Curse

zanntos · Sep 06, 2007, 02:47 PM // 14:47

A bit about myself to define just how "new player" i am. I've played various MMOs over the years so i'm not new to MMOs in general. I picked up Guild Wars Prophecies in early August to play with some of my officemates that were playing, so i have been playing about a month.
I chose W/Mo for my starting professions and managed to get to lvl 20 about a week before the preview weekend. Being curious and figuring since i was enjoying the game and would be buying GW:EN eventually anyway, i decided to do the preorder. After enjoying the preview weekend i pushed hard the following week to ascend before the expansion came out. I also managed to finish one of the attribute quests.
So going into GW:EN i had 185 Attribute points, semi-complete W/Mo skill set, minimal skills from the other secondary classes as i had only just unlocked them, and about 6 Elite Skills to my name. I also tend to spend my time when not with my officemates Hero/Henching because i enjoy the freedom of going "by myself."

Difficulty:
It varies, i can handle most explorable areas as long as i'm reasonably careful. Also i haven't had to much trouble in the various dungeons, though my attempt on Frostmaw's Lair was rather ill-fated as i went poorly prepared for the new wurm packs as i was expecting the lvl 18 hatchlings from the preview event not the 23-24 Young Worms. A few of the Master Quests seem a bit out of reach such as Soloing the Griffon, or the swarm quests defending the Eye and Battledepths as i feel a lack the skills/experience to deal with these missions. Also the Norn Fighting Arena proves to be rather difficult with my somewhat limited skill set.

Heroes:
Since i only have Prophecies they're all new to me, being newly ascended i'm fairly limited with my customization options. However, i view them as a strong addition to my henchmen teams and i enjoy the added level of control they offer me over normal henchmen. I don't have access to "Overpowered" combos such as the 3 SF Ele's that seemed to be so popularly broadcast as "broken" as i have not yet bought Nightfall. I also enjoy the "background" quests available for several of them such as Xandra and Kahmu.

Dungeons:
As i mentioned in the difficulty heading i can handle most of the ones i have reached so far. Also the opportunity to pick up some some gold items and advance my Treasure Hunter and Wisdom tracks is quiet welcome. Also I enjoy the themes of the various dungeons.

The "Grind":
Meh, i'm going to do it somewhere so at least GW:EN offers me some reward for doing so. While for much more experienced players that have already put in the time/energy to get their Legendary Treasure Hunter or Wisdom or one of the gold sinks like Drunkeness i'm sure this feels like more work with minimal payout. For me on the other hand still sitting at the bottom of these various title trees it gives me something to do while i work toward my other titles as well.

Expansion Length:
I have no issue with the length of the campaign for probably much the same reason i have no issue with the "grind". I'm still fairly new to the game, i don't have a perfect max weapon for every possible spec, or the skill sets to pull of many of the popular power specs. I have plenty of things i can do in GW:EN besides stomp through the campaign. And i have motivations to run a dungeon more than once to get my Eye of the North faction.

Cross-Campaign Content:
For other players that already have all 3 campaigns it's probably not a big deal to them, but for me with Prophecies, GW:EN gives me a taste of the things that exist in the other campaigns. Between the items, monsters, and Heroes i get a good taste of the content from the other campaigns. Also the various skills from other campaigns that i do not have access to. This has been acting as a rather strong advantage for GW:EN itself and additionally motivates me to buy the other campaigns as having access to the heroes and skills of the other classes through them only increases my interest in the other campaigns.

Hall of Monuments:
Ok, as a new player it was never one of my selling points to begin with. People from preview were irked with it's incomplete form, while it mattered little to me. While older players are actively filling theirs with the things they have already done, to me it's more of a motivation to go out and do things and remind me of how many other things i still have to accomplish. It's a symbol of the things i will do instead of the things i have done. My near empty monument is there to say "get out and do stuff" not "look at all the stuff i've done."

Overall i have been enjoying GW:EN alot, and while i can understand that some high end players might find the content a bit shallow for them, for a newer player such as myself i have found GW:EN to be particularly deep and providing plenty of new things to do.

SeraCombi · Sep 06, 2007, 02:57 PM // 14:57

...I was thinking about this the other day.

Alot of people are complaining about this expansion...

But what if this was the first Guild Wars game that came out..what if it was the First GW game you've ever played?

I bet you'd think it's pretty awesome.

I guess your post demonstrates this in a way.

YunSooJin · Sep 06, 2007, 05:04 PM // 17:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeraCombi

...I was thinking about this the other day.

