An Open Letter to Fanboys

[A Black Falcon]

But ya know, in general I do tire of repetitive quests of that sort. I like single player RPGs because they can come up with some pretty weird quests that take some genuine thinking. Puzzles can happen both in and out of battle. Not a single MMORPG I've played involves any amount of intelligence outside of some clever prebattle setup.

GW doesn't have many puzzles either, not like you'd find in a Baldur's Gate or a Torment... if you want a single-player RPG, that's why those games exist. There are some small "puzzle" elements on a few of the missions, though, and 'figuring out where to go' can be an issue sometimes... but the biggest amount of skill in the game is choosing your skillset. Remember, you may have 200 skills available on your character, but you can only ever take eight into battle, so choose wisely... :)

I didn't play it for long, but I did play it long enough to find out that after a certain level, you just can't count on it unless you plan on waiting around for days on end. No, generally the areas later on are designed specifically so that you do have to deal with it yourself. If you are having trouble, get a party. If a party is having trouble, form a raiding group to charge the place.

True, but since you're all in the same world, that is always an issue. Can't you admit that it hurts the immersion significantly to have not just you killing those goblins, but fifteen people standing around waiting for them to spawn and taking turns killing them one at a time? In GW that'd be a much more fun battle, that's for sure (and that's leaving out GW's more active (and perhaps more fun) battle system, too...)...

True, WoW does have instanced dungeons. Because they know that the only way to really do a dungeon is to instance it. Have it not instanced and it allows you to do what I did in some early caves in WoW... wait around and have other people clear out some of the path, so you can progress on your mission. And it also allows you to set a static number of non-respawning monsters, laid out in a specific pattern, which is a far, far better style than standard MMORPG respawning stuff.

And remember, that lack of a "open overworld" is the single biggest factor keeping away the monthly fees, so think of that if you find something else annoying about it... myself, I think it's fine, because I didn't exactly find myself interacting with others much anyway from my limited experiences in WoW and Ryzom. In GW, between the random-teams arenas and the missions (remember, there are quests and missions, and they are different. Quests are things you get in the 'main world' that involve doing stuff in the overworld areas, usually solo. You respawn when your party dies, but with a death penalty. Missions are one-shot missions (that is, your party dies and you start over from the lobby), that follow the story of the game. They are mostly linear, but each has an optional sidequest to attempt that adds replay value and challenge to the mission. They are usually done with a (human) party you gather together in the mission lobby. The third gametype, of course, is the PvP...), I did far, far more (interaction with other humans) in any one of the two-day events than in that week I played the WoW beta...