General Discussion

I've tried WoW two times, gave it a shot, came to a certain level and thought to myself "another xy levels of doing this? no, thank you." and I've deleted it both times. But that might be because I don't like pugging (and my friends don't play wow) so I couldn't.. well, didn't want to, join dungeons and play something else than a global pve. The thing that I really missed in those beginning levels of WoW is that there is no story line. There're event chains, some interesting but I dunno, I expected a more epic character story progress or something.
GW2 on the other hand is.. Interesting the first couple of hours/days/weeks/months (depending on the player) and most of the people just dunno what to do after they reach 80/their first couple of goals/whatever. There are no typical quests, there are hearts that you do per map (which have the same mechanic, so you're basically grinding). You have a character story, which is currently bad since they reshuffled it in a september patch (above lvl 60 story and they're working on it to fix it back like it was. which was fun). There are Role-play dedicated servers and guilds on most of the servers.
The HUGE downside to gw2 are the skills. The first 5 skills are bound to your weapon. There's a heal skill, 3 utilities and an elite. This leaves to few options for buildmaking (especially if you ever played GW1). Some skills are just plain useless. And the current meta playing pushes on stacking and max dps and nothing else. Class balanced are nonexistant (or at least I think that since I main a necro, the most hated by devs class ever)
On a plus side of GW2, there's an exp coming that might fix stuff :P

if you have any other question, shoot (though I could probably reply on the gw2 part, not so much on wow)


There're two other MMO's that I keep an eye out - Blade and Soul and Skyforge. Both presumably coming out in Q4 of this year.

Hello Friend @Seleya!

I was once in your shoes and sought guidance from my more experienced friends and they all pointed me towards GW2 :)

Free to play, lots of content, big new expansions coming up soon, friendly and helpful community overall and a fun game that I myself have enjoyed immensely for almost 2 years now

I hang out with this bunch, am even ad admin for the gw2 section
Lemme know if you are interested in joining some day maybe :)
http://www.pandionknights.co.uk/home

@ Seleya
I really like creating characters in MMOs, and I found my characters in GW2 extra likeable.
Here are my GW2 characters! http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh263/Manah-Angel-Eyes/gw2castupdated-1.png~original

I tried both GW2 and World of Warcraft. I personally stuck with just GW2 eventually. Here's my observation of both games:

Exploration: WoW is very vast, while GW2 is smaller and split in square zones. However GW2 encourages jumping around, there are hidden platform/jumping puzzles in each zone! :D

Questing: WoW's quests are pretty linear, the typical "kill 5 rats" type are quite common. WoW is seeping with lore though, every quest has a long page of explanations. This may be tedious or enjoyable depending on your interests. GW2 on the other hand has shorter, compact quest dialogue and multiple objectives in each quest. For example if you have to help out on a farm, you can feed the animals, ward off thieves and/or collect eggs. You can choose to just feed animals or just attack thieves, or alternate between your options.
As for story quests, GW2 lets you choose dialogue types to shape your character. The story branches out depending on your choices.

Combat: GW2's combat is far more fluid, you have less skills but each of them are useful and can be combo'd. GW2 also lets you dodge roll. WoW is more static but has a wider range of skills and attacks to choose from.

Extra: Community: GW2 is more focused on cooperation, WoW seems to have more competition from what I could see. Both have PvP of course, but GW2 seems more PvE-friendly. In GW2 all races can hang out together, in WoW you have the Alliance races vs the Horde races.

Extra: Moneys, Events, Time-consumption: WoW is pay-per-month, GW2 is buying the game once. I believe buying GW2's expansions is optional. As for events, GW2 seems to have a lot of temporary ones, which may be fun or stressful. Both games will consume quite a bit of your time.

I would also recommend having a brief look at the 3D model style, races, classes and lore of the two games. These factors are quite subjective. For me, WoW has the awesome werewolf Worgen and Druid class, but GW2 has the pretty plantfolk Sylvari and Avatar-like Elementalist class.

@Seleya

Wall of text incoming...

So I've played both, but stuck with WoW because of personal taste. I've always felt GW2 seems to be more focused on PVP endgame (I could be wrong), but both have their strengths and weaknesses, so I'll just try to focus on your interests:

Character Development/Roleplaying - GW2 has a very strong intro questing sequence and amazing character customization for every race. It also uses a story customization piece when creating a character, which can be good or bad depending on how you look at it (essentially it provides you with a choice on a piece of your backstory/beliefs). Most of WoW's intro questing sequences are not as strong, but there are a few (Worgen, Pandaren, Goblin, and the Death Knight intro) that I feel are almost as strong as the GW quests.

Later in the game, it pretty much comes down to this distinction: WoW focuses much more on you being a small part of a larger story (so fostering story through cooperation), and GW focuses on your personal story (fostering story through independence).

Another thing to note is WoW has quite a few realms which are specifically for RP.

Exploring/Questing: WoW's world is huge. And when you get into the higher levels, the art starts to really shine. The questing in the game is pretty standard, some guy tells you to do something, you do it, and he might give you another quest. But this system leads you through an individual story within each zone.

GW2's world is fairly large and the art is pretty varied. The questing system is a bit odd, you complete favors for npcs by doing specific actions within their territory. This gives you less descriptive stories and a feeling of openness. This mechanic (along with a Points of Interest' mechanic) is meant to foster open exploration through the worlds.

Combat: GW has a much more fluid fighting style, you have to actively dodge attacks and there's no true 'healers' in groups and focuses on positioning and enemy movement control. It uses a unique weapon system that allows you to switch between two main toolsets on the fly.

WoW's basic mechanics are much more simple, just fire off abilities without too much worry about positioning. Where WoW does start getting interesting is the 'specializations', where every class has three or four main toolsets meant for doing different things. Each of the toolsets are distinct, a Rogue might choose to be a stealth or poison specialist, or forgo that for a 'swashbuckler' style set. WoW uses the common rpg trinity of tank/healer/dps.

Art: I'll say this now, WoW will age better, hands down. It just had a graphics overhaul for its characters. The aesthetic is pretty standard, except for Pandaria.

GW2 has a varied aesthetic, the Charr are dieselpunk, Humans are pretty standard, and so on. So if you want something different, GW is probably better.


As a final note. GW2 is cheaper. You pay once for the main game, and no more. WoW has a monthly subscription model. You can try out the first 20 levels of WoW for free though.