A Litany of Comparison: GW and World of Warcraft

you're right the guy next to me doing like +2 per rank damage is completely game breaking overpowered.

OH NOEZ HIS URSAN STRIKE DOES 10 MORE DAMAGE THAN MINE HOW EVER WILL I COMPARE

Nope - you just don't understand enough about the game. You don't need max titles or reputation to be effective. I have used regular skills more 99% of GWEN, except where you are given specific skills you must use (which aren't based upon rank at all).

The time to get from level 1 to level 20 is very short. The time or requirements to get max armor and max weapons is also very little. Those are the stats of your character and those are what determine how effective your character is. Except for very specific builds, PvE-only skills would render your character below average in performance.

In WoW, however, you can't really succeed unless you farm or grind for better armor and/or weapons. The only time you *need* to grind in GW is if you are specifically working towards some max title, rank, or other such achievement.

I dont mean anything wrong with it. But the story and or lore doesn't come from WoW it comes from previous games.

I think what Bryant means is that it's origin does not really matter, as the game utilizes it and it adds to the game's depth and immersion. So it's still one of the game's strengths in the end.

I don't think GWs lore is bad though.
The game has quite a lot of lore for being the first by this development team.

Its not either GW lore is better or worse than WoW's lore. WoW's lore is the buildup of other games that makes WoW's lore over via decades, GW's lore is made up from GW, via 2 1\2 years.

The point was that WoW itself, the game itself doesn't have a story but WoW is end result off from all the other stories over the Warcraft series.

I've spent a lot of time in both, maybe an almost equal amount of time. I switched back to playing GW yet again, when EoTN came out.

WoW is a PvE game -- and it's a really good PvE game. It's at its most successful in raiding content (something I don't like at all, but many do). I personally enjoyed the 5 man heroic dungeons the most out of PvE content in that game. Leveling up and seeing the sights and sounds of world PvE content, and doing world pvp on the way, was also a lot of fun.

However, WoW's PvP is AWFUL compared to Guild Wars' -- but since WoW was so much better in every way than the mmos that came before it, and not everyone is aware of Guild Wars, people don't really know any better. There are so many ways to make people lose control of their characters in WoW; stuns, fears, disorients, etc. The concept of "Pre-Prot" doesn't even exist; healing is just a skill-less "bars go up" spam. Mortal strike is effectively unremovable. Permanent passive defense skills, such as soul link, are a bad idea that provide no opportunity for the player to make skilled plays. Paladins have low proc % talents which someone recently accurately described as "Occasionally, skills used against you fail". The rest of the game itself is really well done, but the actual combat mechanics itself are full of horrible horrible design flaws.

WoW is a much more social game than Guild Wars, and each server has its own community. You can walk around town and recognize people and guilds. You can log in, and there is something to do that you can quickly do with others, to advance your character in some way. You can do a dungeon for badges, you can do an AV/AB/EoTS/WSG, you can play the auction house. It really does feel like there is a world going on.

Guild Wars is full of people soloing with their heroes. In fact, Guild Wars doesn't have much of an in-game community at all, and while you might feel that WoW's playerbase are a bunch of immature pre-teens, let me tell you that Guild Wars' in-game community is the worst I have seen in any game, ever. There is absolutely no accountability for being a douche bag in Guild Wars. In WoW, people are immature, but they (and their guilds) do care about their reputation on their server, and people who scam or ninja loot will find themselves kicked out of their guild and ostracized. Overall, the WoW pug experience is far superior to the GW pug experience.

So if WoW has all these positives, why am I playing GW? Well, because Guild Wars' PvP is way more fun than WoW. It's not even close. Playing a monk or a mesmer in GvG (or any format really) has no analog at all in WoW. GvG is way more fun than anything WoW has to offer. Team Arena is vastly vastly superior to WoW arenas, because you can change your team's class makeup at any time without having to spend 6 months leveling and season-3-pvp-gearing a new character. And let's not forget the continual battleground honor grind for all those other pvp slots. Basically, the gear grind and shitty game mechanics make WoW PvP suck donkey balls compared to GW PvP.

Something I really miss, and what I really wish Guild Wars had, was an Alterac Valley equivalent; a 40v40 (or more) battle, preferably with multiple objectives. An epic battle with a lot of people running around, could take 1-4 hours to complete (with people coming and going constantly).

But yeah, it does suck when I log into GW, see that all my friends are offline (everyone seems to quit GW constantly), and 0-2 people in the guild are online (we're a PvP guild not a PvE guild, so we're small), and yeah, there really isn't jack shit that I feel like doing. At those times, I do miss WoW, where I know a shitload of people who still play, and I'd soon be grouped up with them doing *something*, while chatting about random crap on ventrilo.

Gigashadow, I'm not really a fan of WoW PvP either.
WoW and EQ2 PvP, heck almost every online rpg I've played rely on tons of arbitrary calculations innately determining everything down to even if a basic auto-attack lands or not.