Alot of people are complaining about this expansion...

But what if this was the first Guild Wars game that came out..what if it was the First GW game you've ever played?

I bet you'd think it's pretty awesome.

I guess your post demonstrates this in a way.

yeah it seems pretty unreasonable that people expect ANET to get some things right after awhile.

lyra_song · Sep 06, 2007, 05:09 PM // 17:09

Thanks for a refreshing and different perspective.

I never though of being at the bottom of the title tracks for drunkeness as a positive while grinding for other titles.

iriyabran · Sep 06, 2007, 05:16 PM // 17:16

it's not that GW:EN is bad
people are just bored with the game
because they've played it for so long
they lost the interest in it but they're so addicted to it that they can't stop playing it so they wine about everything
sandly i see those traits in me too
when i started playing i never cared how my character looks or what armor she wears or what weapons she uses
now i find myself restarting chars all over the place and i even bought fow...which i would have never done if i wasn't so bored with the looks and all other armors which i've had/have (and they're a LOT)
and now wherever i go it's just about killing tons of mobs it's just not fun anymore
but GW is not at fault
it's the people who play it that are bored with it's content
and they have to realise gw is gw it won't transform into a totally different game to keep them interested
if they're not happy with GW than move on pls and stop creating wining threads every 3 seconds
i must say i wined a bit too but this is just too much

Gaile Gray · Sep 06, 2007, 05:23 PM // 17:23

Interesting post, zanntos, and thanks for your perspectives on the game.

Ctb · Sep 06, 2007, 05:32 PM // 17:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by iriyabran

they lost the interest in it but they're so addicted to it that they can't stop playing it so they wine about everything

No.

Guild Wars is still a great game at it's core. The combat system is meaningful and requires active participation - a rare trait in MMOs these days. You don't really have to grind out anything to move forward. And, really, the story is pretty decent.

They're complaining about GW:EN because it was $40 and didn't actually expand on much of anything except the titles and Faction points systems.

I'm not quitting because I'm bored with GW:EN, I'm just not playing GW:EN, really. I like the punchout tourney, so I play that, but otherwise I'm just going back to the other campaigns where the game was actually a game.

Quote:

if they're not happy with GW than move on pls and stop creating wining threads every 3 seconds

Yea, right, what kind of screwed up consumer voices their concerns and attempts to achieve improvements in a product when they can just arbitrarily bounce from one company to another desperately hoping somebody manages to meet their expectation despite a complete lack of feedback?

Big_Iron · Sep 06, 2007, 05:38 PM // 17:38

I think many “veterans” have tended to forget that GW:EN is an expansion. If they’re expecting a full blown campaign like the previous editions, they may be disappointed. I don’t think it’s been perfect (i.e. HoM was a disappointment and it seems like Anet dumbed down hero and henchie AI), but IMHO, GW:EN has been an excellent expansion.

Kalendraf · Sep 06, 2007, 05:55 PM // 17:55

As an experienced player, I found the Norn and Charr areas moderately hard, but not overly difficult. However, the Asura regions seem to be magnitudes harder, especially certain spots featuring dinosaurs and updated Tengu. I'm facing constant DP there, and I seriously wonder how brand new players with potentially limited skill sets can handle it.

I'd love to hear a relatively new player's perspective of the Asura areas (assuming you haven't run off screaming first). If you've heavily explored Asuran regions like Alcazia's Tangle, Magus Stones, or Sparkfly Swamp and have battled all the new and exotic forms of dinosaurs, simians, quetzals (tengu), and kraits, please let us know how you're doing. Also, do you feel the treasure dropped here is even remotely in line with the difficulty faced?

Crom The Pale · Sep 06, 2007, 06:02 PM // 18:02

GW:EN is an excellent expansion, the only really sticking point I have with it is that it falls a little short of what I expected for a full lvl 20 player expansion.

In most regards its a great game, lots to do and fun too. However I was expecting to find fewer non-max drops.

I'm not asking nor would I ever want to get an expansion where only rare gold max items drop. It would be nice though if we recieved fewer drops but better quality.

Spending upwards of 1 and a half hours clearing a dungeon where I recieve 35 non max white items, 2 purple and one gold item with non max mods makes me feel like I've been cheated somehow.

I would much rather find 5 max blue and 1-3 max purple items that could be modded and made useable(either by myself or my Heros) rather than filling up my entire chars inventory cappacity with items to sell to the first merchant I find.

