Guild Wars 2

Upon hearing about Orr during the betas I anticipated reaching the levels in order to play there. Once I got there I found the zones to be needlessly confusing in design and relatively bland and not in the least interesting to look at.

Compound that with the risen. yeah I expected them to be everywhere, I didn’t expect them to be so thick that if you pull one you pull 3 and all of them have knockdowns / stuns / cripples, and god forbid you move in that fight because you’ll probably pull 3 more.

Now I’ve found the risen to be a boring and ugh worthy enemy since I first encountered them. They don’t invoke fear or dread or some sense of OMG they’re coming, they instead invoke a sense of “kittennot more of these things”. Other mobs are fun to fight, Risen are boring as hell.

I won’t mention buggy skill challenges and events, that’s stuff that gets ironed out, but can be considered icing on the cake of why I feel Orr is boresville.

No you’re the one who is boring!

Sincerely,
Orr

Death… Good!

I think Orr sucked. and is hands down the worst zones in the game.

EVERYONE, COME! ! Axe Throw Pull

kitten-

I like the maps, but the risen are annoying, and so think that it makes doing simple tasks like farming materials a huge pain in thekitten

“Oh look some Orichalcum!”

DEATH, GOOD!

4 Risen suddenly on me.

I’ve been fighting risen since level 50, I’d like to see some new enemies.

I was going through the lower zones and I found out why Orr is so bad.

The lower level zones have so much hidden stuff, the terrain changes and there’s that feeling of awe.

Orr just feels bland, a island of sand. There’s hidden stuff, but the risen try as hard as possible to stop you from finding it.
EVERYBODY COME

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

I like the maps, but the risen are annoying, and so think that it makes doing simple tasks like farming materials a huge pain in thekitten

“Oh look some Orichalcum!”

DEATH, GOOD!

4 Risen suddenly on me.

I’ve been fighting risen since level 50, I’d like to see some new enemies.

NO, zombies are all the rage these days. Day Z, The Walking Dead, etc., how dare you want something new and original.

I strongly dislike Orr as well. Hundreds of risen aggros with tons of disables everywhere. And it feels like there’s less events too. Fun.

I like the look of the zones. They did a good good job on the “ruins that have been raised from the sea” bit.

It’s just that the mob density makes it an absolutely tedious chore to move across the zone. Having to kill one of the same handful of trash mobs every ten steps just wears me down.

Not even at Orr and already hating fighting risen.

Might have to start a new character or hide out in the earlier zones…

Why’s everybody picking on Orr?

I feel like Orr is one of the most interesting zones in the game, the above sea coral and undead theme is amazing. Its so atmospheric.

Also it would be lame if there were less enemies.

if you feel like you have to fight mobs every 10 feet, then i’m sorry to say, but you are doing it wrong. it is possible, with the right build, to simply run through everything.

it’s tough at first, but you will get the hang of it.

i think orr is awesome looking, and pretty creepy. the only complaint i have about orr is the people that only farm shelter and penitent camp. so bad.

I’m starting to ditch my level 80 character for new ones. Orr does that to you.

To give some constructive changes:

1. Issue: The “army” of enemies isn’t a fun thing to deal with in Orr, with the aggro system. It’s like covering a map completely in the gaming version of mosquitoes and expecting us to have fun. We’re trying to have fun but something’s buzzing in our ear and chewing on our arm every second.

Fix possibilities: Delete most of the enemies. Or massively nerf the health of most of them. Or make them patrol so that we can let them pass, rather than have to wade into their aggro with no choice.

2. Issue: the events feel Pee Wee league and don’t suck the player in. The lore falls apart in motivating us. It feels like the place is just a bunch of garbage piles. There should be a recolonizing effort or a power or something important, besides lazy soldier outposts that don’t even help you do anything. The rest of GW2 works on building up region so much that you can’t just quit doing that at Orr… it’s like going back to an “old” MMO…

Fix possibilities: For one thing Orr needs something more than faceless soldiers to defend and it needs to be a theme you see all over the place. Other areas you can almost feel yourself befriending, but Orr is missing that feeling.

That’s all I feel like writing for now but others have lots of ideas. Let’s hope ANet realizes how important Orr could be to the game.

Serious point for a second, Orr is meant to be the stronghold and “homeland” so to speak of the Risen and Zhaitan. Is it not to be expected that it is going to be pretty much loaded to the kittens with Risen forces?

I’m trying to think of a clever witticism to compare it to a casual stroll through Mordor, but I can’t think of anything or how to properly present it.

im far from Orr (lvl 41 on my main), and im really taking my sweet time getting there. it sounds like Orr is a disappointment for most, probably because they didnt have more time to spend on it before release. im really looking forward to this zone’s changes. in the meantime, ive a million other things to do in game!

