Guild Wars 2

1. You have to examine multiple boxes and such on the shore. Eventually, you’ll have to pry one open with a crowbar.
2. Once you’ve done all of that, go back to Kiel. You’ll get the full dialogue, except the last part won’t work. Thus, you cannot complete the event and get the map fragment.

For no apparent reason, they decided to disable completion of the event when phase 2 started, but not the event itself. It’s all pretty fail, really.

In fairness, there was an official announcement about getting the map fragment before phase 2 started. But if they wanted to turn off phase 1, then they should have turned off phase 1. The boxes are still there, the crowbars are still there, the bag is still there, and the NPCs are still there. In fact, the NPC dialogues are still there, right up until Kiel’s breaks at the end.

So why can’t we still do this part of the quest? What’s the reason for disabling it?

Lame.

Klarick.1682:

lol people still use Linux? Really?

I thought that mess of code got buried years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_adoption

It’s probably the most popular OS in the world. Sadly, it hasn’t made much headway on the desktop. I blame that largely on game companies not supporting it, Microsoft not making their APIs cross-platform (e.g. Direct X), and the mess that is X11.

Since there’s a Mac client, the game should already be able to run in OpenGL mode. Is there really not a switch for the Windows client?

@capnflummox.3082: He’s almost certainly talking about the gold price, not the real-world currency price.

Burkderp.3904:

Do what Wildstar is doing for their AOE

Full coloured circles. Red for enemies, Green for Friendlies and Blue for personal AOEs.

Then enable players to turn off or lower others spell effects while keeping the full coloured circles. Having overlaying rings just gets confusing especially when they are white. Bad colour choice imo.

Doesn’t anyone think about color blind players? Red/green color blindness is the most common variety and color blindness in general affects about 9% of the population.

Besides, the solid circles would just overlap. And while I’m sure that it’d be better than the current situation, but it’d also be ugly.

Either:

1. There is a law or tax that prevents ArenaNet from running the contest in Argentina (and elsewhere), or

2. ArenaNet is excluded you because they don’t like you.

Which one is more likely? :P

@Algreg.3629: That’s essentially what SW:TOR launched with. Nobody used it. It’s just not good enough.

EDIT: I mean, SW:TOR launched with a board where you could put a message next to your name (e.g. “lfg 3 people for COF story”) and it would be displayed to anyone who looked. The problem is that nobody bothered to look.

MrThebigcheese.2014:

Kwami.4356:

No, that isn’t true. Blizzard intentionally made dungeons easier to accommodate LFG groups. They’ve said so numerous times. Today’s dungeons aren’t in any sense of the word challenging, even before you gear up. Neither were Cataclysm’s dungeons. There’s really no ambiguity, here.

Wrong. Cata dungeons were pretty challenging on release and had to be nerfed significantly before people stopped complaining

They were slightly harder because people complained that Wrath dungeons were too easy when Blizzard introduced the LFG tool. Since then, the developers have said numerous times that dungeons and LFR-level raids are intentionally tuned to be easier than was older content to support the random group finders. I really don’t know why anyone is arguing this point.

A lot of people fail to realize that a lot of vanilla WoW wasn’t that hard, they just had no idea how to play.

It was significantly harder than Wrath or Cataclysm.

Either way people pretend a grouping tool effects a lot more than it actually does. It’s a good feature, dungeons in this game are already dead.

Indeed. And since we’re already in a cross-server environment, I really don’t see a downside to a LFG tool.

fractal.7039:

Rusty.7942:

The definition of stupid is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Actually that is the definition of insanity… But we get your point

No, that’s Einstein’s definition of insanity. Also, it doesn’t apply here.

The Mystic Forge is just another mechanic to make you grind more gold and mats. Yeah, random numbers suck when they don’t roll in our favor, but random numbers are random. Oh, well.

Rhyse.8176:

There is indeed such a tool, it’s found in the contacts menu. However, it may as well not be there, since all it does is flag you as lfg to people in the same zone. Using zone chat is more effective because it lets you advertise what content you want. To be useful, it needs to be realm-wide and content specific.

SW:TOR made this same mistake. Actually, that tool was slightly better because you could leave a small note next to your name on the LFG list. But, nobody used it. It wasn’t convenient enough.

