First,it actually brings the "MMO" to the open world instead of the "MMO" in an instance.
Additionally it made every player an ally in PVE, removing factions and removing competition for resources.
It also changed "questing", from the method of delivering them to the way it rewards them.
It is also possible to craft the best items in the game instead of them being hidden in some instance.
There are also a number of things that aren't exactly exclusive to it but that aren't (or were at GW2 release date) very common in MMORPGs, like 3-side PvP, non gear based PvP, etc.
What do you mean by the marked line?
Are you saying that GW2 is a non instanced game, i'm missing your point?
Structured PvP is nice for an hour or two but then it gets boring. Can't make premade groups which is odd but understandable i guess. Again the accesiblilty is there for casuals to jump in and start playing but thats about it. I don't get an addiction for it like other mmo's PvP systems.
O rly?!?! Are you sure you even played a single hour?
Seriosuly, I don't understand people who take time to make a post about a game, they know nothing about...
I was thinking this on so many of the "unrewarding" and "pointless" comments the OP made. Everything is rewarding in this game, everything gives you currency, items, enhancements, materials this list goes on. All affected btw by the +% to magic drop
Did he play at all? because even to level 10 you notice these things.
First,it actually brings the "MMO" to the open world instead of the "MMO" in an instance.
Additionally it made every player an ally in PVE, removing factions and removing competition for resources.
It also changed "questing", from the method of delivering them to the way it rewards them.
It is also possible to craft the best items in the game instead of them being hidden in some instance.
There are also a number of things that aren't exactly exclusive to it but that aren't (or were at GW2 release date) very common in MMORPGs, like 3-side PvP, non gear based PvP, etc.
What do you mean by the marked line?
Are you saying that GW2 is a non instanced game, i'm missing your point?
GW2 Open world isn't instanced, is there any doubs about that?
What I mean is that you actually have masses of people playing together towards the same shared objective in the open world of GW2, something that in most other games doesn't happen except in Raids and maybe the illusion of a populated open world in new starter areas for a race until the game shifts to a lobby like playstyle.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
It's not revolutionary at all, but it brings some features to the fore that have been hiding in other games but maybe not working as well.
A truly revolutionary game will be one that starts as almost nothing and gathers up a large following out of what seems like nothing, using mechanics and systems that many people wouldn't have even thought they would like or even enjoy.
Every game is evolving the genre, and many of them like GW2, The Secret World and even DayZ are showing that there are enough gamers that like these games niche type of gameplay that they can all co exist and no one HAS to dethrone WoW as the MMO giant.
We don't need another industry giant like WoW, we just need companies making games for the love of the game and not for the love of money. If only 50 other folk played DayZ I would still play it because I enjoy the gameplay, not everyone needs to be millionaires.
First,it actually brings the "MMO" to the open world instead of the "MMO" in an instance.
Additionally it made every player an ally in PVE, removing factions and removing competition for resources.
It also changed "questing", from the method of delivering them to the way it rewards them.
It is also possible to craft the best items in the game instead of them being hidden in some instance.
There are also a number of things that aren't exactly exclusive to it but that aren't (or were at GW2 release date) very common in MMORPGs, like 3-side PvP, non gear based PvP, etc.
What do you mean by the marked line?
Are you saying that GW2 is a non instanced game, i'm missing your point?
GW2 Open world isn't instanced, is there any doubs about that?
What I mean is that you actually have masses of people playing together towards the same shared objective in the open world of GW2, something that in most other games doesn't happen except in Raids and maybe the illusion of a populated open world in new starter areas for a race until the game shifts to a lobby like playstyle.
Once you have explored the zones and done the quests in GW2 though you enter the lobby game too, idling in cities, crafting, dungeons, pvp, WvW, do it all without really going anywhere. Add in the fact that you can just fast travel anywhere and it feels even smaller.
None of the zones in GW2 connected at all, so its not really OPEN fi you want to get down to it, everything is connected by a loading screen and once a certain amoutn of people are in that zone you are placed in an overflow, so it is instanced.
Googling turns up an interesting lack of results. What's funny is that all known instances of this phrase, or close variants, spawed here, in this thread.
If you're questioning who's 'guilty of generating the hype'? It's the OP.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
If you find GW2 features nothing new how do you call any other mmo's on the market then ? What do you expect from mmo's in general ?
