Guild Wars 2

I like GW 2 just wish they start bringing more retail expansion’s out for GW again. (ANet GW isn’t finished yet, hire me and I’ll bring it back from the grave and make it the greatest online game in the world.)

Guildwars 1: Eternal Dragon.

Guildwars 2: Fireworks show.

I much prefer GW2 over GW, for the open world structure alone. I’d like to see some of the stuff mentioned, particularly skill collecting, and I’d like to see pvp get some serious love (I’m not a big pvper but that really ought to be a highlight of this game given it’s pedigree).

I also share the opinion that the gem store as a major revenue stream does seem to have had quite a major impact on some basic areas of the game. It kind of irritates me to be honest, I really don’t want to feel like I’m playing Guild Wars 2 Lite, but things like shared bank space limits that seem extremely tight and just the fact that money is so hard to come by often leaves me feeling like I’m playing a very pretty, slick FTP game.

But overall I think GW2 is a really great game, one of the best MMOs I’ve played (and I’ve played most of ‘em), it will improve with age I’m sure.

Red Falcon.8257:

GW1 player for 8 years here, I’m quite happy with GW2.

Things I would like to see:

1) Increased skill pool (including elites), weapon variety for all classes, a lot more traits.
This would give the game some solid build depth and variety, which GW2 lacks a lot compared to GW1.

2) More rare skin that need to be obtained by killing specific bosses a la GW1.
Honestly most skins are easy to obtain, the hard ones are legendaries which need gold farming to be obtained.
I hope Ascended weapons will be introduced in loot tables of bosses from dungeons, and their skins be actually good looking.

You hit two major things I want. What I want as a 6 year Guild Wars player is the ability to be more creative with my builds. They pretty much just need to continue to build on the game and everything should unfold with this game going far in MMO terms, just like Guild Wars 1.

Like most have mentioned, GW1 didn’t really pick up until the NF + EotN expansions. So I’m still hoping GW2 will improve massively over time like it’s predecessor. So far it’s an amazing game, with a good deal of content. And I’m still happy to see some long term goals + achievements to keep us occupied, since this is what worked for GW1, which has kept the game running for years, and still is.

A few things I am disappointed in though:

• The lack of decent guild structure. Giving people the ability jump between guilds wasn’t the best idea. It doesn’t feel like you’re a part of tight-knit community of friends or fellow guildies. Plus it’s bad for activity when half your members aren’t representing and guild chat becomes a total barren. Also the lack of Guild Halls is very disappointing. This is what made guilds special. The small communities with a place to hang out.

• When ANet announced that the skills will be simplified, I didn’t think they would destroy one of GW1’s shining features, the huge variety of skills and builds. Once you gain all possible weapon combos and skills by level 20, it feels like a drag hitting max level. Using the same skills over and over.

• No dedicated healing class. I’m sure Monk players were devastated when they first made guardians. With the lack of trinity/true tanking, Monks made up for that. Guardians only offer what I see as support. No direct and powerful heals, just slightly helpful boosts and regen.

Aside from those, I’m still having a blast playing this. It’s worth every penny, and I think for the amount of years put into this game, it’s a job well done. And I’m looking forward to future content and improvements as this game progresses.

Guild Wars 1 is a game I actually enjoy. yes you read that right I still play it. the mechs in Guild Wars 2 however are …Different(No Smit Sherlock).Not something I wasn’t expecting. It took me almost a week before I realized there was no heroes or henchmen. Then after more time playing and remembering Guild Wars 1 It sorta bummed me out.

The great thing about Guild wars 1 is the PvP and the “build your own Salad bar” so to speak (Skill bar) and the Secondary Professions. I hate pvp to no end ,but Guid Wars 1 was different and I like it for it’s Unquie PvP style (Unquie to me anyway). The build your own bar and Secondary profession is really awesome. Something Guild Wars 2 lacks, but theres a small understanding to that.

I’m not even going to try and compare GW1 and GW2 – they’re so far apart that the only thing linking them is lore. That said, I was NOT a fan of the days of Prophecies, so I’m hoping it’s the gradual improvement that remains a trend in this game too.

I started out as an alpha tester for guildwars 1. I fell in love with the pvp in that game did it extensively with my old alpha guild fianna. When it was released i played it quite a bit didn’t care for the PvE all that much but we were required to do some PvE. Anywho as all good things do it came to an end. For me GW2 is on another level both pvp and pve leagues above gw1. Sure there aren’t as many skills as gw1 but honestly a lot of the skills in that game felt redundant. There’s plenty of room to grow in gw2 as good as this game is now i can’t even imagine how good it’ll get in the future.

I liked the original game (played it since beta) and a lot of the nuaced mechanics that were added later. So far GW2 is kicking its “kitten” all over the place though. I like the player-driven aspect of this game a lot more which is why I can’t help but roll my eyes at all the, “there’s no endgame,” and, “there’s nothing to do,” comments from people who would be better served by saying that the one thing they want to do is not supported.

The only reason I even take time to visit forums is because I’m at work and can’t play.

edit: iirc, 4 months in we didn’t even have Sorrow’s Furnace yet, right? It was also before everyone was r9 and you couldn’t get into HoH (still Glint’s neighbor 4 months in) because everyone was looking for “r9+, show emote”. That reminds me that the PvP is WAAAY more accessible and interesting in GW2.

I would take Master Togo over Trahearne any day though. I also miss playing Kurzick FA (even though I was Luxon). Bonding that one ele NPC was a lot more fun than it sounds.

I prefer the original Guild Wars; it will always be my favorite game. I liked the henchmen/hereos; being able to farm elite skills from bosses; creating interesting builds from all the many skills, re-doing the missions in hard mode; vanquishing; completing quests (still haven’t finished every quest); traveling by wurm in the desolation; going for legendary titles; interesting hero characters ….

