Poll: Guild Wars 2 compared to World of Warcraft

[endtherapture]

Wow has gone stale and boring, GW2 is just... It is a single-player game in MMO environment. Also the fighting in GW2 dynamic, but homogenic, it is all the same, every class does the same with basic variation on range and attack type. Otherwise it is the same dance without even slightest rubatto in between. Use one of your 5 attacks, dodge, knockback or dodge. Then there are boss fights that are the same but it is 100 people doing it. No healers, tanks, nukers... It is just everyone doing the same dance.
When in wow you at least need 3 skill sets do something.

I prefer WoW - if there would be something to do.

I have to disagree here.

I've been playing a Warrior and a Mesmer. My warrior is straight up, tanky and DPS.

Mesmer requires a lot of thinking and I can go for a condition based build or just a straight damage one.

Guardians are sought after in dungeons for their abilities to buff other players up, Thieves are great in WvW and Mesmers are sought after in PvP.

Elementalists also have tons of skills.

 

[Silly Hats]

I've sunk about 3000+ hours of Guildwars 1, I don't think that I could have been more disappointed by GW2. I got about 250h which is impressive for a standard game, though for a MMO it falls short. It also seems like I have to install a rather large patch every time I want to play when I go to log in 1-2 a month, regardless if its new content I don't want it.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Nobody wants to talk? Awwwww

Sorry. I've played both games, but discussing the advantages of either game will only end up in discussing the current state of MMOs in general and all that I don't like about them, and I don't have the time for that right now.

I've no intention to play either game again in the future, but let me put it this way: You'd have to pay me a lot more money to make me play WoW again.

One thing I do want to mention though, since no one else did (if yes, my apologies for missing): Guild Wars 2 has a really beautiful art style in menus, loading screens and such. A pity that you don't see this style that often in the actual game world.

 

[Jynthor]

Guild Wars 2 is one of the most repetitive games I've ever played, needless to say that got boring fast. I seriously fail to see how it is winning in the poll. The character creation is the best part of the whole game.

 

[PH3NOmenon]

There's so many falsehoods in this thread it's almost cringe-worthy. What's more, hardly anyone touches on the biggest issue of all: time investment. (Full disclosure, Played WoW since beta, played GW2 since its release, main reason for not playing WoW any more is because I feel Blizzard is not providing £12 worth of content to me every month).

If you want to play WoW and do anything of import, you'll need to raid two or three times a week. Ideally, you'll never miss a week and you should be earning your weekly points so you don't fall behind on gear. Also, the gear you earn now will be irrelevant when the next tier of content is released. Dailies are less of an issue but Blizzard still focuses their daily quests in a single area, forcing you to look at the same scenery for days on end.

Read: You must play consistently and you must play a lot. Probably doing the same thing multiple times.

GW2 on the other hand does not require you to log in daily. Heck, a couple of weeks ago a buddy, who hadn't touched the game since 2 weeks after release, logged back in. We ran fractals together. We both got rewards we could use. We both got our daily fractal achievement done. We then checked out the new storyline: new content for the both of us. We went to a random zone and did the hearts there: we helped the Seraph retake some villages and assault some others, which ended up with a champion mob. That finished off the entire daily rewards thing and the next day, I'll get the daily reward by doing none of the things I described above.

Read: GW2 is less stringent about its requirements. It just lets you have fun in its world. You probably never have to do the same thing twice.



But there's downsides to that too. If you want to play as efficiently as possible in GW2, you're going to end up in the champion farming circuit and that just bores me to tears. In my opinion, that's the "wrong" way to play GW2, but when the wrong way to play is the most efficient to earn loot and karma... well... there's a bit of a problem.

GW2 does not have any what we regularly consider as real end-game. Not really. The fractals, sort of, but that's about it. But then, the it doesn't really need one. Levelling is genuinely fun and the downscaling means levelling content never becomes useless. Every week, me and my gf fire up the game and do stuff with those people who quit WoW from our old guild. There's still dungeon-paths we haven't done yet and new content gets added every month.

GW2 PvE is the more casual of the two when you define casual as "infrequent player", rather than the "moron" definition the WoW community uses the handle for. And that's a good thing across the board. Especially when you're in a point in your life when games should be fun and relaxing, rather than a second job. The problem only arises when you take something that's meant to be casual and start to take it overly serious. Then it breaks.

