I miss Guild Wars

[Leo G.4501]

And then there's my story: My first MMO was FFXI and it was...interesting. Played it for 2 years and the friends I made in it were what kept me going. The things that pushed me away from it were the fact that FFXI is a friggen slog (from travel, to leveling, to gearing...even just the story quests offered no hand-holding) but mostly that as we matured through the game, getting higher level jobs, it required more gil and better equipment and thus more time and investment to go further. Those friends, while still nice, started devoting all their time toward BCNMs, NM camping, farming and other activities to get more stuff...that and the only means to solo at the time was stripped away (changing how mobs despawn meant Beastmaster could no longer solo things worth good EXP). So I went to the other game I had been told about by one of my in-game friends...City of Heroes.

Long story short, be glad you still HAVE Guild Wars 1 to enjoy. I've actually gone back and dabbled in FFXI here and there, what kept me in it has moved on to other games. I wish I could do the same with City of Heroes. My pantheon of heroes and rogue's gallery of villains was what kept me in it and I only needed my imagination, the game's foundation and the community to bounce ideas off of and be inspired by their creations. It was a fun ride.

[Kameko.8314]

I'm with the OP, probably same age or so. And remember that same battle. Checking on the back of game . Subscriptions.. subscriptions... and then guild wars. Remember asking the people at the store no subscription right? I can keep playing? And went home asked my parents and said sure. And next day boom life is gone. I did go to wow for a few years and enjoyed it but ended up always coming back to GW. Allince battles? Best thing ever! GvGs? Getting catapulted by your own team? Priceless. I am glad I found it and yes it is the passing of time and nostalgia that makes me miss it. I went to go play it again and just couldn't . (And understand why others cannot) . But wheb I was young and chugging along I thoght nothing of it. Each city bustling with people. I was a healer being asked to join all over. But when the city is empty and no people around to tag with (yes I know lots of people still play BUIUUT each outpost doesn't have people like it used to. You could find people anytime anywhere doing stuff) it makes it hard to get into the game.l again/for first time.

[SnowdropFox.2456]

In the same boat as OP, almost the same story as well (although I started when Factions released).

I miss searching through the forums and shouting in major cities for the best deals. No tradingpost was a healthier "massive-multiplayer" experience imo.I formed bonds with people that sold/bought stuff. Need xyz? Ask this guy! I have xyz? This guy wants it and we'll haggle for hours on end to get the best deals around town.

You had a sense of community with half the playerbase based on your faction alone, let alone your guild. I was proud to have the guild emblem on my back. PvP was actually fun, GvG's were great and back in the day you still had a feeling of "we're in this together" with the Favor of the Gods (Link).

No one around to play specific content? No problem, equip your heros and party on!

God, how much I miss it. Good thing it's still playable.

[Squirrel.6318]

@"Catfish.4503" said:In the same boat as OP, almost the same story as well (although I started when Factions released).

I miss searching through the forums and shouting in major cities for the best deals. No tradingpost was a healthier "massive-multiplayer" experience imo.I formed bonds with people that sold/bought stuff. Need xyz? Ask this guy! I have xyz? This guy wants it and we'll haggle for hours on end to get the best deals around town.

You had a sense of community with half the playerbase based on your faction alone, let alone your guild. I was proud to have the guild emblem on my back. PvP was actually fun, GvG's were great and back in the day you still had a feeling of "we're in this together" with the Favor of the Gods (Link).

No one around to play specific content? No problem, equip your heros and party on!

God, how much I miss it. Good thing it's still playable.

lol damnnn I forgot about the haggling , I used to run people and try to beat other people's prices lol

[zealex.9410]

The existance of the tp hasnt necessarily made gw2 any less of an mmo than gw1. And even if a supposed gw3 didnt have a tp and was based on player to player trading, ppl would go out of their way and make their own tp like tools.

What made gw1 great and alot more social (i can assume at least)was that teamplay and social interaction was alot more heavily supported and incentivised by the content and the devs. In gw2 teamplay it is much more limited and only aplicable or required in very specific cases, nowhere near the amount it was in gw1.

Its pretty similar when compairing gw1 and 2 to early wow and current wow.

[Vayne.8563]

@Kilo.2539 said:Everything was better in GW1.. I miss it too friend.

Everything isn't better, due only to the fact that Guild Wars 2 has a trading post. Spending my day standing around in Spamadan trying to sell something was not my idea of fun. Also pathing wasn't fun.

Here I am, the brave ranger, exploring the wild. Oh look a log. Guess I have to turn back.

Some things were absolutely better, but definitely not everything.

[Dami.5046]

I think one thing that sticks out for me is that although there was a 'meta' and builds (55monk I <3 you ) there wasn't the hate you get here. Yes rangers still got trashed and still were dismissed, I spent hours trying to get around fractions because pugs would constantly kick you on one until I found my guild. However here YOU MUST have the meta, in fact people won't let you join anything unless you can run it and are obsessed with DPS meters to increase the grief. Look at the WvW snobs only wanting certain builds. In GW one you knew you needed a monk, maybe something ranged, something melee. There was no hate. I for one had every class, and could come as want was needed. We changed to fit in without question.There is more grief in this game .

