Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Happy T-day to you! :D

As far as your experience with GW so far goes:

~ I agree with your thoughts on instances, at least with the general explorable zones and how it's both a plus and minus at the same time. I do like knowing that if I'm tracking down Boss X to capture an elite skill or the chance of a green item drop and my group wipes, that boss will still be there when I respawn vs. having to sit on my butt and wait 30 minutes if another group killed him in the meantime (ala my EQ days). Missions make the most sense as instances by the nature of how they function, but explorable zones can definitely feel too much like a single player game - and if you have a group of all heroes / henchmen then in many ways that's exactly what it becomes.

~ No jumping = a winning decision from my experience, at least it becomes more so if you get into the PvP aspects of the game very much. Among other things, I truly hated WoW PvP because A) I played as a Warrior and B) All anyone does in melee range is run in circles and jump.

~ ArenaNet have done an excellent job of listening to the player base so far in terms of aspects of gameplay they don't really enjoy - you hit one of them square on the head re: the 'invisible walls'. With each release the zones have become more and more open, with the GW:EN and Nightfall zones being much more in line with what you might be used to in other MMOs.

For what it's worth, at least GW is heading in the direction of more open zone design vs. EQ2 which seems obsessed with creating more and more walls in zones with each new release (see Butcherblock as a shining example) - sure you can jump off of cliffs and die all you want, but the walls + no topography on maps = a frustrating journey trying to travel from point A to B.

~ With instant travel, I've never understood why if player A leaves an outpost, so does the rest of the group, but it doesn't work in the opposite direction. On the one hand it makes sense or else people might zone you to a town you don't want to go to. On the other hand I don't see why they couldn't implement a simple yes/no box asking if you want to travel as a group.

Since you're playing through Prophecies you are going to run into quite a few more of the not-so-great design decisions that were altered for the better with later releases, but on the whole the combination of solid gameplay / stability / visual immersion makes up for its shortcomings, at least in my book.

Oh, one last thing (honest!) Advancement in Prophecies is a bit slower than Factions or Nightfall, so depending on how much you play you may or may not get a solid character up to 20 in a month. With the characters I'd leveled there I tend to hit 20 about 2/3 of the way through the missions when I do side quests for skills along the way. Either way you'd want to get to Ascension to unlock the remainder of your attribute points before venturing into GW:EN.

For Project: Troll I'd hire the owners of every single gold farming site on the web - obviously they're as intimate with game design as anyone actually making the games, right? I mean, you can't tell me that it wouldn't be highly entertaining finding ways to exploit their creation for personal gain as the world watches them squirm. The forum trolls? Those would be the customer service reps :D

On a more serious note though, I'll have to put a bit of thought into who I'd actually build my 'dream team' around ...

(and depending on weather or not you'll be playing Nightfall or even picking up GW:EN with the original campaign, I'll have to track you down for some Hero Arena battles. :P)