Guild Wars 2

I followed this game before it’s release for around 3 years. Watched every developer podcast, read every interview, was active on the forums (these official forums didn’t exist) and was generally a giant fanboi.

I’ve played the game since release. Here are my thoughts:

The personal story was alright for the first 30 character levels. It was not good. It was not bad. It was alright. Once you get to the Lion’s Arch story section and the TERRIBLY written slapstick moronic writing ensues it takes an awful turn for the worst. The individual who thought the Zhaitan fight should be realistic and should require players to use giant cannons to kill him in the most repetitive manner possible needs to be fired. Reality should ALWAYS take a back seat to fun. Spamming a cannon shot for literally 10 minutes was the least fun I’ve ever had in a boss encounter. Literally, ever. In short, overall, the personal story was bad. Not awful, but a SOLID bad.

Combat is boring as hell. I have 5 skills I can use frequently, a few more skills I can use occasionally, and an elite skill I (generally) can’t use very often at all. Are there more skills than this? Of course, but I can’t use them in a given encounter. I’m locked in and all that character diversity is gone as soon as combat starts. Just about every single MMO I’ve ever played (even the bad ones) had more diversity in combat.

PvP is mundane. The fact that the developers came out and stated yesterday that they’re going to be pushing the conquest game type as the “competitive tournament game mode” made my jaw drop to the floor. For 6 months people have been screaming in the forums that this game type is unpopular and provides only 1 metagame revolving around a boring playstyle – bunkers.

CONSTANT nerfs to the economy that have increased the grind in this game to ridiculous levels has brought me to the point of not wanting to PvE at all. Scrounging for hours to acquire 1 gold (I’m exaggerating, but still) isn’t acceptable. If you have no end game content and the only thing you can think of is to increase the length of PvE grinds, then you need to be fired as a game developer. CONTENT keeps players. Not near infinite grinds. CONTENT. This isn’t a new concept.

These are my thoughts. What are yours?

I agree with your opinions. You’re probably going to be torn apart by white knights that think the game is pretty much perfect the way it is and/or a moderator will probably ninja delete your thread(like they did mine) or lock it.

My thoughts are yours, I was following GW2 since they scrapped Utopia in GW1, I wanted to play a time mage so bad. Seriously. Anyway, not much I can add but reiterate on the pvp topic. We need more modes, conquest sucks and e-sports won’t even matter if your game is boring, for real. Get on the new modes. GvG/HA is a MUST.

Even FA/JQ were a billion times more enjoyable than any conquest match I have had. The only enjoyable pvp experience I can get out of this game is WvW and I can’t even play that because ANet refuses to optimize the game around nvidia cards.

Basically pvp is dead and it will remain dead until they add a decent mode. Good luck with custom arena’s, that will net you a little extra cash from people that want to set their own rule book but it won’t be very popular trust me. It will get stale after a week when people realize oh we’re still stuck with the same crappy conquest.

Sadly, I have to agree with you on some of these things.

The combat does get pretty boring. Most professions you just spam the auto attack and occasionally some other skills, but most the time in pve, that’s not needed(That’s coming from a rangers prospective). They really should add more skills that you can pick like you can with your utility and elite skills, or just add more bars for skill overall. I am glad to hear they are working on dungeon bosses and events, though, But we’ll see.

The story is pretty bad. Most the time there seemed to be no emotion at all. That’s the thing that bothered me the most.

Yes, the whole economy thing is ridiculous. I honestly miss the loot systems from past games. I feel this game is too dependent on rng and DR. It’s near impossible to make a decent amount of money without flipping things on the TP or having magic find gear. Which is another thing. Magic find gear…in an mmo. I’m not a big fan of that.

Anyway, that’s how I feel about the game. I have only been playing for a little over a month with a little over 300 hours across my two characters.

This game has become impossible for potentially dedicated new players.
I personally will milk whatever fun I can still get out of it.

I played GW1 for years, was following this game closely and playing since the headstart.

The story I found enjoyable. You talk about it being a “SOLID bad” but what are you comparing this to? Wow? GW2 is much better in this department. Star wars the old republic? Okay I have not played that game but from what I hear the story is very strong and likely trumps GW2 in this department. I found it to be enjoyable to the point where I was eagerly awaiting leveling up to start the next arc. Although I was dissapointed with the sudden shift in focus to Traherne and the new, linear nature of the story as opposed to the eariler, personalized part.

Combat is enjoyable to me, again you have to ask yourself what is better and what is worse in other games? Compared to GW1, having the ability to swap out utility skills out of combat is a huge boon over GW1. And the interface is clean and tight, unlike the massive bloated corpse of a UI world of warcraft has these days.
“When you use Mortal strike, (if you chose arms specialzation) then it enables use of your overpower ability, which uses no rage, nor genrates rage, also your overpower sometimes procs the use of another overpower and grantes your next heroic strike or cleave to deal and addtional 15% damge” ….excuse me what? You could call interactions like that depth of gameplay, I call them needlessly complicated skill chains.

The combo system in GW2 is magnificent, and leads to some exciting, on the fly changes in playstyle and rewards situational awareness.

