GW2 is the exact opposite to WoW in almost every aspect. So I gonna start with the

similarities:

1. Crafting:

ArenaNet did not make any effort to be innovative here. It is almost exactly the same like in WoW, aside from the fact, that everybody can gather everything and your two tradingskills are both producing skills. However, it is already very polished and well done.

2. World:

ArenaNet goes the same way Blizzard did 8 years ago - take an outdated graphic-engine, create an impressive huge world and put a lot of artistic work into it. So it runs even on older PCs and everybody has a very immersive experience. Yet there is one tiny but important difference: Whenever a high-level character enters a zone with a lower level, his level will be adjusted to the zone. So helping friends or just exploring the whole world always stays challenging. And there is another difference here, too. ArenaNet has some hidden puzzles. Sometimes you will discover something like a hidden cave and find a series of obstacles and traps that lead to a reward in the end.

Now to the differences:

1. Classes:

The holy trinity is gone. There are no tanks and no healers anymore. However, almost all classes can play one of these roles for a short period during a fight, but everybody has to dodge a lot and be moving all the time. This requires more skill than in WoW, is faster paced and definitely much more fun. And yes, 5 warriors can complete a dungeon together. No more waiting for a tank/healer, no more having to play healer/tank because your guild desperately needs some. No more wating-cues in the dungeonfinder. No more sticking to one's role and ignoring everything else, but more playing together as a group. No more watching TV, having a meal and doing whatever with your girlfriend while playing.

Yes you have "only" 10 skill-slots, but think about it. How many abilities do you regularily use in WoW? Exactly, 3-5 most of the time! Here you have them all on cd all of the time. And you can always change the first 5 during combat giving you even more depth. You can change from being heavily dps-oriented to support or defensive, on the fly. It is like changing your skilltree in WoW in combat!

2. Character-customation:

They have three mechanics here. First it depends on your weapons. A warrior who chooses 2handed sword / rifle has a completely different playingstyle compared to a warrior, who chooses sword+shield / axe-axe. Then you have so called traits. You can choose between five paths (and yes mix them), in order to specify your playingstyle. Finally, you can put sigils into your weapons, which also can have very different effects. And the best of it: you can change all of this between fights for free! So if there is a different boss in a dungeon, or you meet a certain kind of opponents in PvP, you can adapt.

3. Role-playing:

During character-creation you have to answer some personal questions. These are a good starting point for your role-playing and have an effect on your personal story. Role-playing as a gamemechanic. How awsome is that? Moreover you can dye your character from the very beginning as you want.

4. Personal-story:

It is a little bit like phasing in WoW, only that you can invite your friends to join you whenever you want. You get little instances in the world and in your hometown. NPCs will recognize you and treat you as a friend, familymember, enemy, etc. The story grows with every chapter and you can make choices that determine the path it takes. Put in the questions from character-creation and you have your very own heroic story. This may even include some kind of housing in the future.

5. Dynamic quests:

Traditional questing is gone. There are some NPCs to help newcomers who tend to get lost without people with golden !s over their heads. But in the end it is very easy: Just run around and explore the world. If something is happening that interests you, just join in. You will always be rewarded and you do not have to group, because everybody works together automatically. No kill-stealing, waiting for spawns or ninja-looting. The ugly days are over! The difficulty scales with the number of players involved. Some DEs are like raiding world-bosses.

And the best part of it: The outcome changes the world around you. Some are very basic, but some are amazing. You really have the feeling, that your heroics have an effect. The world feels more alive and more fun from level 1! Oh, and they brought something completely new to MMOs: you can fail. If you fail to kill the giant, he will kill every NPC in town and eventually close the teleporter.

6. Dungeons:

There will be several dungeons and each dungeon will have several heroic modes, so it will never get boring. Oh, and there are puzzles, traps, etc. Something, WoW never had.

7. Battlegrounds:

When you want to join a battleground, you are warped to lvl 80 and can choose of endgame gear. Everybody is equal, there is no honor-system, no pvp-items and no waitin-cues. They will even include some mechanics, so that players can make their own tournaments and choose between different kind of fights like in Counterstrike.

If you want some e-sports-like competition, there will be official tournaments.

8. WvWvW:

A huge map, where three complete servers are fighting against each other 24/7. Every server has its own big home-land and then there is a neutral piece of land in the middle. There are little outposts and castles everywhere and you need siege-weapons of course. They have put in a clever mechanic with resources (you need them for siegeweapons and repairs). The overall design requires a lot of strategy. You can get there from level 1 (again you will be warped to lvl 80, this time without proper items. However you can loot your enemies). The beta-tests so far show, that this is just awsome, many will play GW2 just for this.

9. Freedom of choice

There is no more farming or grinding! Do whatever you want to, whenever you want to! Personal story, dynamic events, dungeons, battlegrounds, WvWvW - everything is fun and well done, everything gives XP, gold and items. And since there is no item-progression in the endgame, you feel no restraint.

