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Difference between GW2 and GW1
ejendals
Member Posts: 33
in Guild Wars 2
Hello! I have never played original Guild Wars, and from the recent posts about adding games like Diablo 3 to this site, I got that Guild Wars is not actually an MMORPG, that it is as MMORPG as Global Agenda is. So I wanted to get explanation about will Guild Wars 2 be the same, or it is completely different? I am in for such ''MMO''s like Global Agenda, would like to try Guild Wars, but it is too late, when GW2 is commin soon.. So is GW2 ''a different mmo'' or it is just a theme park like World of warcraft or Rift..?
Comments
Check the sticky thread in this forum OP, it should just about answer any question you have about the game.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/Everything-We-Know-about-GW2.html
Guild Wars 1 is described as a Competitive Online RPG, not an MMORPG. The world is instanced, not persistent.
Guild Wars will still be running after GW2 comes out and if you buy the game and the expansion, you can earn vanity rewards (skins, pets, titles) in GW2. Guild Wars 2 might not come out until next year sometime, so still plenty of time to check out GW if you want. The trilogy is $30 and has been on sale on Steam for as low as $15. It's a lot of content for no subscription fee. I personally don't think it's a great game but it's a very good one.
GW2 will be very different from GW and also from WoW/Rift. In my opinion, they're really examining every aspect of MMOs, questioning everything, and coming up with the best game they can. It is a true AAA quality MMO with a persistent world.
The big features are a dynamic events system which completely replaces traditional quests and offers a more engaging, community oriented experience.
There's also a personal storyline for each character to give them one big epic adventure instead of a quest log full of things. The story has branches based on choices in game and also at character creation.
The combat is not FPS shooter, but more active than a traditional MMO, featuring casting on the move, dodging attacks and projectiles, and letting people adopt different controlling or supporting roles in combat on the fly depending on the needs of the group, not just being locked into one role.
There's lots more but those are the big ones I think.
We're happy to help answer any questions you may have.
If you haven't seen the Manifesto trailer that's a good place to start. The second half is all gameplay footage (staged obviously but it's in game not cinematic)
Here are two fan made videos also, Top 10 reasons to be interested and 10 little things to like.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Both GW1 and GW2 are themepark games, however they are/will not be anything like WoW or Rift. I haven't played Global Agenda, so I can't make any comparisons to it. I apologize in advance if you already knew the following information. Wall of text incoming.
Where to start, where to start...
First, GW1 isn't an MMO, not in the traditional sense. It is/was a CORPG (Competetive/Cooperative RPG) When Arenanet first created the game, they wanted it to be a PvP game with PvE on the side, where PvE was sort of a pre-PvP training ground for the players. However, things didn't turn out the way they had expected them to and many players demanded more PvE content, so Arenanet obliged.
It is a team-oriented game, and except for some very specific tasks in the game, the whole game is supposed to be played with a party (the size varies from 4 to 12 players or henchmen (AI)). The world is entirely instanced except for the towns, in which you meet other players and form parties. With the game getting older and the playerbase spreading over 3 stand-alone games and one expansion Arenanet had to add Heroes, a "smarter" version of the henchmen, which players can modify and control. So pretty much this made the game almost entirely solo-able.
At the center of the game stands the story. You have both quests and missions. Quests you will be familiar with, although due to the instanced nature of the game there is a sort of persistence to the areas you're currently in. (the mobs don't respawn etc.) The missions told the story of the game through the tasks you had to complete and with the help of cutscenes. You can skip most of the quests if you don't feel like doing them, however in some of the stand-alone games the missions are required of you to do in order to progress further.
The level cap in the game is 20. You can reach it in a day, depending on which game exactly you start in. The 20 levels are pretty much the tutorial, the real game starts afterward. There is also no emphasis on gear progression whatsoever.