TL;DR I've played GW2 roughly once a week for almost a year now, I'm still doing new things every week. WoW can't match that.

 

[SecondPrize]

I had a lot of fun playing a WoW which no longer exists during TBC. I didn't make it far at all with GW2, it seemed to me like they took the admittedly already bad mmo questing and cut out any attempt at providing context for your actions, leaving only the kill x and collect x bits. Then I got to the first story cut scene with more than 2 people talking and burst out laughing.

 

[Chairman Miaow]

I prefer GW2 over WoW hands down, although I'm not gonna go too far into it since I prefer the original GW over GW2, and you don't want to get me started on that...

Actually, since I never played the original I wouldn't mind hearing about how Guild Wars compares with it's sequel if you felt like going into some detail about it.

Well, for starters I'd like to say that while I'm not too much of a fan of GW2, it's easily the best normal(read: wow-like) MMO I've played, but that's just another reason for my dislike of it.
GW was different, not really an MMO in the traditional sense(some argue it's not an MMO at all, and it's hard to disagree), and I love the way the leveling system works in GW. Getting to 20, which is max, can be done in a day with a Factions character, and that's where the fun starts. At 20 you finally have access to all the attribute points and can start throwing together your own builds, something you can't really do in GW2. Yes, you can fiddle with utility skills and traits, but it's not the same. The way GW2 is set up means that all chars will play pretty much the same.
In GW you have secondary professions, I can take a monk and use daggers and assassin skills, I can make a sword-wielding ritualist able to go toe-to-toe with warriors in CM PvP. GW2 forces you to pretty much play cookie cutter arr day erry day, no exciting variation. The party system in GW also meant you could come up with some funky combos, in GW2 the most you get is synergies or whatever they call it, which is random and unreliable at best, and doesn't require much coordination anyway because of all the spam.
Or, you can go a bit bonkers and try to make your own solo builds, and there's also room for farming. I know, there are arguments both for and against farming, but it's a nice and convenient way to make cash, whereas in GW2 the only way you can farm is by doing more of the same you're doing all the time anyway, you can't just walk up to a bunch of raptors or vaettir and make them all go kaboom.

This is just a rambly, not very well thought out rant on the differences between the games as I see them. I've got a fair amount of game time in GW2, and just about 10x more in GW(not much in WoW, got to level 24 or so), so if you want to discuss it even further then feel free to pm me, it's easier to put words to it in a conversation with more specific questions and whatnot.

I'm with this guy. Although I am enjoying GW2 I loved GW so much more. One of my most hilarious moments in gaming was my guild playing some pvp coming up against an 8 man monk/necromancer team. They did no damage at all, but they just wouldn't die ever, and ever so slowly chipped our health down. People think because you only have 8 skills at once it's less complicated, but I think that makes it all the more nuanced and interesting. You really have to pick your skills properly.

 

[SinisterGehe]

Wow has gone stale and boring, GW2 is just... It is a single-player game in MMO environment. Also the fighting in GW2 dynamic, but homogenic, it is all the same, every class does the same with basic variation on range and attack type. Otherwise it is the same dance without even slightest rubatto in between. Use one of your 5 attacks, dodge, knockback or dodge. Then there are boss fights that are the same but it is 100 people doing it. No healers, tanks, nukers... It is just everyone doing the same dance.
When in wow you at least need 3 skill sets do something.

I prefer WoW - if there would be something to do.

I have to disagree here.

I've been playing a Warrior and a Mesmer. My warrior is straight up, tanky and DPS.

Mesmer requires a lot of thinking and I can go for a condition based build or just a straight damage one.

Guardians are sought after in dungeons for their abilities to buff other players up, Thieves are great in WvW and Mesmers are sought after in PvP.

Elementalists also have tons of skills.

Issues are there are the 5 primary's and the 5 with long cooldown.
But at the end of the day with my 3 characters I could kill everything that was soloable and there is no trinity to create any form of tactical planning of personal skill required since even according to dev.s Everyone can do everything.

 

[endtherapture]

Wow has gone stale and boring, GW2 is just... It is a single-player game in MMO environment. Also the fighting in GW2 dynamic, but homogenic, it is all the same, every class does the same with basic variation on range and attack type. Otherwise it is the same dance without even slightest rubatto in between. Use one of your 5 attacks, dodge, knockback or dodge. Then there are boss fights that are the same but it is 100 people doing it. No healers, tanks, nukers... It is just everyone doing the same dance.
When in wow you at least need 3 skill sets do something.

