Guild Wars 2

Oh right! Almost forgot!

TL;DR: This game is fabulous!

Subtle and clever. Sadly I fear it will be lost on most who read it.

I often see posts asking why anyone still plays this game. Examples like this are why.

I have never played an MMO where I am glad to see other players show up. Or where I actually ask players to join me while doing PvE. And more often than not, I find that players respond to the calls.

Just last night I ran into a couple people trying to kill the ghost boss Horace in Lord Baradin’s tomb. I joined in but we kept getting our butts kicked. Finally I send out a call on /map asking if anyone wanted to join in.

The next thing I know more people show up and we pounded Horace into the ground. This was on a weekday, in a lower level zone and later in the evening. So much for the claims the game is ‘dying’ or the community is weak.

In the end we all got the chest and finally I got those resource nodes that had been taunting me. And all this was after I had some great PvP fights in WvWvW.

I’ve tried dozens of MMOs over the years and none has been able to provided this kind of experience.

That’s why I’m playing GW2.

The nicest post I’ve seen all day

Good to see other players that share my feelings! I kind of feel sad with so many negative threads, and yet every time I log in I get this feeling that something awesome is going to happen in-game, and that feeling never disappoints me!

I actually take joy in helping lower level players and wandering around in lower level areas! Think I totally get what ANet aimed for!

Recently I decided to complete all the jumping puzzle achievements. This has lead me to see some of the coolest world building in any MMO I have seen. They took the time to actually design the WHOLE zone instead of just using the clone brush to copy parts over and over again.

Ah yes, totally forgot about the first Jumping Puzzle I did! It was last Friday, in Lions Arch.

A friend of mine already had done it and wanted to show me. It involved following a ghost around while we went trough fake walls and such! It was HILARIOUS and amazing at the same time lol

I kept laughing a lot specially every time I fell from some rocks!

This is the kind of stuff I love to see in game, and was my favourite part about finishing my map completion.

Being a Charr, i had only really seen the plains of ashford and hadn’t really touched the other starter areas much until I hit level 80 and decided I wanted to complete the map. I loved going back and helping out the low levels with tough boss fights and events.

My favourite was in harathi hinterlands, I came across an event to hold the line against the oncoming centaurs that only one player was currently helping with. he was getting swamped by centaurs, so me being the full flame legion beserker armored warrior charr that I was flew in with my vigil greatsword and helped even the odds in the fight.

As the event chain continued we pushed the centaurs back to their main camp only to get our kitten handed to us by the chief centaur. We picked ourselves back up, dusted ourselves off and called for some reinforcements in /map, and not a minute later people started charging in with us and in no time we beat the pants off our former adversary.

Awesome moments like this I just don’t get in another game.

And that’s why I am playing GW2

chakan; GW2 is perfect for casuals. its like skyrim, multplayer, with a hint of jrpg.

but, here, we’re dealing with people that play 10 times (if not more) than you.
you d be surprised to know how many players actually already lvled to 80, finished the main story have 100% map completion and have their armor set.

arenanet couldnt design for them;
be it a good horizontal progression,
or more options/ranking/menus in pvp,
or more statistic/ranks/roles in wvw.

they just… were happy like you.
and me.

but not the horde of players that come from “the wow”.
which is, btw, the most popular game of the last decade.
it aint a small feat to tackle it.

Avatar (first of, is your name Avatar from Ultima series or from the movie? :P), I totally understand what you are saying, and I can’t disagree with you simply because I don’t have the arguments to do it. Like I said, I can only play for some hours per month (really, I must have only played for like 5-10 hours this month, IF!) so I can’t say I’m one of the unpleased hardcore players.

But we all knew that we weren’t being presented with another WoW clone, rather than a different take in direction of general MMORPG gaming. This game is supposed to be played differently, specially in the social aspect of it (in my opinion).

Like mentioned, I take extreme pleasure in helping players in need, conquering events and exploring each area to 100%. When I’m done with it, I don’t really know what I will be doing, but ANet seems to be adding new stuff and the game as only been out for what…nearly 3 months? It’s a MMORPG without any subscription fee and we are having new content already!

This is not a rant against angry players. Everyone has their reasons to be mad. This is just me trying to share my great experiences with the game, rather than finding more and more stuff to be annoyed with!

Chackan, you’ve hit the nail on the head with much of your posts in this thread (which is great, btw). Avatar is equally as correct, though. While a large number of us knew it wasn’t going to be like WoW, many players came from the WoW mentality and prefer that style and thus GW2 wasn’t the game for them. That’s ok too. For those of us who got the game we were looking for, we’re a pretty happy lot.

