It's like WoW, but ...

Jeff Strain made some itteresting remarks some time ago: http://www.guildwars.com/events/trad...7/gcspeech.php

I wonder ... what does it mean when while you yourself avoid saying it, but everyone around you does say "It's like WoW", because pretty much anythime GW2 is mentioned, direct WoW comparsions appear, usually concluding that its too alike.

Does that mean ... trouble?

Maybe its not too late for anet to Carve out their own thing, and be the best at it.

A lot of people regard WoW as a benchmark. So a lot of companies will try and take the WoW system and add there own little things to it. Not mentioning any names, but a couple of games due out soon just seem to be a re-sprayed WoW, nothing new.

I think what Jess Strain is getting at is if you want to take an existing product and remodel it a bit, then you are limiting yourself in what you can do. He is saying that you can break away from the mold and still be very successful (which has already been demonstrated).

I think that Jeff Strain is probably going to be suffering from a bit of cognitive dissonance in the near future if he hasn't already.

GW1 is probably WoW's biggest competitor even though they aren't the same type of game. I'm guessing that ANet wants to make something a little more WoW-like in order to get a bigger piece of the puzzle.

Yes, but GW is slowly returning back to herd. Its basically, doingnew stuff, being succesfull, then slowly going back to old stuff.

It makes little sense in that context.

These "It's like WoW" comments about GW2 are currently coming from worried/upset players who know very little to nothing about what GW2 will REALLY be like. All we have to go on is rumor and very vauge statements from Anet. And even those statements could change over the next 2 years.

If people from Anet start compairing GW2 to WoW, or after release players find the two far too similar, then we can worry.

But them it would be also too late, no?

People also like to compare GW to Wow due to the founder's of Anet were dev's at Blizzard (and left), Jeff in particular because he worked on Wow during it's development.

That being said I fell GW2 is going to be based of GW1 (what worked, what didn't) and not repeat the same mistakes as well as broader appeal. My friend was turned off on gw "max" lvl 20 and would not give it a try because of it, there more people like that out there. Just having no level limit / high level limit does NOT equal wow clone, every mmo has "level development" even before wow came out.

I do find it troubling that ANet can clearly be considered a success story, and yet is leaving their original premise. Since the logical successor to Guild Wars should be authored by ANet, since they have their groove, I would think that they would want to co-develop their products as a lesson learned from the MMO world. Although I have not played them, I believe that EQ1 is still being worked on, if EQ1 had been shelved completely for EQ2, then I think Sony would have taken a hit that they dodged. Unfortunately, the Hall of Monuments seems to be a clear sign that for their purposes, GW 1 is done and they would prefer us all to move on to GW 2.

I guess one way to look at it is that in they continued to release expansions, then they would have to be all PvE as we see in EOTN. What else can they throw at PvP? That has been pretty well covered, and the game engine probably would have to be re-written to add anything new, thus requiring GW 2. All that is required for a PvE expansion is more of the game, new zones, retextured monsters and loot, and re-skinned armors.

Do not get me wrong, I think that the reuse of meshes is fine - my point is not to pick at them, but to show that to expand PvE is simple and PvP is hard.

Hopefully ANet will go the co-develop route and continue to expand and support GW 1. If they have their own specialty, and any competitor trying to be "like GW" would be at a disadvantage to ANet since they own it, any radical departure without continuing to hold this specialty seems like a bad idea.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

GW maybe heading in that general direction, we have no idea about GW2 though. And, as you said, GW did do that "new stuff" and was successfull. Presently, adding titles (grinding stuff) and dungeons (replayable stuff) is a way to keep the playerbase ticking along until GW2 omes out. Even if a lot of players leave GW NOW, a large number of those will come back for GW2.

I like GW's max level 20 because it keeps the focus off of leveling, except for proph which takes a little too long to level up and too long to get your attribute quests.

Both games have strong points, i think the comments "it's like wow" are people reacting to Anet picking up things that work well, for gw2. People don't have another comparison for the announcements than wow-like. ..

In context of Mr Strains comments, one has to believe (or not if you like) that the wow-like details will not be done like-wow.

