Originally posted by Neo_Viper @SavageHorizon : what you describe is the typical way WoW clone players who aren't used to anything else are playing Gw2. That doesn't mean it's the only way to play it, it only means that you were unable to adapt to a different game.
Sounds like you just made a strawman and put a "You played it wrong" t-shirt on it.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Originally posted by Neo_Viper @SavageHorizon : what you describe is the typical way WoW clone players who aren't used to anything else are playing Gw2. That doesn't mean it's the only way to play it, it only means that you were unable to adapt to a different game.
Sounds like you just made a strawman and put a "You played it wrong" t-shirt on it.
Yeah lol, at least he has just confirmed what many of us have been saying.
Originally posted by Neo_Viper @SavageHorizon : what you describe is the typical way WoW clone players who aren't used to anything else are playing Gw2. That doesn't mean it's the only way to play it, it only means that you were unable to adapt to a different game.
Really! lol, why don't you come join me in Age Of Wushu.
Vanilla WoW's content after 8 months only a handfull of guilds was doing BWL, I'm just going by my server. Only the no-lifers were 60 in the first month, most other took 2 - 3 months to level. Within the first month of GW2 even casual players were 80 and farming Orr events. Vanilla WoW will remain the most memorable time of my 11 year MMO career, but I love modern day mechanics, not soo much this dumb loby based crap that you just queue up for. Vanilla WoW to me was more about the adventure and the hardships to overcome a raid. I'm kind of anticipating FFXIV:ARR for the story and the hard PvE content that Yoshi-P has talked about in some interviews. Sorry got off topic there, but I think GW2 is holding up well compared to vanilla WoW, it's 8 months in and I'm still playing that's a good sign for me.
Originally posted by nilden I like to compare my video games with what is available to me at the present. Cold hard reality is Guild Wars 2 and any other game has to compete with World of Warcraft and all it's expansions. Mind you I'm not saying you can't have your historical comparison but it seems to me the important part of this is what one gets now.
Well, the unfortunate thing about a game like WoW is that, at any given time, it has nearly the same amount *content.* Every time a new expansion is released, so much of the previous content is rendered obsolete. Every vanilla, BC, WotlK and Cata raid are now worthless. Almost all of the dungeons from those expansions are irrelevant - for example, people may still tend to run Hellfire Ramparts when they reach level 60, but you'll never see anyone run Mechanar, or Arcatraz; you'll also never see anyone run the heroic versions of the level 70, 80, and 85 dungeons. The number of zones and quests is the only thing that continues to grow indefinitely; but at the same time, the amount of experience required to level through older zones continues to be nerfed so that players have no need to experience all the zones and their quests. Not only that, but every zone's content is itself made irrelevant after you level through it. There's never a reason to return, and nothing new ever happens. I'd feel pretty bummed out about it as a developer, knowing so much of my hard work is useless to most players most of the time.
I understand the desire for a present day apples to apples comparison, but I do think this is some stuff you then have to also take into consideration. As of right now, every bit of the permanent world content remains relevant to me at level 80 - (I actually find myself spending far more time in low level zones on my 80 characters than any of the high level zones, which would have been impossible for me in WoW, and I loved zones like Ashenvale, Redridge, Elywnn and Duskwood.) It will be interesting to see how true this holds as GW2 ages. As of right now, I suspect I will still be able to viable play in Queensdale and Wayfarer Foothills (or any other zone I want to visit) and have a good time there 8 years from now.
I don't think an MMORPG that was mainly targeted towards PVP then later decided to cater more to the PVE crowd should be compared to an MMORPG that was mainly targeted towards PVE then later decided to cater more to the PVP crowd.
Originally posted by Neo_Viper @serenes: you realize that link of yours proves that Gw2's world is at least as big as vanilla wow, right? Not to mention the calculation method is flawed since gw2 zones use all the space while wow continents are dented. Kryta+magma are as big as kalimdor, and shiverpreak+Ascalon as big as eastern kingdoms.
