Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Guild Wars - The Myths Discussion

Since I started talking about Guild Wars again, I see Twitter is a Twutter (erm...Flutter) with other conversations about this old game.
Almost as old as EQ2 and WoW, it seems to hold up quite well in retrospect (visually as appealing if not moreso than EQ2 and makes WoW look like it is being run on my calculator).

But, I think a lot of people still have qualms or concerns over various aspects of the game and have never tried it because of those concerns. I hope to crack some of those here (or at least allay such fears...) and clear the air on some points.

1. Only 20 levels
This one is pretty prevalent, as most people think that "if it does not have 40-80 levels", then the game ends pretty fast.
This is nonsense actually.
Thanks to an endgame that actually is far more compelling and has an actual reason for existing (and not the usual "raid" kind), the 20 levels are not a concern.
To give an example, in Prophecies, the levels are considerably slower, but it is because you are put through an engaging storyline that does not need "levels" to make you feel like you must grind.
And that is the keyword...GRIND. The actual leveling and playing of the PvE does not require a grind.
The other campaigns seem to flow faster (with Factions being very quick...within several days and Nightfall maybe a week at most), you get to the heart of the game much quicker.
Also, of note, if you do not like the PvE play, and want PvP...then guess what, no need to level at all, and you go directly to the PvP gameplay. But, PvE allows you to do a special part of the game called "Capturing Skills". Check out a wiki for more on that, as we are not here to discuss the finer points.

2. Old game, No population
This is probably so far from the truth, that it is laughable.
Now, depending on which campaign you go into (I keep mentioning this word, as GW is broken up into "Chapters" called Campaigns...again, wiki is your friend, if you must know more) you could find a smaller pop.
But, this game is FAR from empty. The servers are broken into districts, and so many exist.
Want to know how busy the game is? Just change (yes, you can do that...) to District 1 in any campaign, and see the loads of people in the important cities.
We hit major lag in the city on our first load, as so many people need to be adjusted for, it is crazy. Suffice to say, so many are running missions and forming groups...and if you do NOT like grouping...hey, GW has that covered also (thanks to Heroes and Henchmen).
Also, GW is one of the few games that still holds top spots on Xfire after so many years, as people just keep playing and playing. And why wouldn't you, as it is free after the box sale.

3. Kiddies Dancing
Yes, I actually saw someone give this as a reason not to play.
And why shouldn't the kiddies dance? Free to play after purchase, meet new people, hang out in town and NEVER adventure.
But, c'mon, do some research. There is a mature guild that plays in GW heavily. There are many adults who play the game. Really, there are so many kids in other MMO's that using this as an excuse is sad.
Do a little more investigation. We did a simple "Looking for mature players" in general chat, and so many replies hit us...it is quite a busy game, that there are more than enough players of all ages to have fun with.

4. No Jumping
All I ask is you go outside your house, and as soon as you leave, just keep jumping as you walk along. Better yet... tell me how many times in a day YOU need to jump while living normal life.
Now, just focus very carefully in your other MMO. Try not to jump for jump's sake. Now, play for two hours. How many times did you NEED to jump in THAT MMO?
My chances of NEEDING to jump is maybe once or twice in a two hour play session...AT MOST. Sometimes not at all.

I never miss jumping in Guild Wars.

These are just a few of the issues people have. There are others, which all are ridiculous, but I say there is NO REASON not to try Guild Wars and have some fun. It may not be what you are use to in your MMO...but, isn't that the best part?

5 comments:

Sente said...

Guild Wars is one of those games that things can be done differently to "real MMOs" and work quite well.

Looking at XFire numbers it is still "bigger" than most MMOs out there, even with the limited amount of updates in the past years.

Anonymous said...

The only problem I have with Guild Wars is that Guild Wars 2 is not out right now. I'm kind of tired of the old content in the original at the moment, so I just can't bring myself to stay logged in for long these days. I wish like crazy that Arenanet could have found a way to both work on GW2 AND push out one last chapter to hold us over in the interim!

Dustin Moore said...

Note on the jumping. It's the whole gravity factor. I can't go down a 3 foot drop, instead there is a set path I have to walk around. Just give me more freedom with movement, that's all.

Longasc said...

Add "crafting" to the list... and mounts.

Yet, people have no problem to say that Star Trek Online is a MMORPG while Guild Wars is "no proper MMO" and so on.

This makes me cringe. People must have been brainwashed to do every day their daily quests in WoW and look at graphics that have been outdated on the day the game was released already.

The same with instancing - right now people are doing nothing but waiting in the major WoW cities to come in the dungeon finder queue. But instances are bad. As are the whole levels from 1-80, people would like to skip them to go right into the instanced dungeons.

People also like to dream of innovation - but this innovation must be like WoW. Otherwise they think it is probably no MMO.

But to each his own - and Xfire should show how much more players Guild Wars attracts than many other MMOs except WoW combined.


I just cannot understand how people manage to get bored by WoW and then go on looking for the "next innovative WoW clone". Hopefully every button is mapped to the same function.

Guild Wars offers very compelling game design for discriminating gamers. It is for sure just too much for people who expect to do very menial tasks (I Tank! I tank! or "I Healer! I push red bars up!) and revel in the joys of going afk while a slowly rising bar indicates a crafting progress of raw materials that later get used to create stuff that is in 99% of all MMOs absolutely useless and worse than drops. But people love the grindy time sink. Because crafting is part of a proper MMO. Even if it is bullshit like that.

I could go on and on, but in the end it is not my problem if people miss out on a really awesome Guild Wars experience because of prejudice and odd and conflicting ideas how their dream MMO should be.

Anonymous said...

I love Guild Wars. They really do so much *right* that it's still baffling to me that they are unique in the genre.

I'm really looking forward to GW2.

I *will* register a mild complaint with GW's "habitrail" (thanks Shamus) effect, where there is One True Path through the wilderness. I don't miss jumping, but I wish I could climb a hill or walk off a cliff. It's not a big deal, just one of those odd design decisions.