Well thanks JDKenada! Yes, I understand what Avatar is saying. If I came here thinking that this was a WoW clone I myself would leave very very disappointed. But that’s the thing, players both criticize that model while at the same time they don’t really know how to “live” with a different model.

Which is normal really, we have been presented with this way of playing MMORPGs for so long, it’s hard to quit the old habits. It’s like learning to drive with a joystick instead of driving with a driving wheel lol. But this really couldn’t be avoided!

I think that ANet took knowledge of that and is now trying to please both worlds, introducing new gear and new zones. Let’s see how they fair on that, but the time I will take to reach that level is going to be years from now or something :P

Plus one <3. This is how I feel.

Great post!! Viva la Casual gamer! GW2 Rocks at this, one of the best ever in my opinion.

Hehe, nice to see more happy people :P We need more threads like this one lol

What is this??! A happy post? NO I won’t have it. Not allowed around here.

haha Just kidding.

I’m by no means a hardcore player that said some time in the next week or so I’ll have logged 1000 hours (I’m disabled and can’t walk very well so I have a lot of time to spend). I only have one level 80 and she’s sitting at only 83% map completion. A huge portion of my time is spent just chatting with people or wandering around Tyria. I’m always finding either new events, places or puzzles I hadn’t seen before. GW2 is an amazing game and I’m looking forward to enjoying it for many years to come.

This is the first time on these forums that i have felt obliged to post. i agree with everything said by the op – the game is spectacular and unique in the ‘good vibe’ provided by the interractions of what i would term the ‘non-hardcore’ community. From my first 50+ man fight with the shatterer i was sold. thanks a-net!

This is one of the beauty of GW2, player helping player and able to make amazing adventures, keep it up!

Today myself and another player ran into a vet ice imp that was a pain, so we backed off and asked for help. Enough ppl showed to kill it and then we all ran in a group to get some of the other stuff. Later another player and I took on a different vet. I love the collaboration in this game! I helped someone out the other day with their story. Just randomly asked me to help so I did.

This is how I feel too OP.
It just makes me happy to play every time I log in- My husband and I have had some awesome adventures in Tyria.
Great post.
subtle too

Chackan.2813:

Good to see other players that share my feelings! I kind of feel sad with so many negative threads, and yet every time I log in I get this feeling that something awesome is going to happen in-game, and that feeling never disappoints me!

I actually take joy in helping lower level players and wandering around in lower level areas! Think I totally get what ANet aimed for!

And now you see the light.

People in game don’t actually care about the new tier as much as forum goers do. People who truly love the game could not care less what comes out so long as its new, its not completely game breaking and it give them something to do.

This game is amazing for the exploration and interaction with other players in the open world. I love so much about it, which is why I am still here, even though I am in a rut with my main character and can find no reason to log her in. Just to grind in a zones I hate for gear that is unattainable for my casual play hours. shrug ..at least I am liking my alts. I am so impatient for new lands to explore…100% the map is fun the first time…

OP is right on spot.
This is the only MMO I played that you can actually have only 15 minutes to play and it’s enough for a chain of 2-3 dynamic events, a heart, while playing with other people without the fuss of group forming, and racing towards the mobs to be the first to tap them.
Just roam around, see the action, jump in, do some pew pew and/or fist spreading, collect your reward, say thanks, and move on, no strings attached.
perfect and fun for the casual players.

I can’t quote because of some network limitations that don’t let me see images (and the quote button is an image, so… :P) but to those referring to helping other players: that’s one of the best things, makes me feel like I’m really in a large community. Every time I reach an obstacle I start asking for help. The first time this happened was with a Champion Troll (I think) in some caves in Queensdale. I was playing with a mate, and got beat up by that kitten. Then another player appeared, and another, and yet another! Soon we were dozens just torturing that son of a troll! First time I’ve seen something like that happen in a long time!

Maybe it’s just me, I came from Ultima Online (alongside other MMORPGs of course, but UO was one of my BIG 3 – UO, Guild Wars, Lineage 2) so player interaction was one of the things I most appreciated in a MMORPG. In Lineage 2 we only saw players killing mobs, all over again. In GW (and mind you, I love that game with all my heart) we were limited to instances. In UO anything could happen! It was a really truly living world! Playing GW2, finding myself in an ambush or dangerous event, watching other players arriving to help…just brings me back to those good old UO times!

As for the new gear and stuff, honestly I can’t say I understand all the negative behavior round it! It’s still optional (although it seems that new dungeon requires new gear, or something) and I even haven’t done one single Dungeon (yeah, even AC!) so this must be my casual side speaking lol :P But it really doesn’t seem like a bad thing! New gear, new dungeon, new mechanics!

Again, this is just my humble opinion, and I’m a casual player, so I’m not trying to turn down every hardcore unpleased gamer!