I am not interested in GW2 for one simple fact. I have read that they are going to charge you $60.00 for the game and then they are going to have a cash shop. WTH, so you want to gouge more money out of us after we shelled out for the intial cost of the game. Talk about Game capitalism at its worst. No thanks, not me, you can keep it!
You are paying initial cost of the game+a monthly fee for the P2P games on this list and yet you are complaining about an initial cost plus a cosmetic cashshop?
Have to say that I didn't expect to see Aion on that list. Aion is actually quite low nowadays in terms of subs, but people still play it. Yes it will lose subs to TERA.
Regarding TERA though, a lot of people dont understand. As far as we are concerned, it flopped in the East. But it is effectively re-launching with fixed/balanced/westernised content and LOTS of new content as well to justify its endgame state.
So yes, we can expect a full game with Server vs Server PvP at launch and lots more.
As for the list, WoW will still hold the top. But by the end of 2012, the difference in its subs and the next best competitor will be trivial. 2012 may see someone topple the WoW throne, but its looking unlikely. Either way, WoW is going to drop in subs a LOT.
Currently waiting for the MMO industry to put out something good.
in my opinion games like RIft have success due to the over population of "silver platter" gamers, while TRUE MMOs like Vanguard teeter on the brink of shut down.
This list is a testament to the utter destruction of a once great genre.
/fixed
Really? Because the fact that he posted it didn't make it obvious enough that it was his opinion already.
We know some of GW2's ideas work in small, limited, demo environments, and when they put you right in the dynamic event situation, and with the current balancing settings that they use for demos, etc. As with all the games on the list that are not released, we don't know what the balance, content spikes, or wholistic experience will be like on release.
When I beta'd WAR, a week before release, the faster experience gain and population levels around public quests were awesome - some of the most fun I've had. When the game was released, and experience gain was just a tad slower, and population gaps made public quests almost impossible to complete half the time (unless you actually had a group to go do them), the game just didn't work. Everyone camped out in the pvp lobby instead of playing the game, and even the pvp balance felt off.
So I wouldn't want to make too many predictions. I'm hopeful that GW2 will be a good game when it comes out, but I wouldn't want to bet too much money on it being #1 mmo. Most of the list I agree with, but I think some of the games yet to be released have a high chance of being a bit lower on the list due to not quite meeting expectations.
We know some of GW2's ideas work in small, limited, demo environments, and when they put you right in the dynamic event situation, and with the current balancing settings that they use for demos, etc. As with all the games on the list that are not released, we don't know what the balance, content spikes, or wholistic experience will be like on release.
When I beta'd WAR, a week before release, the faster experience gain and population levels around public quests were awesome - some of the most fun I've had.
When the game was released, and experience gain was just a tad slower, and population gaps made public quests almost impossible to complete half the time (unless you actually had a group to go do them), the game just didn't work. Everyone camped out in the pvp lobby instead of playing the game, and even the pvp balance felt off.
Sounds like public quests in Warhammer Online didn't scale, and it seems like they weren't the main form of PvE content. Guess what? Dynamic Events scale and are the main form of PvE content.
Hmmk my prediction is that in 2013 i will be reading an article on this site titled "Guild Wars 2: What went wrong?" Imvho of course
I thought you were going to PAX/GamesCom to play SW:TOR and GW2 to form an opinion?
People just say that to lend themselves an air of credibility. This user has already made up his mind and thought to grace us all with a little smug, self-satisfying baiting. There's a verboten word for that I think we're all painfully familiar with at this point.
Hmmk my prediction is that in 2013 i will be reading an article on this site titled "Guild Wars 2: What went wrong?" Imvho of course
I thought you were going to PAX/GamesCom to play SW:TOR and GW2 to form an opinion?
People just say that to lend themselves an air of credibility. This user has already made up his mind and thought to grace us all with a little smug, self-satisfying baiting. There's a verboten word for that I think we're all painfully familiar with at this point.
Is that word also used for certain "bridge guardians"?