About zones being populated... As you say, mop zones, and that's it. And even then, when I leveled my dk the zones were dead empty, so I think you are slightly exaggerating.
And don't make it sound like you are forced to repeat events, that is simply not true. How shall we discuss raid bosses on farm status you kill dozens of times in Wow?
@vectrexevo: I played wow for 8 years, it's a great game, but we have enough wow clones, we don't need more. We need new concepts, not bad copies.
Umm, no that link I posted would prove that WoWs landmass would take a longer time to travel.
Guild Wars 2
crossing distance:Tyria world map from North to South 38 min by 46 min (E -> W)
= 84 minutes to travel the continent both ways North-South/East-West
World of Warcraft
size: Kalimdor N => S coast and E=>W coast = 10 x 4 miles
Eastern Kingdoms (WoW vanilla) N => S and E => W coast = 9.5 x 3.5 miles
crossing distance: Kalimdor from N => S coast 42 min, from E => W coast 17 min
= 59+59=118(Because two continents of roughly the same size) meaning it takes a longer time to travel the distances of the continents in a straight line, meaning there is less landmass in Guild Wars 2.
I'll give you the dented zones and Guild Wars 2 using all the zone so lets cut out the "dents" in the zones and Vanilla WoW would still be larger then GW2 in landmass.
And where do you get that these zones are as big as Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdom?
The key thing you should be looking to measure is total area of all the zones, which is a simple length times width calculation. Using your numbers, for WoW, this is 42 * 17 * 2 (for the two continents) = 1428 minutes squared (since the unit you chose to measure this in is minutes it takes to walk across the land, which I agree is the only useful way to compare one game to another.)
Using the same method, GW2 comes out to 38 * 46 = 1748 minutes squared, or 22.4% more full map area.
But of course, several problems arise. These measurements assume perfect rectangles that are filled with open space from end to end, which, of course, is not the case in either game. Unless you can accurately account for all the "empty space" within these maps and subtract it from the total potential area, this type of comparison becomes pretty useless outside of very general estimation.
For example, we could find that 40% of GW2's map is filled with empty, useless space, reducing GW2's total area from 1748 to 1048.8. Meanwhile, we may find that WoW's maps were only 90% efficient, resulting in a decrease of 142.8, leaving an area of 1285.2. In this scenario, WoW wins.
In another scenario, however, where, say, we find both WoW and GW2 to have been 70% space efficient (30% filled with empthy nothingness), GW2 would win with an area of 1223.6 versus 999.6.
There's also the matter of movement speed. As movement speeds increase, the world essentially "shrinks." Mounts, epic mounts, and eventually the introduction of epic flying mounts all made players *feel* like the world was a little smaller than it was. One could say the same thing about waypoints in GW2, that they utterly destroy the sense of size of the world.
While subjective feelings have no part in a quantitative statistical analysis, they are important factors to consider in the qualitative analysis. I'm inclined to argue that how big the world feels to its players is almost more important than how big it objectively is. A smaller area used incredibly efficiently and jam packed with content may feel much better than a gigantic barren zone.
These are just things that need to be taken into account before anyone bends the stats in their favor and declares their champion game the winner.
Not bad for a non-sub game. Of course, there are still those that cling to the idea that you can't update your game without a sub model, but most people know better by now.
As for WoW and GW2's dedication to releasing new content early on, I applaud both. WoW? Not so much these days. For such a massive cash cow, they stopped adding regular content a while back, but it was the worst during Cata.
I know only one thing. Give me WOW battlegrounds, raids on cities and open world pvp in GW2 and i will change the side because of awesome GW2 graphic. I just can't find a reason to play GW2 , there is no real reward for leveling and pvp is meaningless
Originally posted by bubaluba I know only one thing. Give me WOW battlegrounds, raids on cities and open world pvp in GW2 and i will change the side because of awesome GW2 graphic. I just can't find a reason to play GW2 , there is no real reward for leveling and pvp is meaningless
I can take open world PvP or leave it, frankly, but I did enjoy the concept of killing the other faction's leaders. No doubt about it.