It seems to me you are waiting for virtual reality with 3d glasses on and can walk in a real virtual world ? Newsflash that might not happen in our life time !!! shocking i now !!!
GW2 have taken alot of standard mmo features and improved them. For some its epic and for some its fail.
Dunno what you wanted to achieve with your post as it might take another 3 years for a studio to beat GW2 in terms of inovation.
Archage will suffer from alot of dated mmo mechanics and that might be the only tripple mmo comming out and be compared to GW2, and its a year of release date here in the west.
GW2 is evolutionary and a fantastic game but imho it currently falls somewhat short of revolutionary, i say currently falls short because the game is less than 2 months old and can still over time have features, content and fixes added that eventually make it truly revolutionary if anet should decide to take it that way..
I still play gw2 and very much enjoy it but just like any other newly released games it has some serious flaws and bugs that need to be hammered out..
Its not really revoloutionary, it just borrows from games that aren't wow for a change.
Specifically daoc, coh & war.
But there's one thing it does which is great compared to wow and all its clones. Endgame in gw2 isn't a glorified lobby game with everyone sat in cities waiting to go instances. Which is weird considering they made gw1.
It really depends on how you define "revolutionary".
It is the first game that doesnt do just like Wow and still do what it does really well. It also do that with B2P.
But GW2 is not a revolution in itself, just like Paynes writing wasnt. It is however the start of a revolution because it acually show mainstream devs that you dont have to do things exactly like Wow to make a fun and working game.
I still voted Yes, but only because I already known this for a long while. The game still have a lot of the standard MMO features put in a slightly different way, and exploration is not something new, it was a common features in the late 90s early 00s.
GW2 is not a Wow copy and what is at least revolutionary starting is that it actually proves that non Wow copies still can do fine.
The game is still in vanilla and where the game will be 5 years from now is hard to say but it still prove the point and hopefully it might get people like EA and Activision to realize that it is not just changing P2P into F2P that needs to be done if you want a new successful MMO but you also need to change the basics of the game.
There are other games who got the same basic idea, Tera have tried to change MMO combat, TSW try to get rid of levels and so on (not counting small indie games here) but none of them really sold well enough to really prove the point to the larger publishers, and GW2 is experimenting with many things who each by themselves might not be so big.
GW2 is not a revolution in itself but the revolution have started. We just dont see the large picture yet and wont for a few more years but hopefully we will once again get MMOs that try to do things in their own way instead of just copy and paste.
First,it actually brings the "MMO" to the open world instead of the "MMO" in an instance.
Additionally it made every player an ally in PVE, removing factions and removing competition for resources.
It also changed "questing", from the method of delivering them to the way it rewards them.
It is also possible to craft the best items in the game instead of them being hidden in some instance.
There are also a number of things that aren't exactly exclusive to it but that aren't (or were at GW2 release date) very common in MMORPGs, like 3-side PvP, non gear based PvP, etc.
What do you mean by the marked line?
Are you saying that GW2 is a non instanced game, i'm missing your point?
GW2 Open world isn't instanced, is there any doubs about that?
What I mean is that you actually have masses of people playing together towards the same shared objective in the open world of GW2, something that in most other games doesn't happen except in Raids and maybe the illusion of a populated open world in new starter areas for a race until the game shifts to a lobby like playstyle.
Once you have explored the zones and done the quests in GW2 though you enter the lobby game too, idling in cities, crafting, dungeons, pvp, WvW, do it all without really going anywhere. Add in the fact that you can just fast travel anywhere and it feels even smaller.
None of the zones in GW2 connected at all, so its not really OPEN fi you want to get down to it, everything is connected by a loading screen and once a certain amoutn of people are in that zone you are placed in an overflow, so it is instanced.
Actually you can't do dungeons from towns.
In fact the open world is still relevant because part of the "quests" never end and you won't spend that much time in towns.
It is open world it just isn't seamless.
An overflow server is that a server. Much better than a queue screen.
It is crazy the things we have to debate with Guild Wars games. "Guild Wars 1 ins't an MMORPG cause it is instanced" bur "DDO is an MMORPG" no problem or "Vindictus is a MMORPG ". I wonder if people debat if TERA is a MMORPG or not because it has CHANNELS AND THOSE ARE DIFFERENT INSTANCES but "GW2 is instanced because if your server is full and they send you to an overflow server isntead of queue it is proof it is an instance".
