I’ve just thinking about Forsaken World. You’ve probably heard about this game. With dungeon farming for getting gear, so you can farm higher dungeons for getting gear and so on and etc. PvP between guilds if I’m remember correctly, starts at high level. Just another classic mmorpg.
And when I think about Forsaken World, I am overwhelmed with good feelings. I even want to log in and play a little. I remember the feelings when I was tanking in the dungeons, when I was collecting armor for my tank, when I was doing dailies. It was good time.
The irony here is that after playing GW2 since release, I, fan of GW game, don’t have such feelings. More than that, I don’t have any feelings about GW2. Not positive nor negative, nothing. There is nothing! Why is that? Why I have feelings to some game like Forsaken World, and don’t have any to Guild Wars 2(!!!).
Guild Wars 2 is the question to everything! If you like mmo you should check up GW2, if you hate mmo, you really should check up GW2!
Than why I don’t have feelings, any feelings about this game? If you ask me what this game like, did I like it, I don’t know what to say.
Yes, I liked GW2 in the very beginning. But I also liked GW1, and not just liked, but liked with a passion! So maybe my interest in GW2 was because of GW1 exclusively. Maybe if not GW1 and this statement: “We took everything you love from GW1 and put it in to GW2”, I would not have bought this game.
Yes I liked GW2 in the very beginning. But those feelings… positive and negative, they are gone. They are all gone when I found out that GW2 has nothing to do with GW1. This project probably the only one, which doesn’t left any… impressions! I can’t say that this project is bad, but also I can’t say that this project is good. I don’t know what to say. All I can do it’s shrug in response. In my language I can call it: “Not fish nor meat”.
Okay, let’s try to find out why.
When I found out about Guild Wars 1, I fell in love in to this game. GW1 took away WoW stereotypes! That’s why I loved GW1. Because it was a niche game. Something new, something not like other classic mmorpg.
Armors. Armors in GW1 didn’t have any stats, except defense option. It was not about getting gear for your build. It was all about playing the game and don’t have a headache about gear. Armors were all about fashion.
If builds required some specific stats, we could just buy runes and insignia from npc, and the price was pretty cheep. After that we just put runes and insignia in to the armor. But even if builds required some specific “stats”, it wasn’t a headache, because they had minimum impact. In general, builds were all about only skills, and gears were about fashion. So we wouldn’t have to grind gear for build. We needed armors for defense. That’s it!
I can’t say the same about Guild Wars 2 unfortunately. Armors have stats now, weapons too, and now we have accessory with their own stats too. And all of it have different types of quality: a white, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink.
And now, half of the build strength depends on gear with it’s own stats. This is classic mmo stereotype which GW1 through away, but GW2 took it back (remember statement – everything you love in GW1 we took in to GW2).
So if you want your build to be in a proper level, changing traits isn’t enough. You also need to get a whole set of armor and weapon and accessory with specific stats. It’s far, far away from GW1 and much closer to classic mmo stereotype.
While gear grinding is fine in games like Forsaken World, where the whole pve is about gear grinding, and you know it from the very beginning, it’s not okay in GW universe. This is Guild Wars we are talking about! Bringing to GW gear grind, you through away GW1 unique feature (remember statement about everything we love in gw1 Anet took in to gw2), and bring the feature from classic mmo, making Guild Wars less unique, and making more… something we have already seen so many times before. This part which we loved in GW1 Anet, didn’t bring it to GW2, but have killed it instead.