F2P MMOs ITT |OT|

[A Black Falcon]

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.

Dungeons - EotN has them. Quite a few, and they're hard.
Loot - below.
Quests - Get in towns, sort of like PSO. There are lots.

Obviously exploration doesn't interest you in games, though. Too bad, it is one of the best things about the game. (Did doing things like finding discoveries in Skies of Arcadia interest you, if you ever played that game? Skies is my favorite JRPG ever, of course, and the exploration element is a definite part of why.)

and minimal experience.

Um, what? How much DID you play GW, anyway? It can't have been much, if you even missed GW's levelling system. Guild Wars has a level 20 cap. Once you reach 20, experience is only useful for getting skill points, which you use to buy skills with. It took a while to reach level 20 in Prophecies, you won't hit 20 until you're probably 2/3rds or more of the way through the campaign, but in Factions and Nightfall you are levelled to 20 pretty quickly, and EotN, as an expansion pack, is level 20 only.

That is, experience is less important in GW than in any other MMO. There are no issues (in multiplayer) about levels or anything like that, because everyone is the same level. It's one reason why GW has the best competitive multiplayer of any MMO ever, pretty much, with tournaments, random arenas, guild battles, and more. It's a huge part of the game. You can even create PvP-only characters, which can't do the single player part, but start from level 20 and can use any skills unlocked on your account (that is any that any of your regular characters have gotten).

There is no MMO with as little grinding as Guild Wars has, with as low a level cap, or with as even a playing field between players. Armor works the same -- better armors have penalties as well as bonuses, so while there are better and worse armors, any max-level armor is going to be usable. You can't get something with some amazing, perfect bonus, it'll have some weakness too. The same goes for the runes, etc. that you can put on armor pieces.

simple loot

Basic loot items are simple, sure, either money or various kinds of horns, skins, etc, but weapons drop too (from enemies which carry them), and of course there is elite skill capturing -- in order to get elite skills you have to defeat a boss enemy that has that skill and then use a capture signet to capture the skill. You can only have one elite skill in your skillset at any time, so you've got to choose carefully -- but using the wiki and stuff to find where to look for elites you want is a good idea, otherwise it can be frustrating. Still, I definitely like the system.

As for other "loot", the main thing of course would be the various armor sets, which you have to create from crafters. Each class has a lot of different armor sets available, so there are many options to choose from. As with everything about the game it is balanced for fairness, so while you can spend huge amounts of time and money on a 15k set (the really expensive, late-game special armor sets you can find in each campaign, it costs 15,000 gold per piece), it won't give you any kind of additional bonus, it just looks cooler. I guess some people dislike that, because they want loot that makes them better than others and stuff, but GW isn't about that, and I like that about it. The game is incredibly well balanced. I'm not sure what your position is on this, it might be interesting to hear (about GW or anything else, just about this general issue). Thanks to the armor sets, Guild Wars has plenty of cool "loot" to aspire towards getting. Oh, there are also special, rare weapons to find from enemy drops from certain bosses and such, or from quests, so there is that too. Most of my characters use some kind of rarer weapon, they are better than the normal stuff.


I mean, I can see how someone could dislike these systems. Sure. They're very abnormal for an online RPG, certainly, particularly in leveling. I, however, loved the design, and have never for a moment wished for any levels beyond 20. You hit 20 during your first campaign, and then the rest of your time playing is all spent at that level. Works great, I love it. But sure, I can see how people who like levelling would hate that.

GW2 seems to be completely ditching GW's levelling system in favor of something quite different, and that's one of the many design decisions about the game I'm really not liking what I've heard about them.