Lets just ignore the point that you keep playing (if only briefly) with tons of people while by the time a panda in the biggest MMORPG reaches northrend he is playing alone in the world (that is if he isn't levelling by doing dungeons instead of doing quests).
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Googling turns up an interesting lack of results. What's funny is that all known instances of this phrase, or close variants, spawed here, in this thread.
If you're questioning who's 'guilty of generating the hype'? It's the OP.
And before the OP or anyone else thinks about using this poll to bash the game more... a game not being "revolutionary" (but IMHO just "evolutionary", aka enhancing existing elements) doesn't make it a bad game, or all MMORPG since the UO/AC1/EQ trio are bad since they all copied on those three and enhanced the features.
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
It's, by far, not the first game to not clone WoW design. Tabula Rasa, TSW, Darkfall, and others have gone a very different direction.
It might be the first pure fantasy MMO that's a success AND haven't cloned WoW mechanics - that's true, but I don't find that to be particularly amazing.
Trying new things is fine, but if they don't amount to something better - it's worth exactly nothing, except as an experiment to learn from.
To me, GW2 represents a lesson that - apparently - some people/developers needed to appreciate why some things are the way they are in RPGS - and why they work. Some things don't need to change and they're not exclusively bad - with a good example being the trinity.
I have never really thought of GW2 as revolutionary, but over time it has delivered a kind of "personal revolution" in that it has taken the shine out of older games that I used to really enjoy.
LOTRO is one such game. I always loved it, always went back to it when out of things to play. But now, after GW2, I just can't play it. The combat seems dull and dated - I have to stand there and take the hits, I can't dodge, my attacks are slow and I can't move and attack at the same time. I can't swap weapons in combat.
Same with questing - having a quest log just puts me off now, lots of things to do all over the place and I feel this need to try to clear it out before quests become grey. Then there is the fact that quests become grey and I have outlevelled them, or certain areas or content and parts of the game slowly become obsolete. Plus I miss events just popping up and dragging me in directions I didn't plan going in when I set out. The game world seems more static and lifeless.
So, maybe GW2 isn't the earth-shattering change to the genre that people thought it would be, but at the same time my own experience is that it has evolved MMO gameplay to an extent where older games just seem old now by comparison.
Sorry, we have a presidential election coming up. If this is what passes for skeptical scrutiny on this site, how poorly informed is our electorate?
Hold me, I'm more frightened every four years.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I voted no. GW 2 is a solid MMO but nowhere near revolutionary. Unfourtunately the industry is in such a state that big budget developers dont take risks and want to mostly play it safe, which means nothing revolutionary will ever be done by them.
First,it actually brings the "MMO" to the open world instead of the "MMO" in an instance.
Additionally it made every player an ally in PVE, removing factions and removing competition for resources.
It also changed "questing", from the method of delivering them to the way it rewards them.
It is also possible to craft the best items in the game instead of them being hidden in some instance.
There are also a number of things that aren't exactly exclusive to it but that aren't (or were at GW2 release date) very common in MMORPGs, like 3-side PvP, non gear based PvP, etc.
What do you mean by the marked line?
Are you saying that GW2 is a non instanced game, i'm missing your point?
GW2 Open world isn't instanced, is there any doubs about that?
What I mean is that you actually have masses of people playing together towards the same shared objective in the open world of GW2, something that in most other games doesn't happen except in Raids and maybe the illusion of a populated open world in new starter areas for a race until the game shifts to a lobby like playstyle.
GW2 is not an open world mmo, just because people can play together does not mean it's an open world. You actually made the claim that it brings open world to MMOs lol, that's total rubbish.
Have you actually played an open world MMO where there are no instances whatsoever because GW2 is not one of those worlds. I will give ArenaNet it's due because the world is okay and graphics are very nice indeed but saying one of the things GW2 chages is bringing open world to MMO is lauaghable to say the least.
Most of future mmorpgs will handle quests according to GW2,getting rid off quest hubs, they will also get rid off the stealing mobs and ninja looting & they will allow to share kill experience, crafting nodes and a long etcetera....
GW2 may be not the "Genre breaking" some of you were expecting.... Maybe you had unreasonable expectations...