I prefer WoW - if there would be something to do.

I have to disagree here.

I've been playing a Warrior and a Mesmer. My warrior is straight up, tanky and DPS.

Mesmer requires a lot of thinking and I can go for a condition based build or just a straight damage one.

Guardians are sought after in dungeons for their abilities to buff other players up, Thieves are great in WvW and Mesmers are sought after in PvP.

Elementalists also have tons of skills.

It's better than locking people out of the content though. It's so frustrating knowing I'll never be able to do some areas in Orr because no one goes there and it isn't profitable. There's a lot of difficulty tweaking that needs to go on to make stuff fun, soloable and still challenging but not impossible or having to abuse exploits.

Either way, Mesmers and Elementalists have tons of skills. Roll an elementalist and you'll see what I mean, 4 different elements to cast and use, with 5 skills each means 20 skills per weapon, plus slot skills, so you have 25 all on accessible cooldowns.

Issues are there are the 5 primary's and the 5 with long cooldown.
But at the end of the day with my 3 characters I could kill everything that was soloable and there is no trinity to create any form of tactical planning of personal skill required since even according to dev.s Everyone can do everything.

 

[Tragedy's Rebellion]

Snip

Sure, I'll bite. The thing is with so little healing in the game it just boils down to whoever can burst the most damage in as little time as possible. (I'm talking strictly PvP, PvE is a joke in GW2) The 3 utility slots you can change gives you very, very little variety and most skills being so situational as to be useless 99% of the time. That still steers you towards 1 or 2 skills that can be used in multiple situations and that's it. There is little room for tactics, because skills are executed so fast and you have no access to casting bars that interrupting becomes almost impossible, you die way too fast if there is more than 1 person on you with no way out after you blow the one cd you have, the classes feel interchangeable with only cosmetic effects between them all (the "special resources" each class has doesn't alleviate this problem in the slightest). There is no potential for team work because classes rarely seem to complement each other and even worse sometimes they hinder your efforts like the 25 bleed cap that pushes condition necromancers down if there is even 1 more class around that can inflict bleeds. The trait system is garbage, because it shoehorns you into one specific playstyle because the other traits are horrible, situational or buggy.

Being able to move while casting isn't the Second Coming, it just allows you to move while casting. It adds little in the way of positioning or mobility. The PvP maps have all the same objectives while other objectives don't seem to work because of the combat system being so burst focused. Conditions being a mild nuisence than a viable and greatly appreciated tactic, again relegating the combat to pure damage. Some classes being infinitely greater than others because of this. The absence of mana just cements the burst aspect. etc etc etc. It's just a poorly thought-out system, unable to elevate PvP to the heights of GW1.

 

[Yuuki]

GW2 doesn't compare to WoW.

Both games are built fundamentally differently from ground-up, both approach PvP/PvE/Combat/etc differently. Both games have some amazing strengths, neither can claim to be superior to the other.

Apples to oranges.

I fell lost when playing GW2 is like everybody just rushes and beats the hell out of everybody else/mobs .... I feel that roles are needed in mmorpg Imho.

You do have roles though in endgame dungeons though, it's just that they are a lot less arbitrary/required. There are definite advantages to having your group comprised of 2-3 tank/support builds and 1-2 damage-heavy builds. A lot of the damage in GW2 is based on line-of-sight, e.g. if you stand behind someone they will be taking most of the damage instead of you.

The fact that everyone is responsible for evading/avoiding/blocking damage on their own (and healing themselves to an extent) means that the overall difficulty of GW2 dungeons can be tweaked to be vastly harder than what WoW has.

 

[SinisterGehe]

Wow has gone stale and boring, GW2 is just... It is a single-player game in MMO environment. Also the fighting in GW2 dynamic, but homogenic, it is all the same, every class does the same with basic variation on range and attack type. Otherwise it is the same dance without even slightest rubatto in between. Use one of your 5 attacks, dodge, knockback or dodge. Then there are boss fights that are the same but it is 100 people doing it. No healers, tanks, nukers... It is just everyone doing the same dance.
When in wow you at least need 3 skill sets do something.

I prefer WoW - if there would be something to do.

I have to disagree here.

