Guild Wars 2

Ive been trying to put my finger on why my playtime has gradually diminished the past six months, and – in talking with friends last night – I think we came up with the real answer.

The game needs more guild focused content. It’s as simple as that. From a single player perspective, GW2 does a better job than any MMO on the market, imo, but it still cannot compete with pure single player games that focus on that experience.

Group based play (5 and 10 player) is fun and worth supporting, but I often find that it, oddly enough, works counter to community and guild focused activities. When you are restricted to a set number of players, leaders are put in tough spots regarding who to invite and who to leave out. So, while its good to see new content, it isn’t really conducive to guild health and activity.

Real guild content – when we’ve gotten it – has filled that gap nicely – and better than any MMO I have ever played. Capturing and building the guild hall – experiencing guild missions when they were new and fresh – community focused bosses like Tequatl or the Marionette – these all brought guilds and friends together to create what I felt was the best MMO experience I could possibly have.

But, it has been a year since guild halls needed real support, a year and half since the last major engagement was introduced (Mordremoth) and almost 4 years since the last guild missions.

Guild don’t have anything substantial to do together right now, and it is hurting the game experience.

We need new guild missions.

We need new world bosses THAT ARE TRIGGERABLE WITH THE GUILD FLAGS scribes build.

We need new objectives for guild halls.

We just need something for guilds to do in game before people start drifting away to more interesting pastimes.

There aren’t many things that can kill an MMO – especially one as popular as GW2 has become.

But the one biggest draw bringing people back into these games (imo) is a sense of community. The communities we build in the game keep us playing.

Anet needs to start supporting those communities again – and that, first and foremost, means starting to pay attention to – and building content for – guilds again.

I agree with both of you. Guild halls are great, but they don’t offer active play. You have scribing, decorations, and all those systems inside the guild halll, and that’s about it for guild progress: displayable items. I’m not saying they are bad, actually they are absolutely awesome, but the acquisition could come from active play, mixed with a little personal reward (guild missions are good at that).

The Guild Hall is a vast creature they could polish a bit more to offer more stuff in there. I remember when some dev said mordrem would attack and try to reclaim the guild hall, but that idea seems to have been scrapped. Well, they could create a system that does have a Mordrem attack weekly, or Guild battles (finally?). Or a multi-step guild battle with both things.