Hey all
I’ve started playing this game during the 3-day headstart. I had a blast, made new friends, explored, I simply got overwhelmed by the game and can simply say, it was the best game I ever played.
Before you all go “Burn-out”, I’m quite confident that this is not the case. I have stopped playing this game in early August 2013, after about 11 months of playing it (exam breaks included). More and more I saw the gaps in the game:
- lack of PvE end-game of value (everything got repetitive),
- lack of PvP end-game of value (WvW is rather much the contrary of fun when you are getting smashed by blobs making you lagg and SPvP is hardly a PvP mode at all).
- and they didn’t fill those gaps, because of the focus on “Living Story”
As I see it, the game was PERFECT for a beta release in the first 1/2 months. What it did fail in was: bug fixing very soon after release (just didn’t happen), adding new content (just didn’t happen either).
Some things could be a lot better in GW2, and those things could and should have been fixed within the first 3 months.
A few examples:
- kicking offline players in World vs. World
- party-leader leaving dungeon deleting the instance;
- population imbalance in World vs. World (server vs. server is a bad system when you don’t make a clear distinction between PvE and PvP players);
- stacking as a dungeon tactic and defiance/unshakeable as a boss mechanic;
- zerging as the main tactic for WvW.
The thing that killed this game, was living story. The attention living story got, was actually something required for creating new maps (PvE/PvP/WvW), weapons, classes, races, skills and so much more. What did we get? Rushed biweekly content with an incoherent and naive story, annoying characters, dumb rewards (minis, backpieces), plenty gem-store purchases, a few implements that ruin QoL (Ascended, Dailies, Achievement Grind)…
Now Anet announces a “traditional” feature patch, but most of the things we’ll get (I speculate) will be things we should have gotten 1 year ago: new wvw maps (EotM), a fix for zerker (but no fix for stacking and bad boss mechanics), accountbound WXP ranks (which weren’t necessary in the first place).
Are you excited? I’m not.
I’m rather disappointed because they wasted over 1 year a half to realise that Living Story IS NOT an equivalent for worthy content.
My hopes for April aren’t very high and I doubt that Anet will bring anything more than fixes and content we should have gotten long ago.
Will I quit this game? Not yet. April/May will be the deciding month though.