Although I liked EotN much better than you did, Hyudra, what you wrote here was a really thorough and informative review. I didn't hear any "axes grinding", as the saying goes. Well done! :-)

By the way, I count 11 missions in EotN -- 3 for each arc (Asuran, Ebon, and Norn) and then 2 afterward. Frankly, I think "Heart of the Shiverpeaks" should also count as a mission, although I guess technically it isn't one. That means EotN has 2 fewer missions than Factions, which is not bad for an expansion, in my opinion.

Moreover, as I stated earlier, I liked the dungeons. To me they feel like repeatable "mini-campaigns" or longer-than-usual missions, each with a *chance* at a decent reward such as you might get after completing a campaign. I really think they are a good addition to the GW series. Some of them are, admittedly, excruciatingly difficult, but that just makes eventually beating them all the sweeter. :)

Thank you for the positive response.

I double checked, and you're right.  11 missions, not 9.  I'll edit my post.

Originally posted by Hyudra
*snip*

Sound

I'm deaf, sorry.  :P

For all but the most dedicated players, most parts of the hall will be very bare.

This has to be my biggest gripe with GWEN.  The game actually punishes you for having spent money on extra character slots.

In my case, I have 23 characters spread across 2 accounts.  Most of the extra slots were purchased before Nightfall was released.  Had I known then that the grind to make them effective via reputation farming would have been so extreme, I wouldn't have bothered buying the extra slots. 

I've gotten 10 characters through the story missions in GWEN and am literally so sick of it, I've gone back to City of Heroes for awhile.  Yeah, that's a grinder, too, but at least it's different.

Here's a perfect example of how broken GWEN is regarding the Hall of Monuments:

The only way you can display heroes there is by outfitting them with hero armor.  But if you go to Dakjah Inlet (Nightfall) to farm hero armor fragments for the first 4 heroes you can get armor for there, the first three fragments drop pretty easily.  After that, the fourth piece becomes so rare, you have to try running the challenge dozens of times and then hope you get lucky.  Meanwhile, you can't display Nightfall's 4th hero in the HoM without that fourth armor piece.

In another instance, I have a storage chest on my main account with 22 greens in it I've farmed over the past 28 months.  Not one displays in the HoM.  Zero.

The problem is the developers designed GWEN as though everyone playing the game only has one character on one account and has been playing just long enough to get to the Eye of the North.  But to players - like myself - who have already invested several thousand hours into the whole Guild Wars franchise, including spending extra money on bonus packs and extra character slots, the Hall of Monuments discounts most of the investment of time and money we've put into it.  It punishes dedicated, long time players and customers.  It doesn't reward us.

Fixes to HoM I'd suggest:

• Any green from any campaign should be good enough to go into the Hall of Monuments.  Players shouldn't have to feel as though the time they spent farming Ghial's Staff was any less valuable than the time they spent farming in Slaver's Exile.  Greens are greens.  They should be treated equally.
• Drop the ridiculous requirement for elite hero armor to be required for heroes to be displayed in the HoM.  Once they're on display, they appear as bronzed statues anyway!  What freaking difference does it make what armor they're wearing?!?
• None of the EoTN racial armor you get once you get rank 5 in any one title can even go into the HoM because none of it's considered "elite."  In Factions, for instance, I can get access to Imperial Ascended armor by having enough gold and crafting materials and by beating the last mission in the game.  THAT armor can be displayed and you don't even have to be a certain rank to get it there, but the time you spent beating GWEN, farming the faction and having the gold and materials needed to craft "end-game GWEN armor" isn't good enough for the HoM.  IMHO, that's just stupid.  Again, players are punished for not putting MORE time into getting this stuff.

The net effect of all the grinding you have to do to get anything for the HoM, for me, is to not even bother anymore.  It's become so overwhelming and stale it's not even worth it.

And if anyone from A-Net is reading this: if this is where you're taking GW2, I wont bother with that, either.  I - for one - am getting sick and tired of feeling like a hamster on a treadmill.  That's exactly how GWEN has made this long-time customer feel.

As always, your mileage may vary.

