WoW: MoP or Guild Wars 2

[Martinus]

So I'm getting a bit bored with WoW, but with the expansion only two months away, this may change. But now, in about a month, Guild Wars 2 is getting released too. Which one do you think would be a better game? I saw some gameplay videos of GW2 and it is going the same old annoying route as "realistic graphics but really crap" games did in the past but perhaps I don't know enough about it.

Or are there other good MMORPGs out there that I should try (they must be in a fantasy setting though, so no Star Wars please) - but I can't stand sloppy delivery - it must be the same quality as WoW.

[sbr]

Guild Wars intrigues me just a little because of the no subscription thing. 

You are rich enough that you probably don;t care about that though.

[Martinus]

What I like about Guild Wars 2 is that apparently each class can perform each of the three roles (tank, healer, dps) depending on the spec chosen. So you could be an Elementalist (equivalent of a Mage, broadly speaking), but if you specialize in Air or Fire, you are dps dealer, when you specialize in Earth you are a tank and when you specialize in Water, you are a healer - and on top of that you can be both melee or ranged dps.

In WoW, the choice was usually between the two classes that can perform all roles (paladins and druids) but are much more boring to play, than the "specializing" classes. But if some class concept speaks to you lore wise (e.g. I always liked the idea of a Mage in WoW), but it does not allow for a certain role, you are screwed/confined to the prescribed role.

[Tamas]

I understand you are gay, dude, but there is being gay, and there is paying money so you can play as a PANDA.

[Martinus]

I understand you are gay, dude, but there is being gay, and there is paying money so you can play as a PANDA.

I wouldn't be making a panda character, but they are overhauling talents and of course it's new content. Still, as I said, I am out to try something new, it's just that everything else so far (e.g. I was really into WAR, conceptually) has been sub par.

[katmai]

Seems to me then GW2 would be more to your liking. Few friends who have been in beta really like it, but unlike Marti i'm comfortable enough with my sexuality that I will be playing a Panda as liking the Monk tanking spec.

[Tamas]

I would have a couple of friends to join in GW2, but I have made a sacred vow to not play any more MMOs, ever. Hard to resist, but I must!

[Martinus]

Seems to me then GW2 would be more to your liking. Few friends who have been in beta really like it, but unlike Marti i'm comfortable enough with my sexuality that I will be playing a Panda as liking the Monk tanking spec.

I think all races can be a monk so that's not a justification.

[Syt]

He's a Pablo Sandoval fanboi.

[katmai]

Seems to me then GW2 would be more to your liking. Few friends who have been in beta really like it, but unlike Marti i'm comfortable enough with my sexuality that I will be playing a Panda as liking the Monk tanking spec.

I think all races can be a monk so that's not a justification.

All but Worgen and Goblin.
But of all the races would have to be Dwarf or Panda to follow lore of a Brewmaster

@ Syt Darn Tooting!

[frunk]

This is a writeup I did for my friends after the first Beta Weekend in April.  I've added any changes in my thinking following the two other Beta Weekends in Italics.

I focused on PvE and crafting.  If you want opinions on PvP and WvW you'll have to find other places for that.  The quicky coverage on those is you can freely flip between the three formats, and here are the specifics:

PvP: Character auto-leveled to max (80) with full skills, appropriate equipment.  Fighting in XvX (5v5 typically) 15 minute or 500 point maps, usually scored by capturing/holding locations and by kills.
WvW: Character auto-leveled to max (80) but with same skills and equipment as PvE.  Massive struggle between three worlds, supporting hundreds of players on each side.  Neutral locations to take and hold, worlds doing well give benefit to PvE players.  After X weeks world matchups are reshufffled based on performance.  I dabbled in WvW during the last beta weekend, and it was a hell of a lot of fun.  I got to participate in an attack on the central keep.  We got all the way to the main tower, but were eventually repulsed by not only the defenders but the third team that was also attacking.


