Let me start by saying, im just about 2 months into this game, and I do enjoy it, probably better then most of the MMO’s out there. I love the “adult” feel of the game, it doesnt feel like a child’s game like WoW did when I first started playing that many many years ago (which i eventually gave up on after 6 months of life sucking game play). However I feel the game is lacking in most respects compared to what it is hyped up to be, mainly in 3 major category that I think need to be seriously re-evaluated and modified to at least some extent to extend the life of the of the game.
1) Living World: I love the concept of living world updates and the continually updated storyline, however for both living world updates i have been around for, I felt they were severely disconnected from the rest of the game and the content itself was just weak. Both the LS tower of nightmares updates I was able to complete in a matter of 4-6 hours, with minimal effort and minimal reward (even though by some miracle I managed to get an RNG drop ascended weapon on the end of the first tower of nightmares mission). This storylines i feel are very very weak, they need to be more like the personal storyline missions in the sense that they have at least some what of a plot line, connect with the rest of the world on some deeper level, and take more then a few hours to complete. I could go on to elaborate but I feel that there has been such a rejection of this latest update that its almost like beating a dead horse here, which brings me to my next point….
2) Expanding The World: So here we drive to the heart of the issue, the game has been out for over a year, and there is no word on when we will get a major update to allow us to explore new zones, get new dungeons, or new bosses to fight. You write into the main storyline of the game 9 different elder dragons, and yet people are only able to fight 1 of them, in an absolutely HORRIBLY put together and written final story personal story mission, with nothing but CRAP rewards for taking the 2 hours to complete this mission. While there is alot to this game as it is, after a while it does eventually start to feel repetitious if you are not interested in WvW or PvP. You are either fighting a world boss, doing a dungeon, playing the very short living story lines for all but a few hours, or…doing what drives me to my final point….
3) Content, in particular ITEMS: Yes and here we get down to the singular driving purpose of “end game” with GW2, and thats ascended weapons. A 6 month to year long quest to craft 1 weapon out of probably 10 overall and that is literally the singular focus of what everyone strives towards after they exhaust every other avenue of the game. There is no grinding for weapons or gear, there is no great areas to farm for loot to sell to drive the economy, its all centered around “skinning”. There are a set few weapon classes with specific weapon characteristics, and then you pick a skin and “transmute” to get your character appearing a certain way.
This is probably the single biggest issue with the game more then anything. Yes you can say, well thats the way the game is supposed to be, but then we come back to the living world situation, which is what people are complaining about. You grind out the living world update for a few hours if that, you get to the top, you beat the boss, its all crap drops, and you complete the achievements and get a skin. Meanwhile the actual cool skins you have to BUY with cash money on the auction house. This is, a fatal flaw to the games continuity to be successful. And the biggest problem with this is the fact that there literally isnt enough variety in the items (weapons/armor) to support RNG drops to make the effort in these things truely worthwhile. If you werent interested in the gas mask skin, you did it because you needed the gold, why, because you are saving to craft and ascended!! lol
As much as I hate referencing WoW, the thing that drove the game for so long is literally how much STUFF there was in the game. You had a 45 man raid in a dungeon which took 2 hours to fight a boss, and everyone was chomping at the bit to get their hands on like 2 epic drops that could be only distributed over the 45 people. This was the system that drove the game, you consistently had to come back to get the cool gear, and grind, and fight to get it.
Now im not saying that GW2 needs to turn into WoW by no means, but a page needs to be taken out of that book to actually give this game some purpose and some life, otherwise, i have a feeling these living world updates, if they continue to be this bad, arent going to keep peoples attention span long enough before the next MMO comes around.