Poll: Are you playing Guild Wars 2 or Mists of Pandaria?
- Thread starter LetalisK
- Start date
This is the first WoW expansion that I haven't bought on release day, and I'm kinda proud of it! I remember standing in queues to get my greasy hands on TBC, WotLK and Cataclysm, such exciting times with my friends! Well exciting in TBC/WotLK atleast, I found Cataclysm to be an absolute borefest and almost all my friends quit to play D3/LoL/DotA (sigh). My /played is over 200 days, hehe.
For now I'm playing GW2 for as long as it keeps me entertained...and I foresee hundreds of hours of exciting adventure/gameplay yet to come!
I have absolutely nothing against MoP as an expansion, this isn't stemming from some kind of Panda/Blizzard-hate. I just needed a breath of fresh air (or more like an entire atmosphere of fresh air) and a break from the subscription model.
For now I'm playing GW2 for as long as it keeps me entertained...and I foresee hundreds of hours of exciting adventure/gameplay yet to come!
I have absolutely nothing against MoP as an expansion, this isn't stemming from some kind of Panda/Blizzard-hate. I just needed a breath of fresh air (or more like an entire atmosphere of fresh air) and a break from the subscription model.
Guild Wars 2.
I've liked WoW before, I thought it was pretty engaging at one point. I've always had some issues with it but at a time I thought repetetive grinding, arbitrary questing mechanics and the whole experience (especially the dungeons and the raids) feeling like a historical reenactment where the player has as little input and presence as possible (rather than a huge epic story it purports to being) were things I was just going to have to live with if I wanted to play MMOs.
I might be getting Mists of Pandaria at some point anyway, just to check it out, but I'm at best lukewarm about WoW nowadays. It's a rotting house that Blizzard tries to fix by painting it over until there's more paint than wood. As the best example of this I still hold 'resilience', the PvP stat that they had to implement because of the disparity between player's health pool and the amount of damage they're doing. It's a patchwork solution, they should have done a complete overhaul of the system when they noticed it rather than implementing a stat that makes PvPing feel incredibly exclusive. Especially at early levels if you don't have the snazzy heirlooms.
And daily quests were a horrible, horrible idea to begin with, the logic behind forcing players to do even MORE of them is incomprehensible.
Other MMOs have given a fair try to fixing those issues but it's Guild Wars 2 that finally did so many things right that it mystifies me why anyone would still prefer WoW's system. Especially now since everything I've read of MoP seems to suggest Blizzard is merely wallowing in the above problems instead of trying to fix them.
Guild Wars 2 has its own issues, of course. I'm somewhat concerned about the end game, for one. Making all high-level gear of equal value and thus allowing the players to choose their own path to acquiring it is a sound move, but I'm not sure what you're supposed to be doing once you complete your gear. Besides PvPing, which is by itself pretty fun, but I do hate the fact that the World versus World incurs repair costs. If your realm isn't doing very good and you're still trying to build siege weapons and stuff, it's very easy to end up losing money in it.
The personal story is rather trite, as some have mentioned. It never got painful for me to play through but its biggest problem is that it's very short and spread too thin, trying to last through levels 1-80. When the suggested level for continuing your story suddenly jumps five levels ahead of you and you have to go do something else for a long time to catch up, it loses urgency somewhat. To raise the stakes, it makes a big deal of some characters dying along the way but they don't get enough screen time to be well-characterized, so the effect is lost. Making the primary antagonists feel like destructive, distant, inexorable forces of nature rather than moustache-twirling villains is an interesting choice, but I didn't even know what Zhaitan looked like until the very last quest.
Also the Destiny's Edge plot line commits the cardinal sin of relying too much on the extraneous novels, I feel.
Still, an MMO where even the levelling process doesn't bore me after the first character must be doing something right.
PS: I love jumping puzzles!
I've liked WoW before, I thought it was pretty engaging at one point. I've always had some issues with it but at a time I thought repetetive grinding, arbitrary questing mechanics and the whole experience (especially the dungeons and the raids) feeling like a historical reenactment where the player has as little input and presence as possible (rather than a huge epic story it purports to being) were things I was just going to have to live with if I wanted to play MMOs.
I might be getting Mists of Pandaria at some point anyway, just to check it out, but I'm at best lukewarm about WoW nowadays. It's a rotting house that Blizzard tries to fix by painting it over until there's more paint than wood. As the best example of this I still hold 'resilience', the PvP stat that they had to implement because of the disparity between player's health pool and the amount of damage they're doing. It's a patchwork solution, they should have done a complete overhaul of the system when they noticed it rather than implementing a stat that makes PvPing feel incredibly exclusive. Especially at early levels if you don't have the snazzy heirlooms.
And daily quests were a horrible, horrible idea to begin with, the logic behind forcing players to do even MORE of them is incomprehensible.
Other MMOs have given a fair try to fixing those issues but it's Guild Wars 2 that finally did so many things right that it mystifies me why anyone would still prefer WoW's system. Especially now since everything I've read of MoP seems to suggest Blizzard is merely wallowing in the above problems instead of trying to fix them.
