Guild Wars 2

Hi,

This is a question for Veterans of MMOs.

Who of you remembers “camps” in older MMOs?

Remember the hours spent sitting with friends while you killed Orcs on the Orc Highway in Ro, Water Beatles and Pookha in Connacht? What about your first time through a Satyr camp in Ashenvale?
Remember when there was such a thing as Face Pulling? Or the Rogue Rabbit in Upper Black Rock Spire?
Remember needing a Mage for Polymorph and a Rogue with talent points into Sap to do Living Section of Stratholme?

How about the days you spent getting enough Silk for bandages, skilling up Tailoring, or just making a little profit for yourself off creatures that actually dropped it: Bloodscalp Trolls in Stranglethorn Vale for instance. Or how about leveling cooking that final bit when it still capped off at 300 and you had discovered Moonkin Eggs were just amazing (both to sell and to eat).

Question 1:
- Who would really like to see camping come back as part of the game? Actually going some place, taking a seat with some friends, and getting to work enjoying the challenge of this particular set of creatures?

Where’d you cap fishing for the first time? For my first time, ever in an MMO, it was Erudin with some friends where we’d go sit, chat, and discuss our experiences in playing over the last week.

Do you remember how you came to find Nat Pagle outside Theramore?

What was it like the first time you ever saw “your evil twin”?

Do you remember the first time your “ultra-safe teleporter” delivered you 200 meters above where you thought you were going?

For me, all of this reminds me of how isolated other MMOs were before they decided to put teleports everywhere instead of giving teleport to a player or an NPC in a capital city. I rezzed a person today near the Shattered Palisades today and for just a moment had this waft of nostalgia when rezzing someone was more than a kindness…

Question 2:
- What’s missing from the community experience for you?

I’ve been farming a lot of Empyreal Fragments. This has lead to me appreciating how systematically every zone has at least a few locations where I can go and collect them. I’ve seen some areas I never knew existed before (even after 100%ing the map on 7 characters, two legendaries, and more ascended crafting than I care to think about). It was refreshing to discover there are still hoards of places and aspects to adventuring I haven’t run into yet.

For all this, I was doing this because I saw three AC groups listed in as many hours today. Dungeons have never been fun, but it was sad to realize there really isn’t much to do that involves people or finding a way to make that close knit group of friends that I have had in all the other games I’ve played.

Question 3:
What giant vacuums have you come across in this game that you’ve not found in other games?

Question 4:

What aspects of this game really shine for you and make it worth playing?

For me,
Jumping Puzzles have been great.
Until recently, the firm security of not having to constantly armor grind just to play the game was a keeping me here.
The ability to Transmute. WvW was my main passion until the new Traits came along and wiped out my favorite characters (and primaries).
Fractals have been a lot of fun, though finding a group of friends that continues to play the game has always been difficult and increasingly so this last year and a half.
The thorough attention to detail has always surprised me, I dearly love it: I only just discovered the Basilisk Den inside the cliff beside Vigil Keep today.
Probably a lot about having a limited number of skills on my bar, but always wishing they were better planned and that there were more of them.

I don’t know if I’m a veteran. I’ve been playing MMOs for about…15 years? Thereabouts?

1. Apart from a few veteran/champion creatures and group events, is there really anything on the ( PVE ) map that would require camping? Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anything. Do I miss it? I don’t know. Players do tend to come together and in the loosest sense work together for events. Personally, I play this game like I’d play a single player – absolutely no interest in PVP, lemme explore the map, other players = other characters, if I meet friendly strangers yay, if not, no loss. Strangely enough, this leads me to #2 and #3:

2/3. The biggest vacuum for me is the absence of dungeon runs, both community- and game wise. That was one thing I was looking forward to when I started playing GW2, and was disappointed to find out isn’t really done. Granted, I’d read before I started that a lot of players prefer speed runs, but I hadn’t expected to have SO MUCH TROUBLE getting together a group of players for a lazy, yes-we-will-kill-every-mob-because-we-can, run. I know dungeons aren’t everyone’s cup of tea and can get very tedious, especially if you’re farming something, but…well, let me put it this way: I have 2x lvl 80 toons, a couple of lower level toons, and on not a single one of them have I seen anyone in map chat asking for X dungeon. And that’s just a little weird to me. Even outside of guilds, in the games I played I always saw people trying to get together dungeon runs.

