Guild Wars 2

In this thread i wanted to discuss a bit of the imagination that tickled everyone from beta till now.

Since i had a reall vision on what i expected and what i got.

Well, let me tell you, as a gw1 veteran the first things that came to mind was the same type of playstyle, progression wise in the endgame but even bigger and better.

I thought that ‘The mists’ was some desolate place where only the best of the best eventually COULD get to. Where there where special dungeons specificly made for hardcore people with loot ‘reall heros’. Someone who just got to lvl 80 could never reach this unless he/she learnt the game inside and out/ got certain ‘map’ completion achievements. That it was the place where you needed to travel through some open world pvp(wich in the end became WvW irl), but had to be really carefull, Where you really needed to showcase what you got to proceed to the ‘hall of treasures’ where behind lots of mobs/dungeons/bosses and various different un-WPable points there where some guys who sold some special loot (legendary equipment) and with un-WPable points i mean you had to play for atleast a couple of hours through some epic dungeons/mobs/bosses and when you had to go you could get to a camp and logout there to do the next part the day after that. But you actually had to commit to that 1 piece of adventure. So it’d actually feel like an adventure and not something you could just WP to.

Like a progression dungeon with open world resting places to go to the next area. Aka gw1 style storyline but with less WP.

I thought jumping puzzles where instanced things you had to do to get to some really interesting/rewarding points like a camp where you could learn some recipe noone would ever get unless they travelled through that JP (account bound).

I hoped for the idea that i would get stuck at some point (like a really hard boss/dungeon etc) So id have a reall challenge to learn some mechanics or needed a really good group where every member was tested (split party dungeons) to proceed.

General idea was that i thought endgame in gw2 was the entire learning experience youve had with JP’s dungeons and bosses from 1-80, where crammed together into 1 blob of hardcore content where you needed to know exacly everything the game had to offer. like Do dungeon :Starting with a jumping puzzle with a long route and rest spots to some kind of split road scenario where you picked either the mining field with 5 rich orichalcum nodes or the imba boss noone knew howto defeat. (choices for ppl who want gold vs ppl who want challenge)

What i got was literally everything i wanted but… in seperate content. Wich in the end was kind of a dissapointment to me. But expected sort of.

I really love the aspect of an open world with gw2 unlike gw1. It feels like a one of a kind propper PvE fast-skillbased MMO . It gets you going when you decide to find a party who DOESNT just use a WP to go somewhere but actually travel the world through portals and caves on foot. Once i learnt that WP’s where totally ruining the immersion i came up with my own ‘questline’ (go on a map with commander tag and first guy who gets to me needs to show me the way to the nearest town/bank without WP and id give some exotic over the top loot with the special agreement that we’d do all the events that come in our way)
At that point i realised how magical Gw2 was. I hope everyone gets to experience it once mordermoth destroys all WPs for a few weeks in LS. Then everyone will complain and after those few weeks the reall adventurers would come!

When I heard that Mists of Pandaria was going to be the next World of Warcraft expansion, I lit up in a fit of rage. It was the worst thing I could have ever imagined happening to a game that I had been playing for a solid eight years. In response, I searched for a new MMO to get addicted to; a new strain to the drug that people call Fantasy MMORPG.

I went through a lot of games: Rift, Perfect World, D&D online, and Aion are just a few to name. Then I saw the GW2 manifesto trailer, and that’s when things changed. I went out and got GW1 and all expansions, played it religiously, just so I could get some HoM points. The beta came out, and I played that too.

I can still remember making my human guardian and walking through DR for the first time. That’s when I knew…when I absolutely knew…that GW2 was going to be a niche game to take many WoW fans away silently. It has.

In WoW I had a character that was very near and dear to me, his name was Modaeus Aurison. I did a lot of RP with him and built a lot of relationships. I’m so glad to have him here on this game. I love to RP with him still, but as a Paragon of Dwayna, rather than the Holy Light.

This game saved me from game misery, and is only getting better as time moves on. God bless the developers of this game.