Well, it kinda did. Dungeons were fine and terribly hard even, until gear progression trivialized them. The dungeons were never truly nerfed. What gave the RDF a social impact was that it matched you with random people from different realms, who you then never saw again. This made building communities on your own server unimportant (er, less important) and gave anonymity and immunity from consequences to everyone. And then the Penny Arcade Effect (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19) takes over. This had much more impact then any perceived changes in game difficulty.

No, that isn’t true. Blizzard intentionally made dungeons easier to accommodate LFG groups. They’ve said so numerous times. Today’s dungeons aren’t in any sense of the word challenging, even before you gear up. Neither were Cataclysm’s dungeons. There’s really no ambiguity, here.

With regard to building realm communities, well, GW2 is already just about as cross-realm as you can get with guests, cross-realm guilds, free transfers, etc. I don’t see how a useful LFG tool would negatively impact the community in such an environment.

Shinzan.2908:

Calavera.1086:

Shinzan.2908:

They should make a dungeon finder, pick the dungeon you want to do from a list and get grouped with 4 others… surprised something that simple isn’t in from the start to be honest.

For the reason I mentioned. It’s not something everyone wants.

I don’t get what your reason is though… waiting around to get a group is a good thing to you? You could still not use the system if they made one, too.

People have this fantasy notion that the LFG tool in WoW somehow “killed the community”. What it really did was shift dungeons from a 2-3 hour experience (one hour spent looking for a group, 1-2 hours spent replacing people when they were bad) into a 1-hour minute experience (30 minutes in queue, 30 minutes for the dungeon).

The social aspect “died” because they made the dungeon content easier with the expectation that randomly matched groups wouldn’t be able to complete the dungeons if they were too hard. So, there was no longer any need to communicate or devise strategies. Dungeons became lifeless and boring.

I think that Blizzard miscalculated when they made dungeons too easy. However, the LFG tool is fantastic.

wauwi.9162:

i wish i could report them…but i never saw one single botter so far…not at Elona Reach (german server)
and not that much goldseller in the chats and mailboxes either…get max 1 mail per 2 weeks and a goldseller only posts twice in the map-chat usually until he remains silent (for whatever reason)

i don’t know if this is just overreacting or simply THAT bad at the NA servers

They aren’t overreacting. The bots are out of control on my server. I see groups of them in just about every zone and they’re always there, no matter how many people report them.

The worst is Knut. The ‘K’ is hard, not silent!

Oh, well. Norn just talk funny.

Fozee.1083:

Kwami.4356:

And, judging from the number of bugs that exist throughout GW2, I don’t share your confidence that ArenaNet could have fixed Vanish any sooner than Blizzard.

As a tester who is frequently sought out by game studios, I simply don’t come across any alarming number of bugs. Fit and finish issues can be found often, but people should hold no expectations of that, realistically. It isn’t that I’m not looking for them, I’m just not finding many of them.

Really? I come across bugged hearts and DEs every time I play.

Are you automating a task? If so, you probably shouldn’t be.

Cancer.9065:

@Cernow if its about the Guardian GS skills I though so too…. then someone in my guild pointed out that its because skills seem to be in order of cooldown duration from low to high.

That’s the theory, but…

1. I don’t find that to be an acceptable reason to change skill positions when we can’t choose where to put the skills on the bar, and

2. There are other examples in the game that don’t follow this pattern. See: Warrior Sword offhand, Elementalist Dagger/Dagger Air, Elementalist Dagger offhand Earth, Ranger Sword/Dagger combo, Necromancer Dagger/Focus and Dagger/Dagger combinations.

@Strill.2591: I object to the idea that a player can short-circuit the system. I never said that everyone was doing it or that legendary weapons weren’t possible to obtain without buying gold.

wauwi.9162:

there’s still “the classic way of the grind”

1.: just kill mobs on one spot like you do in any k-mmo
2.: do it again
3.: do it again
4.: sell gear to the NPC and mats at the TP after you start getting aching muscles
5.: profit

i did that for months in RO…for just ONE item…man i must have been so bored at that time…good times tho

Too bad this game has a DR system to prevent that. :/

green plum.7514:

BTW, there is one more reason why old symbol was OP IMHO. It made self-combos way to easy. You could do symbol + whirl + leap for two finishers in a row, and you could do it really often. I don’t think any other profession has access to self-combos such frequent.

