Guild Wars 2

I can actually answer that. I got one of my good friends to try this game – it is her first MMO. The only other computer game she’s actually ever played was Minecraft.

She loves it. She doesn’t know any better, of course – she doesn’t encounter bugs and flip out, she doesn’t expect things that a lot of us have become used to. She just knows the world is beautiful, it rewards her for exploring, and she’s having a great time. She’s still pretty much spending most of her time poking around the capital cities and exploring to her heart’s content. She’s definitely happy with the game.

You have to remember – if this was your FIRST game, you wouldn’t be in such a rush to level and throw yourself at the “end” of the game. You’d be having too much fun with the journey. I really do envy her in a lot of ways

My first MMO was Ultima Online just for reference. I remember running around Britian for a good while before going to try and kill a wolf with my character. I got my butt kicked BTW. I also remember how big the game seemed. I was hooked.

I don’t see why I wouldn’t feel that again here if this were my first MMO.

I enjoyed the ride to 80, until I got to 80. Then it fell apart almost over night. I’m trying to play an alt, but even with different zones, its not the same, because I already know whats coming and its another boring wall. Makes me think, “Why waste my time now?” And its ruining the game. Luckily there is no monthly fee, so I can come back when things are fixed…IF things get fixed. ANET just messed up really badly with progression at 80 and only 1 zone to do anything in. A badly designed zone at that.

There are core mechanics I never agreed with and still don’t, like no aggro system or dedicated healing mechanics. The Necro has been badly designed and I’ll be long gone by the time they fix any of their major issues at the rate they’re going.

WvW has been mostly a waste, because of the terrible draw in problems. Its just not acceptable coming from other MMOs where these issues didn’t occur. If I can play Skyrim MAXED out with all sorts of mods, I should be able to get better performance in WvW. If a character pops into view and you’re getting hit before you can even react, that’s NOT fun. I can see the beautiful castle a mile away, but 20 players just pop into view less than 50 ft away. Lame. Sorry.

If this was my first MMO, I’d be ignorant to all the little things that are so very wrong with it, even though the outer shell is very nice.

trick question lol. Good for you OP. Fun game, but has to many premades attached to it.

IF it was my first id would easly say yes i like this game.

But its not and its fastly becoming my first shortest mmo played to date. I lasted 9 months on WOW (couldnt take blizzards approach messing with the classes i enjoy playing anymore) before i deleted and tossed it in the trash. Swtor is my second mmo and i lasted 4-5 months on that and this one im only into a month on it and ready to move on lol.

When i read about gw2 i was happy with the things they where putting into the game that reminded me of my happier days in d2 but sadly 90% of the stuff i read never got put into the game and its just another mmo with a dodge skill lol.

Not into premade games with no indepth toon buildings. Game dev’s these days are just lazy and in a rush to make a money cow with dumbdown items instead of giving players what they realy want. Depth.

I lasted years playing diablo2 online and offline becuase its super fun and very indepth with building your toon.

I still have the first MMO feeling when I play an MMO with a lot of potential or when they’ve done things like the old days. UO was my first, I also played EQ, DAoC, AO, SWG, AoC, WoW, EQ2, LoTRO, WAR, GW1 and countless smaller names. The only three I ever played for more than a couple months were UO, SWG, and WAR. I played GW1 for awhile, but I don’t consider it the same caliber as the other three.. It’s more of an MMOG than MMORPG. I briefly tried the others in between but none of them gave me that sense of wonderment.

What do the MMO’s that I’ve enjoyed the most have in common? Minus WAR, which I loved for the realm vs realm and the lore, all of my other favorites offered FREEDOM with character customization. The two MMO’s I judge all others by are UO, and SWG pre-cu-nge. The skill systems and sandbox style of character progression offered a much better roleplaying game experience. I really felt like I could be who I wanted. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t give you that same flexibility, but it does a hell of a lot better than EVERYTHING else out now. The crafting and e-commerce side is lacking for a truer sandbox experience, and the leveling system (which is almost pointless in GW2) dumbs it down a little. I’ve probably played, and tested more MMO’s than most people have ever seen or knew existed and I know two things are for certain. Sandbox elements create a much better community and a much more immersive game.. GW2 has some of those elements and it really has the potential to turn this game into the standard for all MMOs.

