Guild Wars 2

Most of Alpha’s attacks are avoidable. By most I mean all of the attacks that actually do damage to you can be avoided provided you aren’t within melee range of him and get out of the red circles in time. He does an AOE fire attack so you would have an incredibly hard time trying to melee him.

Many of his red circles give you enough time to actually walk out of them. Only use dodge if absolutely necessary so that you have the endurance for when you actually need it.

If you find yourself in a crystal you should try to use a skill that would allow you to get out of it. Thieves can use steal to escape but I don’t know about other professions. Otherwise, you want to get people in your party to switch to crystals immediately. They don’t take long to destroy.

This is an excellent idea interpol. I think that Anet should figure out a way to make it work in some future patch. There may be a lot of technical problems though so we can’t expect it to happen any time soon.

A puff of smoke you say. That sounds a lot like smoke screen followed by any sort of blast and it puts you into stealth. Good find.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

did you report him? Because we do ban for that type of behavior.

We’re always working on ways to keep people from trolling and exploiting others. We recently made it so that the party leader can’t leave the group and kick everyone out without his instance being destroyed, so this is just the latest iteration in people trying to abuse other people. I will alert our programmers to this if they are already not aware.

While I agree that you are taking a step in the right direction with this I think that it’s not a real long term solution. The party leader isn’t always going to leave just because he/she wants to grief the other party members. His/her Internet connection might have died or maybe the power went out. Maybe there’s some kind of emergency that he/she has to attend to. Players who are not the party leader can leave at any time and they can be easily replaced. No one will call them out for griefing/trolling.

A real long term solution would be to make it so that players are not kicked from the instance when anyone, including the “party leader”, leaves. Now I know this might not be technically feasible simply with the way instancing was designed but there has to be some workaround to make it happen. Yes, this would also solve the problem with the leader going AFK. If anyone else went AFK for an extended period they can be easily kicked and you wouldn’t label them as griefers for going AFK in the first place.

Guild Wars 2 doesn’t deserve game of the year because some people on the Internet said so; therefore, it must be so.

The game does have its flaws and could be considered a diamond in the rough. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it and I know many others did too. No game can ever have enough content to keep you perpetually entertained. Eventually you’ll run out of things to do and make the claim that the game is grindy.

What Chess said except that even now technology isn’t evenly distributed. You still have people farming using crude tools that were available over a thousand years ago. There are still places without power. You still have hunter-gatherer tribes in various parts of the developing world. If anything, Tyria is an accurate reflection of the real world.

Then again, it does seem like 15th would be inaccurate for humans. Humans do have airships even though you only see them in Orr. You could argue they’re not really human airships since they were built using technology from different races. You do see waypoints spread throughout the world. Each city also gets its own Asuran portal to Lion’s Arch.

It’s kind of a catch 22 with ArenaNet. They need to sell more copies in order to make enough money to put out more advertisement. At the same time they need the advertisement, which costs money, to make more money. Yes, they need to better market the game but they need to spend their marketing dollars wisely.

I think that in addition to YouTube ANet needs to make their presence more known on Gametrailers. I didn’t see any of the content update videos on Gametrailers and I know they are big.

Generating controversy, where deliberately or not, can sometimes work but often times it will backfire. The Ascended Gear issue didn’t go over so well with certain players so they decided to spread the message about how ArenaNet lied to them. Of course, whether this really hurt sales of GW2 is up for debate. Mortal Kombat generated a lot of controversy back in the day for its gratuitous violence and that probably did work in Midway’s favor.

If the current iteration of Guild Wars 2 was released when WoW first came out or shortly thereafter then Guild Wars 2 would have a strong chance at actually beating WoW. Yes, it would’ve been the literal WoW killer. But GW2 isn’t competing against vanilla WoW, it is competing against a WoW that has received countless updates and new content. WoW has experienced many controversies in the past like the hardcore raiding scene being inaccessible to the majority of the player base and has overcome these with heroic modes and welfare epics.

