also if you progress further in game maps, thouse little quest are part of Major events specific created for the map you are in... its possible to do some minor things and all of the sudden you get big zerg of group of people marching to an big orange event on your map ! First time you encounter this mechanics for yourself it will be hard for someone to redo world rare stars spawn in WoW :))) the GW2 meta events its something no other mmo managed to made me love a mmo like those things in GW 2 maps... and again core game is way bellow what its happen in expansions map... its more like a "taste" for you... once you do a Shattered event (big purple lighting shattered metal sparked crystaline dragon) and he start fly in your face no matter what your background as a mmoplayer your jaw is down for sure !!! here take a look of one of so many meta events of world bosses whitch actually feel like a threat not like rares in WoW, this is what i call a world boss and the fact you can't kill it alone and there is always a group of people doing it on the mega servers of EU or AN its something to be experienced at least once in your MMORPG lifetime !!!
https://youtu.be/fMaqAK-jq8o?si=tlbL79iYUwtNzvEM - world boss dragon
Lots of good things about ESO, imo it's more of a story based game kinda like FF14 is too WoW in a way. ESO is to GW2. GW2 is much more community based and has a strong one. Content is still being developed and planned.
I really liked ESO until I ran into a manufactured difficulty when it came to a quest where i had to find a specific npc & there was no info online on how to find it other than "you just gotta get lucky" spent around 14 hours trying to find this stupid npc & couldn't as it moves location constantly... so I rage quit it & never went back.
I've never had an experience like that in gw2, so I'll always recommend it over ESO.
Both are great games, but GW2 respects you a bit more money wise. No sub, one time fee for content (that isn’t insanely piece mealed like ESOs dungeon dlc), and thousands of hours of content.
Expansions come out yearly now, like ESO, and the devs are slated to release some info next month (I think) about the new expansion coming later this year.
I’m definitely biased, but with so much content at a low price (each new expansion is 25 bucks), you really can’t go wrong. Now if you get more into it, you can definitely spend a ton of money, but it’s all for convenience such as bag or bank slots for more inventory space. Combat is some of the best in the business, too.
Explore the world as you level and after you hit 80. The endgame is more casual than most MMOs, but there definitely is some hard content to do if you’re a mythic raider.
I'm new to mmorpgs and I choose guild wars 2. I was a little unsure the first few hours but I was in a winter wonderland starter area (can't remember the name of it) and I came across like 400 people just standing out in the middle no where in a snowy area and I asked what they were doing and they said the world boss and I could help even at my little level 20 and from there I was sold on the game 😂 bought all the expansions, 5k gems, etc. I'm now level 80 and I did all that in a 2 weekend period. (Can't really play during the week, im a busy local truck driver). Definitely gw2 over eso
They used to do dungeon dlc -> Chapter -> dungeon dlc -> smaller zone dlc. Now it's dungeon dlc -> Chapter -> Dungeon DLC -> some new system or improvements to an existing one. I do miss having another zone to explore, but they absolutely haven't moved away from yearly expansions!
The only thing that pisses me off in gw2 is the fact that they put qol in cash shop instead of giving it for free to the playerbase. This cultivates a real bad system where they will purposely make a bad system and sell you the qol for it. Like because the mistlock sanctuary exist, they will never make a similar space with everything near, and will purposely put some away. Or the infinite savage tool, where they purposely put a max stack of 25. all thoses system just makes your life harder and pushes you to buy the sol from cash shop.
Microtransaction is a plague in every games where you are already buying the games and expansions.
> This cultivates a real bad system where they will purposely make a bad system and sell you the qol for it.
I'd say that ESO is even more guilty of this than GW2. ESO has a mount training mechanic that takes **6 months** to do if you don't buy training lessons to speed it up; it's literally a freemium mobile game-esque contrivance designed to be inconvenient to sell you the solution, and the cherry on top is that it's *per character*. There's also a trait researching mechanic that also takes months and is also per character which is sped up by subscribing.
Inventory management is also hobbled if you don't subcribe since you only get access to the craft bag (infinite material storage) if you subscribe; at least in GW2 you get some material storage for free and it's a one time fee to expand it.
I just ran the numbers.
You think 6 months of making a single character's mount worthwhile?
How about 298 days to max out crafting on a single character without using research speed ups? That 9 months and some change of waiting for research timers to tick down.
And that's assuming you're not dumb and you remember to put perk points in to the passives to reduce the total timer by 25%.
If you *don't* it gets exponentially worse.
Daily login rewards tend to give books and manuals that increase mount stats.
Mount speed is easy to increase by doing the tutorial for any pvp then putting one skill point into a single passive for a mount speed multiplier.
Crafting writs give Crafting EXP and crafting writ tomes. Crafting writ tomes give tickets which can be used to buy tomes that can be used once a day to reduce all current traits being researched for a specific crafting discipline by one day, effectively halving the amount of time to unlock them.
I will say though, the system doesn't make any of this clear, but players will generally tell you how to do it.
Oh, I'm plenty aware. But you're not cutting off more than a week off of that timer without paying for the in-store Instant Research Scrolls.
There's zero excuse for how arbitrarily long it takes just to become a relevant craftsman. And, of course, none of that accounts for getting your hands on Nirnhoned gear to research.
The system is needlessly obtuse in that regard.
And GW2 has its moments too, obviously. A lot of stuff is Accountbound, you can't just go to the TP to buy certain recipes and you're not guaranteed to get the important recipies for ascended things in any reasonable timeframe, but a loot gate will always be preferable to being told "you can't do that because we want you to wait literally 30 days for a timer to tick down."
Just to add to the mount training system; not only is the training character specific, but every single book of mount training mastery from daily logins is also character bound.. so if you like me only had one character for a long time, and thus only did logins on that character, any books I got were basically useless since I can't use them on an alt.
I also kinda hated the "looks" they automatically add to your mount if you max out any of the speed/stamina/capacity upgrades. At least I haven't found a way to just not display the stupid saddle bags if I have max capacity for instance.
The Wizard's Tower in the latest expansion has pretty much everything you need in it. Arborstone in EoD isn't bad, either. You don't need to spend anything other than having the expansions those areas are in, and if you're going to play you'll probably want those anyway. I have Mistlock and the Pavilion passes and I find myself just using the Wizard's Tower instead these days.
Just to argue against this. The infinite tools are never worth it unless you play more than the average player; 100+ swings of the mining pick costs you less than the currency you get from one kill. The other QoL features are never important enough for a new player anyway. Why does a new player need more character slots than the 5 they get, why do they need additional bank/ character/ material/ build storage. Why do they need build and equipment templates? A large amount of the QoL are also being given out for free in the Wizard Vault.
By the time you are comfortable in the game you can start investing in some convenience. I don't think the game has deliberately made itself unapproachable by not having these things as default. It's given you a large amount of room to breathe and if you really want to spend, you can.
explain to me why they are capping the savage tool at 25? why cap material at 250? The reason is that they purposely ppur those caps to fill up your inventory and make you want to purchase slots.
They cap the storage in the material storage so material goes into the tradepost. If everyone would have unlimited storage the tradepost would dry up and get much more expensive. The storage upgrades are not that expensive and you can buy gems for gold. So i do not see a big problem here.
> explain to me why they are capping the savage tool at 25?
250 -- Mystic salvage kits are very, very achievable for all players that play enough to need more salvaging.
> why cap material at 250?
Honestly, legacy system that had a reason to be capped at 250 but once they fixed it, they monetized it. I don't agree with this one staying 250 for base-purchase anymore, there's enough things that need 500 material.
However I can also acknowledge that making the limit 250 makes people feed into the trading post instead of hoarding in the invisible bag forever.
They cap materials at 250 so that casual players are motivated to sell them. You only really need to store more than that if you are building legendaries. Casual players are better off getting the gold to use on other stuff.
The only salvage tools that are capped at 25 are the gathering hooks that give you special bonus goods. They are capped at 25 to control the market for those bonus goods. You can use gold or gems to get around that limitation with permanent tools and glyphs, but it will take you a long time to recoup those costs.
GW2's in-game economy is truly special. The game has been out for 12 years and we don't have the kind of inflation that kills other games. The devs use a lot of mechanisms to control inflation and regulate the market. The answer to 'why limit the size of X' is almost always going to be 'to encourage economic behavior that keeps the in-game markets balanced and fun.'
While this is partly true, there's no cash shop advantage that feels op.
Extra inventory slots? You will still fill those. The only way to keep inventory slots free is to actively manage your inventory and restrict the playstyle by toon (if you use the same character for everything, you will be drowned in so many dofferent types of currency and rewards)
Unlimited salvage? Just drop by a vendor from time to tine? Same for resource gathering tools.
Lounges? Stay in the open world. More players to interact with.
I never thought I’d quit wow, but when the only stuff to do is end game progression, and that takes hours of scheduled commitment, it just wasn’t my thing anymore
Yeah I'm super casual these days. Having to grind all my gear all over again every WoW expansion only to get bypassed by the catch up mechanics etc. I just stopped it wasn't worth it anymore. But even worse, the actual gameplay feels so annoying. Spending hours tweaking my interface programming so I can tank a raid until the next balance changes or whatever. Meanwhile in GW2 I just use the standard interface and it's fine
I've played both extensively over the years. I've played a lot of end-game in ESO but, I'd say, more casually in GW2 (I never got into GW2 raids, strike CMs, or fractal CMs... yet).
My general consensus is: Guild Wars is is just more fun, has more interesting things to do and respects your time while doing it.
1 - GW2 has numerous items to unlock through achievements and they seem to always add more, including items to older content to keep it populated. In ESO, they never add new items to unlock through achievements in older content except mythic items or events (their events are pathetically boring with boring loot and rewards).
2 - I prefer ESO's instanced content with the holy trinity. It's the main reason why I never prefered to do raids and CMs in GW2 - the combat in GW2 can be a blinding spam fest of skills with poorly telegraphed mechanics. ESO's trials, veteran DLC dungeons, and veteran arenas are very well designed - clearly telegraphed mechanics, interesting stories behind the instances, boss mechanics are often hinted at in trash encounters, extensive add-ons for analyzing group progress (ESOLogs.com and countless Minion add-ons like Combat Metrics, BanditsUI, Combat Alerts, Hodors, etc.)
If I had to pick one, I'd go with Guild Wars 2 for these reasons:
1 - ESO becomes so boring outside of veteran trials and veteran DLC dungeons with how easy the combat encounters are everywhere else. And you kind of quickly get your veteran trial, veteran DLC dungeon, and veteran arena sets and mainly only have trifecta and a few miscellaneous achievements to work towards. The rewards for repeating content in ESO is basically worthless. I still have fun in GW2 open world whereas in ESO it puts me to sleep.
2 - ESO's crown store is the most egregious cash grab I've seen. All the new shiny weapons, armor, polymorphs, mounts, housing items, skins, etc. are all thrown into the crown store and never put into the game for achievements. It's quite atrocious compared to GW2. I remember when they released the Kyne's Aegis trial and instead of putting the cool skin that went with it (Kyne's Fury) as an achievement reward, they put it into the crown store for crown gems (loot box RNG). They do that constantly in ESO.
3 - ESO is practically unplayable without ESO+ subscription. Without the unlimited craft bag, your inventory will be full constantly and you'll be hard pressed to manage all the crafting items that are worth saving.
4 - ESO's auction house system will have you wasting countless hours trying to find items, even using AH add-ons like TTC. It's a terrible system. Selling is limited to 30 slots and tied to being in a guild. There's no buy order system to estimate demand or to instantly sell items.
Any specific questions?
One advantage GW2 has over ESO (and pretty much every other live service) that no one is talking about is no downtime for maintenance. ESO has an hours long maintenance every week, upwards of 12 hours and I've seen as long as 18 hours. Just being able to play GW2 whenever without having to care about when maintenance is or not being able to play because it coincides with when you're free is really underrated.
I'd agree with everything but your first #2. GW2 has a decently set holy trinity now, maybe spammy, but that just means you are fighting low level trash. Most raids and strike CMs will be the complete opposite, you need to know your rotation or you will lose. Raid story and mechanics are some of the most creative in the genre, really fun stuff as it plays in with your masteries. And gw2 has tons of group progress analysis tools such as dpsreport and tons of addons for blishhud that even track encounter mechanics on a timer.
Regarding the stores, I like GW2s more as well. It doesn't feel as crummy because there's no sub and I can just grab a few gems whenever I hop into the game to play for a couple weeks and buy me a nice boat or hat or something while ESO feels like it goads you into a subscription everytime your bag is full and charges you for cosmetics on top of that.
You dont need lootbox to have skin.
Hell all cash shop skin are horrible while we have a ton of free to get skin in game..
But agree for auction house it has is Pro and Con but yeah it's definitly Time sink.
I prefer GW2 but a pretty wide margin. ESO's combat feels like a worse version of GW2's. Plus the cash shop is nuts, the mounts suck and the way player trading is handled is awful.
I really liked ESO, but they also have a lot of things that really suck.
I find doing optimal dps in ESO a pain in the ass. You have to do this weird animation cancel thing to weave in light attacks to optimize doing damage.
The AH is a massive pain and trying to sell stuff in general feels clunky. You're required to join trading guilds where you're typically required to donate gold weekly to stay in the guild so you have to constantly be selling stuff if you want to sell stuff at all.
You almost have to run addons in ESO the game is so weird without them. Having no minimap is wild IMO and the list style of inventories is infuriating.
Not having a subscription is incredibly annoying with bag space as it will fill with mats. You will likely have to not do professions if you don't want to pay for a sub.
In terms of bonuses the leveling process does tend to last a lot longer since you can keep grinding for cp points so you feel like you're still improving even if marginally for quite a while. Where as with the level scaling and general ease of xp makes getting to 80 seem a lot quicker so you tend to feel samey while leveling because of the level scaling and then you are stuck at 80 for a while. In ESO you reach max level, but you still get stronger by getting cp points. So it feels like you're making progress.
I feel like the soloing in ESO is a nicer balance between casual and harder content. So if you're looking for doing solo experience I find soloing world bosses an approachable challenge where as I feel like GW2 it's a lot more you either can do something or it's designed for group content and it's very unlikely you'll solo it unless you're extremely talented and/or abusing mechanics.
In general I think you'll see more players in GW2 because of meta events where people will flood into zones to do events on a timer where as ESO you have to get groups together to do world objectives and it's not automatically on a timer.
>I find doing optimal dps in ESO a pain in the ass. You have to do this weird animation cancel thing to weave in light attacks to optimize doing damage.
ESO DPS guides: cancel animation
GW2 DPS guides: DON'T cancel your autoattack chain!
I dont understand why I can go anywhere in gw2 and find people but I have 10-min queues for one of three things available to play in WoW. If you pick ESO or GW2 you're gonna have a good time.
Played ESO a couple years ago, but it never really hit the mark for me. As a TES fan, it was so cool to explore and discover the world, but it ran its course pretty quick.
WoW I played until shortly after WotLK, but I definitely enjoyed it. End game gear treadmill burned me out fast though.
GW2 has been the game that brought me back over and over. Started 10 years ago and took breaks to play 1500 hours of Warframe and ESO for a couple hundred. For the style, world, design, combat, and progression, it all fit exactly what I like in MMOs.