Decent list, though I wouldn't put Aion on it as a matter of personal taste.
My issue is the author's perception of SWTOR vs. GW2. Both games look fantastic, but I'm going to have to go on record as saying that GW2 has way more hype to live up to than SWTOR. At the end of the day, SWTOR is a solid step forward in MMORPG gaming, but also a cautious one. BioWare rightly approached the game's design by keeping (and polishing) all traditional MMORPG elements while addiing a single new one---the full voiceovers. It's a smart move.
On the other hand, GW2 is promising some amazing things. Too good to be true? Possibly. Overhyped? Most definitely. I hope they deliver, but I'll believe it when I experience it.
Hmmk my prediction is that in 2013 i will be reading an article on this site titled "Guild Wars 2: What went wrong?" Imvho of course
I thought you were going to PAX/GamesCom to play SW:TOR and GW2 to form an opinion?
People just say that to lend themselves an air of credibility. This user has already made up his mind and thought to grace us all with a little smug, self-satisfying baiting. There's a verboten word for that I think we're all painfully familiar with at this point.
Is that word also used for certain "bridge guardians"?
Decent list, though I wouldn't put Aion on it as a matter of personal taste.
My issue is the author's perception of SWTOR vs. GW2. Both games look fantastic, but I'm going to have to go on record as saying that GW2 has way more hype to live up to than SWTOR. At the end of the day, SWTOR is a solid step forward in MMORPG gaming, but also a cautious one. BioWare rightly approached the game's design by keeping (and polishing) all traditional MMORPG elements while addiing a single new one---the full voiceovers. It's a smart move.
On the other hand, GW2 is promising some amazing things. Too good to be true? Possibly. Overhyped? Most definitely. I hope they deliver, but I'll believe it when I experience it.
I would really like some people to point out EXACTLY which things ArenaNet will have hard time delivering on. Most of the time them sceptics seem to be avoid the details.
Decent list, though I wouldn't put Aion on it as a matter of personal taste.
My issue is the author's perception of SWTOR vs. GW2. Both games look fantastic, but I'm going to have to go on record as saying that GW2 has way more hype to live up to than SWTOR. At the end of the day, SWTOR is a solid step forward in MMORPG gaming, but also a cautious one. BioWare rightly approached the game's design by keeping (and polishing) all traditional MMORPG elements while addiing a single new one---the full voiceovers. It's a smart move.
On the other hand, GW2 is promising some amazing things. Too good to be true? Possibly. Overhyped? Most definitely. I hope they deliver, but I'll believe it when I experience it.
Can't fault your caution. They've set the bar pretty high for themselves.
We know some of GW2's ideas work in small, limited, demo environments, and when they put you right in the dynamic event situation, and with the current balancing settings that they use for demos, etc. As with all the games on the list that are not released, we don't know what the balance, content spikes, or wholistic experience will be like on release.
When I beta'd WAR, a week before release, the faster experience gain and population levels around public quests were awesome - some of the most fun I've had.
When the game was released, and experience gain was just a tad slower, and population gaps made public quests almost impossible to complete half the time (unless you actually had a group to go do them), the game just didn't work. Everyone camped out in the pvp lobby instead of playing the game, and even the pvp balance felt off.
So I wouldn't want to make too many predictions. I'm hopeful that GW2 will be a good game when it comes out, but I wouldn't want to bet too much money on it being #1 mmo. Most of the list I agree with, but I think some of the games yet to be released have a high chance of being a bit lower on the list due to not quite meeting expectations.
GW2 and WAR are handling DEs rather different. WAR had them as a extra feature to add a little more fun, GW2 have them instead of group quests and they are a lot more advanced and varied (and yes, WARs didn't scale, big misstake).
No one has done DEs on this scale so we can't be sure if it works long term or not but neither WARs or Rifts DEs are good comparisions.
Still, putting a unreleased game as number one is a bold guess and anything can happen.
