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Does Guild Wars even HAVE to be an MMoRPG to be good ?
RPGnub
Member Posts: 96
in Guild Wars
Ok so this is my first own topic here and since I recently got Guild Wars Prophecies and Nightfall I felt like writing some stuff about it. 
Many people seem to argue whether or not Guild Wars qualifies as an MMoRPG and I don't want to get into that argument since I frankly couldn't care less whether it is or not.
Now I only got myself into MMoRPGs a couple of years ago so I may have missed out on the very beginnings of the genre. Nevertheless I did read about MMoRPGs in game magazines and I was fascinated by this idea of playing an RPG together with thousands of other players. Back then however I believed that MMoRPGs would share the same qualties as Offline RPGs being a rich storyline and fun gameplay with the gain of levels merely being a reward for the exciting adventures that your character had gone through. A good example for this would be games like Baldurs Gate and Fallout. i don't think anybody has played these games to hit the max level but instead to experience a nice storyline and fun adventures. The implementation of levels and loot back then was merely one of the features to keep you entertained.
As you can probably imagine the truth was far from that when i actually got to play a few MMoRPGs myself (through free trials and freebie games). No rich storyline, no exciting quests, none of the things I was used to from playing offline RPGs.
What I experienced instead was a game design that simply HAD to throw out many of the features of normal RPGs since their implementation would have been impossible with several thousand players playing at the same time. Quests were pretty much scaled down to killing a number of respawning monsters because more complex objectives would inevitably have caused some massive bottlenecks which is already apparent with the problem of "boss-camping". With all the the qualities missing from an offline RPG the only objective that was left was to max out your character, something that originally was meant to be merely be part of the whole thing... but at least you can do it with a lot of other people and I often was asking myself whether the possibility to play with potentially thousands of players at the same time was really worth the price of leaving out most of the features I originally enjoyed in RPGs.
Guild Wars however appeared much, much different and infact when I bought it I didn't think it would actually be THAT different from other Online RPGs. In a sense Guild Wars is turning back to the roots of offline RPGs. The instancing which at first sounded like merely a trick to save bandwith turned out to be an integral part of why the game happens to be so good. With instancing the devs would never have to worry how many players might at some point be in an area since there would always be a controlled amount of people (1-8) normally working in a team.
Since the possibility of bottlenecks is out of the way with this the designers were able to actually come up with intersting quests where the monsters themselves were no longer walking experience points but an actually dangerous obstacle between you and your objective even to the point where the developers even gave them enough A.I. to be able to work in relatively organised teams against the player, something that also would have been impossible with the mob herds of other online games.
That way the game's content feels like actual content unlike normal Online RPGs where the content and "objective" was for the most part to get a character to the maximum level.
Because of this I don't get why people kept saying that Guild Wars has no PvE content when the PvE content it has is actually better, maybe not more lengthy but much, much more diversive than the PvE content of any other MMoRPg I have tried so far even to the point where for once I am having just as much fun with PvE as I do with PvP simply because the quality of Guild Wars's PvE campaign
can actually compete with offline games, something that I have yet to see in a *classic* MMoRPG.
All this makes the low level cap pretty much obsolete and I don't understand why people keep asking for a higher cap. Are they so used to the levelling treadmill already that they are unable to have fun in a game without it ?
Of course the campaign of Guild Wars can be finished, leaving you with the game's many PvP options but even if I chose not to keep playing it after I finished the PvE part completely I still had an entertaining Single/Multiplayer experience, more than worth my money.
So why do people insist to argue whether Guild Wars is an MMoRPG ?
My theory would be that the reason why people throw temper tantrums at the game is that GW so effectively pointed the finger at EVERYTHING that is wrong with the current condition of the MMoRPG genre.
Many people seem to argue whether or not Guild Wars qualifies as an MMoRPG and I don't want to get into that argument since I frankly couldn't care less whether it is or not.
Now I only got myself into MMoRPGs a couple of years ago so I may have missed out on the very beginnings of the genre. Nevertheless I did read about MMoRPGs in game magazines and I was fascinated by this idea of playing an RPG together with thousands of other players. Back then however I believed that MMoRPGs would share the same qualties as Offline RPGs being a rich storyline and fun gameplay with the gain of levels merely being a reward for the exciting adventures that your character had gone through. A good example for this would be games like Baldurs Gate and Fallout. i don't think anybody has played these games to hit the max level but instead to experience a nice storyline and fun adventures. The implementation of levels and loot back then was merely one of the features to keep you entertained.
