Guild Wars 2

As a person playing this game since launch, I was interested in seeing first impressions of new players to guild wars 2 with all these recent new updates and patches.

So I found this video on YouTube of a person playing the game for the first time. I think this video says everything that is good and bad about the game for new players!

I think Anet has some big issues to resolve when it comes to getting people interested in the game.

You should probably disregard the vast majority of videos about games on youtube anyways. The vast majority of them are meant only to garner attention, views, follows, etc, to generate money.

I think the problem is actually serious. The first time I played gw2, I gave up at about level 20. The quests were too boring. I picked it up maybe 8 months after, rolled a new character which I loved (mesmer) and pushed myself to pass level 20. At some point things became a bit easier. And now I love it. But yes, there are a few terrible quests which take forever because there is nothing to do.
The event system is really nice and I usually wait for the event to finish the quest in the area because it makes things faster (more enemies to kill).
And I know my girlfriend had the same problem until she went to PvP. Now she enjoys PvP and is trying to stay away from PvE leveling which is a shame. And I managed to also bring a friend to the game and he also got bored with the quests and I feel like he’s not motivated to play anymore.

2 things that bugged me the most in this video that Anet needs to work on.

1. The personal story is not unlocked until level 10. Meaning by the time new players reach level 10 they are bored with heart quests and want to quit the game. They may not even realize that there is a story to play. (I understand that the personal story has its own set of issues, but still)

2. When did they change that in order to play WvW you have to level 31??. I have not gone to WvW with a low level character recently so I never noticed that. Why did they change this? It is big turn off to new players who are coming to game because they were interested in this feature only.

I’m noticing the same problem in that video and mentioned in this thread even. People are relying to much on hearts to level. That’s not really how you play this game. If you stick to hearts, yeah you are going to be bored out of your mind and probably drop the game. They should have never added the hearts to begin with, but people complained that they didn’t know what to do and so they put the hearts in to “guide” people I guess. You should focus more on just exploring the map and doing events. Plus hopping to other race zones.

Plus WvW and spvp are great ways to level as well. You can enter WvW through portals in LA even if you can’t access the WvW panels. I do think this “restriction” is stupid and they need to have it like it used to be because it wrongly gives the impression to people that you need to be level 31.

Sid.8512:

2. When did they change that in order to play WvW you have to level 31??. I have not gone to WvW with a low level character recently so I never noticed that. Why did they change this? It is big turn off to new players who are coming to game because they were interested in this feature only.

They haven’t locked it, per se. You just can’t access it from the icons up the top until that level.

You can still get in through the portals.

I lol’d everytime he said he ’couldn’t wait to get a mount’

I don’t understand Anet’s logic behind the NPE. They say it’s because the game was leaking players, but based on this guy’s reaction it seems like they are going to leak even worse than before. If people are getting bored and quitting before they even discover the personal story, pvp, or wvw, then something needs to change.

What’s even more troubling is once they reach level 10 and start the personal story, they will probably begin to hate the game even more. WP did a video showing just how stupid and pointless these missions can be.

If the game is this sleep-mode easy, why would anyone care to stick around? What reason do we have to care about the story?

Sid.8512:

As a person playing this game since launch, I was interested in seeing first impressions of new players to guild wars 2 with all these recent new updates and patches.

So I found this video on YouTube of a person playing the game for the first time. I think this video says everything that is good and bad about the game for new players!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_uspCbFFK0

I think Anet has some big issues to resolve when it comes to getting people interested in the game.

I watched the video you linked..

It was as if I was watching one of those montageparodies you see on Reddit.. It was really annoying.
If he bothered to read what was on his screen it wouldn’t have been a hassle to do the hearts.
If he thinks the “questing” (hearts) system is boring.. He isn’t going to like the much of the content that GW 2 has.

I’m just going to sum this up to: This isn’t the game for him!

xarallei.4279:

I’m noticing the same problem in that video and mentioned in this thread even. People are relying to much on hearts to level. That’s not really how you play this game. If you stick to hearts, yeah you are going to be bored out of your mind and probably drop the game. They should have never added the hearts to begin with, but people complained that they didn’t know what to do and so they put the hearts in to “guide” people I guess. You should focus more on just exploring the map and doing events. Plus hopping to other race zones.

If you have to tell someone how they should play to have fun in what’s supposed to be a sandbox then that’s bad game design. However GW2 isn’t for everyone and I personally enjoyed hearts immensely when they game initially launched. Maybe because the zones were full of players? Plus, that was when you could do the personal story when you wanted and not every 10 levels.