I had it recommended to me by a mate who knows what I like. I’ve never looked back. It helps that I’ve been able to recreate quite a few old roleplay and fictional characters of mine in a way that really works out. I just need elementalists to have greatswords and that set will be complete.

I first heard of GW2, while still playing GW1, as I would look around the wiki and came upon this tiny bit of information… there really was nothing much at that point, other than… we will get a new game instead of another campaign or expansion.

At first I did not follow the information that much (there was not that much information to get… it was years before release) but as information became more plentiful as it got closer I followed everything… checked certain sites daily and made sure to be awake to watch the very first trailer, the very moment it got out.
I was on the exitement train and bought the CE as pre-purchase, the very second that I could.

After years of love and thousands of hours spend in GW1 having done all there was to do… some things twice… I needed something new and loved GW2 from the first beta… where I regretably could not take part in the final event… I did for the other betas though.

Been playing since headstart and still love the game, although my relationship with GW2 is more turbulent than the one I had with GW1. I never had a regret in GW1 and I never really felt disapointed about any of the content. With GW2 I sometimes have doubts about the future and I may get bouts of disapointment, boredom and discontent about things…. but it rarely last too long and always end up back in love with the game.

Wp’s arent going anywhere mate.If u are 1 of those mount lovers that think how this is perfect time to put them in game,you are wrong.Taimi gonna save them all ! <3

Im new to GW so what I got was great. Tho OP, ur game sounds brilliannt. Where can I play ;-)

I remember going to GameStop to pick up my copy on the 24th, I think it was. Good times. I made a shirt that said “I pre-ordered GW2 for the early access, and all GameStop gave me was this POS shirt. Thanks, Obama”. And I never did get into that early access.

I hadn’t played GW1 before, but upon learning about GW2 I did a great deal of research for myself into the series during the slow wait for the betas, the stress tests and actual release. I really, really liked what I learned from GW1, and was very excited to play a sequel that was “everything and more you liked about GW1”.

I ended up later purchasing and playing GW1 for myself after it became apparent that GW2 was in fact nothing like the pre-release promise to be like GW1. When I’m feeling a bit silly, I still have a bit of hope that GW2 will become more like GW1, that GW1 might get a content update (even if it is just mostly unfinished and abandoned content), or that another game similar to GW1 might come out before the next video gaming market crash.

Honestly it didn’t take much to get me into Guild Wars.

I came home one day and saw my brother playing something I didn’t recognise. He told me it was an MMO called Guild Wars that didn’t charge a subscription, you just had to buy the game and then you could play whenever you wanted.

I watched him do a mission (Fort Ranik I think) and was really intrigued by the charr because to me they were very original – humanoid cats, but big and chunky, not skinny leopard type things, and with horns.

He explained that there’s no kill tagging or loot stealing, PvE is entirely cooperative and at that point I was sold.

The hardest part was choosing between Prophecies and the newly released Factions, but my brother only had Proph, and it was the first one so I got that first. I’ve never looked back, it was easily one of the best decisions I’ve made.

Buying GW2 was pretty much a foregone conclusion. I got it on the first day of pre-purchase. To be honest I didn’t know much about it other than the lore but in a way I think that worked to my advantage because I didn’t have many pre-formed expectations. I knew the important things: no subscription, no competing with other players to complete content in PvE and no gear treadmill and I was excited to finally play a game with persistent maps outside cities again.

All in all I’m very happy with both games. They’re certainly different but that just makes it seem less pointless having and playing both.

I didn’t have an MMO background. The sub fees were a huge turn off (this was before F2P became common). I had played Diablo II heavily for some years and really that taught me enough about how much I hate grinding levels and gear to be more powerful. Blizzard came out with WoW, along with a sub fee. It was at that point I decided I was done with Blizzard at a company. WoW went on to have unprecedented levels of success but I could never bring myself to play more than a free trial. Besides, I had GW1 around the same time frame.

