I didn't want to make this post, but you've left me no choice...
Hrothgur wrote:S1lentOp wrote:Hrothgur wrote:Guild Wars is amazing.
unlike WoW, strength is based on skill, not stats. the low level cap gets rid of most grind, and its got free online play. PvP is amazing as well, tis got at least...four diffent PvP modes (random arena, team arena, alliance battles, heroes ascent....)
PvE is good too (my favorite =P)/ missions are reallly fun (if you party with other people..) and once youve beaten the game you can go on to the elite missions (which are insane).
Yeah, but since this thread is about MMOs, Guild Wars doesn't count.
http://www.guildwars.com/support/faq/pr ... hp#details
FTA"Rather than labeling Guild Wars an MMORPG, we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game)."
this does not say that GW is not an mmo...it says GW developers prefer to call it a CORPG...this is because GW is NOT role play based...it is PvP based.
When i looked up the defenition of an MMO this is what i got:
A massively (or massive) multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG is a multiplayer computer role-playing game that enables thousands of players to play in an evolving virtual world at the same time over the Internet. MMORPGs are a specific type of massively multiplayer online game (MMOG).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMORPG
now you tell me which one of hte reqs guild wars doesnt fit.
GW is 1) massive 2)multiplayer 3)online it is also a Role Playing Game
i think that what is throwing you off is hte instancing....when you get your own private copy of hte map to explore. it is just a different style of MMO....one i happen to like (sometimes i have to go AFK for a while suddenly and i can leave my char standing in the middle of hte desert/mountain/cave/field for as long as i want)
i hope htis makes clear that GW fits under the category of MMO, and thus, is proper material for this thread.
Let me put what you're saying in a different and hypothetical situation using the same reasoning you are.
Rough Definition of a First-Person Shooter
"A first-person shooter is a game in which the person sees the world from the character's perspective and uses an array of different weapons to defeat enemies throughout the game"
Then you pick up a game like Brute Force and call it an FPS. I say it isn't and you reply: "I think what's throwing you off is the viewpoint. When you're playing the game from the third person perspective, it is just a different
style of FPS. It might not be in the first-person and the game creators might say it's a third-person shooter, but the fact is that it shows some similarities to the first-person shooter because you use weapons throughout the game to defeat enemies. So obviously this is a first-person shooter."
The fact is that Guild Wars is not a MMO even by the definition you've provided.
"A massively (or massive) multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG is a multiplayer computer role-playing game that enables thousands of players to play in an evolving virtual world at the same time..."
First I want to point out that the definition uses the word "world" and not "worlds," implying that there is only
one world being played on. Immediately Guild Wars is disqualified because thousands of players cannot, in fact, play in the same virtual world. In fact the only place in the game that more than 3 or 4 players can play together is in a town and even then there are several parallel versions of those towns (called districts). So even if you're in the same town, you aren't actually playing with everyone in that town. If almost all of the Guild Wars world is instances and therefore private to each party, then it cannot legitimately be called a MMO because there is no one world that the players are playing on. Instead there are several replicated worlds that each party plays on and even those worlds don't change. As soon as you walk into a town, the world outside is refreshed, so there's no evolving world present.
There is a difference between a dungeon instance and a world instance. In World of Warcraft, for example, the Scarlet Monastery is a dungeon instance. When players enter they get their own copy of the dungeon to play in, but it is only a small part of the game and players don't spend a majority of their play time in it. Outside of that instance is the world of Azeroth where players interact and play in the same world simultaneously. All of this takes place in one world, not multiple replications of one world. Additionally even the towns are shared with players and not split up into districts as the Guild Wars towns are. World instancing, however, does not do this. With this kind of instancing, the players spend a majority of their time in their own copy of the world away from other players outside of their party. In this case, there is very little interaction and a complete absense of an evolving world (singular) since the instanced worlds are turned immediately back to normal upon returning to any town or designated area. If this wasn't enough, even the towns are split up so that there is limited interaction with players even if they're in the same town. Each district is essentially a copy of the town that a certain amount of people are allowed to be in.
So both inside and outside of the towns, there is very limited interaction between the many players playing the game, and there is an absence of any evolving world since the world is changeless as a result of it being an instance. What you do in the towns has no effect on the world outside of the town and what you do outside of the town has no effect on the world inside the town (unless you're selling something you picked up).
The creators were right in not calling it a MMO because it does not fit the description of a MMO; it only shows similarities. You can't call Guild Wars a MMO for the same reason you can't call Brute Force a FPS. They don't fit the definition. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it is PvP based. EVE Online is PvP-based, but it's still a MMO by definition.
Kyero Fox wrote:RUnescape might blow to you. but is that why there are thousands and thousands of people playing it?
Kyero, people play RuneScape over other MMOs because it's free and there's nothing to install, thus making it a good time killer.
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That's my long post for the week.
