Guild Wars wins best MMO of the decade - Massively.com

No one is disagreeing with the arguments for WoW being a shitty game. We're just saying that this is a shitty poll because it has a very small sample size and was performed on a site whose followers have a distinct bias towards GW.

Yes, I'm just saying that Guild Wars should win these types of awards.

If there were a way to applaud for your post, I would.

I've spent several years working in the gaming industry on the administrative/support/management side of things primarily. I'm a decent enough programmer, but I don't have the imagination and understanding of primary game mechanics to be even remotely skilled as a developer, nor do my personal interests lead me in that direction.

What I do is set up the entire background support system (moderating staff, tech support, billing, billing support, merchandising, contests, support/fan communities, etc.) for primarily indie gaming companies and new publishers/developers. I'm actually really good at what I do. Once a company grows beyond a small staff of developers, I usually move on to a new start-up company, because getting them off the ground is where my talents lay. I contract for a set duration of time, with specific community/support goals to achieve in that time, and then my contract is complete and I'm on to the next... leaving behind an established, strong system that can easily be maintained and expanded.

So, with that said...and explaining that most of my perspective on this type of gaming comes from the business end of things...

WoW has such a huge player base for the simple reason that WoW a) has a way for you to be "the best" in your own mind and b) allows you to buy your way to the top. Period. End of conversation.

It's a debate nearly every gaming effort has to have with itself... "what player base do we want to attract?" Blizzard is perfectly happy to attract basement dwelling fanboys who boost their self-esteem by becoming uber-warrior so they can run around stomping noobs and stealing their drops. Anet could not care less about that player base, even knowing it is a large and lucrative one.

My first week in GW, I spent hours talking to my husband and co-workers about all the ways I felt the GW business model rocked... it was VERY evident which player base they were trying to attract. And not at all surprising, most of the GW-bashing I see comes from the aforementioned basement dwellers who are simply miffed that they can't find a way to buy their way into stardom in GW.

I've spent two and three days straight pounding caffeine so I could stay awake tracking bogus transactions and sometimes ending up doing a rollback on the server because of an exploit that has trashed the in-game economy. I've spent thousands of hours in contact with CC companies and law enforcement tracking down users engaged in CC fraud. I've had people who know what I do and who I do it for try and manipulate me into "helping" them (or their children) in their game of choice. I've had death threats emailed to me more times than I can count. I've had my husband AND my children threatened. People get amazingly abusive when you ban them for cheating. If I had a nickel for every time I've chased a banned player from proxy to proxy, getting rid of their new accounts, stopping them before they can wipe some other poor sap's CC balance out in a single transaction... hell, I'd buy an island and retire.

Whether through design, chance, or just good luck... ANet has ended up with a vastly different player/fan base than WoW. Be glad... you think hacking is bad in GW? Come work on a game with the other kind of player base.

I'm GLAD that GW is unattractive to that type of player. I don't want them near me when I'm trying to relax and enjoy an evening killing charr. I don't want to be constantly worried that they're finding new and interesting ways to hack user accounts... just so they can be "the best" for as long as it takes for them to finally get caught and banned. I've been playing Blizzard games for years... am anxiously awaiting DIII along with many other fans... but nothing, NOTHING could induce me to play WoW, and hell will freeze over and secret cow level axe-wielding bovines WILL crap rainbows before I'll buy DIII if it is even remotely structured the way WoW is.

Moo moo moo moo MoOOOOOOOOOooOOOO!!!

Here's the best recommendation I can make for GW, strictly looking at the player base they've deliberately, or accidentally, alienated... I would pay monthly to play GW... and that is something I have NEVER done and swore up one side and down the other I would never do. I know what an amazing thing they've accomplished... I appreciate it professionally... and for that, I'm willing to give additional financial support.

I don't doubt that there are a million gripes one can make about Anet, NCSoft, etc. It comes with the territory. No game is free from issues, no customer support is free from failures, no eCommerce transaction is free of risk, and no account is utterly unhackable. But I also know that they are better than most... and I also know, first-hand, just how bad a company can REALLY be. GW doesn't even come close to bad, it isn't even on the same plane of existence.