I’m tired of hearing people talk about WoW as if it was forward-revolutionary to the game genre itself. It really wasn’t the pinnacle of MMO’s at the time. Blizzard just took a genre that was inaccessible because of a steep learning curve and a variety of goals and dumbed it down into a cookie cutter, system driven character builder. There is hardly ANY character customization in WoW vanilla, and you have very little freedom in character development. It takes you along the same path for every character, from start to end game. DAoC and SWG were leaps and bounds ahead of WoW in terms of revolutionary work and the same year WoW released so did EQII. The difference is, Blizzard already had a huge fan-base, most MMO’s at that time were from independent developers or smaller industry names. Blizzard was revolutionary for the INDUSTRY, not for the progress of the Genre itself. They turned MMO’s into a cash-cow and created a model that would get people hooked on content they had to continuously buy. They made the Genre more accessible, and that’s about the extent of anything revolutionary or evolutionary that they did for it.

GW2 is slowly opening the door for the casual and “dumbed” down gamers into the deeper aspects of MMORPG’s. The aspects that we haven’t had for awhile. Customization, TRUE theorycrafting and freedom to create the character that you wish to be. Roleplaying is what this genre was derived from and a big part of that is being your own character.

This is my first MMO, I have never played any other MMO prior to it because I don’t want to pay the subscription fees.
I have spent more then 200 hours into this game. Like it a lot. But personal story wise, feel like very underwhelming. I like the dungeon in this game, it’s been challenging. Since I have no other MMO experience, can’t really say GW2 dungeons are better than others or not.
GW2 gives me the impression of so many things to do than any other (non MMO) games. It’s tire sometimes when tried to figure out list of things I want to do in GW2.
I find myself pay more attention to other MMO games than before, someday I will definitly give traditional MMO a try, I am very curious about the raiding system ~_~

This is my first MMO and it exceeded my expectations. Love the open world and dynamic events. People everywhere. I have had this for a couple of weeks now and play every night.

My favorite thing is seeing a big gathering and busting out my “Box O Fun” People love it!

This is one of the best games I’ve ever played. I started in 1984 too.

WoW was my first, … loved it,… until the endgame hit hard and destroyed anything what had to do with “RPG” in my mind…

Everything went from exploring, fighting big kitt dragons, getting “Epic” Loot …. to Grind that kitting Raidboss, after the “Firstkill” it’s just a numb Grindfest, the “Hate-Breeded” Community made it much worse….

I guess if I would have started GW2 i still would live in my happy RPG Bubble, where questing isn’t just a boring task to do until I am 80, but a little “Adventure” on every corner…

I guess, I would care more about “Killing that kitten Dragon just to see if I can” instead of “Gief EPIXXXX PLX!!!!!11”

I guess I would be amazed by the “Multiplayer” Experience I had!

And I guess I would search for the “Save” Button, for a lot of time … since I came from Oldschool Games like Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment and Icewind Dale…

That it was run by overrated amatuers more concerned with ignoring reality via purging their forums of negative threads/posts moreso than keeping their game itself clean.

Kendu Kuzal.3985:

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The problem is that what you say about GW 2 isn’t the reality. It’s the potential that GW 2 might become one day but atm it’s nowhere close to “deep character customization”.
Champions Online and City of Heroes (R.I.P) have that, GW 2 doesn’t because while it feels like the game is deep ArenaNet lost it touch with the skill system that many loved in the first games.

This is almost more of a console-action game then a “real” MMORPG make no mistake there is indeed MMO to GW2 but the RPG part is pretty non-existant in terms of actual character development.

If this was my first MMO i’d
1) Still be leveling a multitude of characters trying to figure the game out. I started MMO’s relatively late in life as I used to be one of those who had the attitude ‘pay to play.. never’.
2) Yes I would be impressed just as I was with my first. The number of zones, the vastness of the world kept me entertained for a long time, just like this one has done.

As I would have nothing to compare it to, being my first MMO how could you not be somewhat impressed with the whole massively multiplayer online??

Been involved with online games and MMOs for around 25 years,so the question is a little hard for me to hyper.

However,I suppose if it were my first ever MMO,I’d be wondering why I can’t find the in game options to automate my characters,like the kitten tonne of other characters I see doing circles around most major world events. lol

GreenZap.1352:

Kendu Kuzal.3985:

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The problem is that what you say about GW 2 isn’t the reality. It’s the potential that GW 2 might become one day but atm it’s nowhere close to “deep character customization”.
Champions Online and City of Heroes (R.I.P) have that, GW 2 doesn’t because while it feels like the game is deep ArenaNet lost it touch with the skill system that many loved in the first games.