I had followed development of GW1 since long before it came out (just like with GW2). GW1 was just what I was looking for! It had a very low level / gear cap which was tremendously appealing. It had multi-classing so I didn’t have to be stuck with one way to play. It had a HUGE world (that actually felt huge because there wasn’t always a WP one minute away). It had strong and interesting story telling with pretty rich lore that hooked me. It had challenging content I had to actually think about, and probably fail a few times, before getting through. And oh how satisfying it was when I did. I had played quite a lot of games in my life by this point, but this GW1 was really something special.

I ended up putting far more time into that game that I ever had anything before. It wasn’t perfect. I would have liked to have jumping/swimming. I would have liked more of an Open World outside of cities. I would have liked larger pvp battles, and something more for property ownership / territory control. But all in all, the game just blew me away.

When GW2 was announced, I followed its development as obsessively as any devoted fan would. As amazing as GW1 had been, there was no question I was getting GW2. And it even had an Open World, large scale pvp, and jumping/swimming! Also it would have these “dynamic events” where stuff happens, and players can participate and actually change what’s going on in the area! They even said (or I was to understand), it would be everything we loved about GW1 but more & better.

I can’t even tell you how many dead hobos I would have stepped on to play this ASAP. So I pre-purchased the very moment it became available and played in every beta event. Played at the game’s launch, and the rest is history.

Sadly, GW2 didn’t turn out quite how I hoped and was actually lacking some pretty major stuff at launch (and still is 2yrs later), and we’ve gotten terribly little new expansive content in this time vs what GW1 got. It still has a heck of a lot going for it fundamentally, but it just doesn’t seem like it will ever live up to its potential at this rate.

But anyway, that’s how I got here and remain still.

The game looked good and I heard that gw1 was a very good game
I trusted arenanet based on their background, I really regret it…..

My previous MMO was Final Fantasy 11….
I hate Square Enix with a passion.

FF11 has a crappy turn based combat system.
Grind, Grind, Grind.
10Hour or 72hour Boss Respawn Timers.
It’s just boring and crap. The game is not skill based at all. It’s Gear based! Gear is everything in that game.

Only reason I played FF11 was for the Story Missions which had epic Cut-scenes and my friends. Actually, I didnt play other MMOs because FF11 was the only real game with cut-scenes and epic adventures while other MMOs where just about questing with texts reading.

I told my best friend RJ who died this year on Feb 15th that if an MMORPG with epic Cut-scenes with voice acting, Action based combat which requires skills not gear to be good, No Grinding, Exploring is everything, good graphics and art, and I can play however I want, comes out to the market… I’m quitting FFXI in a heart-beat for THAT GAME… I told my friend this of course 7 years ago thinking it would never happen…

Till I saw GW2 on youtube by Alexrediculous… That’s when my life changed. I stalked GW2 since then and got into alpha and beta and I was sold… Good by Vanad’ell and Hello Tyria!!!

Havn’t looked back since then. GW2 happens to be the game I was waiting for. =)

ArenaNet cares for their players and Square Enix only cares for their bottom line.

I was getting fed up with the community from my previous game and I had remembered seeing something about GW2 a year before that, so I looked it up and was sold once I watched the asura and charr videos. Art & character design is important to me when choosing a new MMO to play because if I am going to be in a virtual world it might as well be one I like. They tried something different with the races in GW2 and I respected that.

Short version: NC Soft killed CoH, my friends and I had to find a new game to play together. GW2 won the vote.

Long version: I’ve played several MMOs over the years. I got into EverQuest when it was only a couple months old, and spent a few years trying to solo in that game. I never got very far, but I gained a great tolerance for some things from it.

I eventually burned out really bad from trying to solo it, and unsubbed from it. A couple of friends got me into SWG, which I once again took on as a solo game. Again, didn’t get far, but I loved the game and crafting. I left just before the combat upgrade, well ahead of the NGE. My friends… were not so lucky.

Eventually, someone told me about City of Heroes, and I jumped in during the last few days of open beta. It was AMAZING! But, the group I was planning to play with had to quit for various reasons. EQ2 came out, and I decided to try that for a bit. Again, tried to solo it, didn’t get far. And I hated a lot of it. The crafting, though, was interesting. It had some cool ideas behind it.