The end of dungeon chests are fine, my luck sucks so far with them, all offhands and staffs with non max mods that I sold to merchants. They at least hold the possibility of greater rewards more in line with my efforts in a Master Difficulty dungeon.

iriyabran · Sep 06, 2007, 06:17 PM // 18:17

@Ctb i share the same opinion u stated about guild wars
but i believe the price is worth it i think gw:en is good and i believe anet will add more things in the future just to keep us interested untill gw2
i mean sheesh some people got gw:en armors on the bloody preview

now about feedback i know it is useful but when you see 10 different topics on page one stating the same thing in a wining way (gwen is rip off oh noes giev me my money, gwen is not what i expected, very disappointed with gwen and so on)
i don't call this a usefull feedback :/

Ctb · Sep 06, 2007, 07:10 PM // 19:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by iriyabran

i don't call this a usefull feedback

Well, that's more the "community" here than anything, I think. There's plenty of useful feedback, it's just that GWG is full of petty, mean people and after you've posted here for awhile it's easy to just be bitter and nasty about everything. The regulars here have really made a sort of art form out of degrading anybody that has an opinion they disagree with, regardless of how measured and well-presented it is.

I think there's plenty of good feedback, and if it were posted in a better environment it would probably be much more useful.

Other than that, I disagree with your comments on GW:EN. $40 is a hefty price tag for a computer game, especially a relatively small expansion. I've said it before, I probably wouldn't be so annoyed about it if it were $20 or even $25, but for something that cost 80% of a full chapter, this was kind of lame.

To the point of the thread though, I think if this were the first game, I probably WOULDN'T play. one of the things that thorougly irritated me about LOTRO was the titles, actually. You kill things or perform certain deeds and you gain new skills or certain skills get better. I hated it because to keep up with the game you had to constantly grind up certain title points.

One of the great strengths of Guild Wars - and it really showed in Prophecies where there wasn't a lot of side stuff to play with - was the way that the fire-and-forget combat system actually required a measure of tactic and interaction.

I think Prophecies and Nightfall are excellent starter games, I think Factions and GWEN would have driven me away had I started with one of them instead.

tyche7 · Sep 06, 2007, 07:42 PM // 19:42

I admit I have complained my fair share on this expansion. But, I agree it's mostly b/c I am used to the extremely high standard A-net has set. I LOVE Guild wars (otherwise I wouldn't be here in the first place). And I really like GW:EN overall - I'm just nitpicky becuase so many other things are already at such a high standard and I'm a perfectionist....

Good insight though!

Buster · Sep 06, 2007, 07:45 PM // 19:45

Other than Prophecies, GW:EN is probably the best release they have done. There is just so much to do in GW:EN compared to other campaigns. The Dungeons are great, I love exploring and finding new things not to mention
the nice rewards you get when completing the Dungeons.

The mini games are alot of fun for me. So far I been playing Polymock and I been able to acquire Summon Ruby Djinn and Summon Ice Imp which are actually pretty neat. Currently working on getting rank 6 for Asura and Summon Mursaat. I have yet to do any Norn or Vanguard areas yet but I am doing 1 area at a time before I advance to the next.

Overall it is great and I wish they would have done this type of expansion a long time ago.

Darkpower Alchemist · Sep 06, 2007, 08:44 PM // 20:44

The expansion is awesome. The HoM is its only iffy point, imho. I get to kill Charr, troll around in dugeons, and box dwarves? Sign me up!

Magni The Bison is still kicking my teeth down my throat. It's like SF2 Hyper GW Edition. How long did M.Bison(Vega) kick your teeth in before you finally beat him? Anyway...

Did anyone bring a MM into the first Asuran Dugeon and get all you minions taken by a monster with Verata's Aura? That was scarily priceless. Cynn is actually a real nuker, and monsters spike you-and Murakai...full powerbar=death wipe. I'm loving it, and I have all the chapters. Some people just won't be satisfied with damn good and fun.

greyhawk · Sep 06, 2007, 10:21 PM // 22:21

I am a vet to GW, having picked up proph a week after it came out (trying something new when i was playing NWN) and i didnt like it at first, but the game grew on me. and faction was a great game, nf was meh to me, but Gwen i love it. the dungeons is what this game was really made for, 18 places to test your skills and the skills of friends (ingame or real life) or even play with pugs, the game was short if you only did the prims but leaving all the side quests makes you miss half of the game and a bunch of heroes and exciting places.
personally i give Gwen a 5 out of 10 on armors, for a lot are reskins or mix matches, but i would rather keep the 15k gear i have now, and have 1000times better gear in GW2. but the game play it self i would give a 9 out of 10, keep in mind it is 75% all about the dungeons, 25% prims, which totally explains why the prims was shorter.

yuna of spira · Sep 06, 2007, 10:27 PM // 22:27

I am glad that there are players out there that enjoy the expansion such as the OP, I dont mean to take that away from them in any way.

