Guild Wars v12,195 = Diablo II v1.10

The Sorrow's Furnace patch has breathed new life into this game. The population in some of the game's more obscure map points has increased exponentially. People are giddy about the new areas and new drops. You can almost feel the dusty wheels of the in-game economy turning once more.

I can only compare this to how Diablo II's 1.10 patch rejuvenated the title, eradicating the exploits and adding new or renewed features to what was considered a conquered game. Granted, like with 1.10, I'm certain there will be new exploits to deal with and fresh problems to address. However, there's a buzz on the forums and in the game that I have not seen since the days of the beta events.

Cheers, ArenaNet. You've won many tired and disappointed fans over with this new release and have successfully breathed new life in your first title. Grats.
-- Scaper-X

Agree 100%. This update renewed my interest in the game from top to bottom. You name it, I love it. Refund points? OUTTA HERE! Low faction rewards? SEE YA! Kick butt new zones to explore? YOU BETCHA! Our lack of faith in ANet was... disturbing.

<---What he said.

I love doing away with attribute points, an example how I used them.

I did all the Ascension missions, and went to kill my mirror. Being a monk I didnt ware too well. So I switched to Axe and Smiting fully and killed my mirror.

For the record i never doubted Anets super powers as game makers...

I really enjoy this update, however i have not yet found any new areas because ive been too busy doing the new quests... which brings up my next point, i think Anet went a little overboard with Last day dawns...

agree 100%!!! but cmon keys gotta drop more i did like 2 of the new quests and noone in our party got 1 key . God i've always hated the attribute points that was the best thing ever!

Lack of faith was disturbing? That one needs some explaining.

As for comparing this game to Diablo II, what you neglect to mention is that 1.10 came out roughly 3 years after release. It DID breath new life into the game, as has 1.11, but so did 1.09, 1.07, ....

The more important comparison is relative popularity of both games during their life cycles to date. As no time in GW's life has it been able to match D2. The last time I brought that up I was told that "you can't compare GW to a classic like D2". It would seem you can't compare it to a new game like WoW either.

You act like this is some amazing free gift. You go on and on about it being free, when in fact we are STILL paying customers, for whom the vast majority of this patch amounts to a waranty repair. It was a lemon, it's a bit less lemon flavored now. I can't see anything in the "fixes" to bring back any of the PvP guys, that whole faction bump certainly isn't going to cut it as most of us never liked faction to begin with.

Oh, and for all the talk of Anet not having a problem with farming, actions speak louder than words.

Both D2 and WoW have a brand-name advantage. I had friends who would never consider playing an MMORPG lather and drool over WoW. And I've had online-game playing friends who never even heard of GW. And others who thought it was some "wierd asian game" (due to it being from NCSoft)

Nobody can dispute that Popularity does not equal Goodness. I personally was quite dissappointed with D2, and I despised WoW for the 2 characters I clenched-teeth leveled to 40 or so.

Now vaguely happy with GW. It's not perfect, but its not bad.

Have you tried North Kryta yet? I personally thought that one was insane.

You can buy keys from merchants in any town or outpost- they cost a bit of money, but can be well worth it if you get a nice drop- at least until upgrades and some runes drop to reasonable prices. Even just selling to NPC's, getting a rare armor with a superior vigor or absorption will net you the value of several dozen keys.

Point one is simply incorrect. It's the game that makes the company, not the other way around. Bioware, Bethesda, Id, and yes, Blizzard, were all nobodies. Then they each wrote a game that a large number of players thought was great. I'm not saying all those games WERE great, but they were considered so by a lot of people who don't seem to agree with me.

Point two has always been true. If you want proof of that just look at your VCR. Beta was better in every way that counted, but we have VHS still around today. I've never ever seen an FPS that I could stand (and I was a soldier once upon a time), and I've only seen 1 RTS that wasn't mind numbingly stupid (Homeworld). I think calling an average adventure game like KOTOR the "game of the year" is an insult to every great game ever published.

The fact remains that some games "make it" and some don't. As I'm typing this there is exactly 1 tombs district, 1 team arena, 7 LA, 9 Asc City, 8 Droknars, and 1 of every other town I randomly checked. Yes, there are way more Camp districts than ever before, but it's still not in double digits.

Look, I loved this game in beta. I tried hard to like it in release. I was patient for a while, but there are limits. There are certain people who will ALWAYS look for an excuse for the performance of this game. Not too long ago it was "wait till finals are over", and now it's "school is starting, wait till next vacation and weekends". There are even dimwits who have started saying "GW was always meant to be a game you picked up whenever a new update came out, then set aside for a while".

At some point you have to accept that it would have happened by now if it was ever going to. For me, I blame Anet's dogmatic decision to MAKE us love PvE even if it kills us. Only in this case it's their own product they killed.