They just don't feel like there is as much emphasis on skillful play over buffing up through time and gear in order to get those calculations to stack in your favour.
But such is the nature of pay to play games. You play more and pay more to get higher stats in order to get higher proc, hit, evade, resist rates in order to see improvement in battles.

having played a 70 druid both feral and resto in wow i would have to say that you're compeletely wrong in that respect. even with the best gear feral druids suck verses all classes in arena pvp one of the lowest represented classes in the top brackets in fact ( and these are the best of the best players)

in regards to resto druid being able to heal in pvp and pve while that is true if someone were to fight me in the wilds all by myself i would be screwed, i can't just compeletly change my spec without paying the price in gold and it adds up.

I want to Kill and fight back.

In gw i can change my characters specs and skills in seconds before advanturing out of town for free for as often as i please.


. i can only speak for that class but from what everyone else here is saying that plays more than one class in wow there is a serious issue of class balence. Arena pvp wow's most feature and broascast event is heavy decided on the class you choose before gear before skill.

Actually in Gw for you to be a powerful as the next guy in pvp is as easy as making a pvp only character, which takes 1-5 minutes depending on how you like you hair. Which means its more about skill then time spent grinding of the developers idea of what you should be.

to have a pve character that can pvp aswell only takes 5 hours to make, if your not a new player probably 3 hours; in that time you actually Learn to play you class and create other skill combos within it. This comparison is nothing to the leveling from 1-70.

Now on that issue of grinding what would you rather spend your time on? grinding for epics that will be worthless once the next expansion comes out, or for titles that will be carried over into the next game?

I'd choose the latter for the simple fact that people would remember me for somthing.

Even though it's forgivable in Guild Wars' case, WoW still has all that lore. In that sense (or catagory if you prefer) it is the greater.

If that's all you're getting from raids and the like - grind - then I'd say you could be playing for the wrong reasons.

Well another big point to mention that is ignored so far.

When the next WoW chapter comes out, you get to keep your characters. Guild Wars is dead and Guild Wars 2 is a different game. Kind of what you see is what you get now with Guild Wars.

Have not played WoW, but Guild Wars is an interesting game in that for most people it got less and less fun as each expansion came out. Seems for most people, the peak of Guild Wars would have been Sorrow's Furnace, pre-AoE nerf.

After that "balance" after balance started to reduce the fun in farming, PvP and playing in general.

Guild Wars had a fun run, but in two years I pity people who will try to play it since it will be a graveyard. World of Warcraft unless they do something REALLY stupid, odds are will still have millions paying monthly to be active.


A better comparison now IMO will be GW2 theoretical design and WoW. Seems Guild Wars will be borrowing more from WoW, which may drive more players away. On the flip side, if they can reform PvP and successfully keep it interesting and truly balanced they may get the PvP crowd back that left ages ago. Sadly I see GW2 suffering the same faults as the first one. But at least the community will learn, start early and enjoy what you can before it is nerfed to hell.

Edit: I mistunderstood. You are talking about how Guild Wars will have no new expansions, while WoW will.

I i don't raid anymore, takes way too much time for a struggle art student with plans for world domination.

jokes aside someone before me in this thread nailed it raids are jsut about learning the dance and the drill there is no creativity involved in it.
looking pasts the virtual item rewards i probably dont' have any real life friends that play wow with me, because of no free server x-fers and time zone differences and of course the dreaded monthy fee which scares people away.

I gw i can play with any of my friends anytime they are on no matter the distrinct. best part is we can take breaks! if you had raided in wow you would know that due to respawns on the trash mobs in instances ( or world) you can't stop untill you reach up to X boss and down him. like shade of arran in kara etc. GW mobs stay dead when you kill them and no repair cost for dying too. there are jsut so many things i can go on about.

Zinger: Mass Effect lulz

I downloaded the WoW 10 day trial a week and a half ago, just to see what was so special about WoW. After 10 days I can honestly say that you can't fairly compare WoW and GW. The gameplay, which is all that really matters in the end, is just too different.

My WoW toon, Valaofthefen(I couldn't fit the s at the end), is a Human Rogue. You begin near a church, surrounded by a bunch of non-hostile, low level foes. To make things easy your weapon is already equipped, something ANet needs to adapt in GW2, and your bar is already loaded with your default skills and abilities. For the first few days I sort of foundered, going here and there and mostly exploring. The WoW wiki is extremely inadequate compared to GuildWiki and so I just gave up on some quests. Anyway, it took me a while to realize that its insanely easy to twink your stats and in no time all my stats were 50 plus(First Aid(because I was tired of eating cheese to regen), Crossbow, Sword, Daggers, Unarmed,etc). But once I got to level 13 I plateaued. The areas in WoW are incredibly large and so its hard to find a group. WoW has party search but I guess no one uses it in the noob area. *lol* So quests too hard to solo never got completed. Another thing was that I had to rely on quest rewards to make any $$ and that gets eaten up fast by equipment maintainance. Only humanoids drop money and unless its a boss(this is in low level areas) its like 4 coppers at a time. Also, that Griffin service can get pricey. I'll probably buy WoW, simply because I like the Rogue class, but the emphasis on leveling is kind of annoying. Nothing is more frustrating than having the money to buy something but not being able to get it because you're one level off. If leveling in WoW is faster than it used to be then it needs to be boosted further. I needed to kill certain foes for a quest but people kept running into the area and killing them before I could do anything. So I'd have to wait for the guys to respawn and maybe I'd get 1 or 2 before someone else came and killed the rest again.