I like the zone but it’s just a pain getting across it. Very often many of the way-points are in conflict so you can’t move unless you’re prepared for slow progress from the next best way-point to your destination.

If you do decide to make a mad dash across the map, you aggro everything in your path and will no doubt kill other players you come across as the train loses interest in you and gets them.

It is a little frustrating at times but I wouldn’t want to lose the sense of tension the zone creates due to this. How this is balanced I don’t know.

Embolism.8106:

EVERYONE, COME! ! Axe Throw Pull

kitten-

Especially if there’s more than one you can’t even play the kitten game.

It has to be a pain, because you know it’s like the enemy stronghold or something

Anyway the great thing about the game is that you can travel to any map at the click of a button and have fun even on your level 80. If you get bored of Orr, then move! and come back when you want a bit of a challenge.

I like to see how many risen I can pull at a time. AoE them down and get phat loots.

Get and Bring friends

Boring isn’t the term I’d use – but I would say the quality of life on Orr is severely lacking. Soloing isn’t very efficient, and travel is pretty brutal both in terms of cost and hassle.

Don’t take it the wrong way, but “quality of life” made me chuckle.

Risen Thrall: This is bull kitten, I only get kittening ESPN1 in Orr and I have to subscribe to Comcast for it!
Risen Preserver: You think that sucks, my son has lupus.
Risen Brute: I got fired today. With the value of Platinum Doubloons going down the toilet I’m not sure how we can afford to eat anymore.
Risen Thrall: You guys are downers, wow.

I think it would make more sense if any of the dynamic events actually had an impact.

If we take an area of the map from the undead, it should be ours, at least temporarily. Grass should start growing, rabbits should show up, the coral should start dying and shrinking. And I don’t mean every 10 minutes as currently. That’s what keeps people clumped up in the “good” spots for events.

Then, late at night, a new WAVE of the risen should rush out, destroy everything and retake the area, and only during this wave, we should fight back by doing important small and large raids on key locations to bottle them up and hold the land we’ve taken, but if we haven’t the resources, they should win.

They are an unlimited enemy after all, but they shouldn’t bloody well keep rising instantly.

It’s a war zone.

It just feels like a minefield and not much more as implemented.

I say steal everything you can from wvwvw and throw it into Orr. Give us something other than rerunning the same mouth-breather events again and again.

The WvW theme idea vs AI on Orr is kinda what I had expected from the details given about Orr pre-release. I mean, Tabula Rasa has such a system where Ai mobs would raid and take over outposts forcing players to team up, clear it out. So I kinda of expected it from the explanation.

Instead we got… well, Orr. blech.

We need a new level 80+ zone around Frostgorge or something*. Orr + Risen are just simply no fun at all.

*Speculation here; but if we talk to the guards blocking access to the Crystal Desert; he seems to hint at needing the Queens OK to enter, and that Dark Days have fallen there. Maybe that’s a hint of something new there? (Just hope it’s not more Risen)

Embolism.8106:

EVERYONE, COME! ! Axe Throw Pull

kitten-

LMAO! true!

The Orr zone manages to suck all the fun out of the game. I hate it with a passion.

I like orr. Ok thematically its a tadge depressing, however it is the dead hordes stronghold so I was not expecting puppies…

It really feels like you are invading enemy territory, its a fight in and to move around, its great.

Derpinator.2894:

I think it would make more sense if any of the dynamic events actually had an impact.

If we take an area of the map from the undead, it should be ours, at least temporarily. Grass should start growing, rabbits should show up, the coral should start dying and shrinking. And I don’t mean every 10 minutes as currently. That’s what keeps people clumped up in the “good” spots for events.

Then, late at night, a new WAVE of the risen should rush out, destroy everything and retake the area, and only during this wave, we should fight back by doing important small and large raids on key locations to bottle them up and hold the land we’ve taken, but if we haven’t the resources, they should win.
.

So the first group of players in a day should get to see the attack and come prime time, all the other players only get to see “finished” events…..yeah great idea….

Orr is a great looking place, but the Risen annoyed the heck out of me so much that on my first level 80, the instant I arrived in Orr and noticed how long it took to get around the place because of the mobs putting slowing effects on me, I re-rolled and made a new character. The same happened on my 2nd level 80 when I arrived there too. I have yet to explore the full map of Orr because of how much it bothers me.

I have since made another character and my 2 level 80 characters are unplayed apart from when I use them for crafting and WvW.