But I do feel that for myself and logically for other veteran players, the expansion turned out to be a disappointment. For friends of mine who have played guild wars on and off for the past 2 years, these were the concerns and things that werent expanded enough:

Interesting mob builds. It seemed that it many cases the devs, in order to make pve more interesting or harder, merely either raised the level of mobs or gave them unique monster only skills. While this is a seemingly effective way of achieving this goal, it gets quite boring after a while (the last 2 campaigns). I think they did an amazing job with the charr's difficulty: they were able to keep them at level 20 but give them cross-class skills and plenty of healers (charr prophets) that made them harder to kill and stay alive against. The rest of the game didnt have this. The destroyers were pretty weak as all they were was things that took less fire damage and were high level, and the asuran area was the same. Why didnt they the same flair to those other areas? the mantids dont do anything to hurt a party or take any ingenuity to kill....all they have is that stupid self rez, that like brings up only 1-2 of them. A while back anet told the players that they couldnt do the coding for cross-class mobs, but obviously they can (may have been helped along when they did heroes), it was just a lack of effort. So when things like this happen that reduce the fun and uniqueness of certain areas (I pretty much use the same builds and hero/henchie lineup wherever I am), us as veteran players just dont find it fun.

Secondly, anet did an amazing job with skins in the first 3 campaigns. the environment, armor, weapons, and mob figures kept looking different and, may I say, better (animated weapons ftw). But in GW:EN none of that was there. Many of the dungeons have the same layouts as each other.....armor looks incredibly similar to other forms (except the norn, which is nice for that reason), and the weapons just dont have a uniqueness about them. Obviously they were able to come up with new skins for the other campaigns....so why not this one?

Again, I dont mean to take anything away from new players...but as I understood it, the expansion was designed for veteran players. I mean, one of the main draws was that Gwen was back, the Charr were back....and it was supposedly a new area to follow up to gw2 and be able to transfer accomplishments to gw2. By that....its a disappointment when the game becomes pretty much what you've played already. In other campaigns they introduced totally new really hard elite pve areas (urgoz, deep, DoA, UW, FoW) and all of these were very fun, dropped unique stuff, had unique mobs, and took a lot of effort to figure out how to get by the areas. So far I've seen none of that. all of the dungeons can be pretty much heroable, and become EXTREMELY easy when you are playing with real people. Again, if they were able to give us such superior things in past campaigns, why the drop in quality?

Drops, golds, Hard Mode, etc. are other issues plainly stated, but that would go on far too long. Again I think its great that there is an audience out there in guild wars that really appreciates the new expansion. But from the number of concerns and complaints about the new expansion and who is voicing them, I come to the conclusion that veteran players just dont like it. Additionally I come to the conclusion that maybe the devs are trying to get a new crowd of new players to guild wars as they believe that the old ones who are still here playing will continue to play even with half-assed campaigns. So I and many others (whether they post or not) wish to voice how disappointed we are in the campaign and what things could be improved upon, as we have seen in campaigns past that they are willing to change things as time goes on. Personally if after posting on problems throughout these popular forums and not seeing any or much improvements, I will leave the game and not buy gw2. I appreciate what anet has done in the past with the game and think there are great aspects to guild wars that other mmo's dont offer, but when things arent fun anymore as a result of the game's content....I'm fine with doing something else.

sry for long post, just felt like i needed to say all that.

Cyandroid · Sep 06, 2007, 11:32 PM // 23:32

Having started playing GW about 2 months ago, I am also pretty new to the game. I purchased a 3 pack of all the campaigns and started a ranger in Prophecies. I was all the way to Ring of Fire when the preview weekend hit.
I had seen screenies of EOTN ( and the dungeons looked really cool!) and was able to get a preview pack for $1, so I gave it a try...and loved it. I bought the full version the first day it was available. I really do think that the reason most people are complaining is that they're burned-out. They've been playing GW since the beginning, and perhaps have played a bit too much since then. There simply isn't anything that can be added to the game that will be new enough or good enough for these types of players. Personally, I'm having a great time with EOTN and GW in general. Great job with the scenery and graphics on EOTN ArenaNet!