[SlateSloan.3654]

our guild in gw1 has never been elite but yet we where still able to do everything from urgoz to DoA. it was normal that everyone had his special role inside the group. the challenge was to get better in what you wanted to do. to learn from others and to improve to achieve more and go beyond. in gw2 the people rather choose to cry to the devs how "unfair" and "hard" the content is so the devs change the content so the player can win regardless how he plays or what he does. new armor for 2000 gems anyone? like us on facebook and twitch!

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

To be fair there were missions which were cried over the forums.Vizunah Square comes to mind, which execution was not that good, often you were better off playing with henchs on the second team than getting a full team.

But overall yes, gw2 is more prone to qq because this game is dumbed down and spoon fed.

[Dami.5046]

I just think there was more respect in gaming in those days full stop and yes I know not everyone was an angel ... but you certainly weren't make a mockery on some forum or over Map chat.Now that people think to insult and anger is way more fun.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Gehenna.3625 said:I think the main issue for people who really enjoyed GW1 is how much GW2 was not like GW1. After all the devs were talking about taking the best of GW1 and making a new game that would make it even better. Since they basically only took the lore as background and some of the names they essentially took nothing of GW1 into GW2. It's hard to justify calling it GW in that sense. [...]

Exactly. :+1:

@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:But overall yes, gw2 is more prone to qq because this game is dumbed down and spoon fed.

Unfortunately, that pretty much hits the nail on the head.

[Dami.5046]

That's the thing about heros. It didn't make for a solo game. Who didn't grab a few friends and used a hero in the last party slot? We had a full guild and still did it, if only a few of us wanted to do say a sorrows run. Gw2 hasn't that freedom. It's either group or be dammed.

[Goettel.4389]

I've got similar rose-tinted glasses when looking back at vanilla WoW, but fully realize those days probably won't come again. Halcyon days, eh?

@Mikali.9651 said: No one cares if I help with that bounty monster in PoF, ressing that poor brave soul and then soloing the boss while ressing that poor soul more than 5 times. No one cares if I heal in meta event.

This resonated with me. I do think some distant player somewhere cares when I risk my toon flying back to res a fellow pony farming toon in Lake Doric.I even enjoy having to take that risk (that train stops for no one), believing that that player will have a nice jolt of bio-chemicals over the fact SOMEONE cared enough to even notice he/she getting downed, let alone risking getting downed himself to res. I like to think people care, even if they don't funnel that care through an ASCII table.

So yeah, I don't really have anything on-topic here, except maybe: carry on healing, the MMO massive cares! ;-)

[Goettel.4389]

double post

[sereniity seven.5603]

Hate to say but gw1 was the best . I can’t stand gw2 and the way it went .

[sereniity seven.5603]

There’s not much fun in gw2 . For sure there was much more challenge in gw1 and players actually interacted better . Talk about builds and items. It was simply fun . Gw2 is a mess sorry

[Aplethoraof.2643]

I had fun in GW1, that much was true. But after going back to it, I realized how much it has been superseded by GW2 and honestly most MMOs on the market now. It might benefit from a remaster, that much is true, but it has aged poorly and it shows. I went back to it after feeling a bout of nostalgia and tried it out again. Decked myself out with a full party of heroes, put on my best builds, and went into some hardmode tyrian titan hunting.

I can't say I had to do much. Maybe my guys were "too decked out", but I didn't have much difficulty. Combat felt slow and stale, with poorer animations.

One thing that ESO and GW2 (and wildstar, when it came out) spoilt for me was combat. Being rooted while using skills just kind of feels outdated now. Anytime I play a game with it, my first instinct is to kite while casting and when I find out I can't, it just casts a huge pang of disappointment into me.

That and GW2 just has a lot of advanced systems and conveniences (material storage, though GW1 had this too, a good trading post, global currency, stuff like that) that other games just don't have. The combat in GW2 feels (both with animation and sound) weighty and impactful.

Honestly, I think a lot of people take for granted everything that went right in GW2. There are balance issues and bugs, but tbh most MMOs have those. Balance in MMOs is a rollercoaster, I've never played one where something wasn't OP or underpowered. And bugs will happen, no matter what the game is. True, GW2 could stand to do some things like improve its existing systems (sPvP variety, more world bosses, underwater combat, make tougher encounters) but it is largely an outstanding game. Anything people don't complain about is something they are doing right, and there are a lot of things done right that other MMOs haven't grasped yet (fair cash shop model, excellent player inventory systems, ways to progress towards the same goal without being railroaded towards one game-mode or another aka non-linear progression, no gear treadmill so you can go on and off and not fall behind your friends. . .).