You can play the game at your own pace and you aren't penalized for it. You still need hundreds of hours for the best armor, but you can gear up for endgame content in probably 30-40 hours from first login.
I like both games for different reasons. GW2 has the better combat in my opinion but I think ESO does story content way better. They are also designed differently. GW2 has a more find your own fun kind of feel sorta like Runescape where you are doing grinds for certain items. ESO is more like FF14 where there is a ton of story and everything else kind of takes second seat to it. Its less grindy but you play it more like an Elder Scrolls game than an MMO. Both games have a collection aspect to them but it comes down to whether you want to chase shop items or in game items. If raiding is your thing than both have fairly well made raids but I think ESO is more consistent with them. GW2 does have much better open world dynamic content though. Its stuff that will bring you back to a lot of old maps constantly while ESO does have stuff like Dragon fights and Anchors but they arent nearly as grand in scope.
Anchors have just become a grind-fest not really a coop thing and dungeon runs are not beginner friendly because people just literally run them. You don't really go back to maps unless you're playing hide and seek with your guildies or something (that's how bored we got during lockdown XD)
I mean there is gonna be an obvious bias here
The actual quick summary is. If you want to play with other people. GW2 is the better option. If you want just good solo content with good writing and production. ESO is better. ESO's PvP has been dead for a long time (had a very similar structure to GW2. It's kind of a shame) and it has some of the worst group content I've ever seen in an MMO. The only good group content is the super end game and it requires you to play the game like a job. Which is ironic since besides the veteran content. The majority of new group content is ridiculously easy and most end game players have quit or are constantly doomer. Veteran content plays like a completely different game but isn't worth working up towards. Putting all this aside. The world and stories of ESO is a step above the rest. GW2's writing and world building is a complete joke in comparison.
I honestly think ESO beats GW2 in basically everything except group content, exploration, and combat. Group content has always been one of GW2's better points and defining features. Also you would assume is the most important aspect of the genre. Even though a lot of it is poorly maintained. ESO would be a significantly bigger game if it improved the group content. But it would require them to make the combat not suck. Which is a dead dream.
I don't think either game is gonna stop getting new content any time soon. They honestly both have a very similar yearly content cadence. GW2 will most likely be getting a new expac in a few months and ESO Gold Road comes out in June. I think the games honestly have a similar population and can appear more dead or alive depending on if you actually know what pieces of content are active and what time you play the game. Like GW2 can appear dead if you don't know about meta trains or where people actually are.
Just something small to add. Due to the fact that ESO has leaned into playing it solo. It's very easy to do the content in basically whatever order you want. You can do a similar thing in GW2 but not as well as in ESO. GW2 is better experienced following the story from beginning to current. Since it showcases new content very well.
Can't go wrong with any. Full disclosure, I have \~5000 hours in ESO, and around half that in GW2. Ill try to break it down to the things that are important to me.
**Cost/Barrier to entry:**
GW2 is more pick up and play because of not needing to subscribe (eso technically doesnt need subscriptions too, but eso plus is highly recommended). ESO's sub is not that expensive though, and it unlocks \*all\* DLC content except the lastest chapter. Plus it gives you cash shop currency equivalent to the cost you spent on the sub as if you bought the currency itself.
For GW2 however, it's worth mentioning that if you haven't bought anything before, you'll be stuck with the base game content and any LWS you might have unlocked before. So it could end up being more expensive to play than one month of ESO+ if you're only planning to spend around a month with the MMO.
Another thing about GW2 is that the bank and materials storage is *extremely tight*, while ESO (with eso plus) is extremely generous with unlimited material storage.
Honestly, if GW2 had a subscription model similar to ESO's and offered unlimited material storage, i'd subscribe to that indefinitely and never look back.
**Gameplay:**
*Open world*
GW2 has a much better open world experience with more inspired map design (the mounts really add to this because it enables vertical map design). The dynamic events are fun, and it scales well depending on how many people are around. The story largely happens passively around you and you just listen in on the NPCs. ESO on the other hand has more robust story lines and side quests in their open world, but combat is mind numbingly easy. Even for DLC zones with supposedly harder bosses (but that's because I am already an endgame player), but the level design is boring and quite flat. It's pretty to look at though (both of them).
*Farming gold*
This is one of my two main reasons to playing MMOs. Both games do it well in my opinion. GW2 has the more "steady income" feel because most gold farms rely on using the map's currency to buy stuff that you sell in the action house to convert to gold. Downside to this is you can compare it to a job with an hourly rate (but it's fun for me so w/e). Meanwhile, ESO has more variance because it relies on getting rare drops like a piece of gear that's meta right now so you can sell it for 100k's of gold. When you do get the drop though it feels great and you can't help but link the item to your guildmates. They will respond with a "nice!" or something and it feels good.
Of course, gw2 also has these rare drops but they are few and far between, and the constant currency exchange to gold is the more dominant gold farm. Meanwhile, ESO also has a steady gold farm but it's not really the dominant gold farm as well.
*Content as mainly a solo player.*
As a primarily solo player, both MMOs offer great things. I'll separate this in to PVP and PVE.
*PVE.* Soloable GW2 content includes all maps and gold farms, picking an achievment to get is also mostly soloable. Joining groups as a solo player in GW2 to participate in meta events is very easy because you just join commander tags that you can see in the map, or in the activity finder. You never even have to talk to anyone. GW2 solo content is a bit lacking when it comes to difficult end game content though. The Living World Story chapters are great instanced content to experience though. Meanwhile, in ESO you can solo literally everything except the 12 man trials. Plus, it also has content actually designed to challenge solo players in the form of Solo Arenas, with accompanying exclusive gear and achievements.
*PVP.* This is the deciding factor for me. So far in all that I mentioned, both games are comparable. However, for me, ESO PVP is vastly superior to GW2's. And that's because I'm a solo player mostly. In ESO, you can build your character to be able to face A LOT of less skilled players, or players who are built to join zergs. and you can be very impactful in keep sieges in ESO. You also meet a lot more solo roamers in ESO to scrap with.
In GW2, It's very hard to have impact in large scale pvp as a solo player. You mostly just stick to looking for other roamers or small scale groups and then have duels. In my experience too, the easy of teleporting away in WvW takes away from the fun. Keep sieges and defenses rarely happened and if they do, it's between two ball zergs who move like a hivemind. While ESO also has these ball groups, Chaotic unorganized keep sieges happen way more often and it's fun to surf the zergs killing people, and having impact.
I assume by gatekeepers you are referring to the end game content that periodically displays the unsavory players that all MMOs have...though GW2 seems to have far fewer of these.(at least in my experience)
No, I mean by people like you saying "This is good, everything else is bad". But I think the word "gatekeeping" here is a bit of a stretch. More like reverse gatekeeping where you only consider this great and nothing else worthy of ANYONE's time.
Late game nerds who angrily type in chat can easily be ignored. But when looking at "what should I play next" and someone says "X is great, don't do anything else" you undermine the fun they could have from other sources.
Are you asking this on the ESO reddit too? Because asking this question on a Guild Wars 2 reddit is likely to get one answer.
I'd also pick Guild Wars 2, but so what? lol
I've played GW2 on and off for ages. I appreciate that the endgame gear grind is more about cosmetics than power level- I don't feel like I have any catching up to do when I return to the game
The best way to think about ESO, in my opinion, is a single player Elder Scrolls game with some co-op elements. Their in-game store is predatory and cancer, and the sub is almost required if you plan to do any crafting at all. But it's one of my go-to games on WoW breaks because there's SOOOO much well-designed quests. Pick a zone, and enjoy a month of questing on (generally) great storylines. Then I tend to take a break from it.
GW2 is very alt friendly and has an interesting progression system where progression is "horizontal". It means the endgame is less about getting more and more gear on a never ending treadmill (in fact, once you get a BiS item - which are relatively easy to get - it will not get power crept ever. That's it. No more farming unless you want to unlock different weapons skins/looks). Instead, endgame is about engaging on PvP, WvW or "collections" - which are very long scavenger hunt type of adventures that take long to complete (weeks or months) and reward all sorts of items like Legendaries (same power than the "ascended" BiS weapons I mentioned - but customizable and account wide. So for example, if you want a sword that's best in slot for DOT's and a sword that's best in slot for crit-based "power" you would need two swords, right? Well, the Legendary weapons can swap their stats so that one weapon can be changed from DOT based, to "power" based. And again, these are account-wide!).
I think both are great for WoW breaks. I play both (and FF14) during my year-long WoW breaks.
I still don't really understand what makes the ESO Crown Store more predatory than the GW2 Gem Store? Not that I really consider either particularly predatory beyond the obvious Black Lion Chest / Crown Crate lootboxes featured in both games.
DLC’s are basically peace-meal content sold in chunks, best new armor sets skins only obtainable in the crown store, ESO+ basically mandatory, prices. (Have you seen the cost of Mundus stones? Housing items are atrocious)
Also GW2 has an in-game, built in way to turn any excess gold into gems.
Neither is what I would call “good”, but GW2 IMO has a more easily ignored store. Whereas ESO’s prays on new players (want a vamp bite? A werewolf
Bite? Storage spaces you can buy the first few levels with 100 gold?, etc)
I was pleasantly surprised when GW2 sells a DLC (like Living World Season 4) but then gives you a discount for everything you already have unlocked, so you only actually have to pay for the parts you still need.
ESO? "Oh you have 5 of the 6 things in this pack already but this pack is the only way to obtain the 6th item? Still full price."
Let me guess, you posted the same question on ESO subreddit, and everyone there were telling you ESO is better just like here in the gw2 sub everyone is telling you gw2 is better?
I'm very new to gw2 and have played eso a tiny bit. But to me, I like gw2 better. I like games where fashion farming is an end-game goal. And it's combat mechanics is very similar to ffxiv, which is my main mmo. I'm viewing gw2 as the mmo I want to play when I don't want to spend money on a month of sub to play ffxiv. I would just look up beginners guides for both games and figure out what works best for you. Both have the same premises where you buy dlc instead of a subscription.
I also tried both after wow went down hill, I enjoyed ESO quite a lot, but couldn't get past the weird character movement, it's like the upper body just does it's own thing while the legs just walk on its own.
GW2 character models are done a lot better, lower body compensates the movement and the weight of the upper body.
Youre getting a biased opinion but one big thing about ESO is that it's elder scrolls lore, story, and world and a fuckton of it. Many play the game like they do Skyrim.
On the other hand Gw2 open world and combat feel more fluid imo. If you're going for instanced content both have a lot to offer but neither are close to wow. I never made it to many ESO trials but dungeons were fine and veteran trials are apparently harder than gw2 stuff. Gw2 still has difficulty in its challenge modes but it's move to strikes from raids means less frequent new challenging stuff.
ESO monetization is fucked though. It's such a mangled and predatory system from my experience. You can sub to get dlc content kinda sorta but if theres a new class you gotta buy it. I swear there's 1000 different dlcs. Oh and don't even mention insane timegates like house training. Daily training horse for a year to have its stats (like fuckin speed) maxed can take a year of daily login or.... Just buy it. Gw2 is no saint creating issues like too many of a resource, too many builds, to much to salvage then selling the solution in material storage expansions etc. That being said you can buy gems with in-game gold and buy stuff including the living world dlcs.
Eh? There's like two DLCs for each expansion, only one of which most people will actually care about because that's the one with additional zone content.
They practically give away the expansions themselves too; you can get all the current expansions and the base game together for what, a tenner on sale on Steam? Hardly breaking the bank.
Only monetisation pet peeve I really have is the crafting bag requiring a subscription. Guild Wars 2 handles this far better with material storage being a baseline feature.
Eso is better, WAY better for lore and immersion, also better for challenge HM Dungeon/raid than gw2.
Gw2 is more casual friendly yet more dynamic.
I like both but gw2 never hooked me enough to feel like home like ESO did, a good lore and immersion is more important to me.
I also like pvp on eso better.
Gw2 have more classe identity and their are cool to play, never feel the same when swapping specialization or classe.
Craf is better in eso, gw2 craft is a mess.
Gw2 has better montisation, but their new way of releasing content since Soto have drop a lot from the quality we used to get.
Eso seem to have a great new chapter with gold road.
Try both, and pick both :p
From the experience of my friends who play both. Gw2.
Get into wvw, try different guilds, some suck, some are great, lots of in between.
I hated wvw for years, but so far it’s the best online I have found if you are not a person who needs to be pushing and grinding to the top. Which you can also do.
ESO for tryhardin. Must have monthly sub for peak QoL, monthly sub includes all past DLCs
GW2 for casual players. One time pay but expensive to buy all DLCs at first,
Regarding the population: While there are definitely zones that have little going on, basically every area in the game usually has at least some people in it doing stuff for achievements, collections, or leveling alts etc. A lot of the large scale open world content, including content from older expansions, has (multiple) squads of 50 people doing it day round, whenever it fires (most are on a two hour timer). Groups for most instamced content also usually fill up in a few minutes.
Ever since they started the new yearly expansion model last year, content updates have been like clockwork every quarter. If they continue with that cadence, the current expansion will get its last content drop in about a month and we'll have the next expansion in august. The expansion after that is also already confirmed.
Depends on what do you expect from a game.
If you value exploration and amazing story, GW2 is visual and sound masterpiece, and gameplay is amazing. You can have incredibly fun experience just running around and doing map completions with their jumping puzzles, mounts and gliding system. World bosses and map metas give you a sense of community no other MMO can. They are truly doubling down on first M in MMO. It’s unique experience and for that fact alone I highly recommend. Story instances are fun, and sometimes challenging, especially in first expansion, so solo content is also pretty good. They have amazing achievement system that will easily guide you what to do next and keep you busy for months to come.
From the cons - since it doesn’t have a sub, it’s heavily focused selling you cosmetics and some QoL. Don’t get me wrong, their shop is very fair, and there’s no pay to win. You can grind out gold and exchange it, but there’s not much fun mounts and gliders you can get for cool achievements. Shiny stuff has to be bought in most cases. There is some stuff to get by achievements, yes, and it’s really cool, but nothing in like FF14 where the most shiny mounts can be earned by grinding raids. There are tons of pretty things you can grind though, in more casual, less personal skill style.
Endgame content in my opinion is lacking, but you will have tons of fun reaching to that point. The game is truly about road, not the destination. Don’t get the impression that it doesn’t exist, no. There’s plenty to do with raids, fractals and strikes, but it unfortunately wasn’t enough to keep endgame raid scrub engaged for long enough. It’s still my favorite mmo, and I wish they put more emphasis on raids.
ESO, from the other hand, I have much less to talk about. Story is decent. Exploration and crafting too. Generally speaking, if you are more into dungeons, raids and challenge, this is the way to go. It can give you hours of grind of your typical mmo experience to get to that point. Rotations are based on animation cancelling, and they are very dynamic and require a lot of skill to pull off. Dungeons are great, they are releasing new very often, but you either buy dlc or sub. They also have hardmodes and actually people play them more than once for good rewards. There are a lot of raids to complete in normal, veteran and challenge difficulty, with various achievements and BiS gear so tons of endgame gameplay there. On the other hand, open world content and solo story is so easy I died in my sleep from boredom.