The combat system is also quite different from WoW/Rift. GW1 skill system is based on Magic the Gathering rather than on D&D. You have hundreds of skills for each class (and you have a dual-class system) of which you can pick only 8 at any given time. You can freely respec and play around with this system as much as you want, which I believe was the charm of the game for many of those who played it. There are healers, but there are no tanks in the real sense of the word and most classes can fulfill more than one role thanks to the flexibility of the system I mentioned previously. You can also change your second class freely after a certain point in the game.
GW2 is a spiritual successor of the first game. The design philosophy and goals of Arenanet remain the same, but the methods they use to accomplish them are quite different. This time around GW2 is a fully fledged MMO with a persistent world. PvE and PvP are equally important to Arenanet right from the start of the game.
GW1 was instanced in order to make players cooperate and to remove any forms of griefing (kill-stealing etc). As Arenanet put it - they want you to be happy to see other players in the game at any given time. Thus like in the first one PvE and PvP are completely separated and there are no more quests. Instead you get Dynamic Events that have a lasting (not permanent) effect on the surrounding world. They have a really large number of DEs and they will be scripted in such a way that when you go through the same area at a later point of time you will encounter completely different things happening. The game relies a lot on visual and audio clues, so there are no more walls of quest text that tells you where to go and what to do. Instead you see things happening, like some farmer coming at you screaming that bandits are attacking his farm and pointing you in the direction. And the bandits won't be standing in the field picking dasies, waiting for you to come and attack them either. They will be burning the farmer's haybales and stuff like that. Events chain, based on the outcome they may have different effects on the world (like completely chaning the monsters that spawn in an area or some goods disappearing from the local merchant's "For sale" list.) Also, events don't reset until the players come and fix things up. All players can jump right into the action, and leave wherever they want. The events scale based on the number of players currently actively participating in them.
I don't know what you like/dislike about themepark games and if you like sandbox games instead. One thing I personally find completely annoying is the quest system. It's mainly because I feel forced to move from an area when I'm finished with the kill-10-rats types of quest and having to go to the next area. I used to play Lineage 2, and while not completely a sandbox game, I loved the freedom to pick where I want to go do my leveling since there were no quest hubsto "guide" me. This is personally the thing I like most about the DE system in GW2. That you're given the option where to go and what to do and it feels natural just to explore the world.
There are also hidden places in the world and you can trigger a dynamic event by finding and opening a random chest in an underwater cave.
Arenanet pay just as much attention to the story in GW2 as they did in GW1 (maybe even more). However, this time around you don't have to play through it if you don't want to. Half of the character creation consists of you answering on biography questions and based on your choices you'd have a different personal storyline than someone else. There are choices to be made in the game as well. The personal storyline is mainly instanced and choices you make are permanent (If you decide to kill some NPC it will stay dead.) It really reminds me of a single player RPG (with a branching storyline) placed in an MMO world. Of course, you can completely skip it if you're not interested.
There are more traditional MMORPG features like 5-man dungeons, with the small difference that dungeons also have a story told through cutscenes. The dungeons also have an "explorable mode" (actually at least 3 different versions of this) which is supposed to be a highly challenging group content.
As with the first one, there's no focus on leveling and gear progression. The max level is 80, but the leveling curve is flat (from 31 to 32 will take the same time as from 79 to 80) and you can get max stats armor through crafting, by doing dungeons, through PvP(World vs World vs World) or just buy it at a vendor. The only difference will be the looks.
Crafting is somewhat similar to that in Minecraft, in the sense that you collect different nodes, and depending on the materials you put together you may "unlock" different recepies. Also you won't be forced to craft tons of useless stuff to level your crafting.
Combat is both similar and different from GW1. It's still inspired by MTG, but the skill pools are much smaller (because of issues with balancing in the first game). There are ways(traits) to modify your skills. Arenanet are "removing" the holy trinity typical for games like WoW and Rift. The healers are completely removed as a role. The things left are support/control/damage dealing. Any class can fulfill any of those at any time, so the days of "GLF healer to go." are pretty much gone.
I can write more, but it's almost 6 AM here. So, you tell me. Is it a typical themepark MMO like WoW and Rift?
