Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I’m Garrett, and i’m a GW2 noobie. Of course no problem here. Being a noob in MMO games is the best time you’ll had in the whole experience.

So i wanted to share some of my thoughts about the game, get it of my chest, and move on. Flame suit up? let’s go :)

So my first impression was that GW2 doing a lot of thing differently from others, more traditional MMO’s, which is not a bad thing of course. But coming from the area of really more traditional MMO’s and RPG’s overall, i’m having a bit of difficulties adjusting myself to the whole dynamic level downscaling. To me, character level is something permanent. you can hamstring it, alter the stats with debuffs and such, but can’t alter the level completely.
It got it advantages of course, like letting your much higher level friends playing with you, and avoiding farming exploits from much higher levels. But to me – a traditional gamer such as myself – this system pretty much have a negative effect on the feel of character progression. When i’m visiting lower level areas with my UBER level 80 OMFG char, i want to feel it. That’s perfectly fine if monsters won’t yield XP. When it comes to level and progression I really would prefer that no one would mess with my char. But that’s just me.

So as a social game GW2 wasn’t very social so far. By now i have leveled my engineer to 30, and still haven’t got the need for one single group. So, i’m having hard time to get social in the social game while you don’t really need anyone to get along. And yea, i guess it will come later, but, what about the other 70 levels?
I guess the group finder feature is now a permanent reality and MMO games. You don’t really need to talk to anyone, go anywhere, or do anything. Everything is automated. I guess most ppl like it, and even for it benefits, i think this is a devastating feature for the in-game communication between players. But hey, the times they are a changin and such…

World events is an awesome concept. It is really original and makes the world feel much more alive. But this is a feature that in my opinion should be a little more balanced cool down-wise and rarity-wise, since it seem that events are way too common and occurring way to much. I think that since they are so common it harms the unique feeling when an event take place. So when something happens everybody just start running like a herd of sheep (including myself with no idea what the hell i’m shooting at) :)

Mining – for example ore or wood.
Do you guys remember how it was in the “old days”? Two characters meet at the same point, see a piece of ore mine in the distant and start racing for it like crazy. no more. when you mine ore in GW2, it still remains in the wrold for the other guy.
Sorry for being the old guy, but in this case i prefer the old way: you mine something, it disappear. That way it made you feel like you are in world that everyone is sharing, right? and if somebody’s picking something from the ground, well… it got its consequences.

I guess most of you won’t agree with me, and that is only natural (specially in GW2 forum). I guess you might think i’m picking on a lot of the little details and not the majority of the game, that might be more PvP oriented then anything else. But now that i got that of my chest, i can move along :)

Thank you for reading, and happy gaming to us all.

I know, old guys have problems when it comes to getting out of their routine.
So try to adapt to the lack of “No KS!!! @#$kitten!” and “OM#$%F I was here first” that plagues so many of the “classic” MMOs. That is essentially what takes most of the conflict and adversity that normally stand in the way of cooperation in classic MMOs. In GW2 usually you WANT other people to come and hit the boss you found (well mumble mumble new dailies events). Just look around you, explore and try to actually talk to people. Not friendly? Have you done the wintersday dailies? Did you even notice how many times people shout in map “who wants to snowball fight” vs how many people actually help each other do the achievement with no words said except a “ty” and a smile in the end?
I’m not saying GW2 community is all angels and rainbows, we got our sour apples too, but it’s way better than any other MMORPG.
P.S. Trust me, when you visit a low level area on your “uber” lvl 80, you DO feel it. Even if the lvl 80 is not that “uber”

I don’t really agree with your mining opinion, I really love not having to compete for nodes. So many times in WoW I would come to a node and get jumped by some mobs and have to kill them. Meanwhile some druid flies down and snatches the node while I have aggro. LAME…

But I do agree with you on the social aspects. GW2 has automated almost all social interaction. This is great in some ways. It makes group content a million times easier to jump in and out of. But it has had consequences for individual communication skills. People don’t have to talk to each other as much, so they don’t. On top of that I think a lot of people are actually on Teamspeak or Ventrilo talking to their friends rather than using /say or /map. This makes the game overall feel like there is less socializing between strangers.

Honestly technology isn’t and shouldn’t regress to accommodate older social norms. It’s up to us to develop new social norms in light of new technologies. Basically what I’m saying is that yes it sucks that there seems to be less in-game socializing due to the streamlining, but we just need to adapt because that’s what humans do.

Personally I think VOIP is where it’s at. Everyone nowadays hops on their guild’s Teamspeak to chat and stays silent in-game unless otherwise provoked. Even console peasants (xbox) form private chat parties instead of talking to the strangers in matchmaking. The new social structure appears to be a formation of “family bubbles.” Players congregate with their “family” which is either their close-knit friends or guild, and they talk in private away from the common rabble. Then they engage in gameplay from that “safe” environment; only interacting with the general public when absolutely necessary.

