Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone!

This weekend, I got together with three close friends that I used to play Guild Wars 1 with. In fact, one of them was the person who introduced me to it.

Since Guild Wars 2 launch, I could never get it to “stick” with any of them. Even daily login to level up their first 80’s (and they all have 3rd birthday gifts!) didn’t do it.

It dawned on me, last week, that Dungeons were what they were looking for. Only us involved (instanced), a clear start-to-finish path and somewhat challenging encounters.

We ran story mode of Ascalon Catacombs, with 3 (and then 4, half way through), which was not particularly had but still not a speed run. They had a fantastic time, and all agreed that this was the content they were looking for back when the game launched.

The following morning, I did story mode for Sorrow’s Embrace with just one of them. I think it took us somewhere between 2 1/2 and 3 hours, partially because I had never played any paths of that dungeon! Once again, a fantastic adventure.

Today, I have learned about the future of dungeons… what timing!

Fortunately, they aren’t in it for farming, so lowering the gold rewards won’t really impact them.

One of my favourite parts of dungeons is that you can pick what you want to do. If the new Fractals system makes it possible to pick, then maybe it will take over for dungeon runs…. I’d definitely not want to see it work like dailies, where Friday night comes around and there is only one choice for the groups’ weekly Guild Wars 2 experience.

Anyhow, I’m not complaining about something that hasn’t happened yet.. just amused that this news coincided with me getting 3 old GW1 vets back into the game.

I have been running a couple of GW1 vets through some GW2 dungeons, so I totally understand what OP has experienced. It feels fresh to see the content as it was designed through the eyes of newer players in which the ambient, story, dialogue, boss mechanics are fleshed out more than just a few gold earned after a few minutes run through. I’m too used to dungeons now that I often fail to see how this content was meticulously crafted 3 years ago; but I’m sure it will not go unnoticed by new players and that dungeons will stay permanently as a core part of GW2 content.

I feel like I had the opposite experience. Dungeons in this game are just weird… The first dungeon I ran was AC story mode at level 30 and it was a complete disaster. We’d no idea what was happening everything had way too much HP and hit ridiculously hard for a starting dungeon.

Didn’t touch dungeons again till I was 80. At that point they were still a very odd experience. Skipping these mobs and those mobs. Stacking in corners and just spam AOEing things down. Never felt right.

To this day dungeons in this game seem to be a complete failure in my eyes. I do fractals every once in a while but dungeons are just not something that is fun and farming dungeons is even less fun. I had high hopes when I started playing the game, the combat system seemed to lend itself to some great dungeons but it just didn’t pan out at all.