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Role Playing (Games)

Guild Wars Hits the Million Mark 56

Posted by Zonk from the hacking-and-slashing-with-no-fee dept.
-pms-mistletoe writes "Hot on the heels of World of Warcraft's breaking the 4 million subscriber mark, Guild Wars has also reached a big milestone with over 1 million users. The differences and similarities between the two games are marked, especially given Guild Wars' lack of traditional sharding and no monthly fee. Are these large numbers of players signals that the popularity of MMORPGs is growing? Or are the same people playing both games?"
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Guild Wars Hits the Million Mark More

Guild Wars Hits the Million Mark

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  • I'm a WoW player with many friends there, but I also have a circle of friends that play Guild Wars. Other than the 'no monthly fee' aspect, is there something in Guild Wars that could tempt me away from WoW, or should I keep trying to pull my GW friends into WoW?
    • It's all personal preference. Guild Wars and WoW are very different, aside from the fact that they are both MMORPG's. Guild Wars is based almost entirely on PvP, while WoW takes time and effort to reach top level and engage in serious PvP, Guild Wars takes very little time to get to top level, in fact, you can even make a character that starts as the max level.

      Some people believe this defeats the purpose of an MMO, some peoplethink it highlights the only good part of MMO's, but like I said, it's just per
      • That's all fine and dandy, except that Guild Wars is NOT an MMORPG. It's completely instanced. It's like if Counter-Strike limited its players to official servers only, and the hub that connected you to those servers was 3-dimensional and looked just like the game. That doesn't make it a "Massively Multiplayer" game, it just makes it appear so.

      • Slightly misleading (Score:3, Informative)

        by Nasarius ( 593729 )
        you can even make a character that starts as the max level.

        You make it sound like the PvE game is completely disposable. To clarify, you still need to play through the normal game to unlock skills and items.

        • Re:Slightly misleading (Score:2, Informative)

          by Dac Vin ( 824848 )
          You make it sound like the PvE game is completely disposable. To clarify, you still need to play through the normal game to unlock skills and items.


          They added a priest of Balthazar (For the ignorant, he's the guy you visit to unlock stuff with those factions you get in PvP) in the random arenas, so nope, you don't need to PvE anymore to unlock stuff.

    • Re:Anyone played both? (Score:2, Informative)

      by faloi ( 738831 )
      I've played both, and spent a lot of time on other MMORPGs too. Frankly, no, there's not much there that makes it special and different. If you like playing on a more casual level, GW is great. Missions tend to be heavily instanced, at least through the beginning (haven't played enough to hit the high levels), so there's no waiting for your spawn cycle or any of that mess. Even for "normal" missions. On the other hand, if people like GW they might get frustrated by WoW. Especially on a pure PVP server

    • Re:Anyone played both? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Squiggle ( 8721 )
      GW has a far better PvP system. After playing many fantasy MMORPGs the improvements in quality, accessibility, variety, and fairness of the PvP are astounding. If you play because you enjoy interacting with other players more than you like collecting levels and gear then GW offers a better experience.
      • I love how the article focuses entirely on alternative MMORPGs, but everyone still ends up comparing the 3 big ones. I wish I had enough mod points to rate everybody offtopic...

    • Re:Anyone played both? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AlexMax2742 ( 602517 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:29PM (#13633962)
      To draw a few lines from WoW to Guild Wars.

      First of all, transporation. No more paying a griffen rider to get from one place to another, you can go anywhere you've already been instantly.

      Secondly, it's a lot easier to get together a group for an instance, mainly because you can have fairly competant NPC players take the place of people who you are missing.

      Next is skills. Your account stores the lock and unlock status of all of your abilities for all of your classes (in addition to lock and unlcok status of runes, which you can put in items). Once you learn a skill or rune within the game, it's unlocked for your account. Unlocked means that when you create a PvP-only max level charactor, your new charactor can use that skill or rune.

      Next is how you use these skills. Imagine being limited to only being able to use 8 skills at any one time. You can swap them out in town, but once you're on a mission, you can't change them out. This forces you to pick and choose your abilities wisely.

      Next is charactors. Imagine selecting a Warrior in World of Warcraft, and being able to select a secondary class such as a preist. Your primary profession being a warrior, you would have all your warrior skills and you would wear warrior armor, but you would also have preist spells at your disposal. Guild Wars is like that.

      Next is attributes. No skill trees in Guild Wars. You have a attribute points system that's most like the skill points from Diablo 2. However, unlike Diablo 2, your attributes are not as simple as 'attack', 'defense' or anything like that, your attributes vary depending on what two classes you picked. If I could generalize them, they pump up a certain number skills (Fire Magic, for example) to make them more effective, though there is the occational "increase my stats in general" attribute, such as Energy Storage Attribute for the elementalist.