I have also found a vacuum of e-diots on GW2. Something which other games, quite frankly, have in overabundance. Yes, there will be the weird oddball spouting nonsense, yes, I’ve had players throw insults, but in general the player population of this game seems…nicer? More laid-back? ( Wait till I actually get to do dungeons, I might change my mind then )

4. The giant map. The hundreds of quests. The levelling. For me personally, that’s a selling point. I’m a pure PVEr and in this aspect, this game is great for me. I play this game when I get back home from work, when I want to relax and have fun.

I can go farm, I can go explore, I can try Jumping Puzzles ( and horribly fail, most of the time ), I can do the personal story or let it sit until I’ve reached lvl 80 – this game is what you make it. Wanna craft? Craft away. Wanna PVP? Go for it. Wanna be a lazy slob like me and just bounce around the map…well, there’s aforementioned giant map.

Class-wise, I’m a bit meh about it though. I sometimes wish the meta wouldn’t exist, at least not to the point where classes are exempt from it by design. I’m kind of used to the holy trinity and its inevitable transmutation, when people figure out the ins and outs of classes: whoever ends up with aggro, tanks. The rest either heal or DD. So I’m used to playing in a style where it didn’t matter so much what you were playing, as how you were playing. Then again, that’s a personal preference, and so far the meta hasn’t had any negative or positive influence on my gameplay, so I’m mostly ignoring it and just play however the heck I want.

camping, not really. most of the time we are fighting over spots.

Eirdyne.9843:

…Snip…

Well the funny thing is that you are taking everything from WoW wich is well… WoW.

Why I call myself a Veteran.
Started my MMO days with Ultima Online for a few months then went to WoW later and played that for a year, after that I was hopping around many MMO’s like SWG, RuneScape, Vanguard, EQII, CoH/V, Flyff, ROSE Online, GW1 and more. Latest MMOrpg before GW2 I played was LoTRO and I played it for almost seven years after this my girlfriend got me GW2 as a birthdaygift so we started playing it together on the 3days heastart and been playing it since then but I have tried other MMO’s after that but I feel that I can’t go back to the usuall MMOrpg’s anymore but anyway after GW2 I have also played SwtoR, ESO, Champions online(off and on for two years), STO, Defiance(Not realy the usuall RPG but it has it’s elements), Scarlet Blade and Trove. Even though I played all those MMO’s after GW2 I have still played GW2 almost everyday since it release.

Q: Who would really like to see camping come back as part of the game? Actually going some place, taking a seat with some friends, and getting to work enjoying the challenge of this particular set of creatures?

A: I can’t answer to who would but I can say that I wouldn’t like that. Challangeing Dungeons, Events and story instances yes but not just a single place with the same sort of enemies that would end up in some silly farm.

Q: What’s missing from the community experience for you?

A: Can’t think of anything just now, as a community friendly game as GW2 is it has it all. The only game that gave me some kind of special feelings was LoTRO as it was/is based on LoTR and it is cool to be able to visit know places from the books. But GW2 has it too as it is nice to see places you remember from GW1 and stuff. GW2 also has a lot of useless but cool secret places to discover for your own enyojment but other MMO’s usually don’t have to many of these (I guess I don’t really understand the question).

Q: What giant vacuums have you come across in this game that you’ve not found in other games?

A: Groupwise content I havent fealt the absence of it, I mostly play together with friends and we always find stuff to do together. Even if the content is managable with one player doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it as a team. There are a few spots in the game where playing in a team has been a hinderence instead of a good experience for example with some Hearts (Tasks) where you have to collect stuff and it disupears when another player picks it up and you have to wait for respawn. But you said not found in other games, so I can’t think of any (feels like I didn’t understand this question iether).

Q: What aspects of this game really shine for you and make it worth playing?