GW2 is more about dungeons and I don’t care for dungeons. I really grew to dislike them after finding out how upset people can get if you make mistakes. So they’re just stressful for me. I’ve never been keen on killing or being killed by other players either. I realize that those are the best parts for many players; so GW2 is definitely the game for them. Lastly jump puzzles are super fun for some people, but not me because I have problems gauging jumps. And I see that GW2 will be using those a lot in their content. Again GW2 is a great game for some people just not for me.

They just need to create pools for weapon skills that resemble each other more or less so players can choose skills for their weapon (exclusions, for keeping weapons balanced, ofc)

Turgut.4397:

Like most have mentioned, GW1 didn’t really pick up until the NF + EotN expansions. .

This must be a PvE view. GW1 was at it’s peak just prior to the first expansion. It was beautifully balanced, then the assassin in particular unbalanced the game and it struggled to find that nice skill balance point again.

But what GW2 clearly is missing is GvG. We’ve all said it since beta, GW1 had the best PvP mode of a game to date and the devs thought this game mode was either too “elitist” or didn’t produce fun battles. I dunno which. Still a clearly poor choice. sPvP is awkward.

PvE is infinitely more interesting in GW2 than GW1.

I played GW for six years. Straight, no breaks or anything.

I loved it, and I love GW2— it feels like a logical next step to me (I know a lot don’t agree). It feels properly epic sometimes on a scale that GW1 rarely managed. WvW is incredible, and the closest thing GW1 had to that was Alliance Battles. You could see what they were trying to do, but they were limited by the technology. Now they’ve made something truly brilliant.

Sometimes I do miss the personal instanced gameplay of GW1, but most of the time, I’m incredibly happy with GW2.

One thing I’m undecided on is whether the skill system is an improvement or not. GW1 felt like it had a skill system of greater depth and variety sometimes.

Gw1 was the better game IMO. I personally think they strayed to much from what made GW great.

Things I miss:
Elite skills to capture, skill options, rare weapon skins to farm from rare mobs, build options, henchmen, my beloved Dervish.

I also worry about expansions and content. I want to see Elona and Cantha. I do not want to be stuck fighting Dragons forever. If they put out one expansion a year and it is for a single ED. We will be in tyria forever.

Guild Wars 2 is great game, you get a lot for the 60 to 200 $. / ………

Got an 8 year GW1 Account with only 3k hours playtime. GW1 Prophecies was a great start into the Series, the change after leaving Pre-Searing was shocking (in a good way).

GW1 during Factions? went from being a social game to more an Esport Type thingy. The Espot mentality shifted over into PvE as well, getting in a UW party was impossible for quite some time as a ranger, this segregation was the reason of my departure from GW1.

In other words, in GW1 the Build was the meta. Semi good build? Sorry, you are not ready for us.. at the end, you had to have at least a necro or a monk 55 to get everywhere and farm. So, i kept doing RA for 3 years, nothing else (and i don´t want this to be the case with GW2);

This is one of the reasons why Anet decided to remove the 2nd profession-tab from GW2, it´s a lot easier to balance and keep track of everything.

Don´t get me wrong, GW2 is nearly perfect (remove the region restrictions and allow US vs EU (Wv3 Fights, should be possible, right?), bring back the Story Mission (with optional objectives) or make sumtin memorable becauseGW2 story (human) is redundant to a degree, very generic to be honest, nothing memorable sadly imho.

How in the name of Santa, can a World with its Lorebackground/History (Gw1) change dramatically within 250 years? Bettletun is now a village with its own market, a small “Circus” and of course an After-Work Discoteque (CM Manor sumtin)… what happend to Piken Square?… gone, what happened to Temple of Ages?.. gone, only the archipelago Ring Of Fire survived the devastated power of 250 Years of “tectonic earth shakes”.. everything else, got a new “overhaul” which is okay, if you never have played GW1, but as a GW1 Vet. myself, i can not find any “connection” between both Games.

And i miss that. Bring back the dwarves, an expansion like in the form of Moria :)
Moria for me, is still the BEST Expansion across every game to date!

I am disappointed as well, it’s gone all too Korean grindy using the same business model.

There’s nothing new here that the Koreans didn’t do several years ago.

To be honest, the things I do miss from GW1 could still be implemented, and the game is very different, although in the same spirit. Many things have remained the same. The biggest problem I currently see is them trying to cater to too many players by saying “provide vertical progression with zero grind.” I have utterly ignored Ascended gear until they fully figure it out (it’s sheer beta at the moment.) I dislike Vistas and Jumping Puzzles, but more because I don’t find Mario type games as fun as I used to when I was younger, and have become used to turn-based strategy/RPG games with minimal movement. They could be more forgiving, IMHO, because not all types of player are good at them (I am VERY bad at jumping puzzles, falling way too many times, which takes out any purported fun they are supposed to provide.) Despite the ocassionally hectic combat, I still like GW2 combat a big deal, despite it being too action-oriented for my usual, favored playstyle. I remember having to adapt to it for many weeks, but now it’s second nature. I just thought to myself that it’s good, becuase it’s a different game-an “evolution” (or devolution, for many of its detractors.) I still think they may e able to add more features that harken back to GW1 while taking nothing away from the new game.

Things like:

-Guild Halls

-Seeing your own mapping star and titles (I honestly don’t see why implementing this is a problem in anyway or fashion-developers, feel free to say why can’t we self-target so we can see our own accomplishments/titles?)

-A few new dungeons that are similar to the old ones players were used to, minus the “trinity” system

-Polish: GW1 was almost always a polished, clean game experience. Granted, the new engine may be harder to program.

-Guild Capes, for those who loved to wear them. Alternatively, full Guild armor sets, as opposed to a few pieces here and there.