A couple of responses to the original post:

Kits: I also think it's silly that the new kits cost 5 time as much for 4 times the number of charges. Except at the beginning of the game (when you have no money anyways) I've never had trouble getting back to a town to buy more kits before my inventory fills up with unidentified and/or salvage items. Fortunately they didn't change the original kits, so that patient, cheap scavengers like myself are not forced to waste their money on the new system.

Trade: I was trying to ask why it seemed harder to find Signets of Capture while in Lion's Arch a couple hours after the update, and my question kept getting drowned out by all the tards who were spamming the All channel with trading messages. If the GW devs don't implement a formal trade system, they should at least prevent people from typing messages starting with WTS/WTB (or automatically forward them to the trade chan). The latter method would just be an ongoing battle with inconsiderate users, however, who would probably quickly resort to things like "W-T-S" instead of WTS to get around the filters.

Other impressions on the update:

- New quest menu seems interesting. I'm near the end of the desert though with my main character, so I don't have any quests in my log currently. I just made a Mesmer but logged her out just before the update hit.

- Savage Shot (Ranger bow shot skill) no longer has a casting delay! I was capping skills from bosses in Thirsty River with an all-ranger group tonight and I was using an interrupt build (distracting shot, savage shot, choking gas, and that 25 energy interrupt shot that I can't remember the name of) and was pleased to notice the change right away. BTW, we stomped that mission by using pets as tanks and healing each other with Healing Spring! (and of course lots of teamwork) Unfortunately I missed out on capping Marksman's Wager because I capped a non-elite Necro skill earlier (I had already capped Order of the Vampire last night and was disappointed at its weakness).

- Signets of Capture seem to be harder to find. Maybe I was just looking in the wrong places, but I was only able to find them at the Magi Whatshisname in Lion's Arch and not at any skill trainers (I only tried Lion's Arch and Ascalon, however, so I may have merely been looking in the wrong places).

- Looking forward to seeing the new areas when I get there. I still have to do the final ascension stuff before I even leave the desert, and I'm going out of town, so it may be a couple weeks...

I was doubtful going in, but I think the chest system is tremendous (makes PVE actually work, imo anyway), the new quests are easily more entertaining than FoW or UW, and they dropped in the faction update and 10 million other little things? I'm loving it. I could see as I read in one other thread that some people wanted something uber hard and uber grindish, well keep clearing UW or things like that. I think the people who are disappointed are those who already went to lengths to be uber elite and play 10 hours a day, and enjoyed their position as farmers and controllers of the game's economy and the like. Well that's nice but you know I think all the people who want a casual, awesome game, and not a day job game, are going to love this update a lot.

Lol you played TWO characters to lvl 40 and despised it? LOL What a joke. When one has an "option" to do something or not do it and they despise it, they certainly aren't going to do it. lol Try again you lose.

Sonya: You're being unreasonable. I know there have been times where I've wanted to like something enough that I forced myself to stick with it much longer than I should have. One example that comes to mind is the time that I made myself play quite a ways into Silent Hill for the PSX, barely enjoying it, and then finally giving up due to its lack of story. Xenogears is another example (spent a lot of time on that one a couple times). Sometimes it takes a while for it to sink in that a given game just isn't as good as I had hoped it would be and that I can stop pushing myself to try to find something good in the next chapter/town/whatever.

I disagree. v1.10 was made for atracting new people, this is made for giving the experienced players something new. The Diablo v1.10 patch made the game nice for new players, because everyone, including the players that used to play needed to start all over again.

http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/show...735#post317735

Kind words from Gaile about our kind words.
-- Scaper-X

no my lag was getting unbelievebly high so i stoped.. i plan to venture to SF today with henchmen however (ya.. i know, good luck with that)

I just noticed something... does the original poster mean patch 1.11 because i don't really remeber running back to 1.10 like i have for 1.11, heh, i am once again hooked on D2...

No, I meant what I said.

1.11 was a final patch, one that blew the game wide open with extremely unbalanced items and made-up endbosses. This ain't that.
-- Scaper-X

I fully agree with the day job thing. I have full time job and I am a full time student. I dumped WoW because i had to fish for way too long for my stupid pet. If I am gonna pay for a game I am gonna play it. GW to me is more fun, because I am constantly playing the missions and quests, not hunting animals and fishing to feed my cat, I can do that for free at home. Good Job to ANet for making something, for us people with too many lvl 20's, to do.

i love it when people quote opinions (especially their own) as cold hard fact

hey guess what

guild wars isn't dying in popularity, it's still going well strong

and it's only five months old

give the game time

or just leave it because 'a-net killed it', as you so eloquently put it

fewer elitist idiots in my game that way