User:Deon/Opinions

Introduction to this page
This is where I'm going to put all my viewpoints about things I think are important in the world of Guild Wars. There's really no point in me putting all this here but I don't have much else to do at the moment and there are things that kind of bug me. Comments left on my talk page saying "zomg u noob wtf" will be laughed at and otherwise completely ignored. You can state your point of view if you want, but if you don't avoid ad hominem everything you say will be void in my eyes.

NEWS FLASH The transformation into WoW is now officially complete! With the April content update introducing new Copper, Silver, and Gold coins as well as having to pay $10 or $15 for services that can be bought once PER MONTH, Guild Wars has now OFFICIALLY turned into World of Warcraft! Enjoy the grinding and spending real-world cash GW players!

Prophecies
Prophecies has been and continues to be my favorite of the three campaigns. Maybe it's because every time I play it I'm brought back to the old world of Guild Wars.. back when there were six professions and very limited skills. No PvE skills, no consumables, no summoning stones, no green weapons (at least before Sorrow's Furnace) and all that good stuff. Back when PvE used to actually be difficult and rewarding when you finally completed the game. I remember the first time you go through the game not knowing what to expect and being immersed in the story while trying to figure out your profession. Prophecies doesn't have all these cheap gimmicks (Kurzick/Luxon, Sunspears, Lightbringer, Rep points) and is more reminiscent of a traditional RPG instead of an MMO. It's got numerous different locales and environments, and really brings more diversity to the table than any other campaign in my opinion. No campaign to date has ever been able to hold a candle anywhere NEAR Prophecies, and I hate that it's starting to lose the respect it once held.

Factions
This is kind of the middle campaign for me. One thing I really like is how you level insanely fast on the starter island. It's nice that it doesn't keep you hanging around forever once you've learned all the basics. On the other hand, once you get off of the starter island you have to spend so much time in the same monotonous and boring Kaineng City area. Bunches of buildings all over the place with afflicted, Jade Brotherhood, and Am Fah. That's literally all you see until you get halfway through the game. The Kurzick areas aren't much of a change, but instead of buildings you get trees that have the same dark feeling as the run-down city. The Luxon area is slightly brighter I suppose but it's still a cold, dead sea. Since they couldn't come up with any more variety they then make you go BACK into the city. There is zero change in this game and it all runs together for me. Not to mention that Vizunah Square is one of the most horribly executed missions to date. Having a 16-player co-op mission is a cool idea, but more often than not I get stuck with 15 henchmen who can't keep themselves alive. Overall, it's average. AB is the only thing keeping it from being intolerable in my opinion.

Nightfall
Basically, this is the opposite of Factions. Still average, but for the other reasons. Starter island takes TOO LONG. Most of the time you're just doing random unrelated quests to fufill the primary quest of "get to level 10." It's boring and repetitive, and I wouldn't mind never starting another Nightfall character again. Once you get off of there the gameplay isn't really that bad to be honest. Most of the missions are fairly interesting and some of them are pretty unique. The endgame area ruins it again though, as it's so high-end that it's just frustrating for the majority of players. Then in some strange twist Abaddon is so insanely easy that I beat him my first try with a random party of henchmen. Pretty disappointing. Though I'm incredibly impressed with the Easter Egg involving /dance and Abaddon. Finding that out made my day and is some humor I didn't expect to be put into it. Overall it's average, but I never want to start another character there again.

Eye of the North
My second-favorite, actually. Taking away the Asuran side, the gameplay is really pretty interesting and fun. There are numerous mini-games and new sets of armor to be had. I think the reputation point idea is just a lazy steal off of WoW but at least it doesn't require an insane amount of grinding to be reasonable. While I think it defeats the purpose of the game to have titles where you have to farm bosses repeatedly or leech raptor farmers for weeks I guess there are some people who like that. Personally, I'll get rank 5 of the organization of my choice, grab its armor, and leave. Overall it's good for an expansion. I'm pretty happy with it.