-Lessened difficulty that requires deeper strategy, but making party wipes more probable. Most dungeons IME are not that hard, because spawning points make it so people can return to fight forever. And what I mean by “lessened difficulty” is not to make dungeons easy, but rather turn down the one shotters-way too many.

I may have forgotten afew things, but I believe GW2 could still be more “GW1-like” for many of the old players without actually being GW1 or having to compromise the new concepts behind GW2.

While I loved GW1’s complexity, I must add that the elitists ALWAYS found ways to only use the SAME skills and builds over and over beause they were more “effective”-which means that even though GW1 had a pretty diverse and fun selection of skills, most people ended up using very few of them (the “best” ones, of course). Healer’s Boon was the preferred Elite for many healing Monks, even though there were (is) such a big amount of skills, elites or otherwise, to choose. In this new game, it’s harder to claim that only this or that build is “effective”, and gameplay heavily favors personal taste (meaning, you can be an affective team member whichever way you wish to play, granted you play relatively well.) I don’t feel as if I must play a “full DPS Guardian”, because the DPS role, though many still pursue it, is not something I MUST do in order to do well in the game, either solo or with allies. In short, the new combat system is not as bad as some make it to be vs GW1, once you get used to its mechanics, and despite the lesser choice of skills, one is actually freer to play and join up with others with builds that work FOR YOU rather than following the latest, supposedly “more effective”, “meta” builds.

I like GW2. But, there’s one thing I loved in GW1 that I’m really missing in GW2. And that is the ability to play with all my friends, no matter where in the world they live: guesting. Without guesting, this might as well be a single player game, in my eyes, as I don’t like to party with strangers (I don’t count encountering strangers in the wild and doing a DE together as partying).

Things better about Guild Wars 1:
- PvP was flat-out better
- Skill diversity gave more control over builds.
- Combat was more calculated and less hectic. Highly time-based without being frustrating.
- The dungeons are so much better. (loved UW, FoW and SF)
- Achievements felt important
- Caters to the hardcore audience
- The events just seemed better… hard to explain…

Things better about Guild Wars 2:
- Exploration is actually enjoyable. The first time.
- Helping and being helped by strangers is awesome.
- Easier for casual gamers to pick up.
- More features / activities. More social.

Notes:
GW2 provides the illusion of choice when it comes to builds. Losing the trinity was a dumb thing to do.
GW2 caters to the Casual gamers while alienating Hardcore gamers. All the FUN parts of the game are designed for casual gamers, like WvW (for instance) whereas the dungeons are nowhere near the quality that they should be. They’re an insult.

My MAIN disappointments?

GUILD WARS 2 has no Guild Wars at all. No GvG?!!
Skill versatility? What’s that?! There’s about two viable builds for each profession, everything else is trash.

Hawkmoon.5849:

GW2 is a far cry from GW1. Comparing the two is not unlike comparing an apple and a pomegranate: they look slightly similar on the outside, and they’re both fruits…. and that’s about where the likeness ends.

GW2 focuses on the cash shop. This is clear in every content update: new chests with new shinies for you to blow real-world cash on, with about the same odds as winning the Powerball lotto. This is by far one of the biggest disappointments of the game.

The trek to actually acquire money in this game is astronomically frustrating. If you’re not a trading guru, or a massive dungeon grinder, you’re pretty much screwed because of DR and the accompanying horrible drop rates. This issue was compounded by some type of change (that ANet refuses to acknowledge even exists) after the Lost Shores update. This was never the case in GW1; for example, PvP in my opinion was easily one of the best ways to make money (Zaishen keys and HoH chest rewards). In the case of GW2, PvP feels like a massive cash sink. While I don’t believe there should be a “100% surefire” method to gaining cash, certainly going out and spending several hours farming mobs should net you a decent reward for your time? Not the case here.

Combat feels stale after about 20 levels. This is due in part to the lack of trinity. While dumping the trinity was a good idea on paper, what this has boiled down to is every class DPS’ing their faces off, because things like support skills are wasted. At least with a tank/heal/dps setup, you have a good idea about your role in combat; there is no such distinction between Guardian, Mesmer, and Thief (or any other combination of classes): they all simply push out damage. Combat mechanics come down to attack everything + dodge red circles= win.

The announcement of Ascended gear treadmill, er, excuse me- vertical progression… and the “brilliant idea” of Fractals; the LS event debacle… How this game has been voted “Game of the Year” by multiple sources is truly beyond my grasp.

Do I still play? Sure. But not nearly as much as I thought I was going to when GW2 was first announced. I put 6+ years into GW1, and I still want to go back and look for groups for Alliance Battles and HA… I don’t feel any of that sense of longing in GW2, and that, perhaps, is the biggest letdown of all.

Love this post . Guild Wars 1 was a much better game .

Making my own builds in GW1 was the most fun I had in that game. Capping elites, making new skillbars, etc.

That’s all gone now. I still like the dynamic combat system with dodging and jumping and stuff, but I still miss GW1. Also… HALL OF HEROES, Y U NO IN GW2?!?!

I wouldn’t say GW2 is better then GW1, but it really is a completely different game. The graphics in this game are certainly better though. :/

Eye of the North graphics beats all tbh.

The Last Hobbit.6492:

Things better about Guild Wars 1:
- PvP was flat-out better
- Skill diversity gave more control over builds.
- Combat was more calculated and less hectic. Highly time-based without being frustrating.
- The dungeons are so much better. (loved UW, FoW and SF)
- Achievements felt important
- Caters to the hardcore audience
- The events just seemed better… hard to explain…

Things better about Guild Wars 2:
- Exploration is actually enjoyable. The first time.
- Helping and being helped by strangers is awesome.
- Easier for casual gamers to pick up.
- More features / activities. More social.