Each of us has to do what we feel is best, spend our money where we feel it is deserved, devote our time to what works for us... for me, GW is pretty darn awesome.

Your mileage may vary.

Moo.

Has anyone ever done a cost by cost survey on all the mmorpgs.

I figured When I bought the GW games it was as they came out and usually got special or collectors editions I must have shelled out around £130 in all.

What do you have to pay for WOW and its expansions, I know you get some play time included in the price and that if you pay for 6 month chunks of playing time it works out lower than paying monthly.

I am guessing WOW works out at least 3 times greater than GW over 5 years of play.
I just think that should be factored in when you work out how good a game is.
Should players expect a game costing £400 be a whole lot better than one costing £130

So , now it 's said that GW is such a great game , maybe they will just not bother anymore doing updates and just go along with costumes every months.
Nah , but i do believe that people don't really know how crap the game has turned to as long as they don't go in the PvP part. If i enjoyed farming ectos 24/7 with shadow form sin , sure i would say the game is great also....and this explains as well why GWEN is supposed to be the best extension.....

However , i hope they're kidding concerning the best community part. Previous explaination i gave could explain it maybe since you realize the terrible mentality when going to PvP....

I do not know how Eye of the North won for best expansion. It went against everything that Guild Wars said that it would be from the beginning. It has so much inherent grind in it that it is not even funny. It is also very obvious to me that it did not sell well and the only reason why people want it is because of the hero unlocks and the broken PvE skills.

As for the WoW argument, I only have a few things to say. I don't own WoW nor do I want to play it, ever. However, I knew of many fans that quit WoW and went to GW when Prophecies was still considered fresh and innovative. Then after a time, they found out that GW didn't provide a better experience and they went back to WoW.

WoW is one of the few MMOs where people quit and then they later return to the game months later because they get interested in the new content. I had at least 20 friends that played GW at the time of the game's launch. Since that time, every single one of them except for one person has quit the game and moved on to other, more popular MMOs. Or I should say, MMOs that provide a closer relationship with their fans.

You can dump on all the other MMOs that you want, but you can't deny that ArenaNet doesn't implement any fan suggestions until its months (or even years) after people wanted it. I know that people wanted a Pet Stable six months after the game launch, but ArenaNet waited three years to implement a Zaishen Menagerie. By that time, people get tired of waiting. If you disappoint them enough times, then they will just leave. I've seen so many game forums where people literally beat up developers because after 30 days, non-critical but annoying bugs in the game aren't fixed. How long does it take for a skill balance to arrive in our game?

In addition, Guild Wars is one of the few games where the fans are expected to police the game themselves. This means that the game is effectively a lawless land where you can do anything you want with little (if any) punishment. It is so obvious that exploits are being used every day and nothing is done about it. I mean, take a look at the Challenge Missions. There's scores in some of the missions that would take somebody 10 hours of play to obtain, so you know that an exploit, a bot, or some other AFK method is being used. The high scores are posted with the character names right there for everybody to see, so it's not like you can't tell who's doing it. These missions pay money rewards so even if it takes hours to earn anything, they're earning about an ecto for running the computer while they sleep.

this really surprises me, I was hoping that WoW would be again elected best MMO of decade, and cataclysm best expansion like on every MMO website

actually they are Fallen Earth fansite that has diversified into reviewing other games.

Personally I don't even understand why polls like this are conducted. People vote with their wallets and there is a clear winner in that respect and it's not Guild Wars.

Why does it matter what a specific community voted for in this poll? The only numbers that truly matter are the number of subscribers and people who bought the game. That's the most reliable "poll" there is.

Thank you.

It's nice to remember that the GW community is NOT the GWGuru community, which IS often pretty obnoxious.

Well...no. Sales do not equal quality. Just popularity.

Lots of people read and go see Twilight, and listen to Justin Bieber, but that doesn't mean they're good, does it? Not at all.

Guild Wars is an MMO?


Dhuum scythe says hi.

Popularity doesn't mean something is the best. If you sort Youtube videos by number of views, this is painfully clear.

I'm sure people would scoff if a musician was named "Artist of the Decade"; there is absolutely no way to make such a poll "fair", unless you polled everyone in the world who listens to music.

