WoW or Guild Wars?
 

The title explains it all.

Which one do you prefer?

Good post. After a new pc purchase I'm asking that question myself. I'm strongly leaning towards GW right now as it seems like fun and a lot less time commitment. However WOW looks good also and maybe has more of that epic feel to it. I like the graphical look and style also. However there is the time-sink aspect.. the cost is also an issue.

I did play SWG and thought that was decent, but tired of it after about 6 months.

There might already be a thread on this? I can't remember...

I was a die-hard Guild Wars fanboy. I had the game pre-ordered, was participating in beta testing, etc. Then, I tried World of Warcraft on a whim. Ended up loving the game, buying it, and cancelling my Guild Wars order.

They're both solid games, but very different. So, depending on what YOU like to play I might recommend one game or the other. WoW is a MMORPG, GW is more like Diablo combined with Unreal Tournament.

World of Warcraft has a 14-day free trial in the September PC Gamer. I don't know of any Guild Wars trial, but they might have one too.

I didn't find that WOW had a high time-sink factor.In fact i found it to be quite the contrary as i could log on and do quests pretty quick by myself and not have to stay online camping for hours like in other games.

Both games are good but I prefer WoW over GW.

If you don't mind paying $15 p/mo to play a game I'd go with WoW otherwise pick up GW. You can't go wrong with either.

I thought WoW was free?

$15/month

Oh. I see. How much is Everquest to play a month?

Should have made this thread a poll question. I am going to try the 14 day trial of wow and then go from there.

Probably $15 also,most MMO's are $15 a month i believe.At least all the ones i have played were.

As much as I liked what I saw of WoW, I couldn't imagine myself paying $50 to buy the game in the first place and then play $15 a month to play it.

GW is getting great reviews too but I've never played it.

I guess being a poor college student I would have to go with GW myself.

The fact that I get over a hundred ours of enjoyment for $14.99/month makes it an easy decision for me.

Good luck! I just got the demo from PCGamer, and I can't get the stupid thing to install. It gets a little ways into it, and then just hangs at copying terrain.mpq or something like that.

I looked at the Blizzard boards, and saw a lot of people with the same problem (and the full version of WOW). There have been no reponses from Blizzard staff either. :grumble:

Well, I finally got WOW to install last night. Had to install it on my backup PC, and then manually copy all the files over. Played it for a good number of hours, but I'm not sure I'll go back to it. Almost got to level 8, but find that most quests are sending me places where I get spanked pretty quickly, and hanging out killing low level monsters to level up is boring. I guess they expect you to group up, but I'm kind of a loner, and don't like to do that. Plus the quests so far seem more like busy work than actual quests.

How is Guild Wars different? Do the quests actually seem important? Is it easy to play on your own? Or do you need to group up?

I haven't played Guild Wars or many other MMORPGs, but from what I understand WoW is the most solo-friendly of all of them. Most of the quests that are not in dungeons can be done solo. As for the importance of the quests, with level 60s roaming the countryside, how important of a quest would you give to a lowly level 8? :)

But yeah, the "kill X creatures" or "collect Y items" are the least fun quests of them all, but there are enough quests in the game that you can skip those if they aren't your cup of tea.

That's really odd. What class and race are you playing? Just about any quest that is not labeled "Elite" or "Dungeon" and is Yellow or easier you should be able to solo.I won't disagree with that. There are a few quests along the way that are different, but for the most part they involve "Fetch # of this" or "Kill # of those".Guild Wars has it's own selection of "fetch and gather" quests. But the instanced missions are really cool. They are storyline driven, and contain scripted events. You do need to group up for these, BUT you can hire NPC henchmen in town if you don't want to go with other people.

I'm a human warlock, which in hindsight was probably a bad idea. I don't find the magic spells I have particurly exciting, and the best weapon I've found (that I can use) is actually a letter opener. My little demon friend is cool, though.

I'm fine as long as I'm up against only 1 bad guy at a time, but if I ever get attacked by 2 or god help me 3 bad guys, I go down pretty fast. :(

The quests depends in GW. Some are important, while others are not and basically there to give you experience - more than farming will supply. In the time before you enter the academy, Pre-Searing, you are allowed one party member and you can do 100% of the map w/o anyone. A party member helps, but if you play smart you can do it solo. Post-Searing, you start with 3 other party (4 total) members and it goes to a max of 8 party members. Here you can choose other players or Henchmen that loiter about town. I would not recommend playing solo w/o henchmen in Post-Searing, but you probably could for a bit if you play smart.
I just started playing and I really like it. The quests give you good experience and gets you to explore the map and find stuff.

That's pretty much normal for WoW. Taking on more then 1 mob at a time is pretty difficult unless you're a few levels higher then the guys you're fighting. At least early on in the game.

Warlocks are an advanced class to play, and they are a bit weak at the lower levels. Once you get your Voidwalker at level 10 it becomes a lot easier.

Also, some of the early human quests can be a bear, in particular Princess, Hogger and those dealing with the Murlocs.

My recommendation is that you try some other race/class combinations until you find one that works for you. For example, if you like pets and you like soloing, Hunters are an excellent option.

GW is more of a 'online RPG' that can be played co-op. This comes through in the quests as well. Certainly some of them are your typical fetch quests, but most of them feed into the background story at some level.
Also in GW, after a certain point, you benefit more from doing quests or missions. The quest I worked on this weekend, the enemies between begin and end point were getting me 0 or 10 XP, but the quest gave me 500.
I've soloed with henchmen almost all the time, and my char is level 10 [of 20]. I know as I progress out a bit farther, and work on some of the advanced quests, I'll need to group up a bit more, but I've been okay so far.

Well, I got tired of WOW always crashing on me, so I gave up and went out and purchased Guild Wars. Only to find it crashed just as much (if not more!) Good news is, I was finally able to track down my problem. One of my ram sticks was bad. I replaced that, and it was smooth sailing from then on out.

It's hard to compare the two, but I think I am having more fun with GW, even though it seemed to me that WOW was "deeper". GW has it's share of annoyances, but I do like the quests better, and it seems to me that it's easier to actually find quests. After of the few basic quests in WOW, it was difficult for me to find anyone who wanted me to do anything ( I kept having those "Well what do I do now?" moments). I did like the cartoony look of WOW better, fwiw...

WoW is a deeper game, but GW does have its moments too. On the whole though, GW felt like MMORPG Lite to me - but still a very fun time. And of course the absence of a monthly fee helps. (Though I pay $25 a month for the Station Pass - and considering the number of hours of enjoyment I get, I'd say it's a great investment - EQ1, EQ2, SWG and a few other games).

What is this "station pass" thing stingo?

I think I've seen that--it's basically the 'monthly fee' for MMORPGs, which obviously costs more than the fee for just one, but gets you gameplay on most if not all of Sony's MMORPGS. [you still have to buy the game itself, I assume].
correct me if I'm wrong, of course.