This is almost more of a console-action game then a “real” MMORPG make no mistake there is indeed MMO to GW2 but the RPG part is pretty non-existant in terms of actual character development.

I think you’re mistaken if you think the RPG part is non-existent. In comparison to GW1 and especially the first release of GW1, the RPG element in GW2 blows it away. This is the only mainstream (big name) MMORPG that offers this type of customization. You aren’t forced to go down any path, and you can literally play your character however you see fit. There is a huge variety of builds. There are no set roles, as in the holy triumvirate (tank, heals, dps). It’s far more open than most of what is available and it has the audience that could truly be opened up to the sandbox style that true MMORPG’s presented in the past. I know this isn’t a sandbox style game, and it never will be.. But it has the elements there that give players accustomed to the WoW style of “dumb” MMO’s a taste of what they haven’t been exposed to.

I think the problem you are having is grasping their attempt to meld the WoW style linear development with a open skill point development. It’s not perfect, but at least someone has been brave enough to stray away from the WoW clone mentality. I also think people are silly to try and compare games like WoW or even other sub games to this. It’s not a sub game and it does things that subbed games don’t. They are different animals with a common ancestor. The original RPG.

Galdethriel.7524:

My first MMO was a much older game (I think it came out 1 year either before or after WoW did). It was slow, grindy, poorly balanced, glitchy, ugly to look at, had an unresponsive dev team (and when they did make a presence in the forums, they were usually jerks) and a hit-or-miss small playerbase and community.

Sounds like Shadowbane I did enjoy that, but man, yea…

Fiddlestyx.9714:

So an MMO is just a single player game where I can see other people playing too?

Back in my day (and get off my lawn!), it was the inverse. You couldn’t do anything meaningful unless you were grouped. And even then, you were lucky achieve forward momentum because dying meant XP loss, de-leveling and therefore skill loss (and potentially item loss). Ironically, UO was very soloable after they launched Trammel, but EQ was the larger business success, and “what is an MMO” built on that game style instead.

City of Heroes kinda started the emphasis on soloing (though in some ways so did SWG), in response to Everquest’s significant lack therefore (unless you were a Necro or Bard, maybe Druid). This continued through many games into WoW, which was soloable to the level cap (60) at launch and every level cap since. You could choose to dungeon, but you weren’t forced to.

Eight years and a few dozen new MMOs later, it’s as core to the genre as minimaps and generalized waypoints

Personally i think if this was my 1st ever mmo i would be severely dissapointed in any other game! . Played loads of f2p and p2p and this is to me by far the best . Seriously i tried the free wow 1-20 trial recently and it was just so lame in comparison to GW2 its shocking. Keep up the good work Anet you guys are making a lot of people very happy

The last MMO i played for a long period, if its considered an MMO was diablo 2. Tried diablo 3 and had high hopes for it, but didnt like it. Stopped it playing after a week (waste of money). So, this is basically my first MMO. Deffinitly my first real MMO of this type. I spent 5 minutes or less on a WoW trial and thats all it took to realize i didnt like it for many reasons.

So, now that I’ve played GW2 on average about 2 days a week, and I say this in all honesty, I LOVE IT. It has great graphics/gameplay/playerbase. Like many others I have seen some bad apples (bots). But it didnt bother me to much, I just ignored them and kept doing whatever mission/event i was on.

Also, I love the black lion market where I can buy gems and use them to buy stuff. In my first week I spent atleast $100.00usd on gems and got the cool profane armor and pirate suit and also aviator shades for my female elementalist. Also i got hooked on buying dye packs and mini packs. So arenanet has a serious money maker there, id guess that ive spent around $200-$250 on there. So just to say if there is atleast 100,000 other people who have done the same, then arenanet did a great job on implementing that
feature.

I like the different races and gender possibilities and so far everything ive seen and done on the game tells me ill get a lot of replayability after getting to level 80 with my elementalist.

According to some people this might as well be my first MMO since GW1 apparently doesn’t count and it’s been over 10 years since I quit UO.

Honestly I think in a lot of ways it’s made it easier to get used to this game because I came into it expecting something new and different that I wasn’t used to. A lot of the complaining I see on the forums seems to be centered around people who are annoyed or confused that GW2 doesn’t play exactly like other MMO’s they’re used to, or at least doesn’t have their favourite aspects.

