Combat
This is TERA’s big win, yes even with animation lock (which prevents the hacking and whatnot we saw in DCUO, by the way). GW2’s combat is still a ton of fun, don’t get me wrong. It tweaks the standard tab-target stuff enough to make it far more interesting than in games like WoW or EQ2. Plus the dodge, once you learn its importance, is a brilliant feature to make combat seem more active. But that doesn’t stop TERA’s “True Action Combat” from pretty much making all other MMOs’ combat seem infantile. There are other games trying it on the horizon (Raiderz stands out and is F2P). But TERA really does have an ace up their sleeve, and with more diverse content in the future, and a focus on PVP, I can see En Masse’s game earning and keeping a large hardcore crowd of gamers with a lust for player versus player. Seriously, once you find your class, the combat in TERA is light-years ahead of anything else on the market. GW2 is good at it, but TERA is better.
Bill’s Conlusion
Ultimately, I’ll be playing TERA for the next several months at least. I look forward to Diablo 3, and I really am excited about The Secret World as well. I’m a gamer, I’ll play everything. But TERA’s got its hooks in me for now. In fact, I actually think TERA might be more fun for me than SWTOR ever was. I wonder though just how long it will last. What will the end-game hold? And more than that, will I be playingany other game when Guild Wars 2 launches? Both TERA and ANet’s game have their upsides. Just as SWTOR had its own benefits when this same argument sprouted around the time of BioWare’s launch.
But for what it’s worth, if you’re asking me my own opinion? I’ve not had the feeling Guild Wars 2 gave me in an MMO for over seven years. It made me remember that these games are about the world and the people, and about exploration. Not just about levels and gear. I can’t wait for that feeling to be permanent when GW2 launches. TERA really is a good game. But for my own tastes, I think Guild Wars 2 is ultimately the better product.
LUKE’S INTERNAL BATTLE
After months of waiting, this weekend marked my first moments of playtime with the hugely anticipatedGuild Wars 2. After waiting so long, the only word that accurately sums up how I felt over the past few days is…underwhelmed. Not overly so, but enough to make me take stock of why I feel this way. After a post-mortem with some guild mates, we came up with a radical conclusion: I’ve been playing too muchTERA. While I fully intend to play both games, the past weekend has got me thinking about how the two compare, and now I plan to share my conclusions with you, gentle readers.
Class Progression
The way your class develops in Guild Wars 2 through having different weapons offer different skills offers brilliant customisation. The first character I made was a Charr engineer, and I found much of my first hour consumed with trying to track down as many different weapons as I could. From very early in my playtime I was able to refine my playstyle to what worked best for me, and that’s really quite special.
TERA has nowhere near the same level of class customisation on offer. Your class is pretty much shackled in terms of how it operates, all the way down to the weapons it uses which could quickly become repetitive. What makes up for this is the vast difference in play experiences between classes. In a game with an emphasis on action combat, the speed and range of attacks take on a much more important meaning, which in turn makes picking the right class for your style a big task. Sure, it can’t be refined to the degree present in Guild Wars 2, but that’s not to say there aren’t options there.
Quests and Adventure
Once again on this front, Guild Wars 2 triumphs, though I’m dubious how much this matters. The dynamic event questing system is brilliant…the first time you encounter an event. As I found myself after staying in the same area too long, doing the same event 3 or even 4 times causes the veneer of this shifting world to crack. Events moving back and forth do make the world feel vibrant but also cause your actions to appear futile. Whilst I’d never claim TERA does anything but recycle the tired MMO norm of “kill X rats” or escort quests, neither does Guild Wars 2 once you take away the manner in which they’re delivered to you. So what it all really came down to for me was…
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Combat
Pretty much 80% if not more of my time in both games thus far has been spent in combat. Whether I’m doing quests or just exploring, mobs are constantly trying to kill me. As a result, it doesn’t matter to me what I have to do or what my objective is but rather how I go about doing this. On this front Guild Wars 2felt similar to every MMO I’ve played in the last decade at the basic gameplay level. It’s more refined in many aspects but it’s not revolutionary by any means. That’s not to say TERA is, but I certainly find its combat to be less overused and a welcome change.
Both games shift towards action combat through things like dodging, though TERA places far more emphasis on this. My problem was, coming to my Charr after 5 days on my Castanic, I felt like I was moving in molasses. Everything seemed slower, and I wasn’t plagued by framerate issues like many others. Dodging seemed to be a token gesture in Guild Wars 2; monsters swiftly caught up with me when I ran out of stamina after 3 jumps. Because of this, the difficulty of monsters seemed punishing; if I mess up a dodge in TERA and lose a chunk of life, it’s my own fault, but even doing things perfectly in Guild Wars 2 can swiftly see my health pool depleted.
Luke’s Conclusion
