Curse

HigherMinion · Apr 04, 2013, 02:45 PM // 14:45

A serious argument can be made for fall of Guild Wars starting with the release of Factions. The introduction to a series of unbalanced skills and new profession mechanics. The nerf to Soul Reaping and introduction of Hard Mode killing elementalists. PvE skills killing build creativity. Mountains of more zones, spreading the population thin. PvE became stale and unexciting; PvP, not much better.

Now imagine a server dedicated to reviving Guild Wars at it's peak of creativity? All the updates until just before the release of Factions. No more powercreep, no more heroes, no more unbalanced skills. More creative builds, tactical play and real team work.

Only ANet could make it a reality, I imagine. One can dream. I have seen it done by another games company recently; releasing a 2007 version of their current MMO alongside because their community called them out on their shit. I don't think we should have requested ease of use whilst sacrificing a quality game and balance.

/sign for Guild Wars:Prophecies.

Leot · Apr 04, 2013, 04:18 PM // 16:18

While I understand you feelings of nostalgia, there are a couple of reasons why this will never be reality:
1. The extra areas and skills where meant to be refreshing: A game with only a couple of areas, skills, and missions WILL get boring after a while. The only reason there where so many players at that time was because the game was <1 year old.
2. ArenaNet does not really care that much about Gw1 anymore, their main focus is Gw2 which is actually their source of income at the moment. They didn't even made a fake developer update for April's Fools, despite the fact that a single devoted player could have made them in 20 minutes all by himself. Even though they have the manpower available, they just don't WANT to do ANYTHING but keeping the servers running and the events going on.
3. You might think that the game was balanced at that time, but there were a lot of flaws in 2005's GW. Spirit spam *cough cough*.

Instead of cutting things from Guild Wars I think it is a much better idea to ADD stuff to it..damn..if I were the game designer for Guild Wars Beyond: Palawa's Wrath, I would have made EXCITING new quests that'd take players to *new areas that don't require additional development power*- Ahmtur Arena, Bombardement, or Desert Sands. Perhaps even skills or new arenas....there's so much more possible for players who don't wan't to be forced to play the half-baked successor.

**cosyfiep** · Apr 04, 2013, 05:59 PM // 17:59

I just started a new toon in prophecies...I dont have eye of the north on that account (and only added factions/nightfall a while ago--so no skills unlocked),

so if you want to play just like its 2006/7 or so...get a new account, prophecies only and play with just henchies, its as close as you will get to the original, since they wont revert skills and 'balances' even for an old copy of the game.

/not signed.

HigherMinion · Apr 04, 2013, 07:24 PM // 19:24

I thought you'd say that, Cosy, and this is hypothetical, Leot. If it could happen, would anyone really want it or care?

Obviously, it's easy for one to say you could buy a new account with purely Prophecies attached. Then you still have the updates and powercreep that comes with that. The mesmer update being the greatest backstab to the old game. When you start getting mobs of the same profession desirable for one party, there's a problem. That happened with mesmers.

What's this Spirit Spam of which you speak? The only spirits in 2005 were nature rituals, who were pretty harmless apart from their clipping nature, if that's what you're referring to.

I can't think of anything that was broken in Prophecies that didn't then appear to even pale in comparison with the new skills. Assassin attack speed for example, made spiking enemies out with Strength of Honor, Barbs/MoP/elemental conjures much easier and spirits were still quite powerful before they were upgraded, but weapon spells were more OP (unstrippable, long durations, fast cast often).

This reply is looking jaunted now, but focusing on Prophecies professions only and their current skills; the elementalist was revamped purely because of Hard Mode, so get that reverted aswell as the mesmer update. These two had their definitive places in Prophecies. The necromancer would improve physical damage, the physicals pewpew, the elementalist will have flare and such, which will be super effective in Normal Mode... And the mesmer will have to learn to interrupt well because there's no Spirit Bond

Don't look at this "suggestion" so depressingly, as if it will never happen. It's hypothetical based on that assumption already. How about I ask you this: When was the highlight of your time in game? When was balance and all the professions at their best?

I have had this feeling, since GW2 was released, that Guild Wars is now their art project. The soap box they can use to produce something *they* like and are happy with, as opposed to GW2 which requires a mountain of PR and people to say "yeah we're sorry it's bad". I just don't see why they haven't started revamping GW yet, to the way they want it.

The only reason GW took the turn it did, imo, was to get more people interested in GW2. Now it's out, there's no need to make creative decisions in the wrong direction, purely to please a specific market. The market is themselves and they don't need to please everyone.

Perkunas · Apr 11, 2013, 10:03 PM // 22:03

I recently "activated" a Prophesies only account, formerly a mule account. It is actually fun when, "You unlocked ________". A bit frustrating when I tried to "load from template" and only had 2 or 3 skills. My "Stonewall" W/E has more Ele skills unlocked than warrior. So the long process of unlocking and or reaching certain outposts as in the old days. Not complaining, but I can say, "I don't have that skill yet."

sun strike · Apr 12, 2013, 07:10 AM // 07:10

hard mode came shortly after nightfall was released, not factions.

MaxBorken · Apr 12, 2013, 10:33 AM // 10:33

Roll it all the way back....

Lets have the unconditional weapons dropping from those secret chests too....

And Droknars Forge as the main trading place.

Max

karadoc · Apr 16, 2013, 11:40 PM // 23:40

If there was a 'nostalgia server' like this, I'd still choose to play on the main server.

I agree that there were a lot of negative changes after prophecies - but there were a lot of good things too. (Although, now that I'm writing this I'm struggling to think of specific things that I think are good.)

I actually like that such a thing as Hard Mode exists, in the sense that I like that I can re-visit early game areas with some kind of challenge. But the specific implementation of HM is not ideal. HM seems to be designed to be played with just a couple of particular strategies in mind, which disadvantages certain professions.

I think vanquishing areas is a nice end-game 'checklist' type thing to give old players something to aim for - but a lot of the other titles are... less appealing. The cartographer title is an alright idea, but the fact that it requires players to hug the walls to complete it means that it has a negative impact on gameplay. Exploring is fun - but constantly walking into walls just in case there's a tiny bit of extra area to reveal on the boundary is not fun.

...

One particular thing that I dislike is the introduction of (super-powerful) PvE only skills, and the split between PvP & PvE versions of existing skills. These things were apparently introduced to correct an imbalance between the strength of certain professions in PvP compared to PvE; but I think that imbalance should have instead been addressed by changing the monsters in PvE so that they behaved a bit more like players in PvP.

For example, PvP mesmers excel at shutting down particular enemies, but traditional mesmer skills are weak PvE because monsters have been given enormously high energy regen, duplicates of important skills, and faster cast times in hard mode. Thus PvE monsters can't be shut down by energy denial, and other forms of mesmer shut-down don't work as well either. So traditional mesmer skills are weak in PvE even before we take into account the fact that big monster groups often include too many high-priority targets for them all to be shut down. This imbalance should have been addressed by changing the monsters, not by changing / adding PvE skills.

...

I think I got side-tracked. What were we talking about again?