The pvp…is growing stale. One game type, either 5v5 or 8v8. Not much to play around with there. Stale meta game with little room for innovation.

Can’t really speak to the economy as I mostly earn gold through dungeon runs, which has only alternated slightly since release.

All and all I give GW2 a 7/10, with potential for greatness if they had a larger team working on changes and fixes.

We keep getting temporary content, so I have some hope for the permanent content coming.

I agree with the comments regarding the story. The combat, however, feels fine to me, especially coming from GW1. I do think we need more challenging overworld content, though.

GW2
bad combat check.
bad story check.
bad pvp check.
no GvG check.
and the list go on.
4/10

Sadly this is how I feel as well.
Last boss just broke my heart.
Combat is, well it’s alright I like the fact that there is only 8 skills I can use at any given time but whoever thought it was a good idea to just go from hundreds of skills that each class had to this system and claim that you have more or the same amount of character build customization is just idiotic, guess what I see a guardian with a great sword coming at me I know exactly what hes going to do.

PvP is kinda useless, unless you’re all about bragging rights, but since it’s WvW who are are going to brag to? Your own server? And the most hilarious think about it is, if you’re dominating in WvW you get a few mob to spon so you can go kill em for the loot, but farming is being penalized…

Which brings me to my last point, I swear I read it time and time again that Anet don’t want people to grind for anything to achieve what they want to achieve.
You want acended gear? You have to farm fractals… and on top of that they still don’t have a group finder of any kind so you’re left with shouting in LA for an hour that you feel like doing fractals.
Most of the people will go and farm for the money but screw that with the anti farm in the game that’s a bit of a bummer, and who in the world in Anet, a company that’s all against the grinding decided to put in legendary weapons as a reward for the BIGGEST grind I’ve ever seen in ANY mmorpg game.

Shear Force.9154:

Sadly this is how I feel as well.
Last boss just broke my heart.
Combat is, well it’s alright I like the fact that there is only 8 skills I can use at any given time but whoever thought it was a good idea to just go from hundreds of skills that each class had to this system and claim that you have more or the same amount of character build customization is just idiotic, guess what I see a guardian with a great sword coming at me I know exactly what hes going to do.

PvP is kinda useless, unless you’re all about bragging rights, but since it’s WvW who are are going to brag to? Your own server? And the most hilarious think about it is, if you’re dominating in WvW you get a few mob to spon so you can go kill em for the loot, but farming is being penalized…

Which brings me to my last point, I swear I read it time and time again that Anet don’t want people to grind for anything to achieve what they want to achieve.
You want acended gear? You have to farm fractals… and on top of that they still don’t have a group finder of any kind so you’re left with shouting in LA for an hour that you feel like doing fractals.
Most of the people will go and farm for the money but screw that with the anti farm in the game that’s a bit of a bummer, and who in the world in Anet, a company that’s all against the grinding decided to put in legendary weapons as a reward for the BIGGEST grind I’ve ever seen in ANY mmorpg game.

I’m sure the irony is not lost on the developers, especially the poor sods who participated in the manifesto video.
Every bad decision, such as the FotM, the ascended gear, the reductions of open-world reward, character-bound dyes, etc, can be directly traced to the design turn-arounds post-June; and every single one of them is at the behest of the monetisation department that came along as part of the shares buyout deal from Nexon.
NX currency is just around the corner, I fear, as soon as the current player-hemorrhaging reaches a peak when March draws to a close, and the true business model brought in with the shares deal has had it’s predictable effect.

puffintoast.6501:

Shear Force.9154:

Sadly this is how I feel as well.
Last boss just broke my heart.
Combat is, well it’s alright I like the fact that there is only 8 skills I can use at any given time but whoever thought it was a good idea to just go from hundreds of skills that each class had to this system and claim that you have more or the same amount of character build customization is just idiotic, guess what I see a guardian with a great sword coming at me I know exactly what hes going to do.

PvP is kinda useless, unless you’re all about bragging rights, but since it’s WvW who are are going to brag to? Your own server? And the most hilarious think about it is, if you’re dominating in WvW you get a few mob to spon so you can go kill em for the loot, but farming is being penalized…

Which brings me to my last point, I swear I read it time and time again that Anet don’t want people to grind for anything to achieve what they want to achieve.
You want acended gear? You have to farm fractals… and on top of that they still don’t have a group finder of any kind so you’re left with shouting in LA for an hour that you feel like doing fractals.
Most of the people will go and farm for the money but screw that with the anti farm in the game that’s a bit of a bummer, and who in the world in Anet, a company that’s all against the grinding decided to put in legendary weapons as a reward for the BIGGEST grind I’ve ever seen in ANY mmorpg game.

I’m sure the irony is not lost on the developers, especially the poor sods who participated in the manifesto video.
Every bad decision, such as the FotM, the ascended gear, the reductions of open-world reward, character-bound dyes, etc, can be directly traced to the design turn-arounds post-June; and every single one of them is at the behest of the monetisation department that came along as part of the shares buyout deal from Nexon.
NX currency is just around the corner, I fear, as soon as the current player-hemorrhaging reaches a peak when March draws to a close, and the true business model brought in with the shares deal has had it’s predictable effect.