I eventually came back to City of Heroes, trying a new server. I’d been told that Virtue was the friendliest server, so I went there. The difference the server switch made was unreal (note: Virtue was the RP server). I became a die hard RPer and fan of the game, paying full subscription and more for two accounts even after F2P became an option.

Sadly, right after GW2 went live, NC Soft killed CoH. There was a lot of resentment towards GW2 and ANet, but the Paragon Devs said that we shouldn’t blame the ANet devs for what happened. And from what other friends had told me, GW2 was shaping up as an outstanding game. With more complex crafting than CoH had, which I honestly missed. So, when our little group voted on what game to jump to, I was one of the ones voting for GW2.

I have to say, the game WAS amazing. It WAS everything I’d hoped for, more or less. It WAS beautiful. It WAS… well, a lot of things it’s been moving away from. Half of the group pretty much doesn’t play any more, and those that are left tend to play fairly rarely, so we’re not really a group in the game these days. We’re all looking forward to some upcoming games that may recapture the feel of CoH, and when they arrive if they live up to expectations we’ll all jump to there.

Played GW and got 50/50 in my HoM, how could I not? Why I played GW in the first place is more stupid/pathetic.

I played games like Flyff etc. for ages because they were “Free” and when searching for mmo’s I kept seeing GW and thought “Hey if other games are free why aren’t you?” so stuck playing my free mmo’s, all the while constantly forking out cash for minipet of the month etc. At least the game was free, right? :S

After I came to my senses and bought GW (Eotn/Prophecies pack). I bought Factions that Christmas season and Nightfall CE was on sale at the shop my bro. worked in at the time.

Result = 5 years of addiction.

someone recommended it and the game i was currently playing had really bad publishers
yes publishers plural, the one was horrible enough to delete everyone’s progress when they transferred the game.. and it’s a shame because it was a great game for its place in the genre

I had a long time friend/guildie in WoW who kept pushing GW1 and I’d look at it and go “meh.” Perhaps the low rez screens and videos didn’t help my perception of the game. But then he said hey, GW2 is coming, take a look at these alpha videos. I watched the alpha demos at cons and was sold in seconds flat. Cooperative play without node stealing, no breath meters, jaw dropping gorgeous settings and outfits, all the hallmarks of a game designed to “get rid of all the unfun parts of MMOs” as the devs said.

The more I saw the more I liked. My WoW friend planned to make a guild as a revamp of one he’d run for a couple of years in WoW and we designed new versions of two of our characters from there to fit the new world. I joined the 2RP site, participated in the discussions on picking an unofficial NA RP server, did a ton of forum RP. Our guild launched in .. hmm .. April 2012? And we made our own Enjin site on which we did a ton of RP to develop our characters.

Out came the betas! The very first one we spent time making characters, exploring the world, but we also had time for a number of RP sessions. I couldn’t get enough of the game. I proselytized it to everyone who had the slightest glimmer of interest. There was a YouTube video a very talented person did, using footage from the profession skill previews and setting it to Two Steps from Hell “Protectors of the Earth.” I showed that to people at parties, linked it to online friends, watched it over and over. (Sadly, it suffered when the filmer shoe horned in the Mesmer footage once that came out, having been perfectly paced; it got too frenetic and choppy in the new version, and eventually the old one was no longer available to savor).

I haunted a local GameStop to get the CE, having to explain to them how purchasing it worked, but they came through. I even took a week off work for headstart/launch, something I’ve only done the one time for a game. (Well, it was a good excuse for a week off, I usually had too much use-or-lose by year’s end anyway. Subsequently I’ve just taken September time off to honor my anniversary and birthday, but not specifically for a game). ANet was wonderful enough to launch 3 hours early, with plenty of notice they would do so, thus starting at midnight my time. By 3 am I face planted but I had 5 names secured and my main RP guy a number of levels into the game.

