Guild Wars versus World of Warcraft

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 7:17 pm

Both are MMORPGs. Both are fantasy-themed.

One wants you to pay money every month you pay; the other says 'free subscription'.

Guild Wars is ahead for me... any other arguments that can be made, for or against?

Hedgecore · Post by **Hedgecore** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 7:24 pm

Gameplay wise, I hear WoW is better, though yes, the price thing is a turn off. From what I've seen of each, WoW also seems more interesting, in that it's Warcraft. Its got character, and a certain uniqueness, what with the horde, and the alliance wars, and the night elves and such. GW seems just like 'generic fantasy setting' to me. I suppose I should put up the disclaimer I've played neither of these games....thereby destroying what miniscule credibility I may have had.

*edit* oh oh! WoW is available for MacOS, which i appreciate.

Post by **Dark Silver** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 7:24 pm

Guild Wars is a visually beautiful game, with a interesting storyline, but a character lvl cap of 20.

though that is suppossed to go up when they release the next expansion.

Guild Wars works on a "we'll let them play free, and they'll like it so much, they'll buy the expansions" idea. It seems to work, it's a good looking and fun game.

Never played WoW, so i couldn't tell you.

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 7:24 pm

Hrm. Well, Tauren are cuddly.

Edit for on-topicness: I can't speak for Guild Wars, but WoW is amazingly fun. The environments, characters, quests... Charming and a joy to play.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:07 pm

Dark Silver wrote:Guild Wars is a visually beautiful game, with a interesting storyline, but a character lvl cap of 20.

Is that important though? Diablo has a lvl cap of 99, and I've had it since it came out and I have NEVER gotten a character that high.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:08 pm

Pcm979 wrote:I can't speak for Guild Wars, but WoW is amazingly fun. The environments, characters, quests... Charming and a joy to play.

Blizzard also doesn't support routers, which is what I have. This is the principle reason I don't play Diablo on the realms anymore. Guild Wars says I can do x, y, z and still play even with a router.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:10 pm

Oh, and about the whole "Guild Wars is set in 'generic fantasy land' and 'WoW is WARCRAFT, dude'."

I actually hate the Warcraft universe...

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:10 pm

Erm. If you can't play it, why ask the question?

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:25 pm

I can't play Diablo, easily. I could still play it if I found lag, login problems, and hardcore characters DYING to be acceptable.

I don't know about WoW... Blizzard might actually have that problem solved.

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:28 pm

Well, if it helps, I'm an absolute PC novice, and I just plugged the thing in and played.

And again, it sounds like your mind's already made up.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Fri Oct 14, 2005 9:29 pm

I have played both. While the shitty connection at my college prevents me from seriously playing either right now, it's Guild Wars that I truly stuck with. Not feeling obligated to play something you pay for regularly is a great feeling. I also got bored with WoW around level 40, but before that it was great fun.

Guild Wars is more hack'n'slash action-oriented, but by no means mindless. A very dynamic skill system keeps you on your toes, I've found.

WoW, on the other hand, is like traditional MMOs in that you spam x ability, throw in y occasionally, with perhaps z move in an emergency.

GW limits you to 4 characters at any one time, and is all on one "realm."

WoW has something like 8 characters per shard, of which there are like 20, some PvP, some normal, some RP, etc. (though I've never seen the attraction of true RP in MMOs, save perhaps Galaxies, but that's another story)

GW is very well-paced and is more on par with Diablo in terms of character power. You rarely feel the grind.

WoW is better than pretty much all true MMOs to date, but it's still grind-tastic. Half the reason I finally quit at level 43 or thereabouts.

GW's artwork is lush and fantastic. Vivid, HDR lighting, etc etc.

WoW is very... cartoonish. And maybe it's just my monitor/graphics settings, but it's so very dull. Washed out colors, bland textures, and so on. Though even if it is just my settings, that says quite a bit in terms of system requirements right there (given I can run GW like a dream).

If you can think of anything specific or comparisons you'd like, I'm here.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 2:49 am

Ok, so the maximum number of characters I can have in GW is 4?

I can MP with how many people?

Yes, I think I'm more interested in GW than WoW. Thing is, can I convince my friend to pick it up rather than WoW?

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 3:07 am

MP is with groups, combat.

GW is hellishly fun. CAn't really describe what makes me say that, but it just fits together so perfectly.

Post by **B4UTRUST** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 3:35 am

Also GW has a rather fun pvp mode where you generate a character(yes this takes up one of your 4 slots) and choose abilities and create them then are dumped in with 3 other random people for 4v4 matchups. I think they also have like 1v1 and 2v2 as well. But it's loads of fun. Plus for winning matches and such in PvP you get stuff for your other characters in the actual storymode setting and for certain things in storymode you can unlock new abilities for pvp.

zac naloen · Post by **zac naloen** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 9:10 am

I love guild wars... i can't play it at the moment because my uni network doesn't let me do anything.

but it is awesome, i'll be back on at christmas for a month 24 hours a day.