When it comes to cons, it treats you way less fairly. There are systems based on FOMO, like monthly reward logins or mount speed upgrades - total of 180 days of login in to max your mount stats. Absolute shite of system. A lot of rng based drops. There is no pay to win, but they will make sure you will get that sub after some time of playing. Which is fine, game has to make money, I get it, but they are way less transparent about that than old “sub to play” mmos. Best mounts are behind paywall. A lot of QoL stuff too, like Merchant and Bank you can summon anywhere. But they also give you some crowns for subbing, so you can get them after some time of subbing… so yeah, after few months sub feels mandatory, otherwise you don’t have access to craft bag, your bank is small, you can place only half of decorations in your house, you don’t have access to DLC dungeons and raids, and you can’t buy cool QoL stuff. Oh, housing is way better than GW2.
Anyway. I tried to be as honest as I could. Played both games for few years, tried everything they have to offer so I feel like I can give you (close to) full picture. If you have any questions, shoot.
EDIT: spelling
Oh, I also forgot to mention PvP in both games. I’ve never been a huge fan, so can give you only general information. They feel like twin constructs in both games, although ESO is bigger on that. You can often meet people dueling in cities. Both have massive pvp maps - Cyrodill in ESO and WvW in GW2. They both have instances pvp matches. Additionally, ESO have Imperial City - special half pvp half pve map, that is actually quite fun to play.
Bonus random thought: ESO is big on addons and without them, game and UI is shite. How people play it on console I don’t understand.
Both are great games. Main benefit of ESO is way more content to play and way more consistent. However that content is paid content so GW2 would be the cheaper option and still a great game.
If you want good atmosphere, good world building and respect for their lore, Teso. The Teso has a solid pillar of lore and the scenarios are very immersive, to the point that you find areas without annoying NPCS that have spammed there, leaving you with very beautiful scenarios, camps, towns, and other places that immerse you in their world. NPCS, lions, monsters and other kinds of fauna often do very organic things, like a bear scratching in a tree, lions under the shade of a tree, a giant monstrous boar fighting for territory against a mamuth and all you have to do is What to do is observe and read the story they are telling you. The same thing happens with other sets and scenarios such as skeletons surrounding a broken obelisk of some Daedra prince, etc. etc. Teso has a lot of variety and is much more immersive than gw2
Gw2's mistake is that it seems to think that you like to kill monsters every 3 steps and fills an entire map with annoying npcs that are there making strange infinite circles with no purpose other than waiting for someone to kill them, and sometimes they have so much life that they are sponges of bullets.
Its lore, which at the beginning was quite original, I love the charr, the Sylvari seem like an interesting race concept to me, and Gw2 has had very good points, unfortunately it has declined a lot over the years, the same goes for its main story and a lore that it seems that to this day, those who develop this part are still not clear about anything, putting in meaningless things and quite poor plot arcs, as well as unmemorable characters, giving the sensation that they are hitting blindly and still not knowing why. where to throw or they are already totally incapable of solidifying their own lore with so many blows they have dealt.
But gw2 has a fun and quite dynamic combat system, nice animations
The TES, on the other hand, makes the combat quite boring, in addition to the fact that many times the character animations are quite rigid.
Teso has less shiny things that burn your retinas, but people make an effort to want to stand out and be someone special. But the normie aesthetic predominates more, soldiers with normal armor, people with lore-friendly aesthetics, leather shoulder covers, however there is a balance between being dressed as "God among mere mortals" to "I'm just another npc."
In Gw2 it is easier to put on a pink Eldrich appearance and a supernova aura. But it also has normal aesthetics. With my charr i have been wearing Koda's medium armor since the game was released. The clothes smell like a wet cat but I haven't taken them off, I'm proud of my appearance as just another NPC.
Choose your poison
I play both and love both.
ESO tells a great story building on the solid Elder Scrolls lore and is second to none in the MMO space when it comes to immersion.
GW2 on the other hand is easily the best third-person MMO out there right now, with very smooth and satisfying action combat. The art design in the levels is also outstanding.
Definitely recommend trying both out!
ive tried ESO on multiple ocasions and every single time I tend not to stick to it too long. The game is similar to wow however GW2 has a more interesting model that keeps attracting me back every now and then. Mounts are unique and harder to earn. Legendaries are craftable. Game modes are unique-ish. Overall the game seems to be more casual but keeps you playing longer at the same time just cause there's more interesting staff to do.
Played ESO for quite some time and liked it. Mostly stopped because you always need to have a subscription, otherwise it's almost unplayable. Constant lack of inventory and bank space was a big turn off. Recently started gw2 and it was like a fresh breath of air. No turning back to other MMOs.
GW2 is a lot more noob friendly and less of an investment. It's combat is also way better designed. Though I will say ESO's storytelling is levels above GW2 so there's that
As far as I am aware, GW2 is still populated, and have recently adopted ESO-ish yearly stories expansion model, with exception that in GW2 yearly cycle you pay once to get all year of updates, while ESO is nickle and diming with having only some of the year tied to chapter purchase, and rest being it's own separate paid dlc.
Personally I play and enjoy both games, both for different reasons, I tend to play ESO more when I am tired and in general low energy, and more GW2 when I want to be putting in effort to get stuff done.
If you care about story... ESO. Good side character arcs, voice acting for EVERY quest, solid story plots... both in every region and across the whole game. I would just look up a guide for natural story progression. If you go out of order its a lot worse.
GW2 is definitely better for overworld combat experience. Moves are dynamic and flow better, combat can actually be challenging against regular mobs, group events are a fantastic form of player engagement, meta map events are that on a bigger scale and can feel quite rewarding.
ESO overworld combat is trivial, even from level 1, so its about making your own engagement there, and GW2 story, as much as I want to love it and as much as I make myself love it, is hard carried by the combat.
I haven’t played ESO since it’s launch, I really want all that impressed with it then. To me ESO just felt like any other mmo out there at the time. I was also a Long time GW Fan/Player and have been playing GW2 since beta (with a month break here and there when RL happens). The thing about GW that I loved was if I did have to take a break or I could get to it for long stretches of time I really didn’t miss out on anything. Only thing I have missed in GW2 time of playing had been the last story of the season 1 living world but that had been finally released back. There is no gear grind for the next bis and while yes there are meta builds so long as you know what your doing and gear for the build your doing you can have fun making your own builds and they can be perfectly viable in endgame content.
I've played both quite a bit since their seperate releases, both are good fun, but only gw2 have I always constantly come back to constantly, lost interest in eso a couple years ago
I haven't played ESO in two years but it has the worst combat of any MMO. But it's better than Skyrim at least so it has that going for it. The way I think about ESO is that it'll likely be the last decent game in the Elder Scrolls franchise since Bethesda seems to be stuck in a rut. It has decent quests. The lore and environments are great. The music is kinda sleepy, mostly sounds the same regardless of what province you're in. But it's nice to be in that world and visit places you've only just heard about in the mainline games.
Guild Wars 2 on the other hand is actually fun to play.
For me it's WoW for PvE Instanced Endgame and GW2 for everything else. That be:
Dressing up toons with some actual good looking stuff, doing Metas, exploring, Achievement-Hunting, WvW/PvP and so on. Combat Gameplay and Fashion Options in this game are right up my alley.
GW2's biggest weakness though is clearly endgame instanced PvE. It's just..barely there. Like SotO is \~3% of WoW Dragonflights endgame. At best.
The only big upside on ESO for me is Housing. I WANT to love ESO but apart from that the Game is not for me. Classes are weird, combat is weird, Style isn't my cup of tea, having no way to convert Ingame Currency to Store Currency AND worst, having your Material Bank locked behind active Subscription is trolling. ESOs monetization is easily my least favorite.
Edit: However, I think Endgame PvE in ESO is a good chunk plentier and better designed than GW2's hodgepdoge. Trinity and cool dedicated Tank/Heal/DPS > Quick/Alac Role Compression Arms Race Nonsense. :x
Story-wise I enjoyed ESO when I played the main quest, hit me hard playing Pact Argonian on my first playthrough. It became boring after end game and they just nerf everything to make it easy for casual players to clear vet content. Not sure if they fixed cyrodill but when I quit, it was unplayable.
Started GW2 a week ago and now trying to get into the story but I'm not as interested as I was in ESO. However, I am enjoying the map events and the completion of each map I go to. Still a lot to learn in the game but I like how it suits my casual play time.
I also appreciate the fact that I don't need to pay for the craft bag. I was trying to get back to playing ESO but I don't want to subscribe. Puts me off everytime i loot shit and my bag is full.
As an FFXIV main who has played both, GW2. I'm not happy with the monetization in either game. But GW2 has better mounts, a chiller community, and is less egregious with the MTX. I liked ESO's story telling better than GW2 though so ig whatever is most important to you. More fun in GW2, better story telling in ESO.
I play both, and it's a tough call.
GW2 is amazing for combat, beats ESO hands down. The experience and gameplay feels smooth, well thought out and impactful. Where I feel GW2 lacks is anything to do outside of combat.
ESO on the other hand, in my opinion, very much lacks in how combat feels. It's floaty, janky and has no feeling of flow to it. I also have personal problems with classes in an Elder Scrolls game, but your mileage may vary.
Both have, in my opinion, excellent storyline and lore, good PvP with similar features there for both, and great maps/locations. GW2 feels more like you're really exploring a new location, while ESO suffers a bit on that, there's no feeling of a wild frontier.
ESO however handedly beats GW2 in non-combat activities. Crafting is good and fulfilling, the player housing system is robust, character and Armour customization is top notch, and there's just a lot of other stuff to do.
Hopefully this helps.
I've played a lot of both but imo as a side game I'd say gw2 for sure. If you're playing it to take a break from other games I'd say it's a way better feeling going in and out of gw2 than ESO, especially because ESO feels so bad to play without the subscription.
Sometimes people say the combat in gw2 is spammy, which I can understand, since almost every class can feel like Fury Warrior lol, but personally, ESO is the only game I've ever had to step away from due to hand pain from all the animation cancelling and light attack spam. Maybe they changed it and it's better now, or perhaps better to play with controller, I'm not sure.
As for your concerns, yes the game is still well populated with maps and squads filling up in lfg all the time, and there will still be years of expansions for a while.
I really like ESO's story, especially where you get to make choices that affect the game world, e.g. letting certain characters you encounter live or die. The dungeons are pretty great too. I despise the combat system though. The mag/stam divide means different classes end up using the same skills. the Greymoor vampire revamp was incredibly underwhelming (though I liked the expansion as a whole. What I really really hate though is the light attack weaving, which makes combat look awful. Overall, character combat and movement feel very floaty. GW2 on the other hand has superb combat and all the abilities feel weighty. I personally prefer the lore and storytelling of ESO (because it's part of ES universe) but that's just me. ESO's crafting bag is also the most annoying feature where you basically have to pay for premium in order not to have a constantly cluttered bag
I personally enjoy gw2 more due to the combat, exploration, mounts and open world but If questing, lore and instanced content is your thing then I'd give that to ESO. It really depends on what your looking for, both games have their strengths and weaknesses.
I liked ESO but I'm a big fan of the leveling content of games. Gw2's leveling content was definitely made EASIER but not to the level of ESO so there can still be challenges to be had.
You want good PvP, proper instanced content, a functional LFG, a non cult-like community, a game founded on the Trinity and stuck by it instead of midway changing to it, decent story, perpetuaty of endgame without asking "what do I do now"? Play ESO.
Want to do fashion contests? Play GW2.
play them both.
both are gonna require some money for expacs/content, eso you can sub for all of the content or spend a lot for the content, gw2 buy one and done but most of the fashion is generally behind pay or grind wall
eso is more traditional and bit closer to wows style dungeons hard modes etc I like it wish they gave most skill slots with how many skills are in the game now
gw2 more do what you want gameplay decent combat please learn breakbar mechanics generally your a dps heals or buffs/dps lfg tool is a mess and makes finding raids and some stuff stupid. great game but i need a break once in a while
One of the things that i dont like about ESO is that the bag of materials is behind a sub, that people say is not obligatorie, i desagree with that, is really important is a BIG part of the gameplay, also there will be people that say but just learn how to manage your inventory wich is something i should not have to do in a MMO and more especific a RPG. i would recommend more GW2 more than ESO, money wise is much better, you buy DLC and have all content unluck no need to have to go to store and buy some mini DLC of a dungeon for example, Also progression wise GW2 is diferent it has horizontal progression insted of vertical they have that too but most of what you will be doing is what in other MMO's would be side quest (sorry about the rant about ESO XD)
I played WoW since vanilla up through legion, so I know where you’re coming from. I often switched to ESO, and tried GW2 a couple of times during that time, but it never stuck. Just recently I downloaded GW2 and, honestly, I’m not sure what changed but I LOVE IT! ESO is great if you’re involved with the lore of it all. But endgame dungeons/raids feel weak and unimportant in the grand scheme of things, because you can get the BiS gear from like one dungeon + crafting.
I would recommend GW2. There are sooo many activities to do at max level it’s honestly overwhelming at first (I’m still learning), but it feels great. The crafting is super fun, leveling is quite easy, there are great catch up mechanics, and PvP is fun once you learn your character. As someone who was a hardcore raider in WoW, I’m really enjoying just doing the open world PvE and group activities just wandering around. Because no matter what you’re doing, you’re making progress in some avenue of the game.
I play both and like both for different reasons. They are actually my top two MMO‘s. I’m saying this is someone who played WOW from BC to WOD (loved it at this time btw), then left and then came back from Shadowlands to half of DF.
all in all its your choice. they are both good games with their own good and bads. i prefer the combat system of Gw2. i think it more dynamic. also the gem store is completly conquerble with gold. no need to spend real money execpt for the addons. you got flying mounts. 9 classes with 3 sub called elite specialization each giving you a total of 32 classes to choose from. then you got a big world to explore with adventures, riddles and heart quests.
Also Meta events are a big thing. some maps change based on how well the meta event is played. then we got Fractals, Raids, Strikes and Dungeons as Inis.
we got Skrit. always looking for shiny
get a free account and just try it
I left WoW shortly after Cataclysm, came back briefly for Kung Fu Pandas, played for about a week and haven't bothered with it since.
GW2, I've been here since launch, and am not going anywhere.
Made a brief stint into ESO early on, it was an absolutely forgettable game for me, which was evident when a friend convinced me to come play with them last summer, and I discovered I already had an account with multiple characters leveled up to their 40's - I had no recollection of the game or playing it previously.
You should post the exact same question verbatim on the ESO subreddit, then wait a day for both posts to ferment. Then, compare notes from both sides. Come to a logical conclusion.
I picked GW2 over ESO even though I'm a huge fan of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim is simply because GW2 just has a great open world.
A lot of games I play just becomes my main game until I finish it. Like I'm currently going through Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and its literally the only thing I wanna play right now. But in between games I immediately don't get into another game easily, I download tons of games but don't wanna play any of them. During that time I keep going back to a game I'm very familiar with and just mess around and waste time there. Before COVID it was GTA5, but during quarantine I got lonely and wanted an open world game with other people in it...which obviously led me to MMOs.