But it is definetly going to change how mmos will be played from now on.
In my opinion...GW2 is not "Genre Breaking"...but a very awaited evolution of the genre´s gameplay.
First,it actually brings the "MMO" to the open world instead of the "MMO" in an instance.
Additionally it made every player an ally in PVE, removing factions and removing competition for resources.
It also changed "questing", from the method of delivering them to the way it rewards them.
It is also possible to craft the best items in the game instead of them being hidden in some instance.
There are also a number of things that aren't exactly exclusive to it but that aren't (or were at GW2 release date) very common in MMORPGs, like 3-side PvP, non gear based PvP, etc.
But none of those things is actually new.
No instances: All the old games were like that. Instances came later.
"Every player an ally on PVE": I've seen that in text mode muds when graphic web browsers did not exist yet.
It's also not the first game that changes the "questiong approach". It has got its personal approach but still uses quests anyway.
Best items are crafted is as old as SWG.
So, yes, GW2 will change some things, the same way other games have done. Now, will it be the revolution that some players were talking about? Not really.
Revolution means new? Changing means new?
The fact it goes fetch things from older games even MUDS, some that don't exist any longer is proof it is changing things.
Evolution, Revolution, Change, Innovation, none of these words mean "something new, never seen before".
It just means a departure from what is done now. Which games released in the last couple years brought the things I mentioned to the mass market?
Revolutionizing the MMO market will mean future games will incorporate some/most of the things GW2 has in a regular base.
So if in the future we start seeing overflow servers, low downtime patching, Dynamic Events, weapon tied skills, no trinity, faction-less PvE, 3 side PvP, global auction house, b2p+cash shop, more action oriented combat (I know several titles have started to do that, but the biggest ones only rarely do so), less "!" NPCs, etc, then GW2 was indeed probably a revolution.
And sometimes it isn't those that create/invent something that make it popular or bring it to the masses - WoW could be described as a streamlined and polished EQ, but the fact is that WoW became the standard and not EQ,dispite EQ introducing many of the concepts WoW use first.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Most of future mmorpgs will handle quests according to GW2,getting rid off quest hubs, they will also get rid off the stealing mobs & they will allow to share kill experience, crafting nodes and a long etcetera....
GW2 may be not the "Genre breaking" some of you were expecting.... Maybe you had unreasonable expectations...
But it is definetly going to change how mmos will be played from now on.
In my opinion...GW2 is not "Genre Breaking"...but a very awaited evolution of the genre´s gameplay.
Sharing nodes already happens, as for the lack of quest hubs, i can't see it. Their are MMOs that are in development that still have quest hubs and many people still prefer them.
Comments
absolutely it still is, nothing has changed from the features list it has to now. if people don't learn it's just their own ignorance.
To those who believe the nonsense the devs of sub only 2004 lobby style cookie cutter games sell you:
"It's easier to fool people then to convince them that they have been fooled" -- Mark Twain.
Seen so many examples of that happening in other titles. Is it any wonder people are afraid of change?
What do you mean by the marked line?
Are you saying that GW2 is a non instanced game, i'm missing your point?
I was thinking this on so many of the "unrewarding" and "pointless" comments the OP made. Everything is rewarding in this game, everything gives you currency, items, enhancements, materials this list goes on. All affected btw by the +% to magic drop
Did he play at all? because even to level 10 you notice these things.
GW2 Open world isn't instanced, is there any doubs about that?
What I mean is that you actually have masses of people playing together towards the same shared objective in the open world of GW2, something that in most other games doesn't happen except in Raids and maybe the illusion of a populated open world in new starter areas for a race until the game shifts to a lobby like playstyle.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
It's not revolutionary at all, but it brings some features to the fore that have been hiding in other games but maybe not working as well.
A truly revolutionary game will be one that starts as almost nothing and gathers up a large following out of what seems like nothing, using mechanics and systems that many people wouldn't have even thought they would like or even enjoy.
Every game is evolving the genre, and many of them like GW2, The Secret World and even DayZ are showing that there are enough gamers that like these games niche type of gameplay that they can all co exist and no one HAS to dethrone WoW as the MMO giant.
We don't need another industry giant like WoW, we just need companies making games for the love of the game and not for the love of money. If only 50 other folk played DayZ I would still play it because I enjoy the gameplay, not everyone needs to be millionaires.
