player portal first for bragging rights. We have – right, nothing even close. Ignore the portal then…

Darkness falls?
Alliances?
Claimed towers = guard notifications, alliance notifications, + exp, gold, etc?
Climbing walls?
Realm ranks?

Ok – that is just retail & launch rules. I didn’t go into any expansion because each one brought different things to the table both good and bad. Player housing? Yeah – we don’t have that. Mordred server / rules? Right – we don’t have that either. Like I said, I get your point. We had night capping issues, population issues, server transfer issues, you name it. The issue wasn’t the game though it was the two ton heavy thing in the room called WoW. It was taking off and everyone tried to catch up.

Enter Trials of Atlantis – their major push to PvE. Master levels are tough. Not everyone could do them. Few got to ML10. You and I both know it. Scrolls and artifacts are hard to farm. Crazy right? For those special weapons.

It set the foundation. You can’t change history. GW2 WvW has some nice things but overall it is stale. Server match ups based on a chess scoring system are not working without major input by devs. No rewards. No player portal. Claiming doesn’t do much. Server trolls can impact things (tacivators).

Heck – look at this past weekend. No PTR – new elites tested, and in some cases broke / bugged, yet allowed to run in WvW. You think that didn’t have an effect on a score? Noise in the system – shouldn’t have been allowed.

Midgard, Thane, Igraine – main. Also ran with my better half in a Pac Healer / SM suppression spiritmaster. So I know what sort of CC frustration you are talking about. But kitten was it fun. I have not seen anything in GW2 that comes close to some of the thrills I had in DaOC & Darkness falls. Just not here in WvW today.

GW2 is fun, but it isn’t DaOC and I don’t think it will be CU based on the alpha test(ing) that I’m currently in.

Bragging rights are unhealthy and toxic for any gaming community. You wouldn’t believe how many people didn’t care. I read the herald for news, not for who mez/PBAE’d the most or Crit Shotted/ zephyr’d the most people that week. You cannot argue that class and skill balance in DAoC was absolutely awful compared to today’s standards.

Realm rank abilities was a flaw, not a feature. There is no reason that someone playing longer should be more powerful than people just getting into it. Titles are for prestige, Realm rank abilities were unfair.

Darkness Falls was like the frontiers, PvE and a vast majority untouched for RvR, the remainder being a coordinated group ganking lowbies (for no realm points) at their entrance portal.

Alliances did nothing for the game other than being a slightly more exclusive LFG tool.

Guard Notifications were cool, yes, but GW2’s version of that is swords. And that is enough for anyone who cares to defend.

Climbing walls? Who would you like to have climb walls in GW2? Thieves? Sure, lets see how well that blows over :p

You see, you’re just like the other posters rating DAoC RvR as the best thing ever. Looking back at the nostalgia with rose-tinted glasses. Yes, it was so much fun! I know! I had incredible amounts of fun, I was a Warden on Guinevere, and then when the classic servers came out – a diehard Ranger soloist on Gareth. I was reknowned in Liervik to the point of 20 Albs camping my corpse for the entire auto-release timer when I hit level 40 outside their spawn (before you could turn off xp). The memories are fond and grand, but the game was not so much when you see what was built upon it.

Turk.5460:

Bragging rights are unhealthy and toxic for any gaming community. You wouldn’t believe how many people didn’t care.

People did care. Just like you have your leagues today in sPvP. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t exist. Toxic? Oh, you mean like cross server talking that is going on in todays WvW matchups?

I read the herald for news, not for who mez/PBAE’d the most or Crit Shotted/ zephyr’d the most people that week. You cannot argue that class and skill balance in DAoC was absolutely awful compared to today’s standards.

And GW2 classes are balanced? Or WoW’s? Or “insert any other mmo out today”?

Realm rank abilities was a flaw, not a feature. There is no reason that someone playing longer should be more powerful than people just getting into it. Titles are for prestige, Realm rank abilities were unfair.

So…how about GW2’s ranks in WvW – same concept. Masttery of catapult, flying, rams, supply, etc. Do you think a level 1 character playing WvW will have those abilities say of a Silver Squire or Platinum?

Darkness Falls was like the frontiers, PvE and a vast majority untouched for RvR, the remainder being a coordinated group ganking lowbies (for no realm points) at their entrance portal.

It was touched constantly for RvR. To deny other realms, for farming crafting materials (pre SI crafting was best source of armor/weapons), gold, and ganking. How is that different from what transpired GW2 launch and the jumping puzzles before PvE crowd got in a complained about how they couldn’t finish map complete?

You don’t think spawn camping isn’t happening today? It does, daily, across most servers. This isn’t a honor system…

Realm points are earned regardless of DF or Maps.

Alliances did nothing for the game other than being a slightly more exclusive LFG tool.

Guard Notifications were cool, yes, but GW2’s version of that is swords. And that is enough for anyone who cares to defend.

Had nothing to do with LFG – everything to do with guild management and allowing smaller guilds to exist beyond other things.

Climbing walls? Who would you like to have climb walls in GW2? Thieves? Sure, lets see how well that blows over :p

It was just a difference, among other things. Wouldn’t bother me, no different how some classes can port to places other classes can’t…

You see, you’re just like the other posters rating DAoC RvR as the best thing ever. Looking back at the nostalgia with rose-tinted glasses.

We disagree. You keep saying rose tinted glasses because we are not agreeing with you. It is ok to disagree, it doesn’t mean you are right. No more than it means I am right. DaOC set the standard. My opinion. .