Originally posted by nilden I like to compare my video games with what is available to me at the present. Cold hard reality is Guild Wars 2 and any other game has to compete with World of Warcraft and all it's expansions. Mind you I'm not saying you can't have your historical comparison but it seems to me the important part of this is what one gets now.
Well, the unfortunate thing about a game like WoW is that, at any given time, it has nearly the same amount *content.* Every time a new expansion is released, so much of the previous content is rendered obsolete. Every vanilla, BC, WotlK and Cata raid are now worthless. Almost all of the dungeons from those expansions are irrelevant - for example, people may still tend to run Hellfire Ramparts when they reach level 60, but you'll never see anyone run Mechanar, or Arcatraz; you'll also never see anyone run the heroic versions of the level 70, 80, and 85 dungeons. The number of zones and quests is the only thing that continues to grow indefinitely; but at the same time, the amount of experience required to level through older zones continues to be nerfed so that players have no need to experience all the zones and their quests. Not only that, but every zone's content is itself made irrelevant after you level through it. There's never a reason to return, and nothing new ever happens. I'd feel pretty bummed out about it as a developer, knowing so much of my hard work is useless to most players most of the time.
I understand the desire for a present day apples to apples comparison, but I do think this is some stuff you then have to also take into consideration. As of right now, every bit of the permanent world content remains relevant to me at level 80 - (I actually find myself spending far more time in low level zones on my 80 characters than any of the high level zones, which would have been impossible for me in WoW, and I loved zones like Ashenvale, Redridge, Elywnn and Duskwood.) It will be interesting to see how true this holds as GW2 ages. As of right now, I suspect I will still be able to viable play in Queensdale and Wayfarer Foothills (or any other zone I want to visit) and have a good time there 8 years from now.
Regarding obsolete content: downleveling or heroic deadmines are just work arounds for flawed design. Having levels as progression means you are going to outlevel zones, monsters, items, etc. If your level 80 those starter zones that bring you back down to level 5 are only relevant if you have not completed everything there already or need to farm to start crafting or help a friend. If you added the ability to downlevel in WoW that wouldn't make anything but the latest content relevant, sure you could go back and experience the lower level stuff at the level it was ment to be played but you also take away the ability to power through stuff for your friends.
In Ultima Online which had no levels the content never became truly obsolete. An example being if you wanted arrows you could kill harpies for feathers in the harpy dungeon and return to do so at any time.
Another game that made the levels mean very little when it came to content or grouping was City of Heroes with sidekicking, mentoring and super-sidekicking as well as upleveling and downleveling plus being able to set difficulties for missions.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Originally posted by bubaluba I know only one thing. Give me WOW battlegrounds, raids on cities and open world pvp in GW2 and i will change the side because of awesome GW2 graphic. I just can't find a reason to play GW2 , there is no real reward for leveling and pvp is meaningless
I can take open world PvP or leave it, frankly, but I did enjoy the concept of killing the other faction's leaders. No doubt about it.
What I really find strange about GW2 is, how unimportant the 3 big faction become at lvl 80+. Nobody ever asks you whether you are from the Priory, Vigil or the Order. There is so much potential to create a mini-battleground type of game, like in GW: Factions with the alliance battles for Kurzick or Luxon. There could be unique rewards for players most active for a specific faction for example, Titles, "prestige" armor sets, mini pets etc.
And btw...even if I dislike WoWs cartoonish graphics nowadays, I would rather take the bad looking cape of WoW than the stupid guild flag on my back in GW2. I do understand the difficulties with a cape, especially with the Charr character models but the flag just looks utterly ridiculous.
Originally posted by Jimmydean 8 Months into WoW Vanilla I was playing WoW. 8 Months into GW2, I am playing WoW. Take that for what it's worth.
8 month into WoW vanilla, I was playing WoW. 8 month after GW2 was released, I have tried Pandaria, leveled my main to the new cap, canceled my two WoW accounts and went back to GW2 forever disgusted and bored of the WoW clone style stalled end game, and definitely not wanting to level another character through exactly the same areas and quests. At least previous expansions permitted variety when it came to leveling, in Pandaria it's one, linear path.
