Guild Wars 2

I used to play another mmo, during the beta weekends I would drop whatever I was doing in that game and go play gw2.
I told my friends there that I would still play this game alongside of gw2.

Once gw2 was released I played only this for 2 weeks, then figured I should still play the other game too.

It started with taking a solid minute to figure out why my skills stopped working. – I was out of mana.

I couldn’t find my heal skill, got confused when I died right away instead of being able to rally and forgot I had such a thing as a flying mount to get out of sticky situations.

I couldn’t dodge or attack and move at the same time – resulting in getting into a fight with a healer in an instance because I kept running around the boss…

After logging in 2 more times while trying to enjoy the game I just gave up and dropped my account info to a friend asked her to divide the stuff I have between friends – I never logged in there again.

I have tried different mmo’s since, just for the hell of it or when I needed a break. But it never got me as much as this game.
Not having to target, being able to dodge and rally, not having to worry about carrieng over 9000 potions around. Being able to choose how my gear looks through transmutation, no endless grinding just to keep up with the rest…

There are many, many more reasons why I love this game – too many to list them all.
There are obviously parts that ‘could’ be better, but that’s something that’s true for everything. But I have faith in that the core of this game will always be good… No Pay to Win, no waiting forever for a healer, many different viable builds and many different things to do ingame

We’re still playing the game. I think that’s already enough credit.
People complaining is actually a sign that they want the game to be even better, not that they think it’s bad. When people think a game is bad, they just leave.

Sometimes we can be rude but that’s because of frustration. When you talk to a person, trying to makes things better and they stay silent and don’t answer, after a while you’ll get angry too.

We are indeed spoiled, and it will be interesting to see how the new MMOs will do, since people these days don’t give new games a chance to grow. The game either has everything at launch, or it’s a terrible game.

Wildstar better have a customizable UI or I won’t bother trying it out. The UI fills the entire screen, and I need to have my screen as clear as possible.
As much as I dislike the UI in GWII, at least you can actually see what’s going on, except for when there are spell effects.

hmmm

- traditional RAIDS = fail
- extreme support for addons = fail ( certain add ons become a must, to the point you cannot play w/o them)
- P2P = fail. ( in this day and age, yes it is fail)

And with fail I mean it will stay a niche game at best, mainly for the hardcore crowd which is like 10% of the mmorpg community.

- For the particle effects issue, there is actually something that does wonders atm.
SweetFX, has reduced my particle effects problem to the point I can actually see the Boss telegraphs and all, and I’m a melee warrior so.

I still give GW2 the benefit of the doubt. There is much that I don’t like or outright hate (ascended gear, levels, vertical progression) but there is still a lot of potential if they expand this game with more horizontal progression (housing, heros/henchmen, GW1 skill system).

When I started playing GW1 I quit after a week or so and didn’t touch it for a LONG time. Then a few years later, after the release of Factions, I came back. And man, had the game changed for the better! A much better campaign, many more skills, 2 new professions, super awesome armors and weapons, awesome environments, titles, etc etc etc. Where GW1 prophecies really put me off, GW1 Factions and all the patches in the mean time really turned it into the game that I loved.

I just hope the GW2 devteam also comes around and starts adding content that is great (so no more scarlet and ascended nonsense).

And yes, other MMOs are total dreck, endless gear threadmill and grind, no thanks. The only other MMO I play is Ultima Online, and I used to play EVE. Maybe Everquest Next soon.

Rift has bad camera angles and a bad interface? At least it has a highly adjustable interface, what can you do with gw2, oh thats right nothing, i hate neverwinter because you feel pressured to buy zen, but saying that games art work and combat system is inferior is a joke, its ok 2014 is here, this place will be a ghost town buy summer, gw2 had 0 real competition last year, this year will be different.