You really need to be consistent in your argument and not just fall back to rose tinted glasses when people disagree. Because in GW2, today, WvW, gear matters. Time of play matters. Number of people matter. Server population matters. Tickets per week matter if you are going for ascended or legendary gear. The list goes on.

It isn’t about nostalgia…

GW2 classes are better balanced than any RvR game I have played. I think a lot of people are forgetting just how unbalanced ESO, DAoC and WAR were. There is no class in GW2 that isn’t viable. Sure some dominate the landscape (cough… Guardians/DH… cough…) but they aren’t so OP that a player feels like they cannot win regardless of the skill gap.

kurtosis.9526:

How do you stack rank all current RvR options? Eg:

there is no ranking because there is no other game with rvr worth mentioning.
thats why people keep playing the half completed gw2 wvw

eso rvr also not worth mentioning

Zhuul.1759:

kurtosis.9526:

How do you stack rank all current RvR options? Eg:

there is no ranking because there is no other game with rvr worth mentioning.
thats why people keep playing the half completed gw2 wvw

Yup – you pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Zhuul.1759:

kurtosis.9526:

How do you stack rank all current RvR options? Eg:

there is no ranking because there is no other game with rvr worth mentioning.
thats why people keep playing the half completed gw2 wvw

Actually most WvW players/guilds have left the game, most of the big alliances / guilds that came to the game didn’t even stay around long enough for HoT to land, WvW is that flawed.

Which is why the game has had what are in effect server merges, and even with that (at least on EU) you have T1/T2 matches made up of 7 or 8 linked servers that have way less activity than you used to have with just 3 servers in a gold tier matchup, and that is with incomparable levels of rewards that have dragged PvE players into WvW to boost numbers.

Pretty much every MMO I see the same delusional nonsense about “this game has the best combat system, best PvP, etc, if only the devs did a proper a job”, reality is much of what is considered “good” in an MMORPG is down to subjective taste and that beyond that the genre is in decline, so as a whole is doing a pretty poor job anyway.

But anyway, not sure it counts strictly as RvR, but the best mass scale PvP system in an MMORPG I’ve ever played, is EVE Online by a mile, sure the combat or whatever may not be to everyone’s taste (including mine), but as a well designed, well thought out game of mass PvP it makes things like WvW look like the poorly thought out PvE joke it is.

Straegen.2938:

GW2 classes are better balanced than any RvR game I have played. I think a lot of people are forgetting just how unbalanced ESO, DAoC and WAR were. There is no class in GW2 that isn’t viable. Sure some dominate the landscape (cough… Guardians/DH… cough…) but they aren’t so OP that a player feels like they cannot win regardless of the skill gap.

Very true, but unfortunately some people are still living in the past and can’t handle change.

Straegen.2938:

GW2 classes are better balanced than any RvR game I have played. I think a lot of people are forgetting just how unbalanced ESO, DAoC and WAR were. There is no class in GW2 that isn’t viable. Sure some dominate the landscape (cough… Guardians/DH… cough…) but they aren’t so OP that a player feels like they cannot win regardless of the skill gap.

GW2 has terrible class balance in WvW, because basically they don’t even take WvW into consideration on any meaningful level (no the odd very rare WvW centered change is not “meaningful”).

Which is why for the entire game if you look at large scale then half the classes have been either completely and utterly surplus to requirements (engy/ranger for most of the game) or had some niche role (mesmers as “veilbots” in zergs or mes/thief in focus party when they were a thing) that were dwarfed in numbers by other classes like Guards who have been perma-meta the entire game and required in vast numbers, or necros for large parts of the game, etc.

If I go play ESO for example all classes have decent builds for large scale (templar best healer/support, sorcs can put out the damage and offer support with probably the single most important “zerg-busting” skill in the game – negate, nightblades are the best AOE bombers in the game, and so on…), GW2 balance on the other hand you have three classes that frankly could do the job by themselves, three classes that really are not needed at all, you have one that is useful as a niche, and then you have warrior & ele that have dropped down the pecking order.

And it is not like the typical ‘bad balance’ you get in other games, where it is cyclical, in WvW it is largely permanent, where the same classes stay OP the entire game and the same classes stay UP the entire game (for the most part), never played a game with balance as bad as GW2 WvW in that respect.

I have to both agree with Cra.game and Turk.

*I agree with Cra.game in the regard that the Camelot Herald was a fantastic idea and is so much needed in GW2 to give WvWvW a meaning. You will never get a great memory out of the GW2 WvWvW because it is missing any history keeping of worth.
*High ranks were not for everyone. If you sucked, you stayed something like 2.2 or somewhat like that for a very, very long time.
Battles at hotspots like Caer Beno were epic, and people often came to help whatever they did.

I agree with Turk about nearly all of the rest.
Buffbots were pestering DAOC, a game that asked for monthly subscriptions.
Class Balance was garbage. The reign of the thief classes was the most terrible thing I remember about DAOC.
Ionou or however they were named on Albion were the forefathers of Asura, which makes me despise them even more in retrospect.

As a player of DAoC, WAR and GW2, I rate them as follows:

1. GW2
2. WAR
3. DAoC
   Each game seems to have improved on it’s predecessors. While we all see the many flaws of GW2, even the developers (believe it or not), I think we’re on a journey of improvement.

Let’s not forget DAoC was plagued by;

• /stick tanktrains,
• clipping range aoe mez/stun with no unit cap and lasted for 60 seconds (later nerfed),
• permastealth as core mechanic,
• REAL slideshow lag (I mean, 1 frame every 5 seconds sometimes),
• Buffbots – get one or forget winning,
• Subscription fees (yes, one for you and one for your bot)
• OP SI/ToA gear