Guild Wars 2

Good day to everyone reading this. I wanted to take a moment to give my overall feedback after trying out this game (and buying it).

First I want to give my background in playing MMOs
I started with WoW for 4 years, FFXIV for 2 years, and ESO for 2 years. My love for WoW died out when I realized that raid leading end game content and being a guild leader were making a game I once loved, no longer appeal to me. So i ventured out from my safe space of knowing only one MMO to try others. All of them had their perks and downsides but yet none seemed to incorporate everything I loved into one game….Enter Guild Wars 2.

Going to go over general areas and rate each of them, and provide 1 area I really liked and 1 area that if i could improve I would.

Music: Score 8/10
After playing ESO for 2 years along side FFXIV I was really dismayed of the lack of music, so I really hoped that when I downloaded GW2, it would have some good sound tracks playing during adventuring and fights. So far, I am very pleased with music, the login is just epic, and the music played while wandering the world is just right. Not to intense, yet to not soft and making you want to sleep kind of music.

Graphics: Score 6/10
In MMOs at least for me a more realistic environment is what I really look for, and is usually the very first thing that will make me decide to download and try the game. While GW2 has no where near the level of graphics that ESO has, it is more of a balance between WoW and FFXIV. There are clothing physics, the rain drops on your screen after swimming is a nice touch as well.
Lighting is nicely done on characters as there are no major harsh shadows, so your character looks good at all angles. If there were to be a GW3, i would hope that the detail of the graphics starts to push into more realism like in ESO

Combat: 9/10
Much like WoW and FFXIV, tab targeting and beautiful spell animations. The combat itself can hook someone on this game alone I believe. However, it is also more simplistic than WoW or FFXIV in terms of how many abilities there are (maybe not having reached lvl 80 or end game, i might not be aware of everything) but I don’t feel overwhelmed with the amount of spells, and I also don’t feel as if everything is just a 2 button mash all the time.
I think Elementalist will be my main, as I always enjoy healing (I am aware that the standard trinity does not exist, and hopefully someone will correct me if I am wrong.) and elementalist seems better suited to healing groups.
I also like the fact that your spells change based on weapon, and each profession has different spells for the different weapons. That really broadens how you can perceive your character and really does allow a player to make a character their own.

World events 10/10
Much like the FATE system in ffxiv, I love exploring the areas and seeing a random event pop up. Last night there were quite a few of us defeating some dark thing in a swamp…might have been a world boss? But i really enjoyed it and it was wonderful to see so many people there helping to kill it.

MSQ (main story quest/personal story)
Haven’t done much into this as I am only level 14, but I have three characters total that have all done the first part of the story and I like how it changes based on what you chose during the character creation. This right here makes me want to level alts, so I can see all the stories

Gem Store 7/10
Innovative that you can buy gems with gold in game. This encourages people to actually play and work towards earning gold so they don’t have to spend real life money. However for someone like me, that right away wanted to make sure my character was dressed nicely and fit my idea of a hero, that was available as well.
This section gets a lower score because i feel for how many items are available, they seem to cost considerable more than other games.
I know it is because you can convert gold into gems, but it just seems higher than I thought it would have been seeing as how there are many many more items available for purchase than other games offer.

Transmutation/transmog/glamour whatever you like to call it: 10/10
GW2 allows a player to really make a character their own. Transmutation and unlocking skins as you acquire an item is so nice, that many other games need to adapt this method. Since i am wearing a costume, I haven’t had to use transmutation charges yet, and I also don’t have any. I hope as I play this, they are not hard to acquire, and also that it is something I won’t be forced to buy from the gem store. So the 10/10 score is an early on score, which I might find to be much worse later on.

Crafting: To early to score yet
One nice thing about ESO was the simplicity to crafting, I feel with GW2 that it will go kind of the same way as FFXIV, which is not really a bad thing, just much more involved than I would expect. Again this is to early on to tell, and I have tried crafting a few things, but kind of just stared at the screen thinking…“ok, i can make shoes….so i make shoes, are they better or worse, and i can’t really seem to craft a lot of armor slots yet” It just didn’t seem that intuitive when I first viewed the crafting table. Will probably have to look up a guide on it, which kind of kills it for me.