He didn’t understand the lvl 10 quest? I don’t know if this is funny or sad, sorry^^’
Reading the quest text or talking with the heart-above-head npc miiiiiight be too complicated for the average lets player. But I guess reading is boring in lets plays.

Only once I had a problem with a Heart that didn’t get full no matter what I did, only after a long time I succeeded. The one in the right/top corner in Diessa, where the portal to Rhand opens. Making it compeltely event-dependable was not a good idea

About the story I can only agree with you, Sid. It was much better to do one story mission every 2-3 levels instead of rushing through 5-6 each 10 levels. Being forced to level in the open world without any hint of an upcoming story not only drags on, but can become boring very fast, especially since new players only see the hearts and no vistas or skill point challenges. That’s content they know nothing about when they play the game for the first time. The personal story was THE main reason I felt motivated to reach level 80. I drop many MMOs before even reaching max, so having a story that leads you almost perfectly to the endgame was a huge point for me. It’s sad they partially hide their story from new players nowadays..

It boils down to GW2 is not like other MMOs. Other MMOs use quest givers as a way to lead players through areas until they leveled enough to leave. GW2 is more sandbox like where you make your own fun. I was an explorer. I wanted to find all waypoints, POI, Vistas and SkillHero Challenges and harvest nodes for cash. If the hearts filled while I was defending myself, great. But this was back in the “good old days” of pre NPE. At the very least all the mat nodes are hidden and I don’t know how much of the those “goals” I had are now hidden on the map or for how long.

I know the goal of NPE was not to overload the new player with things they could do but now it’s like an overprotective parent who won’t let their child out of there reach. But the result may be limiting players just to hearts and map sweeping which IMO isn’t the game’s strong suit and is training new players to be led rather than encouraging free play.

Idk why……….but I always found Norn starting place is boring as hell…..This might be reaaaaly subjective, I started as a sylvari, and found the world alot more interesting, very soon compared to the snowy area.

Many things that annoy NEW players in this game that vets will never see unless they get another, fresh account. Many things you have to unlock now (this is account wide unlocks btw); if you already have a higher level character, you will never come across frustrating things. Like say being able to mail, use the TP, accessing bank, ability to enter pvp, etc. It is ANNOYING. All these things were not there when most of us started to play and now they are. Lastly, hearts just well…suck. This is one the few games I really really dislike leveling up new chars. And again, if you are a vet you will more than likely have lots of level up tomes to instantly make a new char 80…a new player has to slog through all this boring heart content that has had experience and gold nerfs..

They really need to revert most of the NPE changes. The “too confusing” excuse just doesn’t fly.

The problem with that video, like others have said, is that he is seeing the Hearts as Quests. Which is not what they are meant to be.

Hearts weren’t designed as a quest system, they were made to help guide you to Event areas. Events are what could be considered Quests, as they are your main source of XP, just like Quests are the main source of XP in other MMOs.

Back in the day, we didn’t even have Hearts. It was just open world explore till you came across Events. They added the Hearts cause people were lost and didn’t understand what to do. So they made Hearts as guides to help push you to Event areas, and then added small tasks to them to keep you occupied while you wait for Events to pop up.

He seems to be misinformed about several things, whether it’s the lacking tutorial system or just holding onto old MMO mechanics, I’m not sure. But you can tell he can’t let go of the old mechanics from other MMOs, and is carrying that into GW2 instead of leaving his comfort zone and realizing that GW2 is not like other MMOs.

Otherwise I just couldn’t stand the video. It was mostly annoying.

Originally, when it came to personal story, it was a bit more fun to level because the next personal story was available right away at level 2. Every time you completed the personal story you have incentive to level because you only had to be a level 3 or 4 to play the next story (or if you wanted a bit of a challenge, play it when you are under level). Doing just a few hearts or an event was not too bad because then you could play the story again shortly.

Now, it is grind to level 10. Play a few story missions and then grind again. And as wooden potatoes had said in one of his recent videos. The personal story is just too easy the way it is set up now.

the personal story is one of the reasons I have such a hard time sticking to the game. I really like the story and as soon as I am getting into it. I have to wait again for the next part. it gets old real fast, and heart quests get old real fast.

I have a guard at 56 and want to level another character but I can’t bring myself to it because it feels like there is no way to speed things up.

