Orry

um, that went in the wrong place, it should be below the whole thing.

Photics, you keep talking about how you don't like the lore because of the false gods. But even Lord of the Rings, a decidedly Christian work has many gods. First there is Eru Iluvatar (refered to as The One in LotR and The Silmarillion) who created Middle Earth and everything else. And then there are the Valar, which were ascended beings who acted as gods with a specific role, similar to the gods in Guild Wars 1, and one of these actually went on to become the first Dark Lord, Morgoth, who actually tricked Eru Iluvatar at one point in time, and these were definitely not angels, having once been mortal. And then there are the Maiar, which are descended spirits whose powers were tied to, and in some case rival those of the Valar, most of these are wizards, like Gandalf, others were corrupted by Morgoth into balrogs, and yet another one is the second Dark Lord Sauron.

Now, the ancient dragons in Guild Wars 2 are said to possibly even be older than the 6 gods, I would link them to the Maiar from LotR, the 6 gods I would link to the Valar, not having created Tyria but having shaped it, and there is probably another creative force somewhere that would be synonymous with God.

Really this is just LotR's lore with a lot more magic, we're even fighting a dragon (Maiar) named Zhaitan (Sauron).

And as far as the 2008 beta, if their comments are to be believed they could have released a beta in 2008 as they claim to have been playing the game themselves at that point, just by the time got around they decided that the market preferred betas to be close to release at the end of the development cycle, creating an experience more akin to the actual release.

@ Mike

For example, if you kill a Centaur chieftain, the Centaurs will eventually elect a new one and restart the events.

Doesn't that sound like they'd get a new chieftain if you killed the old one?

>>...and how are the Charr not evil? The Humans are not the aggressors.

Aggression=evil? I mean after all, by that definition the United States would have to be considered evil based on the war of 1812, and far less than 250 years after that Canada, Britain and America were all allied nations.

But seriously, according to the Charr, Ascalon was originally theirs, the humans took it, so they decided to attack the humans.

>>If there were gods in WoW, I don't remember seeing them.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Titans
Actually, Sargaras, leader of the burning legion was once one of their number. And he is deep in the Warcraft lore.

One must remember WoW has a rather large back-story which is where it's lore lies, if you don't see the lore it is because you ignore it, not because it isn't there. You can get a similar effect by accepting quests without reading their dialogue, skipping all cutscenes and turning off chat whenever NPCs talk because honestly the only difference is one is included directly in-game and the other requires reading/playing the previous games to get the lore, which IMO is bad design, but I was familiar with it anyway.

>>ArenaNet is focusing on things like false gods

Except, in Tyria they're real, same as any gods in D&D are part of that games lore and are real in the context of that universe. There are also gods in WoW, the titans that created Azeroth. Along with in many other games.

>>Would the Smurfs team up with Gargamel?
>>Would GI Joe team up with Cobra? (I think they have and it never lasts a full episode.)
>>etc.

There is an important difference between these examples and the Charr. The Charr are not evil, the Flame Legion is, and the Charr are in civil war. A question you should have asked is "Would the orcs team up with the humans when confronted with a larger enemy?" and the answer is yes, the Orcs, Humans and Nightelves all fought together when confronted with a greater evil. (See Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos) Even if they went back to fighting after, they were allies for as long as they were fighting The Burning Legion.

I keep going back to Warcraft because you mention it as a better story, but most of the criticisms you have for Guild Wars are apparent in Warcraft.

The grind in GW just feels a lot more like pursuing a goal then it does in WoW, yes it is far from non-existant, but one doesn't need to be a drunkard in the way one needs to have level 80 and whatever the current max gear is. Honestly, I like the blurr effect the alcohol in GW gives, I may be one of the few, but I do actually enjoy it, I'm not grinding out the drunkard title on any one haracter, I have several characters with minutes in the drunkard title. Drinking while vanquishing or doing a full UW clear can hardly be considered grind, can it?