      Next is crafting. It's almost non-existant, except for either collecing X number of items to deliver to Y collector or collecting X number of items and using a salvage kit to turn it into Y number of crafting materials that you give to Z crafter to get him to create you stuff.

      Next is charactor customization. There are a lot fewer unique looking pieces of clothing per charactor, but unlike WoW, you can dye every piece of it. Dye drops off of enemies very rarely, and you can also buy dye for a (in the case of black, obscene) amount of gold.

      Next is instances. You have lobbies in towns. You can see other people in the lobby. However, once you exit town, you and everyone else in your party are the only people in there. The 'main' instances, the ones that advance the storyline, are called missions, and they are a lot more interesting than "go from one instance boss to the next". They even have a 'bonus' in each mission that you can complete for extra experience. The missiosn are the best way to advance in the game and get from one place to another (ie, if you want to get the hell out of the place you are in, just do the missions and you'll advance the storyline to the point where you move on to somewhere else). Of course, you can go to town and wander outside the town for another instance where you do local quests, without the direction of the main missions.

      Next is the continent. You have a lot less freedom to explore in Guild Wars than you do in WoW. WoW had a jump button and very few, if any invidisble walls. Guild Wars is full of them, it's less of a 'land mass' and more of a 'network of roads'. Also, while you start out in pre-searing Ascalon which is relatively pretty to look at, Ascalon post-searing is the most boring place to be, ever. Think Desolace, except with mountains and much bigger. Once you get to Yak's Bend, you're getting into much more interesting territory.

      Next is end game. The end game in World of Warcraft is either running the endgame instances over and over again for phat lewt or doing battlegrounds over and over again for phat honor (which you exchange f

    • Re:Anyone played both? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cyxxon ( 773198 )

      As others have already said, it is personal preference. But as most comments so far were in favor of GW, I decided to post as well.

      I like WoW much more, and I have played both since beta. Do not make the mistale now though to think I am a hardcore player. My main WoW char is level 43, not even 60. I casually play both, but I have played WoW a lot more. I am not playing on a PvP server, but RP, so I do not get griefed at all, and as such do not have that problem. But my main gripe is the quests. I play the

  • MMO's (Score:4, Informative)

    by pureseth ( 917220 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @02:25PM (#13631996) Journal
    I think Guild Wars is more for the casual gamer in the since that it doesn't have a High max level and is based on PvP. It doesn't take 2 years to get to top level and actually have fun, but at the same time you can get the best stuff in the game effortlessly and kinda defeats the purpose. That, along with the fact that there is no monthly fee are the main reasons it is such a good competition with WoW.. IMO.

    • Re:MMO's (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Goyuix ( 698012 )
      I think you have hit the nail right on the head. I am a Guild Wars player (casuaully, at the very most maybe 5 hours per week) - and it fits me perfectly. The things I like best are, of course, no monthly fee, as well as the MMORPG part is well balanced - there is a cohesive (though not stellar) story that you can follow and lead you through the game, a boatload of side quests, relatively easy (though a bit time consumptive) progress through the game, and of course - you get your own copy of the world while

  • The best thing about Guild Wars... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BigZaphod ( 12942 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @02:31PM (#13632070) Homepage
    I'm a casual gamer. Normally I would never go for the MMORPG things, but for a brief time my fiancee and her dad and brother were deep into Guild Wars and I ended up buying a copy so that I could go adventuring with them as something fun to do together now and then. Ironically, this was about the time she was starting to lose interest in the game and she had to go back to school (where she has a Mac and thus cannot play it anyway), so that pretty much never happened. Every now and then late at night I fire up my old Windows PC and login and go killing monsters for a few hours with the CPU characters. I'm not in a guild or anything and I don't go on to play with other humans - it's just a time sink for me once or twice a month. I'm not trying to be the highest possible level, collect the most gold, find the most hidden areas or anything like that.

    The lack of a monthly fee is the ONLY reason I even considered buying the game. Period. I would never pay for a subscription to a game like this as I would never play it enough and, frankly, after a few hours it gets pretty boring. But for that odd time when I don't feel like thinking with a puzzle game or have no side projects I want to do, Guild Wars is a great time waster.
  • Well, I was playing Guild Wars back in the Beta Weekend Events and ended up starting a guild with a guy and his brother. I let him become the leader and me just an officer due to fact that I'm off and on all the time. I skipped playing for a month due to school and when I came back, his brother was the new leader. It turns out that he's addicted to WoW and decided to stop playing GW. So I guess you can say there is an overlap between subscribers of GW and WoW but not at the same time ;-P.
  • Are these large numbers of players signals that the popularity of MMORPGs is growing?
    Is this a serious question? Of course the popularity is growing.