That’s basically me when I’m trying gw2 when it was released. I felt leveling was boring and slow because coming from other mmo, my main focus is to level up all the time, so I quit the game. After 2 years, I came back to gw2 and roll a new toon. This time my main focus is on map completion. Surprisingly, I had a lot of fun exploring maps that require lower level than my character and bam, I didn’t even realized when I level up so much. Tbh, gw2 leveling up philosophy is very different from other mmo, so it is hard for new players to catch what’s going on with gw2.

Silverkey.2078:

I think the problem is actually serious. The first time I played gw2, I gave up at about level 20. The quests were too boring. I picked it up maybe 8 months after, rolled a new character which I loved (mesmer) and pushed myself to pass level 20. At some point things became a bit easier. And now I love it. But yes, there are a few terrible quests which take forever because there is nothing to do.
The event system is really nice and I usually wait for the event to finish the quest in the area because it makes things faster (more enemies to kill).
And I know my girlfriend had the same problem until she went to PvP. Now she enjoys PvP and is trying to stay away from PvE leveling which is a shame. And I managed to also bring a friend to the game and he also got bored with the quests and I feel like he’s not motivated to play anymore.

Except I ‘love’ everything you list that you hate. I’m leveling up a new Necro (last class to play before the new one) now, 23rd level. Decided to go putz around in Brisban after clearing Kessex before doing maybe Gendarran and then Lornar’s, one of my all time favorite zones.

So is one of us right and the other wrong? I’d say neither are necessarily right or wrong. We each have different play styles and things we enjoy, it would seem.

Now what do they do about that? Do they work to keep me? Do they work to keep you? Do they work to keep both of us?

I’m not picking on you specifically, this was just a great post to juxtapose against my own enjoyment experience and to make a point. Not sure what the point is, other than to say it would seem they are going to make whatever kind of game that they make, and it’s up to us to determine whether we enjoy the game or not.

There are things that GW2 “doesn’t” do well for me, and even things they’ve taken away from me that make me sad and I’ll never get them back. I get some of it over in…wait for it…AA. Yeah, that’s right. Really enjoying my second visit over there, and playing ‘both’ at the same time. I get a house and farmville and lots of nice clothes and nice looking tunes with some great emotes and idle animations and much like the time I spent working towards a Legendary here (which doesn’t mean all that much), I’m working on a car there (which…doesn’t mean all that much). I don’t even PvP over there, and my gear is pretty terrible. When I want to fight and explore zones…I come back here. And I love WvW here in GW2.

So just like a TV show, a book, a sporting event, music, this is a piece of entertainment. We either find the entertainment worth our time (sometimes money), or we do not. Sometimes, like with a TV show, it’s close enough and we keep watching. Often times we start because it’s amazing at the beginning, then jumps the shark at some point, but we just keep watching because we’ve watched so long, we don’t really know how to stop. Not really up to that TV show to care whether I like it any more, they’re going to make what they make.

And I’m not saying criticism is bad, I get that we criticize because we ‘care what happens’, but often times one person’s criticism of wanting something changes is exactly what someone else enjoys. Now what do they do?

Edit: ^ sorry…that is why I can’t use Twitter. If Twitter were Wordpress, I’d be in heaven.

man, as a new player, I level so fast, I was worried I was doing something wrong. Hearts were a great way to do the quests, and still is, and they were always super easy, and best of all, most time they had something good a new new player could buy, or sell their junk. as a vet starting a new character, hearts are even easier now, it hard to understand how this system right now is bad, but I know I don’t have the experience that came before this change, but from what people say, I do not like it, lol.

Ha, getting to level 10 is not a “grind”, it’s trivial post NPE. It’s only annoying to key farmers. I guess they really didn’t like it but didn’t have a way to fix it until they bumped up the starting level on the grounds that a chapter should be doable straight through without needing to level.

Behellagh.1468:

It boils down to GW2 is not like other MMOs. Other MMOs use quest givers as a way to lead players through areas until they leveled enough to leave. GW2 is more sandbox like where you make your own fun. I was an explorer. I wanted to find all waypoints, POI, Vistas and SkillHero Challenges and harvest nodes for cash. If the hearts filled while I was defending myself, great. But this was back in the “good old days” of pre NPE. At the very least all the mat nodes are hidden and I don’t know how much of the those “goals” I had are now hidden on the map or for how long.