As you can probably imagine the truth was far from that when i actually got to play a few MMoRPGs myself (through free trials and freebie games). No rich storyline, no exciting quests, none of the things I was used to from playing offline RPGs.
What I experienced instead was a game design that simply HAD to throw out many of the features of normal RPGs since their implementation would have been impossible with several thousand players playing at the same time. Quests were pretty much scaled down to killing a number of respawning monsters because more complex objectives would inevitably have caused some massive bottlenecks which is already apparent with the problem of "boss-camping". With all the the qualities missing from an offline RPG the only objective that was left was to max out your character, something that originally was meant to be merely be part of the whole thing... but at least you can do it with a lot of other people and I often was asking myself whether the possibility to play with potentially thousands of players at the same time was really worth the price of leaving out most of the features I originally enjoyed in RPGs.
Guild Wars however appeared much, much different and infact when I bought it I didn't think it would actually be THAT different from other Online RPGs. In a sense Guild Wars is turning back to the roots of offline RPGs. The instancing which at first sounded like merely a trick to save bandwith turned out to be an integral part of why the game happens to be so good. With instancing the devs would never have to worry how many players might at some point be in an area since there would always be a controlled amount of people (1-8) normally working in a team.
Since the possibility of bottlenecks is out of the way with this the designers were able to actually come up with intersting quests where the monsters themselves were no longer walking experience points but an actually dangerous obstacle between you and your objective even to the point where the developers even gave them enough A.I. to be able to work in relatively organised teams against the player, something that also would have been impossible with the mob herds of other online games.
That way the game's content feels like actual content unlike normal Online RPGs where the content and "objective" was for the most part to get a character to the maximum level.
Because of this I don't get why people kept saying that Guild Wars has no PvE content when the PvE content it has is actually better, maybe not more lengthy but much, much more diversive than the PvE content of any other MMoRPg I have tried so far even to the point where for once I am having just as much fun with PvE as I do with PvP simply because the quality of Guild Wars's PvE campaign
can actually compete with offline games, something that I have yet to see in a *classic* MMoRPG.
All this makes the low level cap pretty much obsolete and I don't understand why people keep asking for a higher cap. Are they so used to the levelling treadmill already that they are unable to have fun in a game without it ?
Of course the campaign of Guild Wars can be finished, leaving you with the game's many PvP options but even if I chose not to keep playing it after I finished the PvE part completely I still had an entertaining Single/Multiplayer experience, more than worth my money.
So why do people insist to argue whether Guild Wars is an MMoRPG ?
My theory would be that the reason why people throw temper tantrums at the game is that GW so effectively pointed the finger at EVERYTHING that is wrong with the current condition of the MMoRPG genre.
Comments
well said, RPGnub. As to your question as to why people insist on arguing CORPG (A.Net's official stance on the subject) or MMORPG (which also works since it fits all the criteria of the catagory) is because they need to classify things into set values. A or B, Hot or Cold.
I've been playing games for so long that I only care about one thing anymore: Is it fun? <YES/NO>
--~~--
Play Guild Wars? Go here - http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Main_Page
And go here for the new official Guild Wars Wiki! http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page
Is guild wars fun? YES
Is guid wars a MMORPG? NO
Who says its not a MMORPG then?
The creators of Guildwars no less.
Congratulations, LordSlater. You have continued the pointless flames of CO vs MMO. *thumbsup*
--~~--
Play Guild Wars? Go here - http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Main_Page
And go here for the new official Guild Wars Wiki! http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page
Anyway, I could care less what you want to call Guild Wars. I've enjoy this game more than any of the other so-called MMORPG's that I've played and it fits my casual gaming style perfectly.
---
See that is the thing, it doesn't fit the commonly acceoted definition of the MMORPG category. It is not a persistent universe. YOu go into the instance and bring a few thigns out, but you repeat them and they are the same. What you do has no impact on others and they have no impact on you. Even with WoW's iffy semi persistent world when you leave an instance like Ony's Lair you leave a ginat head in the central city. It may be a minor impact but it is still another player impact you or you impacting ther players.
Guild Wars is great fun and I like it a lot, but it isn't a MMORPG.
[EDIT]
Man, I'm gonna burn for saying this, but since when did a persistant world become criteria for a Massively Multiplayer Online game?--~~--
Play Guild Wars? Go here - http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Main_Page
And go here for the new official Guild Wars Wiki! http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page
Since Meridian and Ultima Online. If there is no interaction of events from one player to another nor any impact on others it is just an online game with lobbys. Phantasy Star Online was a great game, but it was also a co-op game and not an MMORPG.