A: Oh there is so many! I will make a list of stuff.

- No vertical progression.
- Awesome Dev team. Friendly, funny, Human, honest and more (I know many don’t agree but this is my opinion).
- easy access to PvP, WvW.
- PvP where player skill is the base factor and not the gear.
- No quests.
- Very few requirements to farm, I can just play the game wherever I want and finally get most of the stuff in the end.
- No requirements to grind gear to enjoy the story and level up to 80.
- Jumping Puzzles and Mini Dungeons hidden all around the world.
- Guild Missions.
- Waypoints instead of pocketmounts.
- Megaservers.
- Wardrobe system (This is rather awesome).
- No full requirement for a trinity team.
- Fast spaced combat system, no rooted when casting every skill.

There is more but those are the ones I could think of right now.

The only “camp” I know is people waiting for Tequatl half an hour before the spawn of the event.

This is not WoW Op, get use to it.

Camping is something I wouldnt want to see returned. That said I can understand its nostalgia value. I still occasionally return to Anarchy Online and remember some of the social and boss camping sites and feel the twang of the old skool.

As for 3 and 4, it comes down to the action combat, fluid gameplay and the dynamic events system. The gfx used to be a big part, but i am increasingly finding them dated which is a real shame. A big part of why I play is the relevance of all content. Going to Lotro, there is no reward in replaying Moria despite being mind blowingly awesome first time through. Here I can play anywhere in the map thanks to the scaling system.

I camped a lot in “EverCamp 2” .. and no thanks .. i dont really miss that part of the game.

1. No. Camping is a result of a flaw in early, primitive MMO mechanics.
2. The Mega server has created a lack of server identity outside of WvW.
3. Grouping outside of dungeons/raid/fractal instanced content has much less desire than other MMo’s I played.
4. Too many to list? I would say no vertical progression, account bound achievements. Action combat.

Player localization is something I miss from older games. Now anyone is everywhere or can be in seconds. Before people found areas they liked and “lived” there, it wasn’t for camping or farming(metaphorically speaking, there was actual farming) reasons. When you decided to relocate it was a major decision and could be risky/costly. While some may see that as a flaw, one thing it did create was little communities and sense of purpose. One would say a “living world”.

There are actually only a few things I really like about GW2. The dynamic event system is good, the combat is fun, visually it’s well done, but most things people seem to rave about in GW2 I personally somewhat despise.

Guild Wars 2 is not primed for a good community. With mega servers, rotating WvWvW servers and the fact a person can join more than one guild hurts it a lot. Further, you can’t craft gear for friends, half the items aren’t tradeable, nearly all the currencies aren’t tradeable and you can’t help friends get items they need because of this games RNG. You can’t do people the epic favors of the past. I finally am good with money, wouldn’t it be awesome to craft the best stuff for my guild mates? Everything can be done solo in this game, and in fact it most certainly seems encouraged.

The in game community in this game is a joke compared to MMORPGS of the past.

Q: Who would really like to see camping come back as part of the game? Actually going some place, taking a seat with some friends, and getting to work enjoying the challenge of this particular set of creatures?

A: I would not like to see camps again. However, camping was an awesome way to “bond” with people, and GW2 is in desperate need for something to fill that void.

Q: What’s missing from the community experience for you?

A: All the reasons I listed above.

Q: What giant vacuums have you come across in this game that you’ve not found in other games?

A: The biggest void is a rule set and content that allow my first paragraph to happen. That is the only critical flaw of this game to me.

Q: What aspects of this game really shine for you and make it worth playing?
A: class design, the combat system (WvWvW), the graphics and the legendary weapons are outstanding in my opinion.

EDIT: Primary games were DAOC and Warhammer Online.

ionix.9054:

Guild Wars 2 is not primed for a good community. With mega servers, rotating WvWvW servers and the fact a person can join more than one guild hurts it a lot. Further, you can’t craft gear for friends, half the items aren’t tradeable, nearly all the currencies aren’t tradeable and you can’t help friends get items they need because of this games RNG. You can’t do people the epic favors of the past. I finally am good with money, wouldn’t it be awesome to craft the best stuff for my guild mates? Everything can be done solo in this game, and in fact it most certainly seems encouraged.