Originally posted by Lonesamurai1

Is it wrong that that made me chuckle when i read it?   Although not being Deaf myself (and not wanting to sound like a complete ass), Jeremy Soule did yet another awesome job with the music and ANet's sound effects are top notch as usual and its a real shame that you can;t enjoy them

Ah, I'm not capital-D Deaf, just deaf/hard of hearing.  It's not so bad that I can't hear the music, just enough that I can't seriously review it (or get reliable use out of Vent, which is what ~really~ irritates me).  If I didn't mean some humor in that little blurb, I wouldn't have put it up - regardless, I just wanted to show that I was at least trying to cover all the bases.

Originally posted by Serling

And if anyone from A-Net is reading this: if this is where you're taking GW2, I wont bother with that, either.

 

If you'd asked me in August if I'd get GW2?  I'd have given a tentative yes.  Now, after EotN, I'm pretty sure it's a no.

GW started off really well.  It had a novel concept with minimal grind, an illusion of balance in PvP (As much as such a thing is possible), a forgiving system where you couldn't make irrevocable mistakes, and a rare design twist that gives players freedom in their character design - something I haven't seen to such a pleasant degree since FFT, the only other game I've really devoted so many hours to.

Anet lost their way.  I disagree with many by saying that I think Factions was well designed, but for a few errors (Namely the ritualist design concept and spirit spam's annoying influence on casual PvP).  Factions wasn't a big game by any measure, but it introduced new gametypes, new classes, fresh challenges and a beautiful setting.  Factions was designed as an 'underpowered' addition to guild wars.  Skills and new classes were intentionally created weaker, to be buffed at a later date.  For a game with relatively cautious skill balancers, I think this was a fairly good road to take (though it's disappointing that skills that were so bad as to be unusuable in early '06 are still unusuable as '08 approaches).

Nightfall was where the trouble lay.  The third chapter was created as an overpowered chapter, to be weakened later.  Skills such as Searing Flames dominated the meta for a time, in probably the most defining example of 'metagaming' as we've seen in the past few years.  I applaud Anet for raising the elementalist above being just raw utility (and party wide heals) but I think that in terms of raw design, Nightfall fell short.  The paragon and searing flames both suffered from the same syndrome.  Underpowered or moderately balanced on their own, but exponentially stronger with each additional person that brings it to the table.  With all of this, the PvP metagame was fundamentally altered, and since Anet couldn't very well nerf 50 of the 300 skills they'd introduced with Nightfall, they'd fouled things up rightly.  Nightfall introduced more grind, less creativity and around this time, Anet's goals were distinctly shown to have changed.  It wasn't until EotN that this truly became apparent.

Anet has turned it's back on the original design tenets - 'skill, not grind' being the chief one.  Meanwhile, PvP has dwindled into what is essentially the same build, with maybe 3 skills being different between two given teams, and the occasional adventurous guild trying a gimmick or variation on the theme (and invariably losing in the long run).  Kind of sad for a game with 1,200 skills to see so few made useful.  Less than a third of the skills are viable for serious play, over 400 are just too weak to use. 

This has barely changed in recent updates -- the skill balancing team is focused on fixing the most troublesome builds in high end PvP - a situation that affects perhaps 10% of GW's playerbase.  Skill balances come infrequently enough (once per season) that by the time anything is seriously fixed, GW2 will be on the shelves.

I can't fault Anet for recognizing that they made a fundamental error in the design of guild wars - one that would require hundreds of man hours to iron out.  Melee is too strong, and caster damage can't be buffed to match it without being too strong in 'spike' damage.  As a result, PvP revolves around melee, with casters to prevent the melee damage, healers to prevent/heal it, and more casters to mess with enemy casters.  Skill balances and changes come far too infrequently (and are too cautious to make a difference on their own), so the environment hasn't changed for eight or ten months.

(As an aside, it's probably pretty obvious that I think Anet made a poor choice in their skill balancer, Izzy Cartwright.  He made a good step forward in bringing a prominent & skilled GW player to the table as an adviser, but in the two months since, has yet to release a serious update.  The game as a whole needs someone that can jump off that cliff, making sweeping changes, seeing what happens and then revoking those that simply don't work).