It's hard to compete when you don't have a set number of players. In GW, we know that we have over 4mil copies sold. Then, count in how many of those are stolen/bots, how many are those copies on the same account, how many of those are bought by the same person (bought before you could buy character slots) and the active player base starts to seem veeeery very small.

I do agree with you on this. My hope with gw2 is basically you keep getting "levels" like you do know in GW1 but it shows 21,22,23 or it's based on xp plus what skills you have access to but the attributes (and skills powered off of) stop like they do in gw1. I don't think this would be the case but I hope it is.

Of course "everyone around you" is going to talk about WoW, it's the 800lb gorilla of the industry, everyone is familiar with it, and it's a highly successful product.

Jeff Strain is just talking about *developers* of games not declaring their product is "just like WoW but", not players. Players are of course going to make the comparison.

Higher levels *will* make a difference, but the power curve will be flattened.

Uh damn, I used to know a math equation showing what I meant. I'll provide an example instead: A level 20 character will be stronger than a level 5 character by far, but a level 100 character will be slightly stronger than a level 50 character.

Those are just examples, of course. I have no idea what the set level will be in GW2.

Here's why I don't see GW2 as wow clone
(stuff is pulled from articles, interview, etc)

• There's a "core" game that everyone has and add-ons (to pay for the no monthly fee) that add to the core.
• They have stated making it accessible on as many pc's as possible (implies not a "vista" dx10 exclusive).
• They don't like monsters "camping".
• Instanced and persistent (implying more persistent then GW1 is now)
• Map Warp will still be there
• Keeping a "limited skill set" on your bar when you go out to do stuff (not necessary 8 maybe more or less)
• Pve & Pve centric Pvp and a septate "structured pvp" that doesn't fall on the no-max / high lvl limit.

This does not have a "wow" feel to me. Again GW has elements that can be compared to other mmo's and since Wow is the biggest in the US (hint - Wow is not the biggest, Ragnark Online has 17 million in 2006 were Wow was only at 7 million around that time - it's just RO not as popular in the states).

Ah, that does make sense, and that doesn't seem so bad.

Well, WoW is pretty accessible, not sure what you mean there. It has some pretty low-end requirements, making it a little easier for someone without the funds to purchase a high-end PC.

As to monster camping and persistancy in GW2: It's been stated that in the PvE world, only missions/dungeons will be instanced. So in that sense it's going to be just like an MMO (or if you're jaded, you can say WoW). How they'll prevent monster camping, if that's the case, will be interesting to see.

However, my biggest concern for that is this: how will they manage the cool quests that they've been doing if most of it's going to be persistant? Maybe it'll be GW:EN style, where if there's a cool quests it'll make the area suddenly instanced? *shrug*

(To add a little flame to the fire, it sounds like GW2 is going the way the Hellgate:London is going right now...)

I play both WoW and GW, and I honestly see more people around in GW than in WoW - it might not be as big of a game, and it may be highly anti-social, but it does seem to have a good number of people. Then again, WoW has a lot of different servers each of which is essentially a different community, while GW has a lot of different servers but the population floats through them all in constant flux (the pulldown to switch districts is one of the best things GW does, and in a more social game could have been something great).

The problem is that while GW is a good and successful game, it has a number of critical problems that make its long term viability problematic. Fixes to those problems are easily seen in the things WoW does right, and fixes other than the ones already seen elsewhere are harder to think of. So it's natural to think of them in WoW terms:

- lack of auction house
- lack of meeting people in the outside world
- low level cap (lack of feeling of advancement)
- all human character species.
- Lack of casual PvP (honestly a community problem, as GW has casual PvP - the RA, but it gets dismissed by players)
- Balancing PvE for the needs of PvP
- So easy to solo that it becomes hard to not solo.
- lack of an endgame for PvE (the endgame is essentially moving to PvP)

These problems don't have to have WoW-like solutions, but the WoW-like solutions are the paradigms that pop into our heads first.

LoL, you answered all of your own questions.

I cannot take full credit - Strain (and his speechwriters if any) did all the heavy lifting for me, all except whether they would continue to support GW 1 and release more games for it.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce