Guild Wars! Lets hope all MMORPGs go this way!

[Lindy]

Eh, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about the grinding part.

One thing I know for a fact is the simple idea that GW is a lot more balanced that WoW, I've spoken to people about it, and they plainly say that Rogues and Paladins generally rule in PVP, in GW there is no overruling class, no one skill that destroys everyone else, skills are built specifically. Every class has a cancel skill, an interrupt skill, a healing skill (or several), skill that cause conditions and hexes, and while it may sound like every class is the same, they all work in different ways.

Add in Blizzard's love of nerfing things that are percieved as overpowered and it just plain turns me off playing it. Vanilla is not my favourite flavour.

Like, rangers have a skill that interrupts a skill and blocks it for 20 seconds, mesmers get a skill that when cast on a character means the next skill that cast fails and they take damage. Pure damage and whatnot are never the answer, you have to be sneaky and tactical.

And the only EXP depreciation that occurs in GW is from enemies, as you rise in levels, lower enemies give less while the EXP you need to gain a level rises, but what you get from quests remains exactly the same.

Oh, and the transport in GW is a nice simple press of the M button, and you can warp to a town you've been to, which while being simple, is a lot nicer than transport in other MMOs.

God, I hated transport in RO, had to walk far too much, or rely on Warpolytes. I suppose the variety of transport in WoW is nice, but I still prefer my nice simple map in GW.

[Lionx]

WoW i know for sure has balancing issues on pvp and pve. FFXI doesnt have it as much since pvp is not a main factor.

Isnt GW made by Blizzard? Another thing is that i hate the warping thing, makes the distance between towns nothing. that is not a real good way to make an MMO. That killed alot of exploration and difficulty, i find this a fault, just like how private RO servers gave you instant tele.

I find this more to be i have this game so i am supporting it to the death. I dont have WoW but my friend plays it. I find it to be bad and nothing worth my time, but i do see where its good and i do like aspects of the game. I have FFXI but it also has its faults, but that doesnt mean i will defend it to the death. Just enjoy your game, i dont find Guild Wars to be anything noteworthy IMO, but you do so have fun with it. I am not going to be interested in this at all, FFXI is my game, and i wont be bored for a long time.

[Rostum]

Guild Wars is made by people who branched off from Blizzard (AreaNet right?). Anyways, WoW was a horrible game, I played it for a long time (left FFXI to play it, ended up going back). I'm sure Guild Wars does a lot better, I heard it's just a balance between FFXI and WoW.

WoW has done horribly, most of the members have left by now. =P Well at least the hardcore players.

Either way, Guild Wars isn't a 'true' MMORPG, but I'm sure it's still a great MMORPG in it's respect. Everything has flaws, but oh well if you enjoy it, play it! =D I sometimes wish FFXI wasn't limited to the PS2's capabilities, it would be a whole lot better.

[Endless]

WoW has done horribly, most of the members have left by now. =P Well at least the hardcore players.

Since sales/registration/load numbers contradict you, I'd like to see your proof to back that statement up.

I call bullshît.

[Lionx]

The initial sales does not mean the lasting power of an MMORPG, alot of MMOs are bought and member subscriptions rise when it first comes out for numerous reasons(i think WoW's was hype). The lasting capability of the MMO however needs more time to be said and i feel should be the deciding factor in an MMO, but due to the casual nature of WoW i doubt it be anything great unless they can somehow change it so some of the people who play harder stay subscribed along with better patches that arent just nerf or buff up.

Give the game a year or two and see if theres still any more people on WoW.

EDIT: However i do know many WoW players from FFXI go back, like this guy's LS a majority came back, and only one or two stayed. My friend who played FFXI would come back from WoW only if his brother would pay for it with his CC(he doesnt have one apparently). He think its different for both but prefers XI. So really are the sales going to be consistant is the main issue here. Sales mean nothing, lastability to me does.

[Rostum]

WoW has done horribly, most of the members have left by now. =P Well at least the hardcore players.

Since sales/registration/load numbers contradict you, I'd like to see your proof to back that statement up.

I call bullshît.

Lionx explained it pretty well above.

I won't doubt that the initial sales went through the roof. But it was greatly hyped by the Blizzard fanbase - a lot of the hardcore MMORPG's have left by now, if not now they will be leaving soon, simply due to the fact there is no end game suitable for them, and leveling is way too fast and easy.