Marketing yourself as the best MMORPG, or WoW killer, might seem like a good strategy but it’s too bold. Even if your game is superior you’re going to receive backlash from people who hold unrealistically high expectations. No, you have to take a different approach. For the upcoming expansion any sort of commercial should incorporate story elements from the game like any movie trailer. This sort of thing always resonates with audiences. See the Matrix Revolutions trailer. The movie itself was good but not great; the trailer was just bad kitten

It’s definitely a little awkward to roleplay when you’re not in a roleplaying hub like a tavern. That’s especially true when you’re not on a server with a lot of RPers. Hopefully some day there will be an MMORPG that lets your actions do the roleplaying for you so that it isn’t limited to text. I mean something like a sandbox where you can be a dragon hunter, a real thief (don’t mean the profession/class), a business person, etc.

Garambola.2461:

We roleplayed a Personal Story quest of my Charrr that took her to Snowden Drifts. I found it fun and since the other players on that run still message me, I presume it wasn’t awful for them either. One said though: “I have never roleplayed a quest in a game. Not since D&D.”

OP: I love your post. Your examples are great and they would enrich the world. Are you really sure you are not a roleplayer? I’d love to play with you.

I find that I’m not really a traditional roleplayer. I don’t just mean I don’t speak in a medieval fashion. I might be more of a military commander type. WvW would be ideal for such a situation although I don’t actually have a commander badge because they’re pretty expensive. I’d do it more for practical reasons than just for the sake of roleplaying.

Me: Squad A proceed to Bluevale. Squad B to Redwater. The rest of you, on me. Gather supplies at Faithleap. We’re taking Dreadfall Bay east gate.
Scout: Five tangos leaving Sharan Hills. They’re heading towards Foghaven.
Me: Squad C, break off and intercept tangos.
Squad C leader: Roger that.
Me: Squad A and B rendezvous at Hero’s Lodge.

I’m not a roleplayer myself and have nothing against it. There have been complaints both by roleplayers and non-roleplayers against the other side. There will be bad apples on both sides and that’s just how things are. But I digress.

The topic is about methods in which players that choose to role play will do so. As I’m not a roleplayer myself I have limited insight into this activity. Perhaps some people that do roleplay would like to enlighten me and the non-roleplayers. It just seems to me that a lot of roleplayers congregrate in certain areas like taverns inside cities and/or towns. Their roleplaying seems to be limited to these areas and oddly limited to just using chat.

Like I said, I don’t roleplay myself so my perception could be skewed. I just think that roleplayers are limiting themselves when they’ve been given this big world to roam around and roleplay in. The game is an RPG and you’ve been given a role to play in the world of Tyria. You can customize your character in almost any way you like and choose a profession that best suits you. I’ll admit the personal story doesn’t give you tons of options and the choices you do get to make don’t have a large enough impact on the world.

There’s nothing stopping you from roleplaying when say running a dungeon with fellow roleplayers. It doesn’t have to be inside a tavern. I’ll just write a brief script for COE (any path).

Friend 1: We have been wandering through this treacherous place for hours. I grow weary.
You: Soon my friends we will be free of this place. Subject Alpha has escaped from us twice but this time we will finish him!
Friend 2: Tonight, we dine in hell!

I think for WvW the roleplaying experience would be even more amazing. I think the possibilities out there are endless.

Commander: We’ve held Stonemist Castle against Sanctum of Rall’s relentless assaults for three days. Hold your ground soldiers, victory is close!
Random guy: Sir, we have reports that Jade Quarry is leading an assault on one of our camps.
Commander: Send a small battalion to intercept. We can’t afford to lose the castle no matter what.

I’m no roleplayer but I think it’s way more fun to roleplay when you’re actually playing the game than when you’re just sitting in some tavern. This isn’t an attack on roleplayers so please don’t misinterpret it as one. You are free to do as you like and what one person considers fun another may not.

Jumping puzzles with moving platforms would be nice. There are already platforms that will appear and disappear. A really cool thing they could do is a jumping puzzle that takes place on a living creature like in Shadow of the Colossus.

If Halloween had candy corn elementals then it’s likely that Wintersday would have something like candy cane elementals, snowmen, and reindeer.

It’s possible it has nothing to do with Guild Wars 2 itself. Planetside 2 just came out recently and you have SWTOR going free to play. You’ve also got Black Ops 2 and Halo 4 that most likely will draw attention away from Guild Wars 2. I bet even WoW is losing playing time and possibly subscribers at this moment.

I’ve really only played WoW and GW1 so here’s my list.