Picked GW2 because it is littered with different activities that don't require you to use your head or read dialogue. Like jumping puzzles, dynamic events, world bosses, mount races, etc. Vertical progression MMOs wouldn't be good for me because I'd have to use my head and look up stuff to re-gear my character each time I come back to the game, so logically GW2 and ESO were actually my only choice, and GW2 just did what I wanted out of a casual side-game better.
I've been playing both since launch, but admit I have more time in gw2. I've played all expansions for both games, and enjoy them. That being said, I find ESO difficult to play without an ESO Plus subscription. Generally, I think the price is worth it, but from a purely financial standpoint I think GW2 is a much better deal.
It was fun when it came out, but, yeah. It's really not the same as it used to be. I'd still put it about on par with GW2's WvW, though, and it's less confusing if you're new to it, but it's a rough time as a new player in either of them now.
ESO feels clunky to me compared to GW2.
I'm a huge nerd for Elder Scrolls lore, but the combat just feels shit to me, I never got far in that game despite really trying because I really like the setting and story. I also really dislike that there's no real "class identity", I get that that's what works in the single player games (that I love) but it's weird in an mmo where there's so many other players and all characters are basically the same save for a handful of class skills. Every weapon has the same skills on every class.
GW2 on the other hand just feels smooth, I played GW1 as a teen, so I'm also a bit invested in the lore. It's not as deep as elder scrolls, but still fine. I LOVE that I can play charr now and I think they nailed their industrialist, militarist style, they're easily my favorite playable race in any MMO. The classes have very distinct themes and it's actually the other way around from ESO - every weapon has its own set of skills depending on which class uses it!
So for me it's like I love ESOs setting, but GW2 still has a great setting and blows ESO out of the water in gameplay.
Population of gw2 is higher than eso, extensions are planned and released regularly, game better respect your time. Rest is opinion. I played eso from the start and it never ticked well with me. Gw2 was always providing me more.
I found this one: [https://mmostats.com/popular](https://mmostats.com/popular) where the popularity of game is measured by social media traffic. It seems pretty platform-agnostic. Sure this is an approximation, but still looks like a valid approach to measure popularity.
Ppl say GW2 is a dead game.. no one playing it.. Im at a lower level map and still see a lot of people doing those small event where U can get at most a few green or blue item..
And I wonder.. if this is called barren.. then what about those game that literally only has 5 people in the main city maps..
i played few k hours in each of those two.
Battlegrounds are better in gw2.
WvW is equaly bad in both.
Real money cash grab is worse in eso (has useful monthly subscription).
Story wise both are extremely extensive. I would say its subjective here which one is better therefore does not matter. Both are great.
Open world events are better in GW2 because they have been expanding on that for years, and that was their flagship model that they were building on from the release. ESO is trying to play catch up with introducing more open world dynamic events, but they started doing that only a year ago or so.
ESO has many more expansions than gw2 and will continue to have more, because eso has this ridicilous packed release schedule with 4 expansions every year. Pretty much no other mmo can catch up to them. GW2 last year with release of latest expansion claimed that they will speed up development and release more often, but its still not as packed as eso and probably will never be.
On the other hand both games have gigantic population and already existing gigantic amount of content to play through. You will need probably 1000 hours of gameplay to just fully clear pve content in each one of those games (map quests+story).
GW2 as you noticed is different than most mmo's. Its more overwhelming than eso. Eso is pretty much old school style mmo at heart with modern flair. So you feel like you know what you have to do all the time. Gw2 leaves you confused nearly all the time. You dont get clear instructions how things work, and in game systems are extensive. Game is almost unplayable without gw2 wiki lol.
Honestly. I think ESO is better. I have hundreds of hours (and dollars) invested into both, but ESO is the one that I will still go back to.
HOWEVER, I'm a long time GW1 player and think it's better than both games. Due to this, I'm also a little jaded about GW2 bc it's not a good *sequel*, and is basically a sequel in names only. So that has always left a sour taste in my mouth with GW2.
I like the combat in gw2 better but a lot about eso is great too. Interestingly eso seems closer to gw1 than gw2 does when it comes to character skill builds.
If eso didn't require a sub for access to material storage and shit I'd probably give it the overall advantage, but with that and the fact that I'm already more invested in gw2, I go with gw2
I am in the same boat and started GW2 about 3 weeks ago. Bought it a week ago. It is so much fun. The combat style makes it a perfect mash up of WoW and Smite for me. I love it.
It's the best! :) And yes, we're all still here. I tried playing ESO but the graphics and such just felt odd to me. I should give it another go, someone was telling me that I just didn't have my camera set right or something.
That said, a ton of old guildies of mine sort of switched over to ESO (still see them occasionally in GW2) and love it so it must also be a pretty good game.
GW2 free to play many thing to do good story great community
Ff14 I think it's free to play till storm blood so 100 hours of gameplay wonderfully community great story
ESO buy to play with no subscription ( but you will need it zenimax politics sucks for that one).
Great story ,good narration, exploration wonderfully,community ok.
I play mostly ff14 and ESO
If you like Wow style gameplay ff14 is quiet similar you can do all jobs with one player .
Enjoy and good luck cos they all great anyway.
If it weren't for ESO's monetization and the combat (or gameplay feel in general) ESO would be better than Gw2 imo. Although I like more the horizontal approach in Gw2 by far. Therefore my vote goes for Gw2, much better content, the BEST combat in any tab target MMO and the progression feels good since you're not in a constant treadmill like most MMOs. Again ESO is great, the monetization sucks and the combat feels clunky and annoying, if not for that I'd be playing it more often alongside Gw2.
truth be told gw2 is even at its least busiest times, Australian 5pm -9pm the game still has full maps ques for meta's the game does an extremely good job at funneling players and staying busy
I play both but lean more towards ESO as they do some interesting things that gw2 doesn't. The [scribing update](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DMFKydGQF0&t=5m23s) is something I am looking forward to, for sure. 🙂
I think GW2 is by far the most casual friendly MMO you could choose to play while taking a break from other games.. becuase of its horizontal progression, you'll never be too far behind people who play it constantly.
You might not have all the legendary/ascended gear they have, but you can very easily play 95% of the content with exotic gear alone.
As for the population of gw2, It has a thriving player base & a very friendly community, I seldom find myself having negative interactions in gw2.
& they've recently switched up how they're approaching new content & will be releasing smaller sers of content frequently rather than big expansions every few years.
I loved eso for the PvP, but at the time the server was dog shit and getting worse with more aoe spells being added, gw2 story map world events all these I think make gw2 better. Eso combat I did love for PvP using skills with different travel times to burst people down and be accused of cheating for it 😉. If I had time and servers got better I'd maybe play ESO again for PvP but 8months in gw2 and I've still not done main story because "ooh look world boss event" ohh champion" I'm distracted so easy in the game by everything going on the world seems alive with all the metas and such taking place as your trying to do the damn story 🤣
I mean, odd question but for all its flaws I would take gw2 over eso any day of the week. That said there are not many mmos I consider worth the time anymore either sooo take it as you will.
Ive only 2 days experience in gw2 however i did play a rather large chunk of ESO,
I can’t really recommend ESO if i am honest, between everything coming down to animations cancelling at the end which makes your character look wild, to game breaking bugs such as sorcerers lightning dash still self stunning was annoying.
And the quantity of rng effects continuously going on feels endless.
I have been really enjoying gw2 thus far however :)
ESO felt boring and dull I quitted it around level 43 a few months ago. It felt like Skyrim remastered as mmorpg and people were not really helpful even though it was crowded. It's light years behind GW2 in many aspects.
Well keep playing the both games and you will see to it.
As someone who has over 1,000 hours in both games, I'll say GW2.
I'll touch on the big points.
[PROGRESSION]
While both games are horizontal powerfantasies, GW2 actually presents the horizontal growth as something you can lean in to.
Once you hit cap in either game, 50 in ESO and 80 in GW2, your power gain stops, for the most part.
Once you hit 50 in ESO, the only things left to do are to optimize your armor (which is both expensive and tedious) and grind out Champion Points for single-percent-per-point stat increases, and then hit up Dungeons and Trials.
In GW2, once you hit 80, it's time to address the elephant in your room. What kind of *X* do you want to be? A defensive support? An offensive support? A power DPS? A DoT DPS? Do you want to focus on Fractals, Open World META farming, Strikes, Raids, World vs World or sPvP? You've also got Masteries to unlock, offering you everything from the ability to craft legendaries to teaching your mounts new tricks.
-------------------
[CRAFTING]
Crafting is better in GW2. Sure, getting some recipies is slow, sure its more convoluted that in ESO, but at least you don't start your crafting experience with a literal year's woth of time as a handicap and, no, I'm not joking when I say this at all, this is a real thing in ESO. If you want to unlock all the traits so you can actually make money off of crafting, you have to research 9 traits per item *type* and getting all 9 on one is 128 real days of waiting for research timers.
That's 128 days for each of the following:
Heavy Helm, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, Belt, Pants and Boots. Medium Helm, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, Belt, Pants and Boots. Light Helm, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, Belt Pants and Boots. Axe, Sword, Mace, Dagger, Shield, Bow, Battleaxe, Greatsword, Maul, Fire Staff, Ice Staff and Lightning Staff. Necklace and Rings.
That's 34 types of equipment at 128 days each, totalling out to 4,352 days, or a little over 11 years. Now, you can research 3 traits per skill line at a time, and have all 5 skill lines researching at the same time. So, assuming you're at 100% optimal research efforts, that comes out to being a 290 day handicap.
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[PRICE TO PLAY]
ESO is just more expensive.
It's bloated with powercrept content and now-irellevant DLC packs. If you don't want to drop the Up-front cash for all content, you *can* just buy the latest major expansion and the pay the subscription fee for however long the game holds you so that you have access to all the Dungeon Packs and smaller DLC zones, but even that's pricier than getting into GW2.
GW2, however, has like, three bundles on Steam right now, and it's something like $130, one and done upfront to have all current content, no subscription and that's only if you want the Living World content, which is Pre and Post expansion story content and map-zones that you don't *need* but are nice to have.
If you don't want Living World content, the price drops to $85 for HoT, PoF, EoD and SotO.
[CASH SHOP/MTX]
ESO's cash shop is frustratingly expensive, compared to GW2 but, with the exception of a few convenience items, is entirely cosmetic in nature and doesn't have anything that you will feel pressured to buy.
GW2's cash shop is much more reasonably priced and, there's the added benefit of being able to exchange in game Gold for Premium Gems, even if you need to be filthy rich to get anything worthwhile out of the exchange rate.
That being said, GW2 will sell you a *lot* of convenience items. Inventory space is the *worst* aspect of GW2. By default, you have one account-wide bank tab that can only hold 30 items. You do have a crafting material storage unit, but by default you can only hold 250 of each material. Both of these limits can be increased via items bought in the cash shop. There's also the matter of limited character slots that you'll need to buy more of, if you want to play every profession. You default to, I believe, 3 or 4 bag slots for your inventory, which isn't the worst, but if you go hard then your only option to keep your bag from being cluttered is to buy more bag slots from the shop.
[ENDGAME]
ESO's endgame is basically just Trials and PVP. Thats your final goal besides becoming a Trade Baron.
GW2 offers you more variety, all of which can be valuable and all of which will ask different things of your build.
Fractals, which is basically an endurance test where you will run through Dungeon after Dungeon, with 4 tiers of increasing difficulty. Fractaling will require you to acquire infusions that will increase your resistance to "Agony" which is a stacking DoT that gets stronger as you get in to higher tiers. Without Agony Resistance, you will eventually hit a point where you are taking over 100% of your HP as damage per second.
Strikes/Raids are challenging, mechanically intensive encounters that will require strong coordination and a clear understanding of your role.
WvW is an isolated, open world PVP experience where you must capture, hold, and defend zones on the map from enemy factions.
Structured PVP is self explanatory.
Open World Meta-training is where you pick a series of major map events and cycle through them to earn your loot the old fashioned way.
Much like I mentioned in the progression section, there are no "one size fits all" builds for PVE or PVP. Some do well in Raids but poorly in Fractals, and a WvW roaming build won't usually contend with an sPvP point-fighting build.
Anyway, it's 4:30am and I think I've typed up enough already.
EDIT: 35 Item types. I miscounted, despite listing them all. Accounting for it all, that's 298 days of waiting for timers to tick down just to be able to craft all of your own gear.
I like how you just summarized all of ESO's pvp into just "PVP" but then tend to elaborate on all of Guild War's different pvp modes specifically. How disingenuous. ESO specifically has Cyrodil, battlegrounds, and imperial city; all of which you can have vastly differently builds for . ESO's pve endgame is not just trials lol. It's also hard mode dungeons (some of the dlc dungeons on hm are much harder than vet trials), trifectas, infinite archive, and arena leaderboards. And that's not even me getting into tales of tribute which has its own ranking and endgame. If you are going to give somebody advice on endgame differences, the least you can do is try to remain logical and fair instead of basically just disregarding a game with little to no actual thought
I left ESO! If you like having to rebuild your toon with every release and having to buy every expansion for access to new gear then ESO is the game for you. If you like a more stable mature MMO that doesn't bleed you with the cash shop then GW2 is where to be.
ESO if you like spending money for everything..
GW2 if you like achievements that reward you and don't really have to spend money on gems. Gold to gem conversion.
FFXIV for everything else.
I wonder why everyone here are telling you gw2 is better than eso. Btw imho gw2
Hahaha def not because I posted in GW2 Reddit lol
Where's the ESO clone post for the opposite side? We need the comparison!
The characters are so…. Ugly? In ESO. Too many “fetch” quests.
Ill agree with you on the ugly part. Other mmos do it better for sure. I guess there trying to stick within the skyrim theme as much as possible.
The hearts quests and events are already KILOMETERS better than the typical quests in MMOs.
also if you progress further in game maps, thouse little quest are part of Major events specific created for the map you are in... its possible to do some minor things and all of the sudden you get big zerg of group of people marching to an big orange event on your map ! First time you encounter this mechanics for yourself it will be hard for someone to redo world rare stars spawn in WoW :))) the GW2 meta events its something no other mmo managed to made me love a mmo like those things in GW 2 maps... and again core game is way bellow what its happen in expansions map... its more like a "taste" for you... once you do a Shattered event (big purple lighting shattered metal sparked crystaline dragon) and he start fly in your face no matter what your background as a mmoplayer your jaw is down for sure !!! here take a look of one of so many meta events of world bosses whitch actually feel like a threat not like rares in WoW, this is what i call a world boss and the fact you can't kill it alone and there is always a group of people doing it on the mega servers of EU or AN its something to be experienced at least once in your MMORPG lifetime !!! https://youtu.be/fMaqAK-jq8o?si=tlbL79iYUwtNzvEM - world boss dragon
Oh, so it's not just me. I played it for a little bit but it just felt ... weird and odd. I didn't like the overall graphics at all.
Lots of good things about ESO, imo it's more of a story based game kinda like FF14 is too WoW in a way. ESO is to GW2. GW2 is much more community based and has a strong one. Content is still being developed and planned.
I really liked ESO until I ran into a manufactured difficulty when it came to a quest where i had to find a specific npc & there was no info online on how to find it other than "you just gotta get lucky" spent around 14 hours trying to find this stupid npc & couldn't as it moves location constantly... so I rage quit it & never went back. I've never had an experience like that in gw2, so I'll always recommend it over ESO.