Douche bags in GW are usually guildless. My alliance has a zero-tolerance policy for troublemakers and dramu. Anyway...I've found that alot of people in GW don't want help. When I log on I'll ask my guildies if they need help and they always say no. So I just do whatever I feel like doing, there's alot to do with 9 toons, and log off guilt free. I asked didn't I? *lol* Also, most of the people I know who play GW are 18 and over and so they have lives aside from GW. I've hardly met any WoW players over 18. The one I did meet quit and plays GW now.

Vala: The Wowwiki is meant for the lore, not for the quests. Try Wowhead or something similar.

And guildless douchebags are the people who make guilds full of douchebags : \

I have not played WoW. Truth be told I am actually mildly afraid to. Why? MMOs are addictive, and I am weak-willed at resisting gaming addictions.

I got addicted to GW. The only reason I ever escaped the addiction is because ArenaNet literally drove me out with all their bad design ideas. I am worried that WoW would be more fun and so I'd end up getting stuck playing it.

As far as RPGs go, they are neither of them RPGs. RPGs are KotOR. Mass Effect. Baldur's Gate. Neverwinter Nights. Not MMOs, not Final Fantasy, not sandbox games.

I'll stick with Mass Effect, Mask of the Betrayer, and other works of art.

Yeah Wowhead is good. I was trying to think of the one with the rocket at the top. I kept typing in wow rocket into google, but it turns out it was wowhead in the end.

WoW Rocket does have an awesome and nice ring to it, though...

Wrong, the reason WoW is more popular is because of their preivous games, which were popular.

Oh, for the comic, sorry again for the size, you'll just have to save it on your computer, open up and zoom in I guess.

/waits for Zinger to post but most likely won't.

A reasonable comparison overall, but I would just say that this line made me snicker:
I can certainly see where the endgame dungeons are fun for some, but as an adult with kids and friends, all adults, mostly with kids, these endgame dungeons are 100% grind. You move at a snails pace taking each group apart like a calculus equation, then you wait 5 minutes while one guy has to pee, get stuck waiting again while another has to change a diaper, make a mistake, party wipes, and quit because most of the party needs to get some sleep and can't take the 2 hours it's going to take to fight back to where everybody just was.

It's grind because it's no-fun work. If I wanted to spend that much time doing that little, I'd go back to PnP wargames; much more fun, much more social, and just as impossible to really play anymore.

Take the time factor out of it, and I prefer WoW, but add the time factor back in, which you have to as an actual adult, and all those "WoW by a nose" comparisons I can make are meaningless.

That, and as the average character level goes up, it becomes a barrier to entry for new players. All grind MMOs gradually flatten out the leveling curve as the community ages for this reason. If it takes too long to get caught up, why start?

And if people don't see that such games are in fact designed to waste a player's time, then perhaps a less judgemental description would help bring the point home. If they aren't designed to waste your time, they are certainly designed so that any particular list of tasks will take an average player a pre-defined and closely scrutinized amount of real-world time to complete. Such task lists include but are not limited to: leveling, questing, acquiring gear, gathering resources for crafting professions, building wealth, improving travel speed (mounts), getting to and finishing dungeons, and on and on, to include absolutely everything that is generally considered 'playing the game' (i.e. anything but socializing or just goofing off). If you spent time moving up the power curve of the game in some way, there is a formula in a spreadsheet at Blizzard HQ that describes how much you paid for your progress, and how much it cost them to provide you with that sense of accomplishment. For example, they know how much an Epic Mount costs (in RL money), based on the average RL time it takes to acquire one. And you can be sure, they adjust that timescale so that Epic Mounts are a big money maker.

The time it takes to get things done is the primary consideration for makers of P2P MMOs. It's not the only consideration, but it must come first, and it impacts every design decision they make. Its effects show up everywhere from the spawn rates of Peacebloom to the drop rates of the best epic gear.

The thing that's most un-fun about WoW (and other EQ knock offs) is that absolutely every form of progress is a tiny, incremental increase in power. And since the game is built around time, as your power increases, each increment gets smaller and takes longer to achieve. I heard one of the designers on TV the other day talking about the next expansion. He was saying they're introducing a new profession, which I thought at first would have to be pretty interesting. Then when he pointed out that this new profession will be able to create inscriptions which "for example, might add 1% to your crit rate", I just laughed. I mean, I know that sounds sexeh to someone who has spent months eeking out every last drop of dps from their Rogue, but in the end it's completely ridiculous.