Ya know, I was going to ask you what you’re talking about, but I did a quick google search first. This is what I found:

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Meleagar/112012/24237_NCSoft-Sold-Arenanet-and-GW2-Out-For-Nexon-Investment

It all makes a ton of sense now…

It is what it is, that’s how I’m looking at it now. I’m looking at what is there in this game to invest time and effort in and I just can’t bring myself to care enough. I really like the open world, the maps are beautiful but at level cap, it ends up sucking the money out of your pockets so that quickly kills the fun, having to watch your money in a game just to enjoy a change of scenery on a whim (and the fact that I tried the different crafts doesn’t help). And for the same reason I like moving around in the open world, I’m not going to dungeon grind, ever.

PvP here lost it’s luster and I still don’t care about legendaries. Roll alts, have fun then I get to the lvl 80 maps, get bored, rinse repeat. In 4 months, I still haven’t logged 400 hours, who I played with have left and I’m already being asked why I stay and I’m embarrased to say…“it’s pretty”, otherwise, I’d be long gone.

Rambodacious.7495:

Ya know, I was going to ask you what you’re talking about, but I did a quick google search first. This is what I found:

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Meleagar/112012/24237_NCSoft-Sold-Arenanet-and-GW2-Out-For-Nexon-Investment

It all makes a ton of sense now…

You know the scary part is those comments are right on target, if ANet of all companies could give in to this crap then how can we trust any gaming company nowadays? Back before GW2 was released if you asked if ANet was trust worthy I’d say yeah, more than any other out there for sure.

Now I can never be sure what to believe. It’s pretty much fact that eventually all great gaming companies live long enough to turn evil and betray the fan base though. At this point I’m used to it but not MMO’s, not once in 7 years did I question ANets moves in a negative manner except when they removed TA and replaced it with the most horrible arena I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing.

If you ask me, in the past few years they have fired anyone who were major decision makers in GW1 and just replaced them with a bunch of money grubbing nexon employee’s or generally clueless dolts. Everything they have done recently has been extremely questionable and quite insulting to what they built on so long ago.

Wow, I never read that Nixon related post, or even knew about it, everything makes sense now.

Over 400 hours played for a 60 euro game. That’s 10x more than an average 60 euro game. It has its flaws, it has its good points. Overall I enjoy it and since I don’t need to subscribe I am okay with it. It’s a brand new game, poor choices were made, let’s hope they listen to the community and make it better. All the games we compare new games to didn’t improve overnight or were awesome from day 1, it took time, hard work and a community supporting it. Everyone is entitled to say whatever they want, but if you dislike it so much, why not play something else? You aren’t ‘obliged’ to stay through a subscription so go out, enjoy some other games and come back when you feel you can enjoy it again.

Direksone.3867:

Over 400 hours played for a 60 euro game. That’s 10x more than an average 60 euro game. It has its flaws, it has its good points. Overall I enjoy it and since I don’t need to subscribe I am okay with it. It’s a brand new game, poor choices were made, let’s hope they listen to the community and make it better. All the games we compare new games to didn’t improve overnight or were awesome from day 1, it took time, hard work and a community supporting it. Everyone is entitled to say whatever they want, but if you dislike it so much, why not play something else? You aren’t ‘obliged’ to stay through a subscription so go out, enjoy some other games and come back when you feel you can enjoy it again.

But isn’t saying “yes, the game sucks now, come back in a couple years” kind of… wrong? I mean, should anyone have to do that with a “good” game? Isn’t what you described the very essence of a “bad” game? “Go play something else cause this sucks” has always meant bad game to me in the past…

Everything you said is exactly my thoughts OP, people can say what they feel good or bad, but what you stated is the reality of the situation.

I played i think it was 5 years in Guildwars 1 without one gameplay complaint, seems odd.

I didn’t say it sucks. I said I enjoy the game very much, but it has its flaws. Neither do I mean ‘a couple of years’. What I mean is that you shouldn’t feel tied down to a game. I used to be with WoW, quit it years ago, did some others like DCUO, SWTOR and Rift, but since I played DCUO for free and now this I feel liberated. Playing doesn’t feel like an obligation, because I do not pay for it monthly, which means I can come and go as I please. It may not be the best there is right now on MMO territory, though it has some things I find more fun/better than some of them, but I don’t mind either. It’s a game, something I do for fun in my free time, like my other hobbies.

It’s supposed to be fun, not an obligation. I can understand your concerns and dislikes, I really do, but I do feel that some, and I don’t necessarily mean you by that ‘forget’ that it is a game. There are plenty of other f2p games, like SWTOR and DCUO which are a lot of fun to get into and why not try them out? It’s free! Get into other games, check out what else is out there and come back to any of them that fits you best.

OP, I’m in a similar situation to your own. Agree with your entire post.

GW2 is not seated atm to be a successful MMO. I’ll be jumping ship to the next big thing, perhaps even an old big thing, without hesitation if the game is not fixed by March some time, which I do not think is possible.

