Guild Wars Vs World of Warcraft

[*kjm]

Originally posted by: skace

Originally posted by: Maxspeed996
LOL! ok , I may be a cheap bastard...but c'mon $180 a year to play a game on top of what? $40-$50 for the game? I dont' go buying games every few months. This entire year I have spent $120 on new games...Oblivion $50 - Factions $50 (Guildwars expansion) and Quake 4 $20
And I can play them when I want....For some people it may work , but for me I can't make myself pay fees to play a game. The games I've got have more than lasted me all year , and I've barely scratched the surface of what I've got...so FOR ME , my way works.

Your way works, although most people who play video games usually spend a lot more than you are. Usually someone who can claim to only buying 3 games a year is stealing more than that online. Not accusing you, since I honestly can't really say. Once you include the price of any downloaded games, your value to time goes through the roof.

Even if those really are the only games you've played in an entire year, you are still not gaining access to the same type of experience you would be with wow. None of those games gives you access to a fully populated world. That might not appeal to you, but if it does, that type of networking comes with a price.

It depends on ones life? I just got a black lab that is now 11 months and I?m spending a lot of time training him in the field. I?m a home owner and I just remodeled my living room and just started building new cabinets in my woodshop for the kitchen. I also fish, hunt, garden and on top of all that my wife wants to spend time with me I just bought GW and if I ran everywhere possible it would take me a year to finish on my own. As you can see I only get about 2 to 4 hours a week to play though

 

[zerocool84]

if i was younger im sure i could get into WOW because it would suck my life away, but having a LIFE, i cannot dedicate my life to games any longer. Guild Wars you can pick up and play it at any time and not miss anything. the world wont progress without you. i had bought Guild Wars a year ago and i barely started really getting into it this past month. i only play a couple hours a week but it's something i dont have to worry that im going to miss something if im not going to play today. plus i dont have to pay a monthly fee

 

[zinfamous]

I'm still not sure what the set-in-stone rules are for what most people in these forums use to classify a "true MMO." It seems like the social aspect is important (which the critics claim GW does not have--not true), or the ability to run into players in the field (I'm not sure why this is so important). Actually, I spend most of my time in GW chatting with firends I've met while in random pick-up groups, farming...and questing on occasion just to advance. It actually took me several months to get my first character through the end of one campaign...as I got so distracted by interacting with other people and figuring out new and unusual builds for my several characters. I barely even PvP, but it's an entirely new aspect I haven't exploited--and that I'm not paying a monthly fee to ignore...

My question is: What defines the social aspect of a game? I've actually met a couple of really good people online and we'll hold ongoing discussions, we know a few things about our personal lives (how is this not social enough?), run around and goof off a bit, etc. Why is it necessary to run into people while questing to classify an MMO as a true MMO? This is why I don't play WoW; b/c I would have to get too involved to progress in any way, and I prefer to mix up my free time with other things in life. (Not that I'm saying WoW players are any more geeky or too dedicated...just that I think to be competitive you have to spend more time online...much less the idea of getting what you pay for in respect to monthly fees). That being said, to truly get everything out of what GW offers, you would end up spending ~$100 per year on the 2 new campaigns that are released.

I also have a job, make good money, and wouldn't consider myself cheap; but there is a limit to what I can justify spending my money on a monthly basis. (However, I also take the time to bitch at the cable company when appropriate, in order to get my monthly rates reduced to an acceptable amount). So saying someone doesn't want to pay monthly fees for an online game misses the point of why most people object to paying those fees. GW covers just about everything I look for in a game these days; and I think that expalins why people have different preferences for certain types of games. (I've never bought an FPS b/c I find them boring with no replay value after a few weeks...and eye candy is just an excuse to spend another 1-3k on a new rig) But, too each his/her own of course.

In the end, the cost per play is negligible between the two as you essentially pay the same amount on a yearly basis to have full access to either GW or WoW. This is simply a matter of different business models b/w Blizzard and Arena Net in how they advertise and produce their games. I rejected Blizzard's model b/c I see a monthly fee as a reminder that I should be devoting a certain amount of weekly time to this game in order to get my money's worth. Really, it's all about psychology and approaching players based on how they value their time and money...and of course their game style differences...

And GW is nothing like Diablo. I think most people that claim this have probably played GW for a day and immediately write it off as being too derivative. You do have to get pretty far in the game to really start enjoying it; so most will miss the more interesting aspects of strategy involved in the game if they don't spend a little more time with it.

 

[kainthelongshot]

The matter is quite simple:

If you have more fun playing GW then play GW.
If you have more fun playing WoW then play WoW.

If you feel WoW is worth the money then play WoW.
If you don't feel WoW isn't worth the money then don't play WoW.

I don't see why people get so enraged. Its a game. Do what makes you feel good. You don't need anyone to convince you nor do you need anyone to blast you for your hobbies. But on a a personal note, its all about balance. If you feel that you are missing out other oppurtunities then take a break. I raid and play wow but sometimes I just need a break. You can make any game GW or WoW as casual or hardcore as you want. It ultimately comes down to the user.