Kurzick/Luxon rivalry
The one thing I have to say right now is people who go into AB or any other faction-related competitive mission and calls the other side "suxons", "kurdicks", etc. annoy me to absolutely no end. Every single time I see those phrases, I literally cringe and have to hold myself back from going off on that person. It's a game, and the sides have no effect to you. Just because one person chose to fight for the Kurzicks or another person decided to fight for the Luxons, that doesn't mean ANYTHING. Most of the time they're probably just doing it for a faction's armor, or to work on a title. There's no meaning at all to a person siding with a faction. Calling people stupid luxons or dumb kurzicks is just completely dumb. We're all just people playing a game, buying armor, and having fun. Don't ruin the game by trying to pretend it actually means anything. Nobody likes you. Just leave.

The Kurzick Side
I like the idea behind the Kurzick faction. They're a highly bureaucratic society based in ancient rituals and traditions, and have taken up residence deep in the Echovald Forest. Not only that but the Urn of Saint Viktor is extremely useful, shielding the party from a large amount of damage. Their areas are extremely nature-based and have an atmosphere that's largely unlike any other area in Factions. Not only that, but I think Fungal Wallows are adorable when they're not trying to kill you.

The Luxon Side
The Luxons have a pretty neat type of idea too. Sort of the warrior-clan type thing, completely the opposite from the Kurzicks. You also have to admit that living on a sea of solid jade is pretty epic. Siege Turtles are also a pretty cool idea, albeit they're slightly overpowered. They also have a variety of forces via the different animal clans, which is neat. Lastly, they have Argo, and honestly enough said. He can just yell at someone and a shower of meteors rain down upon them. I'm sure that's a power everyone wishes they had.

Lich King
My favorite villain, the traditional "let's destroy the whole world" type of guy. I also like how he completely strung the party along as the Visier and manipulated every single thing to fall exactly in place. It's too bad as a boss he's really pretty harmless, but I like the concept.

Shiro
Shiro is honestly just a big dummy. He got paranoid, killed some emperor and was sealed away, and then comes back only to basically screw himself over. While he was immortal and "not human" or whatever we couldn't do anything to harm him. We could see him and he could kill us but that's about it. For whatever reason he just had to feel the need to become mortal again, but for what reason? In the next mission we just kill him. Why didn't he just stay immortal and never die? Stupid plot.

Abaddon
Better than Shiro, at least. What game would be complete without a big bad god of darkness? Unfortunately he's ridiculously easy to defeat. On the plus side, he's really big, and is an excellent dancer.

Warrior
Honestly, in my opinion this is the most uesless class. When GW originally came out the Warrior was the end-all of tanks. Throw some healing prayers on you and everything would have a hard time killing you. Now Warriors have so many counters and weaknesses that they have become obsolete in every single way. If it weren't for all the newbies picking the Warrior as their first character, this class would become extinct within the next year.

Ranger
Highly versatile and highly underrated. Their raw damage numbers can get dangerously high when combined with many PvE skills (Asuran Scan, I'm looking at you) and can provide massive degen and condition spreading on the PvP side of things. They can also trap, though its effectiveness is still questionable to me, as well as go toucher. Touchers get a lot of crap but unless you have the right skills to counter them (cripple anyone?) they can prove to be quite the nuisance. Not to mention every Ranger carries D-shot. I don't mind having one or two on my team whenever possible.

Elementalist
Overrated in PvP, overpowered in PvE. Get a team with a bunch of Savannah nukers in PvE and you'll wipe everything (excluding destroyers) with ease. In PvP, their spells take so long and can easily be countered by one or two spells from a Monk. The only good PvP Elementalist are ice spikers, air spikers, and earth to a lesser extent. Wards can be nice and they have a few decent nuking skills, but the first two should be first choice. Unfortunately the nuker has become the stereotype of the elementalist, and it's sad to see all that wasted potential.

Monk
Not much needs to be said here. Monks are the healers, end of story. But actually, I firmly believe that prot monks are superior in every way to spike-heal monks, ESPECIALLY in PvP. Most of the time enemies have a spike going on a Monk before a healer can react to it. A protter can anticipate and put some protection on the character in question and will stand a much higher chance of preserving his/her life. I think most people go healing though because all you have to do is "red bar." With a protter you have to see what's out there and anticpate what skills will be used against who in order to mitigate the damage.

