Guild Wars 2

Unlike many of you I don’t have much experience with MMOs. Other than GW1 and GW2 my only previous MMO was Ultima Online, and I stopped playing that almost 15 years ago.

Just recently however I started playing one other and although it’s a good game and I’m really enjoying it the difference has made me really appreciate some features of GW2, things I had never really though about before or thought were now standard in MMOs.

(BTW I realise some/all of these may not be unique to GW2, but this is my list based on my experiences. Hopefully other people will add to and amend it.)

Guaranteed crafting success

• This one really surprised me. People often complain about crafting in GW2 being too expensive or time-consuming, but at least we never have to worry about putting in that time and money and getting nothing back. Imagine if you not only had to save up for materials to make an exotic or ascended item, but had to decide whether to pay 2 or 3 times more (at least) for guaranteed success or gamble with a lower chance and risk losing everything you put in. Imagine if there was no way to make it 100% sure at higher levels. Honestly I’ll take ascended time-gating over that any day.

Crafting material storage

• And the Deposit all materials option
• It makes inventory management so much easier. Even just the fact that there’s a whole class of items I don’t have to think about (with odd exceptions, if I want to sell a material rather than deposit it). But also the fact that it leaves my bank and inventory space free for items I actually want or I’m saving for a particular purpose rather than filling it with things I may need to use one day. Especially when I was new and didn’t really understand the crafting system, so I didn’t know what I should keep and what I could sell. I could save things until I knew without being unable to play because my inventory was full of materials.

Transmutation

• This other game is (IMO) beautiful and it has a lot of interesting armour sets, and possibilities for mix-and-match sets. Unfortunately none of that matters to me because I have to use the armour that gives the stats I need. There are limited possibilities for customisation through crafting, but nothing like I’ve gotten used to in GW2. I didn’t realise until it wasn’t an option how much I’ve come to like getting to choose my characters appearance.

No regular server down-time

• Saving the best two for last here. Admittedly I don’t know much about operating servers but this is the most impressive point on this list, IMO. I think I remember 3 or 4 occasions when GW1 was off-line for maintenance, and once in GW2. My new game is taken down for several hours once a week, more if there’s problems. I guess I just assumed whatever tech or server wizardry Anet uses was available to everyone else as well, but apparently not.
• And it does make a big difference. Here there may be mixed feelings on patch day, but at least everyone can look forward to trying the new content and having their hopes or fears confirmed or denied. There patch day is met with a sort of resignation that you’ll be doing something else that day because the game is unavailable, followed by the reactions to the actual content.

Hot fixes

• I know what you’re thinking. It’s some combination of “What? I can name at least 3 bugs from launch that have never been fixed!” and “What? I hate it when I’ve just updated the game, logged in and I get told I’m going to be kicked because there’s a launch-day patch!” But imagine if instead you were told they know there’s a bug, or several bugs, and they have managed to fix them, but you have to wait 5 days for the fix to be implemented because it’s Wednesday, maintenance happens on a Monday and they don’t consider these bugs serious enough to take the game offline for an additional 4 hours.

Danikat.8537:

Unlike many of you I don’t have much experience with MMOs. Other than GW1 and GW2 my only previous MMO was Ultima Online, and I stopped playing that almost 15 years ago.

Just recently however I started playing one other and although it’s a good game and I’m really enjoying it the difference has made me really appreciate some features of GW2, things I had never really though about before or thought were now standard in MMOs.

(BTW I realise some/all of these may not be unique to GW2, but this is my list based on my experiences. Hopefully other people will add to and amend it.)

Guaranteed crafting success

• This one really surprised me. People often complain about crafting in GW2 being too expensive or time-consuming, but at least we never have to worry about putting in that time and money and getting nothing back. Imagine if you not only had to save up for materials to make an exotic or ascended item, but had to decide whether to pay 2 or 3 times more (at least) for guaranteed success or gamble with a lower chance and risk losing everything you put in. Imagine if there was no way to make it 100% sure at higher levels. Honestly I’ll take ascended time-gating over that any day.