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: kainthelongshot
The matter is quite simple:

If you have more fun playing GW then play GW.
If you have more fun playing WoW then play WoW.

If you feel WoW is worth the money then play WoW.
If you don't feel WoW isn't worth the money then don't play WoW.

I don't see why people get so enraged. Its a game. Do what makes you feel good. You don't need anyone to convince you nor do you need anyone to blast you for your hobbies. But on a a personal note, its all about balance. If you feel that you are missing out other oppurtunities then take a break. I raid and play wow but sometimes I just need a break. You can make any game GW or WoW as casual or hardcore as you want. It ultimately comes down to the user.

what he said

 

[CKent]

Lol wow... how much is your cable bill? TV is just so godawful... how the hell can you be entertained by bad singers or people eating gross things? And yet you wouldn't think twice of paying 3-5 times what an MMORPG costs for that garbage?

Guild Wars is not an MMOG. The acronym means Massively Multiplayer Online Game, add in a role-playing if you want for the RP. Massively Multiplayer is the term which cropped up to describe the very difference between this sort of environment and diablo / guild wars style online gaming, which had been around for a while.

 

[zinfamous]

yes, most of tv sucks; but you do realize that not all of it is worthless reality shows and whatever you mean by crappy singers (i believe mtv is still around; and i'm quite certain that they excised the music part a decade or so ago).

i actually only pay about $40 a month for cable and broadband with comcast. the service is so godawful ******, it gives me ample opportunity to call them to bitch and complain about their worthlessness. (i'll even do this on lunch breaks just for kicks. it can be quite satisfying). in the end, i get enough credits and discounts on my bill to bring the jacked up prices down to the more reasonably acceptable price that these services used to be years ago. (is there any legitimate reason that cable + internet jumped from $45/month to almost $100/month within 5 years? why is no one complaining about price fixing?)

If you didn't know, TV allows you to watch sports, cooking and nature shows (which I've watched since I was 5), and Family Guy. To me, this is more valuable than giving myself the opportunity to become sadly addicted to a false online reality world (how is it any different than reality TV?).

Also, why can't anyone explain the difference b/w MMOG and the type of game you claim GW is? You say the term is applied to differentiate the two, yet fail to give a real definition of the term...I can in no way fathom how being able to meet groups outside of towns and outposts is such a vastly different experience from only being able to meet them within towns unless you are partying...at what point is this community experience so different to warrant a separate classification? Is it that important to be able to go out and bully teams of "noobs?" (dear god, I hate that word.)

Don't we(I) have better things to do than argue this point? Probably...

 

[CKent]

I was referring to american idol, I hear a lot about it in guildchat. As I grow older I lose more and more interest in sports. What is the sports scene really, but a glorified high school with a bunch of roided up peter pans set against one another? Why would you watch cooking shows aside from the assortment of attractive women they've hired to raise ratings? I mean seriously, you can watch 20 minutes of fluff and 10 of commercials, or look up a recipe on the internet in seconds, so... why? And nature documentaries died about 7-8 years ago when the Discovery channel decided better profit margins could be had by comparing everything to football fields (The sperm whale is a football field long, zomg!). If I lived in the UK and got BBC programming, maybe you'd have a point... but I don't. I haven't even turned the thing on in four months or so and couldn't care less. In stark contrast to MMOGs, television offers no mental footwork or social interaction, but costs at least 3 times the price and can creep up to 10x as much or more. The brain is less active when watching it than when sleeping.

What a persistent world offers over playing with a limited number of people at once is immersion, a higher interaction complexity via raiding and tradeskills and a real economy.

I have better things to do, but it's amusing watching evangelists scour internet forums, interjecting their views in threads where they're off topic in an attempt to save souls. You're not the only one.

 

[zinfamous]

touche'

but i must say...when i refer to nature docs i don't refer to the discovery channel; which is of course mung. why someone who builds a motorcylce deserves hordes of fans is beyond me.
PBS still has quality programing. and while attenborough may not be as prominent as he was, you still se some good stuff form time to time. Animal Planet actually has some decent stuff from time to time...of course it's mostly filled with ridiculous dog shows and dumb videos of people's ugly pets.

and as for the cooking shows; yes, food network, like every other entertainment-based medium, is dumbing itself down to the worst demographic to plague our society:young, dumb males (slightly worse than the 12 year-old girls, as their only social commentary involves football, watered-down beer, and golden tee). rachel ray is simply a c*nt. she has no business cooking or interrupting what used to be quality cooking programs (if you have ne reference to this...then don't bother arguing it as there are still good cooks on the network...even though most are not being renewed b/c they actually have professional training. go figure). internet i sgarbage compared to a good cookbook. and a real chef with a palatable show can be very good--mario batali vs. say...emeril.

in the end, you seem like the type that will never be convinced of an opinion differing from your own rather jaded and cynical view of things. i will simply say that people have different tastes; and while they may be better, truly tasteless, or simply different compared to yours, that is how things are. neither you nor i will change this. ...and if you think bbc programming is much better, then i doubt you've spent much time with it. the news is better, of course. ...but that is not all they are.