The OP wanted to know how we came to the game, so what happened after is another tale.

I started GW 2 because of all the lies. I simply love being made promises to that don’t deliver.

Hybarf Tics.2048:

I started GW 2 because of all the lies. I simply love being made promises to that don’t deliver.

“And if you’re good this year, maybe Santa will bring you something.”

Palador.2170:

Hybarf Tics.2048:

I started GW 2 because of all the lies. I simply love being made promises to that don’t deliver.

“And if you’re good this year, maybe Santa will bring you something.”

This is GW2, same thing as last year just wrapped differently :P

I was a WoW player…I didn’t really like it, but I kept playing it, hoping it would get better. It was okay. I saw the potential of the format.

Then I told my niece I was playing WoW, which she said was the evil empire, and suggested I tried Guild Wars 1 instead. Said I’d like it better. She was right.

I gave up my WoW sub and never looked back. I was one of those playing Guild Wars 2 waiting for the Utopia update, when it was cancelled in favor of Guild Wars 2.

I like Guild Wars 2 a lot, but it’s lacking quite a bit that I liked in Guild Wars 1. On other other hand there’s quite a lot I like in this game that Guild Wars 1 didn’t have. C’est La Vie.

Palador.2170:

Hybarf Tics.2048:

I started GW 2 because of all the lies. I simply love being made promises to that don’t deliver.

“And if you’re good this year, maybe Santa will bring you something.”

Well now that you mention it I’m waiting for Destiny to come to PC.
Then I’ll have 2 games to juggle with.

Gw1 is the MMO that gave me faith in MMO’s. GW 2 is the MMO that made me loose faith in MMO’s. Destiny will be the MMO that’ll renew that faith. Then GW 2 will become the game I come to while I wait for an expansion for Destiny.

I was recommended to play gw2 by my friend. I saw him playing a ranger and use a way point; it all looked so smooth. My campus also has it’s own gw2 guild. So i saved up some money and bought the game but alas by that time very few of the campus played it. I actually don’t think i ever got to play with any of them. Now that guild is dead but it’s alright they weren’t mmo players anyway.

I leveled up my ranger to late 30s. He was a human called Azraeel Seraph and i was very surprised to see that humans had a military police force called seraph too. I ended up taking a long break after getting tired of the toxicity on the forums at the time (never should have checked). It was around the time of ascended release i think so everyone was up in arms over that and the ranger forum was filled with tears and warrior envy.

I came back few months later and made a warrior, who became my first 80. I was going around wearing knight green gear (I couldn’t afford rare) and using a regen banner build. The warrior got boring fast and i took another smaller break. I returned and after a lot of research and many many low level characters later i made a sylvari mesmer named Loki Jotunn (I had forgotten about the jotun race and didn’t think that people would asociate the name with norn).

The mesmer took some effort to level up to 80 but i liked it a lot. After getting to 80 and getting exotics gear I had another break and returned few months ago and this time i made and leveled to 80 all classes except for ranger and necro, who are in the process). I have started to log in less and less often because of classes and getting bored easily (more because of my own fickleness rather than the game’s shortcomings).

Overall I am glad that i got the game even though in almost two years i haven’t even passed the 1000hrs mark. It is a superb game and its a pity that more games aren’t like it.

Until GW1, i was always into single player games. I was heavily playing Elder Scroll games, namely Oblivion at the time, where on the forums, I met a friend who was into creating mods for the game. We created a few of our own that were quite successful and still going strong.

Throughout this time, he kept talking about an online game called GW1 that he was addicted to and was telling me he was playing Oblivion just to have a break from it. He tried to convince me to give it a try. I wasn’t interested in Online games at the time, heard lots of bad things about them, so i resisted. Until finally, i relented when a trial came up and gave it a go.

It was interesting, but extremely confusing. Still when my trial expired, i decided to purchase Nightfall, it was where i did my trial so had at least a bit of familiarity.

I was such a noob, was completely lost, had no idea how to do anything. It was an alien world in literal sense, not just in gameplay but also all the social things, like how to chat with people, trade, forming parties etc.