Rambodacious.7495:

Combat is boring as hell. I have 5 skills I can use frequently, a few more skills I can use occasionally, and an elite skill I (generally) can’t use very often at all. Are there more skills than this? Of course, but I can’t use them in a given encounter. I’m locked in and all that character diversity is gone as soon as combat starts. Just about every single MMO I’ve ever played (even the bad ones) had more diversity in combat.

I was agreeing with you until I got to this part. It seems that you suck at playing this game.

There is a button, the tilde key(~), that lets you switch weapons in combat. This way, you don’t have 10 skills to work with. You have a minimum of 15 skills! Some professions can use more significant amount of skills like the engineer and Elementalists. If you are not switching weapons enough to make the combat more dynamic, you are not playing it right.

If you are not using utilities enough, then it is because you are not optimizing to your play style at all. Instead of putting this cool situational skill. You could put more dps to your utility skill and then spam them. If you run to a situation where you need that situational skill, then that is when you sacrifice that dps utilities and slot in that situational utility.

After all, if you are not spamming that dps/dps-buff utility, then you are just as powerful as not using any utilities at all.

runeblade.7514:

Rambodacious.7495:

Combat is boring as hell. I have 5 skills I can use frequently, a few more skills I can use occasionally, and an elite skill I (generally) can’t use very often at all. Are there more skills than this? Of course, but I can’t use them in a given encounter. I’m locked in and all that character diversity is gone as soon as combat starts. Just about every single MMO I’ve ever played (even the bad ones) had more diversity in combat.

I was agreeing with you until I got to this part. It seems that you suck at playing this game.

There is a button, the tilde key(~), that lets you switch weapons in combat. This way, you don’t have 10 skills to work with. You have a minimum of 15 skills! Some professions can use more significant amount of skills like the engineer and Elementalists. If you are not switching weapons enough to make the combat more dynamic, you are not playing it right.

If you are not using utilities enough, then it is because you are not optimizing to your play style at all. Instead of putting this cool situational skill. You could put more dps to your utility skill and then spam them. If you run to a situation where you need that situational skill, then that is when you sacrifice that dps utilities and slot in that situational utility.

After all, if you are not spamming that dps/dps-buff utility, then you are just as powerful as not using any utilities at all.

I don’t agree with this post. While weapon switching can certainly be useful it may not be in some situations. A player chooses two weapon sets that they enjoy playing with but either weapon set may have a situational benefit, therefore switching to them in some encounters may actually be a disadvantage. If two specific weapon sets are required to keep the momentum going in combat then the player is being pigeon-holed into using these sets, which is not right.

In theory, I think what you are saying is correct, however Anet has not nearly pulled this off for most classes and there needs to be some serious work done to the professions and weapon combos to get it to this stage. I’ve rolled many characters now and when I find some weapons that I enjoy I do find that a lot of the time auto-attack is the only option. It’s got nothing to do with playing bad, it’s just the combat and weapon mechanics simply haven’t been properly developed at this stage.

If you have found and profession and weapon sets combo that works for you then stick with it, because there are many players that do not have the same luxury atm.

“When it is Ready!”
Got it? GW2 has been released months ago BUT it is not ready.
It is ready when there are Guild Halls, GvG & AB.
Then IT IS GUILDWARS 2! THEN IT IS READY!!

Some of the comments against the developers in here are insulting. If you dont like the game fine, but quit calling the developers idiots just because you dont like the game as much as other people. There is a huge number of people who enjoy this game, including myself.

To the original topic. The game has some issues but I dont agree with many of the things youve said. The combat can have a huge ammount of depth. Specially if you play an engineer or an ele. Even the warrior has a minimum of 16 skills at one time. I constantly switch between other weapons depending on the situation. You dont need to have this huge bar of skills to choose from, when most of them are useless anyways. You claim there is a grind to guild wars. There is. Welcome to MMOs, depending on the game it can be disguised in many different forms

Omen.1879:

runeblade.7514:

Rambodacious.7495:

Combat is boring as hell. I have 5 skills I can use frequently, a few more skills I can use occasionally, and an elite skill I (generally) can’t use very often at all. Are there more skills than this? Of course, but I can’t use them in a given encounter. I’m locked in and all that character diversity is gone as soon as combat starts. Just about every single MMO I’ve ever played (even the bad ones) had more diversity in combat.

I was agreeing with you until I got to this part. It seems that you suck at playing this game.

There is a button, the tilde key(~), that lets you switch weapons in combat. This way, you don’t have 10 skills to work with. You have a minimum of 15 skills! Some professions can use more significant amount of skills like the engineer and Elementalists. If you are not switching weapons enough to make the combat more dynamic, you are not playing it right.

If you are not using utilities enough, then it is because you are not optimizing to your play style at all. Instead of putting this cool situational skill. You could put more dps to your utility skill and then spam them. If you run to a situation where you need that situational skill, then that is when you sacrifice that dps utilities and slot in that situational utility.

After all, if you are not spamming that dps/dps-buff utility, then you are just as powerful as not using any utilities at all.