I've been playing a Warrior and a Mesmer. My warrior is straight up, tanky and DPS.

Mesmer requires a lot of thinking and I can go for a condition based build or just a straight damage one.

Guardians are sought after in dungeons for their abilities to buff other players up, Thieves are great in WvW and Mesmers are sought after in PvP.

Elementalists also have tons of skills.

It's better than locking people out of the content though. It's so frustrating knowing I'll never be able to do some areas in Orr because no one goes there and it isn't profitable. There's a lot of difficulty tweaking that needs to go on to make stuff fun, soloable and still challenging but not impossible or having to abuse exploits.

Either way, Mesmers and Elementalists have tons of skills. Roll an elementalist and you'll see what I mean, 4 different elements to cast and use, with 5 skills each means 20 skills per weapon, plus slot skills, so you have 25 all on accessible cooldowns.

Issues are there are the 5 primary's and the 5 with long cooldown.
But at the end of the day with my 3 characters I could kill everything that was soloable and there is no trinity to create any form of tactical planning of personal skill required since even according to dev.s Everyone can do everything.

Why should everyone get the same experience? Who said that everyone is equal to get everything. Work for your reward.
So this discussion boils down to the usual "Is everyone entitled to the same content".

 

[endtherapture]

Wow has gone stale and boring, GW2 is just... It is a single-player game in MMO environment. Also the fighting in GW2 dynamic, but homogenic, it is all the same, every class does the same with basic variation on range and attack type. Otherwise it is the same dance without even slightest rubatto in between. Use one of your 5 attacks, dodge, knockback or dodge. Then there are boss fights that are the same but it is 100 people doing it. No healers, tanks, nukers... It is just everyone doing the same dance.
When in wow you at least need 3 skill sets do something.

I prefer WoW - if there would be something to do.

I have to disagree here.

I've been playing a Warrior and a Mesmer. My warrior is straight up, tanky and DPS.

Mesmer requires a lot of thinking and I can go for a condition based build or just a straight damage one.

Guardians are sought after in dungeons for their abilities to buff other players up, Thieves are great in WvW and Mesmers are sought after in PvP.

Elementalists also have tons of skills.

It's better than locking people out of the content though. It's so frustrating knowing I'll never be able to do some areas in Orr because no one goes there and it isn't profitable. There's a lot of difficulty tweaking that needs to go on to make stuff fun, soloable and still challenging but not impossible or having to abuse exploits.

Either way, Mesmers and Elementalists have tons of skills. Roll an elementalist and you'll see what I mean, 4 different elements to cast and use, with 5 skills each means 20 skills per weapon, plus slot skills, so you have 25 all on accessible cooldowns.

Issues are there are the 5 primary's and the 5 with long cooldown.
But at the end of the day with my 3 characters I could kill everything that was soloable and there is no trinity to create any form of tactical planning of personal skill required since even according to dev.s Everyone can do everything.

Why should everyone get the same experience? Who said that everyone is equal to get everything. Work for your reward.
So this discussion boils down to the usual "Is everyone entitled to the same content".

How can you work for a reward when loads of the content is IMPOSSIBLE to be solo'd? People aren't going to 2 areas of Orr in the game except for map completion because the content is challenging, even for massive zergs of people, and not terribly profitable, because it's more profitable to go to Cursed Shore and zerg champions.

This means, me, a latecomer to Orr, will never be able to play this content. Ever. It simply won't happen. I'm all for letting peoples different choices in storyline etc. pan out differently but when general PvE content is impossible because no one is in an area then that is a problem.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Why is this even a poll? I could maybe get behind comparing Star Wars to WoW but not GW 2 as they are completely different games as far as MMOs are concerned. Same as you can't compared GW 1 to 2 or to take an example from another genre DotA2 to LoL. They take two completely different view on how the genre is supposed to work.

 

[Silvanus]

How can you work for a reward when loads of the content is IMPOSSIBLE to be solo'd? People aren't going to 2 areas of Orr in the game except for map completion because the content is challenging, even for massive zergs of people, and not terribly profitable, because it's more profitable to go to Cursed Shore and zerg champions.

This means, me, a latecomer to Orr, will never be able to play this content. Ever. It simply won't happen. I'm all for letting peoples different choices in storyline etc. pan out differently but when general PvE content is impossible because no one is in an area then that is a problem.

