Guild Wars 2

Ive decided to post a honest review of this game,no sugarcoats on the bad and praising the good.

I will start with the good :

Ambient

- Nicely designed immersive environment that instantly sucks you into its world as a new player

- Everything about the GW2 visuals when it comes to ambient is on par,even though game is old

- You will never fell you lack atmosphere,from array of : forest,desert,snow,rocky-like maps there is something for everyone’s taste

Toon Creation

- While not that great or offering alot of options,you can still make your hero look somewhat what you wish

- Pick between the unique races you wish to play,sick of being a generic human ? You have a option to play as other races such as a mighty viking,king from tekken ( Charr ) , or saladfingers ( Sylvari ) , jokes aside you really have a decent amount of options to pick from

Soundtrack

- Simply Great

Classes

- All of them fun and special in their own way,you will mostly never get elitist whining about your class in open world PVE

- Pick between heavy,medium or light armor classes for your desire

I will now get to the bad points of the game,but i will mention some good things about the bad in the facts i will list below.

World/Map Exploring Activity

- While fun for the first few maps,it will quickly become a chore,especially if you get no worthy loot for exploring any of the maps

- Can map exploring be fun though Johnny ? Yes sure it can,if your a perfectionist who simply has insomnia if you don’t have everything in order on 100% and enjoy revisiting the old maps of tyria all over again on alts.

- I hate to break it to you but the only 3 reasons you actually need to map explore is :

1. To get Waypoints you will need to circle bosses everyday,do guild missions and get to dungeons.

2. Hero Points,required for completing your heros build ( With EOTM being simply a better and faster way of getting these..yeah you get the picture ).

3. Gift of Exploration which is basically a crafting material for a legend which you get ONLY after you completed the world map 100%.

- Generic repetitive ’’monsters’’ you will fight on your way while exploring but most of the time its five,five f.. enemy types that appear in heart quests all the time,regardless of map type such as : Skrit,Dredge,Risen,Wurms ( Wurms which is literally the same model re-painted green,white,sand depending on what map you face them ) , and Sons of Svanir .

On top of that if you decide not to do heart quests there is no reason to engage in combat with any of the monsters on your way,it basically becomes ‘’Le tour de Tyria’’ where you run for hero points and waypoints.

- The loot is the biggest negative of World exploring,you get nothing no i mean literally you get nothing that would make this chore of a process worth it.

Tyria Dungeons

- I’ll give it this it has multiple paths to pick from story and 3 other ways to finish a dungeon,they can be fun yes especially if done with friends.

- You’ll mostly need to do these for achivs ( that is if you care for AP ) .

- If you plan to be a ‘’dungeon runner’’ forget about Tyria and these sets of dungeons,do yourself a favor an play a better dungeon MMO or play FOTM.

- The limited loot is what kills most of the fun out of these dungeons,kills any replay value these dungeons had.

- If you dont care about loot,then this shouldnt be an issue and you can enjoy Tyria dungeons with no pressure.

World Bosses

- Ever thought of fighting massive behemoths and slaying dragons ? Well thats not exactly what you get here , instead of having random pattern attacks where boss can take down a player in an unpredictable manner they are basically QTE ( Quick Time Events )

- About 50% of the boss fight process is basically the boss being AFK while a zerg reks him,he rises does a laughably predictable attack or does fear then you proceed to zerg him and yeah thats it.

- No worthy mention loot,no actual fun,no reason at all to kill that sad lot of bosses other then them being on your daily list.

Salvage Wars 2

- 90% of the loot you get will get salvaged for ecto,and thats it,sometimes you get lucky with 1 gold exotic piece you can sell,but other then that yeah,salvage wars.

- Unless you own a gem store salvage machine you will actually lose money buying salvage kits to destroy bad items in your inventory ( which is 90% of the loot you get from PVE lol ) .

No Real Means of Getting Income

- Once you hit 80,there really ain’t much to do,as above mentioned World Bosses,Dungeons and Map Explore youd only ever do to get minimal income of gold daily.

- Which leaves you with a few options how to get gold in a decent time manner and all of them include you running with 20 other people in a zerg :

SW Chest Farm : Run behind a bunch of guys with a shovel and a key to unlock hidden chest in the desert while being attacked by 2 out of 3 enemy types in SW,fun fun.

This is indeed a decent way of getting gold,some ppl can do 10-12 gold per hour doing this,but ask yourself a question how long can your mind take this mind numbing boring process.

I find it simply embarrassing that next to all the dungeons and bosses this is the best way to get gold,unless your gonna open your moms wallet and dunk real money into the kitten .

Me myself im full ascended with 2 legends in my hands,i was lucky enough to get gold when dungs where not nerfed,but today this is what yould do if you want more then having a generic trading post exotic set.

- Or do Fractal of the Mist,set of repetitive dungeons where yet again you fight of those same generic monster types you fought in World Explore.

- Fun to a certain point,and loot being decent as of December 2015,if you want some decent amount of fun and challenge ( depending on your frac level ) do yourself a favor and farm this instead of SW Chest Farm.

No Real Goal/Endgame Content

- Once you get your legend and ascended set pick between :

- Fighting 2 monster types in HoT waiting for nightfall to farm a generic QTE boss and depend on full zerg parties !

- Glide around on your glider to get to…? I really dont understand whats the purpose of this but its fun.

- Farm pointless masteries that.. make you run faster in town and make you glide more ?

And grow your epen showing your mastery level !

- Fight in abandoned WvW maps where you will :

1. Once again run behind a zerg to kill another zerg (which can be fun)

2. Be the lone wolf and roam the wasteland ! Search and Destroy every 20 minutes !

- Thats exactly what roaming is like now,every 20 mins you might score a kill,but it mostly turns out into ppl just closing the game before you kill them ( ?° ?? ?°).

