Guild Wars Hits the Million Mark

-pms-mistletoe writes "Hot on the heels of World of Warcraft's breaking the 4 million subscriber mark, Guild Wars has also reached a big milestone with over 1 million users. The differences and similarities between the two games are marked, especially given Guild Wars' lack of traditional sharding and no monthly fee. Are these large numbers of players signals that the popularity of MMORPGs is growing? Or are the same people playing both games?"

Comments

My friends & I are RPG fans, not MMO fans

[mbourgon]

Of my group of gaming f(r)iends, all save 1 have bought Guild Wars. There are several reason for it:
1) Linear Campaign - there's a complete story. Sure, go into the desert/shiverpeaks/jungle and kill random stuff. But for us it's more about getting from point A to B, explore, and continue the story, than farming. (And I have no idea what "sharding" is, so I'll pass on that for now)

2) "Instanced": basically, when I step outside the town, it's me and the people I went with. I'm honestly surprised there are other ways to do it. Sure, occasionally it'd be cool to hop on, and join my friends wherever they are, but the fact that we don't have to deal with all the other stuff the MMO people b*tch about is more than a fair trade.

3) No monthly fee. Hey, we've been playing Neverwinter since it came out. We have a Teamspeak server installed on the same linux box as our Neverwinter server. Almost none of us have any interest in spending 15$ a month on these games.

4) It's an RPG. Not just click click clickclickclick. You have your 8 skills and your stats, you have to think about where you're going and what you're doing, before you leave town. Hmmmm.... I'm going into an ice cave - better leave my "icy bow" behind. Maybe other MMOs have this, I don't know.

But overall, for a casual gamer, not an MMO fan, Guild Wars is great. Hop on and play - if your friends aren't on, find some people and go do stuff. I can see the addictive properties (as can my wife). But the hardcore MMO people don't seem to care for GW much, and that's fine. I'd never buy an MMO.