Originally posted by Alot Originally posted by Unlight
Originally posted by Alot
Originally posted by Foomerang
Hmmk my prediction is that in 2013 i will be reading an article on this site titled "Guild Wars 2: What went wrong?" Imvho of course
I thought you were going to PAX/GamesCom to play SW:TOR and GW2 to form an opinion? People just say that to lend themselves an air of credibility. This user has already made up his mind and thought to grace us all with a little smug, self-satisfying baiting. There's a verboten word for that I think we're all painfully familiar with at this point. Is that word also used for certain "bridge guardians"? Im ditching out on pax this year. was gonna go but lost interest. funny how this is a pure speculation/prediction thread but of course if my predictions differ from yours its considered trolling. are you seeing how silly that is?
Hmmk my prediction is that in 2013 i will be reading an article on this site titled "Guild Wars 2: What went wrong?" Imvho of course
I thought you were going to PAX/GamesCom to play SW:TOR and GW2 to form an opinion?
People just say that to lend themselves an air of credibility. This user has already made up his mind and thought to grace us all with a little smug, self-satisfying baiting. There's a verboten word for that I think we're all painfully familiar with at this point.
Is that word also used for certain "bridge guardians"?
Im ditching out on pax this year. was gonna go but lost interest. funny how this is a pure speculation/prediction thread but of course if my predictions differ from yours its considered trolling. are you seeing how silly that is?
Originally posted by Alot Originally posted by Foomerang
Originally posted by Alot
Originally posted by Unlight
Originally posted by Alot
Originally posted by Foomerang
Hmmk my prediction is that in 2013 i will be reading an article on this site titled "Guild Wars 2: What went wrong?" Imvho of course
I thought you were going to PAX/GamesCom to play SW:TOR and GW2 to form an opinion?
People just say that to lend themselves an air of credibility. This user has already made up his mind and thought to grace us all with a little smug, self-satisfying baiting. There's a verboten word for that I think we're all painfully familiar with at this point.
Is that word also used for certain "bridge guardians"?
Im ditching out on pax this year. was gonna go but lost interest. funny how this is a pure speculation/prediction thread but of course if my predictions differ from yours its considered trolling. are you seeing how silly that is?
Your prediction was utterly baseless at best. Ive made multiple posts in other threads about my concerns with gw2. Im not going to drag them all up in here because it would further derail this thread.
Hmmk my prediction is that in 2013 i will be reading an article on this site titled "Guild Wars 2: What went wrong?" Imvho of course
always possible, but in that case I think the article's subheading will be: "are games no longer <gulp> fun?", and the article will be more about philosophy and include references to Das Kapital.
Charr: Outta my way. Human: What's your problem? Charr: Your thin skin.
From what I saw, Guild War 2 can actually have a lack of excited content and in general content for people to do. Their content is based on X numbers, and from X numbers only X people can generate the fun content. Further speculation suggests that GW2 is actually lacking content. It's nice and shinny, but the reason soo many themepark mmogs go into a themepark direct only path is because of the variations in content gaps. So to prove a point 105 ppl join a 50 event content dynamic event. the content should last for 10 minutes, instead it last for 2 minutes. The content does not scale based on player participation or aniticipation, it remains the same. Players who do not get their own mob cannot fill the content killing. Players who cannot find items to collect to contribute content, really can't contribute or particpate actively in that content. I find reason to say that GW2 is lacking therefore of content. When you branch off the themepark mmog, you will need to anticipate large scale and small scale, allowing your dynamics to scale depending on active user generation. What they did is mcdonalds, what they claim is subway.
You can lie to yourself all you want, there WILL be content gaps for dynamic events unless every square inch of the server will hold a dynamic event 24/7 which wouldn't make them soo randomly dynamic would it? Ultimately anything based on the themepark path of quests, grinding rinse and repeat dungeons and their arena competitive pvp will holdvast content gaps. Their free for all chaos pvp will also embelish content gaps. It solely depends on X number of players, and if that number burst X content then fails. You can count box sales all you want, but you only feed them money, and to patch up content is a lame excuse when that content should already be inside the game, but to add or improve upon content is not a lame excuse. $50 for a game, and I better damn well get my money, not empty words. I would gladly pay $500 for GW2 if it delivered 1/10th of what I wanted. For now, I'll be content to strip away the hype and shinny new gloss and look at it for what it really is. It is a filler for my downtime.