I’m happy to say I’ve joined the GW2 family by purchasing the game, and I look forward to writing a followup to this post in about 6 months after I have had enough time to dive much much further into this game. I just wanted to take the time to rate the game, and express what caused me to actually buy it.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and have a great day!

Any suggestions and comments are welcome.

Welcome to Tyria.

Odd that graphics would be the one area for improvement; it usually scores pretty high.

You can earn Transmutation Stones in-game. Try Map Completion in the city of choice. ; )

Happy adventuring, and good luck!

You will notice that all things Guild Wars 2 go for a ‘painterly’ look. In- and out- of game.

It may not be your cup of tea, and that’s perfectly fine. =)

The forums can be rough, at times. I hope it won’t color your impression of the game, and the community.

It’s major patch day; exciting and emotions may be elevated. Lol.

Again, welcome to Tyria, and good luck!

A mild comment from me: I think you mean aesthetics rather than graphics.

I agree that ESO has amazingly realistic aesthetics, other than the stiff scowling character faces, the armor all being variations on a theme with odd floating hip plates, and the annoying tendency of my Redguard to stand at a pronounced forward tilt when on level surfaces. But these are artistic choices and ANet elected a painterly style as Cedo notes. In fact they touted it before release.

So perhaps visually it doesn’t appeal to you as much as it does to others but that part is a very subjective.

All that said, welcome to Tyria and I hope you continue to enjoy exploring the world. It’s not as story-immersive as ESO but has at least as many nifty little surprises tucked away in corners when you go looking.

I expect that music score (pun alert) will go up once you get into the Heart of Thorns areas. Auric Basin is love. <3

After FFXIV, crafting will be a huge disappointment, unfortunately. But, GW2 will give you 10/10 on sheer convenience, so it almost balances out.

@ Randulf

The whole ship movement in PS, is because the engine really can’t handle moving ships, so the map/instance fakes it, by moving the rest of the map around the ship (somewhat). And yes that is buggy as heck

Had a guildie fall off that once, he ended in a huge teleport loop, as the game tried to teleport him back, but failed, missed the spot, and repeat. He ended up somewhere inside Zhaitan and couldn’t get out, as we fought him.

Welcome to Guild Wars 2!

I’ll say, that while the game’s graphics may not be ‘realistic’, and instead going for a ‘Painted Fantasy" look (Which, IMO, looks better than realistic when you start bringing in fantastic beasts), where this game really visually shines is in character animation… except elementalist scepter, but that’s a decision to make scepter animation style lame, rather than quality. As someone who’s played FFXIV a bit, and seen gameplay videos of ESO, the animation in this game does a MUCH better job of having the characters move naturally in the game world (I couldn’t even get into FFXIV because of how bad the jumping and moving animations were)

I’d say… crafting is kinda meh, and a bad money and material sink. However, it’s critical for getting some end-game things, so it pays off in the long run.

Music – Aside from “Battle against the Tamini”, which I find irritating beyond everything (And it doesn’t help that it plays exclusively during a long escort quest in one of the story branches), it’s pretty great, though it can get repetitive in some of the boss battles (“Raven Speaks”, while epic in its own right, is a bit overused IMO). Once it gets to HoT, though, the soundtrack changes significantly – which is understandable because it’s a new artist, and also fitting because, while the player fights the same, the way enemies work completely changes the rhythm of combat as well.

Personal story – It starts strong, then starts to be a letdown after level 30. There are also irritating parts where NPCs you talk to don’t remember you (There’s one possible pathway for Sylvari that is VERY bad about this, with two NPCs that forget you’ve been involved in all their significant adventures every single mission)… but the level 80 story gets decent again.

Both the music and the art in this game is amazing. The production value is extremely high. Just wait until you hit HoT maps and glide around for a little while.