GW has MMORPG aspects, but without impacting others worlds and instances that is all it has.
GW is an online game, and does not fit the definition that MMORPG has grown to be.
Anyway, my point like I said wasn't to confirm or deny whether Guild Wars is an MMoRPG though this is probably my own fault since I have used this term in my post so much.
What I also don't understand why many people who seem to be slandering this game on one side say that GW is indeed not an MMO while on the other hand pointing out its several "disadvantages" like the low level cap and the instanced world simply because they assume that an MMoRPG needs this to be fun.
If I assume that GW is indeed not an MMoRPG however, these *disadvantages* hold little meaning due to the qualities that the game seems to have inherited from classic Offline RPGs. if I remember correctly the maximum level back in Baldurs Gate was around 8 (!) and in Baldurs Gate II it was around 15. Both games however were perfectly enjoyable since the developers didn't have to hide a lack of content behind an unbearable grind curve. GW felt very much like that although more Diablo-esque.
That content like I said was probably only possible in GW because of said instancing since many of the quests and missions would have been impossible in a consistant world.
Furthermore I'd like to know whether CORPG isn't just another branch of MMOs since I have heard about Phantasy Star Online (that old one I mean) and if I remember correctly the game was classified as an MMoRPG whereever I read about it.
I love GW it is my 1st choice among all current online games. It does have a nice multiplayer/single player rpg feel to it and I love that.
As to higher lvl caps, many people associate higher lvls with greater power, they fail to realize that one games 20 can be the equivilent of anothers 60. I have always made acheiving max lvl a primary goal for me in rpg's even if it is lvl8, or lvl15, simply because I enjoy the feeling of having all the power I can possibly have. That being said it is much more enjoyable having a lower lvl cap so there will be less "grind" to achieve the lvl necissary for me to enjoy the game.
I completely agree with RPGnub.
The MMO part for GW can be debated quite well by both sides, but it really doesn't matter if it's an MMO or not. And if you refuse to play a game simply because it is or isn't an MMO, is your choice, but you'll be denying yourself an opportunity to experience some great games.
im geting so pissed with the stupid arrogant 1337 post about guildwars lately that i got baned .... this comunity id way down the toilet and the moding is ridiculus.
i got banned for posting a pic of the pope saing STFU .. compared to the trash ive seen around , thats nothing.
mmorpg = fags
Well, GW allows up to 24 people to be in the same combat instance, which is thrice as many as Dungeons and Dragons Online, which only allows up to 8 players per combat instance. You can message anyone in the whole world, as the game is all on one 'server' (so to speak), meaning you can play with all of your friends, unlike most mmorpgs that can only handle a couple thousand people per server. Hundreds of people can even be in the same instance: They just are not allowed to enter combat.
So whatever, if CORPG is not a MMORPG: Whatever. I think Anet just wanted to call attention to their unique game by making up a new genre to stick it in while in actuality it fit nicely under the MMORPG label.
As to Desnows claim that players in GW have 'no impact on other players'... Heres some examples showing otherwise:
In the continent of Cantha, guilds can compete to own towns, where they are given benefits over that town. They also fight over the faction ownership of these towns. Depending on which faction owns which towns, a border is made that seperates the continent of Cantha. The ownership of towns has direct consequences to players of each faction as they venture through the continent.
Heres a wiki page about the border: gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Kurzick-Luxon_border
Also, countries fight for the favour of the gods, which gives each country a direct benefit if their country (sort of like a faction, except literally the country they live in) can maintain a PvP area called the Hall of Heroes.
More on holding the favour of the gods: gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Favor_of_the_Gods
Also, there is a merchant system based on Supply and Demand throughout the world. Players can sell and buy all crafting materials, dyes, runes, and insignias. The price of all these items fluxuates depending on how many players are selling them or buying them.