My friend played with me for a little while, then just stopped and left me to fend for myself. I was totally lost after he stopped playing and in frustration i quit and went back to single player games. If only he told me about gw wiki, lol.

6 months later, i decided to give it another go and really stick with it this time and i managed to finish the Nightfall campaign. It felt so good to have done that and at that point, I finally felt i had the grasp of how MMO’s worked. Still had a lot to learn, but i was getting the hang of it. It was only then really i started enjoying the game and never looked back. Got all the campaigns and EotN after that and Played gw1 do death, where i got my 50/50, GWAMM and achieved everything else that i was interested in.

Meanwhile, I heard of gw2 being developed and it was a no brainer i would be getting it. Been playing since head start and although i’ve loved and still love the game, I desperately want some new maps to explore. Here’s hoping that will come soon as well.

Hybarf Tics.2048:

Gw1 is the MMO that gave me faith in MMO’s. GW 2 is the MMO that made me loose faith in MMO’s. Destiny will be the MMO that’ll renew that faith. Then GW 2 will become the game I come to while I wait for an expansion for Destiny.

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO. That’s why it was so good. Of the MMOs I’ve played, Guild Wars 2 is the best.

I started with Guild Wars 1 the year it was released, I was looking for a online RPG type game and was horrified at the low graphical quality for certain ‘other’ monthly fee offerings, Guild Wars 1 ticked all the boxes.

• Causal
• Free To Play
• Graphical Quality
• Story

Moving on the Guild Wars 2, for the previous 2 years since its release I wanted to play but multitude of what might appear to be an unending pile of personal trauma and tragedy in ways best left not imagined, which I am still dealing with today.

I brought Guild Wars 2 as a distraction from my empty meaningless life and to put a spec of happiness, so now every moment I can spare when I’m not composing music is playing Guild Wars 2.

While I likely don’t see the world in the most lovely way it could be its still very a amazing I’m looking forward to the day when I can run it on proper hardware and no this i7/8gb/HD4000 laptop.

I had played Runescape for almost 10 years before I was fed up with the company going back so obviously on their morals, insulting the player’s intelligence through official statements that manipulated results of player feedback from controversial content, and just feeling like I became nothing more than a “$” icon in their eyes. I couldn’t stand that feeling anymore, and ended up switching to Lord of the Rings Online. I played that for 2 years.

Guild Wars 2 was already in beta before I even heard of it, and I never heard of Guild Wars 1 before. My partner at the time introduced me to it, saying he played Guild Wars 1 in the past and was getting Guild Wars 2. At the same time a lot of people in the clan/guild I was in, in LOTRO, said they were going to play Guild Wars 2. I decided to give it a shot, as it had no subscription fee, but I knew very little about it, only what my partner showed me. I picked it up about 2 or 3 weeks after it came out and I loved it from the moment I stepped in, I loved the way skills worked, I loved how combat felt more real, I loved how exploration was encouraged and fun. After the Karka event I loved how the world changed, and actually felt alive. When I think about when I started, a lot really has changed. Forts are shattered in some areas, there is a massive crashed tower, and the biggest hub in the game for players was wiped out, and looks completely different.
I have no intention of switching MMOs for a long while yet to come.

Mine is a pretty uneventful story. Brother of mine recommended I try the game a year or so ago. I tried it once while still being invested in another MMO at the time and couldn’t get into it. Then I tried it later when I found myself wanting a game to play with some other players, but without any obligation to play with other people.

I gave it a more thorough try the second time around and got hooked pretty quickly. I had basically zero expectations going in. I actually had seen videos of it a few times and I hadn’t thought much of it.

But it turned out to be more than I thought it was.

That said, I’m still kind of disappointed that the first time I tried playing, the town clothes system was still in place and I thought it was pretty neat. Second time I tried, it was completely gone and I had started over, so I didn’t have any town clothes to turn in, even for tonics.