Why do I want to buy and play GW2? Because I want to fill my downtime content with that style of game. Even if it lacks in content areas, I'll buy it because I want to. All the other mmogs, well GL same problem no solutions.
I struggle not with life, money, emotions, and world, but against old mindsets and selves to be proven obsolete in a age and time of rapid changes. Go create fun, so you can have fun.
Look i hope hes right. If both gw 2 and tor are succesful its a great thing for gamers. The more choice we have the better. I think because of the star wars ip and the fact with a buy to play game u dont get any real idea of how many are playing tor will be number 1.
That said i expect gw 2 to sell well over 5 mil boxes easy in the first year. I fully expect tor to have over 5 mil in subs by end of 1st year.
Secret world looks like a very cool game. It seems to have sandbox and themepark stuff in it. So its a hybrid set in the real world. it could very well do 5 mil as well rift seems to be growing as a game.
I just want more games to succeed and few to fail. The more games that do well the better for me and any other gamer out there and if u cant see that i pity u.
Choice is good. id rather have 4-5 mmos in the 6 mil sub range then 1 mmo at 13 mil any day cause it means more choices for me as a gamer.
Decent list, though I wouldn't put Aion on it as a matter of personal taste.
My issue is the author's perception of SWTOR vs. GW2. Both games look fantastic, but I'm going to have to go on record as saying that GW2 has way more hype to live up to than SWTOR. At the end of the day, SWTOR is a solid step forward in MMORPG gaming, but also a cautious one. BioWare rightly approached the game's design by keeping (and polishing) all traditional MMORPG elements while addiing a single new one---the full voiceovers. It's a smart move.
On the other hand, GW2 is promising some amazing things. Too good to be true? Possibly. Overhyped? Most definitely. I hope they deliver, but I'll believe it when I experience it.
I would really like some people to point out EXACTLY which things ArenaNet will have hard time delivering on. Most of the time them sceptics seem to be avoid the details.
Sure. I'll elaborate.
1) A fulfilling experience without quests, and without resorting to making the players make their own fun. The quest experience in MMORPGs was a direct answer to the void of MMO spaces that offered little beyond grinding for solo players. It is perhaps over-iterated at this point, but GW2 offers a bold departure---No quests! Still fun! Lots to do! How fulfilling exactly will it be to "wander the land exploring, and stumbling upon dynamic events"? I wonder. RIFT promised that rifts were the most amazing thing ever, but actually they are pretty formulaic, and after a week I started taking pains to avoid them just so I could get on with my day. Will GW2's dynamic content be the same?
2) World vs. world vs world PVP. Interesting. Will it matter? Will it be epic, or merely instanced? What is the purpose of doing cross-server PVP this way? What if your opponent servers are low-population? Is there a queue? It seems a risk.
3) Underwater combat. They've spent a surprising amount of time on this. They've clearly invested a lot of development effort into it. Why? It's never been a forte of MMO play. Historically underwater combat is buggy, annoying, difficult to manage, and less fun than standing on the ground. So why develop this to the extent they have? Nobody I know enjoys it. Let's assume that they've made it more fun than it's ever been before---will that matter to players? Or will they continue to avoid underwater combat in droves simply because dealing with the Z-axis is annoying?
SWTOR is taking a mild risk---that simply adding voiceovers will be enough to spice up MMO play. GW2 is taking a much greater risk by radically changing so many systems at once. I applaud them, but I know from experience that, as George R. R. Martin would put it, "words are wind." We'll have to try GW2 to see if ArenaNet's ideas are worth the effort spent talking them up.