1. Welfare epics (World of Warcraft)
The game with the best vertical progression as claimed by so many people also has a broken item progression system that broke ever since the Ulduar patch was released during Wrath. Run Naxxramus to get the best gear in order to run Ulduar? No need, just run heroics. You don’t ever need to touch Naxx unless you’re just going for achievements. When Trial of the Champion came out Ulduar became obsolete because you could gear up for ToC from heroics. Why do you think people on the WoW forums are saying that WoW was awesome during the vanilla and BC days but crap after Wrath. The overall quality of the game didn’t decrease but item progression pretty much died.

2. No auction house (Guild Wars)
I didn’t play Factions or Nightfall but when Prophecies first came out there was no auction house. If you wanted to sell or buy something you had to spam trade chat over and over until someone finally whispered you. Either that or you had to sift through other people’s spam to find what you were looking for. The districts for each major city only exacerbated the problem because someone that had something you wanted could very well be in another district and so you had to constantly move between districts hoping you would get lucky.

Rhotsbin.8579:

Gear grinding is almost a dealbreaker for me. That they have the audacity to tell us that it isn’t one, and that there’s little grind involved, takes the friggin cake. I honestly had planned to go back to playing, at least a little bit, after this AMA – but those responses just drove me out the door. May this game go down in flames.

~Your former fan(boi) and supporter.

This is just wrong on so many levels. You have made a personal choice. I don’t see why you would wish harm to the game (and people still playing it) though. I doubt you were ever a true supporter. If someone told you they wish you will be out of a job and homeless how would you feel?

I don’t know if you’re trolling or not with the part about getting naked in WvW. Anyway, there are tons of things to do besides trying to get the best gear. There are still the mini-dungeons, jumping puzzles, modus secleris (wherever they are), the treasure skritt (only found it once), and lots of other things.

Mini waterfall found at Kessex Hills.

At the top of a jumping puzzle.

What about that woman you see in your personal story? You know the one that has a Russian accent and wears what appears to be a gas mask? Are these the Margonites you are speaking of?

At least you do state that it is just your opinion. It also means that it is also your preference to have random loot. It’s fine in most cases but when taken to the extreme like in Diablo 3 you have a problem. You can spend over 100 hours playing the game and not get anything good. Of course, you may get really lucky and pick up a legendary in under 20 hours. It would still technically be a grind except there’s a strong chance you’ve wasted your time.

I should also correct you on dungeon tokens. They have been account bound for a while now. It’s exciting for some people to know that their efforts will finally pay off. You run a dungeon x number of times and you’re guaranteed that exotic chest piece. It is a bit of a grind and yes some people dislike grinds but at least the end result is satisfactory.

Now let’s look at the flip side with random loot. You run the dungeon x, a constant, number of times and you get an exotic chest piece. You are really ecstatic. You can’t believe you actually won something. All that hard work really paid off. But wait, what if after you run the dungeon x number of times and you got nothing? Yeah, perfectly okay with that… Well, I don’t buy it for a second that someone would prefer random chance and not getting anything over getting something but having to grind for it.

Stevoli.8795:

Cakoluchiam.6901:

This jump puzzle is harder than Mega Man 9.

I’d like to see AVGN review this jumping puzzle, haha.

Seriously though, I loved this puzzle, when you first make it up to the 2nd part your heart starts racing. When I made it I almost jumped out of my chair

That guy would have no problems with this. In his latest video he completed what could arguably be one of the hardest games ever made, Ghouls and Ghosts for the NES.

The clock tower is hard but compared to actual platform games out there it doesn’t even compare. I just think some people need to be reminded of what games used to be like. I’m not a huge fan of them or anything but I grew up with them so there weren’t really any alternatives.

The best practice you can get is from other jumping puzzles in the game. People who are doing the clock tower as their first jumping puzzle ever will undoubtedly have a really hard time. The hardest part is at the beginning when everyone is clumped up. After you reach the half way point it feels like a standard jumping puzzle, which is still hard but a lot easier since you don’t have bodies obstructing your view.

Make other players invisible. Nice and simple. It’s still going to be hard though.

