I wouldn't say Guild Wars or GW2 is a true MMO in the sense that there isn't really a real sense of progression with those games. But that's my opinion.
That's an interesting opinion. can you define what "progression" means to you ?
I'm interested as well, because I really can't see why there'd be any greater sense of progression in something like WoW, I just found that to have a needlessly tedious leveling experience just to keep you subscribed longer.
I'll admit that since it's so easy to hit max level and armour in GW that it's a bit more important to set personal goals, but even then the game gives you a hand by giving you a bunch of titles to work on if you're into that.
In GW2 I'll admit that there is a certain lack of progression and not a lot of realistic goals. All the goals you'd like to set are too far away, if you want armour then you'll want either T3, which is ridiculously expensive, or dungeon armour, which is a massive grind. If you're into cool weapons then they're all ridiculously hard to get. Sure, they might be somewhat realistic if you're the sort of person who can get really into GW2, but personally I feel that there's not a lot along the way. For instance, in GW pretty much anyone can get a set of prestige armour, it takes a bit of dedication, but if you just play the game you'll eventually have enough, or close to enough, for a 50k armour at least. In GW2 there is no "playing the game", you get through your personal story and then that's it, after that the game has no clear goal for you, it's just "go out there and grind".
I like the way hearts and vistas and stuff works, but it's only fun on the first character, it feels like the game punishes you for making more characters.
In GW you've gotta do missions to progress, sure, but once you've completed the campaign once then you sorta know what to do and how to do it, so subsequent playthroughs of the campaigns are less tedious because you know which quests you can skip and you know how the missions work to get through them more efficiently. In Prophecies you can even run past the majority of the missions.
In GW2 everything is equally grindy and boring every time.
... Aaand I'll stop there, I could probably write an essay about what I like about GW alone, and then another one on why I don't like GW2 all that much, and then yet another one on why GW is better than GW2, but I'll stop my rant here.