Whereas I’m mainly comparing it to single player RPGs and finding that a lot of the “problems” really don’t bother me. I’m happy taking my time to get to level 80 and then focusing on other characters, WvW and PVP, the idea of rushing through most of the content in a game as fast as possible and then complaining that there’s nothing to do, or wanting to do the same thing over and over again for hours on end to gather drops just seems rediculous to me. Apart from MMO’s and Pokemon for some people I can’t think of any games where the normal way to play is to finish the game as soon as possible so you can move on to doing other things with the same software.

I think if I wasn’t already used to GW1 the things that would bother me most is a lack of save and pause options because they’re so fundamental to the way single player RPGs work.

GreenZap.1352:

As I said you didn’t have any THAT big MMORPGs back then. MMORPGS was still a Niché in 2004. There wasn’t any “casual” gamers that played Everquest or UO because it’s learning curve was too steep which meant only ppl who dedicated all their time would enjyoy playing it.

UO had at least 3 – me and my brother and sister. Honestly I think the only thing I really struggled with was the realisation that when people said you could max a skill in a day doing certain things they meant literally an entire day, not the couple of hours I normally played.

If this were my first MMO, then I would have to say that I enjoyed. The story, classes, races would all be overwhelming and I wouldn’t even know where to start. I wouldn’t have been spoiled by other MMO’s and wouldn’t know that there is better out there.

That being said, I think it’s a good game for a new MMO player to start with. They can learn basics, get a feel for the atmosphere of MMO’s. If they enjoy this, then they can check out other MMO’s

domino.4603:

If this were my first MMO, then I would have to say that I enjoyed. The story, classes, races would all be overwhelming and I wouldn’t even know where to start. *I wouldn’t have been spoiled by other MMO’s and wouldn’t know that there is better out there. *

That being said, I think it’s a good game for a new MMO player to start with. They can learn basics, get a feel for the atmosphere of MMO’s. If they enjoy this, then they can check out other MMO’s

Can you elaborate on the “better out there” portion?

I would be spamming F5 to get that quick save going.

Kendu Kuzal.3985:

I think you’re mistaken if you think the RPG part is non-existent. In comparison to GW1 and especially the first release of GW1, the RPG element in GW2 blows it away. This is the only mainstream (big name) MMORPG that offers this type of customization. You aren’t forced to go down any path, and you can literally play your character however you see fit. There is a huge variety of builds. There are no set roles, as in the holy triumvirate (tank, heals, dps). It’s far more open than most of what is available and it has the audience that could truly be opened up to the sandbox style that true MMORPG’s presented in the past. I know this isn’t a sandbox style game, and it never will be.. But it has the elements there that give players accustomed to the WoW style of “dumb” MMO’s a taste of what they haven’t been exposed to.

I think the problem you are having is grasping their attempt to meld the WoW style linear development with a open skill point development. It’s not perfect, but at least someone has been brave enough to stray away from the WoW clone mentality. I also think people are silly to try and compare games like WoW or even other sub games to this. It’s not a sub game and it does things that subbed games don’t. They are different animals with a common ancestor. The original RPG.

I’d say that what you are talking about describes City of Heroes(RIP), Champions Online, EvE Online and Day Z.

What do you mean with “not being forced?” I might misunderstand you and I apologize then but these are the options you have in GW 2:

- PvE (heart quests, events)
- Dungeons
- Exploring
- PVP
- WvWvW

I’d say what this game does really well is to not “force you to play because you are paying sub for it.” but when you are talking about all these options on how you can play then I’m just not following you.

The options you are talking about is something that I think rings true for as I said a game like EvE, GW 2 forces you to do the same thing as WoW does it’s just that you have replaced the quest hubs with events which in the end since u are doing them with other players “feels” like you do not grind as much but in reality you grind just as much from level 1-80 in GW 2 as you would in any other game in this genre.

There is a huge problem with not having “set roles” but I won’t get into that here but basically not having any sort of “real roles” or at least the option to really go all out in one role when you please means that you will have huge balance problems and that evolving the dungeons (which really needs something done with) is hard because not having any form of trinity limits the mechanics that you can pull off a little bit.

The last thing you wrote also again rings true for games like CoH and Champions Online.

“It’s not perfect, but at least someone has been brave enough to stray away from the WoW clone mentality.”