After completing the Mad King’s Clocktower I have to say that ArenaNet is taking this whole concept of the jumping puzzle in a bold new direction. They need more original jumping puzzles like this. Ones with actual moving platforms that you need to time and hop across. Need more.

The fundamental issue isn’t the jumping puzzle. It’s that there are other players obstructing your view. Making other players invisible would in fact make it a lot easier. Now the question is does ArenaNet want to do that?

No, doing Arah story mode does not actually put you behind the door. In fact, you can never get there after you’ve completed your personal story.

There have been a large number of threads on this very topic. I’m not suggesting that you dig them up and post in them instead. I am merely suggesting that you make use of the tools this game offers you to deal with the lack of professions that will heal you to full whenever you take damage or tank all the monsters so you don’t have to worry about them coming after you. Not to insult you or anything but there are groups that have successfully run all dungeons either without dying or dying very little. So the problem obviously isn’t with the dungeons.

There are just so many RPGs out there with co-op play that do not have the trinity and yet people don’t say that they are broken. Is Dark Souls a broken game? Is Fable broken? What about Diablo 3? Diablo 3 might not be the best example since for some reason there are a lot of people that hate that game. Now Diablo 2 is considered one of the best RPGs ever and guess what, it doesn’t have a trinity. That game must be broken. I mean, the monsters are running all over the place and it’s total chaos.

I think it would be easier for you to accept that Guild Wars 2 is a fundamentally different game with different mechanics than your standard MMORPG.

That star beside your name shows everyone you’re BOSS. I can’t think of a better reward except for maybe a legendary weapon but I doubt it’d be that easy to obtain.

Level isn’t the only thing. Just because they can’t inspect doesn’t mean they won’t ask you to link your gear in chat. If you don’t they’ll just kick you assuming you have crap gear to begin with. This elitist mentality is quite common whenever you don’t have a dungeon finder system. Even then it can still happen if you’re part of the non-essential group of classes (dps).

There’s not much you can do about it really. You were probably better off not grouping with them anyway. Imagine if they kicked you right before the last boss. That would suck even more.

Exactly Polle. If you had a bad experience playing Dark Souls because you kept dying over and over it must make the game horrible. Game of the year awards? Those mean nothing. I mean that is the sort of logic the OP is trying to assert here.

This thread is full on WIN. The game has its problems but honestly do we need a new “oh this game is so broken” thread posted every hour? The fact that ArenaNet is being so tight lipped about this event probably means it’s going to be something special. They could just as easily release all the details so the constant moaning would stop for a brief moment but they’re not. They really don’t want to spoil the surprise.

zaxziakohl.5243:

Come on guys. You don’t have to be nasty about it.

He had a bad experience. All you guys are doing by acting the way you are is giving him another bad experience. Why don’t you actually give helpful advice instead?

IJS

I agree with you on that and I would not flame him myself. His thread title does incite rage in certain people though. You shouldn’t be surprised by people’s reactions.

So the patch for the Halloween festivities is coming Monday but there really hasn’t been a lot of information released. We know that there will be new bosses, jumping puzzles, and mini dungeons added permanently. We know there will be four acts, each released on a fixed schedule and some costume brawls. Aside from that ANet has been pretty tight-lipped about this.

It’s good to keep players guessing until the last minute because then they’d be speculating and it should in theory generate lots of excitement. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. It seems instead of seeing posts on what the patch on Monday will add to the game people are more content to post on other things like “why I’m losing interest”, “who at ANet thought this was a good idea”, blah blah blah. It might be a good idea to release more information just to pique players’ interest. This upcoming event warrants much discussion I think as it is the first major content patch in the game.

The Alchemists are a group of casual friendly gamers from all over the world. We have set weekly events throughout the week/weekend to cater to all different types of play style. We have PvE runs (dungeons,world boss killing,karma farming) to WvW runs so whatever you enjoy in Guild Wars 2 you can enjoy it with The Alchemists! We currently have a vent server AND a facebook page to pass along important guild news/events to all our members. If this sounds like your kind of guild and are interested in joining we reside on the Eredon Terrace server, and to get a hold of a advisor or leader please goto our facebook page and write on our wall a advisor or leader will get back to you ASAP www.facebook.com/thealchemistsguild

There are a number of jumping puzzles that don’t even offer a chest at the end. The feeling of accomplishment after completing a difficult jumping puzzle is the reward itself. Even the achievement you get is only there to serve as a reminder that you had completed it.

