A Litany of Comparison: GW and World of Warcraft

I have to disagree your division of pve:

What you described low-end pve is basically Tutorial.

Low end PvE is basically storyline and quests in normal mode.

High end PvE is HM/Elite areas/Challenge missions/Masters quests...

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Also, you assessing GW PvE based on tank-n-spank model is quite unfar, because most effective PvE is the one without tank. Tanking is imported from other games by players, so it is unfit and as result boring and lacks supporting mechanics like taunt.

True. However, it gives a sense of spacial awareness (knowing where you are standing) not present in Guild Wars PvE (i.e. "steamrolling" through mobs. Spacial awareness in GW comes from stepping out of AoE...)

True, but IMO, it's less rewarding (you get half EXP, loot, and money, and you have to fight someone if a green/blue drops. Yes, that has happened many times).

Guildies, however, are helpful beyond helpful for group quests which require 2-3 (or a full group of 5).

All computer games try to tailor to all sorts of computers. If armor is Crysis-level detailed, it will alienate some portions of the playerbase.

There's a rest bonus for the extremely non-active players (double exp for up to 1.5 levels). While I do regret the lack of GW's instant traveling...NumLock (auto-run) helps alleviate that.

Raiding does take up a whole day. However, if teenagers are letting their grades fall by playing WoW, that's their fault, not the game's.

I payed $50 for Mass Effect. I beat it completely within a month. So I effectively paid $50/month for my gaming time, whereas I definately could have received the same amount of game time from playing WoW. The $15/month has saved me hundreds from buying $50 dollar games over the past 3 years.

Then why did Blizzard reduce the leveling time in 2.3? That doesn't sound like "wasting time."

The lack of map travel makes WoW feel like a "world." In GW, the instanced world makes the world feel empty and fragmented. Respawn/Death Penality is instituted so that dying has a severe consequence (whereas in GW, Dying only affects your Health and Energy, and can be removed easily) The "carrot" is only truly evident at lv. 70, which is a very long time away.

While many game companies do have ulterior motives...those aren't.

Purely subjective opinion: I've watched my brother-in-law play WoW. Some of the art is mediocre, the rest is so horribly juvenile I feel insulted every time I look at it. Because of the art alone, I will never buy WoW.

Objective but (maybe) out-of-date: Back in '05-'06, some former guildies (in GW) also played WoW. They often had to wait an hour or more for WoW servers to become available before they could play. There's no way I'd pay a subscription fee to wait in line. I hope WoW has improved their service since then. Whether they have or not, seeing others' experiences at the time really left me with a bad impression of the company behind WoW, regardless of the qualities of the game itself.

Good job Zinger. Interesting Comparison.

One thing that I have really missed about GW when playing WoW is Missions.

I really like the way that they are implemented in GW and make it feel like you are playing through a Story. The quests in WoW just feel completely disconnected to me.

It may be true that the background lore is more extensive in WoW, but in my opinion, GW wins in the story department.

Oh, and I don't care if it makes it feel more like "a world", Walking FTL, Map Travel FTW.

Also, my WoW account is free, so this is coming from someone for whom monthly fees don't play into the equation. I just enjoy GW more and time is precious...

Another reason why this comparison fails.

And by the way, is it so hard to remember my name is spelt with two "u"s, not two "d"s?

First of all, I played both games extensively, spent exactly one year on WoW, during which I had 113 days playtime, was decked in epics, reached Marshall under the old system (the system where there could be only three or four marshalls on a server at a single time), and on Guild Wars I'm nearing 20 max titles (without the EOTN rep titles), got r9 Kurzick and 4159 hours played. I am a Game Designer and Programmer in real life.

I only have a few minutes to type this but I have a serious problem with this part of the OP:

Oh really. I guess you did not take the fact into consideration where you have to change builds in Guild Wars. Half the battle in Guild Wars comes from proper preparation. In WoW, you can count the effective cookie-cutter builds per class on one hand, it has a talent tree with only very limited options, and all core skills will be the same although they might receive some minor buffs due to talent choices. There isn't much variation. Most variation comes from gear, but WoW's community doesn't encourage creativity, they sure didn't like me when I had a warrior running around with daggers, leather and mail armor and 3200 hit point that did twice as much damage as the number 2 in the raid, because warriors are TANKS and anything different is evil and should be crucified.

As for spamming C-space, that doesn't happen in guildwars unless you're running a boring build and are in some n00bgr00p. And what are WoW raids? They are a drill, learn the dance and execute it right, and you get the loot. It's all predetermined. 15 seconds left until boss X uses skill Y! All hurry over to the corner! Magnificent gamedesign there, really encourages creativity and emergent gameplay! /sarcasm

Oh and for C-Space, let me give you a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udtLM...eature=related

For those that don't know: This is WoW, where a mages always kill melee classes and can do so with their most basic spell with they get at their first level. There was a video with a level 48 mage in green gear killing the best geared warriors at level 60 with just his basic spell for damage. Mages can immobilize, polymorph, slow, and teleport themselves away. They can also cast a shield which absorbs damage and causes warriors to get no rage (adrenaline equivalent). Warriors get an item, which they have to sacrifice an item slot for, which can remove one of these effects once every two minutes. They also get a move called Intercept which makes them run to their opponents and removes slow effects, but not the other ones. They can use this once every 30 seconds IIRC. Of course the mage teleport is on a 20 second timer. Oh yes and they had the BRILLIANT idea of making all magic armor-ignoring!!!