I am not interested in GW2 for one simple fact. I have read that they are going to charge you $60.00 for the game and then they are going to have a cash shop. WTH, so you want to gouge more money out of us after we shelled out for the intial cost of the game. Talk about Game capitalism at its worst. No thanks, not me, you can keep it!
You are paying initial cost of the game+a monthly fee for the P2P games on this list and yet you are complaining about an initial cost plus a cosmetic cashshop?
No one has stated that it is just "cosmetic". All games that have cash shops never charge an initial cost to buy the game because they make more off the cash shop. So your telling me that you are going to spend $60.00 for the the inital game then what another $20.00+ for items you want to buy per month. Right in the first month you have already spent $80.00+! At least with a subscription game you don't have to pay the subscription until the second month.
I am not interested in GW2 for one simple fact. I have read that they are going to charge you $60.00 for the game and then they are going to have a cash shop. WTH, so you want to gouge more money out of us after we shelled out for the intial cost of the game. Talk about Game capitalism at its worst. No thanks, not me, you can keep it!
You are paying initial cost of the game+a monthly fee for the P2P games on this list and yet you are complaining about an initial cost plus a cosmetic cashshop?
No one has stated that it is just "cosmetic". All games that have cash shops never charge an initial cost to buy the game because they make more off the cash shop. So your telling me that you are going to spend $60.00 for the the inital game then what another $20.00+ for items you want to buy per month. Right in the first month you have already spent $80.00+! At least with a subscription game you don't have to pay the subscription until the second month.
Actually, they have stated that. Repeatedly. The cash shop will contain cosmetic items only, just as the GW1 shop did.
I know vanguards launch was terrible...I was there. However, it launched with probably 10x the content that Rift has now, even after all the numerous updates.
Bottom line: Rift is fun for 2-3 weeks. Which happens to be the amount of time it requires to level max, max crafting, and experience every bit of available content.
Comments
You are paying initial cost of the game+a monthly fee for the P2P games on this list and yet you are complaining about an initial cost plus a cosmetic cashshop?
Have to say that I didn't expect to see Aion on that list. Aion is actually quite low nowadays in terms of subs, but people still play it. Yes it will lose subs to TERA.
Regarding TERA though, a lot of people dont understand. As far as we are concerned, it flopped in the East. But it is effectively re-launching with fixed/balanced/westernised content and LOTS of new content as well to justify its endgame state.
So yes, we can expect a full game with Server vs Server PvP at launch and lots more.
As for the list, WoW will still hold the top. But by the end of 2012, the difference in its subs and the next best competitor will be trivial. 2012 may see someone topple the WoW throne, but its looking unlikely. Either way, WoW is going to drop in subs a LOT.
Really? Because the fact that he posted it didn't make it obvious enough that it was his opinion already.
We know some of GW2's ideas work in small, limited, demo environments, and when they put you right in the dynamic event situation, and with the current balancing settings that they use for demos, etc. As with all the games on the list that are not released, we don't know what the balance, content spikes, or wholistic experience will be like on release.
When I beta'd WAR, a week before release, the faster experience gain and population levels around public quests were awesome - some of the most fun I've had.
When the game was released, and experience gain was just a tad slower, and population gaps made public quests almost impossible to complete half the time (unless you actually had a group to go do them), the game just didn't work. Everyone camped out in the pvp lobby instead of playing the game, and even the pvp balance felt off.
So I wouldn't want to make too many predictions. I'm hopeful that GW2 will be a good game when it comes out, but I wouldn't want to bet too much money on it being #1 mmo. Most of the list I agree with, but I think some of the games yet to be released have a high chance of being a bit lower on the list due to not quite meeting expectations.
Sounds like public quests in Warhammer Online didn't scale, and it seems like they weren't the main form of PvE content. Guess what? Dynamic Events scale and are the main form of PvE content.
People just say that to lend themselves an air of credibility. This user has already made up his mind and thought to grace us all with a little smug, self-satisfying baiting. There's a verboten word for that I think we're all painfully familiar with at this point.
