Guild Wars 2

I’m 29, all but inactive, and I don’t think stereotypes about age and attention span are very helpful.

I think GW2 is beautiful and visceral, but rarely offers any roleplay of meaning or consequence. Admittedly I haven’t taken any characters all the way to 80 – gameplay got very stale after around level 30 for me, so I just kept making alts for the interesting bits. I didn’t find any interesting choices to make in the world – all the events or hearts seemed to be just succeed or fail, and it feels as though you are supposed to do every task asked of you regardless of your personal values or beliefs. My ‘personal story’ was also entirely instanced and independent of the virtual world, not to mention pre-written, so it was hard not to see it as more like a co-op single player game than as an immersive world of which I felt involved.

There is also a disproportionate emphasis on the reactive, visceral and ‘immediate’ combat against either other players or NPCs with little to no consequence, that I would say appeals to players who aren’t looking for deeper long-term character or community development. This may explain a slight skewing to ages where time is precious because of work/family commitments, and perhaps toward those with a ‘console’ background.

It’s a wonderful fighting game with an absolutely stunning style and setting, but it’s not a very engaging or dynamic virtual world, in my experience at least. I’m going to wait to see if future content updates shift the focus more towards depth of experience and meaningful decisions, but I suspect I might just not be part of the target demographic. That’s perfectly okay, of course – not every game is going to engage every personality style. I’m sure a virtual world focused on emergent player stories and a rich, complex interactive experience is still to come!

Alright, I confess. I am 44 and I play far too much. My daughter is 14 and plays enough. I’m content with my 5 character ranging from lvl 14 to 80, while daughter has her lvl 80 and six little ones.

I am having a blast except when I have to do a vista. Jumping just does not work for me.

22 years old and am absolutely loving it.

I’m only 20, college student, played MMOs my whole life. This game is perfect, I dont have time to play everyday and when I do get a chance to play I can actually kill people and feel like making a significant increase in my character in just a few hours of playing

23 and i love it. It does have its flaws (such as class balance and the occasional bug) but no game this scale can ever expect to not have these issues release. This game is still in its infancy when you look at the life cycle of mmo’s. WoW is a completely diffrent game than when it came out…. what 10 years ago?

32 and loving it. I’m on Tarnished Coast, and the roleplaying community there is one of the best I’ve seen in any MMO. Great place to hang out and tell stories with others in between heading out to adventure!

44, and just started playing but I like it so far. I bought it for the Halloween release coming out tomorrow.

27 and loving it.

33. Love the game. My only real disappointments are the armor choices, all three light armor professions, and dungeons. My favorite 3 toons (warrior, thief, ranger) are level capped, so there’s not much incentive to log on right now, but I didn’t buy the game expecting weekly xpacs. Leveling was fun, and the community is much better than any other MMO I’ve played. Good enough for me.

I’m 21, and I personally disagree with the correlation between players who stick around and age. I think there are other factors at work there.

I also agree with Decutho. As a college student, I think this is a great if you don’t have a lot of time for video games. For me, I can get my dailies done in a couple hours and probably go up a level, and that’s perfect.

33 here, and absolutely love the game.

26 (27 next month), love it so far, but admittedly I have only played it for about a week and a half.

I used to play WoW but feel that I grew out of it (or it grew out of me).

28, I think the game has some serious issues that need ironed out, but I otherwise love it and have no intention of up and leaving unless problems somehow worsen.

19 and it is the best MMO ever!

31 year old. Stopped playing completely. I am utterly disappointed with this game and bored with it to death. I visit the forums occasionally to see whether anything promising is on the horizon, realize that no such thing is and go back to doing other things.

I’m 23 and I love this game as much as I did on day 1, and I play way too much… My boyfriend, who’s 25, and our circle of friends, all in early 20s, left. I’m the last one standing, but I don’t think I’ll be leaving any time soon.

24, amazing game~
I play mmo’s since 14 years old! and i can say, GW2 is the best of all!
I wont stop playing it, except they fix the ranger class a bit in the future, but still atm i enjoy it 100%.
Can’t wait for the Halloween event woohooo!!

20 and loving it!

Game needs some polish though.
I actually lol’d irl when i found out ‘aimed shot’ (warrior rifle skill) is an instant cast low damage ability that slows and is the only ability where you don’t aim and fire from the hip instead <—- things like that annoy me

I am 33 and loving GW2…

No matter how much time I have, be it a day or just half an hour – Tyria always have room and something for me to enjoy.

14/F/NY Come chat with me.

Don’t worry I’m not “To catch a pred.” with Chris Hanson.

Woo! I’m loving the fact that there’s a huge older crowd playing this game. I’m 24 and I really enjoy it so far. It’s fun enough to keep me playing, and casual enough to fit in my schedule.

27 and over 500 hours played. Love it so far.

25 here and most of my Guildies are early 20’s aswell (I think)

25 ans, I love this game!

28 my first MMORPG and loving it!!

I’m 23 and think Gw2 is good, but has a far greater potential; by far one of the best online open world games out at the moment.

Personally, I find the combat to be a bit… lacking. It just seems like the “action” bits of the combat in Gw2 feel a bit off and aren’t really pronounced nor thought through well enough.

I find this might be a part of why so many MMO’s have been hyped up and then we get the “this game fails” argument lately. Younger players are looking for a more twitch reaction game, where your ability to act, move, judge distance, etc. all at once play a huge role in your “skill.” Whereas older players aren’t necessarily interested in those specific dynamics in their game(s) as much. I base this observation partly on a couple things:
1. Jump quests: younger players seem to love them, bane of older players existence (not for everyone, but I do generally see more complaints about them than from younger players)
2. Action Combat Games’ player bases: It seems the player base in these games has a much lower average user age. Sure there are some older players I’ve found here and there in them, but it seems their average user is about 18-20 (from data I have read posted on these game sites) versus what seems to be a much higher average here (about 30 or so from what I’ve seen in posts?).

