Guild Wars V WoW: What we CAN compare

Indelible — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 00:58:32 GMT

Yes, that is right. After protesting the comparison of the two games in my previous post, I am now doubling back on myself. Not completely however, as the majority of the games are vastly different in aspect and playability.

There are two things however, that can be compared, these things being: Res debuffs and minion AI, and that is what I am going to discuss in this post.

Firstly, the res debuff system in World of Warcraft works on a system of effort. If you can be bothered to put the effort in, it will allow you to run back to your corpse after dying and res without any bad effects (aside from having to rebuff yourself and drink/eat). This is good, as it gives the player an incentive to continue the grind. On the other hand, you can chose to res at the graveyard you spawn in once dead (as a ghost) and this will mean you suffer a 75% reduction to all stats for 10 minutes. This means that you are encouraged to continue to play or find your corpse before heading back to town but you can, if you so chose, take the 75% reduction in stats and head back to town straight away.

In Guild Wars, however, we have a very, very different system completely. If you die in GW, your stats are dropped by 15% per death and remain X% nerfed until you either return to a town or you grind enough monsters down to get rid of it. It stacks as well and if you die 4 times, you can expect a mission crippling 60% (15 x 4 = 60) stat nerf. It stops at 60% but this is enough to end even the most hardened players mission. This is all well and good but what I haven't told you is that when you return to a town, you reset ALL of the monsters you killed before getting the 60% stat nerf and have to grind through them again. Imagine how frustrating it gets when you get to the last boss on a mission and suddenly, you die and have to head back to town and regrind all of the mobs up until that point.

So comparing the two debuffs we have one that give players a chance and another that cuts you no slack. Guess where my vote is going. World of Warcraft has a far more rewarding and well though out res debuff than Guild Wars by a long way. The Guild Wars debuff, coupled with the AI makes for a fairly frustrating and disheartening game play experience indeed.

Now onto the AI. Well, I've already given away what my opinion on the Guild Wars AI is so we may as well start there.

The GW AI is...well...very, very basic. The AI pick random targets, unless you hold down your control key and double click on a monster. You can use way point flags to run your heroes and minions into a group of monsters to get the aggro on them but, for some reason, the monster aggro doesn't quite work well either. I can do that and then suddenly have every mob in a five mile radius attacking me...even if I have done nothing. So the monster AI is foolish and simplistic. Back to the minion AI and when it isn't attacking random monsters, it is bugging out and one of your minions is running out to a random location on the map and then running back with another group of mobs for you to deal with. So in conclusion, the GW AI needs a lot of work before it even resembles vague intelligence. At the moment, we are talking Angering Ignorance on its behalf. Add this to the above res debuff, and we have a system that punishes the player for the programmers lack of ability.

WoW however once again out does Guild Wars in one of the only things to compare, with AI of both mobs and minions being very, very refined and well designed. A minion in WoW can be set to three different setting and will act accordingly. It will also not pull and attack random mobs for the hell of it. Generally, it will do what it is told and nothing more. I like that. On the infrequent but annoying off chance that a pet does bug out, you have the pleasant ability to find your corpse once dead and continue to grind. After all, it isn't your fault the programmers messed up, right?

All in all, WoW does out do GW in the only two ways I can find to compare. Everything else is different and so on the AI and Res debuff, WoW wins.

Otherwise - they are two very different games which both have appeal and low and behold, I'm going to continue with both :-D

Guild Wars V World of Warcraft - Not Another One

Indelible — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 17:01:01 GMT

Guild Wars and World of Warcraft had been fighting a quiet but ravenous war since both were released. Eventually, this war was settled by a retreat on Guild Wars behalf but why? I fail to see where this war came from, aside from the fact that ex-Blizzard employees designed Guild Wars and that's about it.

So some ex-Blizzard employees decide they want to cash in on the MMOG market before it becomes saturated and leave the WoW dev team to create Guild Wars. By their definition it is a COMMO and not an MMORPG. To me, it is an MMORPG but one that is trying to be slightly different.

You can see why they are ex-Blizzard employees. The game isn't refined. There are massive problems with the game play that I just can't get over. For example, the AI that controls the minions in the game is outrageously simplistic and worst of all, problematic. The minions will run round in a way that looks fairly like a decapitated chicken on its last rage and these minions will pull every mob group in a half mile radius while doing it. This makes me feel like I am being told off for not wanting to constantly play with horny 14 year olds who want to cyber with my monk in return for some bolts of cloth. Another problem I have with the game is the res debuff. It would work...if it didn't punish you for the programming teams laziness. The simplistic AI coupled with a self destructive res debuff that reduces your life and energy by a massive percentage when you die and you can see why I say, "punish." Add to that that if I die and res in combat I suffer 10%-60% reduction to my life and energy but when my minions die, they happily res and run round pulling more mob groups for me to scream at. The only way to remove the debuff is to either grind mobs down to lower the percentage, or return to a town, resetting all the mobs and forcing you to regrind all of the mobs you have killed. It makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon. The last problem is another AI issue. The mob AI isn't adaptive and that is to say that it doesn't have a range of difficulties based on the arrangement of your group which means that every so often I am fighting an AI that is 20 times more intuitive than my minions, making me the only thing standing between life and death and I dislike that rashly. I play games to relax and not worry about.

The PvP in Guild Wars is very diverse and I am enjoying it quiet a bit. While it is not as informal as WoW and it's simplistic PvP system, it is far more fun. I am made to feel like every match I play is a match that matters, which makes me feel important. I like feeling important. That is why I play PvP and PvP only in most games. Being a good PvPEr makes you feel special; Guild Wars makes me feel very special when I win and very foolish when I lose. WoW doesn't.

All of that said however, Guild Wars holds over WoW with me in many ways. Guild Wars is massively balanced in PvP, something that Blizzard are failing at right now. There are also less random bugs in Guild Wars and the classes are far more original.

In the end, I'm not going to compare. They are two different games with two very different rule sets and graphics engines. While at this moment, I prefer playing World of Warcraft for the arena system, I am planning on playing Guild Wars for a while, to see how it opens up at high level.

You never know: I might reroll GW in a few months.

p.s. If there are any NCSoft or Arenanet employees reading this, fix the damn res debuff :-)

The Daily Quest : guildwars

Guild Wars V WoW: What we CAN compare

Guild Wars V World of Warcraft - Not Another One