GuildWars Haters Rejoice!

[Camerous]

sub·scribe
v. sub·scribed, sub·scrib·ing, sub·scribes

1. To authorize (someone) to receive or access electronic texts or services, especially over the Internet.
2. To sign one's name to a document; also to give consent or approval by signing one's name
3. To agree to contribute a sum of money

2/3s of the definition of subscribe has nothing to do with money you stupid fuck.
Reading your posts are a joy because I get such a good laugh at how ignorant you are.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Originally posted by Camerous
Ok..It has 500k subscribers....you play online with people...you aquire loot and equipement online...there is no single player aspect to it...and you have character progression. I could have sworn that was the definition of a MMO...since when does a monthly charge make something a MMORPG??

From the GW FAQ:

Is Guild Wars an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)?

Guild Wars has some similarities to existing MMORPGs, but it also has some key differences. Like existing MMOs, Guild Wars is played entirely online in a secure hosted environment. Thousands of players inhabit the same virtual world. Players can meet new friends in gathering places like towns and outposts where they form parties and go questing with them. Unlike many MMOs, when players form a party and embark upon a quest in Guild Wars, they get their own private copy of the area where the quest takes place. This design eliminates some of the frustrating gameplay elements commonly associated with MMOs, such as spawn camping, kill stealing, and lines to complete a quest.
Guild Wars takes place in a large virtual world made up of many different zones, and players can walk from one end of the world to the other. In Guild Wars much of the tedium of traveling through the world has been eliminated. Players can instantly return to any safe area (town or outpost) that they have previously visited just by clicking on it in the world overview map.

Rather than labeling Guild Wars an MMORPG, we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game). Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to create the best possible competitive role-playing experience. Success in Guild Wars is always the result of player skill, not time spent playing or the size of one's guild. As characters progress, they acquire a diverse set of skills and items, enabling them to use new strategies in combat. Players can do battle in open arenas or compete in guild-vs-guild warfare or the international tournament. Engaging in combat is always the player's choice, however; there is no player-killing in cooperative areas of the world.

Finally, unlike existing MMOs, all characters in Guild Wars inhabit the same virtual world -- they are not divided onto different servers or shards -- so players can always team up with or compete against any other player in the world.

[Quineloe]

Originally posted by 0hz
-Complete lack of an AH yet the crafting system described above requires continuous trading to create decent items without hours of farming for random drops.

lineage2

[Quineloe]

Originally posted by Moontayle
Gamespot gave it a 9.2, which when you consider the genre (MMORPG), is saying something. The only other one they've given over a 9.0 on is WoW.

and a 8.9 for Shadows of Luclin, right?

Unlike many MMOs, when players form a party and embark upon a quest in Guild Wars, they get their own private copy of the area where the quest takes place. This design eliminates some of the frustrating gameplay elements commonly associated with MMOs, such as spawn camping, kill stealing, and lines to complete a quest.

3 years ago this would have been "unlike many MMOs"

[Metranon]

So if you disabled Diablo2's sp game, it'd be an MMORPG?

I think the definition of an MMO is a roleplaying game in which the mass of players who play the game log into a centralized server provided, in most cases, by the game publisher. In guild wars you do this, thus i would say it's an MMO.

In Diablo 2 rather than logging into a server or set of servers hosted exclusively by the content provider, you log into a makeshift server hosted on some dude's computer who also owns the game. This server cannot support a massive base of users, in fact it probably cannot even support more than 64 users at once logged into it. This fact means that, in my opinion, it doesn't qualify as a MMO.

[Camerous]

/agree with ^^

[Itzena]

Originally posted by Metranon
In Diablo 2 rather than logging into a server or set of servers hosted exclusively by the content provider, you log into a makeshift server hosted on some dude's computer who also owns the game. This server cannot support a massive base of users, in fact it probably cannot even support more than 64 users at once logged into it. This fact means that, in my opinion, it doesn't qualify as a MMO.

What about the 'secure' D2 games that were actually hosted on battle.net? Do they mean D2 was a MMOG?

[Kolle]

GW seems too shallow. I was never able to get into games with pvp because I just didn't see the point. Simply getting higher points or more kills doesn't seem like any kind of an accomplishment.