Once you have explored the zones and done the quests in GW2 though you enter the lobby game too, idling in cities, crafting, dungeons, pvp, WvW, do it all without really going anywhere. Add in the fact that you can just fast travel anywhere and it feels even smaller.
None of the zones in GW2 connected at all, so its not really OPEN fi you want to get down to it, everything is connected by a loading screen and once a certain amoutn of people are in that zone you are placed in an overflow, so it is instanced.
"Revolutionary Game That Would Change The Genre"
Cite this quotation please.
Googling turns up an interesting lack of results. What's funny is that all known instances of this phrase, or close variants, spawed here, in this thread.
If you're questioning who's 'guilty of generating the hype'? It's the OP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
Classic, easy political trick.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
If you find GW2 features nothing new how do you call any other mmo's on the market then ?
What do you expect from mmo's in general ?
It seems to me you are waiting for virtual reality with 3d glasses on and can walk in a real virtual world ?
Newsflash that might not happen in our life time !!! shocking i now !!!
GW2 have taken alot of standard mmo features and improved them.
For some its epic and for some its fail.
Dunno what you wanted to achieve with your post as it might take another 3 years for a studio to beat GW2 in terms of inovation.
Archage will suffer from alot of dated mmo mechanics and that might be the only tripple mmo comming out and be compared to GW2, and its a year of release date here in the west.
GW2 is evolutionary and a fantastic game but imho it currently falls somewhat short of revolutionary, i say currently falls short because the game is less than 2 months old and can still over time have features, content and fixes added that eventually make it truly revolutionary if anet should decide to take it that way..
I still play gw2 and very much enjoy it but just like any other newly released games it has some serious flaws and bugs that need to be hammered out..
Playing GW2..
Specifically daoc, coh & war.
But there's one thing it does which is great compared to wow and all its clones. Endgame in gw2 isn't a glorified lobby game with everyone sat in cities waiting to go instances. Which is weird considering they made gw1.
It really depends on how you define "revolutionary".
It is the first game that doesnt do just like Wow and still do what it does really well. It also do that with B2P.
But GW2 is not a revolution in itself, just like Paynes writing wasnt. It is however the start of a revolution because it acually show mainstream devs that you dont have to do things exactly like Wow to make a fun and working game.
I still voted Yes, but only because I already known this for a long while. The game still have a lot of the standard MMO features put in a slightly different way, and exploration is not something new, it was a common features in the late 90s early 00s.
GW2 is not a Wow copy and what is at least revolutionary starting is that it actually proves that non Wow copies still can do fine.
The game is still in vanilla and where the game will be 5 years from now is hard to say but it still prove the point and hopefully it might get people like EA and Activision to realize that it is not just changing P2P into F2P that needs to be done if you want a new successful MMO but you also need to change the basics of the game.
There are other games who got the same basic idea, Tera have tried to change MMO combat, TSW try to get rid of levels and so on (not counting small indie games here) but none of them really sold well enough to really prove the point to the larger publishers, and GW2 is experimenting with many things who each by themselves might not be so big.
GW2 is not a revolution in itself but the revolution have started. We just dont see the large picture yet and wont for a few more years but hopefully we will once again get MMOs that try to do things in their own way instead of just copy and paste.
Actually you can't do dungeons from towns.
In fact the open world is still relevant because part of the "quests" never end and you won't spend that much time in towns.
It is open world it just isn't seamless.
An overflow server is that a server. Much better than a queue screen.
It is crazy the things we have to debate with Guild Wars games. "Guild Wars 1 ins't an MMORPG cause it is instanced" bur "DDO is an MMORPG" no problem or "Vindictus is a MMORPG ". I wonder if people debat if TERA is a MMORPG or not because it has CHANNELS AND THOSE ARE DIFFERENT INSTANCES but "GW2 is instanced because if your server is full and they send you to an overflow server isntead of queue it is proof it is an instance".
Lets just ignore the point that you keep playing (if only briefly) with tons of people while by the time a panda in the biggest MMORPG reaches northrend he is playing alone in the world (that is if he isn't levelling by doing dungeons instead of doing quests).
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
This, of course. As usual, obvious is obvious.
