Guild Wars 2

Just a random thought I’m having…
I don’t know where exactly to post this question so I’m using GW2 Discussion. :/
So a little background, I am a huge SWTOR player and that was my 1st ever MMO. I just installed (and am about to play for the 1st time) GW2. I also have installed and downloaded Rift. So as you can see, I could potentially be jumping between a total of 3 different MMO’s (4 if you want to include World of Warcraft, but I rarely play that so let’s not count it). Now obviously all 3 games will have different keybindings, gameplay, and everything else. So my concern is (and this may sound like a noob ? but remember I’ve only experienced 1 MMO so far), how difficult is it to swap between different MMO’s? Is it a pretty fast transition or will I almost have to relearn everything if I go back to GW2 (for example) after a month of not playing it?

Mayra

I’m not sure. I know that when I was jumping between WoW and LotRO it wasn’t hard, but then LotRO was essentially a different skin on the same sort of controls. Otoh when I went to WoW for a day after a month in GW2, I kept breaking my casts by moving, and frantically double clicking movement to get out of aoe while my character just twitched in place — and that was after 7 years in WoW.

Keybindings can be made similar between the games. I got used to – for auto run way back in Horizons, so I bound that in WoW and every other MMO. I always move the Inventory keybind to I, etc. If you customize every game to do what you expect with particular key presses, that part of swapping is trivial.

But not being able to dodge? Ick! (also note that in WoW I used a light weight simple two button mouse with wheel, and I have a Naga HEX for GW2, which feels highly responsive in Tyria but was like wading in tar in Azeroth for no reason I could discern).

Personally I have problems remembering things like keybindings for different games, but GWII has an extremely simple UI, with very little need for keybindings.

All you really need to bind is your utility spells(the spells on the right side of the screen).

I can’t speak for Rift or SW:TOR, but with WoW, oh man. You have a thousand things that need to be keybinded.

You just made me go through my old WoW screenshots to see my UI.

Everything was keybinded, and I hid two action bars which were full of other things that also were keybinded, but I was able to remember them.
Here is what my UI looked like before I left:

I think it just depends on the person. Ive had 2-3 months break from GW2 as i was playing WoW and FFXIV and had no problem coming back to GW2.

I’ve never had any problem, personally. There are certain keybinds that I use everywhere (Shift:dodge/ Alt+r:mounts for example) and hud elements I move around if I can, but I’ve found out that even in the rare cases I don’t remember a key, my hands do or I can easily guess it. :P It may take a few hours to really get back into the flow of things, and the longer you’ve been away the harder it gets – but I’ve only really experienced disorientation when playing games I hadn’t touched for years. Most modern mmorpgs have extremely similar controls.