Finally, an actual post on this. Maybe now people who have never even seen WoW and make comparisons on it will get a clue.

People still wait a long time to just play, not to mention they have a an massive amount of downtime. Some things have improved since I as well from what I hear but most things that grip me have not. But Zinger(OP) mostly bores me even though he tries to be non-biased yet he ties WoW with GW in terms of graphics. (EPIC LULZ)

Here comes to person who probobly still thinks I have a level 30 character and I started to play WoW when he was 14.

It's probably the last game that somebody actually bothered to optimize the code. For some reason* they've stopped doing that in games.

*profit

As I play both of these games fully all I can do is say the following:

/agree on all points.

DreamRunner, when's the last you played WoW?

Oh please bryant, the OP's post is full of crap points. WoW having a story, Tanking in GW, AB is choatic.

"easily enough time to level one character to lv. 70, even for the most casual"


Last time was about 6 months ago.

-Zinger's point about a story as not that WoW had one but that WoW has a much, much more developed history.
-In regards to tanking, he was talking about game mechanics in general.
-AB's are chaotic. That's hard to dispute.

Likewise, one of my oldest and most used characters is a level 2 Priest named "Mahbank."

And if he was attempting to play and level and actually do quests, then he's probably one of the worst players imaginable, so much that I don't fully believe that quote.

Nice write up here. WoW even though I've never played it (lotro has some things that WoW does) has some great things in the game that make it worth paying to play it.

The fact it's big is a given..Auction Houses are invaluable. Mail boxes are possibly the best thing ever. For those 3 reasons I'd get WoW to play it. I haven't yet though waiting for a new PC.

Guild Wars seems to be addicting however, I don't know why I like playing it even though I dislike it at the same time.

Morrowind was a great game, although I like Oblivion better exploring wise because it's so beautiful. Especially with OOO+MMM and NE mods.

Do you have a higher res version? I can't read things that small.

A good, extensive comparison, good work zinger.

I played Wow until about level 15, and I know people will say that I'm missing out, and the game gets better at X level, or I'm too lazy,

They'll be right about something, I am stinking lazy, I just can't be bothered getting all the way up to level 70 even with the new patch decreasing grind time.

It's not that it wasn't fun, it's just that I couldnt bothered doing what I was for another 55 levels.

I believe the point to the balance between real life and gaming various from people to people. However, previous reports have told us that a child has died due to neglect by her World of Warcraft-addicted parents in Korea. Although it is possible to point out that it is the parent's fault, we should not overlook in which the game itself may have been a contribution to this tragedy. Although we do not know the exact scales of possible addiction to both Guild Wars and World of Warcraft, we do know that a possible addiction in World of Warcraft can lead to a child's death, and histroy tends to repeat itself.

It is possible to point out that the problem are really lies within people themselves, but we need to consider that a game can be a possible trigger to these negative causes, and in this case, it is World of Warcraft. My point is, if it is possible to reach this kind of addiction and this kind of consequence just to play a game, is it really worth it?

WoW has a much more developed story because it existed for much longer and has developed a story from previouse warcraft games. If you give Arenanet 10-15 years time to create a story for guild wars I'm sure they would have done a better job. Nevertheless, story doesn't matter me personally.

To compare the "intelligence" required to play WoW and GW first divide the games into PvE and PvP

First PvE: Both games are simple: PvE is easy but there is one difference that makes WoW worse: gear. All you need to know in WoW PvE is which mobs do what and what you should do at a certain time. This has become increasingly easy with UI mods, taking all of the "skill" out of it. GW PvE is not much different: look up several hero builds online, plug them in and viola you have an awesome party! So in both games PvE skill is minimal and is little more than looking up what to do or listening to the raid leader. However in WoW no matter how much you know the raid encouter there is always a gear threshold you must breach in order to complete the encounter, the same situation in GW except in GW it is easy to get the "best" gear while in WoW it takes weeks if not months of grinding to get the gear needed to control an encounter.

PvP: The same situation, except I think it is safe to say PvP takes more skill (knowledge, twich reflexes, and adaptation) than PvE. Arena PvP in WoW does take skill however it faces the same threshold of gear as PvE: in order to rise to the top you NEED the best gear which REQUIRES you to grind for weeks/months, while in GW the best gear is easy to get. However there is another pitfall that WoW has: class balance. While both games have a rock-paper-scissors mentality, with WoW certain classes can beat other classes up to 90% of the time, for example mages have a tremendous advatange over warriors, and warlocks have an advantage against mages and so forth. In GW,class balance is less of an issue because of dual classes and the limited number of skills you bring to the battle. For example: a warrior is very weakened by blind however that same warrior can create and use a build that utilizes multiclassing to have a powerful counter against blind (sight beyond sight, antidote signet, mending touch etc.) But by doing so that warrior now is weaker against classes that don't utilize blind (limited 8 skill slots), hence balance is achieved.

T H A N K G O D!..another wow vs gw post..i was getting worried there. Thought maybe someone had went outside or something. Shew, ty god someone spent 2 hours reminding us that wow and gw have different features you may or may not enjoy depending on preference. I look forward to the next novel "Is Guild Wars Dying?" and the stunning finale "Sunlight Burns"

WoW does have history, which is largely due to Warcraft I, II, and III. But the game itself doesn't really have much story, nothing that really contributes to the story/lore/history like the RTS's do.