Previously, you could do the Symbol of Wrath + 2 finishers every 20 seconds because Leap was on a 20 second cooldown. Now, you can do the Symbol of Wrath + 2 finishers combo every 20 seconds because Symbol of Wrath is on a 20 second cooldown. :P

The frequency of Symbol of Wrath + Whirling Wrath combos was cut in half, though.

EDIT: I suppose that you could have tried to time everything so that you’d get Whirling Wrath + Binding Blade on one CD, then Whirling Wrath + Leap of Faith on the next CD, and then alternate from there. But I was going on the “symbol + whirl + leap for two finishers in a row” comment, which didn’t account for Binding Blade.

roqoco.4053:

@Kwami – I think that you have to appreciate that when you have had your fill of the content in a game, that’s really all it has to offer on the PvE side (if you find that sPvP or WvW is more repeatable thats a thing you can do too). Personally, I like Guild Wars 2 sufficiently that I’m happy to play some of the areas multiple times with alts. Some people’s playstyle, OTOH is to rush up to level cap as quickly as possible, ignoring much of the content, and then ask what it is they are meant to do next. There isn’t anything next… at least not yet. How could there be?

I didn’t rush to the level cap. I haven’t finished the map, yet. In fact, I still have plenty to do. When did I say anything to the contrary? I simply pointed out that GW2 is as much a grind as other major MMOs. I stand by that.

And how could there be more content? Well, what about raids? Player housing? Collectable trophies? New zones every 1-2 months? New PvP options (e.g. duels, new maps)? There are any number of things that ArenaNet could have implement to keep players entertained at level 80. And anyway, it’s not really our job to come up with ideas. :P

Fozee.1083:

I think an important difference between Blizzard and ANet is that Blizzard will see an imbalance and take months or years to fix it by implementing some harebrained major mechanic change to fix it. What ANet will do, instead, is observe the actual imbalance and adjust values accordingly, as we saw yesterday with the changes to damage percentages and cooldowns.

I like to think ANet wouldn’t have let Vanish be broken for 6 years.

Nonsense. Blizzard overreacts to imbalances and changes things all the time. In fact, WoW players complain about the constant changes almost as much as they complain about the imbalances that those changes are attempting to fix. Cooldowns and damage coefficients don’t even need patches anymore. Blizzard just hotfixes them in, tells us in a little blue post, and continues working on the next content patch. And, judging from the number of bugs that exist throughout GW2, I don’t share your confidence that ArenaNet could have fixed Vanish any sooner than Blizzard.

All of that isn’t to say that ArenaNet isn’t trying. I do appreciate balance fixes and I do appreciate the frequent patches (though I do wish that they would schedule them instead of just dropping them on us without warning!). But don’t badmouth Blizzard for no reason. :P

andybmcc.8751:

You are meant to learn skills in a specific order, it just makes sense to not allow you to reposition them. Besides, nothing is stopping you from re-binding the skills to different keys. That 1234 crap isn’t very ergonomically friendly anyway.

1. Rebinding keys doesn’t solve the problem. If I switch my keys so that the Guardian Greatsword abilities work like they did pre-patch, then every other weapon in the game will work differently than it did pre-patch.

2. Obviously, you would only be able to reposition skills that you’ve unlocked.

roqoco.4053:

Noone said you can’t grind if that’s what you “enjoy” doing – of course you can.

Well, diminishing returns. But in theory, right.

roqoco.4053:

My point is that the content in Guild Wars 2 is (arguably according to personal taste) more fun than in other MMOs and the Forbes article describing that as grind is just a misuse of the word. There are only so many things that you can do with combat and questing in a game, but GW2 does them rather well, I think.

OK. I don’t really understand how GW2 is different than WoW, SW:TOR, or others. But, if you feel that GW2 is somehow different, then I guess that’s a good thing.

roqoco.4053:

As for legendary weapons, they aren’t a grind in themselves either. Maybe I’ll even get one in a year or two just by playing the game normally with multiple alts. But I’m not that bothered if I don’t. GW2 is a work in progress and hopefully Arenanet will expand the game and maybe make it so that the stuff you need for legendaries isn’t just something that is restricted to a few locations and events, but more something you can progress over the whole game.