It’s not really about the presence of nor lack of consequence in the games, as more of the style, game play, atmosphere, etc. that attracts different age groups.

While I like this game a lot overall, I do look at the Vindictus dragons and then laugh at Gw2 Dragons; PvP wise I like a game called Dragon Nest a lot more. Then again they are different games and have different development styles, goals, etc. but they are also the type of games that younger players seem to go to (like I stated earlier; average for those games is around 18-20 or so, but runs the gamut, older players tending to be significantly fewer in number). They don’t take any more or less skill either, just different styles of games.

Not a 100% accurate picture of things, but it should be in the ballpark.

33 and love it. Cant wait to see how this game continues to grow!

im 52 and love the game and am an avid gamer played way too many over the years lol

I’m nearly 26 and of our 130ish members in my guild the vast majority are over 18. On average most our members are in their 20’s or early 30’s.

I myself am female and we have about 8 female members in total.

I played the game since BWE1 and I started recruiting for the guild beforehand. (I did not play GW1 I came from a WoW/SWtor background). As of this post I played 755 hours.

20 And loving it. Got bored of Pve, moved to WvW got bored of WvW, moved to Spvp. Even if you get bored of one thing there’s still so much more to do. Pretty sure i’ll be hooked for ages on this game

I’m 24, and I have to say this game fills my MMO void good enough for me. I really enjoy it.

I liked other MMOs too, but I’d rather have something simple like this nowadays (am I getting old? :P). No more rep grinding, dailies, blah blah. My favorite MMOs have always been ones where you set your own goals, and GW2 allows me to do that.

37. Played GW1 as well, along with WoW and AION.

24 ______________

43 and love the game.

16 and really enjoying the game,especially the exploration and crafting system. All in all, it’s a beatiful game and I love it

32 and former WoW-player. Since I play GW2 since BETA I not even took a look on WoW:MoP. Well, my wife (29) just took a look on GW2, playing a level 2 elementalist, but upgraded WoW to MoP the other day.
Now, on WoW I got bored after two months, at the most. Often I got bored after three weeks or so.
On GW2 I’m not near getting bored after two months, playing only on char. I love GW2. And while I always lacked the fun in PvP, GW2 makes me PvP most of the time.
Did I already say, I love GW2?

18. Loving the game, but it seems to be missing something

39 here just got the game a couple weeks ago for my birthday….absolutely can’t shut it off…love it!

turn 24 on november 1st and love the game. actually recently inspired to do a nvidia 3d surround setup to get the most out of my gaming

34 and loving it, despite the WvW issues.

31 years old. Taking a break from GW2. Great game, but the stat of the ranger is detracting from my joy of the game.

21 and really enjoying the game with my friends (about the same age)

16 and loving the game!

Rhyse.8176:

I wonder if it has more to do with WoW etc being more structured, and GW2 having much more free form gameplay? I’m not a cognitive scientist, but I’ve definately noticed changes in the way I look at things in the last 10 years or so.

How many of us 30-ish-ers, used-to-play-WoW (or w/e)-but-hate-it-now-ers discovered wow in our early 20’s and loved it then? I wonder if there’s something there.

This fits me quite well, actually. Well, I don’t hate WoW but to get any real progress in that game, it required too much effort to be top dog, felt like work towards the end, I get plenty of that at, ahem work.

36 years old and loving GW 2 so far!

30

….message body length must at least be 15.

there…

I am 76, and I play in a guild with my son (51yrs old), my two grandsons (24yrs old and 18yrs old) my granddoughter (22yrs old) and her fiancè (23yrs old). Guild name is Happy Hippo Family (and my main is called Hippo Pippo).
I just love the game, but my hands are not quick as I would like, so I have a very hard time in PvP. In PvE is not that bad.

Just kidding, I am just 44 on my ID, but only 20 in my heart and soul.

I’m 26.

I’ve played WoW since the beginning and various other mmos but I’ve really grown to hate the cutthroat competition and the selfish behaviour in these games. To me, that isn’t what mmos are supposed to be like. I should want to be around other players not be irritated by their presence and avoid them. I find myself very disappointed with the mmos genre in general these days.

GW2 I feel got that aspect right though. Players can work together and enjoy being around each other, and thats why I really like this game. I feel like this is how mmos should have been.

28 and having fun. Not an ideal MMO but better than most. I absolutely loved FF11 when it launched.

I’m 25 years-old.

I don’t fit your stereotype. My friends, both on and off-line, have always been much older than myself. My friends right now, counting just those off-line, range from their mid-30s to late 50s.
I’ve been this way since I was very little (when I was 10 I was bored with my peers and studied school subjects with those in their late teens and mid-twenties).

I didn’t leave GW2 because “I got bored” and moved on to “the next game”. I left it because of lack of strategy, challenge, and socialization that the game provides.

When I bought GW2, I wasn’t expecting Farmville, I expected something more challenging and engaging.

I didn’t move on to the next game, I went back to play GW1 which I’ve played more than 2 thousand hours for more than 7 years (it’s my only other MMO/game)

Even though I’ve played that game for so long, it’s still fun and challenging to me.

So yes, please, don’t lump us all under the same ADD-ridden rug.

online, people seem to assume i am in my 20’s (the trolls say i’m in my teens),

but i am 44.

i probably come across as immature.

guilty as charged. :p

edit: i began gaming on a Sinclair Spectrum 16k when i was 15.