So that’s one bad taste that I ended up with, despite seeing a lot of cool stuff in the game. That they would essentially remove a piece of content was kind of eyebrow-raising. And still is after seeing starter zone hearts gutted with the NPE. It’s an unpleasant reminder of how much power they have over the direction of this game and how truly little any of us have; that, any moment, they could just shut the game down and no one would be able to say otherwise.

‘Course, that’s no different than any other business. It’s just not something you want to think about as a consumer.

Anyway, I will probably continue to play until I burn out or life says my time is needed elsewhere. Right now, the alternatives just aren’t very appealing.

I’ve written and repeated my story multiple times in the forums but I’ll do it again.

When GW2 was in beta I watched every video, every interview (some in other languages because the devs still only spoke english and I could guess the questions by the answers) to find out all I can. I’ll admit I was taken in by the manifesto but I was really interested in the diversity of builds in PVE the number of roles with their own trinity and the promise of never having to step into a dungeon, do PVP or any raiding ever again. That’s what brought me here.

When I saw that they had a class that basically had WWII weaponry I was hooked. After playing a hunter on WoW for a long time and playing several other F2P mmo’s for years I had had enough of dungeons and raids being forced down the throats of every casual player out there. Most games that were themeparks really didn’t have casual activities but I felt surely Arenanet would make this game all they claimed it would be so I fully expected several non-combat activities outside of jumping puzzles or the occasional minigame. I really thought they’d be serious about adding things like fishing, farming, or housing. And surely surely they’d add plenty more cosmetic items to make up the missing pieces they had on the leather side of things where almost everything is a trenchcoat variation. I was happy to see the additions to the stockpile of backpack skins but I had seriously thought that would come much earlier in the game because typically game developers don’t hold onto their skin department very long after launch so the first year I seriously thought would have plenty of skins come out of the woodwork.

I came here also because of the innovations to the same old tired 2004 nonsense we’ve all seen. Leveling both classes and crafting, gathering, the styles of combat, all seemed progressive, that is until the nerfs came the catering to the PVPers and bad bad decisions in balance for PVE. There’s alot broken because of these choices and the choices to keep loot out of the hands of the players.

So I guess I have a love hate relationship with the game. I love the beauty some aspects of combat the simplicity of mmo life here in many aspects, but I hate what they did to break the PVE experience, the lack of non-combat activities, and the lack of rewards.

I was given GW2 by my son in Sept 2012. My only on-line gaming experience before that was some Diablo 3 that summer, although I had played Diablo and a little Diablo 2 before that. I really liked GW2 from the beginning, so much so that I bought the guide.

I saw Yishis theif gameplay at youtube. Think he so cool pawning nubs kitten and theif looks awesome, like a ninja assassin. I always love assassin class. since ragnarok online

Well I started GW1 after a couple of friends told me about it. It was a little disconcerting for me for a long time since I had played a handful of f2p MMOs and you know how those usually are. So I was kind of biased thinking it would be similar. I enjoyed GW1 a lot but never really made it a “main” game to play at the time. Just a good off and on persistent thing.

As for GW2, I have played many MMOs. And I had jumped off the bandwagon on SWTOR after a couple of months of trying to continue to play it by myself after friends died off slowly after launch. Pretty much ended up quitting since it wasn’t worth the sub fee. But around that time GW2 beta was floating around and I really got into it and it just stuck.

Now GW2 is really the best place for someone like me to go to if I want a MMO experience without paying a fee. And the combat and other things are enjoyable bonuses for me. I still play almost everyday but I love the freedom to come and go as I please.

I wanted to take a break from wow while waiting for a new patch and my first thought was to try gw2 since it’s buy to play and it was on sales(50%) too.So why not.I started a guardian lvl up to max and got bored.I tried to lvl up a new character.Stoped lvl up after 40lvl.This game for me has nothing to do for someone at max lvl for pve.Map completion and a few hours of living story,farm skins or do the same dungeon on different difficulty isnt pve.Im not talking for pvp because i play only pve on mmos.And btw whats the point to create big maps if you cant use mounts and fill them with insta teleports(way points) that makes you open your map so many times that becomes annoying.