Notes:
GW2 provides the illusion of choice when it comes to builds. Losing the trinity was a dumb thing to do.
GW2 caters to the Casual gamers while alienating Hardcore gamers. All the FUN parts of the game are designed for casual gamers, like WvW (for instance) whereas the dungeons are nowhere near the quality that they should be. They’re an insult.

My MAIN disappointments?

GUILD WARS 2 has no Guild Wars at all. No GvG?!!
Skill versatility? What’s that?! There’s about two viable builds for each profession, everything else is trash.

Yeah I agree with all of this. I like GW2, it looks nice and the community is nice, but GW1 was a more focused game and the dungeons kicked kitten

Jaxon.5392:

Turgut.4397:

Like most have mentioned, GW1 didn’t really pick up until the NF + EotN expansions. .

This must be a PvE view. GW1 was at it’s peak just prior to the first expansion. It was beautifully balanced, then the assassin in particular unbalanced the game and it struggled to find that nice skill balance point again.

But what GW2 clearly is missing is GvG. We’ve all said it since beta, GW1 had the best PvP mode of a game to date and the devs thought this game mode was either too “elitist” or didn’t produce fun battles. I dunno which. Still a clearly poor choice. sPvP is awkward.

PvE is infinitely more interesting in GW2 than GW1.

Not precisely, although GvG / Arenas / HA were quite fun, I’ve never been addicted to it’s PvP until they released Alliance Battles. That’s all I ever done for years, AB, AB, AB. Alot of ‘elitists’ didn’t count it as real PvP, but it’s the most fun I’ve ever had in a game. Gw2 only managed to introduce a smaller scale version of AB. And I truly hate WvW, since it’s a pure zergfest, and nothing tactical about it.

But yeah, PvE wise, when NF introduced heroes things got ALOT better for the PvE crowd.

Concerning the unbalance of PvP when the sin was introduced, it’s to be expected. When the dervish was introduced in NF, it was one of the most powerful melee in the game. It’s to get players buying expansions. It happens in every MMO.

Star Ace.5207:

While I loved GW1’s complexity, I must add that the elitists ALWAYS found ways to only use the SAME skills and builds over and over beause they were more “effective”-which means that even though GW1 had a pretty diverse and fun selection of skills, most people ended up using very few of them (the “best” ones, of course).

I am sorry you and some others in this thread had this awful experience in GW where you felt you had to follow the “elitists” and could only do one fotm build.

I always felt like I had the freedom to experiment. Yes there were some team builds which worked in a certain way, so you had to take xyz skillbar, but that was team-build-specific, not general across every dungeon, quest, hard mode or pvp genre. For instance, I took a totally different skillbar as a monk in AB than in RA or FA or GvG.

Generally, I think GW2 is very good, and this is coming from someone who played Guild Wars 1 on and off throughout its entire active lifespan.

I know some have said “it doesn’t feel enough like GW1” but I look at it from a different perspective – I’m really happy GW2 is a proper sequel and not a rehash or simply a tarted up expansion. I love the open world content, the dynamic events and the Mesmer class (the only one I’ve put much time into so far).

However, story content in GW2 is much poorer than that in GW1. The story missions are much worse than GW1’s, the overall story and characters are nowhere near as compelling, and the dungeons I’ve played so far in GW2 (AC, CM and TA) haven’t really interested me either.

I also hate paying to change traits. Being able to change your character whenever you wanted (without ridiculous WoW-esque respec costs) was one of the core cool things about GW1. GW2’s fees to respec are small, they should just be taken out of the game entirely. It’s a redundant and disliked feature.

Oh, one more thing. GW1’s story felt like YOU were awesome, doing amazing things.

GW2’s story (human/whispers) seems to be me taking part in OTHER PEOPLE’s stories. Am I the only person who thinks this? That the NPCs are the main characters in this grand story and I’m kinda just “there”?

Kutai.4971:

Oh, one more thing. GW1’s story felt like YOU were awesome, doing amazing things.

GW2’s story (human/whispers) seems to be me taking part in OTHER PEOPLE’s stories. Am I the only person who thinks this? That the NPCs are the main characters in this grand story and I’m kinda just “there”?

This is exactly what I was thinking. Suddenly we are all just playing background characters and [x] (mainly Trahearn) is the main protagonist.

Snipey.6937:

It never feels like exploring anything when a breadcrumb trail of POIs and Waypoints holds my hand through a zone.

If you’re one of the people who “explores” by getting just close enough to a waypoint or POI to check it off the list and then dashes off to the next one then that’s your problem. I think the GW2 world has a lot more depth and a lot more things to find, but a lot of them aren’t signposted in any way. They’re not part of designated quests and not directly adjacent to POI’s but they are there.

They’ve even included side-quests, believe it or not. You can still speak to NPCs who will say they need help with something, or are worried about someone and you can go and fix the problem. You just don’t have the game telling you to do it. Until I figured that out, and the DE chains, I was feeling frustrated with this game because I missed those short story arcs and the lore they give you.

There’s also lots of interesting places and things to find with no functional purpose as far as I can see, but they’re more fun for me in a way because of that – I don’t feel like I have to find them to complete the game so it seems more like a bonus. Like getting down to the bottom of Rata Sum the internal way.

Gw-1 player for 6 years and I am totally in agreement with the statements we want more skill choice and better unique drops from bosses reasons for this it would improve the game dynamics totally because you would have something to do.

i am a casual player and as such the thing I love most is exploring and being rewarded when I do kill that epic boss and gw2 dosn’t have that at all.

the argument for limiting skills so that the player base is on an equal par is just a joke . the whole concept of games are that it is fun for everyone and you will allways have some elite players in any game that have the ability to play above the rest and set examples of what you can achieve and that is what I loved about gw-1. You had players that were so good at the workings of builds and game play that it would drive you to keep trying just to get that 1 chance of a rare drop, because they would instill within the community their knowledge and help and i feel this made a stronger game for everyone. Gw 2 doesn’t have this type of play at all, it doesn’t allow players to be that elite shining beacon for us average players , as let be honest if you put the grind in no mater how average a player is( like me) I can still do the new fractuals without any real pressure to lift my game as if you progress thru the levels their are players at that same level, unlike if I was to try and do a SC of uw in gw1 I would be laughed out of the party.