I dont dislike this game, but acting like its the best thing since sliced bread is pretty stupid.

deathklock.4961:

Rift has bad camera angles and a bad interface? At least it has a highly adjustable interface, what can you do with gw2, oh thats right nothing, i hate neverwinter because you feel pressured to buy zen, but saying that games art work and combat system is inferior is a joke, its ok 2014 is here, this place will be a ghost town buy summer, gw2 had 0 real competition last year, this year will be different.

I dont dislike this game, but acting like its the best thing since sliced bread is pretty stupid.

- I also thought Rift had good camera, until I played GW2 and it showed me a real smooth camera.

- Rift interface is nice and all but all the add ons and all the crap on the screen makes it a play the interface not the game itself thing, plus combat is boring as hell.

- GW2 doesn’t need add ons or any of that crap, it’s a play the game not the interface feeling which I love.

- I didn’t say much about art, you are putting words there that do not belong, artistic taste is different for everyone but if neverwinter is your idea of good art style I say No comment

- no competition last year, hmm that might be true still doesn’t take away from the fact it is a great game dispite it’s issues.

- empty by summer, hahahahah I guess everybody can dream

- if you have not noticed, the single most telling thing about gw2 success is how now all upcoming companies are trying to copy some parts of it to integrate into their own creations instead of trying to continue to copy wow.

- Acting like it’s the best thing since sliced bread is also something you thought of by yourself mate.
no where does it say that at all and I did say it has it’s issues but….
even with it’s issues it’s a hell of a lot better than all the crap out there on the ether.

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

yeah, because of all the people that play it and all the people that recommend others to play it I actually did give it a go some time ago in 2007 or 2008.

I could not believe my eyes !
Back than I was a console player for the most part so I said to myself,
if that is what 12 million people were playing I considered them all morons at that moment.
that is the sorriest most pathetic excuse for a game I had ever seen in my life.
even compared to consoles games of that era the combat was stale and boring as hell.

Now I’m strictly a PC mmorpg player, all my consoles are gone !
I have never played any other game as long as I have played GW2 in my life.
not even FF which is a long time favorite of mine from my console days.

2500 hours and counting.

Finally a thread that is worth it to read… +1

Latinkuro.9420:

I purposely didn’t log in to Guild Wars 2 for a week for 2 reasons:

- 1 to prevent burn out.
- 2 to see how I would view the game after a week of playing other mmo’s.

The result is well read on:

- In that week I played aion, STO, Rift, Neverwinter, Tera, Eden Eternal, Vindictus, Aura kingdom and so on you get the picture.

What I found is that:
- They all have awkward camera’s that are not smooth, at all !
- character responsiveness is awful.
- reaction times are awful.
- Boring combat.
- quality of life is none existent, when compared to GW.
- messy, badly coded interfaces, and ugly as hell.
- GCD, this didn’t use to bother me at all now I can’t stand it.
- need target to cast anything, annoying much.
- No global Trading post, yeah I missed it.
- art style, I’m gonna censor myself here.

Conclusion

A lot of people say Guild Wars 2 lacks this and that and whatever.
But I say to you, all those other games are missing a hell of a lot more
that we as GW2 players take for granted everyday.
I believe we have been spoiled so much by all the nice good features of GW2 that now we expect an even higher level of quality and polish

The fact of the matter is give credit where credit is due

Guild Wars 2 is an amazing game with many small things in it we take for granted and because they seem so small you might not give it a second thought and think all games out there have those features, when the reality is, I have yet to see any other game that has as much polish, attention to detail and quality of life features as GW2 has, not even wow comes close to this level of refinement, yes I dropped the elephant in the room !

Many consider wow the pinnacle of polish, well I’m here to tell you that is no longer true and hasn’t been since the day GW2 launched.

I’m not saying GW2 is perfect, cough RNG cough Time gating !
but when put into perspective against all the crap that is swirling the ether,
GW2 is a 24k diamond in the rough

Even though I like Guild Wars 2 because I enjoyed the first one, I can understand why people wouldn’t like it. It’s a lot different from other MMOs in that it focuses more on the journey than the “end game.” Friends who don’t normally play MMOS gave Guild Wars 2 a chance because it was more approachable. The tutorials aren’t all that great, but it didn’t make them feel so left out because they’re new with the level scaling.