Why? Because I was moving on from GW1 which I had barely touched in the last fifteen months backwards from the GW2 BWEs. I had gotten supremely bored with trying to hit titles at max, and after carefully realizing there wasn’t much special which I really wanted in the game . . . I just stepped away from it.

I stepped into GW2 on Beta Weekend Event #2 and vastly enjoyed the experience. Even on my toaster of a Mac Mini :P

Many years ago, when computers were much slower than these days, there existed games called MUDs. They were completely text based so even my computer at the time could handle them. I could only dream of playing games like Neverwinter Nights (not the MMO) and to have all the wonders of the multi-user dungeons enhanced with actual graphics and visible characters was utopia.

By the time I had decent enough a computer to play WoW, I could not justify the monthly fee. A few years passed and my daughter grew up. For a time she played a lot of Runescape. At that time those graphics felt very outdated to me and when I watched her and her friends kill the neighbor’s cows over and over for XP, I shuddered. I did like their jumping cabbages though.

Another year passed. Dee (=daughter) turned 12. WoW was being sold very cheaply at the local hypermarket and she pleaded me to buy it. It didn’t take much, I had retained a curiosity for it. There was no way I would pay two monthly fees though, so she played and I watched. And I did not feel the magic.

I soon grew tired of paying the monthly fee so she could play for two days and get bored until the next month. We went in search of a free to play game. After a few not so lucky tries we did find one that was fun. It was a very beautiful game and i could see that if it lived up to its full potential it could have been great. But it got cancelled in beta.

There we were a game dying on us in the early Summer of 2012. My research then gave me the result of Guild Wars 2 being launched in August. Everything I read about it made me want to play more. The cost of it was a bit scary as I needed to purchase two copies, but there were no subscription fees! I also had to buy a second computer, but that is another story.

Now, two years later, I do not regret starting this game at all. Dee plays sporadically her accounts and I play daily. I have fun with this game and I hope it will continue to grow and evolve for a very long time.

This clip made me play GW2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpBzLzZyaSQ
Graphic art and music keep me playing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4YOCuYHieo

I played 2 Korean MMOs before GW2. The last one was Atlantica Online, a turn-based MMO. While the combat system was great (at least for people who like to play turn-based games), the publisher wasn’t. And I grew tired of the gear spiral. Every time when you caught max level and got all equipment to the highest level a new patch raised the max level and the grind started anew. And when I was really fed up by an especially greedy decision of the publisher’s marketing team, my son showed me videos of GW2’s beta.

From then on we theoretized, planned race and builds, and even participated in the last two beta weekends. I played and play continuously while my son comes back every now and then. I am so glad that there is no gear progression to speak of. Even though ArenaNet made some questionable decisions, especially the trait unlocking, I still think that GW2 is the right game for me.

And that in spite of being not turn-based…

I was playing Allods and by the end of 2011 started playing WoW because I got traumatized by P2W (Allods excelled in that). I played for roughly one month then started hearing and reading about “Guild Wars 2”, the name didn’t strike me as a good one tbh but then I started looking for info and fell in love… but before anything, I was told this would be a pay-to-play game and I was already leaving WoW because of that feeling of “obligation”, I held on till I confirmed it would be buy-to-play, so yeah payment model was a pretty big deal for me.

Early in 2012 I joined GW2 brazilian community and worked hard to get the word spread out, I just had to tell people how amazing this game was (and still is!). I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first played in beta: everything was smooth, fluid, and BEAUTIFUL. My PC was (and still is hahah) not that good, but it can run GW2 at a fairly stable FPS. I focused on emerging into the game… open world was (and still is) my fascination, endgame-wise it doesn’t do good but I love helping out guildies on getting vistas/SP’s every once in a while.

Oh, and yeah, one of the most incredible things for me was being able to conjure elementals! Dunno why, I was amazed by that, and I hope there’ll be a trait line specifically for elementals in the future.