Guild Wars 2

First let me say I have a lot of level 80s all leveled up the hard way. No scrolls aside from a few level 20 birthday booster jump starts.

I decided I would level up a new toon on this day to see how it worked now. I created a Norn ranger since thats my favorite class and race. I was very familiar with how things worked before.

First thing I noticed was that mobs were much easier to kill. I practically ran through Grawlenfjord just smashing the hearts at an unbelievable pace. I did not notice any nodes there to collect from. Not completely sure why, I just never found any.

In less than two hours I had worked well into the Shiverpeaks and had hit level 10 way earlier than I ever had before. I also began finding nodes her to collect from so I gathered while questing. I went ahead and did the personal story at this time just breezing through it with ease till I had killed Korag, the Jotun King.

I decided to pause and take in the experience to evaluate what I had accomplished. Here I was in just over two hours at level 13. Id say I still had roughly 50% of the map to complete. After selling the loot I had amassed during this time I had about 1g 37s. I also completed my daily, had a BLC key and a transmutation charge (went ahead and completed Hoelbrak map when I went there for personal story start). Not bad and Im sure I can do it quicker now that Im familiar with the changes.

In really looking at how this works now, I have to say that I like it. It felt very strange at first because I was unfamiliar with it. But I think I will grow to really enjoy these changes. In fact my biggest complaint is that somehow my pet is even slower than it used to be. It seemed even more useless than it was before. Very slow and clumsy. On the plus side, the longbow just melted everything. Pet wasnt really needed.

I have only tried the ranger. I cant say how it is for the other classes yet. But I did not really ever experience any frustration at all. It was an enjoyable experience even though it was very different from what I was used to. I actually had fun and lets face it, thats what they were after with this patch. I think people get comfortable with how things are and tend to take a stand against any kind of change. Rather than to sit on my 80s and join that crowd, I decided to start a new character to see for myself how this now works. I do like it so far. Ill try some different classes this week to see if that opinion holds.