The in game community in this game is a joke compared to MMORPGS of the past.

Q: Who would really like to see camping come back as part of the game? Actually going some place, taking a seat with some friends, and getting to work enjoying the challenge of this particular set of creatures?

A: I would not like to see camps again. However, camping was an awesome way to “bond” with people, and GW2 is in desperate need for something to fill that void.

Q: What’s missing from the community experience for you?

A: All the reasons I listed above.

Q: What giant vacuums have you come across in this game that you’ve not found in other games?

A: The biggest void is a rule set and content that allow my first paragraph to happen. That is the only critical flaw of this game to me.

Q: What aspects of this game really shine for you and make it worth playing?
A: class design, the combat system (WvWvW), the graphics and the legendary weapons are outstanding in my opinion.

You and I have very different opinions on this game as far as community go’s. I’ve found that if you join a decent guild that’s all the community you need. Helping randoms while out and about, is good for the soul. Plus you never know when they might repay your kindness, I help one person out months ago with crafting mats, they where just getting started and was asking questions about how crafting worked. To I gave them a truck load of T1 mats to get them started, as it was just siting in my bank taking up space, so they where helping me too. I said I wanted. Nothing for the mats, just to pay it forward.

Then a few days ago, I get an in game mail, with 5g in it. It was from the guy I’d helped. He wanted to thank me for my help, and wanted me to take the 5 gold for being kind.

I remember camping fondly.

First off to a lot of the replies… a lot of what he was talking about came from EQ long before WoW.

Do I want it back? Hmmm probably not. Camping requires a high level of artificial difficulty, a hard coded trinity system, and severe punishments for death generally.

I’ll get back to you when I get 120 slayer.

Mightybird.6034:

First off to a lot of the replies… a lot of what he was talking about came from EQ long before WoW.

Ye, and dark age of camelot apperently. I am sorry I made a kittenumption as I thought I recogniced the names from WoW and then I saw Q2 I just thought it was all WoW. I googled the named instead and I take back what I said about only WoW statement, But the rest of my post was not false and it was on topic.

Answer 1) I used to camp orcs outside of Freeport, it was a lot of fun, it was also extremely dull and exclusive, not inclusive. It didn’t bring the community together, it caused short term cliques. Sure, those guys where your friends for a while, and you might hook up with them again down the line, but they’re just as likely to have nothing to do with you later, or to outpace you so significantly that you’ll never interact again.

Having special ways to get around whole controlled by specific classes and therefor only a fraction of the population is also not endearing. Not when they have free range to charge exorbitant prices for the “service.” We have this to a small degree with Mesmers, but it’s kept in check by their inability to define who can use their portal and who can’t.

Answer 2) What the community needs is more RP features. Give the ability to interact outside of combat and it will actually make a difference, even to people who don’t RP.

Answer 3) I’m content to be a solo player, so I don’t know. I’ve always been in a guild, but I’ve never needed one particularly.

Answer 4) Jumping Puzzles, Collections, Projects that take materials from all over the world and doing missions and other activities in order to complete. I loved Mawdrey. I’m working on Bioluminescence now. I’m especially looking forward to the new Legendary Masteries.

A lot of what you listed were great things and bring back a lot of nostalgia for me and others. I can also tell you that at this point in my life I would quit any game that had similar mechanics to what I used to enjoy.

That stuff was great back then, but the genre has evolved as has the player base.

I think where a lot of MMOs fail is that they try too hard to recapture the nostalgia of previous games, thus ending up as a clone. There’s a reason those games aren’t popular. It’s because its been done. It was great back then, but its old and tired.

A few things which I not necessarily want in GW2 but sometimes miss:

1) The old tank/healer/dps trinity, being forced to rely on eachother. Socializing isn’t as natural as it was in older MMOs and open world parties exist for LFG-taxis and anti-dc.

