Guild Wars 2

I had a thread here I posted the other day and I was rather surprised to see so many people talk rather negatively about the game. Don’t get me wrong, the game does have notable flaws, as all games do, but here’s some of the reasons why I really enjoy Guild Wars 2.

THE ARTWORK

Graphics certainly don’t make a great game, but it definitely helps immerse the player. With the exceptions of some charr armor clipping issues, this game is beautiful to look at. I really admire the art direction, probably one of my favorite designed MMOs. I especially the work done on the design of the sylvari, I get sick of seeing the stereotypical elf race and the sylvari were just an awesome idea with an even better execution, especially with their homeland.

MONEYS WORTH

This is kind of a cop out, but I do consider no monthly fee an advantage. However, the amount of content I got for my money was worth every penny. I paid $40 for the disc and I didn’t expect to get much, out of that, but I was surprised to see how many hours I got out of Guild Wars 2 and I always felt like I got my money’s worth.

GREAT ADVENTURE GAME FOR NON MMO FANS

In my last thread I talked about a lot of my friends not getting into Guild Wars 2, which is true. However, I was surprised to see that my friends that didn’t play mmos normally found themselves liking it better. They were scared of games like Warcraft because it was “complicated,” and Guild Wars 2 has sort of a middle ground. It’s not the best when it comes to tutorials and such, but it was an affordable adventure where me and some friends could just have fun in an mmo without feeling obligated to commit.

THE COMBAT

While not perfect, I couldn’t go back to standard mmos after playing as it felt too restricting. I liked being able to move around and dodge, and while it doesn’t seem like you have many skills, the combat has surprising depth. There were point well I really did feel like it was just auto attack spam, but overall it’s a big improvement.

TRYING NEW IDEAS

This is debatable, but Guild Wars 2 tries it’s best to take the traditional mmo mechanics and exceptions only to reinvent it. Sometimes it really pays off like the quick time events, auto grouping, etc. and other times it doesn’t such as the sub par end game. However, I like that they have been trying new things, even if some didn’t pay off, the ones that did are really good. Unlike games such as WoW (sorry for all the WoW references haha), the game is more about the journey rather than getting to the end. This can turn a lot of people away from playing, and I understand from that point of view. I found that when I wasn’t focused on finishing everything and just having fun, the game truly started to grow on me.

A WORTHY SEQUEL TO A PERSONAL FAVORITE MMO

I did play Warcraft, but back in high school before I was old enough to get a job, I couldn’t afford monthly fees. So while everyone was playing Warcraft, I found Guild Wars and it was only me and one friend that played it. It was just a lot of fun to play, and Guild Wars 2 manages to improve on nearly every aspect of the original. You can really tell they put their hardest effort into making the sequel an improvement. The original didn’t have much end game either, but it was still fun, I remember people always paying me to run them through instances. Someday my instance running business with become a reality again xD

Of all the things I’d call GW2, “a worthy sequel” would certainly not be one of them. I’m glad you enjoy it, though.

Btw, the endgame in GW1 is PvP as its primarily a PvP game.

Tru Reptile.6058:

Of all the things I’d call GW2, “a worthy sequel” would certainly not be one of them. I’m glad you enjoy it, though.

Btw, the endgame in GW1 is PvP as its primarily a PvP game.

I can see both sides of that argument so I respect your opinion. This is going to sound weird, but if I picked one element I liked better in the first game, it was the story telling. It felt more serious, but it has been years so I’d have to play it again.

i like Guild Wars 2 simply because it is a Guild Wars franchise, it is casual, good business model, and they introduce new style of MMO. if i wanted to play game with trinity i would have gone back to LOTRO. they have good business model too.

however, there are features of other games that i would like to see in the game that could improve our experience. for example guild hall, guild management tool, proper auction house (not simply trading post), better monster fighting mechanics etc.

azizul.8469:

i like Guild Wars 2 simply because it is a Guild Wars franchise, it is casual, good business model, and they introduce new style of MMO. if i wanted to play game with trinity i would have gone back to LOTRO. they have good business model too.

however, there are features of other games that i would like to see in the game that could improve our experience. for example guild hall, guild management tool, proper auction house (not simply trading post), better monster fighting mechanics etc.

