Guild Wars 2

I agree that this game seemed to have stopped all of sudden.

Talrune.5130:

Seems mmorpg.com article today speaks alot to my view on the game now. I am so bored

I could say that about many many games, not even mmo’s. There is a point where for each of us, a game comes to a halt. That means… I go looking for another game, face it that is how I purchased GW2. The previous game came to a halt and I was ready for the next. So don’t make it sound negative, make it sound natural, because most of the games you’ve played previously, also came to a halt.

I’d rather put a game down for a while and come back later then feel coerced to keep playing to collect incremental upgrades that are ultimately still meaningless. The whole loot reward design hasn’t really worked for me in years.
I was hoping Arenanet would focus more of their development effort on designing non-loot based reward systems for PvE. Though it seems the next updates may actually bring some of that.

bojangles.6912:

Why do people always say, “Level up an alt”, when threads like this come up? So basically you are telling them to re-do all the same content you already did doing a different class. WOW how fun! Sorry but not everyone is into making alts, and after a few months of release and to keep from being bored you should make an alt?

I like the other part you said. “Grind for gold and tokens.” Thought people said there is no “grind” in this game. lol

@OP yes the game has been at a halt for awhile now. Having little events like this Christmas one is just fluff. I personally thought it was boring. I don’t play Rift but hear they have been doing a great job lately. Also WoW even pumps out more content and enjoyable stuff compared to this.

If you have to make an alt to just have content then that says a lot about a game.

I love playing alts and tend to stick with games that are strong in the Ways of the Alt. City of Heroes was such a game for me, as was the original Guild Wars. Heck, in the original Guild Wars I bought a second account so I could play more alts. (This was before we could buy extra character slots, of course, and even after that I still bought more character slots.)

Alts! Gotta have my alts. As much as I enjoyed The Secret World it is not strong in the Ways of the Alt. Three factions, yes – but the faction specific missions are basically repaints of each other, and one character can eventually learn every skill and weapon, so… yeah. SWTOR – well, it seemed like it would be exceptionally strong in the Ways of the Alt, and I set out to alt my kitten off, but never even got one character to the level cap before my enthusiasm for the game hit an iceberg.

I currently have 8 GW2 characters, one for each profession. I’ve got a Thief at 80, a Mesmer in the 50s, a Necro and an Ele in the 40s, a Warrior in the 30s, a Ranger and a Guardian in the 20s, and a new Engineer (thanks to the character slot sale) still in the teens. And so far I’m jumping back and forth between them and I’m still having fun doing so.

Now, I took breaks from Guild Wars and City of Heroes, often for months at a time, but I always went back – and played for months at a time. Will GW2 keep me coming back?

Depends, mostly on three things.

Ascended Gear (being, in my mind, at least the foundation of an ongoing gear grind) = do not want. How big will this turn out to be? How much development time will it eat up at the expense of things I might actually enjoy? So far, I’ve not tried to get any of the currently available pieces, and don’t intend to.

Level cap increase = do not want. I hate that. Absolutely hate it. If the Ascended Gear doesn’t kill the game for me, this might.

New professions, new skills, new races, new zones, new missions, plus Cantha and Elona = want! Sooner rather than later. Especially Cantha. So long as they don’t Orr it up…

In summation: the game has not yet come to a halt for me and a big part of that is because I can happily indulge my chronic altitis. If Orr was not at the ‘end’ of the game, however, I’d probably already be gone. (See Taris.)

The article linked by the OP sounded mostly like speculation as to what ArenaNet could add in the future to provide what the author sees as meaningful character progression. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately, myself. While I don’t feel like the game has “come to a halt” for me by any means, I would love opportunities to make my characters stronger, more individual, and more finely tuned to my playstyle. GW1 had, as the author mentions, many opportunities for doing that. Sure, you could buy max-stat gear as soon as you hit a major city and never have to worry about buying armor again, but that was only the start of your character’s growth. Outfitting them with build-specific upgrades, weapons, and skills was a major part of completing a character, and one that had been specialized in that way was much stronger than a fresh level 20, even in max-stat armor.

Without opening up the Ascended armor debate again, there’s a reason I dislike it, and that’s that I find stat gain alone really boring and uncreative and when character progression consists mainly of “GET MOAR STATS” I get tired of it quickly. While I know that just transplanting GW1’s skill capture system into GW2 wouldn’t work, one of my greatest hopes is that when they eventually add more slot skills and weapons to each profession, they do so in a way that makes it a form of character progression. Have us hunt down tomes to unlock new skills, or complete a scavenger hunt to get a basic version of a new class-available weapon that takes more effort than usual to gain every skill for. I think it’d be neat to be able to look at a character in a year or so and say, “Whoa, there’s a Necromancer with greatsword unlocked—awesome!” or whatever.

bojangles.6912:

Why do people always say, “Level up an alt”, when threads like this come up? So basically you are telling them to re-do all the same content you already did doing a different class. WOW how fun! Sorry but not everyone is into making alts

It’s one of the more realistic answers. The other one is if you are not having fun, go do something else and you probably don’t care for that one either. It’s not like we can wave a wand and create new content and gameplay to your desires. We are a loooong way away to infinite unique gaming adventures. If some of us and not pointing at you, put the same fervor in real life as we do gaming: A. They would find real life is interesting and has inifinte adventure, with high res graphics running at >1000 FPS. B. They’d become very successful putting in such an effort.

