24th September 2010, 8:36 PM
I'm playing all these games right now, I'm not going to swoon over Guild Wars for getting their first if both it and another game do exactly the same thing.
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My problem with Guild Wars is that the explorable areas are absolutely massive and rarely have anything in them other than monsters. They feel massive and empty, and lack the sorts of things that I liked about exploring in most RPGs [NPCs to talk to, quests to find, dungeons to fight through, and good loot to pick up]. Guild Wars just doesn't have that.
Of course, most MMOs don't. But Jade Dynasty has a feature that allows you to automatically travel directly to the point you need to be for a quest and Aika Online has a more compact world with relevant points closer together.
Vindictus sidesteps that by having instanced dungeons with you and your party and all the other people present in town and at the docks. Much smaller world, everything is very compact and to the point. Avoids the massive, but empty world syndrome.
My biggest gripe about Guild Wars is the exactly that: wide open but empty. You can wander through some massive zone for a dozen hours and find nothing but monsters to battle for simple loot and minimal experience. I simply don't care for that at all. Other MMOs at least have other people wandering around to give the semblance of life to the world.
But I understand that that sort of thing doesn't bother you. We've had this difference of opinion before with regards to the Elder Scrolls series [massive, repetitive world versus smaller, more detailed world], so there's no need to hash this out further.
Quote:Oh yeah, and I should mention the camera. I love Guild Wars' camera, you have real, free control over it -- you have much better camera control than games like WoW. Hold down the right mouse button and you can move the camera all over, or use the scrollwheel to zoom. It's very well designed, and works great. I haven't seen many other MMOs with camera controls anywhere near as good. I mean, how many MMOs have cameras that let you clip through things, and look at the insides of polygon models and stuff?
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Quote:I love just wandering around, exploring, and mapping out and clearing areas
My problem with Guild Wars is that the explorable areas are absolutely massive and rarely have anything in them other than monsters. They feel massive and empty, and lack the sorts of things that I liked about exploring in most RPGs [NPCs to talk to, quests to find, dungeons to fight through, and good loot to pick up]. Guild Wars just doesn't have that.
Of course, most MMOs don't. But Jade Dynasty has a feature that allows you to automatically travel directly to the point you need to be for a quest and Aika Online has a more compact world with relevant points closer together.
Vindictus sidesteps that by having instanced dungeons with you and your party and all the other people present in town and at the docks. Much smaller world, everything is very compact and to the point. Avoids the massive, but empty world syndrome.
My biggest gripe about Guild Wars is the exactly that: wide open but empty. You can wander through some massive zone for a dozen hours and find nothing but monsters to battle for simple loot and minimal experience. I simply don't care for that at all. Other MMOs at least have other people wandering around to give the semblance of life to the world.
But I understand that that sort of thing doesn't bother you. We've had this difference of opinion before with regards to the Elder Scrolls series [massive, repetitive world versus smaller, more detailed world], so there's no need to hash this out further.
Sometimes you get the scorpion.