Connection with the first Guild Wars - This is basically a completely different game.  The first Guild Wars was almost all instanced/party based content.  They provided henchmen and heroes so you could solo but except for some highly specialized builds you could not go out as a single character against even moderately difficult content.  GW features a massive, massive, massive number of different skills and skill combinations, auto-targeting and at this point fairly antiquated graphics.  It has a low level cap (20) that with dedicated play from some of the expansions could be reached within a weekend.  After that the real game begins as you acquire and experiment with different skills and combinations both with yourself and your fellow players/heroes.  GW2 leaves all that behind, pruning the number of skills way back, raising the level cap to 80 and opening up the game to a more traditional open world MMO environment.  The connection between GW and GW2 is primarily through the story/background, strong support for PvP, some of the classes and some of the skills.

General Overview - Movement is through the standard keyboard directions/strafing.  Right click hold and move if you want to drive by mouse.  Equipment is all pretty straightforward, in addition to the base effect (damage for weapons, defense for armor) it can have attribute or effect benefits, with one additional upgrade slot.  If you are knocked out in combat you have a limited amount of time to try to recover, generally by killing an enemy.  If you fail to do this you are defeated and have to pop back to a waypoint or wait for someone else to come along and revive you.  This also damages one piece of equipment.  If all of your equipment is already damaged then one piece becomes unwearable.  Damaged equipment can be repaired for a small fee.

You can have up to 10 skills at any one time (bound at start to 0-9), plus up to 4 class abilities (F1-F4).  All skills except racial or other bonus ones are specific to the class.  The first 5 skills are tied to your weapon/weapons.  If you just picked up the weapon type you will only have the first skill available.  Use of the skill will rapidly unlock the others, so it's more of a tutorial than a grind.  I had all the skills for all of my weapons (except the underwater) unlocked by 10th level.  All other skills can be picked from a selection of purchased (using skill points) ones.  Skill 6 is a heal skill, 7-9 are utility and unlock at 10, 15 and 20.  Skill 0 is the elite skill which doesn't unlock until level 30.  Note that PvP has all skills unlocked automatically.  Using skills is easy, just click the key.  If you are out of range from the target it will miss.  If the skill is projectile based and there's another target between you and the intended it will hit them instead.  AoE skills will give you an overlay to place the effect where you want and will appear white lined.  Enemy AoEs are red lined.  More powerful skills will frequently have an activation time, during which they can be canceled prematurely for either a reduced or no effect.


PvE:

Questing and Events - There are a few different types of quests and events.  There are heart quests, with each one requiring you to perform a variety of different tasks.  You can do any of the tasks in any proportion, it doesn't matter, and you can pick up at a later point if you leave the area with no lost progress.  Once you achieve it you are done with the heart quest and receive payment in your mailbox (always check your mailbox).  Interspersed amongst these heart quests are dynamic events that you can participate in.  They vary as widely as the heart quests, from delivery runs to eliminating enemies to destroying enemy supplies, whatever.  The difference is that depending on how successfully the event is prosecuted, things will change in the world.  Caravan shipment doesn't get through?  The fort might come under attack from emboldened bandits.  If the bandits aren't repulsed the fort might be taken over.  There's a dynamic nature to the game because of this, and although the event chains come back around again on a somewhat short cycle you usually are advanced enough by that point that it doesn't matter too much.  In addition you have your personal story, which you pursue in parallel.  Personal story events appear to be strictly instanced, and is a more standard quest chain.

Player Environment - The world is big and spacious but felt small in some particulars.  I was able to explore and complete most of the newb (lvl 1-15) and next to newb (lvl 15-25) areas for the human area, with a quick dabble in the norn as well.  Didn't get to the Charr, and at release there will also be Asura and Sylvari areas as well.  What was notable was how many hidden and difficult to reach areas there are about.  There's whole tunnels and secret passages that if you aren't looking for them you won't find.  I didn't get to any dungeons, but I think the first one isn't available until level 30 anyway, and I'm not sure it was open during this beta.  There isn't a level limit for most content, if you wander into a high level area you'll probably get killed quick.  On the other side you do get downleveled if you travel to lower level areas.  This works better than I thought it would.  You still are way more powerful than a regular player, since your equipment and skills are generally better, but the content isn't a complete walkover.  I'm sure the same will apply to WvW despite everyone being level 80.  During the third beta weekend over the two days I completed exploring the two Asura starting areas and the Asuran city, which registered as 8% of the total world.  This doesn't count finding any of the many hidden areas, dungeons, the  dynamic events that I missed or jumping puzzles (yes, jumping puzzles).  So that's completing about 4% a day of the regular PvE content at a "weekend spent playing" pace.  If GW2 was your 8 hour a day job I think you could get through all of this PvE content in about 25 days.  The world is big.