I don’t agree with this post. While weapon switching can certainly be useful it may not be in some situations. A player chooses two weapon sets that they enjoy playing with but either weapon set may have a situational benefit, therefore switching to them in some encounters may actually be a disadvantage. If two specific weapon sets are required to keep the momentum going in combat then the player is being pigeon-holed into using these sets, which is not right.

In theory, I think what you are saying is correct, however Anet has not nearly pulled this off for most classes and there needs to be some serious work done to the professions and weapon combos to get it to this stage. I’ve rolled many characters now and when I find some weapons that I enjoy I do find that a lot of the time auto-attack is the only option. It’s got nothing to do with playing bad, it’s just the combat and weapon mechanics simply haven’t been properly developed at this stage.

If you have found and profession and weapon sets combo that works for you then stick with it, because there are many players that do not have the same luxury atm.

You’re gonna have to post examples, proof, or whatever mathematical data because many times I have the opposite of what you experience. Auto-attack is not the only option. At least that is what I thought when I am fighting a horde of mobs that are 2 levels above me and succeeding.

No I really don’t have to post that. Just be a regular visitor to the profession threads and that’s proof enough.

Omen.1879:

No I really don’t have to post that. Just be a regular visitor to the profession threads and that’s proof enough.

Why would you think autoattack is the only option with….

Warrior
Necro
Ele
Thief
Engineer
Mesmer
Guardian

When your other skills do more dmg/have tons of utility, both defensive/offensive?

Unless you’re a Ranger who uses a Shortbow. Then I understand.

Ursan.7846:

Omen.1879:

No I really don’t have to post that. Just be a regular visitor to the profession threads and that’s proof enough.

Why would you think autoattack is the only option with….

Warrior
Necro
Ele
Thief
Engineer
Mesmer
Guardian

When your other skills do more dmg/have tons of utility, both defensive/offensive?

Unless you’re a Ranger who uses a Shortbow. Then I understand.

This right here.

I am honestly afraid of posting at this point.

I completely agree with your view Rambodacious. There’s so much they could have done over the four months post launch that they didn’t do. People were so thankful for the holiday content none of them thought about what would happen when the holiday is over. I did, I wanted permanent content the kind that actually rewards the players…..instead I keep getting boggled and the number of nerfs to loot for things like boss fights and open world events. Nerfs to classes that already have dps issues in the first place. Gear that nobody wanted being put into the game to try to attract the type of player that has single handedly destroyed every mmo experience since the very first dungeon instances were made in mmo history.

I guess they don’t really want players like me that stick with good games for years to come. I suppose it’s time to accept that as truth because everything they are doing since launch has been for the short term player with the attention span of a flea that jumps to the next shinie they see.

the end game is not fun and the only reason I found I could hold on were for the rewards. When you take those away there really is nothing left is there.

Seriously. How can you play this game by just using auto attack? As a staff elementalist player, using only autoattack in almost ANY situation is a quick death for me. Using crowd control and activating defensive abilities is vital to if you want any success.

I’m with the OP on the idea of alternatives to the gear treadmill. It’s old, and if people want to do that blizzards done it better.

Lord Kreegan.8123:

“The reality of it all” is that players like me who believe in integrity and act on principle will never, ever buy anything from the cash shop so long as we believe we are being played for suckers by ANet… and thus they will make less money than they might otherwise.

I will never contribute a cent past the purchase price of the game until such time as they actually deliver the game they promised… which will require fixing one whole hell of a lot of bugs and horrible, horrible mechanics that make GW2 something much less than FUN — which is why we play games to begin with — and so frustrating as to inevitably be not worth playing at all.

If ANet’s management is so stupid as to not realize that their design decisions are driving players away, then they deserve their fate.

Exactly my position. I feel that I have been conned.

Spvp is a boring mess with one game mode that no one enjoys and pve is a boring grindfest in a “grindless” game. wvw is fun for the most part though, Arena.net should scrap their terrible Spvp and focus on wvw.

If GW2 fails theres really nothing else. World of Warcraft, Star Wars the Old Republic, Tera and The Secret World are all the same crap. GW2 was the only thing that stood out to be different. It got 3 million people because it was different.

Screwing this up would be like screwing up mash potatoes. They can’t make GW2 fail because if they do they’re idiots.

Calae.1738:

If GW2 fails theres really nothing else. World of Warcraft, Star Wars the Old Republic, Tera and The Secret World are all the same crap. GW2 was the only thing that stood out to be different. It got 3 million people because it was different.

Screwing this up would be like screwing up mash potatoes. They can’t make GW2 fail because if they do they’re idiots.

The Elder Scrolls Online, Age of Wushu (Wulin) if you’re in EU, Blade and Soul, Ragnarok Online 2 probably a lot more, and all of them are going to come out in 2013, currently in either closed or open beta except Scrolls. Hopefully one of those will succeed, altho I hope to god they fix everything broken and add good content to GW2 before they come out just make it sexy like I know it can be.

The most disconcerting thing to me as a newer player is this anti-farm diminishing returns system. I’ve played mmorpgs since the glory days of Ultima Online and Everquest.