2) The uniqueness of items. Almost everything can be obtained on the trading post and gem store. A good variety of skins that use the collection/achievement system and give you the feeling of “whoa, this player is really dedicated to X”.

3) Visuals for stuff like WvW ranks or the amount of completed champion titles/won games in PvP that can be seen by other players. I’m talking special symbols next to your name like the star you get from world completion.

If you want camping to come back lets also bring back…

Global Free for all looting – everyone has access to loot, whoever hits F first gets it!

EXP loss on Death – death tax.

Underwater breathing spells only, you dont have the spell ready you choke to death

Mana regeneration via looking at a full screen Magic Book…while you get crit to death by that wondering skeleton!

Corpse Runs with a Corpse decay timer. If you don’t retrieve your corpse in 8 hours you lose all your stuffs!

NPC Mob trains that will hit anything they touch. Perfect for hazing your noob friends!

Character inventory weight limitations. So that when players beg for Gold we can down convert it to 1,000,000 copper and they are forced to delete that 10g in order to move to the bank! Another fun hazing!

NPC Regard table – Faction control. As you kill * number of Y mob you gain hatred with their race, making you Kill on Sight in areas of the game that they inhabit! Nothing like killing snakemen all over the place, to have to sneak into their home town hated to talk to a captured NPC for a key Class quest!

and soo many more….

No thanks!

I’m good with not having to camp for Ranger pets like in WoW.

Nice intention,but it could easily show the worst sides of people and was easily trolled.

DaOC / Redcaps Grab a PAC healer + 2 suppression Spiritmasters = tons of exp and quick levels. Several sources outside in RvR zones as well that allowed similar pulls of non stop exp.

Darkness Falls similar when you controlled entry or managed to play cat and mouse to survive when you logged in and lost it. Other MMO’s had similar places.

GW2 has champ farming routes and EoTM.

I’ll pass on most of the more “classic” elements of MMO play as some people have coined them. Frankly, I view most of them as primitive and poor design in regards to sustainability and their effects on player retention and churning.

When I initially read “camping” I thought the OP was talking about needing to actually clear an area and rest like in RSC. That may be interesting as a concept in huge persistent worlds, but GW2’s isn’t so large as to need it. Monster camp/grind, though… those are horrible things I plan to never experience again in MMO’s. I’ve moved mostly to tabletops at this point because the grind is unnecessary and lacks any kind of depth or substance outside of forcing perspective that is already immediately noticeable from a numbers and mechanics point-of-view.

ah, a brief moment of happy nostalgia remembering the good times my group and i had camping a frenzied ghoul for my first fbss and figuring out najena for the first time.

but, then i remember horrible camps like rastor of guk for the monk epic, lord gimblox for the cleric epic, and all of the fighting that camps caused. i remember that i am 29 years old now and i don’t have endless free time.

i don’t want to deal with camps ever again, but i will appreciate that i was able to experience them once upon a time.

Having cut my MMO teeth on the original EQ (shortly after launch) and having spent a good amount of time at EQ2, DAoC, WoW, Horizons (later known as Istaria), Vanguard, LotRO, FFXI, FFXIV and probably a few more, I suppose I could be considered an MMO vet. And I must admit, there are times when I do miss traditional camps. Camping provided a great opportunity to get to know people. Some of my best game-friendships began as pug-members. I also enjoyed the opportunity to sit still, letting the pullers pull to the group rather than being constantly on the move. Between camps and the trinity, there was a real reason to group up, which I don’t really see in (PvE) GW2.

I also miss being able to trade with other players or drop items on the ground for newbies to “find”. I enjoyed taxi rides and learning languages. I didn’t even mind weight restrictions or paying for repairs on busted equipment.

However, as others have pointed out, however, camps came coupled with so many other horrible game aspects: kill stealing, node stealing, naked corpse runs, de-leveling and so much more.

Now that I’m playing GW2, I’m absolutely reveling in the freedom granted to me. As noted in the second post, my preferred playstyle is solo. Since I do 100% PvE (no PvP, dungeons or WvW), there’s no real need for me to group up. I cherish my independence and the ability to do for myself. I understand I’m playing a multiplayer game but I prefer to play it on my own terms, independent and able to go where I want, when I want. I love the ability to start, and more importantly, to stop whenever I want without having to ask permission, give explanations or make excuses.

Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy interacting with others via chats and the occasional RP (either observing or participating), but I prefer to be able to move about without having to worry about how my movements affect others.

If I want those other aspects (forced grouping, camps, node-stealing and so forth), there are plenty of other places to find them. For now, GW2 is a refreshing change. Except for the vistas. I could easily do without the jumping vistas.

Its interesting to see the list of MMOs mentioned in posts here; I’ve never done any of those. Just Myst Online (2004-2009) and Eve Online (2009-2012) to any major degree, though its been a coin toss about my experience during Second Life’s early years (2004 – circa 2008) too. ;-)

In both of those games, camping (as y’all know it) does not exist. In fact, in Eve, ‘camping’ tended to be a hunt for other players, especially at borders in NullSec. Farming in Eve was just missions or pirate hunting, and again certain types of large-scale (i.e. Destroyer Wolfpack) PvP roaming for fun. In fact, if Eve did not have a subscription I’d probably be back doing the casual-level stuff I liked to do there.

This is why I’ve always felt that nothing in any MMO feels hardcore anymore. Because, for me, Eve’s high-end Meta (the stuff that wandered into RL social engineering levels) was the ultimate in Hardcore. That’s also why I loved WvW here, its a vacation in comparison, and with the right group is amazingly fun too.

Myst Online is the exact opposite – Effectively a multiplayer puzzler/adventure with a heavy social aspect. Its fun in its own way too, because you had to challenge yourself to help make the content sometimes. And I loved to help others there, and just chat with folks. Made a lot of good friends, many of whom have passed on sadly. What I brought over from that game is the reminder to be helpful, and remembering that I play online games for fun – with others, preferably over a voice chat.

To clarify for people who think I’m talking about WoW: perhaps you should read more carefully. Orc Highway is Everquest 1, 1999 to be exact. Water Beatles and Pookha in Connacht is from Dark Age of Camelot 2001. If you did these you’d know why I spoke about them as I did and no more: lots of fun, but fixed right in the middle of two level ranges that will be filtered if I name them. They were a lot of fun.

I could have talked about Artifact farming in ToA, too. I thought that too obscure. So, before you go attack someone in a post pull your head out of your bum for a bit, clean the smear off your eyes, and read.

So, get over yourself you kitten .

Question 1:
- Who would really like to see camping come back as part of the game? Actually going some place, taking a seat with some friends, and getting to work enjoying the challenge of this particular set of creatures?

a: NO, camping was and still is such a toxic way to play mmos, doesnt matter if its pve or pvp, i remember how hard we had to “fight” over a spot in old mmos like mu online, knight online or cabal online, the only way to deal with it is either be lucky and get the spot first/boss or be in the camper party, def not a good way to play

Question 2:
- What’s missing from the community experience for you?

a: Actually group content, because lets face it, dungeons are nothing funny, pvp gets lame unless you are into playing the same 5v5 maps and wvw its boring unless you fight in t1 in a good prime zone

I kept myself busy in wow doing daily quests, arenas, battleground, i freaking loved battleground i could queue for bg all day long till my eyes bleed and if bg was imbalanced at that time i always had a story quest to do, here PS and LS are nothing but boring for me, i did tried the arcana achievements and just quit after 5 mins trying, they are just boring.