Originally posted by Neo_Viper @serenes: you realize that link of yours proves that Gw2's world is at least as big as vanilla wow, right? Not to mention the calculation method is flawed since gw2 zones use all the space while wow continents are dented. Kryta+magma are as big as kalimdor, and shiverpreak+Ascalon as big as eastern kingdoms.
About zones being populated... As you say, mop zones, and that's it. And even then, when I leveled my dk the zones were dead empty, so I think you are slightly exaggerating.
And don't make it sound like you are forced to repeat events, that is simply not true. How shall we discuss raid bosses on farm status you kill dozens of times in Wow?
@vectrexevo: I played wow for 8 years, it's a great game, but we have enough wow clones, we don't need more. We need new concepts, not bad copies.
Umm, no that link I posted would prove that WoWs landmass would take a longer time to travel.
Guild Wars 2
crossing distance:Tyria world map from North to South 38 min by 46 min (E -> W)
= 84 minutes to travel the continent both ways North-South/East-West
World of Warcraft
size: Kalimdor N => S coast and E=>W coast = 10 x 4 miles
Eastern Kingdoms (WoW vanilla) N => S and E => W coast = 9.5 x 3.5 miles
crossing distance: Kalimdor from N => S coast 42 min, from E => W coast 17 min
= 59+59=118(Because two continents of roughly the same size) meaning it takes a longer time to travel the distances of the continents in a straight line, meaning there is less landmass in Guild Wars 2.
I'll give you the dented zones and Guild Wars 2 using all the zone so lets cut out the "dents" in the zones and Vanilla WoW would still be larger then GW2 in landmass.
And where do you get that these zones are as big as Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdom?
The key thing you should be looking to measure is total area of all the zones, which is a simple length times width calculation. Using your numbers, for WoW, this is 42 * 17 * 2 (for the two continents) = 1428 minutes squared (since the unit you chose to measure this in is minutes it takes to walk across the land, which I agree is the only useful way to compare one game to another.)
Using the same method, GW2 comes out to 38 * 46 = 1748 minutes squared, or 22.4% more full map area.
But of course, several problems arise. These measurements assume perfect rectangles that are filled with open space from end to end, which, of course, is not the case in either game. Unless you can accurately account for all the "empty space" within these maps and subtract it from the total potential area, this type of comparison becomes pretty useless outside of very general estimation.
For example, we could find that 40% of GW2's map is filled with empty, useless space, reducing GW2's total area from 1748 to 1048.8. Meanwhile, we may find that WoW's maps were only 90% efficient, resulting in a decrease of 142.8, leaving an area of 1285.2. In this scenario, WoW wins.
In another scenario, however, where, say, we find both WoW and GW2 to have been 70% space efficient (30% filled with empthy nothingness), GW2 would win with an area of 1223.6 versus 999.6.
There's also the matter of movement speed. As movement speeds increase, the world essentially "shrinks." Mounts, epic mounts, and eventually the introduction of epic flying mounts all made players *feel* like the world was a little smaller than it was. One could say the same thing about waypoints in GW2, that they utterly destroy the sense of size of the world.
While subjective feelings have no part in a quantitative statistical analysis, they are important factors to consider in the qualitative analysis. I'm inclined to argue that how big the world feels to its players is almost more important than how big it objectively is. A smaller area used incredibly efficiently and jam packed with content may feel much better than a gigantic barren zone.
These are just things that need to be taken into account before anyone bends the stats in their favor and declares their champion game the winner.
When you toggle walk speed (and in an human it seems a reasonable speed humans would walk) it take ages to reach anywhere.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Originally posted by bubaluba I know only one thing. Give me WOW battlegrounds, raids on cities and open world pvp in GW2 and i will change the side because of awesome GW2 graphic. I just can't find a reason to play GW2 , there is no real reward for leveling and pvp is meaningless
What reward does WoW leveling and what meaning does WoW pvp have?