I know the goal of NPE was not to overload the new player with things they could do but now it’s like an overprotective parent who won’t let their child out of there reach. But the result may be limiting players just to hearts and map sweeping which IMO isn’t the game’s strong suit and is training new players to be led rather than encouraging free play.

I’ve been levelling characters even through the NPE and hardly anything was hidden. I just rolled a new ranger to experience the trait changes from the start and, except for the abomination that is the NPE Wayfarer map, levelling now sort of feels like it did when I started. Though they haven’t put the material nodes back into the level 1 – 5 areas.

Wayfarer was my original starting area when I first started playing. I’m sad to hear how bad it is post NPE. I still frequent the area north of the “wall” but I haven’t seen how the southern area plays since post NPE.

They removed the dredge heart but that’s about it for south Wayfarer. The nodes and TP NPCs removal is through all the maps so not really specific for it. It looks like Hero point challenges are now open to any level again since Marga beared up for my ranger.

I took a few months off from the game last year because of what they did to the map.

I think they need to completely repackage the personal story, and do it similar to season 2 of the living world. The story of GW2 really hit it’s stride in season 2 and stayed strong (mostly) throughout. The reasons for this are because they scrapped the side-by-side dialogues, and made use of recurring characters with meaningful interwoven plots. Also, each episode culminates in a dramatic, and relatively challenging boss fight with unique mechanics. The story is MUCH more satisfying when you feel like you’ve defeated a worthy foe. Most of the original personal story is full of trivial veteran enemies that die to auto-attack with little or no dodging, and no unique mechanics to speak of.

Probably one of the most understated problems with NPE is the mobs. Not so much the combat systems, but the weak Mob behavior that doesn’t encourage the use of the game’s dodge and skill chaning mechanics until much, much later.

I noticed this when starting up my thief. You don’t see any of the truly amazing stuff until you’ve unlocked the utility skills and off hands (which now come much later). The first 10 levels aren’t exciting…. its trying to teach people the UI, when it should be teaching steering you toward skill comprehension. Thats what I loved about the original weapon skill unlocks…. you start with just the auto attack, and kills quickly unlock moves 2-5. Within a couple levels, you have a nice kitten nal of attacks to experiment with. By the time you enter the second half of the starter map, you should have a good grasp of one weapon set, and use the chance to try a second weapon set.

Xenon.4537:

I think they need to completely repackage the personal story, and do it similar to season 2 of the living world. The story of GW2 really hit it’s stride in season 2 and stayed strong (mostly) throughout. The reasons for this are because they scrapped the side-by-side dialogues, and made use of recurring characters with meaningful interwoven plots. Also, each episode culminates in a dramatic, and relatively challenging boss fight with unique mechanics. The story is MUCH more satisfying when you feel like you’ve defeated a worthy foe. Most of the original personal story is full of trivial veteran enemies that die to auto-attack with little or no dodging, and no unique mechanics to speak of.

Yes, I really enjoyed the Season 2 story. They outdid themselves (yes I know opinions may vary, this one is mine) and you can notice that anet learned along the way. Things they did well with LS season 2 imo:

- recuring intersting characters with more or less own personalities (yes all of them were in Season 1, but this time around you actually connect more to them. Maybe this is also because I did all of it at once and didn’t do it step by step as in LS season 1).

- achievements and reason to replay the story parts. this did keep me interested for quite a while. great for achievements hunters and some of them were fun and challenging (especially when doing all of them not using exploits)

- the strong connections to GW1. Something many have waited for for ages. I hope anet expand on this, but don’t over do it. Building connections to GW1 should remain significant I believe

EDIT: Back on topic, GW2 struggles with the balance between not overwhelming new players with everythign all at once, and keeping people interested long enough to realize just how much there is to this game.

One of the worst changes imo is the weapon skills and their tie in to levels. Back pre NPE weapon skills were one of the few things you could “work towards” while having no utility skills or weapon swaps. At the same time, at level 30-40+ one enemy killed would unlock them instantly so it was no hassle to get a new weapon set up and ready. Now I just don’t feel the same amount of “progress” when I level up and the skill just unlocks.

Anet need to find a way to bridge the level 6-31 gap I believe, and a simple level up notification which everyone just clicks away just doesn’t do.

EDIT 2: locking personal story into such big chunks and to fixed levels was also not an ideal solution. Not going into detail here, WP did a very decent video on this topic.

Imo they should add abilities to mobs. The level 3 bandits dodge. Why not other, higher level humanoids?