I can fault Anet for giving up rather than trying to fix the game.  "It's too hard to fix this game, so let's make a sequel and see if we can make it work this time."  -- I can understand where they're coming from, but I won't be buying GW2 because there's absolutely nothing that says the exact same situation won't happen again.

Originally, Anet had excellent design, and I convinced no less than a dozen people to buy the game and participate.  They've lost sight of their objectives, and they've lost my customer loyalty with it.

I disagree with many by saying that I think Factions was well designed, but for a few errors (Namely the ritualist design concept and spirit spam's annoying influence on casual PvP).

Next to Prophecies, Factions is my favorite game, and is where I bought most of my extra character slots.  The best thing about Factions was how very little grinding there was.  XP was excellent and even getting the 10,000 Kurzick or Luxon faction you needed could be done in about an hour and a half or so. Factions was Prophecies on steroids, and - in my mind - represented the closest the devs would ever get to their "skill, not grind" vision.

Unfortunately, they seemed to have been listening to the wrong people, who were bitching about how easy the game was and how little "content" Factions had (d'uh: it was designed around PvP!)

So A-Net's pendulum swung the other way in Nightfall, and while getting all the heroes gave me a reason to play Nightfall, the grind that was introduced to make my characters "better" through LB and SS point farming became a huge turn-off.  Nightfall was the anti-Factions in virtually every way.

EoTN has completed A-Net's "journey to the dark side" as far as it's original vision goes.  I haven't logged in more than 5 minutes all week because every time I do, I'm reminded of how much more farming I have to do to get anywhere in this game.  It's become an "Asian grinder" and I've simply lost interest in doing one more thing there.

Knowing none of this will be fixed has lessened my desire to be there even more, as the dev team gears up for GW2.

In all, GW1 will not go out with a bang, which is what this long-time fan and loyal customer would've liked, but with a whimper.

Damn shame if you ask me.

Originally posted by Serling

I disagree with many by saying that I think Factions was well designed, but for a few errors (Namely the ritualist design concept and spirit spam's annoying influence on casual PvP).

Next to Prophecies, Factions is my favorite game, and is where I bought most of my extra character slots.  The best thing about Factions was how very little grinding there was.  XP was excellent and even getting the 10,000 Kurzick or Luxon faction you needed could be done in about an hour and a half or so. Factions was Prophecies on steroids, and - in my mind - represented the closest the devs would ever get to their "skill, not grind" vision.

Unfortunately, they seemed to have been listening to the wrong people, who were bitching about how easy the game was and how little "content" Factions had (d'uh: it was designed around PvP!)

So A-Net's pendulum swung the other way in Nightfall, and while getting all the heroes gave me a reason to play Nightfall, the grind that was introduced to make my characters "better" through LB and SS point farming became a huge turn-off.  Nightfall was the anti-Factions in virtually every way.

EoTN has completed A-Net's "journey to the dark side" as far as it's original vision goes.  I haven't logged in more than 5 minutes all week because every time I do, I'm reminded of how much more farming I have to do to get anywhere in this game.  It's become an "Asian grinder" and I've simply lost interest in doing one more thing there.

Knowing none of this will be fixed has lessened my desire to be there even more, as the dev team gears up for GW2.

In all, GW1 will not go out with a bang, which is what this long-time fan and loyal customer would've liked, but with a whimper.

Damn shame if you ask me.

I agree with you on all counts.

Sorry to say, but this review is one of the worst I've read about it. I don't mean on the reviewer's opinion. I mean on how it was written. Most of this has sarcasim in it, which is not necessary at all for a review. Sarcasim in a review is like a big sign saying "STOP READING REVIEWS AT MMORPG.COM". Thank you Jeremy Star for making MMORPG.com look completely bad for allowing your review to pull through.

Anyways... The game itself is pretty good. It is average compared to Nightfall. If you have a friend or a couple of friends who you can play with, you'll have a good time. If you are just going to solo and enjoy soloing, you'll have a good time. If you hate solo'ing, you'll possibly hate most of the game till the end.