So my advice for you Garrett is to find a friendly guild or group of friends to talk to if you need social interaction. Otherwise you will have to just be brave and try to break the ice in /say. It’s not that GW2 prevents you from being social, it just streamlines gameplay by eliminating the need to stop and form a group. It’s generally easier and faster if everyone can just run up to a boss and fight it instead of stopping to click /join party.

Regarding a few of your issues:

Downleveling – Trust me, when you are level 80 with top notch gear and traits and return to a lower level area, you will notice a difference.

Society – You are correct that leveling is pretty much an individual activity in PVE (at least it was in my case). Once you reach the higher levels and get to places like Orr and the Silverwastes, that changes, as coordination is required for progressive successful events. I’ve also noticed a lot more communication with the new PVE event dailies that are restricted to a certain map zone.

And a few of the world bosses like Teq require coordination other than the mob blasting away. In my case, most of my interaction comes from guild related activities. WvW also requires A LOTof coordination and interaction.

Mining – I’m not sure how well the “old” concept would work with megaservers. I have a feeling everything would be stripped clean at all times whenever you entered a map.

Edit: reading above reminded me that I have made several friends just doing an “lfg” on the world boss tour (you supposedly get better drops partied up); we stuck together through several bosses and now I have someone to ping in my contacts for PVE and dungeon activities.

I do disagree with a few of your sentiments.

Although, down-leveled character don’t have the full prowess of their level they are still more powerful than a character of the area’s level. They have access to more traits and better gear, rune, sigils, foods, and maintenance. Yes, those are scaled down too, but they still have their effect.

If you have a level 30 Engineer, you only have 50 more levels until you hit the max level, not 70.

ANet designed the game for every class to be survivable on it’s own, but also added elements that do require group play; dungeons, fractals, world events, and other large scale group events.

As for the World Events happening too often, I disagree. I think they happen a fair number of times for everyone that wants to participate in them to have a chance. If Teq only happened once or twice a day, there would be a lot of people unable to do the event due to rl stuff. Plus, you are only rewarded once a day for doing the World Event which does allow for the “epicness” to persist.

I am an “older” player as well and have played a number of other MMOs so will respond to two points that struck me.

First, as others have mentioned, the leveling process is not such in GW2 that it “requires” grouping. As recently as this past year, I found that the leveling process in other MMOs (specifically WoW and Rift) do not require any grouping either. Can’t speak to MMOs other than those two. Also, I found, at least in WoW, that grouping up was not at all social. I tended to “get an invite”…after which absolutely no communication was exchanged…not even “niceties” and as for dungeon groups (using the LFG system), I could have just as easily been with four NPCs for all the social interaction that went on. Years ago…five to six years to be more precise…it seems like groups were more social. Now, it’s just as well that the content doesn’t require grouping because it does not seem inherently fun unless I am running with friends.

The gathering. I have to truly disagree with the OP here. My experience in other MMOs where there is competition for these resources is that it brings out the absolute worst in people. Now…a disclaimer…there are those that play these games for the inherent sense of competition and conflict and, in those cases, I can understand why screwing someone out of a resource node would be really, really cool. Not my cup of noodles, though. I find it much more rewarding to stop and help another player clear trash around a rich node…knowing that we can both benefit from it.

But…we all have our preferences and there is nothing inherently better about mine than the OP’s.

Just to comment on a few points in your post OP.

When you’re “visiting lower level areas with my UBER level 80 OMFG char,” you are UBER. The only way to die is go afk while numerous mobs beat on you. Some professions at level 80 can be in a level 80 zone and go afk while a mob is beating on them and survive (Warior in Frostgorge afk while an arctodus beat on him. I watched and his health barely budged). In a noob zone, your level 80 playing with low levels will have to hold back to not one shot stuff. At level 30, no traits and random gear, you are nowhere near there.

Nodes: different games have different underlying philosophies. Some are competitive, some cooperative. Guild Wars 2 is strongly cooperative, to the point that if noncooperative play emerges, it will be removed. If cooperative play isn’t your cup of tea then this game will never be your home game.

Social: all a game can do is keep from putting barriers in front of you. I’ve read the forums of “The Game That Must Not Be Named.” People complaining that no one parties up with them to do quests. Their friend’s list is full of absent friends. Dungeons are run silently from start to finish. And that is a game that values group content. To be blunt, if you want friends you need to be a friend. If someone asks something in map chat and you know the answer, speak up. If someone needs help and asks in chat, say omw. Join a guild and join the conversation. The game isn’t going to hand out friends at login. You’ve got to do that yourself.

Maybe this game is for you, maybe it’s not. Try to take it on its own terms and maybe what you see as negatives will become positives.

Good luck.

Edit: geez I’m so glad I’ve gotten into the habit of saving before hitting reply. Annoying login again forum feature. >.>