The drops for bosses is a disappointment far beyond belief, not much I can say on this then its a major fail. If you go and kill a dragon their isn’t any value at all unless you get that 1 in a million rare , you should at least get something better then killing a group of undead in the level 1 zone. when you kill a boss in cursed shores their is no difference then killing a low level boss in the level 1 area. WTF? why? why? why? this is one of the bigest fails on the games development ever.

The down levelling is a joke , If I have a boss ( and I do) in a low area that I can’t kill when I am at that level going thru that area then I want revenge when I have reached level 80 to go back and kick his sorry kitten hard, thats my reward fro getting to level 80. worked great in gw1 so why oh why down level us?

I can say that the graphics and I CAN JUMP wooohooooo is so much better but omg dx9????????? need I say more

well baby is up so end of my 2 cents cheers

The removal of monks will always irk me. Protection monks were one of most interesting and fun builds I’ve ever seen in a game. I think, OPINIONS AHOY, that removing healing classes entirely was a mistake. Especially as far as the PvP side is concerned.

Again, OPINIONS, before someone freaks out about it.

I also miss the build variation, I understand that getting rid of the sheer bulk of skills makes the game easier to balance. However, you do lose a lot in that process. Set weapon skills, no dual professions, very limited skill choice and extremely underwhelming elite skills for a lot of classes. All these have really drained a lot from the game.

IN
MY
OPINION.

My thoughts are similar to yours OP.

In some respects I think it has made some good improvements. Crafting, trading post, adding races, large explorable persistent world and getting rid of the holy trinity are a few of them. Lore and easter egg wise, I cannot complain. There are many tidbits of information given that old GW1 vets will appreciate from both the books and the old game, but I feel like there’s a lot of information they’ve left out. What happened to Livia, for example? We see traces of her travels but not much else other than that. That is a minor complaint though. The professions are ok, you have enough variety to please many different people. DE’s are in their infancy I think and will take time to develop and refine into richer and more varied outcomes. For the most part they are enjoyable though I have to admit the kill x several times over becomes stale quickly, but other events aren’t quite so bad. Leveling is ok…..but I still think 20 levels or more levels are better than 80. It would make players feel as though there is more ‘endgame’ so to speak, like they did with Factions. level 20 and the rest of the game you were left to explore and complete. It gave the illusion that there was more to do once you reached max level. Maybe they can do this for future expansions.

It was easier finding groups for dungeons but now fractals has laughably made it more difficult to find groups.

Generally though, the more I’ve played GW2 the more and more disappointed I’ve been. I hadn’t realized how important farming had been to me in GW1 and how it kept me interested in the game over a long period of time after I stopped running missions regularly. The storyline is a mixed bag of successes and failures. It isn’t as interesting as the story was in factions and nightfall or even eye of the north. Not all, but many of the characters are wooden and unlikable, or just bland. I don’t really care what happens to them. In GW you were the hero because you happened to be involved with certain characters, it was kind of annoying to hear them constantly praising you. It broke the illusion for me, for some reason. Like they were trying too hard to please.

I do sorely miss the original mechanics for GW1. I don’t hate the combat in GW2 it is fun in it’s own way, but GW1 was much more interesting. There are too many gimmicks in GW2 skills and not enough utility. I remember the devs talked about longer lasting, sustained combat that would have been aided by potions, several years ago. But perhaps making fights longer and monotonous was a mistake. (I am so glad they didn’t include potions though!) Other than that I can’t really put my finger on it, but the battles for instances in GW1 were much more challenging. There needs to be more incentive to do dungeons, in GW1 they eventually added the coin and mission dailies which helped draw people to those missions for a while, but this happened like, five years after GW1 had been released! It’s a shame that they felt like fractals would improve the game because really I’ve yet to see it. All it did was siphon players away from all other areas into this one isolated dungeon that has little to no relevance to the rest of the game’s objectives.

The battle with Zhaitan was not as bad as I had imagined, it was quite fun in it’s own way and was appropriate for a final boss fight. Though the endless button mashing as kind of anti-climactic.

I enjoyed the halloween and Wintersday event but for some reason I have less incentive to log in for these than I did for GW1 events. I guess collecting novelty items to complete my sweet tooth and party animal titles had me logging in for a good while, and the quests felt rewarding. Wintersday is somewhat weaker than Halloween was.

I agree with many of the posters in this thread though. GW2 is fun in it’s own way, but it is rather shallow. Normally I would attribute this to nostalgia, but it would seem that GW2 tried too hard to be like conventional MMO’s and lost sight of it’s original identity. Or maybe it just tried hard to do too much too quickly, trying to please everyone and pleasing no one in the process.

I still feel like Fractals divided the community in the most detrimental way, since it broke away from Anet’s original and unique vision of an MMO that stood apart from others, not just one that tried to haphazardly please gear grinders.

Incentives and rewards for ALL aspects of the game must be reworked! We need a reason to want to log in.

I am sort of vet. Not compared to most of you, but I did spend 4.5 years on GW1. I played regularly and I was fully immersed in it. Reaching another town was such an achievment(even if it contained 5 NPCs and a merchant lol). Tweaking builds was insanely fun and I got plenty of nice memories from GW 1(mostly Hero oriented). I LOVED Heroes-why can’t we have a single helper? They talked a lot about it in 2009. TOR did it and it’s one of stronger points of that game…

To put those 4.5 years into perspective, I played only a handful games for so long. And them being: Dawn of War(5 years), Starcraft(4.5 years), Morrowind(4.5 years) and DoTA(4 years). Can you hear THOSE names? Those are gaming legends and GW 1 is a proud member of those.