Player Interaction - Even in PvE the game is built around player interaction, and yet it doesn't require it.  The more players around the bigger and tougher events become.  Events (especially mobile events) have a way of attracting people, and soon you'll have a sizable mob of otherwise unconnected people working together.  Having people around to revive you when you are defeated helps tremendously, and even gives them a small xp reward.  A number of times I was defeated and was fiddling around with my inventory before jumping back to the waypoint, and someone would come along and revive me.  I did it myself, when you see the skull and crossbones come up on the minimap it's fun to go and help them out.  All item drops are bound to a specific player, so there's no fighting over loot.  In fact the only resource that is ever fought over between players are some of the heart quest items, but there's usually plenty around for you to do something else.

Crafting - Making items is fairly easy and intuitive once you get the basic logic of it.  A given item requires 1-3 other items to be combined, as well as possibly an inscription.  The more crafting you do in a given discipline you get more experience, eventually leading to better items.  The basic ingredients for crafting can either be gathered out in the world, salvaged from drops or purchased from craftsmen.  Most items require some of the first two, and occasionally a little of the third.  Your crafting level for a given item should be (your level-10)*5.  You get goodies at crafting levels 0,25,50,75,100, etc for player level 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, etc.  I was able to stay ahead without dipping into the trade market until the end when I decided to to see how far I could get.  I got to crafting level 108 with a 23rd level character by buying a bit from the market.  You are encouraged to experiment to find new recipes, although most of them are pretty straightforward.  Others can be purchased from merchants.

The Cash Market - The only mandatory cost to the game is buying a copy of it.  There's no monthly fee (same as Guild Wars).  They do have micro-transactions, but they are doing it in an interesting way.  You can buy Gems from Arena-Net for cash, which you can use to buy cosmetic changes/mildly helpful bonuses from the Gem Shop.  Alternatively you can trade the Gems to other players for the in game currency.  Effectively everything in the Gem Shop is available to everybody, if you are willing to pay game currency to another player for the Gems.

The Good:

The game is gorgeous.  I lost count of the number of times I stopped to look around at the scenery, even though I have the graphics option set to the minimum.  It reminds me of Eve Online back when it first came out in how the visuals just took your breath away.  In particular the underwater areas are great, beautiful shading and the extra mystery/danger of three dimensions.

The game is endlessly engaging without a whiff of grind.  You advance and gain skills but it's organic and wrapped with doing fun things, like squishing wasp nests to help out a farmer, or rescuing another random player from fishmen.

Grouping doesn't feel forced or difficult, and it definitely doesn't require guilds or other social structures.  It just happens because you are both in the same area and help is welcome.  If you later separate that's fine too.


The (Potentially) Bad:  Other than some minor bugs I didn't find any flaws that bothered me to a great extent.  Considering this is still beta it's rather impressive.  Still, things worry me.

The great aspects of grouping may end up being the game's great failing.  Large groups of players zerging across the landscape is a pretty unstoppable force, and there's very little downside to joining the herd.  Other than you really can't tell what you are doing, what anyone else is doing or what is going on except the rewards being racked up.  There needs to be at least some pressure to pry players apart when they get like that, either by reducing the overwhelming power of large groups, making 'friendly fire' an issue or having events that require attention in multiple locations when the group gets big enough.  As it was I'd join these large (20+ players) groups to take down difficult positions, but generally preferred staying away from them so I could tell what the hell was going on.  I didn't see nearly as much of this in the second and third beta weekends.  I don't know if I got better at avoiding the zergs or they just tended not to form as much.  There were still plenty of people around to group up with, just not huge blobs