After playing WC3 I kinda got into the story and did some more reading. Then seeing the world in WoW and that they are at least trying to do things like pvp rewards and hopefully BGs will kick ass, I manage to do pvp without getting too bored yet. Technically you aren't really making any difference in a war or anything like that, but with everything going on I can at least suspend my disbelief moreso than some online shooter.

[ashatumar]

Originally posted by Yermum Onceme

At this point I think ramming a large spike into my nutsack has more potential to be enjoyable than anything blizzard promises to implement.

Can we test that?

[FanBuss]

Guild Wars sounds like a piece of shit from that quote above.

[Snagglepuss]

Originally posted by Metranon
I think the definition of an MMO is a roleplaying game in which the mass of players who play the game log into a centralized server provided, in most cases, by the game publisher. In guild wars you do this, thus i would say it's an MMO.

In Diablo 2 rather than logging into a server or set of servers hosted exclusively by the content provider, you log into a makeshift server hosted on some dude's computer who also owns the game. This server cannot support a massive base of users, in fact it probably cannot even support more than 64 users at once logged into it. This fact means that, in my opinion, it doesn't qualify as a MMO.

what the fuck do you call battle.net matchmaking service then? it's the same thing as guildwars, except it's a chat room where you do stuff like form parties to go adventure and trade items. same.exact.thing.

[GiR]

Rickshaw this thread already, arguing over whether it's an MMO, MMORPG, CORPG or circlejerk.

[ilian]

This game is actually a ton of fun and Ihave been enjoying the hell out of it.

It is definately not a MMORPG by any means though, more so than its 'chat room' towns.

Its much more of a Phantasy Star Online meets Magic: The Gathering meets Counter-Strike.

Some of the PvE elements arnt great, but overall Ive really enjoyed the game, particuarly the PVP and skill system

[Zarcath]

Here's the review I put up on MB.

Against my better judgement I picked it up to see what it was all about, unfortunately my beta experience pretty much summed it up. Terrible.

The single-player game reminds me of Dungeon Siege in graphics/areas/quests and Diablo 1 in terms of functional skills/abilities. The game is both extremely linear and extremely wide, it's kind of weird. You have to progress on your quests to get to the next area (like diablo acts), except the game world ends up being too huge with not much level variety. At level 6, every zone I adventured into consisted of level 3-5 mobs, nothing that gave great exp, until I completed the act quest and it moved me to a new area were mobs were 5-10 range. I adventured 4-5 zone/fields to the left and the mobs were the same level/variety as the mobs outside the city gates. So there is a lot of content but not much variety or incentive to stay once you've reached their softcap.

I haven't come across any rare named yet like in Diablo, and the loot is pretty dismal. The driving force in getting items isn't to sell but to salvage for tradeskill materials.

However the tradeskill items you can make with them suck, the itemization is horrible, the effects for the items level 1-15 were the same, the only thing that changed was the AC. Also, I've yet to come across an actual vendor that sold weapons and armor. It seems like the only way to get new items is either through mob drops or tradeskills. Tradeskills are actually more like psuedo quests, you just get the materials and give it to an NPC to make your items, you can't even harvest items, you just salvage from items you get off mobs.

Mobs have a random chance of dropping random magical items, however most of them suck, having some weird restriction to them (+30% damage vs Charr, +10% damage if you're above 60% hp, +10% chance to +1 skill when you use a skill).

They have a mode that allows you to jump straight into PvP action on a level 20 character. I first thought this would be lame (free level 20), and then I thought it might be neat to get a taste for it early on, but then after I read the fine print and experienced it, it sucks. If you want to make a level 20 pvp guy, you can either chose to one from their pre-made templates (about 12), or make your own build. The catch is, if you make your own build, you can only use the skills that you've learned in single-player. So when I tried to do a custom build I ended up with a level 20 using level 5 spells. The templates are alright, except there are a few power combos already that make PvP boring. The Warrior/Monks come to mind, pretty much Paladins from WoW. You really can't win without a War/Monk on your team, healers/casters/ranged get ganked first. It doesn't help that the player info shows you what class a person is, making it easier for your opponents to pick you out.

You can hybrid yourself to any other class in single-player, the downside is once you pick a 2nd class you can never get rid of it or change.