These supply/demand merchants are called Traders: gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Trader
I'm not sure what you mean by 'no impact on other players' anyways. Are you just angry that there isnt a PvP system where you can attack enemy players on sight? Most MMORPGs require players to consent to PvP, as is the way of GW. I assume that you think GW is not a MMORPG because you cannot enter combat while other players who have not consented to be in your group are around, so you do not like the way you cannot help random players kill enemies, ect. Well, I would suggest that many games like Realm Online, Everquest, and the upcoming Pirates of the Burning Seas all have varying degrees of combat clouds which prevent players who are not in ones group from attacking the monsters they are engaged with or are part of that players quest. You see, many players do not want other players attacking their targets, and GW takes that to the next degree by removing unconsented players from combat scenarios completely.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
As a disclaimer I'm a big GW fan....But there are also some huge criticisms (sp?) of the things mentioned as well. Yes players do have an impact on other players, but the things mentioned/linked to have a far less of an effect than people make it out to be. Thus, basically the only reason I'm posting is to give people a more accurate depiction of a player's "effect" on another in what was linked.
Favor of the gods: The benefit is that if your country has favor of the gods, PvE characters can go to certain spots and access two realms of the gods, Fissure of Woe and Underworld, which are basically repeatable, end-game PvE areas. Basically locking content for PvE players until PvP players from their country win in the three-way fight in the hall of heroes. Yes they do have an impact, and I know of noone who likes this mechanic.
*please insert "Hey, I do like this mechanic!!" in response, but I can't believe it. People who do HA consistently don't do it to win favor and be able to access these areas, they do it to PvP. Keep in mind if you're "holding the halls of heroes" you aren't doing it so you yourself can go to FOW or UW. That is just a preposterous notion to entertain.
Owning Towns in Factions/Border control: You gain faction for your side (Kurzick or Luxon) by fighting in certain modes of PvPvE play, or by doing quests in PvE. (To gain enough faction for town control, you'll need to do several repetitive PvE missions hundreds of times, or do PvPvE play like Alliance Battles/Fort Aspy and Jade Quarry (which is dead, noone goes there so you can't play it 80-90% of the time) When you guild "owns" a town, they get a very slightly reduced cost on the 10-15 goods offered by the merchants in that outpost...which are not expensive anyway and not a big enough difference to be able to make cash by buying and selling. (When i say merchant I mean merchant, not rare materials traders, or rune traders, but the merchants.) They also can spend money on a short fireworks display in the town.
In regards to the "Battle Line" on the map, fighting in Alliance Battles (PvPvE modes) can move the battle line. It can, for instance, place a Kurzick outpost on the Luxon side of the battle line. The only effect this has is that if you have more personal Kurzick faction at that time, the NPC merchants in the outpost won't talk to you and you'll zone somewhere else to merch your loot. You don't feel the need to fight back and move the line, or feel like your side is "losing" the war. You just zone, and move on. More of an annoyance than anything else. In addition, if you are in the guild that owns/controls the capital city for Kurzick or Luxon, you have access to the "Elite" missions in Factions, the main viable End-Game content. Of course, usually these guilds have faction donation reqs. for their members. You can be "ferried" to the elite mission thru a player in this guild, but it is...once again....more of an annoyance to players because they lock end-game PvE content based on PvP play. I know of few people who are not annoyed by this mechanism.
Other than NPCs talking to you depending on your faction, the Border has no effect. A small, minimal effect is that there is more than one Alliance Battle map, depending on where the line is will influence which map you'll be playing on.
Locking content is probably just not what they consider to be "having an effect on others". Yes it is an economy VERY LOOSELY based on supply and demand. Yes I agree that players have an effect on others in some ways in GW, but those ways that it HAS been implemented have suffered alot of criticism, because they don't add depth, rather they take away from it.
I will make an assumption of my own, even though we know how bad they are. But I will assume that Desnow was looking for ways players impact the world in a way to make you want to jump and be a part of what is effecting the world. The economy is fine, but could allow for players to have a MUCH bigger involvement and effect, although I think this would be harder to do with GW's non-item centric gameplay. I'm happy it's not item-centric, don't get me wrong on that one.
Nothign exists out of the instance. If you kill the named in an instance it doesn't affect anyone else. When you log ogg you don't exist in ANY form. Your name isn't on an auctino house, you don't have a structure you left with your name on it, there is no statue of you for winning a guild tourney...there is NOTHING. It isn't perpetual and you have no lasting effect on anything.
YOu assume wrong, you couldn't be farther from correct. Why is it when somone doesn't agree on this board they are flamed and called names of beinf a PK'r and ganker? Get over whoever camped you in the games you mentioned as it wasn't me. I like GW and I like it a lot, but it still isn't a MMORPG, which is alright. Some silly magazine (and honestly there isn't a single game related magazine I would consider decent and unbiased right now) called it a MMORPG and sheep have been calling it a MMORPG since. Anet officially called it a CORPG because of they didn't want it to be directly compared to MMORPGs as it has some shared elements, but missing just as many if not more.