If I wanted something, I could go out and get it without feeling like I’m being punished or wasting my time because some invisible game mechanic has decided to kick in.

Rambodacious.7495:

Ya know, I was going to ask you what you’re talking about, but I did a quick google search first. This is what I found:

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Meleagar/112012/24237_NCSoft-Sold-Arenanet-and-GW2-Out-For-Nexon-Investment

It all makes a ton of sense now…

That was, quite honestly, the most disturbing thing I’ve red regarding GW2. I really hope it’s wrong. Time will tell… -sad face-

Nihevil.8024:

I agree with your opinions. You’re probably going to be torn apart by white knights that think the game is pretty much perfect the way it is and/or a moderator will probably ninja delete your thread(like they did mine) or lock it.

I’m waiting for the original post to be infracted. It states what is wrong and needs to be fixed but is too bitter.

I give it a couple hours before infraction or lock.

I completely agree with you OP.

I would personally describe this game as utterly horrible, boring, shallow, unimaginative, restricting, lackluster, annoying and disappointing EVER. The irony is that it had it’s potential, hence I bought it when I did. But obviously it has FAIL written all over it in huge, glowing letters for some reason.

I stop by occasionally to visit the forums to see if the much required miracle has happened to steer GW2 away from the path of self-destruction, but who am I kidding? I never actually expect that to happen.

Just stay away from this “fun game”.

Shear Force.9154:

Calae.1738:

If GW2 fails theres really nothing else. World of Warcraft, Star Wars the Old Republic, Tera and The Secret World are all the same crap. GW2 was the only thing that stood out to be different. It got 3 million people because it was different.

Screwing this up would be like screwing up mash potatoes. They can’t make GW2 fail because if they do they’re idiots.

The Elder Scrolls Online, Age of Wushu (Wulin) if you’re in EU, Blade and Soul, Ragnarok Online 2 probably a lot more, and all of them are going to come out in 2013, currently in either closed or open beta except Scrolls. Hopefully one of those will succeed, altho I hope to god they fix everything broken and add good content to GW2 before they come out just make it sexy like I know it can be.

Scrolls is just going to be a wow clone. They already confirmed the only thing that will make it different is that it’s Elder Scrolls.

The directon they were heading after launch had a lot of potential to make this a great game. Unforunately it’s completely changed and this game has become very bad now.

Oni.7451:

Rambodacious.7495:

Ya know, I was going to ask you what you’re talking about, but I did a quick google search first. This is what I found:

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Meleagar/112012/24237_NCSoft-Sold-Arenanet-and-GW2-Out-For-Nexon-Investment

It all makes a ton of sense now…

That was, quite honestly, the most disturbing thing I’ve red regarding GW2. I really hope it’s wrong. Time will tell… -sad face-

While you’re waiting for time to tell, read this:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/09/markets-korea-stocks-idUSL4N0AE2UK20130109

The fact is, NC Soft is hurting. They’re going to squeeze whatever money they can out of GW2 now, even if it’s bad for the game in the long run.

BUT WAIT… can’t ArenaNet split off from NC Soft and become their own bosses? They have something in place for this if needed, right? Well…maybe not. Let’s take a look at what happened to City of Heroes and Paragon Studios.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/3/feature/7015/City-of-Heroes-Profitable-or-Not.html

Even if you can’t trust the numbers that the “anonymous” source and NC Soft gave, there’s a few things that you can still easily see. Paragon wanted out from under NC Soft, and NC Soft responded by nuking the entire studio and game. There was truely no warning, they were working on upcoming content and balance adjustments Thursday evening, Friday morning they were told they were fired and the studio was closing. Don’t think for a moment that NC Soft wouldn’t do that to ArenaNet too, if they think they’ll try to get away.

Assyrian.4827:

GW2
bad combat check.
bad story check.
bad pvp check.
no GvG check.
and the list go on.
4/10

Yep.

Tried to be too ambitious and please everybody.

@Developers: Pick a target audience, make a game they will enjoy, profit.

Do not make a mediocre game for everybody you will have very few fans or long term customers.

I don’t agree with the OP. That’s a pretty negative view of things.

I find combat quite fun and interactive. Having more buttons and skills doesn’t mean gameplay is automatically more fun either. The complexity of the fights doesn’t rely only on what you can press either. The depth of the PvP fights comes from a variety of things including terrain, movement, positioning, and duration. Also, I’m going to point out that there’s a flaw to having too many skills and buttons, and that is the potential to distract the player or clutter the player with unnecessary UI and distracts you.

If you think combat diversity is low, then that shows YOUR diversity is low. My combat fights are adaptive and fluid and hardly lacking in diversity. Mix in weapon combos, combo fields, movement, LOS, mobs around you, water… and etc. Mix it up, and don’t limit yourself to just one thing. It’s like being handed a plate full of various foods and choosing only one item and screaming at the cook for not making the single food you chose to have more variety. lol.

PvP – Bunker isn’t necessarily boring… and I doubt that there is only one play style.