  • My friends & I are RPG fans, not MMO fans (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mbourgon ( 186257 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @02:40PM (#13632217) Homepage
    Of my group of gaming f(r)iends, all save 1 have bought Guild Wars. There are several reason for it:
    1) Linear Campaign - there's a complete story. Sure, go into the desert/shiverpeaks/jungle and kill random stuff. But for us it's more about getting from point A to B, explore, and continue the story, than farming. (And I have no idea what "sharding" is, so I'll pass on that for now)

    2) "Instanced": basically, when I step outside the town, it's me and the people I went with. I'm honestly surprised there are other ways to do it. Sure, occasionally it'd be cool to hop on, and join my friends wherever they are, but the fact that we don't have to deal with all the other stuff the MMO people b*tch about is more than a fair trade.

    3) No monthly fee. Hey, we've been playing Neverwinter since it came out. We have a Teamspeak server installed on the same linux box as our Neverwinter server. Almost none of us have any interest in spending 15$ a month on these games.

    4) It's an RPG. Not just click click clickclickclick. You have your 8 skills and your stats, you have to think about where you're going and what you're doing, before you leave town. Hmmmm.... I'm going into an ice cave - better leave my "icy bow" behind. Maybe other MMOs have this, I don't know.

    But overall, for a casual gamer, not an MMO fan, Guild Wars is great. Hop on and play - if your friends aren't on, find some people and go do stuff. I can see the addictive properties (as can my wife). But the hardcore MMO people don't seem to care for GW much, and that's fine. I'd never buy an MMO.

    • Re:My friends & I are RPG fans, not MMO fans (Score:4, Informative)

      by MisterMurphy ( 899535 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @03:18PM (#13632668)
      "Sharding" refers to the way that MMORPGS such as WoW handle large player loads on multiple, seperate game servers. In this way, you aren't playing one game with 4 million people, there are 4 million people playing several hundred smaller games all at the same time, on different servers that aren't connected.
      • And just for clarity, Guild Wars is highly fragmented, but you can jump freely from server to server, and the chat protocol is universal. You won't see everyone in your game world when you walk into a town - just everyone in your "district" (whether these are individual servers or merely instances run on the same server) - but you can change districts to meet up with your friends.

        If you and your friend play in different localities (there are three server "worlds" for Korea, Europe, and North America), you

  • Is Guild Wars really an MMO? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Drakino ( 10965 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @02:51PM (#13632354) Journal
    To me, I think of Guild Wars more as a typical RPG game, with an integrated group finding feature via visiting the towns, instead of the separate chat room/in game aspect of say Diablo II. So to me, this just tells me Guild Wars sold a million copies, and is overall a decent game if that many people are finding it interesting. I am aware of the PVP aspect of it as well, but again thats more of an in game group finder to then go in and have a small deathmatch. Would Half Life 2 be considered an MMO if every time you went into City 17 you saw other players, but once you left the city you were back to playing alone or with a small group? Well, at least then it could justify the mandatory internet connection to play it, but thats another rant for another day.

    More and more games are adding online aspects to them. To me, that doesn't automatically make them an MMO in my eyes.

    I am also noticing more and more games specifically putting "No monthly fee required" even if it is a single player game with a 16 person deathmatch or something.
    • Where are my mod points when I need them?!

      Parent is spot on. Took the words from my mouth.

      GuildWars is not really an MMORPG, but rather an form of a very graphic chatroom/lobby and small private games a la Diablo or Warcraft. To be honest, it could have been possible for them to have the game completely offline, having to play with the computer hirelings and it would probably still sell.

      It's not a big surprise tho, considering the devs behind GuildWars are ex-Blizzard employees, specifically those who desig
    • http://www.guildwars.com/faq/default.html#details [guildwars.com]

      Guild Wars has some similarities to existing MMORPGs, but it also has some key differences. Like existing MMOs, Guild Wars is played entirely online in a secure hosted environment. Thousands of players inhabit the same virtual world. Players can meet new friends in gathering places like towns and outposts where they form parties and go questing with them. Unlike many MMOs, when players form a party and embark upon a quest in Guild Wars, they get their own

    • I had a quick go at Guild Wars at a friend's house, and when I was stuck on a mission I stood in the middle of a town area and said "Does anyone know where X is?" because I couldn't find the mission objective. Some other player walked up to me and said "Follow me", and we joined up and went outside, killed a few monsters on the way, and he showed me where I needed to go. So if there hadn't been a "massive" number of players in the game, I would have had no chance of finding help.
      • Thats no different then going into Diablo 2's online section, and asking for help in the chat room, except that Guild Wars lacks a chat room and instead puts people togther in game instead of in a chat lobby. From the Diablo 2 chat lobby, players can launch into a game togther, and help each other out.

        Massive would have been if 2000 people came up to you and went to help you all at once, something the game doesn't support.