You’re right in that there aren’t too many emotes. It’s an interesting idea to reward new emotes through completion of jumping puzzles. I don’t know how well it would hold up against the player community at large.

Ryth, you make a good argument; however, I just wanted to correct you on one thing. After Blizzard released Onyxia they released Molten Core, which came before Blackwing Lair. It also took the average player a month to get to level 60. This was before they made it easier to level.

I think that the enemies in those low level zones are just harder than the ones in the 80 zones. This doesn’t apply to all low level zones. After playing in the Norn starting areas I found that Human players have it really easy.

I think it’s a great idea to have more PvP options in the game. Currently, SPvP only has one mode and four maps and it gets boring really quick. Knowing ArenaNet though, they’re most likely going to be coming in a future patch. Bug fixing is unfortunately going to slow down their work on new PvP content like GvG but I’m sure it won’t take them too long.

By the losing experience system I wasn’t referring to WoW by the way. WoW really shook things up when the penalty for death was a repair bill. I was referring to WoW’s predecessors like Everquest and even some its contemporaries like Final Fantasy XI.

I think that the so called “removal” of the holy trinity is similar to how the Fallout series went from turn based to real time with Fallout 3. Many people hated it and said Fallout 3 wasn’t really Fallout. I haven’t played Fallout 3 myself but I don’t see how the change could’ve made it a bad game. I want to drive a lambourghini (holy trinity) in Battlefield 3 but I can’t because they removed it and now I’m stuck with tanks and jets. They’re forcing me to play the game how they want. The holy trinity wasn’t removed from the game; it was never in the game to begin with.

I never intended for this thread to be about which game is better. It isn’t top 10 things that make WoW suck or even top 10 reasons why GW2 is better. I think some people may have misunderstood and it’s probably my fault for using this title. It can be easily misread. It was meant as a mostly objective observation of each game’s mechanics/systems. By mostly objective I mean that it can’t be totally free of bias because different people have different preferences. While the idea that when you died you would actually lose experience would seem abhorrent to many there are those that would welcome such a penalty system.

WoW is a better established game and that no doubt gives it a huge advantage over any of its competitors. I played it from Vanilla up to Cataclysm before I stopped. What kept me playing wasn’t the game so much as it was the people. There was a thriving community in the game and within my own guild.

The game itself was pretty fun up until you did all there was to do or at least until you couldn’t make any more progress. I left my original post with a question about what everyone else thought that WoW did better than GW2 in. No one has brought up their own top 10 list of WoW over GW2. It’s been a while since I’ve played WoW so it’s hard to say from my own experiences what WoW does better. Both games are continuing to evolve and they both have theirs ups and downs.

With all that being said though, I think even Blizzard is aware of WoW’s aging mechanics like monster tagging, corpse running, shared loot, etc. They do believe in giving players their own loot as was demonstrated in Diablo 3. It’s simply not feasible to make such drastic changes to WoW as it would fundamentally change the game itself and in the eyes of dedicated players, undermine its integrity.

Zoridium JackL, for some reason it won’t let me quote. But anyway, I think we can both agree that WoW makes the trinity a necessity. It’s not absolutely necessary to run dungeons with because there are always skilled players looking for a challenge that go with unique builds and have strange group make ups. For the most part, the trinity is standard fare.

I don’t think Arena Net has taken anything away. It’s like saying that I am forced to not use a railgun in Modern Warfare 3 when such a weapon isn’t available in the game. The holy trinity was not removed from the game; it simply wasn’t made available to begin with. I’m not trying to be a smart kitten or anything but that was simply how Arena Net decided to look at it when building their game from the ground up.

Then again, we both could be wrong as some people say you can have tanks and healers; they’re just played differently than you would traditionally. Tanks (guardians) aren’t really damage sponges but they do have support skills that protect the group. Elementalists and rangers have AOE heals but they’re not super powerful heals. That’s where the roll mechanic comes into play. You avoid or mitigate damage so that uber heals aren’t necessary.

It’s a fairly new design philosophy and it will take time for players to adjust to. The philosophy behind it is sound but the execution could use some work. I personally don’t think GW 2 is revolutionary so much as evolutionary.