Content – they’ve been adding plenty of content along with events. I don’t see them failing to add new content as the months go on. The grind does exist, but that’s if you’re going for legendary. Other than that, I can pretty much just play and get through without grinding. Leveling isn’t really a drag because you go pretty much go from area to area without having to repeat events several times or grind a single mob many times to level up… You can even just go to another area through LA because low level areas in other places gives you quite a lot of XP for completing hearts. That’s due to the level downscaling. Leveling feels long sometimes though despite there being so many different ways to get XP. But get this, it feels long, but the leveling is smooth. So that’s just saying that there’s a lot of content for leveling, but leveling is a long process.

Btw, I can get about 1-3g in an hour by running dungeons. It’s not that hard to make gold if you really want to.

The game isn’t without flaws though, but nothing is perfect. Your “perfect” game can seem greatly flawed to another person. It’s a matter of opinions and tastes for some aspect of the game.

FYI, a lot of players who enjoy the game don’t bother reading forums or even say they enjoy it. Maybe it’s a good thing they don’t check forums because it gets tiring seeing people express things that you can surely argue against and prove wrong… but they’re not going to listen to what you say and stick to their opinions because they must be right and you’re wrong in their books.

Calae.1738:

If GW2 fails theres really nothing else. World of Warcraft, Star Wars the Old Republic, Tera and The Secret World are all the same crap. GW2 was the only thing that stood out to be different. It got 3 million people because it was different.

Rift is good if you have the time for raiding. The different souls really do give you tons of options in how you want to play… the complete opposite of GW2.

It also has to be said that TERA did action combat way better than GW2.

Also there is still: EVE, darkfall: UW, and the elder scrolls.

kenshinakh.3672:

I don’t agree with the OP. That’s a pretty negative view of things.

I find combat quite fun and interactive. Having more buttons and skills doesn’t mean gameplay is automatically more fun either. The complexity of the fights doesn’t rely only on what you can press either. The depth of the PvP fights comes from a variety of things including terrain, movement, positioning, and duration. Also, I’m going to point out that there’s a flaw to having too many skills and buttons, and that is the potential to distract the player or clutter the player with unnecessary UI and distracts you.

If you think combat diversity is low, then that shows YOUR diversity is low. My combat fights are adaptive and fluid and hardly lacking in diversity. Mix in weapon combos, combo fields, movement, LOS, mobs around you, water… and etc. Mix it up, and don’t limit yourself to just one thing. It’s like being handed a plate full of various foods and choosing only one item and screaming at the cook for not making the single food you chose to have more variety. lol.

PvP – Bunker isn’t necessarily boring… and I doubt that there is only one play style.

Content – they’ve been adding plenty of content along with events. I don’t see them failing to add new content as the months go on. The grind does exist, but that’s if you’re going for legendary. Other than that, I can pretty much just play and get through without grinding. Leveling isn’t really a drag because you go pretty much go from area to area without having to repeat events several times or grind a single mob many times to level up… You can even just go to another area through LA because low level areas in other places gives you quite a lot of XP for completing hearts. That’s due to the level downscaling. Leveling feels long sometimes though despite there being so many different ways to get XP. But get this, it feels long, but the leveling is smooth. So that’s just saying that there’s a lot of content for leveling, but leveling is a long process.

Btw, I can get about 1-3g in an hour by running dungeons. It’s not that hard to make gold if you really want to.

The game isn’t without flaws though, but nothing is perfect. Your “perfect” game can seem greatly flawed to another person. It’s a matter of opinions and tastes for some aspect of the game.

FYI, a lot of players who enjoy the game don’t bother reading forums or even say they enjoy it. Maybe it’s a good thing they don’t check forums because it gets tiring seeing people express things that you can surely argue against and prove wrong… but they’re not going to listen to what you say and stick to their opinions because they must be right and you’re wrong in their books.

How can an opinion on what is fun be proven wrong?

Rambodacious.7495:

CONSTANT nerfs to the economy that have increased the grind in this game to ridiculous levels has brought me to the point of not wanting to PvE at all. Scrounging for hours to acquire 1 gold (I’m exaggerating, but still) isn’t acceptable.

I disagree with this. Economy is fine, grinding its just the worst option to gaining gold, its just enough to cover your repair costs. There are another ways to gain some gold, nobody tells that virtual money in game should be easy to gain.

this Nexon-related post is just a bad piece of writing. If they were so eager to get our money, why aren’t there more “important” things to buy in the store? Ascended items will get available from a lot of other sources too + Anet explained in detail why they brought this new tier… Ignoring the facts in this article and coming up with such a conspiracy theory is low.

What do we have now? We have a lot of problems, yes. We don’t have pay to win in any form. We have only conqust-mode sPvP… the professions are balanced around this, but developer stated that once they feel they have a good core of those maps they introduce other modes for casual-sPvP to test those. We have bunker-builds in sPvP because a lot of players enjoy this kind of defensive gameplay, it’s not gamebreaking for other players imho… either way Anet stated that they feel bunker builds are too strong currently and players can expect changes.