Guild Wars is the step between Diablo style games and MMORPGs. It is far more casual than even WoW if you want it to be (and no subscription fee to encourage this) and very intricate PVPing if you want to g that route. It is more costly to play than Diablo-style (keeping up with expansions) but still significantly less than MMORPGs. You just have to accept one thign you lose for the lower cost is a permanent effect on the world or other players. GW won't be affected in any way if someone just stops logging in and this feels intentional to keep people returning (might as well right? no subscription) and maybe picking up an expansion wqhile between other games.
Refer back to the Game FAQ
http://www.guildwars.com/support/faq/prophecies-faq.php
And plenty of interviews posted on the site as well to support that.
To the Poster above me, winning certain tournaments gets your name and guild engraved on the trophy at Balthazaar's Temple.
Playing now: Cities: Skyline / Ori and the Blind Forest / Banished
Refer back to the Game FAQ
http://www.guildwars.com/support/faq/prophecies-faq.php
And plenty of interviews posted on the site as well to support that.
To the Poster above me, winning certain tournaments gets your name and guild engraved on the trophy at Balthazaar's Temple.
Out of curiosity, why would you post a link that proves you wrong?
Quote (from YOUR link):
"Rather than labeling Guild Wars an MMORPG, we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game). "
If I'm not mistaken, the creators of GW coined the term CORPG themselves when they felt their game did not fit into the broader definitions of what a MMORPG was thought to be, in other words to distinguish themselves from that genre. Some of it may have been marketing and trying to be "something different" but even they say it's partly due to heavy usages of instances and the heavy PvP focus. Be careful before you speak in absolutes, especially this one as it is false.
To me what acronymn they choose to use is in some cases splitting hairs, and not really that important (Note: to me) The game has it's value and will be fun for some people and not for others regardless of what people call it or what category they put it in.
I just find it interesting you jump the gun to call him wrong, but then provide links that prove YOU wrong.
Is guid wars a MMORPG? NO
Who says its not a MMORPG then?"
Who freaking cares???
"I will assume that Desnow was looking for ways players impact the world in a way to make you want to jump and be a part of what is effecting the world."
I came to Guild Wars from City of Heroes (really was chased here by all the nerfs to that game) and haven't looked back.
CoH IS considered an MMORPG, yet the only thing that makes it so is the fact that you are able to spawn-camp and kill-steal. Missions are all done in their own instances with teams ranging from 1 to 8.
IOW, beyond the fact that you can be in a zone with potentially hundreds of other players and go through that same zone killing every baddie in site, there's simply not much difference between the mechanics of the two games. (Oh, and did I mention that to pull off their version of non-instanced zones requires a hell of a lot more processiong power on both the client and server side than is required by GW? Go to any heavily populated server and zone in CoH, and you're going to get terrible lag ALL the time. And unless you're running a very fast machine and graphics card, you're going to get it in CoH's instanced missions, too.)
People just need to stop sweating the small stuff and enjoy GW for what it is, whatever it is.
My mind has changed so much. Yet I'm still acting like I'm the same.
M=Massive, GW is that, many many users three complete campaigns, tons of content, tons of competition, massive amounts of people playing, beyond massive, it's a behemoth..oh wait that would make it a BMORPG and start a whole new round of discussions, nevermind.
M=Multi-player, team pve, pvp, gvg, towns bursting at the seams, GW has that.
O=online, only a fanboy of another game would try to argue GW was not online.
RPG=role playing game-GW is as much an RPG as any other RPG out there.
Everyone who thinks GW is not an MMORPG, please grab your ears and pull down very hard. When you hear the popping sound and smell fresh air, your head has been extracted and you have cured yourself of analcranialrectitius.
It's a shame that the fanboys of other games need to try use this little marketing stragety of letting people know this isn't your average MMORPG by calling it a CORPG. It was brilliance, people are still talking about GW because of it. Keep it alive!
Oh yeah, and all you fanboys from other games who come here to flame and troll, please use the above method of curing yourself and deal with the fact that GW is an awesome game and a LOT of people play it. You don't have to like the fact, that's OK by us, but deal with it, and if you are going to troll here, please come up with something more substantial than this "it's not an MMORPG" sillyness.
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NFWolfDude
Answer to the thread title: no, it doesn't :P