Guild Wars 2

When I personally play MMOs – and of course I don’t speak for everybody else – my emotional attachment to the character I play is important to me. I guess I just feel disappointed with GW2 at the moment because I was hoping for a compelling story and characters. It started off rather wonderfully. I was super excited to play a Charr and the dynamic questing was refreshing…but I just felt like I had no interesting story to follow and that de-motivated me. Afterall, it was about adding the RPG back into MMORPG right? I just feel like the personality story is devoid of any soul or dimension. It was trite and cliche. My charr ranger is 60 at the moment and I feel no compulsion to long on and wonder what’s happening next on her journey. Yes, I tried a few other characters and classes prior to that, but I had the same issue.

It just doesn’t help the more you level the less personal the story becomes. I get that at some point, the story has to come together to face Zhaitan, but your personal decisions should be sprinkled throughout your journey right up to that, it just really feels like it all stops by the time you join an Order. I wondered where some of the characters I met earlier on during my adventures had gone off to. I feel like characters run off on you before you really get to know them and like them.

I also never get a chance to show my character’s personality. I’m a robot speaking her lines. I have one fixed personality that doesn’t match the vision I had for my character. I get story and lore is a small part in a (financially) successful MMORPG (I mean SWTOR went full-bore on that yet the rest of the game was dull and badly done, so it sunk, right?) but it makes the world feel so empty. Which is an even bigger shame to me because this game has some of the most beautiful sights and landscapes in any game to date.

Anyways that’s enough of my mini rant, just thought maybe some people felt the same way and I wasn’t being picky.

Yeah, the RPG part of MMORPG is a bit lacking in the personal story. I hear that expansions really helped with this issue in GW1, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the first GW2 expansion brings.

I’m a lot more attached to minor NPCs and the random people I meet wandering around than a bunch of the major story NPCs.

I’m totally with you on this one. For me the cutscenes are ruining my immersion into the game, beacuse as you put it: I am a valourous robot saying this line that someone handed to me on a piece of paper.

Coming from TSW (and SWTOR), the writing is downright horrible. Not having any cutscenes would actually make it a much more enjoyable experience for me.

I’ve never involuntarily come to dislike my own char before this game.

Agreed, especially bad for roleplayers as it’s hard to create a personality for my characters when the Personal Story forces one upon them. Really jarring for characters who are evil/just kittens.

Ziro.3295:

Coming from TSW (and SWTOR), the writing is downright horrible.

I wouldn’t exactly consider GW2’s writing Pulitzer-worthy, but I’d consider it much, much better than any of the drivel I’ve seen in SWTOR. (TSW is a different story – that actually had some pretty cool stuff.) The only way I’ve been able to even tolerate playing SWTOR is to critique it MST3K style with a buddy… which, in that case, the game is unintentionally hilarious!