A MMORPG cannot base it's success on the initial sales. You'd at least have to wait a year to a couple of years before announcing it's true success (and by that I mean how many members actually stay).

[Daggers64]

good lord people... stop arguing about WoW... XD

I greatly agree that WoW just can't compare to GW, BUT I haven't played it passed beta, and even then, wasn't playing it for long enough to see much... so I could be wrong...
From the opinion of most my friends and others, WoW was just hype in its biggest form... and a lot of people don't play it anymore.
At this point, I dont think we can say that GW is hype, cause its still in the begining... but so far, the game play has been perfect! so I doubt it will ever be considered popular because of hype...

I have no doubt that Guild Wars will become bigger than WoW and FFXI, cause the game play is awesome! and there are no fees! those are the biggest thing to get people to play it! I've known a lot of people that wouldn't have even touched most MMOs, cept now they are playing GW with me! ^_^; Guild Wars is doing a good job getting new people to these kinds of games!

oh and in response to a previous post... NO, Guild Wars does not take 3 hours to go to the next city (unless your talking about from ascalon to Lions arch, that sometimes takes a full night) Cause once you go to a town once, you can easilly teleport there any other time you want without walking all the way there.

[Lionx]

The no fees part kinda worry me since that means the dev team might not be as responsible and GMs not as reliable. That does happen and that can only be answered in time.

Most MMOs are fresh to start with, then it might get old, so see its lasting power, dont forget to take breaks too. RO was great to me too once, then it went kinda ...ehh its ok.

I think its balance, i hate the teleport system. Taking 20 mins to actually make the world feel huge to get somewhere is great, taking 2 hours to get somewhere that is important now thats overboard. Taking instantly just makes the world smaller like RO private. I dont like it. I would say thats like making a map in Diablo, its just not that connected i guess.

Unless theres a good reason to buy the game i prolly wont get it O_o i mean no monthly fees to me is a badd indication of things, as well as instant teleportation of how gameplay would be like.

[Daggers64]

Well, it wouldn't seem the case at this point! ^_^ the GW team has been really good about updating and fixing every bug!
Almost every time I've found a bug, I use the /bug command and report it, and later that night, there is always an update that fixes it! Not that there is many bugs, of course.

A lot of mmo games are out there that are free and have great service, so I don't think fees have much link to service or even how long the game is running. lol Many games have been going for years without fees and they are still running good.

In the end, a company like ArenaNet does lots of projects, and GW is just one! they have plenty of places money comes from, and Guild Wars certainly makes a profit, especially when the expansions come out.

[Lionx]

At this point i guess, there might still be bugs that needs to be ironed out..i am pretty sure alot of things are like that in the beginning.

What free MMOs out there have great service anyway? Besides Private RO servers i mean, since that doesnt count.

In any case give it time and lets see developments :P

[Daggers64]

lol check ONRPG.com or look in our old MMO threads. lol Only example I can come up with, top of my head, Kal Online (its ok) cause its all free, and its going strong. There are better examples though... I'm real tired, and just got back from a big Anime Convention. @_@

I agree, that only time can tell. lol

Still If someone is passionate about something, then it doesn't take money to keep it going. lol thats the whole reason why so many people keep running RO lol! XD Its a LOT of work, and we dont get paid.

I think if the guys that run GW are passionate about it, they will keep it going, they've done a good job planning ahead.
Bugs are fixed fast, and probably always will be. And as I said, there arn't that many bugs, I've only seen maybe 5, 2 weren't bugs as much as just gameplay probs, but all have been fixed so far. (cept an annoying bug that causes Henchmen to respawn in the wrong places sometimes... RARE, but they might have fixed it already) XD

[Endless]

Let's see subscribers numbers then (subscribers = paying players, not number of boxes sold).
WoW, over 1,250,000 subscribers, with, in Europe, over 200,000 players playing at the same time at peak hours.
FFXI, 500,000 (?) subscribers (registered users), with "tens of thousands" simultaneous players on.
No data available from GW for now.
Obviously, WoW is a failure and players are running away from it. :rolleyes2

And a note, running a RO server does cost money (and a lot of time too), and yes I know what I'm talking about, I did it (it might even still be running, I stopped adminning/playing a while ago).