Unless you have lots of friends who love you...

I would love gwen but i have no moneys lol

It's been said before, but I want to say it again:

This review, not the opinions expressed but how they were expressed, was very poorly written. The whole time I read it, I felt no different then when I read the angry kids who bang away on their keyboards in the forums screaming "OMG! TH!S GAME SUXXORZ!".

And when it comes to the content, I think it was more of a waste of time by what he chose to harp on. Bashing the graphics to an expansion of the game because Age of Conan MIGHT be coming out soon? Come on, it's an expansion to a game that's been out a couple years. Bashing the community? Tell you what: Point me to a community that is better than Guild Wars, and I'll honestly give it a shot. I've played all the big names on your top-10's here. Guild Wars is the only game where the community has KEPT me.

Yeah, the expansion was cut short in places. No arguing there. And the grind for aesthetics is still *GASP!* a grind for AESTHETICS. Hooray to Guild Wars, who provides max armor, max weapons AND max skills early enough to where the rest of the game is purely based on player skill. My main hit all of those years ago, and I still love playing him. The game is still the fun it always has been. Sorry this expansion didn't add 10 levels and a new tier of items to work towards for end game PvP for you.

Judging by most of the complaints, it sounds more like the reviewer had a problem with Guild Wars overall than the Expansion itself. In that case, can I apply to write the review for the next WoW Expansion when it comes out? I thought WoW was a pretty meh. I respect it for bringing MMO's into the mainstream, but those graphics are so 2004. So my biased opinion against WoW should obviously make me a great candidate for a featured review of their next expansion.

And the grind for aesthetics is still *GASP!* a grind for AESTHETICS. Hooray to Guild Wars, who provides max armor, max weapons AND max skills early enough to where the rest of the game is purely based on player skill.

Actually, you're not just grinding for aesthetics.  Every racial skill you earn (like LB and SS skills in Nightfall) gets more effective the higher your rank in those titles.  Dwarven skills get better with higher dwarven ranks.  Asuran skills get better with higher Asuran ranks, etc, etc.

The point is, you get those ranks - for the most part - by farming the reputation points you need to get them higher.  Farming is a time-based activity, not a skill-based one.  The more time you put into farming, the higher your ranks, the better your skills (skills you can't use in PvP, BTW).

In other words, you're heavily rewarded for sinking time into this game which is 180 degrees contrary to how  Prophecies was marketed.

GWEN has all the feel and playability of an Asian grinder now.  That's how far they've moved from the original vision.

I always hate reading a review when you know the reviewer spent so little time playing. GWEN does have issue, of course nothing can please everyone all the time. But when I say it has issues I know this I have played it.

As to people saying casual players will have a bare hall...well let me see. I have 3 heros on display two sets of armor including the Asuran, yes the Asuran, not sure why someone said it could not go in the hall no issue with mine. I never bought the head piece I prefered the dark glasses but hey that is me.

I have a couple of destroyer weapons. I love that dungeon what end game dungeon lets you split your time up inside and do it when you have the time?

Overall I am happy with the $40 I spent on GWEN

Originally posted by Serling

And the grind for aesthetics is still *GASP!* a grind for AESTHETICS. Hooray to Guild Wars, who provides max armor, max weapons AND max skills early enough to where the rest of the game is purely based on player skill.

Actually, you're not just grinding for aesthetics.  Every racial skill you earn (like LB and SS skills in Nightfall) gets more effective the higher your rank in those titles.  Dwarven skills get better with higher dwarven ranks.  Asuran skills get better with higher Asuran ranks, etc, etc.

The point is, you get those ranks - for the most part - by farming the reputation points you need to get them higher.  Farming is a time-based activity, not a skill-based one.  The more time you put into farming, the higher your ranks, the better your skills (skills you can't use in PvP, BTW).

In other words, you're heavily rewarded for sinking time into this game which is 180 degrees contrary to how  Prophecies was marketed.

GWEN has all the feel and playability of an Asian grinder now.  That's how far they've moved from the original vision.

Funny I know lots of people who've conquered GW:EN without ever having to Grind.