Now to be real, you can do everything alone and everything with friends, the results are little to no difference if every part knows what to do unlike other mmos where you had to wear the optimal gear, be vocal about the cooldowns and such, plus like others pointed out, the lack of “traveling” and mega server on top of having multiple guilds, kills the comunication and player interaction i mean i interact more with map chat in lions arch than any other place

Question 3:
What giant vacuums have you come across in this game that you’ve not found in other games?

a: The lack of a goal, a clear goal, since gear progression is simple and so quick, you find yourself not needing the ascended gear, just kittening around trying to do something

Pve can be done in a matter of mins, fractals can be done in 30mins and dungeon paths most are 5-7mins runs,add like 15 more mins if you have really bad pugs

Pvp doesnt need gear at all, just get in and thats all, kills all the crafting purpose, and since wvw is a joke (and is going to be a bigger joke soon) you literally log in, do few dungeon paths and log off

Question 4:
What aspects of this game really shine for you and make it worth playing?

a: to be honest, little to none aspect make gw2 shine, now before someone jump on me ill explain why in my eyes it is.

when i started i came from big pvp games, knight online which is a bigger and better “wvw” but really old mmo with heavy grind mechanics and WoW (which i refuse to pay 15$ every month) so my expectation was insanity in the battlefield, what i got? blob or be nearly useless, which is nice but after 1 or 2 fights lost, commander retreats and refuses to fight unless we get 30 more guys to fight in our side, then we get 20mins to 1h doing the lovely PvD which is a killer for me.

All good even in wow and ko i could pve once in a while to keep me busy while battlefield wasnt fair for our side (providing that in ko you could lose exp and be “down leveled”) i did dungeons, it felt nothing special or funny, just specific paths for some dungeons, fractals i felt it was too much for me and i hooked me up! till i started to see the pattern and learn them properly it was just a big joke, unless is the shaman fractal which is the must fun fractal imo

Now to sorta compare wow arenas vs pvp, i had a weird relationship with arenas since i wanst a top pro pvp player but i never found a good partner for arenas, so lets jump straight to gw2, its a big joke, either filled with rangers who cant switch their weapons, thieves that think they are warriors or the new trend CONDITIONS, because everyone loves to have a full bar of red “debuffs” killing you in a blink because “its a l2p issue”, no kitten brah but when i use my fransfers and my bunker guard is exhausted from shouting and removing conditions but we still have a lot of conditions over us, well thats a big problem not a l2p issue

saying that i think ima wait for HoT and see how things goes, personally i feel like i should never log again because i spend more time afking in LA than actually playing (my warrior has over 500h in LA), i dont have HoT but anet has a good chance to make the number 1 mmo, but they need to work, REALLY hard

I hate camping. I did enough of that in EQ with my stupid monk epic. Never want to relive those days… though I admit to having a bit of fun when people joined me but 90% of the time it was solo. Also hated sitting and camping for raids, waiting for the spawn to happen. Which was often my job as I was a monk. So run in, feign death, and just lay there to alert my guild when the time came.

I started playing pristontale as my first mmo, went to RO, then a lot of other korean grindfest mmo games. Until I finally played DCUO and discovered the true value of dev support getting the membership and losing my virginity on the cash shop, mostly because I loved the story and started to love comics. Then, I end up getting FFXIV and GW2… now I can’t go back to any korean grindy games nor any F2P. Which is kinda weird since ’Im korean xD
Kitten me, right?

@ EdgarMTanaka – to you an apology. I get so sick of being attacked for comments from people that just want to get on forums to snap at people. Really though, sorry.

Moving on…

One thing I really love about this game, and frequently forget it, is the representation of women in the game. Black Desert just came out. I was going to buy it till I realized women can’t play Wizards. Men can’t play the Tamer, either, I know, but WoW really turned me off to the macho, men-do-all story. Night Elves started out as a Matriarchal society in Warcraft III and early WoW, but as soon as Malfurion gets awakened (a male Druid leader for those not familiar with WoW) everything became about him leading the Night Elves. I can’t think of a single Horde leader that’s female save one and she’s being transformed into a villain. Also, that seems to be happening to Jaina Proudmoore.
By contrast I could spent a few hours talking about the balance of heroic female characters in all aspects of Guild Wars 2. That’s a reason I hang around. Nothing to do with feminism. Feminism does more damage than it does good quite often. It’s just who doesn’t think of their mother and think: Yeah, she’s pretty heroic actually. Guild Wars 2 seems to not skimp on pointing out the details matter and love the devs for that.