Haters are going to hate, and there are certainly haters in the GW2 community. And yes, occasionally yelling at anet is necessary to let them know they made a mistake (mount skins) is a good idea. But (don't tell anet this, it'll get to their heads!) we shouldn't take for granted what we have in GW2 either.

Though, people take stuff for granted all the time. So what do I know ¯\(ツ)/¯

[DaFishBob.6518]

In GW1, I got killed by a group of Charr while standing on a solid stone bridge. The Charr were well over 20 ft directly below me and killed me with melee weapons.

[Knighthonor.4061]

GW1 was not a MMO. GW2 is a MMO. I dont understand why people compare the two. It's like somebody comparing World of Warcraft to Warcraft 3. Same lore but it's not the same genre of video games.

[crepuscular.9047]

Yeah, the dual class system GW1 had was really unique to the gaming world, especially in PvPyou could muck around so much, Monks throwing traps, Ele running around with undead minions, the different funny builds you can come up with is endless, there are 1319 skills to choose from

and mesmers of GW1 was so unique for the class concept as a spell interruptor/punisher, mesmer of GW2 is so mediocre; the ancestors that taught the teaching of mesmers would be so confused how their teachings were lost

despite everything, GW1 still had plenty of shortfalls due to the engine and game design choices that were bad for anet in the long run, which led to the birth of GW2

the immediate limitation from the user end players notice are

• the movement of players are really on a 2D plane, no freedom of movements around the world like GW2
• there's real open-world experiences, the maps itself are dungeons really; the only place you get to see other players are in outposts, not really a MMO experience

I would even go as far as to say, GW1 probably was built from ground up from PvP perspective, the PvE side was a slap on as an after though

since GW2 was built on a modified version of GW1 engine, I wonder, how difficult would it be for Anet to migrate GW1 to GW2 engine

[Dami.5046]

For it's time Gw was a masterpiece. It must be if we are still writing on how much we miss it. Yes there were some things it could of done better but we coped.
I know those days are gone, even when I log in and take stock of my dervish, my paragon, my sin, my rit, all the things I miss, at least I can say i was there and I experienced one of the best games ever made.

[ProtoGunner.4953]

I really liked GW1 back in 2006, but don't forget the nostalgia goggles. There were a lot of shortcomings. The freedom of movement was bad, everywhere invisible walls, everything was instanced, no resource hunting, no nodes to farm, no real crafting professions. In the instances there was only one thing to do: fighting. Also having tons of skills was great, but in the end there were only a handful of useful builds, many were just fun or useless. Although I really liked some hardcore solo farms. Also the gearing was very limited compared to GW2 and there was no TP etc etc.

[Ashantara.8731]

@DaFishBob.6518 said:In GW1, I got killed by a group of Charr while standing on a solid stone bridge. The Charr were well over 20 ft directly below me and killed me with melee weapons.

And that is one of the reasons GW2 was developed. Unfortunately, they didn't transfer the game's essence into GW2 but made it a completely different game. At the time, GW1 players were hoping that GW2 would simply be an upgraded GW1, with a better engine, more freedom of movement, and the MMO aspect added to it. Some of us were disappointed enough to not touch GW2 for years after its release, because it wasn't what we had expected.

[kharmin.7683]

@sereniity seven.5603 said:There’s not much fun in gw2 . For sure there was much more challenge in gw1 and players actually interacted better . Talk about builds and items. It was simply fun . Gw2 is a mess sorryI appreciate your opinion, however it is highly subjective. There are many players who feel the complete opposite. Personally, I find GW2 more to my liking and play style for a free MMO. I have no problem interacting with players; I just have to make the effort to do so. I do like that players are not forced to interact with other players should they not want to do so.

I find fun in GW2 every day I'm playing it. The more instanced content of GW1, to me, made it more of a chore to find players to help participate and clear content which is why I believe ANet introduced heroes. Once heroes became a thing, many of the PUGS stopped forming. At least, that was my experience. Clearly, YMMV. ;)

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

@"crepuscular.9047" said:Yeah, the dual class system GW1 had was really unique to the gaming world, especially in PvP

No it wasn't. I played Runes of Magic around 2011, and it had a dual-class system that was, if anything, even more radical than GW1's. Each character had (when I started) two classes, and you more or less had to play with first one, then the other as "primary" because only the currently active primary gained XP, and the skills that a class provided (when it was secondary) depended on the lower of its level and the current primary's level.

Example: I'm Mage (think fire ele) and Knight (an actual tank class). My Mage level is 27 and my Knight level is 17. When I am Mage/Knight, Mage provides all its skills at level 27, and Knight provides a subset of its skills at level 17. When I'm Knight/Mage, Knight's skills (the full set) are still 17 and so are Mage's (a subset). I had a consistent policy of swapping back and forth.

In 4.0 they added a third class slot, and the "third right now" was inactive, but the same rules about levels applied, so you tended to end up rotating through the three. If I'm currently Mage/Knight(+Rogue), Rogue provides nothing, except once I switch to Rogue/Knight(+Mage).