Crafting material storage

• And the Deposit all materials option
• It makes inventory management so much easier. Even just the fact that there’s a whole class of items I don’t have to think about (with odd exceptions, if I want to sell a material rather than deposit it). But also the fact that it leaves my bank and inventory space free for items I actually want or I’m saving for a particular purpose rather than filling it with things I may need to use one day. Especially when I was new and didn’t really understand the crafting system, so I didn’t know what I should keep and what I could sell. I could save things until I knew without being unable to play because my inventory was full of materials.

Transmutation

• This other game is (IMO) beautiful and it has a lot of interesting armour sets, and possibilities for mix-and-match sets. Unfortunately none of that matters to me because I have to use the armour that gives the stats I need. There are limited possibilities for customisation through crafting, but nothing like I’ve gotten used to in GW2. I didn’t realise until it wasn’t an option how much I’ve come to like getting to choose my characters appearance.

No regular server down-time

• Saving the best two for last here. Admittedly I don’t know much about operating servers but this is the most impressive point on this list, IMO. I think I remember 3 or 4 occasions when GW1 was off-line for maintenance, and once in GW2. My new game is taken down for several hours once a week, more if there’s problems. I guess I just assumed whatever tech or server wizardry Anet uses was available to everyone else as well, but apparently not.
• And it does make a big difference. Here there may be mixed feelings on patch day, but at least everyone can look forward to trying the new content and having their hopes or fears confirmed or denied. There patch day is met with a sort of resignation that you’ll be doing something else that day because the game is unavailable, followed by the reactions to the actual content.

Hot fixes

• I know what you’re thinking. It’s some combination of “What? I can name at least 3 bugs from launch that have never been fixed!” and “What? I hate it when I’ve just updated the game, logged in and I get told I’m going to be kicked because there’s a launch-day patch!” But imagine if instead you were told they know there’s a bug, or several bugs, and they have managed to fix them, but you have to wait 5 days for the fix to be implemented because it’s Wednesday, maintenance happens on a Monday and they don’t consider these bugs serious enough to take the game offline for an additional 4 hours.

what game?

Not taking the game down for maintenance, or updates (in which the game WARNS and WAITS a reasonable time before going down) are the top winners. Indeed, some master wizardry, but works f**** awesome, and they’re taking this further with new patching improvements (you can play while downloading, prioritizing what you want to download first).

Personally one of the biggest plusses for me is the TP. You can access it anywhere in the world, and sell anything I pick up without going into town. (Plus I like the format but I think there are people that don’t so I won’t include that)

The things I like best about Guild Wars 2 that I miss from most other MMOs include the inability to kill steal and the inability to node steal.

I still remember doing a quest I needed to get done early in Rift. I was waiting for a boss to spawn. Every time it spawned, someone would show up and tag it before I could. Doesn’t help that I’m in Australia, that extra half a second killed me. It happened five times in a row. I even tried to party with other people just so I could get credit. It took five minutes each time for that boss to respawn so for a relatively minor quest, I was stuck there.

The thing is, that’s part of what the quest hub system does to you. That’s how you get enough experience to level to get to the next quest hub. Guild Wars 2 did away with the whole quest hub thing. While I can wait for a world boss to show up, I don’t actually have to. I don’t have to do do any specific event to move forward. The amount of freedom this game actually gives you is staggering.

At times it seems some players forget that there isn’t a subscription or pay walls that other subscriptionless MMOs have. Then they get their knickers in a twist because the game has a cash shop with pretty baubles they want and that’s somehow unfair.

100% agree with what the op said. Anyone whose ever played wow would understand that both gw1 and gw2 are epic in comparision. people just like to complain.

ps: add to your list the living world story. Some qq that its not always that great or buggy but honestly its FREE NEW content every 2 weeks or so. Name one game that does that. WoW sure doesn’t and it has a subscription fee on the premise that it helps to pay for new content lol.