I was too young to really get to see Ultima Online when it was the end all be all. Lord of the Rings Online came out about the same time I was trying Vanguard. I loved both, but couldn’t get into the hardcore aspect of basically living my life around the game just to get from level 5 to 16. By the time I saw level 21 I was done with leveling.

I really miss the creativity of MUDs when it comes to MMOs, but it’s a real plus to not have to imagine a wall of xxx’s as a literal wall of a tavern.

While this game has levels, I really appreciate they are not holding me back from content. Dark Age of Camelot really took a dive for a lot of its community when we suddenly had to get Master Level experience from rarely ran dungeons to get back up to being on equal footing with everyone else in the game.

In general I like the ease of mobility Guild Wars 2 offers in being able to play in WvW, PvP, or PvE without feeling as though I just shouldn’t be there because I didn’t live my life in one of the three (or all of them). World of Warcraft, right from the start, slammed down Gear Cap after Gear Cap on players until now the only real ‘content’ in the game is the release of the next gear-grind.
To say this differently, Guild Wars 2 devs seemed to understand players are happiest when they can play and most hateful when we are arbitrarily locked out of a game we paid for because someone on the corporate ladder was pressing the devs to spend not a penny more than the bottom line: gutting the rest of the game.

And yes, the player community in this game is really pretty great. I miss the days when the Mad Queen or whoever she was (a player) going on an RP rant in LA, but that the game had enough character in its atmosphere to keep inspiring a few people like that keeps me coming back as well.

Another thing is that the devs of this game have some how pulled off mixing modern tech with steampunk and the 16th century. So much so I really do feel like when I log into Guild Wars 2 now I feel I am firmly in a realized world.
Everquest only had this effect on me up until Kunark. Dark Age of Camelot managed it all throughout, but that game was based on mythology terminated in some area just post-Rome so there was a reliable cohesion of aesthetics their dev team had to draw on. Guild Wars 2 devs are doing it from their own collective heads and that’s a darn good statement of their creative abilities.

1) I don’t think camping is the right fit for this game, but I miss having the ‘dangerous open-world’ those sorts of games tended to have.

2) & 3) Group-based Long term goals.

4) GW2 is like a Pizza. Even when it’s bad…it’s still pretty good.
For every feature it has I can name another game that did it better, but rarely do you come across a game that does everything pretty reasonably well.

Emelyn.8729:

I also enjoyed the opportunity to sit still, letting the pullers pull to the group rather than being constantly on the move.

This was a huge draw to GW2 for me. I’ve pretty much played exclusively ranged characters in every game I’ve ever had the option to except in this one (ranger here is meh, I prefer the hyper-DPS archer-type role), and strictly speaking, pulling mobs for hours and hours on end just running in circles and effectively being the only one incapable of getting involved in the conversation without getting yelled at for doing the job sub-optimally gets really old really fast. In the game I played before this, the ranger could easily get one-shot by trash mobs, but was difficult to hit due to its incredible mobility (think of a passive super speed buff except twice as fast levels of crazy fast). Needing to constantly worry about perfect positioning, especially when ranged or caster mobs got involved just made the process very exhaustive. PvP sometimes was actually less stressful depending on the context.

Blainy.4718:

I’ll get back to you when I get 120 slayer.

Haha I think you mean dungeoneering right? :P

My personal highlight is the convenience of gathering the basic materials, except the scraps. No other player can steal you the ore, the wood or the plant, while you are fighting the mobs around it. And dogde-system. These two thing I would really miss I’ve don’t have it anymore.
I just really wish there would be an easier system of gathering scraps like Linen, maybe from a plant too or directly from the npc’s, not only salvaging or a light chance in a material bag. Other games (older and newer) have a better solutions for this essential part of crafting.

Ah Everquest… no other game will be as sweet, or as bitter.

Camping was one of those things I really didn’t like at the time. Eg., AC for jboots… ouch. In hindsight, I can see that it added something special to that game. It encouraged social interaction, both good and bad, effectively breathing life into the game world. Some of my longest term MMO friends originated from camping something or other in EQ.

The most similar part of GW2 is WvW (on an active server), which happens to be where I spend nearly all of my time.