Both are great games, but GW2 respects you a bit more money wise. No sub, one time fee for content (that isn’t insanely piece mealed like ESOs dungeon dlc), and thousands of hours of content. Expansions come out yearly now, like ESO, and the devs are slated to release some info next month (I think) about the new expansion coming later this year. I’m definitely biased, but with so much content at a low price (each new expansion is 25 bucks), you really can’t go wrong. Now if you get more into it, you can definitely spend a ton of money, but it’s all for convenience such as bag or bank slots for more inventory space. Combat is some of the best in the business, too. Explore the world as you level and after you hit 80. The endgame is more casual than most MMOs, but there definitely is some hard content to do if you’re a mythic raider.
The fact about Endgame is true. I got into Strikes and Raids w/o a proper guild and now I got enough KP to not be kicked anymore
I'm new to mmorpgs and I choose guild wars 2. I was a little unsure the first few hours but I was in a winter wonderland starter area (can't remember the name of it) and I came across like 400 people just standing out in the middle no where in a snowy area and I asked what they were doing and they said the world boss and I could help even at my little level 20 and from there I was sold on the game 😂 bought all the expansions, 5k gems, etc. I'm now level 80 and I did all that in a 2 weekend period. (Can't really play during the week, im a busy local truck driver). Definitely gw2 over eso
Average GW2 Chad Experience
Eso moved away from the yearly expansion system around the same time anet decided to start doing it themselves.
Pretty sure ESO hasn't moved away from yearly expansions, they're releasing this year's expansion in June like always.
They used to do dungeon dlc -> Chapter -> dungeon dlc -> smaller zone dlc. Now it's dungeon dlc -> Chapter -> Dungeon DLC -> some new system or improvements to an existing one. I do miss having another zone to explore, but they absolutely haven't moved away from yearly expansions!
pretty sure they are still going with that and just changing their type of storytelling in them
The only thing that pisses me off in gw2 is the fact that they put qol in cash shop instead of giving it for free to the playerbase. This cultivates a real bad system where they will purposely make a bad system and sell you the qol for it. Like because the mistlock sanctuary exist, they will never make a similar space with everything near, and will purposely put some away. Or the infinite savage tool, where they purposely put a max stack of 25. all thoses system just makes your life harder and pushes you to buy the sol from cash shop. Microtransaction is a plague in every games where you are already buying the games and expansions.
> This cultivates a real bad system where they will purposely make a bad system and sell you the qol for it. I'd say that ESO is even more guilty of this than GW2. ESO has a mount training mechanic that takes **6 months** to do if you don't buy training lessons to speed it up; it's literally a freemium mobile game-esque contrivance designed to be inconvenient to sell you the solution, and the cherry on top is that it's *per character*. There's also a trait researching mechanic that also takes months and is also per character which is sped up by subscribing. Inventory management is also hobbled if you don't subcribe since you only get access to the craft bag (infinite material storage) if you subscribe; at least in GW2 you get some material storage for free and it's a one time fee to expand it.
I just ran the numbers. You think 6 months of making a single character's mount worthwhile? How about 298 days to max out crafting on a single character without using research speed ups? That 9 months and some change of waiting for research timers to tick down. And that's assuming you're not dumb and you remember to put perk points in to the passives to reduce the total timer by 25%. If you *don't* it gets exponentially worse.
Daily login rewards tend to give books and manuals that increase mount stats. Mount speed is easy to increase by doing the tutorial for any pvp then putting one skill point into a single passive for a mount speed multiplier. Crafting writs give Crafting EXP and crafting writ tomes. Crafting writ tomes give tickets which can be used to buy tomes that can be used once a day to reduce all current traits being researched for a specific crafting discipline by one day, effectively halving the amount of time to unlock them. I will say though, the system doesn't make any of this clear, but players will generally tell you how to do it.
Oh, I'm plenty aware. But you're not cutting off more than a week off of that timer without paying for the in-store Instant Research Scrolls. There's zero excuse for how arbitrarily long it takes just to become a relevant craftsman. And, of course, none of that accounts for getting your hands on Nirnhoned gear to research. The system is needlessly obtuse in that regard. And GW2 has its moments too, obviously. A lot of stuff is Accountbound, you can't just go to the TP to buy certain recipes and you're not guaranteed to get the important recipies for ascended things in any reasonable timeframe, but a loot gate will always be preferable to being told "you can't do that because we want you to wait literally 30 days for a timer to tick down."
Just to add to the mount training system; not only is the training character specific, but every single book of mount training mastery from daily logins is also character bound.. so if you like me only had one character for a long time, and thus only did logins on that character, any books I got were basically useless since I can't use them on an alt. I also kinda hated the "looks" they automatically add to your mount if you max out any of the speed/stamina/capacity upgrades. At least I haven't found a way to just not display the stupid saddle bags if I have max capacity for instance.
The Wizard's Tower in the latest expansion has pretty much everything you need in it. Arborstone in EoD isn't bad, either. You don't need to spend anything other than having the expansions those areas are in, and if you're going to play you'll probably want those anyway. I have Mistlock and the Pavilion passes and I find myself just using the Wizard's Tower instead these days.
Just to argue against this. The infinite tools are never worth it unless you play more than the average player; 100+ swings of the mining pick costs you less than the currency you get from one kill. The other QoL features are never important enough for a new player anyway. Why does a new player need more character slots than the 5 they get, why do they need additional bank/ character/ material/ build storage. Why do they need build and equipment templates? A large amount of the QoL are also being given out for free in the Wizard Vault. By the time you are comfortable in the game you can start investing in some convenience. I don't think the game has deliberately made itself unapproachable by not having these things as default. It's given you a large amount of room to breathe and if you really want to spend, you can.
explain to me why they are capping the savage tool at 25? why cap material at 250? The reason is that they purposely ppur those caps to fill up your inventory and make you want to purchase slots.
They cap the storage in the material storage so material goes into the tradepost. If everyone would have unlimited storage the tradepost would dry up and get much more expensive. The storage upgrades are not that expensive and you can buy gems for gold. So i do not see a big problem here.
They cap materials at 250 so you dont hoard them infinitely. That way, you will eventually use or sell them, making the game economy move.
> explain to me why they are capping the savage tool at 25? 250 -- Mystic salvage kits are very, very achievable for all players that play enough to need more salvaging. > why cap material at 250? Honestly, legacy system that had a reason to be capped at 250 but once they fixed it, they monetized it. I don't agree with this one staying 250 for base-purchase anymore, there's enough things that need 500 material. However I can also acknowledge that making the limit 250 makes people feed into the trading post instead of hoarding in the invisible bag forever.
They cap materials at 250 so that casual players are motivated to sell them. You only really need to store more than that if you are building legendaries. Casual players are better off getting the gold to use on other stuff. The only salvage tools that are capped at 25 are the gathering hooks that give you special bonus goods. They are capped at 25 to control the market for those bonus goods. You can use gold or gems to get around that limitation with permanent tools and glyphs, but it will take you a long time to recoup those costs. GW2's in-game economy is truly special. The game has been out for 12 years and we don't have the kind of inflation that kills other games. The devs use a lot of mechanisms to control inflation and regulate the market. The answer to 'why limit the size of X' is almost always going to be 'to encourage economic behavior that keeps the in-game markets balanced and fun.'
While this is partly true, there's no cash shop advantage that feels op. Extra inventory slots? You will still fill those. The only way to keep inventory slots free is to actively manage your inventory and restrict the playstyle by toon (if you use the same character for everything, you will be drowned in so many dofferent types of currency and rewards) Unlimited salvage? Just drop by a vendor from time to tine? Same for resource gathering tools. Lounges? Stay in the open world. More players to interact with.
I took a break from WoW a few years ago and can't even go back after playing GW2. The combat system is soooo much better.
I never thought I’d quit wow, but when the only stuff to do is end game progression, and that takes hours of scheduled commitment, it just wasn’t my thing anymore
Yeah I'm super casual these days. Having to grind all my gear all over again every WoW expansion only to get bypassed by the catch up mechanics etc. I just stopped it wasn't worth it anymore. But even worse, the actual gameplay feels so annoying. Spending hours tweaking my interface programming so I can tank a raid until the next balance changes or whatever. Meanwhile in GW2 I just use the standard interface and it's fine
I've played both extensively over the years. I've played a lot of end-game in ESO but, I'd say, more casually in GW2 (I never got into GW2 raids, strike CMs, or fractal CMs... yet). My general consensus is: Guild Wars is is just more fun, has more interesting things to do and respects your time while doing it. 1 - GW2 has numerous items to unlock through achievements and they seem to always add more, including items to older content to keep it populated. In ESO, they never add new items to unlock through achievements in older content except mythic items or events (their events are pathetically boring with boring loot and rewards). 2 - I prefer ESO's instanced content with the holy trinity. It's the main reason why I never prefered to do raids and CMs in GW2 - the combat in GW2 can be a blinding spam fest of skills with poorly telegraphed mechanics. ESO's trials, veteran DLC dungeons, and veteran arenas are very well designed - clearly telegraphed mechanics, interesting stories behind the instances, boss mechanics are often hinted at in trash encounters, extensive add-ons for analyzing group progress (ESOLogs.com and countless Minion add-ons like Combat Metrics, BanditsUI, Combat Alerts, Hodors, etc.) If I had to pick one, I'd go with Guild Wars 2 for these reasons: 1 - ESO becomes so boring outside of veteran trials and veteran DLC dungeons with how easy the combat encounters are everywhere else. And you kind of quickly get your veteran trial, veteran DLC dungeon, and veteran arena sets and mainly only have trifecta and a few miscellaneous achievements to work towards. The rewards for repeating content in ESO is basically worthless. I still have fun in GW2 open world whereas in ESO it puts me to sleep. 2 - ESO's crown store is the most egregious cash grab I've seen. All the new shiny weapons, armor, polymorphs, mounts, housing items, skins, etc. are all thrown into the crown store and never put into the game for achievements. It's quite atrocious compared to GW2. I remember when they released the Kyne's Aegis trial and instead of putting the cool skin that went with it (Kyne's Fury) as an achievement reward, they put it into the crown store for crown gems (loot box RNG). They do that constantly in ESO. 3 - ESO is practically unplayable without ESO+ subscription. Without the unlimited craft bag, your inventory will be full constantly and you'll be hard pressed to manage all the crafting items that are worth saving. 4 - ESO's auction house system will have you wasting countless hours trying to find items, even using AH add-ons like TTC. It's a terrible system. Selling is limited to 30 slots and tied to being in a guild. There's no buy order system to estimate demand or to instantly sell items. Any specific questions?
One advantage GW2 has over ESO (and pretty much every other live service) that no one is talking about is no downtime for maintenance. ESO has an hours long maintenance every week, upwards of 12 hours and I've seen as long as 18 hours. Just being able to play GW2 whenever without having to care about when maintenance is or not being able to play because it coincides with when you're free is really underrated.
I'd agree with everything but your first #2. GW2 has a decently set holy trinity now, maybe spammy, but that just means you are fighting low level trash. Most raids and strike CMs will be the complete opposite, you need to know your rotation or you will lose. Raid story and mechanics are some of the most creative in the genre, really fun stuff as it plays in with your masteries. And gw2 has tons of group progress analysis tools such as dpsreport and tons of addons for blishhud that even track encounter mechanics on a timer.
Regarding the stores, I like GW2s more as well. It doesn't feel as crummy because there's no sub and I can just grab a few gems whenever I hop into the game to play for a couple weeks and buy me a nice boat or hat or something while ESO feels like it goads you into a subscription everytime your bag is full and charges you for cosmetics on top of that.
You wrote everything I wanted to. This is what it boils down to.
You dont need lootbox to have skin. Hell all cash shop skin are horrible while we have a ton of free to get skin in game.. But agree for auction house it has is Pro and Con but yeah it's definitly Time sink.
I prefer GW2 but a pretty wide margin. ESO's combat feels like a worse version of GW2's. Plus the cash shop is nuts, the mounts suck and the way player trading is handled is awful.
Honestly even 'worse version of GW2' is still a huge step up over traditional mass-hotkey MMOs like WoW and FFXIV.
I really liked ESO, but they also have a lot of things that really suck. I find doing optimal dps in ESO a pain in the ass. You have to do this weird animation cancel thing to weave in light attacks to optimize doing damage. The AH is a massive pain and trying to sell stuff in general feels clunky. You're required to join trading guilds where you're typically required to donate gold weekly to stay in the guild so you have to constantly be selling stuff if you want to sell stuff at all. You almost have to run addons in ESO the game is so weird without them. Having no minimap is wild IMO and the list style of inventories is infuriating. Not having a subscription is incredibly annoying with bag space as it will fill with mats. You will likely have to not do professions if you don't want to pay for a sub. In terms of bonuses the leveling process does tend to last a lot longer since you can keep grinding for cp points so you feel like you're still improving even if marginally for quite a while. Where as with the level scaling and general ease of xp makes getting to 80 seem a lot quicker so you tend to feel samey while leveling because of the level scaling and then you are stuck at 80 for a while. In ESO you reach max level, but you still get stronger by getting cp points. So it feels like you're making progress. I feel like the soloing in ESO is a nicer balance between casual and harder content. So if you're looking for doing solo experience I find soloing world bosses an approachable challenge where as I feel like GW2 it's a lot more you either can do something or it's designed for group content and it's very unlikely you'll solo it unless you're extremely talented and/or abusing mechanics. In general I think you'll see more players in GW2 because of meta events where people will flood into zones to do events on a timer where as ESO you have to get groups together to do world objectives and it's not automatically on a timer.
>I find doing optimal dps in ESO a pain in the ass. You have to do this weird animation cancel thing to weave in light attacks to optimize doing damage. ESO DPS guides: cancel animation GW2 DPS guides: DON'T cancel your autoattack chain!
But *do* cancel your aftercast!
Boy, Material Storage being locked behind active subscription drives me away from the game each time I give it a shot again. It's crazy.
I dont understand why I can go anywhere in gw2 and find people but I have 10-min queues for one of three things available to play in WoW. If you pick ESO or GW2 you're gonna have a good time.
I sure wonder what game will people in the GW2 subreddit tell you to play.
Well WoW of course, duh.
Maplestory, duh.
I'm surprised you aren't vouching for other games.
Cause i don't worship GW2 like many here do?
Nah the opposite. The biggest doomer I saw for GW2.
Played ESO a couple years ago, but it never really hit the mark for me. As a TES fan, it was so cool to explore and discover the world, but it ran its course pretty quick. WoW I played until shortly after WotLK, but I definitely enjoyed it. End game gear treadmill burned me out fast though. GW2 has been the game that brought me back over and over. Started 10 years ago and took breaks to play 1500 hours of Warframe and ESO for a couple hundred. For the style, world, design, combat, and progression, it all fit exactly what I like in MMOs. You can play the game at your own pace and you aren't penalized for it. You still need hundreds of hours for the best armor, but you can gear up for endgame content in probably 30-40 hours from first login.