Unlikely. The developers have made posts in the past suggesting that they’re OK with only a small percentage of players even obtaining a legendary weapon.

Regardless, you can apply the same argument to a game like WoW. With Tier 15 is released, Tier 14 armor becomes available with dungeon points and is generally much easier to get than it was previously. However, I rarely see anyone claiming that WoW raid system isn’t a grind. :P

Kumu Honua.2751:

Falcon NW is by far the “Best”…..but if you thought buying a mac was expensive…

Yeah, Falcon NW is expensive. But they look fantastic!

Fozee.1083:

Kwami.4356:

@Sokar Rostau.7316: “At least working for a Legendary in GW2 isn’t that bad, you can even buy a lot of the ingredients on the TP (if you’re ridiculously rich).”

That’s worse, in my opinion. It favors people who have more money in real life instead of favoring those who put more effort into the game. I’d rather a tedious grind like GW2 legendary weapons without the ability to short-circuit most of it with money.

But it has NOTHING to do with you. If I go and buy a bunch of stuff using real money, it doesn’t matter because it’s none of your business. The weapons are not, in practice, better than what you can get in very little time.

Nonsense. Since there is no stat progression in this game, the only form of character progression available after reaching level 80 and completing the map is the hunt for your favorite skins. If you can buy those skins with real money, then it’s a pay-2-win system.

That aside, it affects me in a more tangible way, too. The cost of buying materials in the game goes up when players buy gold instead of farming for materials themselves.

@Sokar Rostau.7316: “At least working for a Legendary in GW2 isn’t that bad, you can even buy a lot of the ingredients on the TP (if you’re ridiculously rich).”

That’s worse, in my opinion. It favors people who have more money in real life instead of favoring those who put more effort into the game. I’d rather a tedious grind like GW2 legendary weapons without the ability to short-circuit most of it with money.

@Demosthene.2195: Good! That’s how it should be!

@roqoco.4053: GW2 doesn’t contain something you don’t actually like doing purely for some long term objective or reward? Then what the hell are legendary weapons?

Heart quests are no more and no less a grind that quests in any other MMO. Grinding for faction and dungeon gear is no different than any other MMO. But crafting legendary weapons is just about the epitome of grinding.

“The trading post uses a filo system which means if you’re the latest person to list an item, your items will sell before the people who put the items up before you!”

That’s absolutely terrible.

Yes, experience at level 80 is important. You get Skill Points for XP at 80 and you need them to craft stuff at the Mystic Forge.

I’ve been experiencing longer than acceptable loading times for weeks. I blame the 14.5GB Gw2.dat file. What a terrible way to store data!

mercury ranique.2170:

No problem at all. Just unclick rember name/password and autoplay if you have those turend on and let her put in the login details.

(small side note if your sister is doing things that are against the ToS (botting, scamming exploiting, etc) and is banned, the public IP-adress can be banned as well, If you live in the same home (and share the same internetconnection) this will happen anyway, if not you have to trust your sister she is not going to do something stupid.

However, Arenanet have been very open to pleas in this kind of situations and they understand that promotion between friends and familly works better then billboards. so they have always have had a benefit of the doubt policy.

I seriously doubt that they’re banning IP addresses since almost every ISP in the States uses dynamic IPs. :P

Rio.1894:

What damage nerf? Basically they switched the cds of symbol with leap. Now leap as symbol’s old cd and symbol has leap’s old cd. No nerf on the cds really but they definitely screwed the combo up by doing this.

1. Symbol of Wrath was much more damage than Leap of Faith.
2. The only Symbol of Wrath CD was 10s, but the new Leap of Faith CD is 15s.

Overall, it’s a damage nerf in most cases. The exception is when you can benefit significantly from the reduced downtime granted by Leap of Faith (e.g. very mobile enemies).

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ANET, CHANGE IT BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS!!! By changing the cds they’ve basically changed the combo sorta. We can still use the old but with the extra timer things wont flow.

I hate the change.