Mesmer
Widely misunderstood, commonly misused. My favorite thing about Mesmers is their insane ability for energy denial in PvP. Arcane Languor alone is one of the best skills in the entire game just because of this. Exhaustion is insanely overpowered, -10 max energy every time it's applied. If you get a Reversal of Fortune spamming Monk, with just 4 RoF's they're out -40 max energy, which is absolutely insane. Also I believe it recovers much slower than normal energy loss would, so it shuts them down for a long period of time. Throw this hex on a Monk and they are practically taken out of the equation. Seriously overpowered.

Necromancer
Too cookie-cutter for me. Necromancers these days are either blood (Life Transfer, vampiric stuff), curses (SS), or MM. There is never any inbetween anymore. They serve their purpose but overall seem kind of weak to me unless they are paired up with a superior class. Necromancer is basically the ultimate support-offense class, and that kind of thing doesn't see near enough proper use.

Assassin
They're either really good, or really bad. A proper assassin will take health management skills, an emergency escape, and will wait for others to draw aggro before rushing in. A bad (read: common) assassin will bring a 6-attack dagger combo, MAYBE shadow refuge, and a shadow step to get to the enemies before everyone else does so they can die first. The class kind of caters towards 10-year old kids who want to be like Naruto or some other crap like that. Deadly Arts Assassins can be insanely fun to use though.

Ritualist
Underappreciated. Their heals can sometimes outweigh a monk's heals (Recuperation = Party-wide mending without the -1 energy degen) and using spells such as Spirit Light Weapon their regen can exceed the regeneration cap. The only problems are spirits are often targeted by both players and monsters alike, and an ally can only have one weapon spell at a time. Their spike-heal capability is slightly lower than a Monk's due to an obvious lack of Divine Favor, but can be useful in this regard also. Spirit Spammers have the same problem of enemies attacking the spirits, but can do hefty damage quickly, so they're always an asset too.

Dervish
Better tanks than Warrior, but still overrated. Enchantment stripping usually means a Derv tank is done for. Scythe attacks are weak, and while the "hit three enemies at once" thing seemed like a good idea, it's rarely practical. Dervishes tend to just have a habit of dying when a regular build is used on them. The only real use they get is they make the best runners aside from those infinite SF assassins. Avatars combined with extra defense and health regen means they can be pretty durable as long as they don't get enchant-stripped.

Paragon
Hard to understand. While their general support can be useful in a lot of cases, I think Paragons honestly deserve better than people think of them. Imbagon builds are just that, imbalanced, and can give every member of the party an 82% damage reduction. What's not to like about that? Their spears can also cause a slew of conditions as well as cause some pretty nice spike damage. Overall it's really not a bad class, they just get a lot of crap because people don't like playing the support role.

Skill balancing
In two short words: Power creep.

While everyone is complaining about their favorite skills getting the nerf bat, everyone fails to realize that since these new monthly skill "balances" have been coming out, the ONLY focus has been to power up previously inferior elites. This in turn leads to other things needing buffing to keep up with these newly overpowered skills. As the metagame shifts to use the newly updated skills, other skills have to be improved to try to bring the focus away from them. Eventually as things get more and more powerful, we'll be able to two-shot monks with two skills while inflicting daze, crippled, and deep wound. Possibly also bleeding and poison. Then we'll gain +15 health regeneration and all conditions will expire on us 99% faster. Also, you lose one hex every two seconds. Then someone else comes along and removes all of this and gives you deep wound and 20 seconds of burning while at the same time draining all of your energy. This'll keep going until eventually the balance of skills will become an absolute joke and they'll have to reset everything to square one.

That is assuming the GW team doesn't spend all their time on WoW 2... er... I mean GW2. Speaking of which:

Guild Wars 2
Based on the preliminary information I've seen, the second installation of Guild Wars is going to suck. The whole reason I got into playing Guild Wars was because it was so unlike other MMORPG's in having instanced maps, 8 skills, and a reliance on skill instead of equipment and grinding. Now, I know they're going to have limited skills and all that in the second installation, but practically everything else is changing. They're moving away from instanced maps and making only the dungeons instanced (like that's never been done before). That means that when we get a quest to "Kill 20 Ettins" there will be a large number of people standing around one area trying to get the kill before anyone else. KSing and Spawn Camping will run rampant and the game will end up just like every other MMORPG in existence. I just hope that GW1 doesn't fall completely off the map, cause that's what I'll still be playing. Though I can see it being almost completely abandoned. It saddens me greatly, but every day they move back the release of GW2 gives me just that much more hope.

