I know I’m going to get hated for not bashing a game we’ve all decided to spend a lot of time in, but….
Guild Wars 2 has a lot of skip able content, unlike Guild Wars. Just because you chose not to do a certain thing in a game doesn’t mean the game itself really lacks content. I did my own comparison below in case you wish to see why I think so. The only thing I feel it really lacks, is PvP, it can’t hold a candle to Guild Wars PvP when it comes down to variety/content.
This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see more content, who doesn’t? But I don’t agree Guild Wars 2 really lacks content per se, I do think they started too big and it simply gets boring after a certain while.
The way I’d compare them;
Guild Wars started with 6 classes and grew to 10 classes within 2 years, but Guild Wars 2 started off with 8 classes straight away.
Guild Wars had 5 challenging and long end-game areas; Fissure of Woe, the Underworld, Urgoz, the Deep, Domain of Anguish. Each could take an inexperienced group a few hours (and a speedclear group less than half an hour.) Guild Wars 2 has 14 different Fractal Instances, varying in time they need to be completed, 8 dungeons with 3 paths each, some take long than others, but it’s a considerable amount of content nonetheless, even though we chose to avoid any slow/challenging paths on a daily basis, such as TA Aether and Arah p4 and the community has adapted the Speedclear meta much more than in Guild Wars.
Guild Wars had 3-4 Storylines, which didn’t take that long to get through unless you got stuck on a certain mission. Guild Wars 2 only has the personal story, which in a lot of people’s (including me) opinion is a bit lackluster, it’s still quite a long story total (assuming you add up the racial stories.) On top of that there’s Dungeon Stories, which follow the NPCs Story, which is considerably longer than the average Guild Wars mission. Guild Wars 2 also has living story, which is comparable with the Guild Wars annual events (some people chose to farm Vaettir’s all week long, but some events had exclusive quest-chains aswell, similar to living story.) They also had bonus weekends, as simple as it might be, it was motivation enough for most of my friendlist to get out of their usual game-mode, atleast for a few hours. Definitely find it a better idea than Gemstore sales, which is about the only thing I can compare it with.
All in all, Guild Wars 2 might have much more content than you’re realizing since they gave you the option to skip it. Ofcourse you can argue Guild Wars had hours and hours, months and months stowed away in hunting titles, which was true. But all titles were, was playing the same story again, or cleaning a whole area, but this time the mobs hit a bit harder and have more HP. That’s like calling a level 1 Fractal completely different content than a level 50 Fractal, where-as it’s simply a bit more challanging. Guild Wars 2 arguably has this system in the form of Achievements.
The only thing I feel it’s really failing on is PvP. Guild Wars 2 PvP doesn’t hold a candle towards Guild Wars PvP. Guild Wars had multiple PvP-options; Guild v Guild, Arenas, Heroes Ascend, Jade Quary, Fort Aspenwood and Alliance Battles, along with a monthly skillbalance, often shaking up the PvP-meta a little. (Frontline builds changed and most of the midline.). Where-as Guild Wars 2 has World vs World with 3 identical Borderlands, Eternal Battlegrounds and Edge of the Mist, along with one sPvP-mode and one only (excluding a hotjoin only map) which is Conquest.