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Its really silly to compare games in such a way. Its vastly different in how things are created today then back in the past. Its both easier to develop content as well as NEEDED a lot more. Not to mention so each element can vary in size and content. If looking at it vaguely, yes, GW2 produced more, but given WoW released today, it would of gotten a LOT more stuff added as well.
Really its all a comparison game. GW2 isn't really adding all that much, its on the good side of things giving good bits of content constantly. Its faring better then say SWTOR, but it falls behind quite a lot compared to something like Rift. To its credit on that end though, Trion is doing quite a lot a enjoys setting the bar.
If you are going to make any kind of comparison (which i feel is a bad idea) I'd say its less about what is added, but the relevance of it and how much of an effect it has on the experience. Its the attention they gain and the longevity in terms of what the content gives in the long run, rather then just the short term. In this regard, GW2 I feel is lacking behind. Far to many of the updates only gain temporary interest rather then a long term one. It just doesn't have content. It has such a heavy focus on combat with much of its content and lets face it, the combat in GW2 is one of its weakest elements of the game.
In short: Different periods in time yield different speeds in which a game can and needs to be updated. Patch substance means more then content and in this regard, GW2 is decent but could be doing far better. Its better to look at what is being made TODAY if you are going to compare, which shows GW2 to be doing about average leaning on the 'good' side.
Its really silly to compare games in such a way. Its vastly different in how things are created today then back in the past. Its both easier to develop content as well as NEEDED a lot more. Not to mention so each element can vary in size and content. If looking at it vaguely, yes, GW2 produced more, but given WoW released today, it would of gotten a LOT more stuff added as well.
Really its all a comparison game. GW2 isn't really adding all that much, its on the good side of things giving good bits of content constantly. Its faring better then say SWTOR, but it falls behind quite a lot compared to something like Rift. To its credit on that end though, Trion is doing quite a lot a enjoys setting the bar.
If you are going to make any kind of comparison (which i feel is a bad idea) I'd say its less about what is added, but the relevance of it and how much of an effect it has on the experience. Its the attention they gain and the longevity in terms of what the content gives in the long run, rather then just the short term. In this regard, GW2 I feel is lacking behind. Far to many of the updates only gain temporary interest rather then a long term one. It just doesn't have content. It has such a heavy focus on combat with much of its content and lets face it, the combat in GW2 is one of its weakest elements of the game.
In short: Different periods in time yield different speeds in which a game can and needs to be updated. Patch substance means more then content and in this regard, GW2 is decent but could be doing far better. Its better to look at what is being made TODAY if you are going to compare, which shows GW2 to be doing about average leaning on the 'good' side.
I like leveling.
The open world.
GW2 has for my tastes a much more interesting leveling and open world than Rift.
I start rift - kill these, kill those, pick up that from those, talk to that guy - all done by text.
GW2 provides a real time audio and visual experience to that while having a more interesting combat - instead of the immobile combat of something like rift.
See, you say GW2 combat is the weakest point, I say it is the strongest point - maybe because I like FPS as well.
Another example would be TSW - I don't like TSW combat as much as GW2, but I like the story missions and investigation missions and the paranoia atmosphere, on the other hand the side quests do nothing for me.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Expectations and competition were a lot different back then. People expect more from a game on day 1/month 1/year 1 than they did in 2004. GW2, one of the most polished and content heavy experiences I've ever had in a new MMORPG, has come out in an age when the expectations seem to be nearing perfection.
I can't state it any better than that. A lot of the games that released after WoW weren't bad, it was just the diminished utility and higher expectations created by WoW that made everything seem a lot worse.
Even if something like Age of Conan, or WAR had released right after EQ, it would have been hailed as one of the best MMOs of all time. WoW raised the bar for 3D MMORPGs to such a height, but at the same time enticed so many entrepreneurs to enter the market that we are now in the best situation ever for consumers since the inception of online P2P MUDs due to a state of perfect competition.
As for the main topic, GW2 is worth every cent, but some of the upcoming F2P MMOs might make that change. By 2004 standards, GW2 is the best game of the year, by 2013 standards, it's just a great game among many others.