Here's my favorite question from the official FAQ that only support my view:

"How is Guild Wars 2 different from other MMOs?

''While Guild Wars 2 adds a persistent world, it retains the unique nature of the original game including a strong narrative, extensive instanced gameplay, an anti-grind design philosophy, and strong support for competitive play."

So here we go. A strong narrative: It has a backstory. Seriously? That's something you think is important you're retaining from GW1? Every MMO has some sort of story. Just because it's "strong" doesn't make it different. Have you seen WoW's lore? It's freakin huge! Second, "extensive instanced gameplay." They're calling instanced dungeons "extensive" apparently... so gg. An "anti-grind design philosophy" basically translated means, "ZOMG QUESTS." Too bad I bet a lot of quests will be "Kill XX of this monster." Finally, "strong support for competitive play." You're not special because you have PvP. Everybody has PvP. I haven't played a single game without PvP.''

Next question:

"Will Guild Wars 2 be solo-able?

''Yes. You will be able to advance your character to the maximum level without ever joining a group if you so desire. Most content will be designed in a solo-friendly way, though often with mechanisms for scaling up in difficulty when more players are involved. This will give players the option to experience the game whichever way they prefer.''

''At the same time, it is important for an MMO community to join together to overcome challenges. There will also be some areas in the game that require a coordinated group effort."''

DOES THIS NOT SOUND JUST LIKE WoW!?!?

Seriously. Every profession can solo up to a specific point. Eventually however things get harder and you're required to start forming parties. Also, is it just me or does a "coordinated group effort" sound like "raid" to those familiar with WoW? RIP Guild Wars.

Titles
In general, I think titles were the single worst thing that has ever been implemented in Guild Wars. All it does is promote elitism and grinding, and makes people do things they absolutely abhor all for the sake of getting more points towards a specific title. It's nothing but a leech, especially considering you only get one thing for it.

Rank/Zrank
I can't really complain about Rank since that's been around since the beginning. The only thing I hate is when people use its emote and try to claim that they are somehow cooler than those who don't HA. It's really elitism as its finest, and I have no interest in wasting my life trying to get a high rank to show off to random internet strangers.

Zrank on the other hand is an absolutely useless idea. It's really the ultimate in "the cash titles" and to top it all off, it lets people use an emote to show it off! People go around flashing Zrank everywhere for the same reason people spam Rank emotes, because they desperately seek acceptance. It's piteous, to be honest.

Survivor
Good idea, but oftentimes poorly executed. This usually has a sort of negative connotation for me (unless they're rank 3) as that means if things start to go badly, instead of running and trying to save the mission they'll oftentimes just map out, leaving the party with one less member and oftentimes making the mission many times harder. It's a neat idea but it really just causes a host of problems.

Norn/Asuran/Vanguard/Deldrimor
Horrible. Just horrible. They took a page literally straight from WoW on this one, and the way its implemented means to get the armor from that side you literally have to grind. It's stupid and a pointless idea. If you're going to make a requirement to get a particular race's armor then make it the requirement that you have to complete their side of EoTN. Once you finish all the primary quests for that particular group, then they'll let you represent them and wear their armor. It makes more sense than leeching off of Raptor farmers or going on multiple CoF runs.

Skillz
My favorite title. I only wish it was easier for people to get higher ranks who don't devote their lives to playing the games. Personally one of the few games I really like is the Dragon Arena. I literally play it all weekend every time it's available, and I'm only halfway to rank 3. Getting much higher than that is practically impossible given there won't be that many more Dragon Arena weekends. The only way to get higher in this title is to literally play every single game every time they're available, and I just don't get that much enjoyment out of the other ones.

Kurzick/Luxon
I have no problem with this, personally. The only thing I have a problem with is when people in AB recruit for parties that are "rank X or higher." That's just ridiculous, especially with the Kurzick side. Who's to say that whoever got that rank didn't just HFFF it before it got nerfed? What if they just FA/JQ'ed a lot? Rank has no say in how good a person is at a particular faction-based mission, and it makes me facepalm when people think otherwise.

As far as I can remember, all the rest of the titles are neutral in my book.