1. It’s uncomfortable to use Leap of Faith when moving with the ‘W’ key.
2. The CDs make the combos weird.
3. Everything is in the wrong place!

1. They need to establish a consistent time for patches so that we can plan around them.
2. Yes, it will always be peak playing time somewhere. However, there are far fewer players in Japan, central Australia, and a strip of eastern Russia than there are in the three primary US time zones. Thus, midnight Pacific time is probably the optimal patch time because it minimizes the impact to players.

I’m more annoyed that they changed the positions of the skills. Now I keep hitting the wrong keys!

Progression is fun. This topic offers a false choice.

The level system undermines the idea that “there is no endgame” and that “the game starts at level 1”. Thus, it should disappear. To be honest, it adds nothing to the game.

Other games have fees to send mail, but those other games also have character-to-character trades. Since GW2 doesn’t, the mail needs to remain free.

No need to world swap. I tested this on the first day of pre-release on a NA server. I was able to put accented characters into a name, despite the little notice in the bottom corner.

From what I’ve gathered, it shows the Sunrise skin during the day and the Twilight skin at night. So yeah, freaking cool.

Lamarius.3201:

Gifts of Exploration are account bound, so I would assume that you could get additional ones on additional toons.
However, I believe you are also mistaken on the amount of Gifts of Exploration you need. You should only need one.
You do need other types of gifts though, a Gift of Mastery forged using a Gift of Exploration and a Gift of Battle, as well as a Gift of Fortune forged using a Gift of Magic and a Gift of Might.
Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eternity

Eternity is made from two other legendary greatswords, each of which requires its own Gift of Exploration.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sunrise
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Twilight

Thanks for your answer. I really hope that they implement another way to get Gifts of Exploration, though. I hate the idea that I can only have two legendary weapons on each character. Some characters need 3-4 just to fill their two primary weapon sets, never mind underwater weapons or weapons that they use less frequently.

Even worse, this means that one of my characters will only get one legendary instead of his allotted two.

I notice that the Eternity greatsword takes three Gifts of Exploration to complete. However, finishing the map only grants two Gifts of Exploration. Do I need to level a second character and get 100% map completion again to craft this weapon? Or, is there another way to get Gifts of Exploration?

Quotes are being silly, so I’ll have to respond the lame way. This is my last post on the GW2 vs. WoW content topic.

cesmode.4257: I have two points to make.

1. There were most definitely 50+ quests in my WoW zones at launch. In fact, here is the current list of quests in Elwynn Forest: http://www.wowwiki.com/Elwynn_Forest_quests. I don’t have a list of quests at launch, but most of the vanilla quests haven’t changed all that much (the rewards have). Since that zone has a lot of quests-that-aren’t-really-quests (e.g. one for each class, but they’re all the same), here’s Westfall, too: http://www.wowwiki.com/Westfall_quests.

2. How does GW2 do it better? Certainly clicking on exclamation points and question marks is tedious. I’m glad to be rid of that. But, I don’t much care for dynamic events getting in the way of me completing the task that I’ve assigned to myself (as they often do). I’m also not convinced that the heart & DE system somehow masks what the quests really are. By level 3, I could tell that every quest is essentially “gather X items”, “kill Y enemies”, “escort this guy”, or “click on Z objects”. That’s pretty standard MMO fare. I’m not complaining about it. I just don’t see how it’s somehow better than WoW’s system.

arrownin.3128:

Kwami.4356:

SpectacularYak.6518:

Kwami.4356:

There weren’t any battlegrounds in WoW, but there was world PvP. This included raids on the capital cities of the opposing faction. There were also duels. GW2 lacks both of these things, though it does have four WvW maps (kind of) and a handful of battlegrounds. So, GW2 probably wins on PvP. Though, it’s hard to call zerg vs. zerg "PvP’. :P

You’re right that WoW was probably the most meaningfully content rich game on release in MMO history (although it felt small, at the time, in comparison to Everquest). Open world PvP, though? You mean the Tarren Mill/Southshore shuffle? Please. Let’s not insult everyone’s intelligence by claiming WoW had any functionally integrated PvP at launch, because it didn’t.

