Guild Wars 2

Hello guys,

Like the title says I stopped playing 2 years ago when I started getting behind on living world content, and considering I have massive OCD when it comes to game completion, I got frustrated very quickly. Anyway, I have a lot of free time on my hands at the moment and while looking for a game worthy of my aformentioned time, I found myself thinking back on my GW days.

And that’s why you find me here today, rather than browsing reddit for information I chose to come here, I remember this community as one of the best there is and I trust I will get honest answers from you.

On to the questions !

Should I be installing this game again ? Has a way for me to experience the whole story of the world been implemented or is it still gone forever ? Will I eventually get behind on content and get frustrated again ? Did it get better ? Worst ?

Thank you !

Living World S1 is still not back in the game, but they’ve said they plan on doing that eventually. S2 can be purchased if you really want to play it. Honestly you shouldn’t worry about keeping up with it though. There’s no way in hell you will ever get anywhere near 100% completion in a game like this, so you might as well stop worrying about that.

Anyway, if you haven’t played in 2 years, you should find plenty of things to keep yourself occupied. Note that it will be much more interesting if you have friends to play with, but even without, there are a lot of long-term goals you can spend some time working toward every day.

I was in about the same boat as you. I quit playing GW2 over a year ago, for no particular reason other than I got so darn busy. My son told me recently about the upcoming HoT expansion pack which rekindled my interest and I’ve been playing a ton since then.

Yes, I missed a bunch of content and you will have too. I don’t know if there’s a way to experience it or not. You could think of it as I do — my “personal story” is that I was bashed on the head in Tyria and had tragic amnesia. But now I’m back and will work with what I have. ;-)

You don’t have to reinstall but will have a big patch or two or so to install. Welcome back!

Season 1….. still gone forever. Eventually may come back, but not until after the expansion drops. They need to look at retooling it as it wasn’t designed the same way as season 2.

Season 2… very playable, it is perminent, though you’ll either need to group up with someone that has the story instances unlocked or buy it yourself. (Like 20$ for the whole thing). It’ll always be there, so take it at your own pace.

Witch of Doom.5739:

You don’t have to reinstall but will have a big patch or two or so to install. Welcome back!

They’re actually working on a streaming client that is in beta right now. I can’t remember exactly how to activate it (it’s an argument you have to give when running the executable), but what that means is that, like GW1, you’ll be able to start the game without downloading the entire update, and it will just limit your access to the parts of the game that you’ve downloaded so far.

I haven’t tried it out yet, but once they get that to a more polished state, it should make getting back into the game after a long absence much easier.

Andred.1087:

Witch of Doom.5739:

You don’t have to reinstall but will have a big patch or two or so to install. Welcome back!

They’re actually working on a streaming client that is in beta right now. I can’t remember exactly how to activate it (it’s an argument you have to give when running the executable), but what that means is that, like GW1, you’ll be able to start the game without downloading the entire update, and it will just limit your access to the parts of the game that you’ve downloaded so far.

I haven’t tried it out yet, but once they get that to a more polished state, it should make getting back into the game after a long absence much easier.

I use this. It’s handy. -StreamingClient is what you add

Waouh, answers so fast, some things don’t change at least !

I guess it’s time to download that thing again and start a new toon, unless I wait for the expantion which is very tempting. Glad to hear they will eventually raise season one from the deads though.
As for the season 2 paywall, I don’t really mind, didn’t mind buying all the GW1 expantions, wont mind this either.

Thanks again to all of you gorgeous persons !

I would strongly advise not deleting your old characters before you’ve tried the new player experience and the trait system. Your new characters will have to unlock each trait individually.

Guhracie has a point. Some of the trait acquisition for new characters can be painful, though Colin has told us they are overhauling that system again (though we do not know when).

I didn’t plan to delete the old ones, especially my first one to which I’m quite attached, but now I have to ask, what’s this about unlocking traits ? Did the system change or something ? I thought everything came with levels and skill points.
Or maybe I just forgot after all this time?

I’ve been back about 3 weeks.

I left mainly because of the LS and the fact I levelled 6x 80’s (92% map completion – minus PvP areas) too quickly and kind of burnt myself out.

That and the fact those sonic periscopes kept interrupting me. I didn’t want nothing to do with LS at the time, but LS had other plans for me.

Map completion no longer involves PvP areas btw.

If you have old characters, they’ll also get birthdays gifts.

My combined characters got me 15 sets of gifts, some of them are good ones. 1 set of gifts per character per year old. But you’ll see when you log in.

I think the game has improved, plus they’ve actually put more effort it seems into the game and not just LS.

Anyway welcome back.

If you have money and skill points and want to play now rather than waiting for the traits overhaul, your skill trainer will sell you the traits instead of you having to unlock them via busted game play options. If you were not logging in to at least get the Season 2 unlocks you will have to pay for Season 2 episodes. In the future, even if you never play, remember to log in every two weeks to get the episodes for free. Otherwise, you will have to pay for the episodes.

Welcome back after a year of being gone.

Aegis.4592:

I didn’t plan to delete the old ones, especially my first one to which I’m quite attached, but now I have to ask, what’s this about unlocking traits ? Did the system change or something ? I thought everything came with levels and skill points.
Or maybe I just forgot after all this time?

Some of us requested skill hunting, similar to GW1 during one of the several Collaborative Development threads with the devs. They couldn’t really apply it to skills, so they applied it to traits instead. Some traits are acquired for killing a certain boss, or helping take a certain tower in Edge of the Mists, or finding a specific chest in the open world, which personally I’m ok with all those. Some though, require you to map a specific map, which can get a bit tedious when it has to be done on each character.

Oh yeah, good old skill hunting, I remember that, nice idea. What i’m understanding is that they over did it a bit and will be tuning it down somehow right ? Learn from the mistakes.
I’m glad they listen to their community, it very well may be their best asset.