What would I want?

More RP options-round 10 emotes is flatout unacceptable. We need more emotes and more interactive world(sitting, lying or even breaking things!). Even GW1 on launch had more than 30. I don’t even…what is this??? Please fix!

A single helper-I can’t care about other people unless I know them or they are guildies. Why not anyhow? Game’s plenty antisocial as is…

Less focus on TP-I mean gems. ANet could regulate prices themselves to stop inflation or Gold devalvation(THEY MUST do that, but it’s a discussion for some other topic)

More variety in weapons-most notably first five skills. Another batch of weapon types should only come in Xpacks-GW1 style.

Fix broken Traits and rearrange them-there are some broken Traits(still) and some LOL powerful are in Adept tier and some WUT? weak are in Grandmaster tier. Fix that.

Better writing. I don’t care really what you have to do for it. Stop using some MMO “story” writers and buy Real ones! Hire Dan Abnett or Graham McNeill or Gav Thorpe(all veterans of Warhammer and they write REAL nice!) kitten I want more adult themes(forget sex), what I mean by that is more choices that leave REAL impact and more Real behaviour of characters. And NO MORE Trahearne Deus Ex Machinimas please! Gosh darn it Trahearne sucks!

PvP and RvR I can’t care about. PvP->not in my RPGs!!!

Better drops and bring back the green items-sort of Like Kole’s Torment or Rhino’s Charge or Nevermore. Self explanatory.

My comments about GW2 after 2-3 weeks of it?

I can feel that it is Guild Wars somewhere deep in it. But so much has changed(and change, as is clearly visible from Tzeentch’s example, can be pretty harmful). Not for the better mind you! I Like GFX, I Like Exploration, I love being able to move and use dem skills(well mostly), Vistas are GORGEOUS and so forth. Weapons are hit and miss, but I think that’s because some weapons just aren’t meant to be used in solo/small scale(Staves spring to mind!)-that and my personal preference. What can I say? What I don’t Like? Good Charr! Simple! Paint them worse than heretics in Warhammer for all I care! A nation does not do 180 degree turn in mere 250 years!!! They are born bloodthirsty mongrels and they will die as ones. Remember how awesome they looked in GW 1 and the time when you were afraid of, idk, Bonfaaz Burntfur? No more-they went through what Warcraft Orcs went(they were VERY bloodthirsty prior to WC3). Further I don’t Like how pointless it all feels(DEs and such are on a too short timer), I don’t Like crafting(it feels convoluted and plainly unnecessary). I am also uncertain where they will take their game after LS and fractals failure.

All in all, I think GW2 has a VERY bright future! Remember the launch of WoW? Those two months of game and server crashing bugs? Look where it is now! Who says that GW 2 can’t 1up it just because it had a better launch(miles better!). I’d agree with Notion that GW1 became fun only somewhere in the late Factions or during the launch of Nightfall.

There is still time lads! Give some and you’ll receive plenty! I feel I can say that about GW2. I thoroughly love GW 2 and I feel as I felt in GW 1. If only they fixed those jarring edgies and all will be k! Tho, I take it that Charr will never again be EVIL? If so, shame. Keep in mind, these anti Charr opinions are my own and I’ll NEVER play one after what they did to Ascalon…

Edit: Also it’s a kitten shame that Besides GW core, GW2 features a Nexon core. That second thing should be drenched in H2SO4 and burned with White Napalm lol, Cuz it’s Hardcore diarrhea and I’d rather that Camel kittenall over me than let my beloved game be infected by such trash! Eh what can I say? Nexon SUCKS, but that is common gamer Knowledge anyhow. That Nexon core scares the kitten out of me…

I’m not at fan of the gear progression, top level gear is way too hard to get for a guild wars game. I’m also not a fan of the dungeons in the first game you could say to heck with it and go yourself. Now you have to run them with little choice on which ones to run.

I also have a major beef on the elementalist and necro. The Ele is a range class; its role is set by definition of what it is. In guildwars2 that doesn’t exist they have access to everything at once. This unfortunately means the most skills have very little to do with a particular element. Most of them are only in an indication of what color the skill gfx is for the skill and what tree the skill falls under. It quite frankly comes off as rather colorless and not relating to what the set definition of an ele actually is. This is easily notable by the skill set they have at their disposal. Most of the “summon Weapon” skills essentially make you a different class for a time. The use of daggers for close range as I said above is also essentially a violation of what the very class role is. A range magic class is a range magic class. If that broken than all you have left is a stealth-less thief

The necro is also just to different in Guildwars1 there was a time I was leveling 4 necros at the same time simply because I loved the class so much, I still have 2 fully geared Necros on my GW1 game, but in GW2 is just to different. The minions of necros are too sad to use yet not useless enough to ignore.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun game. I just think they got a bit to adventurous with the designing and some things are suffering as a result. There are some things that are set in stone that should have been left alone.

How come is Dagger Dagger violation of Elementalist?

You are thinking of a Wizard or a Sorceror-using Staff or Sceptre/Focus(more exotic).
But, have you thought of all those Norn Shamans? Do they look Like they prefer Staves? No, sire!

You can be both as an Ele. The only thing holding you Back is your own imagination.

And the only thing that is Written in Stone is “Written in Stone” itself. Hah!
Proof? Good Charr-if that can change you bet that anything can…

Personally I love the new game. You all have to realize, GW1 took years to reach the point where we all remember it. This game is still less than 6 months out of the gates. Think about it in terms of console game development…. the games we’re playing now compared to their predecessors are light years beyond, simply because of the development of the systems over time. Those systems always put out their best games at the tail end of the lives of the systems, because the game devs catch up to the technology. There’s alot of improvements to be made, and some of the design concepts leave a bit to be desired such as lack of guild halls, lack of personal character homes or any real customization outside of character armor, and the Legendary grind being crazy, but there’s alot of time to make improvements in those areas. Best thing is, it’s FTP so if you get annoyed, just take a break for a few months and check it out after the updates to see if it’s better!

