Guild Wars 2

I feel that with all the HoT stuff that has been revealed recently it’s a good time to reflect on our past and future expectations for the game.

What did you expect of the game before launch, during the stress tests and what do you expect of HoT now?
What surprised or disappointed you?
What got you hooked?
What made you quit playing?

Lets not flame and just dish out our honest opinions of the game here.

Here is a post I made in early 2012 about GW on another forum:

2012

Guild Wars 2 is a very interesting concept and I am a huge fan, but it stays far away from our more hardcore needs in a RPG world (even a MMO one).

First of all don’t buy GW2 if you aren’t looking forward to spending hundreds of hours into mini games (events), short quest sequences (dynamic and meta events, 10 min to 3 hours long) and don’t like exploring.

GW2 is less of an RPG and more of a mini game collection bundled together with RPG elements.

Most bosses in “the open world” feel like mindless blobs that hundres of people use a punchbag, but harder and complicated bosses do exist regretably mosty in instanced dungeons which contradicts their “We have events !” commercials.

The game is very refined on a single player bases, but the multi player portion feels rather dumbdown because they wanted to encourage more people to play together.

Guild Wars 2 provides a little for everybody but in average quality. Don’t expect Black Isles story telling, TL2 monster mechanics and WoW style competitive gaming. Story telling is mediocre at best (I really wanted this to shine, but no it’s truely mediocre). Combat and monster mechanics are very refined from players point of view, because there are a lot of things you can experiment with and actual combat feels very dynamic yet fluid, but ultimately most things feel like the punchbags in the training grounds. Enemies in PvE rarely use mechanics that effect the player other than damage, slow and stun and that might easily bore you. Competitive MMO parts are dumbed down (thank god they did that I hate elitist jerks) and as a result might feel more eventful but less adrenaline inducing and spreadsheetinducing. Gear hunting is there, but once you get to the level cap you’ll have almost all equipment options in arms reach.

Summary :

Guild Wars 2 is a multitude of mini games with deep RPG elements that encourage players to play together and help each other, but every aspect of the game is only average. A GW2 player will have a lot of things to do for months to come, but will never feel truely satisfied by any single activity in the game.

Note: After that post I was called a WoW (played WoW for 2 months) addict and a troll.

2015

In retrospect I feel that I got a lot of things right except for PvP and 3 hour event chains. I was so wrong about PvP back then.

I think HoT will fix a lot of these things and add some much needed depth to PvE encounters. I still enjoy the game in a very casual way and play it on a regular basis.

Please, do share the shift in your view of Guild Wars 2 until now!

Well, I followed the development of the game since its announcement back in 2007. I expected the following: zones are interconnected and don’t have portals, bigger instanced group content (constantly added dungeons and raids). I always hoped for that and even after launch I still hoped there will be more than just the same old 5man dungeons. But until now it is still not possible to create bigger parties than just 5 which is imo ridiculous.

Of course I was first impressed and I found even the simplest ‘bring dolyak form a to b’ event exciting during beta. It got boring during levelling. I then expected more dungeons and instanced content and was satisfied by the Halloween event and the Fractals with new tier of gear – yeah finally something to do. But after that there was not much for a long time. No substantial content. So I hope for now they add more instanced content though they seem very evasive with this quoting it “challenging group” content but don’t mention dungeons or raids as a major feature of the game… It’s okay, I will buy HoT of course since I like the game, but I fear that there will be only the same old open world stuff with some collection stuff etc.

It took a little while for me, and maybe it’s because most of my friends who have the game were never playing as much as they do now, but lately GW2 has been feeling more and more like GW1 felt to me years ago. I’m quite satisfied, and I’m excited to see what new things come in the expansion.

My only expectations about the expansion are the things they’ve confirmed so far. Unlike a very vocal group here on the forums, I’m not going to set my sights on the moon and get my knickers in a twist when ANet doesn’t deliver exactly what I want. I’ve enjoyed the game so far, and I’m sure I will continue to enjoy it, in healthy amounts.