Guild Wars 2

This post is a thank you to the development team for making GW2 such an enjoyable experience. I am currently a level 78 elementalist and will be hitting 80 soon but it feels like I have not even touched half of the content out there and there is so much to do!

I’m a FFXI veteran of 8 years and a WoW vet. of around 6 and I have to say…I have never had more fun leveling in a MMORPG than in GW2.

Just wanted to praise the development team for breaking away from that mold to introduce something quite refreshing to players who are tired of the grind most MMOs invoke.

Can’t wait to see what level 80 entails.

Kagato.5390:

…
Can’t wait to see what level 80 entails.

I won’t tell you to not spoil the surprise… Let’s hope you are not a hardcore grinder/farmer/player!

It is strange I use to feel like this. But oddly enough the longer you play the more you notice that there weren’t really all that many molds broken at all.

Lots of molds were broken but the biggest of all of them was the idea that not every other player in PvE always needs to be competing with you. The idea that everyone has their own crafting nodes, you can’t tag mobs, that you share in reward and experience makes this is a very different leveling experience from other games. The downed state and that everyone can rez makes it a differnt experience.

And it’s a non-linear leveling experience. This quest hub, that quest hub, this quest hub is gone. It feels more organic.

It’s easy to forget after you’ve played it a while how different it really is…but that doesn’t change that it is different.

Vayne.8563:

Lots of molds were broken but the biggest of all of them was the idea that not every other player in PvE always needs to be competing with you. The idea that everyone has their own crafting nodes, you can’t tag mobs, that you share in reward and experience makes this is a very different leveling experience from other games. The downed state and that everyone can rez makes it a differnt experience.

And it’s a non-linear leveling experience. This quest hub, that quest hub, this quest hub is gone. It feels more organic.

It’s easy to forget after you’ve played it a while how different it really is…but that doesn’t change that it is different.

I have seen lots of these things in of other games. GW2 pulled them all together and polished them. Something I feel was very similar to what WoW did its time. Didn’t reinvent the wheel or anything, just pulled lots of good ideas from different places and put them under one roof and did it better then those that came before did.

The leveling is sort of non-linear in the fact that if you out level an area, you can go level anywhere in that area. But if you are the right level for an area, it is still linear you just don’t have to go pick up a bunch of quest. It does feel much more natural that way.

Wryscher.1432:

Vayne.8563:

Lots of molds were broken but the biggest of all of them was the idea that not every other player in PvE always needs to be competing with you. The idea that everyone has their own crafting nodes, you can’t tag mobs, that you share in reward and experience makes this is a very different leveling experience from other games. The downed state and that everyone can rez makes it a differnt experience.

And it’s a non-linear leveling experience. This quest hub, that quest hub, this quest hub is gone. It feels more organic.

It’s easy to forget after you’ve played it a while how different it really is…but that doesn’t change that it is different.

I have seen lots of these things in of other games. GW2 pulled them all together and polished them. Something I feel was very similar to what WoW did its time. Didn’t reinvent the wheel or anything, just pulled lots of good ideas from different places and put them under one roof and did it better then those that came before did.

The leveling is sort of non-linear in the fact that if you out level an area, you can go level anywhere in that area. But if you are the right level for an area, it is still linear you just don’t have to go pick up a bunch of quest. It does feel much more natural that way.

People underestimate putting stuff together the right way. Shakespeare’s plays are just words. Other people have used the same words. Sometimes it’s how things are put together that makes all the difference.

In fact, creatively very very little is actually new. Just about everything has been done before. But the specific combinations of the factors here was an INTENTIONAL design decision by the devs, and that sets it apart from other games.

It doesn’t matter that Rift had dynamic events (aka Rifts) because they didn’t have the confidence in their events to get rid of the traditional quest system. The dynamic events there were tacked on, rather than a focus. That alone makes this a unique experience.

I think, if you play any game for a long duration, you’ll eventually get tired of it hence why so many complain about burnout or lack of new content.

But that’s because you burn through the new content so fast, playing ~5 hours a day. It would seem incredibly repetitive under those circumstances.

What I truly enjoyed from 1-80 (hit it today) was the fact that it was just as easy to get from 79 to 80 as it was from 10 to 11. I didn’t even get to explore most of the zones! So I can easily find more replay value if I choose another character and select other maps to explore that next time around.

The world is beautifully constructed and I love the differences between areas. The storyline isn’t half bad and I do enjoy the personal story.

I just think it was really well done compared to FFXI and WoW, two games I put an unholy amount of time into. My opinion will change, of course, over the next few months. But a game can only entertain you for so long.