And before the OP or anyone else thinks about using this poll to bash the game more... a game not being "revolutionary" (but IMHO just "evolutionary", aka enhancing existing elements) doesn't make it a bad game, or all MMORPG since the UO/AC1/EQ trio are bad since they all copied on those three and enhanced the features.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
It's, by far, not the first game to not clone WoW design. Tabula Rasa, TSW, Darkfall, and others have gone a very different direction.
It might be the first pure fantasy MMO that's a success AND haven't cloned WoW mechanics - that's true, but I don't find that to be particularly amazing.
Trying new things is fine, but if they don't amount to something better - it's worth exactly nothing, except as an experiment to learn from.
To me, GW2 represents a lesson that - apparently - some people/developers needed to appreciate why some things are the way they are in RPGS - and why they work. Some things don't need to change and they're not exclusively bad - with a good example being the trinity.
I have never really thought of GW2 as revolutionary, but over time it has delivered a kind of "personal revolution" in that it has taken the shine out of older games that I used to really enjoy.
LOTRO is one such game. I always loved it, always went back to it when out of things to play. But now, after GW2, I just can't play it. The combat seems dull and dated - I have to stand there and take the hits, I can't dodge, my attacks are slow and I can't move and attack at the same time. I can't swap weapons in combat.
Same with questing - having a quest log just puts me off now, lots of things to do all over the place and I feel this need to try to clear it out before quests become grey. Then there is the fact that quests become grey and I have outlevelled them, or certain areas or content and parts of the game slowly become obsolete. Plus I miss events just popping up and dragging me in directions I didn't plan going in when I set out. The game world seems more static and lifeless.
So, maybe GW2 isn't the earth-shattering change to the genre that people thought it would be, but at the same time my own experience is that it has evolved MMO gameplay to an extent where older games just seem old now by comparison.
Fact-checking on a game forum? No wai!
Sorry, we have a presidential election coming up. If this is what passes for skeptical scrutiny on this site, how poorly informed is our electorate?
Hold me, I'm more frightened every four years.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
My gaming blog
GW2 is not an open world mmo, just because people can play together does not mean it's an open world. You actually made the claim that it brings open world to MMOs lol, that's total rubbish.
Have you actually played an open world MMO where there are no instances whatsoever because GW2 is not one of those worlds. I will give ArenaNet it's due because the world is okay and graphics are very nice indeed but saying one of the things GW2 chages is bringing open world to MMO is lauaghable to say the least.
Nope. Not even close.
But I never thought that to begin with...
YES. And you all will see.
Most of future mmorpgs will handle quests according to GW2,getting rid off quest hubs, they will also get rid off the stealing mobs and ninja looting & they will allow to share kill experience, crafting nodes and a long etcetera....
GW2 may be not the "Genre breaking" some of you were expecting.... Maybe you had unreasonable expectations...
But it is definetly going to change how mmos will be played from now on.
In my opinion...GW2 is not "Genre Breaking"...but a very awaited evolution of the genre´s gameplay.
and BTW: I disagree with most OP´s points...
Exploration dull? Dungeons unorganized? Combat sad?
just NO,NO and NO srry.
Revolution means new? Changing means new?
The fact it goes fetch things from older games even MUDS, some that don't exist any longer is proof it is changing things.
Evolution, Revolution, Change, Innovation, none of these words mean "something new, never seen before".
It just means a departure from what is done now. Which games released in the last couple years brought the things I mentioned to the mass market?
Revolutionizing the MMO market will mean future games will incorporate some/most of the things GW2 has in a regular base.
So if in the future we start seeing overflow servers, low downtime patching, Dynamic Events, weapon tied skills, no trinity, faction-less PvE, 3 side PvP, global auction house, b2p+cash shop, more action oriented combat (I know several titles have started to do that, but the biggest ones only rarely do so), less "!" NPCs, etc, then GW2 was indeed probably a revolution.
And sometimes it isn't those that create/invent something that make it popular or bring it to the masses - WoW could be described as a streamlined and polished EQ, but the fact is that WoW became the standard and not EQ,dispite EQ introducing many of the concepts WoW use first.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Sharing nodes already happens, as for the lack of quest hubs, i can't see it. Their are MMOs that are in development that still have quest hubs and many people still prefer them.
Revolutionary? Change the genre?
Imo not even close...