Feel free to tell me if I missed something. Basically, this is a comparison list. The first being what is common to every MMORPG in the market. The second is a list of what TOR has improved upon. The third is what GW2 has improved upon.
Every MMORPG has:
- Guilds
- Parties
- Quests
- Banks
- Auction House
- Mail
- Dungeons
- Raids
- PvP
- Battlegrounds
- Chat window
- Group Finder
- Crafting
- Gathering
- Quick Travel
- Color coded loot
- Attribute Stats
- Ability Hot bar
- Overhead map
- Mini-map
- Inventory
- Vanity Items
- NPC Vendors
- Leveling
- Currency
- Auto-loot
- In-game GM ticket service
- Talent trees
- Hostile NPC's
What TOR brings to the table:
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Quests= Heavily story driven, voice acted, and animated.
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Mail= Can mail money/items from anywhere in the world via legacy system.
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Dungeons= Heavily story driven, voice acted, and animated.
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Raids= Heavily story driven, voice acted, and animated.
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Battlegrounds= Minor story drive, voice acting, and animations. Bolstered to just under max level and stats increased.
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Crafting= Mods and social gear. Can use companions to craft and gather. Can also send on missions while afk/offline.
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Overhead map= Able to track various kinds of NPC's.
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Quick Travel= Quick travel ability or fleet passes.
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Inventory= No need to find someone else to expand your inventory. Can send companions to sell junk items.
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Vanity Items= Mod-able gear.
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Leveling= Companions make it easier to solo. Legacy system for vanity items, stat increases, and content unlocks.
What GW2 brings to the table:
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Guilds= Next to the character name on the guild list is your account name.
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Parties= Remain in a party even if you change characters.
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Quests= Main class story line is story driven, voice acted, and animated. All other quests are Public quests that vary in difficulty based off how many players are participating.
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Banks= Crafting materials have their own special window in which everything is already sorted by level then rarity.
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Mail= Can mail money/items from anywhere in the world and they arrive instantly.
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Dungeons= Can enable challenge modes that change the encounters.
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PvP= World vs. World pits 3 servers against each other in a massive battleground, where they fight over 4 continents. Guilds may claim towers/keeps/castles for their own. You use siege weapons to attack and defend these fortifications. Every 2 weeks, the servers are ranked and rotated up or down in a ladder system and then pitted against another set of servers.
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Battlegrounds= Upon entering, your character auto equips a full set of PvP gear, is set to max level, and unlocks all abilities that class could potentially use at max level.
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Crafting= Can craft enhancements, then use those enhancements in the process of crafting gear to add either more stats or different effects to the item. Can also experiment with various crafting materials for a random chance at discovering new recipes.
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Gathering= Everyone gets their own gathering nodes, so don't have to worry about stealing. Can also deposit gathering materials into your bank from anywhere in the world. Everyone is able to gather with out training, but gathering is based off the level of your tools. Which you can buy from various vendors in the world. Higher level vendors, have higher level tools.
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Quick Travel= Spread across the world are waypoints. You can travel to these waypoints at any time for a small fee. Travel time is instant, maybe a short loading screen if it's a long distance. They also act as graveyards, when you die, you spawn at the nearest waypoint.
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Color coded loot= I'll use this section to mention that you can change the dye of your armor at anytime for free. Everyone starts off with a basic set of about 20 dyes. As you play the game, you will find unknown dye bottles. Upon use, you learn a new dye. You can also buy them in the store.
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Ability hot bar= Only 1 hot bar that auto-changes the abilities on it based on what weapon your character is using. Even when you go underwater, you get a whole nother set of unique abilities.
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Vanity Items= Using an item that you can find by playing the game or buying in the store, you can actually switch every single stat on an item to another item of your choice. If you find an upgrade with a horrible graphic, you can take it's stats and put them on the item that you like the graphic of.
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Leveling= No need to visit a trainer to learn new abilities or the next ranks of existing ones. Your abilities scale as you level, and through exploration of the world, you discover and defeat various challenges to earn skill points. You use these skill points to unlock more abilities. You also quickly regenerate health/mana/energy outside of combat, so no need to eat/drink or use an ability to regen. Also, your level scales with the level of the zone you are currently in. So no more fear of out leveling your friends.
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Currency= You can buy in game currency in the store. You can also use in game currency in World vs. World to upgrade the various fortification's walls, gates, number of guards, guard difficulty level, and add defenses to the walls like boiling oil, mortars, or cannons.
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Auto-loot= If your surrounded by lootable bodies, can just press a hot key and everything automatically gets scooped up into your inventory.
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Talent trees= Every class gets 5 unique trait trees. You get 1 trait per level after level 10. Each trait tree will give you passive stat increases as you put points into it. As you progress through the tree, there are 2 different traits, Minor and Major. Minor's just do things like increase the radius of an AoE. The Major's can do stuff like cause a damaging AoE to also heal any friendlies inside of it. There are around 12 Major traits you can choose from, but you can only have 3 active at any time.
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Hostile NPC's= There is no tagging of mobs. If you come upon a group fighting a boss, you don't have to sit there and hope they invite you, just start helping in the fight. When the mob is dead, you get experience and loot based off your contribution.