Games cannot make a complete alternative reality at this time. Your first game didn’t, your last game hasn’t, GW 2 nope and your next game won’t.

Rustypipes.6238:

I said this in another thread and I will say it here; there are a ton of things to do in this game, whether or not you chose to do them is completely on you. It’s not lacking for things to do, it’s lacking in thing you want to do.

The game is not custom made for every special snowflake and will not have everything your heart desires to keep you entertained till you discover life outside the game.

Many people are enjoying it just fine, many aren’t, welcome to how the world works.

As for the “leveling alts is just doing the same content”, that a ludicrous statement and probably doesn’t even deserve my feedback but I’m going to give it anyway. Every race has different starting areas, different leveling areas and different personal story (to a point). So, please try to come up with a better reason not to level an alt besides “it’s the same content”.

Outside of storymode for the first 40 levels. Its the same content m8.

Same events same heart quests… if you main has 100% map completion guess what running an alt through is going to be pretty bland because yes you have done all the content already.

What cracks me up are the people here who say there is always so much to do in GW2 yet they will be the first to say how bored they are or how there is nothing to do on the “other mmos” yet everything they said you can do you here, you can do the same on other mmo’s. Alts, craft, raid, pvp, etc.

In my day, we played Pac-Man for years. Sure we’d take a few steps to the left or to the right and play Centipede, Donkey Kong, or another arcade game once in a while. We saw the kid using it moments ago who sneezed into their hand and then grab the controls, and we still put a quarter into the machine because our immune system needed to be challenged too. We knew we had limited content and we loved it! Danged kids and your online content and your wanting more player controlled characters near you more often.
;P hehhehhehhehhehehh

Esrever.8613:

it takes next to no time to get to high level. They added content for all levels for the events. not sure what you are talking about.

It takes around 80-100 hours the first time you do it.

This is even worse than max level in WoW, and contrary to what people seem to believe, the end game does NOT start until level 80.

Thanks for all your feedback! I was just expressing how I felt. I have been playing and testing these things wow going on 17 years now…getting older by the day but still enjoy them. I just hope down the road with all those “dedicated teams” they have they churn outand grow the world as they said they are going to do…just Ncsoft I have little faith in not the dev team Arenanet.

Agree.

I have 3 level 80s now.

• 2nd 2 80s I am not bothering to complete the story – the reward for the final story mission even after the anet fix is worthless to a player in full exotics, so whats the point. You beat Z once and you get that “that was meh” feeling so why repeat it?

• Orr has become a lot less populated even on full servers. It was always kind of a drag due to the gank mobs and all the special abilities the enemies have. Basically I run the initial alley between the 2 camps and farm karma, and every so often I will fight at a temple if I need another karma exotic. Otherwise – its not much fun so why bother?

• Dragon farming – do this with much of my time hoping for a precursor.

• Time, effort, gold, etc. needed to otherwise come up with a precursor and a legendary is nothing but grinding – and its boring.

• Fractals – get boring quickly and the way its implemented was poor since now its all “LFG fotm level n” in LA chat with everyone on different levels making it harder to form groups.

• Dungeon runs for token… over and over … for gear no better than what I can build… uh, yeah – keep your skins. Boring grind.

• W3 – still badly broken with rendering issues and thieves running amok and its mostly PVWALL not PVP given we spend all our time bashing gates… yeah thats fun….

Zapan.7460:

In my day, we played Pac-Man for years.

Yup.

Perma-death.

Same maze over and over.

Now it’s once through the beautiful lands, been there done that, give me some more eye candy to race through. TYVM!

@Talrune.5130: As you said, you arent 80 yet. Still you complain about Anet not releasing content fast enough? What?

Almost no MMO release pre-max level content after release, except is a few odd cases or when they want to revamp the world.

GW2 has gotten alot of updates when it comes to max level content and more work is being done for jan and feb patches. There is more than enough content to level 3 characters to 80 and seeing new content for atleast 50% of your leveling time on each toon.

The game has had enough permamnet updates for a 4 month old game in addition to its seasonal events. I think so far they’ve done quite a good job.