It is so annoying to run around in Orr. So much that I hardly want to go there to farm anymore.

Yeah, i found all three of the Orrian areas to be the least inspired/inspiring of the whole game. The mobs are just evenly spaced across all the terrain, there’s only one KIND of mob (undead), and the events seem to be more rare here than any other zone.

The terrain itself is just sort of “blah” and completely inartistic and non-beautiful, unlike the way the rest of the game is.

After 100 hours getting to lvl 70, i honestly expected more when I got to “home plate” so to speak.

Yep, its not what I was expecting when I first heard about it.Although the rampant bugs in the area may be affecting my POV.

Hickeroar.9734:

Yeah, i found all three of the Orrian areas to be the least inspired/inspiring of the whole game. The mobs are just evenly spaced across all the terrain, there’s only one KIND of mob (undead), and the events seem to be more rare here than any other zone.

The terrain itself is just sort of “blah” and completely inartistic and non-beautiful, unlike the way the rest of the game is.

After 100 hours getting to lvl 70, i honestly expected more when I got to “home plate” so to speak.

It used to be a massive city and kingdom that was blown up and swallowed by the oceans, raised as an undead capitol by Zhaitan. It’s not meant to be pretty or beautiful.

I think Orr is interesting.

Tradewind.6913:

Hickeroar.9734:

Yeah, i found all three of the Orrian areas to be the least inspired/inspiring of the whole game. The mobs are just evenly spaced across all the terrain, there’s only one KIND of mob (undead), and the events seem to be more rare here than any other zone.

The terrain itself is just sort of “blah” and completely inartistic and non-beautiful, unlike the way the rest of the game is.

After 100 hours getting to lvl 70, i honestly expected more when I got to “home plate” so to speak.

It used to be a massive city and kingdom that was blown up and swallowed by the oceans, raised as an undead capitol by Zhaitan. It’s not meant to be pretty or beautiful.

This is however, a game and thus it should be fun. Unless you subscribe to the pain is good game design philosophy. Boring and PITA is not good game design despite the thematic correctness.

I’m in Orr now, and wondering if my server is just completely dead or what. I cannot do any events because I’m the only one there, and while there’s a little chatter in the map nobody is interested in actually doing anything. The high priest boss is impossible it seems for us. I tried twice and our best attempt was still above 3/4 health. That attempt we had a good chunk of people too, but nowheres near what we apparently needed. Everyone just laying around dead and taking up time of others rezzing probably wasn’t helpful either.

Are all server experiences this crappy? Cuz it really makes me hate the zone. I can’t do anything but fight hordes of undead I want to avoid. Actually just porting back to a lowbie zone now. No fun, no fun and all it is doing is costing me silver.

Boring isn’t the word I’d use. Frustrating fits better.

This might be the only other complaint in this game I have to disagree with. Orr is the base island for the Risen, it only makes sense that they’re everywhere on the island. It’s also why all the DE’s there feel like a fight for every inch of soil there. Now my only complaint is the amount of broken DE’s that were there. It was astounding to see that many things broken, one ore two DE’s down…that’s understandable but when 40-50% of DE’s are broken…..that’s just pathetic.

Just a couple suggestions I think would make this zone a bit more engaging, and less annoying.
-Modify the risen abilities outside of instances so that they are not lock on. Given the huge number of enemies, this enables players to conserve endurance and dodge the moves freestyle.
or
- Group the risen in larger squads, let’s say 6, and increase the roaming range. This will help provide better gaps players can weave through to avoid detection. We’ll also get a riskier battle. Throw a veteran giant into some squads and have them roam an even larger area.
or
-Sell an item at vendors, lets call it “Stench of Death”, that decreases chance of being detected by undead.

As for aesthetics, well, I think the area achieves what it’s meant to visually, but I will forever ask Anet to have customizable music per zone, not simply battle/town/boss type categorization. FFXI online had this style, and you really fall in love with each area, and go back sometimes just to hang out and listen to the track and soak in the design. Of course there was also specialized music for battle, fishing, bosses, etc but they really went that extra step to provide a full experience to each area.

i don’t understand anyone who thinks it’s not an “artistic” area. there are some areas, especially around the bodies of water, that have some amazing and creepy structures. one that really stood out to me was the huge statue of that demonic looking guy, next to that even larger stargate looking thing.

it’s hard to notice these things because you are constantly attacked by the risen, but i’ve encountered moments where i just stood there taking screen shots.

i just really like the desolate feel of the area, i suppose.

I really like Orr. I don’t like the players in it however.

The thing that wrecks Orr most is all thekittenglitches, they really need to be fixed.