Lack of skills, lack of secondary profession to at least let us beef up the amount of skills we have as our main ones, lack of useful Elite skills, lack of elite skills to capture.

Lack of creativity with Veterans/Champions with zero personality, they are just nameless pointless monsters to be avoided thanks to the effort-reward ratio.

No Titles unless you actually click on a character, why have titles at all?

Clicking on other players is paramount with the click system as opposed to having clicking on monsters as top priority, why in the open world while fighting a boss should/would I be clicking other players if there are no dedicated healers? At best clicking on other players should be disabled and ties in to the other point of having titles displayed under/above at all times. Then when you hit 1 out of the inability to actually target the boss thanks to other players you targe a minion and don’t get credit for the bosses demise.

Actually, I have one, after thinking following my earlier posts.

One of the things I dislike about GW2 that I loved about GW1 was how the class/enemy system worked, namely that enemies would “play by the same rules” as players. For example, if you saw a wolf, and he was level 5, and he used a warrior skill, you knew immediately that wolf was a level 5 warrior, and would have comparable health and skills to a warrior at level 5.

Given, enemies had some advantages, like monster skills, and the miniboss enemies that shrugged off conditions easier than regular enemies – but even so, you knew if a player had X health at level 20, and you were fighting an enemy at level 25, the enemy’s health pool would be comparable to yours.

Some of the human (or human-esque) enemies in GW2 have enormous health pools. Consider some of the enemies in the TA dungeon. I find wailing on a human sized enemy for 10 minutes with a party of 5 a little bizarre. It’s different when it’s some massive dragon, but not when it’s an individual guy.

Kutai.4971:

One of the things I dislike about GW2 that I loved about GW1 was how the class/enemy system worked, namely that enemies would “play by the same rules” as players. For example, if you saw a wolf, and he was level 5, and he used a warrior skill, you knew immediately that wolf was a level 5 warrior, and would have comparable health and skills to a warrior at level 5.

Yes, this is a great point. The enemies “playing by the same rules”, and for the most part using the same skills, was really well-done in GW1. Also, in the laster expansions ArenaNet got really good at smartly composing groups of enemies of different classes (and not just 12 ice imps in a group), which made fighting these groups a lot of fun. That’s all gone in GW2.

BrokenSymmetry.2593:

Kutai.4971:

One of the things I dislike about GW2 that I loved about GW1 was how the class/enemy system worked, namely that enemies would “play by the same rules” as players. For example, if you saw a wolf, and he was level 5, and he used a warrior skill, you knew immediately that wolf was a level 5 warrior, and would have comparable health and skills to a warrior at level 5.

Yes, this is a great point. The enemies “playing by the same rules”, and for the most part using the same skills, was really well-done in GW1. Also, in the laster expansions ArenaNet got really good at smartly composing groups of enemies of different classes (and not just 12 ice imps in a group), which made fighting these groups a lot of fun. That’s all gone in GW2.

Yeah. I always thought the idea in GW1 was that enemies could only ever be single-class, whereas players could be multiclass – so the skill in defeating enemies came from using that to your advantage. That was certainly one of the concepts.

Not that I’m coming down on GW2 for not being multiclass – just that this idea of working to the same cribsheet as the enemies was really fun, and it made GW2 very different to other MMOs like WoW.

Star Ace.5207:

To be honest, the things I do miss from GW1 could still be implemented, and the game is very different, although in the same spirit. Many things have remained the same. The biggest problem I currently see is them trying to cater to too many players by saying “provide vertical progression with zero grind.” I have utterly ignored Ascended gear until they fully figure it out (it’s sheer beta at the moment.) I dislike Vistas and Jumping Puzzles, but more because I don’t find Mario type games as fun as I used to when I was younger, and have become used to turn-based strategy/RPG games with minimal movement. They could be more forgiving, IMHO, because not all types of player are good at them (I am VERY bad at jumping puzzles, falling way too many times, which takes out any purported fun they are supposed to provide.) Despite the ocassionally hectic combat, I still like GW2 combat a big deal, despite it being too action-oriented for my usual, favored playstyle. I remember having to adapt to it for many weeks, but now it’s second nature. I just thought to myself that it’s good, becuase it’s a different game-an “evolution” (or devolution, for many of its detractors.) I still think they may e able to add more features that harken back to GW1 while taking nothing away from the new game.

Things like:

-Guild Halls

-Seeing your own mapping star and titles (I honestly don’t see why implementing this is a problem in anyway or fashion-developers, feel free to say why can’t we self-target so we can see our own accomplishments/titles?)

-A few new dungeons that are similar to the old ones players were used to, minus the “trinity” system

-Polish: GW1 was almost always a polished, clean game experience. Granted, the new engine may be harder to program.

-Guild Capes, for those who loved to wear them. Alternatively, full Guild armor sets, as opposed to a few pieces here and there.

-Lessened difficulty that requires deeper strategy, but making party wipes more probable. Most dungeons IME are not that hard, because spawning points make it so people can return to fight forever. And what I mean by “lessened difficulty” is not to make dungeons easy, but rather turn down the one shotters-way too many.

I may have forgotten afew things, but I believe GW2 could still be more “GW1-like” for many of the old players without actually being GW1 or having to compromise the new concepts behind GW2.