I will say the story-line is pretty good, and the environments are nice, but the poor itemization, repeating content, unmotivating quests and poor skill system puts this game into the negatives.

Oh, and I should also mention, the game is played entirely online, the city hubs are instanced and your single-player campaign is instanced (like CoH), the problem is you can be in your own private instance and get server lag. I'd really expect some form of offline play mode, no dice. Not something you can play if your internet is out or you're downloading something.

All in all...

Environment = 8 (nice environments)
Storyline = 9 (dynamic, things gets destroyed pretty quick)
Creature Content = 5 (medicore high-fantasy mobs)
Item Content = 4 (usual high-fantasy garbage)
Tradeskill = 4 (your only source of items/weapons, which isn't saying much)
PvP = 5 (dare I say I had more fun PvPing in Diablo 2)

Overall = 6 (worth a whorl at a friends house, but not something you'd want to buy)

The single-player campaign has it's merits, mostly in technical and presentation, however the lack-luster content makes you wonder why you keep playing.

[Gnoma]

You realize that you only experienced a small fraction of the overall game, right? The level 1-10 game, for the most part, is just a tutorial to get you acquainted with the basic gameplay mechanic. It's boring but you can breeze through it in about 6 hours if you actually do the missions. Apparently you spent all your time in the explorable areas which are only intended to support the mission structure, not constitute the majority of PvE gameplay.

In fact the missions make the PvE campaign far superior to any other online or cooperative game I've seen. While the first few are rather simple and easy to get through the difficulty and complexity rises steadily throughout the course of the game. In one of the early missions you help an npc fix a catapult and fire it into a group of unsuspecting enemies sitting around doing nothing. Late in the game you are tasked to defend a fort from invading enemy forces and your team has to coordinate a defense using 4 catapults covering two approaches while keeping the guys that do get through from getting through the gates and attacking an important npc. The only major flaws are with the highly structured environment making the missions completely linear with one or two set paths and no significant deviation.

As for the loot, Guild Wars isn't designed to be a loot based game. It's mainly there to provide a slight measure of added character diversity, which doesn't really work. The difference between players is intended to be decided by skill set-ups and teamwork, not powerful items that require lots of time or effort to obtain. So you will see a large number of similar weapons with different bonuses that provide a small benefit to your character but don't make or break your viability in PvE or PvP. The crafted armor is there to keep your defenses in line with the type of mobs you will be fighting and you only have to upgrade about 3 times through your entire career. Apart from Fur Squares all the crafting items are readily available and if you save up the materials you get from missions you should have enough to upgrade at the necessary points. It usually takes 1-3 minutes to salvage and sell you stuff to a merchant at the end of a mission and you can buy the materials for pretty cheap from other players through trade channels or the materials vendor if you are short on something. I never found a point where I had to actually go farm or grind to get money or materials until the end-game prestige armor that offers no benefit to your character apart from a fancier appearance.

I haven't really tried the pre-made PvP thing so I can't comment much on that. Obatining the skills for it is an annoying timesink if you are only going through the PvE campaign for that purpose, but you get them at a nice rate if you are playing through the missions normally. This changes with the late game Elite skills, which are obtained by finding boss monsters that cast them then using a Signet of Capture which will copy the skill for your own use. The problem lies in the diffculty of not only finding the right boss mob for the skill you want but it can be difficult to get the mob to actually use the skill you need to capture over their normal mundane skills. However there's only around 8 elite skills out of 75 skills total per class and you can only have one in your line-up at a time so your character will still be strong without them.

And the major error in your post is that you are able switch your secondary profession about 3/4 of the way through the PvE campaign. You get 4 slightly difficult quests for the professions you aren't already using and once you complete them you can switch between them anytime you want. You will have to spend your somewhat limited number of skill points or go back and complete a bunch of quests to obtain your new secondary profession skills though.

Overall I'd give Guild Wars about an 8.5. The PvE is fun but short compared to other computer rpgs, whether mmo or not. The PvP gameplay has alot of depth but currently most people are going with cookie-cutter builds and it hasn't reached it's potential. Hopefully it will get more interesting as people gain access to a wider range of skills and realize how easy it is to shutdown a warrior/monk. Until then it can be tedious and frustrating as often as it is enjoyable.