Some might say: it wasn’t ready at release. When is a MMO truely ready? It’s an ongoing work in progress and changes need a lot of feedback from the huge playerbase. The game was ready enough to spend hundrets of hours there and have tons of fun, without a subscription fee. If you feel burned out, just leave for a month or so… you can return whenever you feel to without having to spend a cent. There is a lot of positive change, just compare the Karka-Event to Wintersday: no more one-time only event, Weapon Skins buyable for a easy attainable curreny (wool socks etc.) as an alternative to buying it in the store,…

If they would need our money so bad, why haven’t I felt the need to spend a dollar in the store? I have 4 bank-slots, a bag-slot, 1 character slot… all of that payed with ingame gold. Everything else in the store seems not interesting for me at all. I got exotic gear one or two weaks after I got 80, I don’t care about the Ascended ring and backbag at all since I don’t feel the need for it at all. Dungeons are easily doable with subpar green/yellow gear because this game is about skill, not gear mostly.

so please, tell me where I have to spend RL-money for this game after purchase.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

this Nexon-related post is just a bad piece of writing. If they were so eager to get our money, why aren’t there more “important” things to buy in the store? Ascended items will get available from a lot of other sources too + Anet explained in detail why they brought this new tier… Ignoring the facts in this article and coming up with such a conspiracy theory is low.

What do we have now? We have a lot of problems, yes. We don’t have pay to win in any form. We have only conqust-mode sPvP… the professions are balanced around this, but developer stated that once they feel they have a good core of those maps they introduce other modes for casual-sPvP to test those. We have bunker-builds in sPvP because a lot of players enjoy this kind of defensive gameplay, it’s not gamebreaking for other players imho… either way Anet stated that they feel bunker builds are too strong currently and players can expect changes.

Some might say: it wasn’t ready at release. When is a MMO truely ready? It’s an ongoing work in progress and changes need a lot of feedback from the huge playerbase. The game was ready enough to spend hundrets of hours there and have tons of fun, without a subscription fee. If you feel burned out, just leave for a month or so… you can return whenever you feel to without having to spend a cent. There is a lot of positive change, just compare the Karka-Event to Wintersday: no more one-time only event, Weapon Skins buyable for a easy attainable curreny (wool socks etc.) as an alternative to buying it in the store,…

If they would need our money so bad, why haven’t I felt the need to spend a dollar in the store? I have 4 bank-slots, a bag-slot, 1 character slot… all of that payed with ingame gold. Everything else in the store seems not interesting for me at all. I got exotic gear one or two weaks after I got 80, I don’t care about the Ascended ring and backbag at all since I don’t feel the need for it at all. Dungeons are easily doable with subpar green/yellow gear because this game is about skill, not gear mostly.

so please, tell me where I have to spend RL-money for this game after purchase.

No where Marcus and NO ONE in this thread has claimed that you HAVE to buy gems. What we have claimed is that they have increased the grind. This isn’t deniable. Let me repeat that. It is NOT deniable. It IS fact.

This, among the many other things I’ve mentioned (some of which you agreed with by the way) are the reasons for my current dissatisfaction.

The only response a fanboi can have is “walk away from the game and come back later” which has already been said a couple times and certainly means the game is in a bad state if the only solution is “leave.”

Honestly, I was secretly hoping only a few people saw things the way I do, but it’s just the opposite. So few fanbois are coming to ANET’s undeserving rescue… quite shocking really…

mjharrison.3209:

Calae.1738:

If GW2 fails theres really nothing else. World of Warcraft, Star Wars the Old Republic, Tera and The Secret World are all the same crap. GW2 was the only thing that stood out to be different. It got 3 million people because it was different.

Rift is good if you have the time for raiding. The different souls really do give you tons of options in how you want to play… the complete opposite of GW2.

It also has to be said that TERA did action combat way better than GW2.

Also there is still: EVE, darkfall: UW, and the elder scrolls.

Coming from TERA, it’s a much worse game both mechanically and content wise. The only enjoyment I had was making money out of the auction house. The game itself was slow and sluggish if you had fast reflexes. The customer service was incompetent.

If you want to see an action oriented MMO, DCUO is my choice. If you don’t have an issue with SOE losing your account data, definitely give it a try. To this day I’m waiting for SOE to sell it off to some other company that can better manage the customer support so I can go back and play it again.

Also, didn’t the OP get banned for the wintersday snowflake and made a new account just to post stuff on the forum?

Rambodacious.7495:

No where Marcus and NO ONE in this thread has claimed that you HAVE to buy gems. What we have claimed is that they have increased the grind. This isn’t deniable. Let me repeat that. It is NOT deniable. It IS fact.

I can see that optional grind (you don’t have to grind for better gear) is grind and not that fun, Anet has explained that the way Ascended Items were introduced was a mistake and they are giving us more ways to get that stuff in the upcoming patches. It is a slow progress, but that’s because Anet choose to do a lot of internal testing of new features before they bring it into the game – else such things as the Ascended gear introduction happen (as I said, they already said that this was a mistake).

I’m not sure why it takes this long to give us more rewarding loot sooner but they must have their reasons. It makes no sense that a developer likes to punish it’s playerbase. People here are so fast at jumping on the throat of devs and people who try to defend Anet… it hurts.