I play alot (too much actually) and I still havent gotten bored, I have 4 80s and I’m about to start leveling my ranger again and get his last 60 levels. I was a tad bummed out right before fractals were released but now I cant get enough of them or the game.

They took way too much out from Gw1 that people enjoyed and added way too much generic WoW clone, what do you expect with that combination..

Personally hoping the future updates inject a bit more old Guildwars 1 back into the game or its time to move on, i guess i’ll wait and see..

AcidicVision.5498:

Just out of curiosity has the OP considered that the game just recently hit being more than four months old?

For five years ANet has been telling people that the game will be released when it’s finished. Yes, we all should have known better than to believe them. But we sure as hell have a right to harangue them for not living up to their promises.

Zonzai.2341:

AcidicVision.5498:

Just out of curiosity has the OP considered that the game just recently hit being more than four months old?

For five years ANet has been telling people that the game will be released when it’s finished. Yes, we all should have known better than to believe them. But we sure as hell have a right to harangue them for not living up to their promises.

Oh come off it.

any one who has ever been interested in MMO’s KNOW’s there never actualy “done” when they come out Anet has said it them self “MMO’s are service” the game was as done as it could be with the Cash they had and going by reviews and MOST players still holding a strong interest in it they provided us with a vary solid product.

not to mention an MMO can never truly be put through its pass’s until after its actualy in store’s (( do you have any idea how many people bought this game Day one because they had no interest in Beta’s))

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Zonzai.2341:

AcidicVision.5498:

Just out of curiosity has the OP considered that the game just recently hit being more than four months old?

For five years ANet has been telling people that the game will be released when it’s finished. Yes, we all should have known better than to believe them. But we sure as hell have a right to harangue them for not living up to their promises.

Oh come off it.

any one who has ever been interested in MMO’s KNOW’s there never actualy “done” when they come out Anet has said it them self “MMO’s are service” the game was as done as it could be with the Cash they had and going by reviews and MOST players still holding a strong interest in it they provided us with a vary solid product.

Never played GW1 did you? ANet actually delivered almost everything that they promised with GW1. I know it’s hard to believe. So I don’t expect you or anybody else who has no experience with GW1 to understand.

But you are right. As I already said, YES WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. (Just making sure you saw that bit, not shouting.) I think ANet just promised us too much with GW2 and because they did such an amazing job of delivering with GW1 I believed them.

Also, if you are (like seemingly most others here) either A.) just looking to needlessly debase GW2 out of frustration or B.) looking to zealously defend GW2 and everything about GW2 without stopping to consider any contrary point of view, we can end this now. Because neither of those responses allow for conversation. And I will not succumb to (further) diatribe. Discussion, I can deal with. Argumentation for the sake of it I can not.

Actually, I was just thinking I don’t even know why I am taking the time to type this out since we both basically agree that we should have known better. You could argue that I don’t have the right to harass ANet for GW2 not living up to my expectations though. I totally disagree with you there if you think I shouldn’t speak my mind on that. Anyway, I’m personally mostly happy with GW2 even if I’m bored with it.

You know, a thought just occurred to me. Maybe because of the extreme farming – extreme casual – extreme PvP design philosophy I’ve been left out of GW2. Just because I’m not quite extreme enough in any of those things. I enjoy everything a little but I’m not able to make the most of any of those things because they are all taken to such extremes. Interesting…

There’s a few important goals for me:
- master crafter, golden, emperor and at least on WvW title
- all exploration, jumping, hero and boss achievements
- a single legendary one day, no idea when
- all classes to ~50

Heck … my main isn’t even full exotic yet. Chest is yellow and rings are green. I’ll try to go straight for ascended rings come next patch.

So when all is said and done … there’s plenty to do before I consumed all content. With a real life in between, no idea when that’s going to happen. Maybe in 5 years or so.

I wouldn’t say it’s come to a halt, but there’s a lack of new information about the game going forward so far, the holiday events were nice and all, and the new content they have added has been cool, but it’s definitely time to ramp it up now and start talking about the future because that’s what keeps players interested, looking forward at what’s to come.

Shanna.4762:

I wouldn’t say it’s come to a halt, but there’s a lack of new information about the game going forward so far, the holiday events were nice and all, and the new content they have added has been cool, but it’s definitely time to ramp it up now and start talking about the future because that’s what keeps players interested, looking forward at what’s to come.

I would agree with this.

I don’t see it as so much a halt as a holding pattern.

I’m still playing the game regularly, and having fun – going through the personal story on alts, working on world completion with my main, crafting, etc. – so the game certainly hasn’t stopped in its tracks for me.

On the other hand, I do think we’ve reached a point where the newness is wearing off, and GW2 needs to establish and communicate a direction for the future, so we as players can start thinking about and looking forward to what lies ahead.

I hope and suspect that within the next few weeks, that direction will be made a lot more clear.