Zoridium JackL.7463:

6. I think people blew the whole trinity “issue” way out of proportion to begin with, it actually has a place and serves a purpose, not to mention some people enjoy playing that way. and even if it were a problem the way GW2 handles it is poor, they handle it by limiting your ability to build your character the way you want, you don’t have the option of building a proper tank or healer no matter how much you might want to, it’s a poor solution to a non-issue.

While there are great comments being made here I wanted to respond to yours. I think the most contentious is the holy trinity. I don’t think it’s necessarily a broken system but some people may find it to be. It’s not so much an issue itself but it does limit the design choices the developers have available to them. Having dedicated tanks and healers would force designers to design content specifically with the holy trinity group make ups in mind. When you move away from this you create the potential for a larger variety of content that can be tackled in many creative ways. Notice I said potential rather than saying that this is true right now in the game’s current state. I think there are some balance issues but like any new MMORPG it will get ironed out as time goes by.

I think that when you mention limitations on how you want to play your character you are speaking on limitations of what your character can do. No, I agree that the game doesn’t let you play a dedicated healer or tank even if you want to. The game’s dungeons simply weren’t designed with them in mind because if they were then healers and tanks will become mandatory. Allow me to elaborate. If you have a build that lets you absorb a great deal of damage and draw all enemy attacks on you alone (a tank) but the dungeon is designed in such a way that this particular build is unnecessary then you trivialize the dungeon. It’s all about balance.

Once again, I don’t think the holy trinity system is broken. It’s just very limiting in terms of game design potential. I’m a former WoW player. I never hated the game for it’s holy trinity system. I loved the instant queues I got as a tank and the almost instant ones as a healer. As a tank, I can As a DPS, aside from long queue times, I found that my role was not as important as the tank or healer. Yes, I know things don’t die without DPS. It’s a matter of how much control you had and not whether you were needed at all, CC not included. Maybe it’s just me but in GW2 I found that everyone had equal responsibility and all players were vital to the success of the group.

Red Falcon.8257:

I’m getting tired of hearing GW2 being compared to WoW, regardless if positively or negatively.
Just because GW2 is now an MMO it doesn’t meant it compares to WoW, it’s a completely different game based on other things.

Taking WoW or any other traditional MMO in a discussion about GW2 means not having understood GW2 to begin with.

I respect your opinion but I wouldn’t venture so far as to say they’re completely different games. Just like how WoW took the best aspects of Everquest and made a more streamlined game, GW2 also takes some of WoW’s best features and improves on them. I know, my post was really long but I’m hoping you didn’t just judge it by the title.

7. Structured PvP is actually based on skill rather than gear. It’s true that a lot of players are complaining about profession imbalances and such but you have to wonder about that. Unlike in WoW where there is a gear progression in their arena system, GW2’s structured PvP system puts everyone on a level playing field in terms of gear. Yes, WoW does have tournaments where everyone gets the same gear but why can’t that be for regular arena play? Why does someone have to have an advantage, even a very small one, over anyone else? The only advantages you should have over your opponent is your experience in PvP, your skill as a player, and your cunning as a tactician.

8. Level scaling makes it so that low level content does not become obsolete. If you have a friend that has just started playing the game you can help them level in the low level zones without feeling like you’ve totally wasted your time. Killing monsters, doing hearts, discovering waypoints/points of interests/vistas, and doing events will still net you rewards even when you’re max level. Lower level dungeons will also feel challenging when you set foot in them in your higher levels. There’s no need for a heroic mode. Because if GW2’s level cap was raised to 90 or something like that then those “heroic mode” 80 dungeons will become obsolete. I dare say Arena Net has solved the problem with content becoming obsolete. Yes, your gear stays the same so you’re still godly. But hey, in any RPG you should feel stronger against monsters you’ve killed before.

9. Everyone gets their own loot. Why was loot shared in the first place? Well, it was a system devised to artificially extend the life of a game. If gear was harder to attain, you would be playing it longer in order to attain that gear. A system where other players had a chance to take from you what you want/need only exacerbates this. The problem is that loot can become a major issue between members of a guild or just players in general. You don’t need this drama in a game; it doesn’t serve any purpose. Blizzard made it so that in Diablo 3 has an independent loot system but they won’t do the same for WoW because it would fundamentally change the game. It’s too late for WoW but that’s why we’ve got GW2.

