WaW:AWD vs WaW (Original Edition)

[bink]

Hello,

I am weighing up whether to buy the new WaW:AWD or the original retail version of WaW. Prices are $39.99 vs $14.99, but the key driver for me is that I have not seen the new Matrix documentation - how does the WaW:AWD manual supplied by Matrix compare to the manual of the original?

Purely from a gameplay perspective, is the original worth picking up?

Thank,

bink

[Erik Rutins]

The manual is better than the original and in terms of gameplay, AWD is a huge improvement in my opinion (and I enjoyed GGWAW).

Regards,

- Erik

[bink]

Erik,
 
How about paper quality?  Print quality?  Printing process?  Length?
 
Can you tell me more about the general standards for Matrix manuals?  Can you provide technical details on the printing process - no. of colors, etc.
 
Thanks,
 
bink

[rjh1971]

My suggestion is you get WAW AWD without hesitation, the game improvements done is worth the extra money without doubt, and once you're done playing against the AI you will find other gamers to play against, while I doubt you will find hardly any opponents to play the original.

Rafael

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: bink
How about paper quality?  Print quality?  Printing process?  Length?
Can you tell me more about the general standards for Matrix manuals?  Can you provide technical details on the printing process - no. of colors, etc.

Seriously? I'm not the one to get into printing details, but it's a 182 page manual, printed in greyscale on good quality paper. It's longer than the original manual from what I recall and better organized.

Regards,

- Erik

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: bink
Purely from a gameplay perspective, is the original worth picking up?

As a fan who is so fanatical as to volunteer to keep working on game improvements, I say go for GGWAW-AWD. Both games are great, but the sequel is greater. If you have any interest in either game, then it is worth $25.

Don't worry about the print quality. My original manual fell apart, I admit. The second game I got a disk without a printed manual. But PDFs are better in the long term anyway, you can text search if you need it.

[Vilhjalmr]

I will offer up a slightly different perspective. I have purchased both WaW and AWD and I am still playing WaW as opposed to AWD for two reasons: 1.) my friends are still trying to learn WaW and aren't ready to tackle AWD, and 2.) I wasn't enticed by some of the additional rules such as spying, random political events, etc.

For me, there is sufficient complexity in the original game and the new rules create more clutter. For whatever reason, I don't like the addition of spying, but that's just purely personal preference (I find it's just a distraction). The random political events add more complexity to the game, such that in addition to learning everything else, you also have to learn the odds of what triggers what and take that into account. I can see that breathing new life to the game for people who have been playing WaW for some time now, but it adds more complexity for people who are still learning the game. Another reason I am not big on the random political events is that I prefer the game to be more like a chess match, with direct causality that rewards intelligent play and penalizes poor play as opposed to random (or rather "semi-random") events that affect the outcome. I know I will change my tune on that after playing WaW for a while, since random events help prevent the gameplay from falling into predictable patterns; but I'm just not at that stage yet.

Having said all of that, AWD is the sequel to WaW and a lot of work went into making it a better product. The AWD manual is much better than the WaW manual (if for nothing else than that the table of contents' pagination is correct in AWD), AWD's interface is very nice, and AWD includes many improvements based on play testing and bug fixes that aren't in WaW.

I am not necessarily recommending that you opt for WaW instead of AWD, but I do think there are valid reasons why you might consider it. I would suggest completely ignoring the difference in price, given that your investment in time will greatly outweigh any cost differential. In an earlier post, Rafael mentioned perhaps the biggest reason to go with AWD - you'll have a much easier time finding opponents with AWD, since most people have switched from WaW to AWD. Regardless of which of the two you choose, you will be very happy with either.

Best of luck.
Bill