In addition, as noted above, some skills are PvP/WvW only. A long time ago I equipped a skill that strips boons, but then never found mobs that have boons. I equip skills that return conditions, but either the conditions are ignorable or the mob reapplies them immediately. My skill is then on cooldown and useless. I’m better off with just healing whenever the heal skill comes up and using autoattack. Control skills only last for a second or two. I find that useless also. It’s more like making the mob hesitate for a second than having a real impact on the fight.

There are some people who attack PvEers for not being good and only autoattacking but truthfully the game rarely asks for more than that in open PvE and when it does, it’s usually ignorable.

My issue is that levelling takes too long if you DON’T do the hearts. If you try to organically level without them you’ll be “outlevelled” and will get one shotted by mobs. And yes, hearts are so so so BORING and take too long. At least increase the XP for them so each takes a couple mins rather than 10 minutes. Don’t force people to power level due to sheer boredom!!

I watched the first video linked by OP, and seriously…. either that ‘reviewer’ doesn’t know how to read things properly, or he’s to lazy to even try to understand what’s going on.

I only saw him in some minor cities and one in LA, for the rest he was in wayfarer foothills, when that event was going on/started, he didn’t even ask what it was all about.

In my opinion, that guy doesn’t have a clue how to play an mmo, because one of the first things you learn is getting to know the UI, and talk to people ingame if you have any questions. Apparently he’s to shy and has to call friends to get a clue.

That ‘review’ was pointless. Granted, renown hearts aren’t the friendliest things to level up, but he didn’t even realize that exploring in itself gave exp (and lots i might add, i lvld a toon from 77-79 today by only that, last level (79-80) in SW).

Video definately NOT representative of most new players.

For those thatthink levelling takes to long : my first char ever in this game i lvld within 7 days to 80 (a few months ago) , my last one i lvld in 4 days. Doesn’t take a genius, just some common sense.

Sthenith.5196:

For those thatthink levelling takes to long : my first char ever in this game i lvld within 7 days to 80 (a few months ago) , my last one i lvld in 4 days. Doesn’t take a genius, just some common sense.

Leveling can not take to long and still be boring. What people are complaining about is that the game does not pull new players in the same way it did pre NPE.

The reviewer in that video might not have been an einstein and his pewdiepie like cuts were more anoying than entertaining, but he did touch on some valid points.

Even the shortest leveling curve won’t do if people lose interest after 2 hours.

I think its more boring idling/auto-attacking the tutorial boss for 5 minutes waiting for the tutorial to end. You know, because you cant die and you only have 1 ability to use..

Regardless of if hearts are boring or redundant or not, leveling has changed A LOT from launch. In my opinion, it had been made a lot worse, but the recent patch made it a bit better (not locking you out of your traits and tallents until lv 40, etc.)

But theres still .. something.. missing from back then. Something that makes me hate making new alts, despite knowing the game and loving the combat and such. I know what hearts to avoid, and when to do them with events.. It just feels so.. meh.. now..

I think most of it is how I’m being spoon fed from anet how to play the game. Half the fun of “go out and do whatever you want” was.. well.. doing whatever I want? You notice he never had a dodgeroll tutorial and figured out how to dodge from the start.. Why lock me out of Vistas, mining nodes, personal story, and al this crap until the game TELLS me I can go do it? I see thins on my mini map, I wanna go to them, I wanna see what they do! Not wait until im lv 10 to view vistas or some crap and WAIT to experience some awesome stuff!..

Sadly, I see gw2 becoming more and more like WoW. Funny how be complained about “grinding” and then said he liked WoW more.. Because WoW is nothing BUT a grind.

@Raven – Well I think it was a response caused by players from other MMOs who were use to being led around by their nose and not knowing what to do when simply dropped into the world so they left. ANet saw this as an indication that the player is overwhelmed by the game as oppose to having the motivation of a sloth on Quaaludes. It never occurred to them to just wander, tab to see critter levels, explore all the NPCs to see what they do/offer, etc. They were looking for the big dancing ! or ? over an NPC.

The wiki would be beyond those players. It’s not really their fault, years of being spoon fed in every new MMO that tweaked the WoW model left them with false sense how MMOs are, like where are the mounts? Every fantasy MMO has mounts. And Tanks. And Healers.

The game took a mostly hands off approach initially but apparently too many people become lost and confused when not lead around on a lease.