Guild Wars 2 has its own issues, of course. I'm somewhat concerned about the end game, for one. Making all high-level gear of equal value and thus allowing the players to choose their own path to acquiring it is a sound move, but I'm not sure what you're supposed to be doing once you complete your gear. Besides PvPing, which is by itself pretty fun, but I do hate the fact that the World versus World incurs repair costs. If your realm isn't doing very good and you're still trying to build siege weapons and stuff, it's very easy to end up losing money in it.
The personal story is rather trite, as some have mentioned. It never got painful for me to play through but its biggest problem is that it's very short and spread too thin, trying to last through levels 1-80. When the suggested level for continuing your story suddenly jumps five levels ahead of you and you have to go do something else for a long time to catch up, it loses urgency somewhat. To raise the stakes, it makes a big deal of some characters dying along the way but they don't get enough screen time to be well-characterized, so the effect is lost. Making the primary antagonists feel like destructive, distant, inexorable forces of nature rather than moustache-twirling villains is an interesting choice, but I didn't even know what Zhaitan looked like until the very last quest.
Also the Destiny's Edge plot line commits the cardinal sin of relying too much on the extraneous novels, I feel.
Still, an MMO where even the levelling process doesn't bore me after the first character must be doing something right.
PS: I love jumping puzzles!
How is the Riders of Rohan expansion pack anyways?Mr Cwtchy said:
I have such a love affair with LotRO.
I'm playing GW2. I quit WoW a while back because I had nothing to do. PvE was super easy and I was being let down by people who still after 6 years don't know that fire has a 90% chance of being bad if you stand in it. On the PvP side of things I loved the game but cataclysm broke 2v2 with the healing rework imo. Not that it matters, the main bracket is 3v3 right? Well yeah but my friends quit and my realm (Khadgar EU) sucks uber hard at pvp. So I quit.
Guild Wars 2 looks really interesting and there are a few innovations here and there, and so far I've had fun playing it.
Guild Wars 2 looks really interesting and there are a few innovations here and there, and so far I've had fun playing it.
Neither! I have a life 
But GW2 is something I would love to get into once I get my life's priority sorted out.
But GW2 is something I would love to get into once I get my life's priority sorted out.
Simple, all the bosses have directional cleave/aoe/ranged-type abilities that you need to reflexively (or proactively) dodge/avoid. Since there is no tank/threat-table the boss will take turns randomly attacking any player. The group must use their buff/support/healing abilities (everyone has some sort of heal/support), CC abilities and work together to help each other bring down the target. The priority is avoiding incoming damage, throwing out CC/support and ressing your friends if they've been downed (because they stuffed up or got unlucky).LetalisK said:
A typical 5man encounter will include:
> Watching animations/when things are coming toward you
> Reacting to stuff (with dodge) or counter-abilities
> Throwing out buff/heal/support abilities to heal up the damage that people failed to avoid
> Using your CC abilities to knockdown/blind/daze/etc the boss/mobs
> Ressing people who have been downed (this takes priority over anything else)
> Making sure atleast 1 person remains alive to stop the boss from resetting (if you die you can run back to the fight while it's still happening)
> And finally, dealing damage to the target.
Yes, it can get that complicated, making many of the dungeons FUCKING HARD on explorable mode...far harder than any 5man heroic WoW has done to date, and I've pretty done all of them since the beginning.
The room for error is small, but overall they're still fun and rewarding if you've got a good group. Since there is no dedicated tank/healer you can use any group setup you want, although a more varied group is better rewarded since every class has small weakness/strengths. Ultimately everybody is responsible for their own survivability, everyone is a healer/tank/dps. Some classes can obviously defend better than others, but it all balances out.
Neither, no real time. Uni is starting up again, and most of my time spent not at uni is with my housemates or going out, only have about an hour at the start and sometimes end of the day to use the interwebs. Would definately get GW2 over WoW if i had the choice though.
...What? It WILL make the dungeons impossible for 95% of PuGs, nothing short of properly organized groups (using voicechat or something) with awesome timing and almost zero errors will make it through.Norrdicus said:
I fear ANet's "fix" may involve adding doors/gates to boss zones which close once the fight starts (what WoW does basically).
*scared now*
I bias to say Guild Wars 2 since I'm playing that game right now. It's mainly because there's no subscriptions and I have read plenty of bad things about WOW (like it's too additve) that made me avoid it like the plague.
![Violator[xL]](https://eg-forums-escapist-data.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/data/avatars/l/24/24558.jpg?1620210777){kind=avatar}
GW2, just because I was really into Guildwars I thought this sequel would be just as good or better. Still haven't figured that out, but it's a very decent game up to now!
Never played WoW, so can't really judge it. And I won't.
Never played WoW, so can't really judge it. And I won't.
Well hey, maybe they will resort to the carrot instead of the stick?Tippy said:
Receive no equipment damage if you teleport to a waypoint once the entire party is dead at the same time?
Edit: Also remember, it could be worse. If you wiped once in Guild Wars 1 dungeon, you had to restart the whoooooooooooole thing