Handwaving WvWvW, which is probably the best large scale PvP implementation in any game since DAoC, as “zerg vs zerg” makes you seem a little over-eager to slam GW2. Criticism rings a lot truer when it’s fair and objective. When I see people jumping out of their skin to blast every single element of a game…even its strengths…I don’t think “rational objective criticism”. I think “confirmation bias” and “Hate Dumb”.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HateDumb

I dismiss WvW as zerg vs. zerg because that’s what I’ve experienced thus far. I participated long enough to get my 50 kills for the month and then bailed because I disliked the game so much. If I wasn’t part of a zerg, I was picked off by an enemy zerg. You more or less need zergs to take towers and fortresses.

I don’t think that my criticism is unfounded or a result of confirmation bias. I assure you, I have plenty of problems with WoW, too. I post on their forums as Kwami. It shouldn’t be too hard to find something negative. :P

WvW is certainly advertised as a strength of GW2, but I don’t see it that way. I see it as I see many other elements in this game: a good start, but ultimately disappointing.

For someone who dislikes gw2 that much and WoW so much you sure do spend a lot of time on the forums expressing your opinions which are almost never constructive, and usually just consist of just that, opinions and hardly any real facts. So ill beg this question, why bother wasting so much time here on the forums? You obviously don’t like the game so are.you trolling? Just attention hungry? I really don’t get it.

If you actually look at my posting history for both games, I’ve had plenty of positive things to say, too. I actually enjoy both games quite a bit. That doesn’t mean that I need to agree with every game design choice that the developers make. When I see something that I don’t like, I try to bring attention to it. So, please, lay off the personal attacks.

To those who responded to my WoW vs. GW2 numbers post: If races and classes aren’t content, then why do you all keep telling me to roll another race/class combo in your lists of things to do once I’m 80? Either races and classes are content or you’ll have to strike that one from the list!

I agree that some GW2 zones offer more content than some WoW zones did at launch. I don’t agree that all GW2 zones offer more than all WoW zones. Overall, I think that WoW had more content. The average GW2 zone seems to have 10-20 heart quests and maybe 15-20 dynamic events. In contrast, WoW zones tend to have at least 50 quests and some zones have many more than that.

With regards to dungeons, I don’t feel that level scaling really makes every dungeon “max level”. It’s true that AC is more challenging and more rewarding at level 80 than Ragefire Chasm is at level 60, but the level scaling system isn’t perfect. You’re much more powerful at level 80 than you were at level 35, even with the scaling system in place. Only three dungeons were designed to require level 80 characters for explore mode, each with three paths. Count that as 9 dungeons, if you wish, but certainly not as 32. It’s worth pointing out that I didn’t count different branches of WoW dungeons separately in my tally. In that case, WoW would have 5 max-level dungeons at launch.

With all of that said, comparing the two games directly is kind of silly. I only did it because one poster kept insisting that GW2 launched with more content than any other MMO, which is demonstrably false. I don’t really have any interest in continuing this discussion. Time is better spent posting about how to improve GW2’s lack of content for max-level characters.

SpectacularYak.6518:

Kwami.4356:

There weren’t any battlegrounds in WoW, but there was world PvP. This included raids on the capital cities of the opposing faction. There were also duels. GW2 lacks both of these things, though it does have four WvW maps (kind of) and a handful of battlegrounds. So, GW2 probably wins on PvP. Though, it’s hard to call zerg vs. zerg "PvP’. :P

You’re right that WoW was probably the most meaningfully content rich game on release in MMO history (although it felt small, at the time, in comparison to Everquest). Open world PvP, though? You mean the Tarren Mill/Southshore shuffle? Please. Let’s not insult everyone’s intelligence by claiming WoW had any functionally integrated PvP at launch, because it didn’t.

Handwaving WvWvW, which is probably the best large scale PvP implementation in any game since DAoC, as “zerg vs zerg” makes you seem a little over-eager to slam GW2. Criticism rings a lot truer when it’s fair and objective. When I see people jumping out of their skin to blast every single element of a game…even its strengths…I don’t think “rational objective criticism”. I think “confirmation bias” and “Hate Dumb”.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HateDumb

I dismiss WvW as zerg vs. zerg because that’s what I’ve experienced thus far. I participated long enough to get my 50 kills for the month and then bailed because I disliked the game so much. If I wasn’t part of a zerg, I was picked off by an enemy zerg. You more or less need zergs to take towers and fortresses.