Monte.5013:

The thing that wrecks Orr most is all thekittenglitches, they really need to be fixed.

Yes, yes yes. I refuse to go through these zones until they are not completely borked. I don’t like the idea of having to push past the front lines to skip to the next zone.

Tradewind.6913:

Hickeroar.9734:

Yeah, i found all three of the Orrian areas to be the least inspired/inspiring of the whole game. The mobs are just evenly spaced across all the terrain, there’s only one KIND of mob (undead), and the events seem to be more rare here than any other zone.

The terrain itself is just sort of “blah” and completely inartistic and non-beautiful, unlike the way the rest of the game is.

After 100 hours getting to lvl 70, i honestly expected more when I got to “home plate” so to speak.

It used to be a massive city and kingdom that was blown up and swallowed by the oceans, raised as an undead capitol by Zhaitan. It’s not meant to be pretty or beautiful.

Yea, but does that mean there needs to be undead spaced exactly 5 feet all over the map just standing there? I find it surprisingly beautiful for what it is, but the events and mobs feel kinda last minute.

Orr is horrid.

I’m the kinda player that likes to explore when I get bored of killing stuff, and visa versa, and in most of the zones you can do this pritty much ok.

In most zones when your bored of constant killing, you can pritty much start avoiding combat and go explore stuff instead, but not always, sometimes you have to clear a few mobs, or clear out a cave, but you get my drift,

In Orr, lol no chance, you can’t move five yards without tagging a bunch of angry undead, which is ok if your in the mood for a killing spree, but if your not in the mood it just gets very very tiresome, very quickly.

I dropped my lvl 80 because of Orr, and started lvling alts instead.

The place kinda reminds me of Eastern Plaguelands from Vanilla WoW (not EPL as it is now) back the 60 days, constantly tagging mobs and forced into combat, in a boring horrid looking zone,

How many people went to Winterspring instead ?, and fell in love with a nice looking zone.

:)

Orr being the main lvl80 zone is just horrible yes. If it was just a passing place i wouldn’t mind but for the whole game to lead up to this doom and gloom area it’s just very unpleasing, unsatisfying and dull. And the mobs… they stick(stink) like glue.

I also can not stand Orr or the zone prior to it, What i actually think would help sort the bloody mess of a place out would be heart’s as when i first went there i had zero clue as to where things were going on.

Also im constantly coming across events and their is no one around to do them and some heart’s (that reset) to direct people would help.

The zone itself does my head in (disregarding how bugged the entire place is) and the fact that if you played a sylvari you basically saw 98% of the mobs from that zone already, I find it hard to stay logged in when i go to these area’s.

Which is disappointing as i enjoyed everywhere else and orr just made me get bored.

And now its even more anoying with this anti farming crap they patched in, i feel its a total waste of time doing anything in orr.

Orr can be fun if you’re not planning on doing anything else except DE. Everything else about the zone is an excercise in frustration. There’s only so many CC-break abilities my guardian can put on his action bar and I still can’t stop the constant CC. My frustration level in Orr is in the nerd rage zone.

Orr is the only zone in the whole game where I actively avoid mobs. Not because they are dangerous (they are dangerous) but because they are so annoying and they nearly always come in packs. It’s quite rare to get a single risen by itself.

Also, risen turtles….. 0_0 really?

Also, the artificial speed many of the mobs get completely takes you out of the moment. it’s so artificial.

Visually, I’m ok with the design though the layout is unnecessarily restrictive and complex. It feels like a large funnel rather than a large open world like other maps.

I really try and minimise my attendance in this zone for those very reasons. You don’t get as much karma and silver from other zones, but you still get a decent amount without having to deal with

1- the frustrations and annoyances
2- zerging everything
3- I’ve seen risen for nearly 20 levels already. Now there’s a whole area of only risen.

TurtleofPower.5641:

2. Issue: the events feel Pee Wee league and don’t suck the player in. The lore falls apart in motivating us. It feels like the place is just a bunch of garbage piles. There should be a recolonizing effort or a power or something important, besides lazy soldier outposts that don’t even help you do anything. The rest of GW2 works on building up region so much that you can’t just quit doing that at Orr… it’s like going back to an “old” MMO…

Have you done any of the chapel events?

I beat Lyssa this morning and it was great. Really just everything I was looking for in terms of dynamic events. Takes a decent group of people and decent coordination. Easily one of the best events in the game.

It would be cool if the Orr monsters dropped some token of some sort… or scalps or something, that you could turn in… then it would make sense that they are everywhere and give you incentive to kill them rather than run through them all the time…