Last i checked no other mmo or even any video game i know of does this. this is a huge thing for the fans and players of gw2. Yet people still complain and take things for granted.

ps#2: legendary weapons… qq they are to hard to get or qq everyone has twilight. Get over it. Have you seen legendaries in other games… lol. The legendaries in gw2 look awesome compared to warcraft and other games. If anything thank anet for the awesome skins, and if everyone has a twilight then that just means wow anet you made an awesome epic looking legendary congrats on the great job making it!

I agree with OP, I started playing mmo’s maybe 10-11 years ago. Started with Kal Online, man that was one grindy kitten game with nothing much to do.

And then i played most of the well known ones, and even some of the less known ones.

Games with subscription, without subscription, Free to Play, Pay to Win, Toss your life asside if you want to be at least mediocre at this game, etc.

But the rewarding and pleasant experience in GW2, never found it anywere else. It’s a feeling of freedon, you get to 80 through so many alternatives, and when you reach 80 you do whatever you want, play the game how you want it.

Where in other games it’s either “Spend the next 3 years of your life grinding to reach Cap lvl, only to be increased further, and then grind again for 1 year, and even if you reach cap lvl there is nothing to do besides this one dungeon that drops something” or “Grind to 60, and have this gear, wait no i changed my mind, grind to 70 and have this gear, wait no, grind to 80 and change ur gear again, wait no…grind to 90”

But somehow GW2 players are so entitled that i can’t belive it.

its not people taking for granted its just people seem to be unsatisfied with everything now… this game offers a ton to do for all types of people and yeah there are things that can be better. All in all this game u get bored leave come back i always have been playing since launch whenever i feel like it other than pve needing to be more challenging this game is great imo.

Xfusion.2931:

its not people taking for granted its just people seem to be unsatisfied with everything now… this game offers a ton to do for all types of people and yeah there are things that can be better. All in all this game u get bored leave come back i always have been playing since launch whenever i feel like it other than pve needing to be more challenging this game is great imo.

Well to be fair, the game was challanging, but then people started whining about it beeing to hard, until everything got nerfed into the ground.

Nowadays, almost everyone hast ascended or at least exotic armor, and runs dungeons he has already run dozens of times so of course it is easier. Thats why I really hope for HoT to have new dungeons, because I remember how much of a challange p4 of twilight arbor was once it was released, or the fractals that came after the game was released still are challanging(some more, some less, but the Dredge-fractal and/or Grawl fractal still kick my kitten sometimes) so I we shall see if HoT brings challange back to gw-2 ^^

1. Very few modern MMO have a chance of failure in their crafting systems.
2. GW2 has massively more crafting materials than most other MMOs, less materials mean you dont need an extra storage for them
3. Transmutation is a common feature of MMOs in recent years.
4. No regular server downtime is indeed very nice.
5. There are quite a few bugs that exist since release.

The things I really appreciate in GW2 are as follows:

1) Truly cooperative PvE. You welcome other players rather than shun them. You do not have to compete against other players in PvE, which is a feature the genre has been needing for years, and it always surprises me when I see new games not following suit.

2) WvW and PvP that you can access almost straight after character creation and from anywhere. For PvP, the fact you do not need to progess in order to compete on equal footing, with higher level players, is just the best. And I love how you can jump into PvP and WvW from anywhere. No need to go to a special hub or specific city to join a game. Hell, you can even jump straight into a PvP match from PvE!

3) Freedom to customize the look and colour of your armour. I would love to see dyable weapons too, but the transmutation system alone is very much appreciated.

4) More and more account bound rewards and systems. For an altaholic like myself, account bound is music to my ears. Very few games have an account bound focus, so I am very happy that Anet are moving in this direction more and more.

5) While the fast paced combat is not unique to GW2, it is by far the best there is at the moment. No other MMO I have played since playing GW2, has had a combat system that felt as fluid and fun. GW2 is now the gold standard in combat with which I rate all other MMOs by.

I think out of everything the combat offers in GW2 the thing that I miss most in other games is the dodging. While other games have implemented dodging, none (so far) have got it right. They are either sluggish and unsatisfying to use or no where near as effective as the dodging in GW2. Dodging in GW2 just feels right, and no other game has got it feeling that good yet.