I'm not entirely sure where this experience is coming from. It's still entirely possible to head to Straits of Devastation and Malchor's Leap and get the content there done.

People still head there for the Temple events, and even when those aren't on, you can join a Guild and coordinate. Failing that, those areas aren't impossible to solo.

Don't get me wrong; I agree that some areas have become too empty (and the frequent Living Story releases, as much as I enjoy them, do not help in this regard). But to say you can "never be able to play this content" is not accurate. It's perfectly possible. I still do stuff in those areas, solo and with others.

 

[Abomination]

World of Warcraft is far more refined and progression is something you can "feel" occurring. Boss fights are more than just whittling down a health bar.

Guild Wars II has "diminishing returns" on loot and farming. The moment I found that out I stopped playing because who are they to dictate how much my time is worth?

I don't play either but I feel myself longing for the days I played WoW and how everything made so much sense and the role I played was transparent. I do not have that same feeling of nostalgia for Guild Wars II.

The thing Guild Wars II did was the events and the questing, that was fun... but it's all there really was. Instances are just incredible grinds and the bosses are just massive health pools.

Despite quitting World of Warcraft near the end of Cataclysm I still feel it is superior to Guild Wars II.

 

[endtherapture]

How can you work for a reward when loads of the content is IMPOSSIBLE to be solo'd? People aren't going to 2 areas of Orr in the game except for map completion because the content is challenging, even for massive zergs of people, and not terribly profitable, because it's more profitable to go to Cursed Shore and zerg champions.

This means, me, a latecomer to Orr, will never be able to play this content. Ever. It simply won't happen. I'm all for letting peoples different choices in storyline etc. pan out differently but when general PvE content is impossible because no one is in an area then that is a problem.

I'm not entirely sure where this experience is coming from. It's still entirely possible to head to Straits of Devastation and Malchor's Leap and get the content there done.

People still head there for the Temple events, and even when those aren't on, you can join a Guild and coordinate. Failing that, those areas aren't impossible to solo.

Don't get me wrong; I agree that some areas have become too empty (and the frequent Living Story releases, as much as I enjoy them, do not help in this regard). But to say you can "never be able to play this content" is not accurate. It's perfectly possible. I still do stuff in those areas, solo and with others.

A lot of the content is impossible regarding events. I mean you can kite enemies and get all the skill points, or just run through the areas getting all the waypoints and points of interest, but I'd really just like to do some of the dynamic event chains in some areas, not just Orr, but people don't bother doing them because it's simply a lot more profitable to zerj around constantly killing respawning champions in a triangle as they respawn/

 

[endtherapture]

World of Warcraft is far more refined and progression is something you can "feel" occurring. Boss fights are more than just whittling down a health bar.

The best boss battles I've found in Guild Wars 2 is the Claw of Jormag one, which takes a while and has several phases with different people having to do different things, but this is the communities least favourite one because "it takes too long" and you have to coordinate and too things rather than spam your ranged auto-attack.

 

[tehroc]

I think that GW2 has the far better leveling experience. But it has no interesting endgame to me. For that reason I find WoW to be the better game. It kept me going for about 7 years, GW2 didn't even manage 7 months.

Nowadays not playing either though. Bring on Camelot Unchained!

Did GW2 really not interest you or was it the genre as a whole? For me I think it was the latter that shortened my GW2 game time. Since Burning Crusade I couldn't play wow for much longer then 7 months per expansion. I didn't even bother with MOP.

I pretty much agree with your post. Leveling was fun, I enjoyed not having to run back and forth between quest givers. I enjoyed being able to "raid" at almost any level, one of my favorite events (Frozen Maw) happens in a newbie zone. Endgame consisted of grinding for armor sets which I found to be tedious.

I didn't do much WVWVW. Not that I don't enjoy mass PVP (cause I really do) but my computer is bad and culling sucks in GW2.

 

[Abomination]

World of Warcraft is far more refined and progression is something you can "feel" occurring. Boss fights are more than just whittling down a health bar.

The best boss battles I've found in Guild Wars 2 is the Claw of Jormag one, which takes a while and has several phases with different people having to do different things, but this is the communities least favourite one because "it takes too long" and you have to coordinate and too things rather than spam your ranged auto-attack.

It's not just the boss fights though... it's also the trash that people had to work out methods of skipping in order to ensure they don't spend 2 hours in a dungeon.