- Run out trying to have minimal amounts of fun killing a guy every 20 minutes.

Or become a professional PvP player in HOTM ! So that your epen can grow larger and after your ’’recognized’’ abuse the leagues to farm noobs,yeah! Thats what you get.

Create a Mesmer and dominate the ambers with your stack of rubys that is what being professional gets you!

Sorry for the short rant.

- What you can do really tho after you have everything in GW2 is :

HOT Raid which is actually the only thing worth mentioning that came with this dlc.

Get 4 friends and fight in the PvP Ranked league.

Honestly tho there is nothing to do after you dont need gold lol.

And finally coming down to final judgement and score.

This game is average,a 5/10 right in the middle with its boring gameplay and monsters to no real end game content but tied with great design,ambient,classes and soundtrack deserves a 5/10.

TL:DR

Boring Gameplay,Generic Monsters,No Real Endgame Content,No fun ways of getting gold but tied with good design,immersive ambient and fun classes with sweet soundtrack gives it a 5/10

Johnny

“No Real Goal/Endgame Content”

Really……All I got to say about that is the end game is what you make of it.

If you need to be hand held for what to do perhaps this game isn’t for you.

“Honestly tho there is nothing to do after you dont need gold lol.”

How about have FUN?

“Get 4 friends and fight in the PvP Ranked league”

That’s a bad thing? You know gaming with your friends?

“Fight in abandoned WvW maps where you will”

Pick a better server. I’m on DR but I’m not whining.

" Farm pointless masteries that.. make you run faster in town and make you glide more ?"

Pointless? That’s a matter of opinion. I wouldent call my auto hoover loot pointless. Or mushroom bouncing…..etc.

Dungeons I agree with. We need more 5 man content.

I don’t know what kind of salvage kits you’re using to make a loss on salvaging items. Are you blc kiting blues and greens?

Well what do you want as the endgame? Never ending gear treadmills?

It’s the lack of traditional end game that keeps many of us here. Just saying.

Johneey.2965:

- While fun for the first few maps,it will quickly become a chore,especially if you get no worthy loot for exploring any of the maps

If you explore while leveling you get level-appropriate loot. If you explore when you set a longer term goal you also get more appropriate loot. For example, if you want to craft Ascended you need various low level materials, which you can get if you play at lower level zones, or buy them, but it feels much better if you get them yourself.

- Generic repetitive ’’monsters’’

True for the old maps. But they certainly fixed the monsters in HoT.

No Real Means of Getting Income

The big advice here is to play a game for fun and the content you like and not for the income.

I’m still playing after 3 years and a half, maybe this game has something special. It’s not perfect but for pvp/open world pvp, I can’t think of something better. And despite the lack of classic end game content, there is always something to do or to aim for in this game.

While there are points I wholeheartedly agree with, there are points I wholeheartedly disagree with for one simple reason:

The OP is thinking of GW2 as a traditional MMO. It is not.

You cannot go into GW2 thinking of playing it like you’d play a traditional MMO. If you do, you will get bored fast.

The problem with the game truly came in with the NPE. ArenaNet looked at those players who came to GW2 thinking it’d be like a traditional MMO, wanting a traditional MMO, and left when they saw it wasn’t that and asked them “what’s wrong with the game” and made the changes they suggested but not the problems that were actually wrong with the game.

Doing this has only succeeded in making GW2 some kind of half-breed of what it could be and what it shouldn’t be.

And GW2 has just been steadily going down the path of being turned into a traditional MMO – all for the sake of profits, no doubt. Of more players, and more revenue.

All the while ignoring the actual issues – which yes, the OP does mention. World bosses are a bore, point of doing dungeons have been nurfed repeatedly, and ambient world mapping has little replay value due to all foes being effectively the same.

Heart of Thorns fixes these issues… within itself. The issues remain in the older content, which is what new players will see first, and what most old players see more often (due to there being more of it).

ArenaNet has two bad habbits:

1) Trying to make GW2 into a game that draws the most players and revenue.
2) Ignoring old content entirely unless it has game/economy breaking bugs/exploits.

Fix those habits, and the game improves exponentially over time.

Johneey.2965:

Create a Mesmer and dominate the ambers with your stack of rubys that is what being professional gets you!

What??
SIR I TAKE OFFENSE!
What about revenant

And on a more serious note, if you, OP, thinks that mesmer in pvp dominates everything… you need to go back to PvP for a while… it’s CLEARLY not the dominating class, especially since WoP changes
Get yo’ facts straight

a review of this review:
5/10
sounds like reviewer wants to hate the game

You unironically call characters toons so everything you say is invalid.

gw2 is a 11 out of 10 game here’s why

my opinion

you could have saved a lot of time and just wrote it like that OP.

I stopped playing for a while and just tried WOW for the first time and was so bored with the combat in WOW, I never even made it to level 20. The endless boring quests were mindnumbing and I could not tie all my alts together under one account so I had to grind six times over. Guild Wars 2 has the best combat system and is designed around crafting and farming not single character adventures or raids. They have raids now in the game but I am not sure of their success or accessibility to all players. I rate the game 7 out of 10 mainly for a lack of replay-ability and high level monster variety and combat sameness. End-game is elusive on purpose as this is a progression type game involving multiple characters, farming and group play. I came back to guild wars because I just did not GET WOW. Too slow and too structured. At least gating now is account bound and the future looks bright. They just need to keep cranking out the new stuff in less than three years. How about yearly!