DISCLAIMER: This is rather long and pretty much me ranting about MMOs and how I want one special on to succeed. To save you time, I may suggestion looking for a 10 reasons to play Guild Wars 2 then read my walls of text.
Currently, the only "traditional" MMO I play is Dungeons and Dragon Online, but APB and Spiral Knights are still in there from time to time. Before that, I played a good handful of F2P MMOs, may they be good or bad. I always had this opinion, like any free-to-play MMO player that World of Warcraft was a terrible game. I had that belief up until I started playing Champions Online...then after losing fate in said Champions Online, I went to play Legit WoW with my friend. That was fun, getting to play a game with my friend. I leveled up a tank, she leveled up a healer and we got to level 80 and did raids with her guild. It took us a month or two of this to realize how boring things were and that they were just chores, rather than awesome gaming, which then had us moving to Guild Wars.
Here is where I am going to bring out an argument so to speak: I had more fun playing Guild Wars, a one time payment MMO with expansions that must be purchased than in the MMO Juggernaut that is WoW. Obviously, you can expect my excitement to Guild Wars 2, and in all honesty, I want to see this game succeed. I want to see Arenanet craft this masterpiece they have planned. World of Warcraft is not a bad game, it's a wonderful game, I wouldn't have played it for so long if it wasn't. But yet, it is nothing more than a milestone in MMOs. Many bad aspects of it are simply there because of it's age. Back in 2004, we didn't have the coding to make a character actually dodge an attack, it had to be given by chance through a stat and talent system, or for one's character's arrows to shoot through another character's wall of fire to create flaming arrows.
The simple fact is this: The game is not going to give up on all the promises it has already made. The combat is there already, except for the last class, all the classes are there and balanced, the world has been beautifully crafted, the PVP is following Guild Wars' PVP by nerfing all the characters to max level in structured PVP and giving them all set equipment, thus eliminating the problem of balance between PVE and PVP. They have built and implemented into the game their dynamic quest system; no NPCs with linear quests everyone has played in the exact same order, but quests that will happen at any given time to you and anyone in the area. If Guild Wars 2 doesn't succeed it's going to be a sad day for many fans.
The biggest problem to me is this: Guild Wars 2 has no subscription fee. There are three responses I get from this when I tell people that: they scream with glee that there is something so wonderful that is so affordable, they are spectacle but still want to give the game a chance, or they out right ignore the game for not being so expensive. Guild Wars 2 follows Guild Wars' method of income: Wonderful expansions that improve on content as well as gameplay and are priced reasonably, and an in game store that does not sell anything game changing, only nik-naks such as a stone to keep the appearance of equipment you like. Subscriptions are not necessary for MMOs like they were in the 90's or early 2000's. The price that NCSoft; the publishers behind Aion, Linage 2, Guild Wars and City of Heroes; pays for all their MMO servers can be payed alone through one games subscription fee and still have money left over for development.
Well if the money isn't going to servers, is it going to content? Well that means that along with the price to purchase your expansion in WoW, you're paying $180 a year for that as well. In the time Guild Wars released all their expansions before the team wanted to work on the genre defying Guild Wars 2, WoW only had Burning Crusade released, so probably not. If anyone can justify both a subscription and purchasing expansion packs for the same game, I'd be glad to hear it because right now, having both does not seem necessary.
In short: As a fan of the first game, I'll be getting Guild Wars 2. As a gamer in general, I'll be getting Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 is probably going to be the first and only game I have ever considered purchasing the collector's edition or deluxe edition, much less pre-order it.
Currently, the only "traditional" MMO I play is Dungeons and Dragon Online, but APB and Spiral Knights are still in there from time to time. Before that, I played a good handful of F2P MMOs, may they be good or bad. I always had this opinion, like any free-to-play MMO player that World of Warcraft was a terrible game. I had that belief up until I started playing Champions Online...then after losing fate in said Champions Online, I went to play Legit WoW with my friend. That was fun, getting to play a game with my friend. I leveled up a tank, she leveled up a healer and we got to level 80 and did raids with her guild. It took us a month or two of this to realize how boring things were and that they were just chores, rather than awesome gaming, which then had us moving to Guild Wars.
Here is where I am going to bring out an argument so to speak: I had more fun playing Guild Wars, a one time payment MMO with expansions that must be purchased than in the MMO Juggernaut that is WoW. Obviously, you can expect my excitement to Guild Wars 2, and in all honesty, I want to see this game succeed. I want to see Arenanet craft this masterpiece they have planned. World of Warcraft is not a bad game, it's a wonderful game, I wouldn't have played it for so long if it wasn't. But yet, it is nothing more than a milestone in MMOs. Many bad aspects of it are simply there because of it's age. Back in 2004, we didn't have the coding to make a character actually dodge an attack, it had to be given by chance through a stat and talent system, or for one's character's arrows to shoot through another character's wall of fire to create flaming arrows.
The simple fact is this: The game is not going to give up on all the promises it has already made. The combat is there already, except for the last class, all the classes are there and balanced, the world has been beautifully crafted, the PVP is following Guild Wars' PVP by nerfing all the characters to max level in structured PVP and giving them all set equipment, thus eliminating the problem of balance between PVE and PVP. They have built and implemented into the game their dynamic quest system; no NPCs with linear quests everyone has played in the exact same order, but quests that will happen at any given time to you and anyone in the area. If Guild Wars 2 doesn't succeed it's going to be a sad day for many fans.
The biggest problem to me is this: Guild Wars 2 has no subscription fee. There are three responses I get from this when I tell people that: they scream with glee that there is something so wonderful that is so affordable, they are spectacle but still want to give the game a chance, or they out right ignore the game for not being so expensive. Guild Wars 2 follows Guild Wars' method of income: Wonderful expansions that improve on content as well as gameplay and are priced reasonably, and an in game store that does not sell anything game changing, only nik-naks such as a stone to keep the appearance of equipment you like. Subscriptions are not necessary for MMOs like they were in the 90's or early 2000's. The price that NCSoft; the publishers behind Aion, Linage 2, Guild Wars and City of Heroes; pays for all their MMO servers can be payed alone through one games subscription fee and still have money left over for development.
Well if the money isn't going to servers, is it going to content? Well that means that along with the price to purchase your expansion in WoW, you're paying $180 a year for that as well. In the time Guild Wars released all their expansions before the team wanted to work on the genre defying Guild Wars 2, WoW only had Burning Crusade released, so probably not. If anyone can justify both a subscription and purchasing expansion packs for the same game, I'd be glad to hear it because right now, having both does not seem necessary.
In short: As a fan of the first game, I'll be getting Guild Wars 2. As a gamer in general, I'll be getting Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 is probably going to be the first and only game I have ever considered purchasing the collector's edition or deluxe edition, much less pre-order it.