        Phantasy Star Online also wasn't considered an MMO, and did things just like Guild Wa
        • Massive would have been if 2000 people came up to you and went to help you all at once, something the game doesn't support.

          I think you're mixing up "massive" with "excessive". That would be ridiculous. There are a large number of people playing the game, enough that there is likely to be someone at the right place at the right time who is inclined to help. Contact is in-character, not in a chat room external to the game.

  • Guild Wars, A good introduction. (Score:4, Informative)

    by DeadBugs ( 546475 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @02:51PM (#13632355) Homepage
    The lack of a monthly fee, has made Guild Wars a great introduction into the world of online RPG's for me. You can buy the game for $39.99 [amazon.com] at Amazon and other places. I have been playing it for 6 months now so it's a bargain relatively speaking. They just released some new content for free in addition to the hours and hours of content the game already comes with. [guildwars.com]

    Actually I have enjoyed Guild Wars so much I am now interested in WoW. This "no fee" introduction may help more people get to know this kind of game and then they can move on to the monthly fee games.

    Guild wars will be selling expansion packs in the future, to add new content and pay the bills.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @02:57PM (#13632434)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • There is a big difference between 'subscribers' and 'purchacers'. Subscribers can decrease as people stop paying money for them. Guild Wars doesn't have that problem so that when somebody stops playing the game their account stays active.

    apples != oranges
    • True, however, Guild Wars is on-line only and requires you to login to play. So as long as you keep your account current by loggin in, then you're the same as a subscriber that doesn't pay. :)

      And in reponse to what someone else said, Guild Wars is NOT just PvP... infact, my girlfriend and I have played through the entire game, over months without doing any PvP. It has a huge story line, and lots of co-op missions to do.

      And, if you really are a hermit, you can grab henchmen (AI controlled) to fill out your

  • To say that Guild Wars is "hot on the heels" of competitor Worlds of Warcraft is being very, very generous to Guild Wars.

    First off, in terms of numbers of players: No. They're not. The numbers aren't close.

    But much, much more importantly: Guild Wars charges no monthly fee. Even if the numbers were equal, WoW would still own Guild Wars on revenue.

    • Dude, I meant "hot on the heels of the announcement" :P Indeed, they're not close in revenue, but it's still pretty impressive that given the number of articles from various games companies whinging that "WoW is stealing our customers!", ArenaNet & NCsoft still manage to push out a game with over 1m sales.
  • I played Guild Wars for about 2 months before getting bored with it and sticking it back on the shelf. I played a few other games, took a bit of a break, and (gasp) read a book in the interim. I've now come back to the game a little bit and I have found a new appreciation for its subscription strategy. I love that I can play the game casually or hardcore and have little trouble picking up where I left off. If I played WoW and needed to take a break, I probably would never come back due to the prohibitiv
  • I was playing both. I enjoyed WoW more, but after Blizzard's "interview" here the day before, I decided they lacked respect, so I terminated my account.
  • Just to save anyone else wasting time looking at Guild Wars: if you dig through three or four levels of navigation to the online store, it turns out it's Windoze only.

    *plonk*
  • I have played Guild Wars, and not World of Warcraft. I have been very curious about WoW, so I asked around a lot. I have a thesis:

    WoW is an MMO Epic RPG, i.e. it is geared around the long haul, accumulating power, and abilities gained at later levels that put to shame those of early levels, giving players a sense of accomplishment when they level their character and gain abilities.

    GW is an MMO Action RPG, i.e. it is geared around doing a specific task at a time, acquiring abilities is easy, and the skills
  • 1 million copies sold != million players. I play GW regularly. Most people are bored and have left the game. Most cities are quite empty as opposed to closer to release. It has no monthly fee so people kind of meander back into the game here and there and leave for a month or so. The real number is pretty nebulus, but I'd say it is most likely closer to 300,000 players based on some math on how many people per district at peak times. Not too shabby but not 1 million for sure... Unless we're talking "Million
  • For the record, though alot of us have played RPGs in some shape or form, and a few of us have done the MUDs, none have taken on anything like a MMORPG. That being said: - August 10th, my friend buys one copy of World of Warcraft. - By August 31st, NINE more copies are purchased by myself and others - 4 more copies are purchased within the coming weeks. I would have to say, yes, MMORPGs are growing. Also, I don't mind paying the monthly fee, since 15-yr old asshole racists on XBOX Live are now no longer
    • since 15-yr old asshole racists on XBOX Live are now no longer a fixture in my weekly gaming realm.
      You havn't been to The Barrens yet, have you. I don't know why, but the general chat in that zone is ALWAYS wierd.
      • A few times, but I've managed to accidentally shut off general chat in most places... which is just as well, since most of it is anoying useless crap. I am also playing the Alliance right now. When I turn horde, that might make all the difference.

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