This may be the biggest difference between WoW and GW2, just have fun together with other players! And this is what an MMO should be all about.

It's not about end game raiding for gear. Next question.

Originally posted by Nefera

Originally posted by jakojako

 

Alright, but quest hubs in WoW are placed right where you would be exploring anyway. I understand that maybe GW2 has these NPCs and quests more spread out, but does it still boil down to "go to a zone for your level range, run around and do quests"?

Every single MMO boils down to "go to a zone for your level range, run around and do quests".  (With the obvious exceptions of sandbox type MMOs, Lineage 2 comes to mind as an example.) So with this logic, WoW = Aion = GW = GW2 = TERA = SWTOR.

Only if you make it like that yourself. Because you're downscaled in level appropriate to the zone you're in you could stay in the lvl 1-15 zone forever if you wanted too. And to give an indication, it took me 3+ hours just to explore 1 (yes one) city and I still didn't catch everything going on in it. So full exploring the 1-15 zone could take me up to a few weeks as opposed to WoW where you're pretty much done with the entire zone within 1 play session (once you completed all quests there's nothing to do as opposed to in GW2).

Or you could choose to never ding at all if structured PvP is your thing, you're not just scaled in level if you jump in at lvl 1, all skills and traits are available to you and you can spec the way you like just like somebody who PvE'd to level cap and unlocked all skills that way.

To answer the OP question, for me the most fundamental difference is that positive interaction with other players is naturally happening, there's no incentive needed for it, allthough all mechanics of the game encourage it. There's no competition over  questmobs / bosses / crafting nodes, everyone who contributes to a fight gets rewarded even without being in a group / raid.

No gear grind and repeating the same dungeons / raids / repeatable quest until the next patch hits is also a big point for me because I've burned out completely on that repetetive end-game grind after having raided 4+ raid nights a week for several years. Sure raids are fun but only when still figuring out the tactics and maybe when repeating it the first few times, but after that it's just for the gear to be able to the next raid and / or helping guildies / alts get geared.

Almost everything but biggest difference is dynamic events-no party-no getting quests- no gear treadmill.

But AWESOME WvsWvsW in huge PVP world.

Oh and forgot to mention Graphics WAY, WAY, WAY BETTER then WoW.

Does the fact that GW2 is Buy to Play and WoW is Pay to Play count as a fundamental difference?

Originally posted by jakojako

I've been googling for differences between this game and WoW, and almost every article I see just throws out a bunch of moot points in a fanboy craze. Example being this article:

http://news.mmosite.com/content/q/2012-04-27/guild_wars_2_is_it_just_a_wow_clone_1.shtml

So far I understand:

*You are limited to the amount of skills your character can use

*You can engage in high level pvp with a low level character (the game autoscales you)

...and that's pretty much it. Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Come on OP, you could throw this argument up with about every MMO thats out there, GW2 is vastly different to all the mmo's out there, Graphics, gameplay, UI, rewards, AH, and so-forth, does not remotely make it a WoW clone.

I could make a list on how much different GW2 is compared to WoW and so could many other people. But becasue you have so blatantly started a bait thread, I'm not going to entertain you any further than most people have already.

Originally posted by jakojako

Originally posted by sidhaethe

Agreed with the above poster. If you reduce an MMO into its components too much, everything ceases to be distinct. The fallacy is called reductio ad absurdum for a reason :).

This is really what I'm trying to do though so I can understand whether differentiating between GW2 and WoW in comparing similarities to TESO is meaningless.

An example:

TESO's combat is autotarget with hotkeys; So is GW2's and WoW's

However, TESO's class system seems to be such that you can be whatever kind of character you want to be, and there really aren't any classes. This seems to be more similar to GW2.

I'm really looking for those kinds of things that reveal TESO to be more of a GW2 clone or a WoW clone.

If most qualities end up boiling down to be the same in all three games, or if TESO has about the same number of GW2 qualities as WoW, then I can conclude that the argument over whether it's a WoW clone or a GW2 clone is meaningless, because it would be both.

Originally posted by sidhaethe

In Guild Wars 2, let’s take the same set up and apply it to a dynamic event. As I approach the fortress the commander runs up to me and says out loud for everyone in the area to hear that there are zombies in the local swamp, they are building up to attack his fort and someone had better do something. I head to the swamp and notice that the usual wildlife is gone, having been slain by the zombie horde (you actually get to see this happen as the event starts) when I enter the event radius I have the objective of “Cull the Zombie Horde” followed by a percentage indicating how much of the horde remains and a timer. I start killing zombies as the timer counts down. If I and any other adventurers in the area can cull the horde down to 0% before time expires then the remaining zombies will flee and disaster has been averted. I’ll automatically receive a reward, the fortress remains safe and the original wildlife will return to the swamp. If I fail to cull the horde and the timer reaches zero then the zombies will all shamble out of the swamp and attack the fortress. I have failed the event but now a new event presents itself where I can defend the fortress from the horde. If the fortress is overrun it will remain occupied by zombies until cleared, a valuable travel point will be lost, merchants and other NPC’s will be unavailable. My act of killing the zombies actually protected the fortress with the consequence of possibly losing the fortress when I failed the event.