You obv haven’t played that many different MMORPGs. Going away from the WoW meta game is nothing true, having the game setup with events is nothing new, having exploration as a big part of the game and not having any “real trinity” is nothing new.

“I also think people are silly to try and compare games like WoW or even other sub games to this. It’s not a sub game and it does things that subbed games.”

Weird argument. WoW is a MMORPG, GW2 is also a MMORPG they are in the same genre that one of them is sub based and the other is not have nothing to do with the argument.
So what you are saying is that we can’t compare Call of Duty and Battlefield? We can’t compare Street Fighter with Tekken because one of them is “2d” while the other is “3d”?

I like this game but I would like to se improvements. The things that GW 2 is good at haven’t really been implemented very well so far. The non-trinity system doesn’t work very well yes you removed the trinity system and what did you exactly replace it with? “Everyone can be everything” no the can’t, a ele can’t tank sorry. Guardians is the best tank class ATM, warrior is the best Burst class so in reality you haven’t removed the trinity system you have just locked the “roles” to classes and in doing so screwed over the viability with some build and some “roles”.

I’m all for trying new things but if you remove things that other games in the genre has then you actually have to develop NEW systems to replace them. ATM the “non-trinity” doesn’t work as advertised in dungeons and in world events. They also removed gear progression (i like that) but they didn’t replace it with anything?
They didn’t take anything from the GW1 skill system which means that we atm have a pretty flat game with so much cookie cutter skill builds that it gives me nightmares. Traits isn’t implemented well (5% more damage when over 75% hp, 5% more damage against bleeding foes), the passives is just for the most part not interesting.

I know that they didn’t want to do GW1 again but I still thought that they would take some of the mechanics and ideas that from the first games and ship them over to the 2nd. Having weapon locked skills was a pretty bad idea since it directly forces you to use this set of skills with this weapon and limits character building.

Why not let us play around with skills for the sword? Limit them to 5 skills but give us maybe 10-20 skills to choose from that we can have in those 5 skill slots. You can have “suggested” skill builds to get people started on figuring out how to build their characters.

What always have been the huge part of RPG except from “roleplaying” has been character progression and when you remove that by locking skills to weapons and minimizing the skill combos you can play around with you end up with a pretty flat game sadly.
I’ve talked about events before but a huge problem of making them the central part of GW2 since u cant get to 80 by only doing heart quest is that you need a healthy playerbase to get the events rolling and the problem with this is ofc that if ppl stop playing or the majority of all players get to 80 then newcomers won’t be able to do events cause noone is doing them.

What made GW1 amazing was that the game started at 20, thats when you could start play around with skill builds and runes. GW 2 unfortunately trashed all those goodies in the bin and instead moved the game from a deep intuitive skill system focused game to a streamlined, borderline ez mode game with very few chances to actually evolve yourself outside of PVP.

Just to clarify I like that they removed the gear treadmill and the trinity system but they didn’t implement anything in place of removing those systems which makes grouping feel very meh.

And again GW 2 is nowhere near of doing the events, non trinity and whatnot stuf. If you really believe that GW2 is the first to do this and “changing the world” then you have to try out some more MMORPGS. IF you haven’t already go try FFXI, FFXIV, EvE and Champions Online and that is only naming a FEW.

I just don’t see the freedom that you are talking about in GW2. I see that freedom in EvE, FFXIV and Champions but I do not see them here.

This is a good game and the ideas with it is good but it needs a lot of work ATM to be able to pull of what it advertises itself to be because atm it doesn’t

I agree with you wholeheartedly GreenZap. They removed everything that made GW1 a deep game and replaced it with, well.. nothing.

I’m not gonna repeat myself as my feelings about GW2 from a GW1 player’s perspective can be read here (locked).

There’s been a good bit of discussion here but in reading many of the posts, it seems clear that folks inevitably compare this to other games and ask why it does (x) instead of (y) like other games. Every time a new MMO comes out it will build upon the foundations already lain by its predecessors. That’s how evolution works.

However, every MMO that comes out will be one that introduces someone to the genre. For some players, this will be their first MMO. If you are one such person reading this, please advise us of your views.

I would have the same opinion, it’s a GREAT game, i’ve spent tons of time in it and i don’t even see the end in site, the fact that more content is being added well before i’m even done with the content i was given! That’s great in my book! It’s like buying a multiplayer skyrim that gets more content!