While I loved GW1’s complexity, I must add that the elitists ALWAYS found ways to only use the SAME skills and builds over and over beause they were more “effective”-which means that even though GW1 had a pretty diverse and fun selection of skills, most people ended up using very few of them (the “best” ones, of course). Healer’s Boon was the preferred Elite for many healing Monks, even though there were (is) such a big amount of skills, elites or otherwise, to choose. In this new game, it’s harder to claim that only this or that build is “effective”, and gameplay heavily favors personal taste (meaning, you can be an affective team member whichever way you wish to play, granted you play relatively well.) I don’t feel as if I must play a “full DPS Guardian”, because the DPS role, though many still pursue it, is not something I MUST do in order to do well in the game, either solo or with allies. In short, the new combat system is not as bad as some make it to be vs GW1, once you get used to its mechanics, and despite the lesser choice of skills, one is actually freer to play and join up with others with builds that work FOR YOU rather than following the latest, supposedly “more effective”, “meta” builds.

^ this is spot on what we miss badly and need in GW2 amongst other things GVG + ingame rankings

I think also there is a point in everyone;s lives when “nothing will ever be as good as xxxxxxxxx”

Probably that’s what’s going on here a bit in this thread. And I’m saying that as someone who thinks GW1 was best game made, best online group I played with, and most intense PvP played.

There are some aspects of GW that I miss, such as guilds actually being guilds. I think that we should be allowed to join one guild only (charector based). The account based guild system used in Guild Wars was a mistake (the current system I see as an admission of that). The current system is (as I see it) worse than not having guilds at all.
I miss guild halls, if we had real guilds we would really need these but as we don’t have real guilds I guess we don’t need them. That puts them in the nice to have group.
I miss beign able to select a set of skills to use as my build. We don’t really have builds right now, all the important skills are assigned by the weapon you are using.
Titles, oh man so much to say about the lack of titles in GW2. It’s not that there are none it is that no but you can see them! The majority of the titles in GW2 are much ado about nothing. In GW titles were an acomplishment that had to be worked for. In GW2 titles are so easy to aquite as to be worthless, which is why we can’t display them (I guess).
One thing that really ticks me off about GW2 is mapping. Why should I as a PvE player have to do PvP to get 100% of the world mapped? I am so angery at this that I am at a loss for words. There were several weeks where I simply could not bring myself to bother logging in when I finished exploring only to find that now I had to PvP to get 100% of the world explored.

Overall I’d have to say that GW2 is a disappointment compared to GW1. Anet Changed way too much and left out most of the good things the original game had: skill system, attribute system, builds not being so reliant on gear (unless for farming), no WP fees, no armor repairs, and a bunch of other things. Instead of building off of what made GW1 so great, it seems like they tried too hard to be another ‘me too’ MMO. Before GW2 released I used to laugh at people who basically wanted GW 1.5 rather than a new game. I’m not laughing now.

I played GW1 for 7 years. I don’t thinking I’ll be playing GW2 in 7 months.

Kutai.4971:

Yeah. I always thought the idea in GW1 was that enemies could only ever be single-class, whereas players could be multiclass – so the skill in defeating enemies came from using that to your advantage. That was certainly one of the concepts.

No, in EotN they had enemies with primary and secondary. They were a very good challenge, especially until you got to know them, because you wouldn’t know what they were going to pull out of their hat sometimes.

There are a lot of things that I like about the new game— the combat, the ease of movement, the graphics and the world.

However, I do miss the guild options (like halls, GvG, alliance chat, etc), the wider variety of emotes, the weirder armor looks and skimpier armor for dudes overall, the ability to use heroes or henchmen, open-air missions, etc. I also liked that if you put a lot of time into things, your rewards were better than what they are here; loot in GW2 is very poor, but inflation due to bad decisions initially is allowed to stand.

I’m not so much about dungeons, and the game’s put more focus on those since launch. I’d like to see more focus on the open world again.

Anyway, my biggest gripe about this game is the economy. I don’t like how high some things are being pushed by players, when the only reason a certain set of players could afford that was via exploits. If ANet is going to let that stand, I wish they’d improve the loot rates. I understand that there are problems with that, too, but that’s why they hired an economist!

My second biggest is RNG. I don’t like it at all (thanks AION), and I don’t like how it’s being used for holiday stuff AT ALL. I want to be able to earn things, not gamble.

All that said, I like this game, and I hope that ANet also listens to GW1 fans as well as the new folks.

I’m enjoying GW 2 a lot. I didn’t expect it to be like GW 1 except for the lore because Anet made it clear that the game would be radically different. When I want to play Guild Wars, I play Guild Wars. When I want to play Guild Wars 2, I play Guild Wars 2.

I think that there are some obvious issues with the game that have been brought up on this forum multiple times but that doesn’t change the fact that I am enjoying a game that I don’t have to pay a subscription for. I sincerely feel that I have gotten my money’s worth with GW 2. I expect that we will see massive improvements to the game in upcoming expansions just as we saw GW 1 make massive improvements with their expansions.

Kirinter.8091:

Gw2 is a great game, but I feel like the classes really need ‘more’, or maybe I just preferred some of the old stuff, necros for instance, were quite more fun to play in Gw1 then they are in gw2.

This. Necro’s actually meant something back in GW1. In GW2, “they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health,” so Necromancers are basically viewed by the devs as a chase class.

Meret.5943:

Kutai.4971:

Yeah. I always thought the idea in GW1 was that enemies could only ever be single-class, whereas players could be multiclass – so the skill in defeating enemies came from using that to your advantage. That was certainly one of the concepts.

No, in EotN they had enemies with primary and secondary. They were a very good challenge, especially until you got to know them, because you wouldn’t know what they were going to pull out of their hat sometimes.

Yeah, you’re right – but of course, EotN came out comparatively late in GW1’s life. I’d still say that overall, it was generally the case that GW1’s enemies were single class and that was part of the fun, using your inherent advantage over the enemies.