I was lurking on MMO-Champion and saw a thread with this title and read it. He complained about video card related crashes and lack of depth. I responded and wanted to repost this here, as my first post on the GW2 forums, as my way of thanking the developers for a great game and, especially, a Mac version.
Here is my response:
I can understand frustration about any game if you are having crashing issues but they are related to your video card and not the game. You shouldn’t allow that to colour your opinion of the game (once you upgrade the card it will be much better).
But claiming the game doesn’t have depth is laughable imho.
I played WoW for almost 7 years. I unsubbed mid way thru 2012. I was bored of the game. It is a testament to the original design of WoW that it kept me entertained that long. So I give credit where credit is due. Most of my friends also stopped playing. And, I was disappointed with the direction of the game to put it mildly. I started playing GW2 this month when I finally replaced my 2006 iMac with a new Mac (so I’m actually playing a beta Mac version which has been about 98% bug free).
The character creation in GW2 is arguably better than WoW. The graphics certainly are, including character models, with the possible exception of humans but I don’t like humans in WoW either.
In the first few minutes of leaving Rata Sum I was involved in a dynamic event and died several times. It was at this point I knew I was actually going to enjoy the game. Nothing at all like the 1st 15 levels in Wow where its almost impossible to die because they don’t want to scare away the newbies (and then later try to create content for these same people that never learn to play).
I love my personal story quest line…uber depth…and you can speed up the cinematics by hitting escape repeatedly…if you want to avoid the lore (which is again depth related).
I think waypoints are a great idea as well as otherwise having to walk everywhere like in the good old days of WoW.
Even if you don’t talk to the npcs etc the dynamic events are all clearly related to whats going on in the zone and…add depth.
I think the points of interest and vistas add depth as well and I make it my mission to get them all in every zone (a mini game if you will).
I did my first dungeon run the other day. I died countless times due to the fact that we didn’t really coordinate our attacks and the dungeon (CM) was, I think its fair to say, overturned. But guess what, even though it took more than an hour, everyone stayed to the end. There was almost zero #@$% (a few complaints about over tuning but absolutely none about the skill or gear level of any player). I couldn’t imagine a spoon fed Wrath / LFR baby putting up with this for more than 2 minutes. And it endeared the game to me even more as a result. You actually have to work for things in GW2.
And every zone I have been in, currently a lvl 51 ranger, has had other players in it (without the need for CRZ). I also like the resource model they have that means two players can mine the same node.
I tried one PvP experience and it was neat. I was level 8 at the time and it turned me into a lvl 80. There wasn’t actually a lot of pvp in the zone, it was very late at night, but there were zone related quests that I was able to complete with a few others. A wonderful way to introduce a newbie to content and make them feel that they can still contribute.
Conversely, when you aid a friend leveling or go back to a low level zone you are automatically “reduced” to that zone level. A brilliant concept imho.
Crafting is a lot of work (and I’m stuck because I didn’t read up on it and sort of leveled out of the early zones too quickly from a gathering resources perspective) but, you know what, crafting shouldn’t be go to the AH and buy the mats and be maxlevel a couple hours later. It will give me something to do when I get max level and that again is a source of depth.
I also really like that you automatically get about a 100 free bank slots for crafting materials and that from anywhere in the world you can deposit crafting mats collected into your bank to free up bag room.
And I get to do all this for FREE..or at least no monthly subscription.
Honestly, if you don’t like GW2, its says a lot about what you really want from an MMO…and I’ll politely leave it at that and let you read between the lines.
(P.S. – I’m enjoying the game as a an apparently broken class (according to a few comments in this thread) Ranger – and still having mega fun)
(edited by Sensa.6904)