Is that word also used for certain "bridge guardians"?
Decent list, though I wouldn't put Aion on it as a matter of personal taste.
My issue is the author's perception of SWTOR vs. GW2. Both games look fantastic, but I'm going to have to go on record as saying that GW2 has way more hype to live up to than SWTOR. At the end of the day, SWTOR is a solid step forward in MMORPG gaming, but also a cautious one. BioWare rightly approached the game's design by keeping (and polishing) all traditional MMORPG elements while addiing a single new one---the full voiceovers. It's a smart move.
On the other hand, GW2 is promising some amazing things. Too good to be true? Possibly. Overhyped? Most definitely. I hope they deliver, but I'll believe it when I experience it.
You know of which I speak.
I would really like some people to point out EXACTLY which things ArenaNet will have hard time delivering on. Most of the time them sceptics seem to be avoid the details.
Can't fault your caution. They've set the bar pretty high for themselves.
GW2 and WAR are handling DEs rather different. WAR had them as a extra feature to add a little more fun, GW2 have them instead of group quests and they are a lot more advanced and varied (and yes, WARs didn't scale, big misstake).
No one has done DEs on this scale so we can't be sure if it works long term or not but neither WARs or Rifts DEs are good comparisions.
Still, putting a unreleased game as number one is a bold guess and anything can happen.
People just say that to lend themselves an air of credibility. This user has already made up his mind and thought to grace us all with a little smug, self-satisfying baiting. There's a verboten word for that I think we're all painfully familiar with at this point.
Is that word also used for certain "bridge guardians"?
Im ditching out on pax this year. was gonna go but lost interest. funny how this is a pure speculation/prediction thread but of course if my predictions differ from yours its considered trolling. are you seeing how silly that is?
Your prediction was utterly baseless at best.
I thought you were going to PAX/GamesCom to play SW:TOR and GW2 to form an opinion?
People just say that to lend themselves an air of credibility. This user has already made up his mind and thought to grace us all with a little smug, self-satisfying baiting. There's a verboten word for that I think we're all painfully familiar with at this point.
Is that word also used for certain "bridge guardians"?
Im ditching out on pax this year. was gonna go but lost interest. funny how this is a pure speculation/prediction thread but of course if my predictions differ from yours its considered trolling. are you seeing how silly that is?
Your prediction was utterly baseless at best.
Ive made multiple posts in other threads about my concerns with gw2. Im not going to drag them all up in here because it would further derail this thread.
always possible, but in that case I think the article's subheading will be: "are games no longer <gulp> fun?", and the article will be more about philosophy and include references to Das Kapital.
Charr: Outta my way.
Human: What's your problem?
Charr: Your thin skin.
From what I saw, Guild War 2 can actually have a lack of excited content and in general content for people to do. Their content is based on X numbers, and from X numbers only X people can generate the fun content. Further speculation suggests that GW2 is actually lacking content. It's nice and shinny, but the reason soo many themepark mmogs go into a themepark direct only path is because of the variations in content gaps. So to prove a point 105 ppl join a 50 event content dynamic event. the content should last for 10 minutes, instead it last for 2 minutes. The content does not scale based on player participation or aniticipation, it remains the same. Players who do not get their own mob cannot fill the content killing. Players who cannot find items to collect to contribute content, really can't contribute or particpate actively in that content. I find reason to say that GW2 is lacking therefore of content. When you branch off the themepark mmog, you will need to anticipate large scale and small scale, allowing your dynamics to scale depending on active user generation. What they did is mcdonalds, what they claim is subway.