Aegis.4592:

Oh yeah, good old skill hunting, I remember that, nice idea. What i’m understanding is that they over did it a bit and will be tuning it down somehow right ? Learn from the mistakes.
I’m glad they listen to their community, it very well may be their best asset.

That’s what it sounds like. We had a huge feedback (read: rant fest) thread with a lot of complaints, which is where Colin did finally tell us they would be changing it. However, no details have surfaced beyond that. Some of us are thinking we’ll see something shortly before, if not with, the expansion, but it’s just speculation.

I checked the Heart of Thorns wiki page and it sounds like the mastery system is pretty close to that, so maybe remove the trait hunt thing and instead have the masteries ?

Ok now i’m hyped, the Stronghold PvP mode reminds me of GvG, this is going to be good !

I am/were in a similar situation like you.
I stopped playing shortly after the Mad King Thorn event and came back recently.

I personally wouldn’t recommend coming back at the moment, especially if you left because of living story being inaccessible.

There is basically no new content at all in the game compared to pre LS GW2.

LS season 1 is unavailable and most likely will be unavailable for quite some time.
LS season 2 needs to be bought with gems and is heavily based on characters introduced in season 1.
The trait fiasco makes creating new characters intensely frustrating and despite over half a year of complains Anet still hasn’t changed it.
They plan on fixing it but talk is cheap.

The only new content are 2 maps that actually arent bad, but are nothing special either and have been turned into grind fests anyway.

I personally would wait for HoT, then get some actual info about it from neutral sources and decide based of that. There wont be any new content until HoT anyway so you don miss anything.
Overall GW2 is probably worse than it was 2 years ago, especially if you care about the story.

Thank you for that detailed answer.
Like you suggested I plan to wait for HoT, hopefully I will still have time to play by then ! And all that is announced for this expantion sounds pretty fun so all the more reasons to wait for the good things to come !

Arkinos.7245:

I am/were in a similar situation like you.
I stopped playing shortly after the Mad King Thorn event and came back recently.

I personally wouldn’t recommend coming back at the moment, especially if you left because of living story being inaccessible.

There is basically no new content at all in the game compared to pre LS GW2.

LS season 1 is unavailable and most likely will be unavailable for quite some time.
LS season 2 needs to be bought with gems and is heavily based on characters introduced in season 1.
The trait fiasco makes creating new characters intensely frustrating and despite over half a year of complains Anet still hasn’t changed it.
They plan on fixing it but talk is cheap.

The only new content are 2 maps that actually arent bad, but are nothing special either and have been turned into grind fests anyway.

I personally would wait for HoT, then get some actual info about it from neutral sources and decide based of that. There wont be any new content until HoT anyway so you don miss anything.
Overall GW2 is probably worse than it was 2 years ago, especially if you care about the story.

Personally I think it has improved, but then I’ve never really been into the lore of an MMO.

Got 3 new characters in addition to my old ones, not noticed any issues with the traits. Since being back already levelled one to 80 (world completion) and presently working on the others.

Or with traits is it a PvP issue?

Aegis.4592:

I checked the Heart of Thorns wiki page and it sounds like the mastery system is pretty close to that, so maybe remove the trait hunt thing and instead have the masteries ?

Ok now i’m hyped, the Stronghold PvP mode reminds me of GvG, this is going to be good !

Given how masteries are supposed to work, I hope they don’t tie traits to that (reminds me of rep grind from EotN). We’ll just have to wait and see what they do with the system when they get around to telling us. I’m assuming they are still working out kinks / finalizing the new method, thus why we haven’t heard yet.

Yes, Stronghold does remind me of GvG as well. The devs said they took their inspiration for it from a combination of GvG and FA/JQ

Well, if it’s inspired by GvG and FA, can’t be anything but great ! One thing I love from GW2 is the combat system, so yeah the hype is real !

Arkinos.7245:

The trait fiasco makes creating new characters intensely frustrating and despite over half a year of complains Anet still hasn’t changed it.
They plan on fixing it but talk is cheap.

Just to clarify how long the traits have been in their current state: On the 15th of this month (less than 2 weeks away, now) it will have been a full year. The cost has increased from less than 3g to 43g and 360 skillpoints, per character. We’ve been assured for going on seven months now that they’re planning on making a change to it.

I find the game kind of half-formed, TBH.

The parts of it that are fully formed are great, but the parts that aren’t are almost comically bad.

The fact that people openly admit that some classes are next to useless and that guild chat is full of people laughing about how good they are at cheesing the game are evidence of that.

As a former WoW player, I’m used to a more fully rounded, more balanced, less amateur-feeling, less easily cheesed product.

It’s a very pretty game, though.

Tigaseye.2047:

I find the game kind of half-formed, TBH.

The parts of it that are fully formed are great, but the parts that aren’t are almost comically bad.

The fact that people openly admit that some classes are next to useless and that guild chat is full of people laughing about how good they are at cheesing the game are evidence of that.

As a former WoW player, I’m used to a more fully rounded, more balanced, less amateur-feeling, less easily cheesed product.

It’s a very pretty game, though.

Well, something you might not know is that WoW has been out for a decade, now, whereas GW2 has only been out 2.5 years. I can tell from your post that you didn’t play WoW when it was 2.5 years old, because I did. Rounded and balanced are not words I would use to describe WoW, even after two expansions, let alone before the first one. And I loved WoW. I played it extensively through Cataclysm and then less so through MoP (I stopped about halfway through Mists). It’s just really not a fair comparison to be making.

I totally agree with your first two sentences, though, but I also acknowledge that they’re actively working to improve many of the systems that don’t work- notably, for me, conditions in PvE.