This is really cool, and seems to coincide with what the GI article on TESO was explaining about a dynamic world.

In red...

GW 2 is Tera with no animation locks and aiming via mouse

Tera has good lengthy anims

GW 2 simple anims nice visuals

Tera and GW 2 both action

GW 2 how ever is a hybrid

I'm not saying which one is better

Truth be told you can in fact play both without touching tab button like I did. I didn't touch the tab key at all while playing both.

If you like using tab target combat you can do so in GW 2. if you like auto attack you can if you wish do so in GW 2.

That's just being honest and to the point with facts.

Oh and Tera combat is not bad nor is GW 2 BOTH bring something new I assume far as combat.

Advice to haters toward either game, live life, both game can prosper both are action, both require skill.

Take care and enjoy yourselves.

Play it and you'll see for yourself. A (moving) picture says more than a bazillion words.

After reading some of the replies of the OP its obvious no MMO will ever live up to their expectations.

Originally posted by Freyas

Along with the WoW-like things, a number of features they talked about are things that GW2 is doing that WoW didnt. Using a spinning attack inside a firestorm causes fireballs to shoot out.  The skillbar is setup where you have limited skills, with some  based on weapon, some based on class, and an ultimate/elite skill.  PvP has both esport-themed instanced matches and large-scale 3-faction siege warfare. These all seem like they were copied from the GW2 feature list, or else from the other games that GW2 took them from (i.e. DAOC for the siege warfare).  It sounds like they're trying to shift up their quest system to get some of the benefits of GW2's event system too- such as being able to do partial quests and get quest rewards for content you stumble across that doesn't have quests leading you to do it.

The major complaint is that instead of building an MMO on the strengths of the Elder Scrolls games, it seems like they're abandoning all the things that make the Elder Scrolls games unique and what made people excited about the possibility of an MMO with those mechanics. Instead of developing skills by using them (i.e. you get better at using swords by using swords, and any character can do anything), which has been a staple in all TES games, they're using a class-based system.  They're ditching the traditional TES combat in favor of wow-style combat.  Essentially, their abandoning the mechanics that differentiated Elder Scroll games from most other RPG games.  The comparisons with WoW and GW2 are coming from it being similar to WoW, but with a number of features that are selling points for GW2 that WoW doesn't have.

Yeah this is EXACTLY what I was talking about.

They're only lifting the things from GW2 that "Look Cool" but they're still going to have 200% Carrot on a Stick treadmilling going on b/c most MMO Execs still think that's the only way to keep people paying a monthly subsription for shit.  (And F2P games are even MORE SADISTIC in this manner ... including MOBA's & Online Shooters like TA and APB).

This guy is absolutely right.  TESO had an oportunity to repeat the brilliance of Oblivion but they took a hard left on all the things that could have made it the ultimate "Freedom" MMO.

for me GW2 have nothing to do with WoW. the one thing they share in common is both are fantasy MMORPG and nothing more.

combat / pvp / pve are so diferent 

Originally posted by Vesavius

Originally posted by jakojako

...just throws out a bunch of moot points in a fanboy craze...

 

And there goes any inclination I ever had to help you out with some answers.

 

U just read my mind... i lost my motivation... wont say anything cause i think the OP is a lost cause

The last 3 games that I was super excited about were SWTOR, ME 3 and D3.

Having played a sith warrior to 50 and stayed for about 3 weeks after reaching 50 I felt the game overall had too many issues to warrant a $15 a month price tag.

Mass Effect 3 despite it's somewhat lame ending was an awesome single player experience and the horde mode style multiplayer has kept me coming back daily for a couple rounds of play.  This is the only game in recent memory that has kept my attention for more than a couple of weeks.

After playing the D3 open beta and having built countless builds with the skill calculator I'm pretty confident D3 will keep me thoroughly occupied and entertained for longer than any other game has in years.

All that said I am interested in GW 2.  At this point I really hope the game is a success and is fun, well polished and has fun enough and balanced enough pvp to give it long lasting appeal.  There is sooooooooooooo much hype for this game.  Even before SWTOR released I felt this game had just as much hype.  At this point I'm not making judgements on the game and will wait until it's released for a week or 2 and see what people have to say before considering purchasing it.

MMORPG's need to evolve in new and different ways.  Carrot on a stick is not the best way to go.  It's the easiest way.  Creating a system of play that is truly fun, customizable and has lasting appeal is difficult to do.

I hope GW 2 succeeds.