10. Gear is rewarded for hard work instead of good luck. While the game does have random loot, the best loot can only be attained through effort. It may take a really long time to get that legendary weapon in GW2 but at least you’ll know that you can attain it eventually. In WoW, with a random number generator you may not ever attain a legendary in the course of your life time. You may be lucky enough to see one drop for your raid group but chances are it will be going to someone else.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. I can name many more things but I’ll leave it at that. What are things that you feel that GW2 does better than WoW or any other MMORPG? What are things you think WoW does better than GW2? I know max level raiding will come to mind for many people.

I am just listing 10 things that I feel Guild Wars 2 did better than World of Warcraft. They are not listed in any specific order; it’s not a top ten. By no means am I trying to say that Guild Wars 2 is a better game but there are definitely improvements ArenaNet has introduced to the genre.

1. Monsters do not get tagged in GW2. When you hit a monster, any other player that is there can also hit the same monster and still benefit from helping you fight this monster. It encourages cooperation between players and keeps things flowing. In WoW, once you hit the monster it gets tagged by you. It appears grey to other players and they do not benefit from attacking this monster. Such a system, while not by design, discourages cooperation and only encourages selfish behaviours amongst players. You might argue that this encourages people forming parties. I’ll concede on that point; however, it breaks the flow of the game. It’s just not spontaneous like it is in GW2.

2. Everyone has the ability to revive other players. While this is a blessing in dungeons it is also amazing for the open world. There is rarely a time when players passing by would not revive a downed player. You are rewarded experience for reviving other players too so there’s really no reason not to unless it puts you at risk. Even level 80s that have very little to gain will revive you because they have been conditioned to right from the start. WoW’s resurrection system requires that you have the right class. There are nice people that will resurrect you every now and then but a lot of people will just run past your corpse because it reduces their leveling/grinding efficiency.

3. Everything you do rewards you with experience. You get experience for crafting, for exploring, for WvW, gathering, getting achievements, and all the other things that normally reward experience in most MMORPGs. Yes, WoW does reward you for revealing the map but not to the same extent that GW2 does. You don’t have to check every nook and cranny in WoW and you definitely don’t have to do some crazy jumping puzzles, which by the way are a lot of fun and add a whole new dimension to world exploration.

4. Most damage is avoidable. Room wide AOE (area of effect) attacks, DOT (damage over time) spells, and enemies hitting you with melee attacks from 10 feet away are a thing of the past in GW2. When I say most damage is avoidable I mean that there are some attacks that you can’t avoid once you’ve used up your energy doing rolls and what not. There is a lot more skill involved when you can actually avoid damage altogether and whether you lived or died depended less on a healer and more on your own reflexes.

5. You don’t need a target selected in order to perform an attack. This was one of the more annoying things about WoW that I got used to but never really enjoyed. If you use any melee attack it will hit the closest enemy if your target is out of range. You can swing your sword, axe, daggers, etc, and cast spells whenever you want. The satisfaction of being able to do so like in any action game goes a long way to adding enjoyment to the game. Target runs out of LOS? The spell will still complete but it will miss. True, you just wasted your spell but you get the satisfaction of being able to fire it off.

6. There is no holy trinity. The first problem with this setup is putting a group together for a dungeon or raid. You just have to have a certain number of tanks and healers in the group. It’s great for tanks and healers because they’ll always be needed unless there are too many of them which is rarely the case. The DPS (damage per second) classes end up suffering because they become expendable. Getting into groups as a result is a lot more difficult because DPS are a dime a dozen. The second problem is over reliance on both the tanks and healers. As mentioned above, most damage in GW2 is avoidable. In any MMORPG like WoW, making this so would take away the need for the holy trinity. It is based on the outdated perception that without roles you would have no cooperation and only chaos. Why do I say it is outdated? Games have had co-op play in them for a great number of years and most don’t have tanks and healers. They work perfectly fine. Hell, the Diablo series (a Blizzard franchise) is a perfect example of this. If anything, the holy trinity limits creative freedom for the designers of any game. GW2 isn’t just doing something truly revolutionary, it is doing what should’ve been done from the very start.