Yeah, I went there. The question so many people hate but love to answer.
In my response to this thread, I outlined what my play time consisted of in the first 8 months of WoW versus what it consists of in the first 8 months of GW2. Since I obviously couldn't remember exactly when every bit of content was released in WoW, I had to reference the patch note archives. This lead me to compare the amount of content released within the first 8 months of WoW to that of GW2. The quick breakdown is as follows:
WoW Added:
Feast of Great-Winter (1.5 months)
Mauradon dungeon (1.5 months)
Gurubashi Arena Event (1.5 months)
Dire Maul (4 months)
2 world bosses: Azuregos and Doom Lord Kazzak (4 months)
The first 2 battlegrounds: Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch (7 months)
Blackwing Lair (8 months)
GW2 Added:
Halloween Event (2 month)
Lost Shores Karka event (3 months)
Temple of the Silent Storm pvp map (3 months)
Fractals of the Mists (3 months)
Wintersday (4 months)
Flame and Frost Living Story (5-8 months)
Spirit Watch pvp map (6 months)
Guild Missions (6 months)
Super Adventure Box (7 months)
Numerous new events, jumping puzzles, and mini dungeons that are either not mentioned in patch notes or barely hinted at in passing in patch notes, such as the Forsaken Fortune mini dungeon.
Note, these are just the *content* updates issued post-release. Within this thread, feel free to discuss the differences in content between the two games at release. Feel free to discuss the merits of temporary evolving content versus permanent content. Feel free to discuss any other intangibles you think may have contributed to WoW's growth during it's inception, how you feel GW2 is doing in comparison, and why.
As for me personally, I think it's always easy to clamor for more and more. As a gamer, I know I've certainly evolved over the years. I've grown tired of certain content that once may have had me hooked for months and months. Vanilla WoW certainly had me hooked all those years ago. However, I dare say that vanilla WoW wouldn't fare so well with my present self. Looking back on what there was available to do, I can't be sure it would have held my attention for more than a few months.
My personal analysis is that in a direct comparison, I think GW2 fares very well in terms of content when compared to WoW, both in content available at release and content issued post release; I do think WoW's content was better at *hooking* players then than GW2's is now, however. I also think GW2 fares extremely favorably in a time relative comparison. That is, to someone who has played MMOs for over a decade now and has grown tired of the "WoW model," GW2 gives me significantly more to do than vanilla WoW would have.
Events do not count as content IMO if it only last a few weeks then they take it away, also I will not play gw2 untill they add a lfg system, I will not use a website for that.
I think you are comparing apples to oranges really. WoW released with more content to the game than GW2. Not saying better just saying more. Then added some. I wonder if GW2 had this stuff ready at release, but realized they needed bread crumbs to keep people coming back. Now days with so much choices you need a hook to keep people coming back. It seems pretty clear in many games that if you release some content people will come back to check it out. Look at WoW ever expansion sees a bunch of people to check out the content then they leave. I think GW2 probably is playing off that.
Comments
Sounds like you just made a strawman and put a "You played it wrong" t-shirt on it.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Yeah lol, at least he has just confirmed what many of us have been saying.
Really! lol, why don't you come join me in Age Of Wushu.
My computer is better than yours.
Thank you I am glad we agree I though it made perfect sense as well.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Well, the unfortunate thing about a game like WoW is that, at any given time, it has nearly the same amount *content.* Every time a new expansion is released, so much of the previous content is rendered obsolete. Every vanilla, BC, WotlK and Cata raid are now worthless. Almost all of the dungeons from those expansions are irrelevant - for example, people may still tend to run Hellfire Ramparts when they reach level 60, but you'll never see anyone run Mechanar, or Arcatraz; you'll also never see anyone run the heroic versions of the level 70, 80, and 85 dungeons. The number of zones and quests is the only thing that continues to grow indefinitely; but at the same time, the amount of experience required to level through older zones continues to be nerfed so that players have no need to experience all the zones and their quests. Not only that, but every zone's content is itself made irrelevant after you level through it. There's never a reason to return, and nothing new ever happens. I'd feel pretty bummed out about it as a developer, knowing so much of my hard work is useless to most players most of the time.