I don’t think that my criticism is unfounded or a result of confirmation bias. I assure you, I have plenty of problems with WoW, too. I post on their forums as Kwami. It shouldn’t be too hard to find something negative. :P

WvW is certainly advertised as a strength of GW2, but I don’t see it that way. I see it as I see many other elements in this game: a good start, but ultimately disappointing.

SpectacularYak.6518:

DyZ.2854:

Don’t think you have enough time to listen to that long list.

Bull.

Gating content through repetition does not mean you have more content.

WoW and EQ. Those were the only games that had more content than GW2 on release. And it’s debatable in EQ’s case, as the “content” on display was a largely static world with virtually no quests, no events, no PvP, or many (most) of the modern conveniences and features that MMO players have come to anticipate and expect. If EQ was launched in todays market with that feature set, it would be blasted.

Hell, WoW couldn’t really launch today with that feature set. A PvE focused (PvE only, at launch) game with only one raid, a raid with completely bland and static encounter mechanics? I can almost hear the howling from the content locusts now. In fact, I can hear it really clearly, because I heard it then, too. And let’s never mind the loot lag and constant server issues. My god, they’d be pilloried.

Of course, there would be backlash if WoW launched today in 2004 form. We’ve had 8 years of progress in the genre.

Stark.1350:

Kwami.4356:

Stark.1350:

Someone name an MMO that, upon release, had wayyyy more content than GW2 does now.

Oh right, you can’t. Moving along.

World of Warcraft

Wrong. Vanilla WoW had no PvP at launch, two raids, and a bare handful of dungeons at max level. Try again.

Classes: 9 for WoW, 8 for GW2
Races: 8 for WoW, 5 for GW2
Dungeons: 17 (3 at max level, not counting wings separately) for WoW, 8 for GW2 (1 at max level, 3 if you only count explorable mode)
Raids: 2 for WoW, 0 for GW2
Zones: 37 for WoW, 25 for GW2 (not counting cities for either game)
Crafting Professions: 6 for WoW, 8 for GW2

(Bold means that WoW had more content at launch.)

There weren’t any battlegrounds in WoW, but there was world PvP. This included raids on the capital cities of the opposing faction. There were also duels. GW2 lacks both of these things, though it does have four WvW maps (kind of) and a handful of battlegrounds. So, GW2 probably wins on PvP. Though, it’s hard to call zerg vs. zerg "PvP’. :P

sairen.5492: What you say is entirely true. The $60 price tag is certainly worth the entertainment that this game provides. I don’t think that too many people are arguing that point.

However, GW2 is disappointing for a different reason. It’s a game that does so many things right, but then fails to live up to expectations at the same time. It added story, but they were poorly written. It added dynamic events, but they became zergfests and bot parties. (The ones that even work at all, anyway.) GW2 has numerous dungeons, but they’re bugged and lacking in proper rewards. The skill system is clever and fun, but the skills themselves are dull and lacking flavor.

Worst of all, the game is pretty kitten good for the first X hours, but then becomes a boring, mindless grind for a legendary weapon once you’ve seen every dungeon and completed the map. GW2 is a game with so much potential that it’s frustrating as a player to know that if ArenaNet had another year, GW2 would probably have debuted as the best MMO ever. Instead, what we got was an unfinished product with a number of bugs that’s above my tolerance level, an obscene number of bots and exploits, bosses that don’t feel epic, and and endgame that doesn’t exist.

We want to play more, but there just isn’t enough to do!

mar.7103:

Kwami.4356:

OK, I’ll grant you that WoW’s LFG system is lifeless and boring.

But the system that GW2 uses (i.e. no system at all) is worse. Spamming map chat for 20-30 minutes isn’t fun. Seeing everyone else spam map chat constantly isn’t fun. Being suppressed for asking in map chat isn’t fun.

WoW used to have a channel for LFG. It didn’t solve the first problem, but it more or less solved the other two. GW2 could at least do that much.

I’ve been around since Vanilla and all I remember is /2 Trade chat…was LFG chat.

No, there really was a LFG channel for a while. I’m not making it up!