Guild Wars and World of Warcraft had been fighting a quiet but ravenous war since both were released. Eventually, this war was settled by a retreat on Guild Wars behalf but why? I fail to see where this war came from, aside from the fact that ex-Blizzard employees designed Guild Wars and that's about it.

So some ex-Blizzard employees decide they want to cash in on the MMOG market before it becomes saturated and leave the WoW dev team to create Guild Wars. By their definition it is a COMMO and not an MMORPG. To me, it is an MMORPG but one that is trying to be slightly different.

You can see why they are ex-Blizzard employees. The game isn't refined. There are massive problems with the game play that I just can't get over. For example, the AI that controls the minions in the game is outrageously simplistic and worst of all, problematic. The minions will run round in a way that looks fairly like a decapitated chicken on its last rage and these minions will pull every mob group in a half mile radius while doing it. This makes me feel like I am being told off for not wanting to constantly play with horny 14 year olds who want to cyber with my monk in return for some bolts of cloth. Another problem I have with the game is the res debuff. It would work...if it didn't punish you for the programming teams laziness. The simplistic AI coupled with a self destructive res debuff that reduces your life and energy by a massive percentage when you die and you can see why I say, "punish." Add to that that if I die and res in combat I suffer 10%-60% reduction to my life and energy but when my minions die, they happily res and run round pulling more mob groups for me to scream at. The only way to remove the debuff is to either grind mobs down to lower the percentage, or return to a town, resetting all the mobs and forcing you to regrind all of the mobs you have killed. It makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon. The last problem is another AI issue. The mob AI isn't adaptive and that is to say that it doesn't have a range of difficulties based on the arrangement of your group which means that every so often I am fighting an AI that is 20 times more intuitive than my minions, making me the only thing standing between life and death and I dislike that rashly. I play games to relax and not worry about.

The PvP in Guild Wars is very diverse and I am enjoying it quiet a bit. While it is not as informal as WoW and it's simplistic PvP system, it is far more fun. I am made to feel like every match I play is a match that matters, which makes me feel important. I like feeling important. That is why I play PvP and PvP only in most games. Being a good PvPEr makes you feel special; Guild Wars makes me feel very special when I win and very foolish when I lose. WoW doesn't.

All of that said however, Guild Wars holds over WoW with me in many ways. Guild Wars is massively balanced in PvP, something that Blizzard are failing at right now. There are also less random bugs in Guild Wars and the classes are far more original.

In the end, I'm not going to compare. They are two different games with two very different rule sets and graphics engines. While at this moment, I prefer playing World of Warcraft for the arena system, I am planning on playing Guild Wars for a while, to see how it opens up at high level.

You never know: I might reroll GW in a few months.

p.s. If there are any NCSoft or Arenanet employees reading this, fix the damn res debuff :-)