beanerman_99 · Sep 07, 2007, 12:20 AM // 00:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyandroid

Having started playing GW about 2 months ago, I am also pretty new to the game. I purchased a 3 pack of all the campaigns and started a ranger in Prophecies. I was all the way to Ring of Fire when the preview weekend hit.
I had seen screenies of EOTN ( and the dungeons looked really cool!) and was able to get a preview pack for $1, so I gave it a try...and loved it. I bought the full version the first day it was available. I really do think that the reason most people are complaining is that they're burned-out. They've been playing GW since the beginning, and perhaps have played a bit too much since then. There simply isn't anything that can be added to the game that will be new enough or good enough for these types of players. Personally, I'm having a great time with EOTN and GW in general. Great job with the scenery and graphics on EOTN ArenaNet!

In my opinion, you hit the nail on the head here. Some players just play waaaay too much. Not saying there is anything wrong with that and I am not judging those type of players, but you are right, they have played for sooo long and invested countless hours that nothing could ever match or exceed their own personal expectations on what they feel the expansion should be.

Thank you OP for a refreshing view. The "whine about GWEN and Grind" threads are really starting to make me sick. I understand voicing your frustrations BUT do we really need 10 threads started about "How I hate Grinding"?? I really wish the mods would clean up the boards and mrege a lot of the complaining threads.

To the OP: I tip my hate to you. I couldn't even imagine playing GWEN with all the skills and gear a have accumulated over the past 2 years. I think I would run away screaming LOL

My own opinion so far is I am LOVING the expansion. People, its only been out for a couple days. How in the hell can they say they are already bored with it?? It just amazes me. There is a lot to do, don't rush through to the end and then say there is nothing to do.

zanntos · Sep 07, 2007, 01:46 PM // 13:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kalendraf

As an experienced player, I found the Norn and Charr areas moderately hard, but not overly difficult. However, the Asura regions seem to be magnitudes harder, especially certain spots featuring dinosaurs and updated Tengu. I'm facing constant DP there, and I seriously wonder how brand new players with potentially limited skill sets can handle it.

I'd love to hear a relatively new player's perspective of the Asura areas (assuming you haven't run off screaming first). If you've heavily explored Asuran regions like Alcazia's Tangle, Magus Stones, or Sparkfly Swamp and have battled all the new and exotic forms of dinosaurs, simians, quetzals (tengu), and kraits, please let us know how you're doing. Also, do you feel the treasure dropped here is even remotely in line with the difficulty faced?

I've cleared the Norn Area (excluding Frostmaw, i haven't gone back yet) and the Northern Campaign section of the Charr Area without to much difficulty, i'm yet to wander the southern Charr lands. My experience of the Asura territory is still limited to the Verdant Cascades as i explored my way to the Umbral Grotto. But i agree from what i've seen in the Cascades that the difficulty seems to ramp up a bit. It seems much more team balance sensitive, i was running a fairly caster/interrupt heavy group without any decent melee defense spells so the first couple of Jotun Skullcracker 4-5 packs were an experience.

I haven't gone that deep into Asura territory yet mostly because i've been working on Gwen's quests, so i was back in Ascalon stomping more lvl 20 Charr with Gwen, Ogden and Pyre in tow. I also ran several of the Ascalon secondary profession quests and bumped off a few more missions in the Prophecies campaign.

On treasure drops, with my skill set and gear it feels more or less right, particularly Dungeons as the Bosses tend to be a challenge, and locked chests spit up Purples as likely as Golds. Also even when the Gold items are dropping it's as likely as not it will be junk, although having the access to Inscriptions is nice. However, when i'm riding around on my Seige Devourer in the Charr areas that does tend to feel a bit loot heavy, as the Seige Devourer seems to mow through mobs with minimal difficulty. But from a programmers prospective there isn't really an easy way adjust for that without nerfing general drop rates for the entire area since "just add a flag 'if on devourer' to the loot rate" may sound easy but the impact of tracking and checking that and changing the loot system code could be rather ugly. And the other alternative of taking out the Seige Devourers would be bad because i love my "tank mini-game."

@beanerman
The urge to run away screaming does happen occasionally with particularly difficult places such as Frostmaw and those 2 swarm defense missions, but then i view that as things to work toward. They may be kicking my butt at the moment but it forces me to think about my builds and teams more than normal, that which makes me scream gives me motivation to get better.

@Gaile
You're welcome