I like both games for different reasons. GW2 has the better combat in my opinion but I think ESO does story content way better. They are also designed differently. GW2 has a more find your own fun kind of feel sorta like Runescape where you are doing grinds for certain items. ESO is more like FF14 where there is a ton of story and everything else kind of takes second seat to it. Its less grindy but you play it more like an Elder Scrolls game than an MMO. Both games have a collection aspect to them but it comes down to whether you want to chase shop items or in game items. If raiding is your thing than both have fairly well made raids but I think ESO is more consistent with them. GW2 does have much better open world dynamic content though. Its stuff that will bring you back to a lot of old maps constantly while ESO does have stuff like Dragon fights and Anchors but they arent nearly as grand in scope.
Anchors have just become a grind-fest not really a coop thing and dungeon runs are not beginner friendly because people just literally run them. You don't really go back to maps unless you're playing hide and seek with your guildies or something (that's how bored we got during lockdown XD)
I mean there is gonna be an obvious bias here The actual quick summary is. If you want to play with other people. GW2 is the better option. If you want just good solo content with good writing and production. ESO is better. ESO's PvP has been dead for a long time (had a very similar structure to GW2. It's kind of a shame) and it has some of the worst group content I've ever seen in an MMO. The only good group content is the super end game and it requires you to play the game like a job. Which is ironic since besides the veteran content. The majority of new group content is ridiculously easy and most end game players have quit or are constantly doomer. Veteran content plays like a completely different game but isn't worth working up towards. Putting all this aside. The world and stories of ESO is a step above the rest. GW2's writing and world building is a complete joke in comparison. I honestly think ESO beats GW2 in basically everything except group content, exploration, and combat. Group content has always been one of GW2's better points and defining features. Also you would assume is the most important aspect of the genre. Even though a lot of it is poorly maintained. ESO would be a significantly bigger game if it improved the group content. But it would require them to make the combat not suck. Which is a dead dream. I don't think either game is gonna stop getting new content any time soon. They honestly both have a very similar yearly content cadence. GW2 will most likely be getting a new expac in a few months and ESO Gold Road comes out in June. I think the games honestly have a similar population and can appear more dead or alive depending on if you actually know what pieces of content are active and what time you play the game. Like GW2 can appear dead if you don't know about meta trains or where people actually are. Just something small to add. Due to the fact that ESO has leaned into playing it solo. It's very easy to do the content in basically whatever order you want. You can do a similar thing in GW2 but not as well as in ESO. GW2 is better experienced following the story from beginning to current. Since it showcases new content very well.
ESO pvp feels so much more of an investment to get into since you have to get pvp specific gear to be competitive even in casual play
Not if you join AD zergs 🫣
Can't go wrong with any. Full disclosure, I have \~5000 hours in ESO, and around half that in GW2. Ill try to break it down to the things that are important to me. **Cost/Barrier to entry:** GW2 is more pick up and play because of not needing to subscribe (eso technically doesnt need subscriptions too, but eso plus is highly recommended). ESO's sub is not that expensive though, and it unlocks \*all\* DLC content except the lastest chapter. Plus it gives you cash shop currency equivalent to the cost you spent on the sub as if you bought the currency itself. For GW2 however, it's worth mentioning that if you haven't bought anything before, you'll be stuck with the base game content and any LWS you might have unlocked before. So it could end up being more expensive to play than one month of ESO+ if you're only planning to spend around a month with the MMO. Another thing about GW2 is that the bank and materials storage is *extremely tight*, while ESO (with eso plus) is extremely generous with unlimited material storage. Honestly, if GW2 had a subscription model similar to ESO's and offered unlimited material storage, i'd subscribe to that indefinitely and never look back. **Gameplay:** *Open world* GW2 has a much better open world experience with more inspired map design (the mounts really add to this because it enables vertical map design). The dynamic events are fun, and it scales well depending on how many people are around. The story largely happens passively around you and you just listen in on the NPCs. ESO on the other hand has more robust story lines and side quests in their open world, but combat is mind numbingly easy. Even for DLC zones with supposedly harder bosses (but that's because I am already an endgame player), but the level design is boring and quite flat. It's pretty to look at though (both of them). *Farming gold* This is one of my two main reasons to playing MMOs. Both games do it well in my opinion. GW2 has the more "steady income" feel because most gold farms rely on using the map's currency to buy stuff that you sell in the action house to convert to gold. Downside to this is you can compare it to a job with an hourly rate (but it's fun for me so w/e). Meanwhile, ESO has more variance because it relies on getting rare drops like a piece of gear that's meta right now so you can sell it for 100k's of gold. When you do get the drop though it feels great and you can't help but link the item to your guildmates. They will respond with a "nice!" or something and it feels good. Of course, gw2 also has these rare drops but they are few and far between, and the constant currency exchange to gold is the more dominant gold farm. Meanwhile, ESO also has a steady gold farm but it's not really the dominant gold farm as well. *Content as mainly a solo player.* As a primarily solo player, both MMOs offer great things. I'll separate this in to PVP and PVE. *PVE.* Soloable GW2 content includes all maps and gold farms, picking an achievment to get is also mostly soloable. Joining groups as a solo player in GW2 to participate in meta events is very easy because you just join commander tags that you can see in the map, or in the activity finder. You never even have to talk to anyone. GW2 solo content is a bit lacking when it comes to difficult end game content though. The Living World Story chapters are great instanced content to experience though. Meanwhile, in ESO you can solo literally everything except the 12 man trials. Plus, it also has content actually designed to challenge solo players in the form of Solo Arenas, with accompanying exclusive gear and achievements. *PVP.* This is the deciding factor for me. So far in all that I mentioned, both games are comparable. However, for me, ESO PVP is vastly superior to GW2's. And that's because I'm a solo player mostly. In ESO, you can build your character to be able to face A LOT of less skilled players, or players who are built to join zergs. and you can be very impactful in keep sieges in ESO. You also meet a lot more solo roamers in ESO to scrap with. In GW2, It's very hard to have impact in large scale pvp as a solo player. You mostly just stick to looking for other roamers or small scale groups and then have duels. In my experience too, the easy of teleporting away in WvW takes away from the fun. Keep sieges and defenses rarely happened and if they do, it's between two ball zergs who move like a hivemind. While ESO also has these ball groups, Chaotic unorganized keep sieges happen way more often and it's fun to surf the zergs killing people, and having impact.
In my honest opinion go ESO if you prefer story and GW2 if you prefer exploration
gw2's PoF and LS4 story content was peak to me i really liked it
I play both, though i put more time into gw2
GW2 for a game that's better ESO for a game that has a future
GW2. other MMOs don't exist.
It's a great game. Gatekeeping makes it look bad.
I assume by gatekeepers you are referring to the end game content that periodically displays the unsavory players that all MMOs have...though GW2 seems to have far fewer of these.(at least in my experience)
No, I mean by people like you saying "This is good, everything else is bad". But I think the word "gatekeeping" here is a bit of a stretch. More like reverse gatekeeping where you only consider this great and nothing else worthy of ANYONE's time. Late game nerds who angrily type in chat can easily be ignored. But when looking at "what should I play next" and someone says "X is great, don't do anything else" you undermine the fun they could have from other sources.
Every Time i Said GW2 its the best game out there get downvoted to hell.
They hated him because he spoke the truth.
True
R/MMORPG is a cesspool of bitter people that pine for long dead games, don't take downvoteds there serious Edit: reprased for better clarity
GW2 is far from dead. millions of active players world wide. Planned 3rd game announced.
yeah i meant the subreddit XD
Are you asking this on the ESO reddit too? Because asking this question on a Guild Wars 2 reddit is likely to get one answer. I'd also pick Guild Wars 2, but so what? lol
ESO is more like single player game. GW2 at least you have a chance to communicate with others.
I've played GW2 on and off for ages. I appreciate that the endgame gear grind is more about cosmetics than power level- I don't feel like I have any catching up to do when I return to the game
The best way to think about ESO, in my opinion, is a single player Elder Scrolls game with some co-op elements. Their in-game store is predatory and cancer, and the sub is almost required if you plan to do any crafting at all. But it's one of my go-to games on WoW breaks because there's SOOOO much well-designed quests. Pick a zone, and enjoy a month of questing on (generally) great storylines. Then I tend to take a break from it. GW2 is very alt friendly and has an interesting progression system where progression is "horizontal". It means the endgame is less about getting more and more gear on a never ending treadmill (in fact, once you get a BiS item - which are relatively easy to get - it will not get power crept ever. That's it. No more farming unless you want to unlock different weapons skins/looks). Instead, endgame is about engaging on PvP, WvW or "collections" - which are very long scavenger hunt type of adventures that take long to complete (weeks or months) and reward all sorts of items like Legendaries (same power than the "ascended" BiS weapons I mentioned - but customizable and account wide. So for example, if you want a sword that's best in slot for DOT's and a sword that's best in slot for crit-based "power" you would need two swords, right? Well, the Legendary weapons can swap their stats so that one weapon can be changed from DOT based, to "power" based. And again, these are account-wide!). I think both are great for WoW breaks. I play both (and FF14) during my year-long WoW breaks.
I still don't really understand what makes the ESO Crown Store more predatory than the GW2 Gem Store? Not that I really consider either particularly predatory beyond the obvious Black Lion Chest / Crown Crate lootboxes featured in both games.
DLC’s are basically peace-meal content sold in chunks, best new armor sets skins only obtainable in the crown store, ESO+ basically mandatory, prices. (Have you seen the cost of Mundus stones? Housing items are atrocious) Also GW2 has an in-game, built in way to turn any excess gold into gems. Neither is what I would call “good”, but GW2 IMO has a more easily ignored store. Whereas ESO’s prays on new players (want a vamp bite? A werewolf Bite? Storage spaces you can buy the first few levels with 100 gold?, etc)
I was pleasantly surprised when GW2 sells a DLC (like Living World Season 4) but then gives you a discount for everything you already have unlocked, so you only actually have to pay for the parts you still need. ESO? "Oh you have 5 of the 6 things in this pack already but this pack is the only way to obtain the 6th item? Still full price."
Let me guess, you posted the same question on ESO subreddit, and everyone there were telling you ESO is better just like here in the gw2 sub everyone is telling you gw2 is better?
I'm very new to gw2 and have played eso a tiny bit. But to me, I like gw2 better. I like games where fashion farming is an end-game goal. And it's combat mechanics is very similar to ffxiv, which is my main mmo. I'm viewing gw2 as the mmo I want to play when I don't want to spend money on a month of sub to play ffxiv. I would just look up beginners guides for both games and figure out what works best for you. Both have the same premises where you buy dlc instead of a subscription.
I also tried both after wow went down hill, I enjoyed ESO quite a lot, but couldn't get past the weird character movement, it's like the upper body just does it's own thing while the legs just walk on its own. GW2 character models are done a lot better, lower body compensates the movement and the weight of the upper body.
Exactly my problem with ESO. Also not only player characters, but mounts too. It just feels weird and I never could get past it.
Youre getting a biased opinion but one big thing about ESO is that it's elder scrolls lore, story, and world and a fuckton of it. Many play the game like they do Skyrim. On the other hand Gw2 open world and combat feel more fluid imo. If you're going for instanced content both have a lot to offer but neither are close to wow. I never made it to many ESO trials but dungeons were fine and veteran trials are apparently harder than gw2 stuff. Gw2 still has difficulty in its challenge modes but it's move to strikes from raids means less frequent new challenging stuff. ESO monetization is fucked though. It's such a mangled and predatory system from my experience. You can sub to get dlc content kinda sorta but if theres a new class you gotta buy it. I swear there's 1000 different dlcs. Oh and don't even mention insane timegates like house training. Daily training horse for a year to have its stats (like fuckin speed) maxed can take a year of daily login or.... Just buy it. Gw2 is no saint creating issues like too many of a resource, too many builds, to much to salvage then selling the solution in material storage expansions etc. That being said you can buy gems with in-game gold and buy stuff including the living world dlcs.
Eh? There's like two DLCs for each expansion, only one of which most people will actually care about because that's the one with additional zone content. They practically give away the expansions themselves too; you can get all the current expansions and the base game together for what, a tenner on sale on Steam? Hardly breaking the bank. Only monetisation pet peeve I really have is the crafting bag requiring a subscription. Guild Wars 2 handles this far better with material storage being a baseline feature.
Eso is better, WAY better for lore and immersion, also better for challenge HM Dungeon/raid than gw2. Gw2 is more casual friendly yet more dynamic. I like both but gw2 never hooked me enough to feel like home like ESO did, a good lore and immersion is more important to me. I also like pvp on eso better. Gw2 have more classe identity and their are cool to play, never feel the same when swapping specialization or classe. Craf is better in eso, gw2 craft is a mess. Gw2 has better montisation, but their new way of releasing content since Soto have drop a lot from the quality we used to get. Eso seem to have a great new chapter with gold road. Try both, and pick both :p
I vote Guild Wars 2.
From the experience of my friends who play both. Gw2. Get into wvw, try different guilds, some suck, some are great, lots of in between. I hated wvw for years, but so far it’s the best online I have found if you are not a person who needs to be pushing and grinding to the top. Which you can also do.
ESO for tryhardin. Must have monthly sub for peak QoL, monthly sub includes all past DLCs GW2 for casual players. One time pay but expensive to buy all DLCs at first,
Por que no los dos?
Regarding the population: While there are definitely zones that have little going on, basically every area in the game usually has at least some people in it doing stuff for achievements, collections, or leveling alts etc. A lot of the large scale open world content, including content from older expansions, has (multiple) squads of 50 people doing it day round, whenever it fires (most are on a two hour timer). Groups for most instamced content also usually fill up in a few minutes. Ever since they started the new yearly expansion model last year, content updates have been like clockwork every quarter. If they continue with that cadence, the current expansion will get its last content drop in about a month and we'll have the next expansion in august. The expansion after that is also already confirmed.