I know I'm coming from the GW background where figuring out your party's build is a large part of the fun, but it does feel like there isn't as much skill variety as I hoped for.  Admittedly, compared to most MMOs it's probably a reasonable number, but GW was a haven for wildly divergent skill builds that did all sorts of crazy things.  I don't see this in GW 2.  Now that I've gotten used to the combat system and played a few more classes it feels like there's room for different builds.  A lot of the customizing of your character isn't in the skills but in the traits/equipment that you use to enhance your skills.

Related to this, I'm worried about the lack of skill variety between 30 (when elite skills are unlocked) and 80 (max level).  I'm sure you'll gradually unlock all the skills, but since you can do that in any order and it seems like skill points are easy to come by I think you'll start with the most interesting and work your way down.  Which means the early skills will get more use than the later ones, which means it'll probably take active effort to avoid getting stuck in a rut as far as your character build.  This has been mitigated by having skill groups, where the more expensive/better skills aren't available until you buy a certain number of cheaper skills.  I think it helps.

[Martinus]

Many thanks, frunk. I have since read a bit about the game and this seems like a step forward in many ways, compared to WoW (the interactive "quests", character creation etc. all sound like so much fun). The "only" way this game could suck compared to WoW if the delivery of all the new ideas was faulty (something WAR suffered from). But I hope they pull it out. I will be definitely getting it.

[frunk]

I think one of the best parts of the dynamic events is the feeling that in certain parts of the land world changing events are happening where others are just sleepy backwaters.  One of the human cities in the ~30th level range would regularly get attacked by centaurs.  If the centaurs win they would take over.  At that point there is another dynamic event to take the city back from the centaurs.  If nobody (or nobodies, I doubt a single person could pull off taking it back, I tried) comes along to kick them out they'll stay there indefinitely.  If the players do kick them out then there's following events to weaken the centaurs to stop them from attacking again (destroying catapults/supplies, defeating leaders).  If those aren't successfully prosecuted the centaurs will attack again in short order, otherwise it could be several hours before they show up again.  Some of the shorter dynamic events can cycle back 2-3 times in an hour, longer ones like this one will recur only 2-3 times a day.  I noticed increasing numbers of longer term events as I went up in level, which builds an epic feel.

Very late in the last beta I was almost finished with the second Asuran area.  I just had a stronghold of Inquest (evil Asuran) to clear out.  They were 2-3 levels higher than I was.  I could probably do it but I decided to explore the southwest corner of the map first.  I found this weird region with a glowing sky and animals/monsters popping in and out of existence with flashes of white light.  Every once in a while the monsters would stick around long enough to attack me, but it was manageable (if unsettling).  In the middle of this region I found a deactivated golem (Asuran robot servant) sitting there.  I powered him up and it engaged some "secondary protocol" declaring that it would attack the Inquest!  I followed my robot buddy right back to the stronghold and kicked their asses in short order, joined by a couple other people who were drawn in by this newly created event.

There's a lot of depth to the game.  I started out lukewarm after the first few hours of the first beta, but as I played the world opened up and I didn't want to stop.

[Martinus]

Damn, I have been looking at videos from GW2 and while I like a lot of concepts discussed, I have the same problem with so many MMORPGs before - the graphics is just weird and annoying. I am not saying it is not pretty, but all these games that go for pseudo-realistic graphics (unlike WoW) end up with wonky animations - it's as if something was always off; I don't know really how exactly to describe it, but it's as if every character was a paper doll and not really "connecting" against the background/ground they are running on - it looks so artificial.

Blizzard, with WoW, somehow nailed it - the characters look like they are a part of the environment - in the videos of GW2 I have seen they don't. It's really annoying to me (I know that it was in many other games) so I am not sure I can live with it.

[frunk]

Hmm, the WoW characters may be better blended into the environment, but they've always struck me as looking very fake and artificial overall.  It think it's likely a question of what you are used to.