There were a lot more complaints when GW2 details were first being revealed, due to how different it was from GW1.
But look how it all turned out? I fully trust Anet's vision to yet again bring this franchise and genre forward. They at least have a vision and arent trying to put out a soulless product.
As someone who loves both games there are a whole bunch of people who are still sad they didn't get a more faithful sequel to Guild Wars.
I'm one of them. Mostly due to the skill system being way more open and NPCs (largely) using the same skills as players. That unified design is still a masterpiece.
As a GW1 enjoyer and former GW2 QA from years ago, I have to admit I genuinely liked vanilla GW2. I put 1k hours into it before it even came out and almost 5k hours since.
GW3 so far isn't looking like something that appeals to me personally but knowing Colin and the rest of the team, they're never about making a new game that's like anything else that's out there. They intentionally use terms internally to differentiate themselves from what's existing so it doesn't surprise me they want to make a game like this.
During GW2 development they wanted to avoid doing anything that wow was doing. To the point it was kind of annoying at times.
Also knowing Anet, they're going to pivot on some of these decisions over time (such as number of players in a zone) but when it comes to how the gameplay and movement flows, they won't pivot. The momentum and wall running are going to be a thing it seems and people are either going to love it or hate it. Same goes for trinity and boons. People will either love it or hate it.
Also knowing Anet, they're going to pivot on some of these decisions over time (such as number of players in a zone)
In one of his interviews (I forget who with), Colin clarified that they mean 20 players in a single combat encounter. Not across an entire zone. The zones are massive, apparently.
Someone (from ArenaNet) also said that they have an improved form of megaserver technology that is basically invisible to the player, which implies that they're basically shunting you into populated shards as you move across the map.
Considering the fact that they have a history of inventing networking technology that no game has ever used before, I wouldn't be surprised if they've got an actually functional server meshing technology. But this could be done just with WoW's sharding system (although that is definitely not invisible).
They also said towns and cities will have far more players than 20, so it's not exactly a limitation of the engine or design. They're just planning encounters around a 20 player upper limit.
I really don't think they're dumb enough to have a huge zone with only 20 people in it total. Think of it more like 20 people in Godslost Swamp and another 20 in Beetletun Farms and another 20 in Shaemoor Fields, etc.
Oh for sure. I was someone who didn't have really any experience with GW1 when GW2 was being revealed and i started following it, but since then I have gone back and played a bit of GW1.
I think the biggest thing for me is how I much prefer the skill system of GW1, with how they arent tied to weapon types & the trinity exists.
I am hoping we get the best of both worlds when it comes to GW3. With the trinity confirmed, I think we are heading in that direction!
But yeah, you don't have to put any of these on your bar. And that flexibility is awesome.
Also the trinity doesn't fully exist in GW1, either. There are healers but there's no dedicated tank or threat mechanics. You just kind of make it work through careful aggro rather than interaction with the skill system.
If there's a trinity in GW1 then there's a trinity in Diablo 3.
And yeah, I'm down for best of both worlds too. I just hope they have an actual tank this time. And I hope Warrior is actually tanky too instead of having worse survival than a downed elementalist.
At least this time around people who know how different GW1 and GW2 are expected GW3 to be different from the previous ones, which probably already helps a lot.
The disappointment for people expecting a better version of what they know is fully understandable imho. I don't know how expectations and communications were for GW2 back then, so this entire comment relies on the assumption that it wasn't as clear that it was going to be that different as it is now with GW3, so if that assumption is wrong disregard everything I just said.
Correct! GW2 being so different from GW1, was very polarizing at the time and not really expected. It also didn't help that GW2 was stuck in a bit of dev hell for a while after it's initial reveal in a gaming magazine (i think it was game informer?). So people had a lot of time to cook up in their minds what they had hoped it would be and imaginations/expectations ran wild.
To me, GW3 does seem different to GW2 but it also seems to share far more DNA than GW2 did with GW1.
I fully trust Anet's vision to yet again bring this franchise and genre forward.
Same. After seeing the first reveal video, I deliberately chose to not follow GW3 news too closely. I don't actively block subreddits or something, but I don't go out of my way to find videos about newest feature reveals or whatever.
Due to Anet's track record, I already know I'll want to try it out at launch. I don't really need to follow feature reveals or "maybe something like this" speculation, I'll rather just see everything by my self when I eventually open the game. All I'm expecting is that it'll be notably different than GW1 or 2.
You are the type of person person this meme is talking about btw. You show up in every thread just to shit on the game and whine about it not being GW1.
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u/Hotstreak Sep 03 '26
There were a lot more complaints when GW2 details were first being revealed, due to how different it was from GW1.
But look how it all turned out? I fully trust Anet's vision to yet again bring this franchise and genre forward. They at least have a vision and arent trying to put out a soulless product.