That's the way Polls work someone stands in a shopping mall asking do you believe in Aliens then the report comes out saying 35% of people polled said yes they do.
Doesn't mean aliens exist or that 35% of the entire world believes in Aliens.

Polls are just snapshots and often mean nothing but that is true of every poll ever taken.

Watch a movie called "The rise and rise of Michael Rimmer" its very funny and shows how polls work and also how they can be manipulated.

Its also a more productive way to spend the evening that discussing polls

This...

and this.

Try doing this same poll on Kotaku and see what happens.

Most of the reasons why people seem to believe that GW is an objectively better game than WoW boil down to "because I like it better." You can see where this breaks down.

Properly conducted polls produce valid results. Trying to use the results of a biased poll as validation (as most of the positive posters in this thread seem to be doing) is just laughable.

You don't pay for Youtube videos. World of Warcraft has steam rolled (and I mean that in the most brutal sense) every single MMO to come out since it's release. It has broken records and is truly in a league of it's own. MMOs have come and gone with better graphics than WoW and trying all different kinds of features and not even once has WoW shown any signs of giving up it's near monopoly on the MMO market. It does this all while charging a monthly fee.

World of Warcraft defines the MMO genre and is a big reason why other developers are able to get funding to create all their MMOs. Everyone wants what WoW has - a money tree and that's why investors are so willing to throw their money at potential WoW killers.

We aren't talking about a genre where different MMOs are performing at a competitive level to WoW. We are talking about a genre where MMOs that try to directly compete with WoW end up crushed and have to switch to F2P with microtransactions (LotRo, DDO - both very powerful and strong franchises with big fanbases that still couldn't topple WoW), not because they think it's a superior business model to WoW's but because they know they can't create the subscriber base that WoW has and thus their MMO community struggles with a low population.

When you charge the highest monthly fee on top of requiring players to purchase 4 games at RRP over 6 years into your game's life cycle just to play your MMO and you have over 70% if the market share in the genre with over 11 million active subscribers (before Cataclysm) you have undeniably out-competed every single competitor and not even with a small margin.

Polls are all well and good and personal opinions are all well and good but the most reliable and realistic way to quantify which MMO was the best of the decade is the sales records and number of active subscribers (active subscribers ensures you are counting people who didn't just buy it and hate it, they are continuing to pay and thus believe they are getting value for money). Not even the best F2P games have the population that WoW enjoys.

Opinions and voting in polls are free, buying and subscribing to a game for 6 years is very expensive and a true indicator of which MMO was offering the most appealing experience.

^^ Quite well put, gnome.
Beyond that, the fanboi pandering is somewhat counterproductive to the success of the GW franchise. Much of that blame lay on NC/Anet side of things, but the zealous blathering did its part to help drown out the voices of constructive criticism. Even when stated bluntly and sometimes even rudely, the criticism of the past was constructive
GW was a good game. The PvP was unique and could have become truly exceptional; it could have become the gold standard. Instead, it withered on the vine before it became ripe.
What would it have taken to push GW PvP over the top? Attention, the cheapest resource available. PvP did not need the considerable content development that PvE requires. PvP only needed for NC/Anet to listen to its player base and provide consistent and intelligent balancing for it to reach its true potential. That never happened and now the game is what it is, rotten fruit that never became a delectable treat.

I am not sure what a properly conducted poll is or if this was one.
Polls are usually done by direct questioning of individuals face to face.
If they are polling women under 30 they don't ask me because I am not a woman or under 30.
You cannot easily poll all gamers or all mmrpg gamers as most magazines and websites have a bias, this has already been mentioned.

WOW must have something that appeals to a greater percentage of the gaming world than guild wars.
Is it better than guild wars dunno never played it but its certainly a greater commercial success.

I suppose the success part comes in large from being an all powerful high lever wow character and able to walk over loads of monsters makes some people feel really good.
GW 2 will have a level of 80 so maybe in a couple of years it will start appealing to the same players wow does.

You've never heard of izzy's secret balance forums that were around back in the 2006-2007 era did you? It's where izzy brought in members from all of the top guilds to hear what the players thought was necessary to fix PvP. Unfortunately EVERY player thinks different changes are necessary to fix the game and will always support changes that fit their own style of play.