Before you bite my head off, let me explain.
My first MMORPG was Dark Age of Camelot in 2001, this was and in my opinion still is the best PvP game ever made, quite frankly if the population was still decent I’d be playing it right now. Since DAoC I played pretty much every decent MMO released in the last 11 years and none of them compare to the excitement and realm pride DAoC brought.
GW2 made no secret about wanting to take the good parts from DAoC’s RvR model but has failed on a few fundamental areas, at least in my opinion.
Which is why I will be comparing DAoC to GW2 from now on…
Zerging
Sure, you could zerg in DAoC and many people did, the fact that you could small man, 8v8 or solo viably in DAoC was the thing that made it so great, you didn’t have to run around with the mindless zerglings.
The problem in GW2 is that zerging is encouraged and rewarded, I often solo on my thief and find myself gaining a pathetic amount of tokens compared to when I zerg. Zerging is no fun for me, I’ve never liked it, never will – I fail to see how anyone can find fun in playing like that.
Class Dynamics
In DAoC, there are 47 classes across 3 realms, most completely different, some similar but from opposing factions.
The point is, a successful group required certain classes to make them work, now I understand why ArenaNet wanted to get away from this type of dependency, but the resulting gameplay is somewhat stale.
You don’t have any “speed” class that gives a considerable speed buff to the party.
You don’t have the opportunity to play with good healers that can keep you alive in intense battles – all you have is your own heal, that will eventually be on cooldown and you will die as a result.
DAoC’s gameplay was fun and intense due to these classes, if you had a good player in the group you knew it, in GW2 I couldn’t tell you whether the people I play along side are good players or not, it’s all just a bit “meh”.
Character Progression
As everyone knows, GW2 lacks any type of end game character progression, which is fine… except there’s no character progression in WvW.
As I don’t find WvW particularly fun, on the very odd occasion that I do give it another chance I often find myself wondering, why am I doing this? My character isn’t gaining anything, there’s no reputation in this game.
Harking back to DAoC again (I did warn you), RvR time was rewarded, kills were rewarded, people had reputations for being good players.
A newly leveled character would most likely get obliterated by a higher realm rank foe, even if both were in identical armor, all because higher realm rank players had the opportunity to better their characters through realm abilities.
Now I’m not a fan of giving active abilities to people, but I would like to see people getting the chance to use their WvW kills to better their character in passive abilities, like +%crit or +%power etc.
Reputation
As for Reputation, in GW2 there is none. I don’t see a player and think “that guy is a good player!” or “maybe I should avoid him”, I don’t know the enemies names, they don’t know mine, it’s rather dull.
Again, in DAoC you knew the high Realm Rank players, you knew the good players, you knew the guys you should avoid, the guys that were easy pickings. WvW gives nothing in this area, it’s all very anonymous. I kill someone and don’t particularly care, in DAoC I’d kill someone and get an adrenaline rush, especially if the opposing player was higher RR than me.
Now that I’ve finished gearing the 2 classes I’d ever want to play in GW2 I’m finding it hard to log on, there’s just nothing there for me end game. I don’t want expansions with better gear, I don’t want the endless grind that WoW has, but the lack of rewards in WvW just kills it for me.