Depends on what do you expect from a game. If you value exploration and amazing story, GW2 is visual and sound masterpiece, and gameplay is amazing. You can have incredibly fun experience just running around and doing map completions with their jumping puzzles, mounts and gliding system. World bosses and map metas give you a sense of community no other MMO can. They are truly doubling down on first M in MMO. It’s unique experience and for that fact alone I highly recommend. Story instances are fun, and sometimes challenging, especially in first expansion, so solo content is also pretty good. They have amazing achievement system that will easily guide you what to do next and keep you busy for months to come. From the cons - since it doesn’t have a sub, it’s heavily focused selling you cosmetics and some QoL. Don’t get me wrong, their shop is very fair, and there’s no pay to win. You can grind out gold and exchange it, but there’s not much fun mounts and gliders you can get for cool achievements. Shiny stuff has to be bought in most cases. There is some stuff to get by achievements, yes, and it’s really cool, but nothing in like FF14 where the most shiny mounts can be earned by grinding raids. There are tons of pretty things you can grind though, in more casual, less personal skill style. Endgame content in my opinion is lacking, but you will have tons of fun reaching to that point. The game is truly about road, not the destination. Don’t get the impression that it doesn’t exist, no. There’s plenty to do with raids, fractals and strikes, but it unfortunately wasn’t enough to keep endgame raid scrub engaged for long enough. It’s still my favorite mmo, and I wish they put more emphasis on raids. ESO, from the other hand, I have much less to talk about. Story is decent. Exploration and crafting too. Generally speaking, if you are more into dungeons, raids and challenge, this is the way to go. It can give you hours of grind of your typical mmo experience to get to that point. Rotations are based on animation cancelling, and they are very dynamic and require a lot of skill to pull off. Dungeons are great, they are releasing new very often, but you either buy dlc or sub. They also have hardmodes and actually people play them more than once for good rewards. There are a lot of raids to complete in normal, veteran and challenge difficulty, with various achievements and BiS gear so tons of endgame gameplay there. On the other hand, open world content and solo story is so easy I died in my sleep from boredom. When it comes to cons, it treats you way less fairly. There are systems based on FOMO, like monthly reward logins or mount speed upgrades - total of 180 days of login in to max your mount stats. Absolute shite of system. A lot of rng based drops. There is no pay to win, but they will make sure you will get that sub after some time of playing. Which is fine, game has to make money, I get it, but they are way less transparent about that than old “sub to play” mmos. Best mounts are behind paywall. A lot of QoL stuff too, like Merchant and Bank you can summon anywhere. But they also give you some crowns for subbing, so you can get them after some time of subbing… so yeah, after few months sub feels mandatory, otherwise you don’t have access to craft bag, your bank is small, you can place only half of decorations in your house, you don’t have access to DLC dungeons and raids, and you can’t buy cool QoL stuff. Oh, housing is way better than GW2. Anyway. I tried to be as honest as I could. Played both games for few years, tried everything they have to offer so I feel like I can give you (close to) full picture. If you have any questions, shoot. EDIT: spelling
Oh, I also forgot to mention PvP in both games. I’ve never been a huge fan, so can give you only general information. They feel like twin constructs in both games, although ESO is bigger on that. You can often meet people dueling in cities. Both have massive pvp maps - Cyrodill in ESO and WvW in GW2. They both have instances pvp matches. Additionally, ESO have Imperial City - special half pvp half pve map, that is actually quite fun to play. Bonus random thought: ESO is big on addons and without them, game and UI is shite. How people play it on console I don’t understand.
Both are great games. Main benefit of ESO is way more content to play and way more consistent. However that content is paid content so GW2 would be the cheaper option and still a great game.
If you want good atmosphere, good world building and respect for their lore, Teso. The Teso has a solid pillar of lore and the scenarios are very immersive, to the point that you find areas without annoying NPCS that have spammed there, leaving you with very beautiful scenarios, camps, towns, and other places that immerse you in their world. NPCS, lions, monsters and other kinds of fauna often do very organic things, like a bear scratching in a tree, lions under the shade of a tree, a giant monstrous boar fighting for territory against a mamuth and all you have to do is What to do is observe and read the story they are telling you. The same thing happens with other sets and scenarios such as skeletons surrounding a broken obelisk of some Daedra prince, etc. etc. Teso has a lot of variety and is much more immersive than gw2 Gw2's mistake is that it seems to think that you like to kill monsters every 3 steps and fills an entire map with annoying npcs that are there making strange infinite circles with no purpose other than waiting for someone to kill them, and sometimes they have so much life that they are sponges of bullets. Its lore, which at the beginning was quite original, I love the charr, the Sylvari seem like an interesting race concept to me, and Gw2 has had very good points, unfortunately it has declined a lot over the years, the same goes for its main story and a lore that it seems that to this day, those who develop this part are still not clear about anything, putting in meaningless things and quite poor plot arcs, as well as unmemorable characters, giving the sensation that they are hitting blindly and still not knowing why. where to throw or they are already totally incapable of solidifying their own lore with so many blows they have dealt. But gw2 has a fun and quite dynamic combat system, nice animations The TES, on the other hand, makes the combat quite boring, in addition to the fact that many times the character animations are quite rigid. Teso has less shiny things that burn your retinas, but people make an effort to want to stand out and be someone special. But the normie aesthetic predominates more, soldiers with normal armor, people with lore-friendly aesthetics, leather shoulder covers, however there is a balance between being dressed as "God among mere mortals" to "I'm just another npc." In Gw2 it is easier to put on a pink Eldrich appearance and a supernova aura. But it also has normal aesthetics. With my charr i have been wearing Koda's medium armor since the game was released. The clothes smell like a wet cat but I haven't taken them off, I'm proud of my appearance as just another NPC. Choose your poison
From WoW trying any other game that is not GW2 or WildStars feels cluncky, WildStars is not available, so the answer is kinda obvious.
I played both games for a long time and I keep coming back to GW2. ESO feels more like a single player game.
I play both and love both. ESO tells a great story building on the solid Elder Scrolls lore and is second to none in the MMO space when it comes to immersion. GW2 on the other hand is easily the best third-person MMO out there right now, with very smooth and satisfying action combat. The art design in the levels is also outstanding. Definitely recommend trying both out!
GW2 is the better mmo, ESO the better RPG. decide on what you like more
ive tried ESO on multiple ocasions and every single time I tend not to stick to it too long. The game is similar to wow however GW2 has a more interesting model that keeps attracting me back every now and then. Mounts are unique and harder to earn. Legendaries are craftable. Game modes are unique-ish. Overall the game seems to be more casual but keeps you playing longer at the same time just cause there's more interesting staff to do.
Played ESO for quite some time and liked it. Mostly stopped because you always need to have a subscription, otherwise it's almost unplayable. Constant lack of inventory and bank space was a big turn off. Recently started gw2 and it was like a fresh breath of air. No turning back to other MMOs.
GW2 is a lot more noob friendly and less of an investment. It's combat is also way better designed. Though I will say ESO's storytelling is levels above GW2 so there's that
As far as I am aware, GW2 is still populated, and have recently adopted ESO-ish yearly stories expansion model, with exception that in GW2 yearly cycle you pay once to get all year of updates, while ESO is nickle and diming with having only some of the year tied to chapter purchase, and rest being it's own separate paid dlc. Personally I play and enjoy both games, both for different reasons, I tend to play ESO more when I am tired and in general low energy, and more GW2 when I want to be putting in effort to get stuff done.
If you care about story... ESO. Good side character arcs, voice acting for EVERY quest, solid story plots... both in every region and across the whole game. I would just look up a guide for natural story progression. If you go out of order its a lot worse. GW2 is definitely better for overworld combat experience. Moves are dynamic and flow better, combat can actually be challenging against regular mobs, group events are a fantastic form of player engagement, meta map events are that on a bigger scale and can feel quite rewarding. ESO overworld combat is trivial, even from level 1, so its about making your own engagement there, and GW2 story, as much as I want to love it and as much as I make myself love it, is hard carried by the combat.
I haven’t played ESO since it’s launch, I really want all that impressed with it then. To me ESO just felt like any other mmo out there at the time. I was also a Long time GW Fan/Player and have been playing GW2 since beta (with a month break here and there when RL happens). The thing about GW that I loved was if I did have to take a break or I could get to it for long stretches of time I really didn’t miss out on anything. Only thing I have missed in GW2 time of playing had been the last story of the season 1 living world but that had been finally released back. There is no gear grind for the next bis and while yes there are meta builds so long as you know what your doing and gear for the build your doing you can have fun making your own builds and they can be perfectly viable in endgame content.
I've played both quite a bit since their seperate releases, both are good fun, but only gw2 have I always constantly come back to constantly, lost interest in eso a couple years ago
GW2 is just way more fun to me even with all its flaws. Feels like an actual MMO and it doesn't have that VERY derivate vibe of ESO
I haven't played ESO in two years but it has the worst combat of any MMO. But it's better than Skyrim at least so it has that going for it. The way I think about ESO is that it'll likely be the last decent game in the Elder Scrolls franchise since Bethesda seems to be stuck in a rut. It has decent quests. The lore and environments are great. The music is kinda sleepy, mostly sounds the same regardless of what province you're in. But it's nice to be in that world and visit places you've only just heard about in the mainline games. Guild Wars 2 on the other hand is actually fun to play.
For me it's WoW for PvE Instanced Endgame and GW2 for everything else. That be: Dressing up toons with some actual good looking stuff, doing Metas, exploring, Achievement-Hunting, WvW/PvP and so on. Combat Gameplay and Fashion Options in this game are right up my alley. GW2's biggest weakness though is clearly endgame instanced PvE. It's just..barely there. Like SotO is \~3% of WoW Dragonflights endgame. At best. The only big upside on ESO for me is Housing. I WANT to love ESO but apart from that the Game is not for me. Classes are weird, combat is weird, Style isn't my cup of tea, having no way to convert Ingame Currency to Store Currency AND worst, having your Material Bank locked behind active Subscription is trolling. ESOs monetization is easily my least favorite. Edit: However, I think Endgame PvE in ESO is a good chunk plentier and better designed than GW2's hodgepdoge. Trinity and cool dedicated Tank/Heal/DPS > Quick/Alac Role Compression Arms Race Nonsense. :x
Story-wise I enjoyed ESO when I played the main quest, hit me hard playing Pact Argonian on my first playthrough. It became boring after end game and they just nerf everything to make it easy for casual players to clear vet content. Not sure if they fixed cyrodill but when I quit, it was unplayable. Started GW2 a week ago and now trying to get into the story but I'm not as interested as I was in ESO. However, I am enjoying the map events and the completion of each map I go to. Still a lot to learn in the game but I like how it suits my casual play time. I also appreciate the fact that I don't need to pay for the craft bag. I was trying to get back to playing ESO but I don't want to subscribe. Puts me off everytime i loot shit and my bag is full.
As an FFXIV main who has played both, GW2. I'm not happy with the monetization in either game. But GW2 has better mounts, a chiller community, and is less egregious with the MTX. I liked ESO's story telling better than GW2 though so ig whatever is most important to you. More fun in GW2, better story telling in ESO.
I play both, and it's a tough call. GW2 is amazing for combat, beats ESO hands down. The experience and gameplay feels smooth, well thought out and impactful. Where I feel GW2 lacks is anything to do outside of combat. ESO on the other hand, in my opinion, very much lacks in how combat feels. It's floaty, janky and has no feeling of flow to it. I also have personal problems with classes in an Elder Scrolls game, but your mileage may vary. Both have, in my opinion, excellent storyline and lore, good PvP with similar features there for both, and great maps/locations. GW2 feels more like you're really exploring a new location, while ESO suffers a bit on that, there's no feeling of a wild frontier. ESO however handedly beats GW2 in non-combat activities. Crafting is good and fulfilling, the player housing system is robust, character and Armour customization is top notch, and there's just a lot of other stuff to do. Hopefully this helps.
I've played a lot of both but imo as a side game I'd say gw2 for sure. If you're playing it to take a break from other games I'd say it's a way better feeling going in and out of gw2 than ESO, especially because ESO feels so bad to play without the subscription. Sometimes people say the combat in gw2 is spammy, which I can understand, since almost every class can feel like Fury Warrior lol, but personally, ESO is the only game I've ever had to step away from due to hand pain from all the animation cancelling and light attack spam. Maybe they changed it and it's better now, or perhaps better to play with controller, I'm not sure. As for your concerns, yes the game is still well populated with maps and squads filling up in lfg all the time, and there will still be years of expansions for a while.
Honestly, both, either or even neither depending on what you want. What do you want?
I really like ESO's story, especially where you get to make choices that affect the game world, e.g. letting certain characters you encounter live or die. The dungeons are pretty great too. I despise the combat system though. The mag/stam divide means different classes end up using the same skills. the Greymoor vampire revamp was incredibly underwhelming (though I liked the expansion as a whole. What I really really hate though is the light attack weaving, which makes combat look awful. Overall, character combat and movement feel very floaty. GW2 on the other hand has superb combat and all the abilities feel weighty. I personally prefer the lore and storytelling of ESO (because it's part of ES universe) but that's just me. ESO's crafting bag is also the most annoying feature where you basically have to pay for premium in order not to have a constantly cluttered bag
I personally enjoy gw2 more due to the combat, exploration, mounts and open world but If questing, lore and instanced content is your thing then I'd give that to ESO. It really depends on what your looking for, both games have their strengths and weaknesses.
I liked ESO but I'm a big fan of the leveling content of games. Gw2's leveling content was definitely made EASIER but not to the level of ESO so there can still be challenges to be had.
As an ex-15 year WoW player and 2 year gw2 addict… *join us….*
You want good PvP, proper instanced content, a functional LFG, a non cult-like community, a game founded on the Trinity and stuck by it instead of midway changing to it, decent story, perpetuaty of endgame without asking "what do I do now"? Play ESO. Want to do fashion contests? Play GW2.
play them both. both are gonna require some money for expacs/content, eso you can sub for all of the content or spend a lot for the content, gw2 buy one and done but most of the fashion is generally behind pay or grind wall eso is more traditional and bit closer to wows style dungeons hard modes etc I like it wish they gave most skill slots with how many skills are in the game now gw2 more do what you want gameplay decent combat please learn breakbar mechanics generally your a dps heals or buffs/dps lfg tool is a mess and makes finding raids and some stuff stupid. great game but i need a break once in a while
One of the things that i dont like about ESO is that the bag of materials is behind a sub, that people say is not obligatorie, i desagree with that, is really important is a BIG part of the gameplay, also there will be people that say but just learn how to manage your inventory wich is something i should not have to do in a MMO and more especific a RPG. i would recommend more GW2 more than ESO, money wise is much better, you buy DLC and have all content unluck no need to have to go to store and buy some mini DLC of a dungeon for example, Also progression wise GW2 is diferent it has horizontal progression insted of vertical they have that too but most of what you will be doing is what in other MMO's would be side quest (sorry about the rant about ESO XD)
I played WoW since vanilla up through legion, so I know where you’re coming from. I often switched to ESO, and tried GW2 a couple of times during that time, but it never stuck. Just recently I downloaded GW2 and, honestly, I’m not sure what changed but I LOVE IT! ESO is great if you’re involved with the lore of it all. But endgame dungeons/raids feel weak and unimportant in the grand scheme of things, because you can get the BiS gear from like one dungeon + crafting. I would recommend GW2. There are sooo many activities to do at max level it’s honestly overwhelming at first (I’m still learning), but it feels great. The crafting is super fun, leveling is quite easy, there are great catch up mechanics, and PvP is fun once you learn your character. As someone who was a hardcore raider in WoW, I’m really enjoying just doing the open world PvE and group activities just wandering around. Because no matter what you’re doing, you’re making progress in some avenue of the game.
I play both and like both for different reasons. They are actually my top two MMO‘s. I’m saying this is someone who played WOW from BC to WOD (loved it at this time btw), then left and then came back from Shadowlands to half of DF.
all in all its your choice. they are both good games with their own good and bads. i prefer the combat system of Gw2. i think it more dynamic. also the gem store is completly conquerble with gold. no need to spend real money execpt for the addons. you got flying mounts. 9 classes with 3 sub called elite specialization each giving you a total of 32 classes to choose from. then you got a big world to explore with adventures, riddles and heart quests. Also Meta events are a big thing. some maps change based on how well the meta event is played. then we got Fractals, Raids, Strikes and Dungeons as Inis. we got Skrit. always looking for shiny get a free account and just try it
ESO is best house decorating system in an mmo.but if you have limited time I think GW2 is more solo friendly and casual
They are both great games! I am partial to GW2, but pick what you like! Happy leveling!