I understand the desire for a present day apples to apples comparison, but I do think this is some stuff you then have to also take into consideration. As of right now, every bit of the permanent world content remains relevant to me at level 80 - (I actually find myself spending far more time in low level zones on my 80 characters than any of the high level zones, which would have been impossible for me in WoW, and I loved zones like Ashenvale, Redridge, Elywnn and Duskwood.) It will be interesting to see how true this holds as GW2 ages. As of right now, I suspect I will still be able to viable play in Queensdale and Wayfarer Foothills (or any other zone I want to visit) and have a good time there 8 years from now.
I don't think an MMORPG that was mainly targeted towards PVP then later decided to cater more to the PVE crowd should be compared to an MMORPG that was mainly targeted towards PVE then later decided to cater more to the PVP crowd.
They are pretty much polar opposites.
The key thing you should be looking to measure is total area of all the zones, which is a simple length times width calculation. Using your numbers, for WoW, this is 42 * 17 * 2 (for the two continents) = 1428 minutes squared (since the unit you chose to measure this in is minutes it takes to walk across the land, which I agree is the only useful way to compare one game to another.)
Using the same method, GW2 comes out to 38 * 46 = 1748 minutes squared, or 22.4% more full map area.
But of course, several problems arise. These measurements assume perfect rectangles that are filled with open space from end to end, which, of course, is not the case in either game. Unless you can accurately account for all the "empty space" within these maps and subtract it from the total potential area, this type of comparison becomes pretty useless outside of very general estimation.
For example, we could find that 40% of GW2's map is filled with empty, useless space, reducing GW2's total area from 1748 to 1048.8. Meanwhile, we may find that WoW's maps were only 90% efficient, resulting in a decrease of 142.8, leaving an area of 1285.2. In this scenario, WoW wins.
In another scenario, however, where, say, we find both WoW and GW2 to have been 70% space efficient (30% filled with empthy nothingness), GW2 would win with an area of 1223.6 versus 999.6.
There's also the matter of movement speed. As movement speeds increase, the world essentially "shrinks." Mounts, epic mounts, and eventually the introduction of epic flying mounts all made players *feel* like the world was a little smaller than it was. One could say the same thing about waypoints in GW2, that they utterly destroy the sense of size of the world.
While subjective feelings have no part in a quantitative statistical analysis, they are important factors to consider in the qualitative analysis. I'm inclined to argue that how big the world feels to its players is almost more important than how big it objectively is. A smaller area used incredibly efficiently and jam packed with content may feel much better than a gigantic barren zone.
These are just things that need to be taken into account before anyone bends the stats in their favor and declares their champion game the winner.
Not bad for a non-sub game. Of course, there are still those that cling to the idea that you can't update your game without a sub model, but most people know better by now.
As for WoW and GW2's dedication to releasing new content early on, I applaud both. WoW? Not so much these days. For such a massive cash cow, they stopped adding regular content a while back, but it was the worst during Cata.
I can take open world PvP or leave it, frankly, but I did enjoy the concept of killing the other faction's leaders. No doubt about it.
Regarding obsolete content: downleveling or heroic deadmines are just work arounds for flawed design. Having levels as progression means you are going to outlevel zones, monsters, items, etc. If your level 80 those starter zones that bring you back down to level 5 are only relevant if you have not completed everything there already or need to farm to start crafting or help a friend. If you added the ability to downlevel in WoW that wouldn't make anything but the latest content relevant, sure you could go back and experience the lower level stuff at the level it was ment to be played but you also take away the ability to power through stuff for your friends.
In Ultima Online which had no levels the content never became truly obsolete. An example being if you wanted arrows you could kill harpies for feathers in the harpy dungeon and return to do so at any time.