6) Waypoints. While some feel this breaks immersion or makes the world feel smaller, I love how you can quickly join up with friends to do any activity you want, without having to travel for hours trying to meet up or get to the activity. The total freedom of movement across the world is a brilliant feature, and one I really miss in some MMO’s.

There are lots of other features in GW2 I miss in other MMO’s, but I would say the above are the biggest things for me.

After dabbling in SWTOR the other week when a friend wanted me to join in playing it with them, I realised a few things I take for granted in GW2.

• Dodging
• The dynamic combat system
• The scrapping of the old quest system
• Our Hero panel and inventory UI
• Our vast customisation system

Everyone having the ability to Rezz.
No corpse runs. (flashback to EQ1)
You have to try extra hard to be a kitten kitten in this game.

Vayne.8563:

The things I like best about Guild Wars 2 that I miss from most other MMOs include the inability to kill steal and the inability to node steal.

I still remember doing a quest I needed to get done early in Rift. I was waiting for a boss to spawn. Every time it spawned, someone would show up and tag it before I could. Doesn’t help that I’m in Australia, that extra half a second killed me. It happened five times in a row. I even tried to party with other people just so I could get credit. It took five minutes each time for that boss to respawn so for a relatively minor quest, I was stuck there.

The thing is, that’s part of what the quest hub system does to you. That’s how you get enough experience to level to get to the next quest hub. Guild Wars 2 did away with the whole quest hub thing. While I can wait for a world boss to show up, I don’t actually have to. I don’t have to do do any specific event to move forward. The amount of freedom this game actually gives you is staggering.

That’s a very good point too.

Especially because it can have a knock-on effect on the community. One of the reasons I got put off WoW when I did a free trial (years ago now) was whenever I finally found someone else playing in the starting area I’d try to talk to them and get told to leave. They’d say please (or ‘pls’), but still didn’t want me talking to them or playing anywhere near them. It took a while before I understood that’s because if I tagged enemies they needed it would drastically slow down their quest completion.

In this game at the absolute worst another person showing up has no impact on you at all. Quite often another person is a good thing.

I was watching my friend play Arch Age shortly after launch, which mainly consisted of standing in queues waiting for their turn to kill the boss and it just seemed so strange to me that a new game would do that when the technology is available to allow everyone to kill it together, and get credit. Sure it might be easier but I find it hard to believe anyone finds the ‘challenge’ of fighting a boss solo justifies standing there waiting for your turn to do it.

phys.7689:

what game?

I didn’t name it because I didn’t want this thread to be about basing some random MMO for not being more like GW2. Which was actually my first impulse – I was going to go onto their forum and complain that the game doesn’t do these things, until I remembered how well that goes over here.

What players complain about having to log off for a hot fix and log back on??? I have never encountered this. Especially since its dynamic to what you are doing. You in a dungeon? We will give you a couple hours. You in open world? Well give you 15-30 minutes.

I love how it is not, YOU MUST GET OFF NOW! TO BAD YOUR ALMOST DONE WITH THAT DUNGEON!

Man I forgot about games where crafting could fail! So glad we don’t have to deal with that.

• Being able to buy/sell individual items from a whole stack
• Being able to place buy orders
• Being able to use your scroll mouse to scroll chat window (this seems SO basic, but some games still don’t have this..)
• Being able to play with people across multiple servers
• No regular downtime for maintenance (I know this was mentioned already, but it’s huge!)

The dodge mechanic has ruined other games for me. I played GW2 for half a year and went to try to play another game I was casually playing at the time and all I kept trying to do was to dodge. It’s such a simple looking mechanic but man does it change my perspective of game play. I don’t want to stand there and out damage an enemy by soaking up health/mana potions anymore.

I agree with the OP…especially about the 100% crafting. Having to invest in items that lower a chance of crafting breakage, spending real money on these things, is absurd but that’s how those ‘free to play’ games work.

For me, it’s build templates! Oh wait…

Gruocs.3412:

For me, it’s build templates! Oh wait…

Maybe one day, my friend

I’ve got a good one. Updates that don’t get pushed back 6 days and still have more bugs than a Mississippi bayou on a hot summer day.