Guild Wars 2

I played the new WoW expansion for a week, saw a lot of knock-off GW2 mechanics, and thought, “Why am I paying a sub for this when I could play the real thing for free?”

So, after almost 2 years away from the game, I reinstalled GW2, picked up HoT, and finally hit 80 for the second time on my Elementalist.

Then I hit 400 in cooking and artificer, and killed Zhaitan again.

Fear Not This Night played, confetti rained down on Fort Trinity and I was hooked like it was 2012.

The changes to champ loot drops, the revised daily login rewards, mastery system, and the pivot away from the “two models facing each other” storytelling are massive improvements to the game.

I’m currently tearing through LW Season 2 before diving into Heart of Thorns in earnest, and farming up mats and gifts for The Bifrost.

I think Guild Wars 2 is in a great spot in the MMO space, and I’m excited to see what the rest of LW leads into.

(Thanks Anet!)

Are there any other changes, subtle and overt, that returning players (or veterans!) are really enjoying in the last few patches?

I think the collections are probably one of the biggest and most fun additions to the game over the last 2 years. They’ve added an extra sense of purpose which the game at times lacked. There have been some awesome ones too like the LA karka hunt, Chuka/Champawat Tiger hunts and kitten raising and some of the lore based ones like in Tarir.

It’s a shame the legendary journey ones are no more since they were improving the experience greatly.

Another great addition within the last year (maybe more I forget) is map rewards. That has really helped bring more relevance to the core zones again, which is never a bad thing.

And honorary mention to gliding which of course is awesome and of course “salvage all”

Whoa, what? Salvage all? Haven’t seen that yet.

Map rewards are excellent, though I’m a bt confused as to what triggers them.

It’s approximately every two events that triggers the Map rewards.

There have been a lot of QoL changes in the last two years or so. You could skim through the last years’ Release Notes for some of the changes. Or, for some of the more major changes, use the link above to look at the ‘Releases’ pages.

Welcome return, and good luck.

HoT came to meet the claim of older PVers about central Tyria be easy. So HoT maps is a kind of “hard way” of maps. if you like challenge u will like explore them.

Mackdose.6504:

Whoa, what? Salvage all? Haven’t seen that yet.

Map rewards are excellent, though I’m a bt confused as to what triggers them.

Right click your salvage kit for the option.

Map rewards rotate through a list you can see if you look at the overview map for each zone. It rotates through a common reward (usually a mat like claws, venom, bones, blood, fangs, totems) and uncommon rewards (the rest on that list). Generally you get a reward every 2 events

Excelsior!

I joined 1.5 years before but I pulled out an old issue of the German magazine called “PC Games” from 2012 and I read trough the pre-release article. It sounds so awesome in the magazine and when I look at the actual game, it really is.

I have barely any feel of “wearing off”. HoT is like the turbo mode and even when I have no time to really play I just dive into some people’s fight at nighttime to fight off some Mordremoth and save camps. There is always something to do. I never felt so good in a video game like here. It’s a blast. And it’s also a shame people rate this game by the graphic engine or the age instead of the actual gameplay value.