Probably the thing that put me off the most were the UI, controls, and lack of MMORPG feel to GW1. The controls were clunky, The UI hard to navigate, and I thought that there was way too much instancing in the first game. It was less of an MMO, and more of a single player game with a few areas you could chat will lots of people, and an option to group in a heavily instanced world. I havent experienced the beta for GW2 since I am holding off buying it for now... but can anyone give some insight as to how it is set up? Is it similar to GW1 or have they made it more of an open world?

The one big change is that Guild Wars 2 is very much an MMO, as you are interacting and playing with other people 90% of the time. The controls are pretty much the same, although I don't see how they can be viewed as clunky at all. And the UI is your standard MMO interface. Skill bar, map, enemy health etc.

Can I ask how long you played the first game, and when? They made some pretty big changes to the UI since release, so that might have already been fixed in the original.

I don't have an answer for you, I just wanted to say I agree with you.

I had never really played a MMORPG before Guild Wars, and had gotten in early before most of the macro transactions had made there way into the game. And I found the game really boring, mostly the mechanics, just going from one town to another, getting Items, which were just the same Item icon, with a different, random name, And when you wore it It would just be a pallet swapped texture. Every thing looked bad.

It was just boring running from town to town. Perhaps if I had friends that played it would be fun.

@Dagbiker said:

just the same Item icon, with a different, random name, And when you wore it It would just be a pallet swapped texture.

Perhaps your bad experience has colored your memory, but... well... that's not true.

@wookie912: I want to preface this by saying that when GW1 came out, I had zero interest, and actually never touched it until I downloaded the trial after a GW2 beta weekend on a whim, and, to some extent, I agree with your critiques. That said, GW2, as @Maystack pointed out above, is very much an MMO, though I would say you interact with other players closer to 95% of the time, since the only time you are instances by yourself is if you are doing your personal story quest and are not grouped.

As for the controls, I think I can see what you mean, and for the most part, GW2 has improved on its predecessor on almost all fronts. The one "control" gripe I do have is when using my heal skill: It feels like it has a casting animation, but there doesn't appear to be a cast bar, and the icon just pulses a few times before finally going off. To make matters worse, it doesn't seem as though all healing abilities have the same "cast" time. That said, those seem to be the only abilities that have this annoyance, and you get accustomed to the "cast" time on it pretty quickly, so it's not really a big issue.

As someone who did not play GW1 until recently, I agree with you wholeheartedly. The UI in that game is baaaaaaaaaaaaaad. That said, you'll be happy to know that the UI in GW2 is extremely good! Ability bar is fairly minimalist, while still looking artistic, inventory screen is re-sizable, nothing is more than a couple of hotkeys and/or mouse clicks away, and, with a recent build, UI scaling is back in. Also of note, every UI element pulls up incredibly quickly and fluidly with some pretty slick (and quick) animations.

As Maystack mentioned, this is very much an MMO world, and has a lot less instancing than you saw in GW1. There are still instance portals between zones, but the zones themselves are much larger than they were in GW1 (I believe), and again, other players can be seen everywhere in the world (again, with the exception of within personal story quest instances). For the personal story quests, think swtor class story quests, except instead of having a big fat red wall that no one else can pass through, you just get a green indicator on your map of where it's at, with a little glimmering icon on the game world for where you can trigger it. You then load into an instanced version of that part of the world in which you do your personal story.

All in all, as someone who hated the idea of GW1, and opted for more traditional MMO's like WoW, Rift, and swtor, I can say that I have been very surprised and pleased with my experiences in GW2 thus far.

Yes, Guild Wars 1 to me was boring and generic. I would rather have been playing Oblivion/Morrowind than play Guild Wars even though I bought the game. The story was boring, the story was slow, the gameplay was boring and generic, it just wasn't fun.

But my friends and I preordered GW2 in the hopes we could find a game we'd all enjoy together, and we were not let down. Although there's some complaints I have- all of the females look super pretty and young... I like my women with some battle scars and MILFyness in them- the game is a solid RPG, and even without the MMO mechanics it's free to play minus the entry fee and it doesn't let you down on the coop aspect of it. Although again I'm not interested in the generic fantasy setting, I am most certainly interested in the fluid controls and the fun, tight combat. There's also lots of exploration to be had and that's a huge factor as well. I would recommend it to anyone who has friends to play with, and would only reluctantly recommend it as a solo experience. It's really just a coop RPG- like if Dragon Age or KOTOR were multiplayer, this is basically what it is, except with terrible dialogue and voice acting.

Oh yeah the UI is my favorite part. It reminds me a lot of how sleek Dragon Age Origin's main menu was. How everything blends together and shit and it's very, very well done. It's absolutely impressive. The UI is sleek and smooth- reminds me a bit of my iphone, actually.

@wookie912: The game is so fucking good looking sometimes you think you are actually inside concept art, and the UI is just as well integrated. In in Guild Wars 2 you can jump and it controls similarly to other third person games. No click-to-move. You can dodge too by hitting a dodge key or double tapping a movement key.

It's a fully open world MMORPG akin to WoW and other similar games. There will always be other players everywhere other than dungeons which are instanced.

If you ever enjoyed an MMO or if you never have, you really should give this a shot.

I played mostly when it first was released... about a year ago i picked up the full trilogy, thinking that I would try it again and unlock stuff for GW2 if i picked it up... but I .. couldnt do it... as Dagbiker said... the mechanics still were pretty bad according to my tastes. I guess im too much of a traditionalist... I like a crafting systems, open world with limited instancing.. even games like city of heroes, and the like that rely on multiple copies of zones kinda put me off. Really good to hear that It appears to have moved to a more traditional MMO format , but stays Free to play like GW1.. I may have to buy it now.

It's funny reading this thread. I actually enjoyed the instanced model of GW1 more than the open-world MMO feel of GW2 (at least from what I've tried in the betas). It was a lot more strategic than zerging open-world events. That isn't to say that I don't enjoy GW2 PvE (it's a totally different experience), just that I really enjoyed GW1 from a gameplay perspective. It definitely lacked a "social" feel though as it was basically just an online co-op game.

@wookie912: The game is really nothing like it's predecessor, aside from general philosophy. I vote that you give it a shot.

@UssjTrunks: It can be weird to hear people say that the way GW2 is structured is flat-out better than how GW1 was. I can understand preferring one to the other, but they're such different games that it's almost pointless to compare them.

EDIT: From a point of mechanics, I mean. Obviously ArenaNet's design philosophy is very similar.

Yes.

Like some others have said, GW2 is really nothing like GW1 besides lore-ties (setting, story, universe, etc) and a focus on and system for organized structured PVP. I didn't find GW1 amazing, but I can objectively say it *was* a good quality game (just not my cup of tea how they handled character creation and the campaigns, rather than expansion).