Well, thanks for your replies! It is exactly what I wanted to get from this thread! I am deffinately not going to play those other TP MMOs like Rift or SWTOR, since I am more for sandbox features, Prime Battle for Dominus is actually the one I am waiting for at the moment, but lately I mostly played sci-fi mmos like GA, Perpetuum, so GW2 seems different and a good option for fantasy mmo. So I will, of course, give it a try, when it releases! Thank you again!
GW: Released
GW2: Not Released
I've always looked Guild Wars 1 as something akin to Champions of Norrath in structure. You have missions to beat and goals to accomplish. It is very story driven and gear is a minor focus compared to MMOs like EQ, WoW, etc. That being said, it would be wise to look at this in a different light than you would any of the aforementioned games because it is not an MMORPG in the traditional sense. I believe it was initially called a competitive online RPG during its development and early life. Guild Wars is heavily instanced, with the towns being the only persistent area with large amounts of interaction. To aid you in the instanced quest areas or missions are other players, henchmen (AI controlled) or heroes, companions with editable skillbars.
Guild Wars 2 will be similar to the traditional MMO in the fact that it will sport a persistent world in which you can react with other players world wide, rather than simply in towns or outposts like GW1. Where GW2 differs is in how you will interact with the world and players. Raids are not something heavily focused on, there are 5 man dungeons and plenty solo content. One hallmark GW2 feature is the Dynamic Events system. This system makes questing a bit more dynamic and your actions or inaction in the events determines how the world unfolds.
Reach leavel 20 in a day? Not hardly. Prophechies took me months. Factions and Nightfall are faster but a day? Don't think so.
GW1 supposed to be party oriented but they messed that up first by adding heroes then by changing limit of heroes in a party from 3 to 7. They've all but killed the socialization in GW1. Which I'll never understand. What they did with GW1 goes against what they say the want with GW2.
I for one am glad they dropped heroes from GW2.
How about you do some research yourself instead of making a thread asking people the differences between the two games(there are a lot).
A day might be an over exagerration. However, it took me about 2-3 days to get to level 20. It shouldn't take you months to reach level 20. Seriously... a few weeks at most.
You are such a buzz kill dude. Isn't that the whole point of forums? discuss, ask qustions..get informed? it is still better than GW2 VS SWTOR topics that we get on daily basis. yes there is a sticky but then what are forums for? pvp? or where fans high five eachother all day long?
I thought I remembered hitting level 20 in Factions in a day. Maybe if you just have a day off of work and spend it playing?
Nightfall is somewhere inbetween Factions and Prophecies for speed (But closer to Prophecies)
Guildwars is a CORPG like DDO and STO. It is instanced and closer to an E-sport PvP wise than any other MMO.
GW2 on the other hand differs a lot from the first game, and Rift & Wow for that matter. It is still a kind of themepark since players don't create their own quests though.
I really think you should watch a few of the vids to get the basic understanding of the game before we write walls of text about it here.
Yeah, I did it on a saturday, Factions were really fast.
Prophecies took some time though, and it took really long before you could unlock changing the secondary class.
I think Nightfall is closer to Factions, it is possible to level up to 20 in a day there as well even though it is more work.
Skip the videos because they are biased. Take it from me and any of these guys can tell you I am not a fanboi as of yet until I see it live. The games are basically night and day.
From a outside view in GW2 qualifies more as a traditional mmorpg then GW1 ever could. Total guess not having played the Beta the general idea looks to blend a sandbox and themepark into one game. The questing from what I can tell is not defined or straightforward, but more how you would expect questing to work in real life.
Guess they can be treated more like task then grab x or y quest. The pvp looks to be unique and skill based and not revovling around gear. Issue here you are praying the 13 year old byehind the key board has any skill at the game, but taking away the auto win button with gear is nice.
Overall in my view: 5/10...10/10 if all the promises are true
Hype level: Over 9,000 and impossible to find a fair impartial view of the game not based on total guessing.