You can lie to yourself all you want, there WILL be content gaps for dynamic events unless every square inch of the server will hold a dynamic event 24/7 which wouldn't make them soo randomly dynamic would it? Ultimately anything based on the themepark path of quests, grinding rinse and repeat dungeons and their arena competitive pvp will holdvast content gaps. Their free for all chaos pvp will also embelish content gaps. It solely depends on X number of players, and if that number burst X content then fails. You can count box sales all you want, but you only feed them money, and to patch up content is a lame excuse when that content should already be inside the game, but to add or improve upon content is not a lame excuse. $50 for a game, and I better damn well get my money, not empty words. I would gladly pay $500 for GW2 if it delivered 1/10th of what I wanted. For now, I'll be content to strip away the hype and shinny new gloss and look at it for what it really is. It is a filler for my downtime.
Why do I want to buy and play GW2? Because I want to fill my downtime content with that style of game. Even if it lacks in content areas, I'll buy it because I want to. All the other mmogs, well GL same problem no solutions.
I struggle not with life, money, emotions, and world, but against old mindsets and selves to be proven obsolete in a age and time of rapid changes. Go create fun, so you can have fun.
Look i hope hes right. If both gw 2 and tor are succesful its a great thing for gamers. The more choice we have the better. I think because of the star wars ip and the fact with a buy to play game u dont get any real idea of how many are playing tor will be number 1.
That said i expect gw 2 to sell well over 5 mil boxes easy in the first year. I fully expect tor to have over 5 mil in subs by end of 1st year.
Secret world looks like a very cool game. It seems to have sandbox and themepark stuff in it. So its a hybrid set in the real world. it could very well do 5 mil as well rift seems to be growing as a game.
I just want more games to succeed and few to fail. The more games that do well the better for me and any other gamer out there and if u cant see that i pity u.
Choice is good. id rather have 4-5 mmos in the 6 mil sub range then 1 mmo at 13 mil any day cause it means more choices for me as a gamer.
Sure. I'll elaborate.
1) A fulfilling experience without quests, and without resorting to making the players make their own fun. The quest experience in MMORPGs was a direct answer to the void of MMO spaces that offered little beyond grinding for solo players. It is perhaps over-iterated at this point, but GW2 offers a bold departure---No quests! Still fun! Lots to do! How fulfilling exactly will it be to "wander the land exploring, and stumbling upon dynamic events"? I wonder. RIFT promised that rifts were the most amazing thing ever, but actually they are pretty formulaic, and after a week I started taking pains to avoid them just so I could get on with my day. Will GW2's dynamic content be the same?
2) World vs. world vs world PVP. Interesting. Will it matter? Will it be epic, or merely instanced? What is the purpose of doing cross-server PVP this way? What if your opponent servers are low-population? Is there a queue? It seems a risk.
3) Underwater combat. They've spent a surprising amount of time on this. They've clearly invested a lot of development effort into it. Why? It's never been a forte of MMO play. Historically underwater combat is buggy, annoying, difficult to manage, and less fun than standing on the ground. So why develop this to the extent they have? Nobody I know enjoys it. Let's assume that they've made it more fun than it's ever been before---will that matter to players? Or will they continue to avoid underwater combat in droves simply because dealing with the Z-axis is annoying?
SWTOR is taking a mild risk---that simply adding voiceovers will be enough to spice up MMO play. GW2 is taking a much greater risk by radically changing so many systems at once. I applaud them, but I know from experience that, as George R. R. Martin would put it, "words are wind." We'll have to try GW2 to see if ArenaNet's ideas are worth the effort spent talking them up.
No one has stated that it is just "cosmetic". All games that have cash shops never charge an initial cost to buy the game because they make more off the cash shop. So your telling me that you are going to spend $60.00 for the the inital game then what another $20.00+ for items you want to buy per month. Right in the first month you have already spent $80.00+! At least with a subscription game you don't have to pay the subscription until the second month.
Tera looks awful. Remove it and add Defiance or Undead Labs' Class 4 (if released in 2012) somewhere instead.
Actually, they have stated that. Repeatedly. The cash shop will contain cosmetic items only, just as the GW1 shop did.
Bottom line: Rift is fun for 2-3 weeks. Which happens to be the amount of time it requires to level max, max crafting, and experience every bit of available content.