Of course I mean GRIND as defined as something you HAVE to do in order to progress in the game. Any titles or ranks I needed to progress in Guild Wars happened naturally as I progressed through the plot; everything else (including the PvE skills) are merely OPTIONAL, BONUS skills that give an edge. And you're right, they're not for PvP, so why are you crying? That means they're not necessary to compete. If you don't want the skills, then it's simple to NOT grind towards it.

---

Of course I mean GRIND as defined as something you HAVE to do in order to progress in the game.

---

The reason people aren't making sense to you is because your definition is wrong. The 'nutjob' emote was in poor taste, as well.

'Grinding is a pejorative term used in computer gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or non-entertaining gameplay in order to gain access to other features within the game.' -- Sorens, Neil (2007-03-26). Rethinking the MMO. Gamasutra.

GW, by means of requiring repetitive task completion (kill X mobs, rezone, repeat) to access armors, gather certain materials, increase ranks in Kurzick/Luxon, Sunspear, Lightbringer, Asura, Deldrimor, Norn and Vanguard title tracks, to access certain content and to outfit one's monument... has grind.

GW enforces a moderate level of grind by offering PvE skills that give players an edge in the more challenging areas -- a player who can (and is willing to) play 18 hours a day, 7 days a week will have a substantial edge over players who can only find the time for 12 hours a week, regardless of reasonable differences in skill. This stands opposed to Anet's original design philosophy for Guild Wars.

This stands opposed to Anet's original design philosophy for Guild Wars.

In fact, they've moved so far from their original promotion of "skill, not time", they don't even promote the game that way anymore.

Prophecies was unique among MMOs (which is why so many people argue whether it is or isn't).  GWEN has brought the game to the level of virtually every other "me too" grinder on the market.

As noted in another post, I've gone back to City of Heroes for now.  Yeah, it's a major-league grinder, but at least it's different.  I'm just sad to see A-Net taking the game in this direction.

I was one of the biggest supporters of this game through Factions, and even through Nightfall if only for the heroes.

Now, GWEN has completely turned me off to the game.

And for you, Lazaro, here's one back at ya':

One more thing that pisses me off about all the "l337" crap in GWEN: Seems to me, I paid the same price for the game that everyone else did.  Why should I be denied access to the same features the "leet kiddies" can get simply because they have more time to grind out that crap?

So simply because I have less time to grind than someone else, that makes me less of a customer???

Not according to my credit card, it doesn't!

If A-Net is taking GW2 down this road, they should offer two versions of the game: one version with all the leet crap people can pay extra for, and a basic version that provides no access to that stuff.  Call it the "grind-free" version.  I'd buy that.

Amazing, yet another review without any mentioning of PvP. Start to think that the MMORPG reviewers are just ignoring PvP features in games.

I think Mr. Star read the box and phoned this review in. 

Originally posted by Serling

In my case, I have 23 characters spread across 2 accounts.  Most of the extra slots were purchased before Nightfall was released.  Had I known then that the grind to make them effective via reputation farming would have been so extreme, I wouldn't have bothered buying the extra slots. 

23,  OMG , c`mon man, 23!!!!! 

23,  OMG , c`mon man, 23!!!!!

I'm sorry.  Does that number somehow offend you?

First off 23, thats ridiculous.  But I dont see how this reviewert cant get away with giving it such a crap review.  EVEN G4 gave it a 4 our of 5, PC gamer an 80% range score (which isnt bad seeing that they dont give 100%s and still thought it was good).  Obviously the reviewer has something against Guildwars.  Hell, he probably sucks more than the average porn star at Guildwars and because of his poor gaming skills he is writing this review.  I mean, i am not hardcore, I may look as if I am from my hours in my sig, but I havent played for three weeks..I mean, I dont have trouble, and I am not hardcore.  Grow SOME BALLZ reviewer, and to mmorpg.com, you are partially responsible for letting this idiot post this $#!t review.  What a buncha idiots, and then to go putting it in the email, and on the front page like its actually credible.  Comeon guys!  I am losin faith in this site for its unbiased reviews of games when they allow trash like this to be posted.