[Lindy]

God, lionx, will you shut up about how the teleport system is so terrible.

You walk to a town, that town is unlocked on your map, and you can warp to and from it, what is so terrible about that? The world is huge, it's quite hard to get to some towns and since you usually always need a party to get places, it really wouldn't be much fun to have to walk to every damned town.

Teleporting isn't an awful thing in RO private servers either, god, just because YOU want to spend 3213243894 hours walking from one side of the world to another every time you want to get from town to town, doesn't mean everyone else should have to. I'd say it's pretty fair that if you've put in the time and played it properly to walk from a town to another, you should be able to warp there.

Just because it has no monthly fees isn't a bad sign either, heck, RO has monthly fees and Gravity screws you totally for it, you pay, and you get crap all updates and poor service quality. Arenanet has the backing of NCSoft, who made Lineage and Lineage 2, pretty hugely successful online games, so I'd say there's certainly a lot of money backing it meaning the lack of monthly fees is not going to be a problem. Besides, it's already been stated that the instanced forms of areas and the district system in towns cuts down the bandwidth usage and costs for Arena anyway.

Oh, and running a GOOD RO server costs money, since you need to pay for a dedicated server box and a good internet connection, you can just run a server on a DSL connection on your home computer, though it probably won't be any good.

[Lionx]

I rather see how much there was during the initial launch. Give it a year or two and lets see how many people still pay per month on something casual. I know i wont and not to say casual is bad, i just cannot see how i would pay monthly for that. Give it some time, WoW is young yet, we will see how far it goes.

Lindy, lol no i wont shut up. ^^ i think its horrible and i have a right to say that if i want to. I find it makes the entire world less big :P Therefore less realism in my case. I just dont like it. I find it having to take maybe 15ish minutes avoiding aggro or sneaking around and actually moving through the world to be a better place to be in. I mean whats the point of making some place that probably wont even be traveled in if you can just teleport away? You can like it, i just find it horrible. Now maybe a hefty fee for it might help...if theres an economy i dont know about that in GW. Then again its still young so even if there was one it probably isnt established yet.

Mmm most things that are free arent that great, there are exceptions. i dont trust gravity but on some people that branched off from Blizzard i would expect much more. So far i heard everything is good from Daggers and i guess i hope for it to remain that way. The point is, that Gravity or some low no name company can do fees and not do stuff. But some of them like Sony or Blizzard, and SE cannot do that without getting so much bad rap(not that Gravity doesnt has any, but its much more huge for the bigger name companies). I just tend to think that without a monthly fee, more often than not its not that great.. I hope that the expansions dont be one of those "must have or you are gimped" things on them. EQ was somewhat like that.

I ran an RO server for fun on AOL 56K, it only fits 3 people then lags like hell xD

[Lindy]

Right, explain how it makes the world smaller, explain how it makes travelling less important, you have to travel to there in the first place, you have to avoid people, and the areas ARE travelled a lot since not everything is in towns (shock horror on that one), or maybe people want to fight a few monsters to practice out their skills (wow, shock, practice and skill). Give me a good reason why it makes the world smaller other than the fact that YOU want to walk from town to town to town over and over again, I don't see it cutting out areas so that you CAN'T go to them, nor does it reduce the number of towns, or the hours you have to spend travelling to all these places the first time.

And Gravity is one of the biggest MMORPG companies, there's an RO for every major region of the world, as well as the huge iRO, they're one of the biggest companies in Korea. If you say Gravity to someone who knows about MMOs, they will know who you're talking about, they're certainly not a no-name company.

In fact, in terms of MMOs, Sony are a no-name company hopping into it only just recently with Everquest, Square are the same, and Blizzard, while running online with battle.net, are a tiny name in MMO terms.

Heck, most of Japan was pretty ignorant of Square prior to the merge with Enix.

All these companies you're citing are TINY little upstarts in the MMO game.

Maybe think about what you're saying before you actually say it.

And the expansions have been stated to be akin to expansion decks for card games, it just gives you more variety of skills, and some new quests, nothing that breaks the balance of the game, since that's what it's about. Balance, not stupidly overpowering one class/skill/weapon and having another incredibly weak, and then nerfing EVERYTHING just so the weaker class has more of a chance.