Some of the titles in Guild Wars are made to give long time devoted players a reward, mainly PvPers, Hero and Zaishen are good examples of this. The go in the hall of monuments at a relatively low rank, but they require years of continuous play to max, if someone wants to grind for them than it is there fault, nothing requires r15 Legendary Hero except for the dragon emote you get with it. You can get GWAMM without it, you can get the Hero monument without it. You should get it because you like playing in Heroes' Ascent, not because it's shiny. WoW you absolutely need good gear and max level, and it is admittedly less grindy now then it as before, but it is still that, grindy. Just to get to the point where you actually start relying on skill and actually playing the game. So yes, WoW does limit content by seperating the two sides because you have to grind up multiple characters to experiance both sides.

Most fantasy actually is dark, seeing how most fantasy nowadays is based on LotR and that was the very essence of dark fantasy, in fact Tolkein sold the film rights for practacly nothing because he figured a dark fantasy film wouldn't sell. Saying a dark fantasy game won't sell is exactly the same thing, you won't really know until it is released, except a lot of fantasy games are dark. Fire Emblem sells rather well, and it can get very dark and convoluted at times, and people praise it for it's story. Really, anyone who wants a more light fantasy would probably stick with WoW regardless of whether GW2 fit into the category or not, so it is better to try and carve your own niche, GW1's original approach was competative PvP as seen in FPS games instead of the kind seen in other MMOs, but they changed to a PvE focus partway through which left both parts in somewhat of a mess. Now it seems like they plan to focus on both from the start, still going for that competative PvP niche, but allowing for a PvE story and some sort of open world PvP in The Mists.

Trying to compete directly with WoW is suicide for a company, the game has to be different enough to capture those who don't want to play WoW, since those who do want to play it will do just that, the only thing capable of killing WoW is WoW itself, expansions continuosly make the game more simplified to the point where people quit due to others have max gear too easily, strange but true occurance. However, if they continue to simplify it, it will become it's own worse enemy, and that really appears to be what Blizzard is doing.

Guild Wars 2's event system is what will either make or break the game, and worth it to me to pick up and try.

And honestly a lot of countries make peace in far less than 250 years after their last open conflict. I seem to recall the French and English being allied during the first world war, which was far less than 250 years after they fought last.

@photics

The Horde vs. Alliance in WoW is one of the things i disliked most about the game. Why would all the Bloodelves have to ally themselves with the Horde, and why would they? They were brutalized and captured by the orcs in Tides of Darkness, that's how they allied themselves with the humans in the first place. There is no way every single one of the survivors of The Frozen Throne decided to join the Horde, why can't I have the option to betray them and join the Alliance? You should be able to form Guilds allied with whatever reace(s) you want, and fight everyone who challenges you, or whom you decide that you need to challenge.

And also, even if there is tension between the north and south, they still both fight in wars that America is involved in.

Forced seperate factions based on race do nothing but limit content, now this isn't too bad in a game like WoW where the low level content is grinding levels from quests, but in a game like Guild Wars, marketed as having less grind, does not need, and should not have limited options based on the race you want to play. It's good you mention D&D because in that you could have a group of a half-orc, a human, a halfing and a dwarf, there were no limits to the races you had in your party, a DM could even let you use normally unplayable races. Yes Paladins were originally only human characters, they changed this to allow any race to play a paladin, and required them to be lawful good, with the aditional requirement that they could not associate themselves with any creatures that persistantly did evil and may tempt them to fall, in other words, evil characters. Typically groups were made up of good and nuetral characters anyway, so that didn't limit much, and so long as the evil characters would act good around the paladin he was free to travel around them. And then of course the paladin always has the ability to train in another class and "fall". That is of course in the 3rd adition, 4th adition the paladin's alignment depends on their chosen diety, which would be a completely different conversation, and really a completely different type of character.

Incidently, they have more balance testers now, coincidence?

I liked this update, Guild Wars is still very fun so long as you don't burn yorself to boredom by playing it continuously, I know that from experiance, I at one point didn't play for almost a year before getting back into it about two years ago. Updates help keep the game fresh, which is a very good thing.