Narsil · Post by **Narsil** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 10:04 am

World of Warcraft...

I played Guild Wars for five minutes before getting bored, and I played Warcraft for Months before even thinking of getting bored... and even then, it was only because my dad's immense obssesive tendencies, mixed with that, put me off playing it.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Sat Oct 15, 2005 1:57 pm

Stofsk wrote:Ok, so the maximum number of characters I can have in GW is 4?

I can MP with how many people?

Yes, I think I'm more interested in GW than WoW. Thing is, can I convince my friend to pick it up rather than WoW?

Yeah, four characters at once. You can delete them and make new ones at any time though, as it's not that big of a deal to delete a PvP char (you can just remake the same char later on, but better anyways due to the game's mechanics).

Cities and towns are divided into "districts," typically there'll be 50-100 people depending on size and hour, and usually further divided by the game three major geographical divisions: Americas, Europe, and Asia. Co-operative missions vary from just you and a buddy all the way up to 7 other folks. PvP varies from 4v4 all the way up to massive 8v8v8v8v8v8 tournaments.

And finally, the game is even more fun to go through with an RL buddy for a lot of reasons. Some missions are difficult with all henchmen NPCs (I do not recommend random groups, People Are StupidÃ¢â€žÂ¢) and benefit greatly from another human player and you can form devastating "tag-team" PvP tactics. It's a shame my friend never got it, we had some absolutely ruthless builds in beta.

EDIT: We have an SDN guild as well for groups and such, if henchmen are just proving inadequate.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 9:00 am

Well I bought the game. Played it for 5 mins just to see if a) the game connects to the server via my router (which it does, BOOYAH - apparently I'm not the only guy who has a router and whose problem was taken into account and solved by tech support - are you listening Blizzard? No, I didn't think so...) and b) how it handles.

First impression: this game looks fucking BEAUTIFUL.

Second impression: I probably shouldn't be downloading stuff over Azureus like TV shows and so on when I play... very jerky, which I guess was partially lag or bandwidth problems.

But for $55 AUD on my end, this is nice. Not even KOTOR costed that much, and GW looks sweet.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Thu Oct 20, 2005 3:21 pm

The jerkiness you mention could also be due to just starting GW up for the first few times. It hasn't streamed all of its resources yet, so for the first ~30 minutes of play or so it can be a little laggy. Clears up perfectly after that, though.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:12 pm

Stofsk wrote:Well I bought the game. Played it for 5 mins just to see if a) the game connects to the server via my router (which it does, BOOYAH - apparently I'm not the only guy who has a router and whose problem was taken into account and solved by tech support - are you listening Blizzard? No, I didn't think so...) and b) how it handles.

First impression: this game looks fucking BEAUTIFUL.

Second impression: I probably shouldn't be downloading stuff over Azureus like TV shows and so on when I play... very jerky, which I guess was partially lag or bandwidth problems.

But for $55 AUD on my end, this is nice. Not even KOTOR costed that much, and GW looks sweet.

I played WoW on a router and it worked fine. Totally fine, without a problem and good latency. Don't know what you're getting at.

Anyway, I asked myself the same question a month ago. Which game? I had a friend with GW, but the big killer for me was the gameplay. It was faster, prettier... but the fact that every time you went out of a town, you were basically playing an SP game killed it for me. You'd never find someone randomly. You wouldn't travel like in the real world, instead you clicked locations...

WoW, meanwhile, had less impressive graphics, but certainly excellent Art Direction. It's fun PvE and P, and well. I think it's really fun. GW turned me off also because someone could literally just run you to the 'end' zones, drop you in a town and then you could buy all the top level gear. Seemed too limited content-wise for me.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:36 pm

Nephtys wrote:I played WoW on a router and it worked fine. Totally fine, without a problem and good latency. Don't know what you're getting at.

Blizzard doesn't support routers; this is on it's tech support site. When I was playing Diablo 2 I couldn't connect to Battle.Net without fussing over this or that. Then when I did, there was lag.

My issue with Blizzard is its tech support. When I popped in GW it wouldn't connect and it told me it was likely due to my router. I went onto their site, found the appropriate bit about 'what to do if you have a router...' and then I could connect. Problem solved.

I have Starcraft and Diablo 2. I can't easily connect to Battle.Net ever since I got my router, and when I go to the tech support section I read "Don't bother asking us how to fix it because we don't care." That isn't what they write exactly, but that's the impression it gives to a customer. This impression makes me disinclined to partake in their services.

Perhaps WoW would work with my router just like GW works. Perhaps. But I spent $55 AUD on GW, and am I going to spend $89.95 or more for WoW when I'm actually not sure if it can work, or if it doesn't then I can get it to work? I don't buy games willy-nilly, I make sure that the sys reqs work for my machine before I even consider buying the damn thing.

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