Behellagh.1468:

Every fantasy MMO has mounts. And Tanks. And Healers.

Plenty of tanks in the black citadel! :P

Feels like the guys just couldn’t get out of the “generic MMO mentality”, “oh here is a quest I must do it, done where is the next one in the row”.
When did people start playing MMOs just to stop at level 10 cause the leveling is boring… ALL MMO leveling processes are boring, so far GW2’s leveling is the least boring.

just before closing the door Just one more thing, every MMO is usually huge, has many classes, areas to explore, you know there will be dungeons or the like, you will get abilities at higher levels, cool gear… and the boring leveling is stopping you? WHY THE HELL ARE YOU PLAYING MMOs?

Xenon.4537:

I don’t understand Anet’s logic behind the NPE. They say it’s because the game was leaking players, but based on this guy’s reaction it seems like they are going to leak even worse than before. If people are getting bored and quitting before they even discover the personal story, pvp, or wvw, then something needs to change.

What’s even more troubling is once they reach level 10 and start the personal story, they will probably begin to hate the game even more. WP did a video showing just how stupid and pointless these missions can be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJUMino2KDA

If the game is this sleep-mode easy, why would anyone care to stick around? What reason do we have to care about the story?

Actually Anet never said nor implied that the NPE was for the game leaking players. Specifically Anet spoke of the update of players on free weekends making the purchase. People would go into the free weekends and then stop playing at a very early stage. The NPE was not meant to stop the game from leaking players, it was supposed to get people who started the game in a trial to convert to buying the game. Big difference.

The difficulties that youtuber was facing shows how the npe failed to adress the trouble gw2 has to hold new players to the game. He gave up to the game at lvl 10 and he didn’t even got to see the personal story.

The NPE should have focused in creating more dynamic events around the heart quests, making then less boring to complete, another problem i saw on the video was that he didnt know how to queue for pvp matches, he was just joining those arenas where people were farming for dailies, that may have caused him a bad impression about the pvp in gw2.

If he didn’t like the heart quests, he is not going to like any mmorpg out there :/
It’s pretty much the same everywhere, let’s hope he doesn’t play WoW, there you have static quests xD (Where you have to do one thing, and one thing only)

But it is his first impression, and i do think it’s important to take it serious. Altho 3-4 hours isn’t at all that much, it’s enough. They should have one JP in every starting zone as a “mission” so they atleast can try that, aswell as a dynamic event that appears frequently close to middle so they can experience that aswell. But gw2 is abit harder to understand than most mmorpg, cause gw2 is not like most mmos, it just isn’t.

Casmurro.9046:

The difficulties that youtuber was facing shows how the npe failed to adress the trouble gw2 has to hold new players to the game. He gave up to the game at lvl 10 and he didn’t even got to see the personal story.

The NPE should have focused in creating more dynamic events around the heart quests, making then less boring to complete, another problem i saw on the video was that he didnt know how to queue for pvp matches, he was just joining those arenas where people were farming for dailies, that may have caused him a bad impression about the pvp in gw2.

Actually, this is really bad logic.

One you tuber, even ten, doesn’t necessarily mean anything. The only actual proof would be the number of people by percentage who go from starting the game to staying with the game.

Arguably, no game is going to have 100% uptake. It makes no sense. In fact, most games won’t have 50% uptake. That means that if 1 person makes a you tube video, if they happen to be one of the people who wouldn’t buy it, what does that prove.

When devs talk about updake from trails, they’re usually talking about 20% being a good retain rate. That means even with a good rate, 80% of the people won’t be retained and might agree with this video.

It’s the 20% number that Anet is going to be interested in.

Behellagh.1468:

Wayfarer was my original starting area when I first started playing. I’m sad to hear how bad it is post NPE. I still frequent the area north of the “wall” but I haven’t seen how the southern area plays since post NPE.

Wayfarer is not bad, its still my most favorite area and the only one i completed
on all my 18 characters.

Also the “nerf” to the bunny quest .. everyone i talked about it so far was happy
because the old one got really annoying after doing it the first time.

Behellagh.1468:

It never occurred to them to just wander, tab to see critter levels, explore all the NPCs to see what they do/offer, etc. They were looking for the big dancing ! or ? over an NPC.

I remember we had to speak to every single NPC in EQ2 when it was released, to
find out if they had a quest or not. A lot of people were upset when we got the
! and ? over their heads and said : the game was again dumbed down like WoW.