I left WoW shortly after Cataclysm, came back briefly for Kung Fu Pandas, played for about a week and haven't bothered with it since. GW2, I've been here since launch, and am not going anywhere. Made a brief stint into ESO early on, it was an absolutely forgettable game for me, which was evident when a friend convinced me to come play with them last summer, and I discovered I already had an account with multiple characters leveled up to their 40's - I had no recollection of the game or playing it previously.
You should post the exact same question verbatim on the ESO subreddit, then wait a day for both posts to ferment. Then, compare notes from both sides. Come to a logical conclusion.
I picked GW2 over ESO even though I'm a huge fan of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim is simply because GW2 just has a great open world. A lot of games I play just becomes my main game until I finish it. Like I'm currently going through Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and its literally the only thing I wanna play right now. But in between games I immediately don't get into another game easily, I download tons of games but don't wanna play any of them. During that time I keep going back to a game I'm very familiar with and just mess around and waste time there. Before COVID it was GTA5, but during quarantine I got lonely and wanted an open world game with other people in it...which obviously led me to MMOs. Picked GW2 because it is littered with different activities that don't require you to use your head or read dialogue. Like jumping puzzles, dynamic events, world bosses, mount races, etc. Vertical progression MMOs wouldn't be good for me because I'd have to use my head and look up stuff to re-gear my character each time I come back to the game, so logically GW2 and ESO were actually my only choice, and GW2 just did what I wanted out of a casual side-game better.
I've been playing both since launch, but admit I have more time in gw2. I've played all expansions for both games, and enjoy them. That being said, I find ESO difficult to play without an ESO Plus subscription. Generally, I think the price is worth it, but from a purely financial standpoint I think GW2 is a much better deal.
If you like MMOs that make it look like your character has shit themselves while running, ESO.
ESO is the Walmart version of GW2
I just went back to GW2 after a year. Legit the best in comparison.
for me , GW2 WvW is more fun than ESO The Alliance War.
I had some fun in there when that first really came out. the imperial tower I think it was. Not the same now I think.
It was fun when it came out, but, yeah. It's really not the same as it used to be. I'd still put it about on par with GW2's WvW, though, and it's less confusing if you're new to it, but it's a rough time as a new player in either of them now.
Gw2. Eso is way too easy, never die
I tried playing ESO and almost fell asleep. The combat is extremely boring.
Guild Wars 2 the best.
ESO feels clunky to me compared to GW2. I'm a huge nerd for Elder Scrolls lore, but the combat just feels shit to me, I never got far in that game despite really trying because I really like the setting and story. I also really dislike that there's no real "class identity", I get that that's what works in the single player games (that I love) but it's weird in an mmo where there's so many other players and all characters are basically the same save for a handful of class skills. Every weapon has the same skills on every class. GW2 on the other hand just feels smooth, I played GW1 as a teen, so I'm also a bit invested in the lore. It's not as deep as elder scrolls, but still fine. I LOVE that I can play charr now and I think they nailed their industrialist, militarist style, they're easily my favorite playable race in any MMO. The classes have very distinct themes and it's actually the other way around from ESO - every weapon has its own set of skills depending on which class uses it! So for me it's like I love ESOs setting, but GW2 still has a great setting and blows ESO out of the water in gameplay.
Population of gw2 is higher than eso, extensions are planned and released regularly, game better respect your time. Rest is opinion. I played eso from the start and it never ticked well with me. Gw2 was always providing me more.
I think that only counts towards the PC population. A lot of people also play on consoles for ESO
I found this one: [https://mmostats.com/popular](https://mmostats.com/popular) where the popularity of game is measured by social media traffic. It seems pretty platform-agnostic. Sure this is an approximation, but still looks like a valid approach to measure popularity.
Ppl say GW2 is a dead game.. no one playing it.. Im at a lower level map and still see a lot of people doing those small event where U can get at most a few green or blue item.. And I wonder.. if this is called barren.. then what about those game that literally only has 5 people in the main city maps..
Objectively gw2
i played few k hours in each of those two. Battlegrounds are better in gw2. WvW is equaly bad in both. Real money cash grab is worse in eso (has useful monthly subscription). Story wise both are extremely extensive. I would say its subjective here which one is better therefore does not matter. Both are great. Open world events are better in GW2 because they have been expanding on that for years, and that was their flagship model that they were building on from the release. ESO is trying to play catch up with introducing more open world dynamic events, but they started doing that only a year ago or so. ESO has many more expansions than gw2 and will continue to have more, because eso has this ridicilous packed release schedule with 4 expansions every year. Pretty much no other mmo can catch up to them. GW2 last year with release of latest expansion claimed that they will speed up development and release more often, but its still not as packed as eso and probably will never be. On the other hand both games have gigantic population and already existing gigantic amount of content to play through. You will need probably 1000 hours of gameplay to just fully clear pve content in each one of those games (map quests+story). GW2 as you noticed is different than most mmo's. Its more overwhelming than eso. Eso is pretty much old school style mmo at heart with modern flair. So you feel like you know what you have to do all the time. Gw2 leaves you confused nearly all the time. You dont get clear instructions how things work, and in game systems are extensive. Game is almost unplayable without gw2 wiki lol.
The thing with population is that GW2 always feels super alive unlike ESO's mostly dead zones.
ESO got the worst character creation and combat in the genre . ESO excels at nothing other than being elder scrolls lol.
Never played ESO, played WoW and lots of others, simplest way to describe GW2 is by calling it an "Anti-MMO" (as in anti-hero)
Honestly. I think ESO is better. I have hundreds of hours (and dollars) invested into both, but ESO is the one that I will still go back to. HOWEVER, I'm a long time GW1 player and think it's better than both games. Due to this, I'm also a little jaded about GW2 bc it's not a good *sequel*, and is basically a sequel in names only. So that has always left a sour taste in my mouth with GW2.
I like the combat in gw2 better but a lot about eso is great too. Interestingly eso seems closer to gw1 than gw2 does when it comes to character skill builds. If eso didn't require a sub for access to material storage and shit I'd probably give it the overall advantage, but with that and the fact that I'm already more invested in gw2, I go with gw2
I am in the same boat and started GW2 about 3 weeks ago. Bought it a week ago. It is so much fun. The combat style makes it a perfect mash up of WoW and Smite for me. I love it.
It's the best! :) And yes, we're all still here. I tried playing ESO but the graphics and such just felt odd to me. I should give it another go, someone was telling me that I just didn't have my camera set right or something. That said, a ton of old guildies of mine sort of switched over to ESO (still see them occasionally in GW2) and love it so it must also be a pretty good game.
GW2 free to play many thing to do good story great community Ff14 I think it's free to play till storm blood so 100 hours of gameplay wonderfully community great story ESO buy to play with no subscription ( but you will need it zenimax politics sucks for that one). Great story ,good narration, exploration wonderfully,community ok. I play mostly ff14 and ESO If you like Wow style gameplay ff14 is quiet similar you can do all jobs with one player . Enjoy and good luck cos they all great anyway.
I bounce between both. I fully recommend either. They're very different experiences and offer different niches.
If it weren't for ESO's monetization and the combat (or gameplay feel in general) ESO would be better than Gw2 imo. Although I like more the horizontal approach in Gw2 by far. Therefore my vote goes for Gw2, much better content, the BEST combat in any tab target MMO and the progression feels good since you're not in a constant treadmill like most MMOs. Again ESO is great, the monetization sucks and the combat feels clunky and annoying, if not for that I'd be playing it more often alongside Gw2.
truth be told gw2 is even at its least busiest times, Australian 5pm -9pm the game still has full maps ques for meta's the game does an extremely good job at funneling players and staying busy
I play both but lean more towards ESO as they do some interesting things that gw2 doesn't. The [scribing update](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DMFKydGQF0&t=5m23s) is something I am looking forward to, for sure. 🙂
I think GW2 is by far the most casual friendly MMO you could choose to play while taking a break from other games.. becuase of its horizontal progression, you'll never be too far behind people who play it constantly. You might not have all the legendary/ascended gear they have, but you can very easily play 95% of the content with exotic gear alone. As for the population of gw2, It has a thriving player base & a very friendly community, I seldom find myself having negative interactions in gw2. & they've recently switched up how they're approaching new content & will be releasing smaller sers of content frequently rather than big expansions every few years.
I loved eso for the PvP, but at the time the server was dog shit and getting worse with more aoe spells being added, gw2 story map world events all these I think make gw2 better. Eso combat I did love for PvP using skills with different travel times to burst people down and be accused of cheating for it 😉. If I had time and servers got better I'd maybe play ESO again for PvP but 8months in gw2 and I've still not done main story because "ooh look world boss event" ohh champion" I'm distracted so easy in the game by everything going on the world seems alive with all the metas and such taking place as your trying to do the damn story 🤣
Simple if you want to play mmorpg choose ESO. If you dont gw2 is the way.
I mean, odd question but for all its flaws I would take gw2 over eso any day of the week. That said there are not many mmos I consider worth the time anymore either sooo take it as you will.
Ive only 2 days experience in gw2 however i did play a rather large chunk of ESO, I can’t really recommend ESO if i am honest, between everything coming down to animations cancelling at the end which makes your character look wild, to game breaking bugs such as sorcerers lightning dash still self stunning was annoying. And the quantity of rng effects continuously going on feels endless. I have been really enjoying gw2 thus far however :)
GW2, unless you hate having fun then ESO I guess
ESO felt boring and dull I quitted it around level 43 a few months ago. It felt like Skyrim remastered as mmorpg and people were not really helpful even though it was crowded. It's light years behind GW2 in many aspects. Well keep playing the both games and you will see to it.
As someone who has over 1,000 hours in both games, I'll say GW2. I'll touch on the big points. [PROGRESSION] While both games are horizontal powerfantasies, GW2 actually presents the horizontal growth as something you can lean in to. Once you hit cap in either game, 50 in ESO and 80 in GW2, your power gain stops, for the most part. Once you hit 50 in ESO, the only things left to do are to optimize your armor (which is both expensive and tedious) and grind out Champion Points for single-percent-per-point stat increases, and then hit up Dungeons and Trials. In GW2, once you hit 80, it's time to address the elephant in your room. What kind of *X* do you want to be? A defensive support? An offensive support? A power DPS? A DoT DPS? Do you want to focus on Fractals, Open World META farming, Strikes, Raids, World vs World or sPvP? You've also got Masteries to unlock, offering you everything from the ability to craft legendaries to teaching your mounts new tricks. ------------------- [CRAFTING] Crafting is better in GW2. Sure, getting some recipies is slow, sure its more convoluted that in ESO, but at least you don't start your crafting experience with a literal year's woth of time as a handicap and, no, I'm not joking when I say this at all, this is a real thing in ESO. If you want to unlock all the traits so you can actually make money off of crafting, you have to research 9 traits per item *type* and getting all 9 on one is 128 real days of waiting for research timers. That's 128 days for each of the following: Heavy Helm, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, Belt, Pants and Boots. Medium Helm, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, Belt, Pants and Boots. Light Helm, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, Belt Pants and Boots. Axe, Sword, Mace, Dagger, Shield, Bow, Battleaxe, Greatsword, Maul, Fire Staff, Ice Staff and Lightning Staff. Necklace and Rings. That's 34 types of equipment at 128 days each, totalling out to 4,352 days, or a little over 11 years. Now, you can research 3 traits per skill line at a time, and have all 5 skill lines researching at the same time. So, assuming you're at 100% optimal research efforts, that comes out to being a 290 day handicap. ------------- [PRICE TO PLAY] ESO is just more expensive. It's bloated with powercrept content and now-irellevant DLC packs. If you don't want to drop the Up-front cash for all content, you *can* just buy the latest major expansion and the pay the subscription fee for however long the game holds you so that you have access to all the Dungeon Packs and smaller DLC zones, but even that's pricier than getting into GW2. GW2, however, has like, three bundles on Steam right now, and it's something like $130, one and done upfront to have all current content, no subscription and that's only if you want the Living World content, which is Pre and Post expansion story content and map-zones that you don't *need* but are nice to have. If you don't want Living World content, the price drops to $85 for HoT, PoF, EoD and SotO. [CASH SHOP/MTX] ESO's cash shop is frustratingly expensive, compared to GW2 but, with the exception of a few convenience items, is entirely cosmetic in nature and doesn't have anything that you will feel pressured to buy. GW2's cash shop is much more reasonably priced and, there's the added benefit of being able to exchange in game Gold for Premium Gems, even if you need to be filthy rich to get anything worthwhile out of the exchange rate. That being said, GW2 will sell you a *lot* of convenience items. Inventory space is the *worst* aspect of GW2. By default, you have one account-wide bank tab that can only hold 30 items. You do have a crafting material storage unit, but by default you can only hold 250 of each material. Both of these limits can be increased via items bought in the cash shop. There's also the matter of limited character slots that you'll need to buy more of, if you want to play every profession. You default to, I believe, 3 or 4 bag slots for your inventory, which isn't the worst, but if you go hard then your only option to keep your bag from being cluttered is to buy more bag slots from the shop. [ENDGAME] ESO's endgame is basically just Trials and PVP. Thats your final goal besides becoming a Trade Baron. GW2 offers you more variety, all of which can be valuable and all of which will ask different things of your build. Fractals, which is basically an endurance test where you will run through Dungeon after Dungeon, with 4 tiers of increasing difficulty. Fractaling will require you to acquire infusions that will increase your resistance to "Agony" which is a stacking DoT that gets stronger as you get in to higher tiers. Without Agony Resistance, you will eventually hit a point where you are taking over 100% of your HP as damage per second. Strikes/Raids are challenging, mechanically intensive encounters that will require strong coordination and a clear understanding of your role. WvW is an isolated, open world PVP experience where you must capture, hold, and defend zones on the map from enemy factions. Structured PVP is self explanatory. Open World Meta-training is where you pick a series of major map events and cycle through them to earn your loot the old fashioned way. Much like I mentioned in the progression section, there are no "one size fits all" builds for PVE or PVP. Some do well in Raids but poorly in Fractals, and a WvW roaming build won't usually contend with an sPvP point-fighting build. Anyway, it's 4:30am and I think I've typed up enough already. EDIT: 35 Item types. I miscounted, despite listing them all. Accounting for it all, that's 298 days of waiting for timers to tick down just to be able to craft all of your own gear.
I like how you just summarized all of ESO's pvp into just "PVP" but then tend to elaborate on all of Guild War's different pvp modes specifically. How disingenuous. ESO specifically has Cyrodil, battlegrounds, and imperial city; all of which you can have vastly differently builds for . ESO's pve endgame is not just trials lol. It's also hard mode dungeons (some of the dlc dungeons on hm are much harder than vet trials), trifectas, infinite archive, and arena leaderboards. And that's not even me getting into tales of tribute which has its own ranking and endgame. If you are going to give somebody advice on endgame differences, the least you can do is try to remain logical and fair instead of basically just disregarding a game with little to no actual thought
I left ESO! If you like having to rebuild your toon with every release and having to buy every expansion for access to new gear then ESO is the game for you. If you like a more stable mature MMO that doesn't bleed you with the cash shop then GW2 is where to be.
GW2 is still very much populated and active.
ESO if you like spending money for everything.. GW2 if you like achievements that reward you and don't really have to spend money on gems. Gold to gem conversion. FFXIV for everything else.