Another game that made the levels mean very little when it came to content or grouping was City of Heroes with sidekicking, mentoring and super-sidekicking as well as upleveling and downleveling plus being able to set difficulties for missions.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/What I really find strange about GW2 is, how unimportant the 3 big faction become at lvl 80+. Nobody ever asks you whether you are from the Priory, Vigil or the Order. There is so much potential to create a mini-battleground type of game, like in GW: Factions with the alliance battles for Kurzick or Luxon. There could be unique rewards for players most active for a specific faction for example, Titles, "prestige" armor sets, mini pets etc.
And btw...even if I dislike WoWs cartoonish graphics nowadays, I would rather take the bad looking cape of WoW than the stupid guild flag on my back in GW2. I do understand the difficulties with a cape, especially with the Charr character models but the flag just looks utterly ridiculous.
8 month into WoW vanilla, I was playing WoW. 8 month after GW2 was released, I have tried Pandaria, leveled my main to the new cap, canceled my two WoW accounts and went back to GW2 forever disgusted and bored of the WoW clone style stalled end game, and definitely not wanting to level another character through exactly the same areas and quests. At least previous expansions permitted variety when it came to leveling, in Pandaria it's one, linear path.
Take that for what it's worth.
My computer is better than yours.
When you toggle walk speed (and in an human it seems a reasonable speed humans would walk) it take ages to reach anywhere.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
What reward does WoW leveling and what meaning does WoW pvp have?
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Its really silly to compare games in such a way. Its vastly different in how things are created today then back in the past. Its both easier to develop content as well as NEEDED a lot more. Not to mention so each element can vary in size and content. If looking at it vaguely, yes, GW2 produced more, but given WoW released today, it would of gotten a LOT more stuff added as well.
Really its all a comparison game. GW2 isn't really adding all that much, its on the good side of things giving good bits of content constantly. Its faring better then say SWTOR, but it falls behind quite a lot compared to something like Rift. To its credit on that end though, Trion is doing quite a lot a enjoys setting the bar.
If you are going to make any kind of comparison (which i feel is a bad idea) I'd say its less about what is added, but the relevance of it and how much of an effect it has on the experience. Its the attention they gain and the longevity in terms of what the content gives in the long run, rather then just the short term. In this regard, GW2 I feel is lacking behind. Far to many of the updates only gain temporary interest rather then a long term one. It just doesn't have content. It has such a heavy focus on combat with much of its content and lets face it, the combat in GW2 is one of its weakest elements of the game.
In short: Different periods in time yield different speeds in which a game can and needs to be updated. Patch substance means more then content and in this regard, GW2 is decent but could be doing far better. Its better to look at what is being made TODAY if you are going to compare, which shows GW2 to be doing about average leaning on the 'good' side.
I like leveling.
The open world.
GW2 has for my tastes a much more interesting leveling and open world than Rift.
I start rift - kill these, kill those, pick up that from those, talk to that guy - all done by text.
GW2 provides a real time audio and visual experience to that while having a more interesting combat - instead of the immobile combat of something like rift.
See, you say GW2 combat is the weakest point, I say it is the strongest point - maybe because I like FPS as well.
Another example would be TSW - I don't like TSW combat as much as GW2, but I like the story missions and investigation missions and the paranoia atmosphere, on the other hand the side quests do nothing for me.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
My computer is better than yours.
I can't state it any better than that. A lot of the games that released after WoW weren't bad, it was just the diminished utility and higher expectations created by WoW that made everything seem a lot worse.
Even if something like Age of Conan, or WAR had released right after EQ, it would have been hailed as one of the best MMOs of all time. WoW raised the bar for 3D MMORPGs to such a height, but at the same time enticed so many entrepreneurs to enter the market that we are now in the best situation ever for consumers since the inception of online P2P MUDs due to a state of perfect competition.
As for the main topic, GW2 is worth every cent, but some of the upcoming F2P MMOs might make that change. By 2004 standards, GW2 is the best game of the year, by 2013 standards, it's just a great game among many others.
Events do not count as content IMO if it only last a few weeks then they take it away, also I will not play gw2 untill they add a lfg system, I will not use a website for that.
That being said WoW was better for me.