I agree, it would be nice to have some of those implanted in Guild Wars 2. The term “casual” is often thought of as an insult, but personally it just works better for me. I’m older now, I’m in college, getting a new job, all these things are changing and I wanted a game I could jump in and out of to accommodate my random schedule. Raids in a lot of these games I play were the highlight and takes awhile before you can jump into the action. I guess for that reason I’ve shifted over to being a casual player, but I’m glad I am at least able to do this with Guild Wars 2.

A lot of the negative views for gw2 come from long term players that are disappointed in what anet is doing to develop the game.

The pvp’ers don’t think anet is doing a good job fulfilling promises or bringing balance quickly enough to the game.

The pve’ers are upset that most content released is open world zerg that takes little skill to do and is usually abandoned in a week which leaves people late to the party out in the cold.

The dungeon community is upset that no new dungeon has been released that is really as good as any of the original and that many dungeon bugs go unfixed or are patched without any sort of notification. Because anet doesn’t announce many fixes they do, the dungeon community feels abandoned. This is compounded by the fact that no dev has posted in the dungeon forum for a year.

WvW is similar to the above.

I think a lot of the negativity on the forum is because the devs either won’t or aren’t allowed to talk on the forums much so people that post the same problems get frustrated and then eventually rage in a thread. I think if the devs would take more time to post in more threads and sub forums it would solve a lot of problems.

Even if it was just canned responses like “thank you we’re aware of this and looking into it.” Most of the time the devs respond for like a day to ls forum questions and then are silent until the next one. This was most frustrating for me during the fotm update when so many questions were being asked and the devs stopped replying a day before the update went live.

Tru Reptile.6058:

Of all the things I’d call GW2, “a worthy sequel” would certainly not be one of them. I’m glad you enjoy it, though.

Btw, the endgame in GW1 is PvP as its primarily a PvP game.

I don’t agree that PvP was the end game of Guild Wars 1, though it was originally intended to be.

But when you consider that Anet released the last two products for Guild Wars 1 (Nightfall and Eye of the North) without any PvP in it, you have to ask yourself if the direction changed.

There are a whole lot of people who never PvPed who played Guild Wars 1 for years. The achievements are mostly centered around PvE, the cash shop items are pretty much all centered around PvE.

PvP was the originally intended end game, until Anet realized how many PvE’ers were playing the game. They adapted to meet the need.

End game in Guild War 1 was achievment farming, ecto farming, The Underworld, the Fissure of Woe, The hard mode dungeons, DOA, The Deep and Urgoz’s Warren.

PvP remained the end game for many players but it ceased being the focus of Guild Wars 1 long before Guild Wars 2 came out.

Vayne.8563:

Tru Reptile.6058:

Of all the things I’d call GW2, “a worthy sequel” would certainly not be one of them. I’m glad you enjoy it, though.

Btw, the endgame in GW1 is PvP as its primarily a PvP game.

I don’t agree that PvP was the end game of Guild Wars 1, though it was originally intended to be.

But when you consider that Anet released the last two products for Guild Wars 1 (Nightfall and Eye of the North) without any PvP in it, you have to ask yourself if the direction changed.

There are a whole lot of people who never PvPed who played Guild Wars 1 for years. The achievements are mostly centered around PvE, the cash shop items are pretty much all centered around PvE.

PvP was the originally intended end game, until Anet realized how many PvE’ers were playing the game. They adapted to meet the need.

End game in Guild War 1 was achievment farming, ecto farming, The Underworld, the Fissure of Woe, The hard mode dungeons, DOA, The Deep and Urgoz’s Warren.

PvP remained the end game for many players but it ceased being the focus of Guild Wars 1 long before Guild Wars 2 came out.

Yeah, out of the 4+ years I played the game, me and my friend never really bothered with PVP. xD

The gane has many glaring flaws but it really is quite monumental that they managed to make a MMO where you don’t need to constantly be forced to play keep-up and can just do whatever you want.

And no, Ascended gear isn’t playing keep up. I actually did WvW in half-rares, getting 500 BoHs from player kills only.