You could argue this makes the game “casual,” which is true, but for people like me and my friends that are full time college students and work, it’s nice to have an MMO we can put down whenever that has a lot of content and probably the most visually appealing MMO to date.

Curae captured my feelings exactly. While I’ve felt a little more tedium lately, that’s due to most of my guild vanishing for the holidays so the RP’s been scarce. But my attempt to go to my old game of 7 years failed inside an hour right after GW2 launched. I’m hardly a twitch reflex gamer and yet the action level in combat here and the clean UI keep me engrossed and feeling effective.

I’ll be trying out TESO, mostly because I have a good friend working on it and I will always support his projects. Also I did like Skyrim until a game killing bug stuck me in a town. I just hope I can handle the game mechanics after GW2 tailor made itself to everything I like.

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

Every class can cast something while moving. I don’t know why some of the people here insist on being dishonest when describing other games.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

Every class can cast something while moving. I don’t know why some of the people here insist on being dishonest when describing other games.

umm im not being dishonest, unless they have changed every single caster in WoW to cast while moving in the last few months what i said is 100% true.

WoW is incredibly outdated these days in every aspect, they are desperately playing catch up, look at there new expansion, they have copied paste things from more modern mmos.

I believe that Mages can trait to have something castable while moving, but it’s far from being every ability. So yes, they can cast -something-. Not nearly to the extent one can in GW2 where channeling is the exception. /looks at Guardian Heal Elite 4 and 5

I think Arnath is still right though,
the ratio of spells you can cast while moving in those games is severely limited.
for every 18 spells that root you, you might have 2 that allow you to move while casting.

That makes it feel pretty much 100% of the time as if you’re rooted.

I tried aion 4.0 new class gunslinger, it was fun till the rooting annoyed me to much to bother playing.

EDIT
I couldn’t wait for my experiment to expire so I could come back running to GW2 faster than you can say RUN !

it’s the things you take for granted that pull you back to this game.
- deposit collectables.
- account wide wallet.
- freedom.
- the music.
- the environment.
- the combat.
- the feeling that when you press for something to happen it happens instantly not 2 seconds later.
- sound and action synchronization, when you hit something in gw2 it all sounds, feels and looks the way it’s suppose to, the swing, the hit sound and the feedback from the mob that got hit.
- I hate it when in some games you see the swing, hear the sound 2 seconds after, the mob gets hit but doesn’t give feedback till much later and sometimes the wrong feedback at that.
- and so much more it’s overwhelming trying to think about it all and typing it.

Arnath.2319:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

Every class can cast something while moving. I don’t know why some of the people here insist on being dishonest when describing other games.

umm im not being dishonest, unless they have changed every single caster in WoW to cast while moving in the last few months what i said is 100% true.

WoW is incredibly outdated these days in every aspect, they are desperately playing catch up, look at there new expansion, they have copied paste things from more modern mmos.

Yes, you are. While you can’t cast everything while moving, you can cast some things and you certainly aren’t rooted in one place for a duration of the fight.

It’s more like evolving rather than desperately playing catch up, while GW2 devolved by introducing an obvious, flat out gigantic grind with the introduction of ascended gear.

What aspects are other companies trying to copy from gw2? I keep hearing people saying that TESO is copying the wvsw system, but people fail to realize that DAOC was doing what gw2 does now over a decade ago, and the lead RvR guy at TESO is the one that orginaly made the DAOC RvR/Wvsw system, so if anyone is copying anything is was gw2, thats just fact.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

Every class can cast something while moving. I don’t know why some of the people here insist on being dishonest when describing other games.

umm im not being dishonest, unless they have changed every single caster in WoW to cast while moving in the last few months what i said is 100% true.

WoW is incredibly outdated these days in every aspect, they are desperately playing catch up, look at there new expansion, they have copied paste things from more modern mmos.

Yes, you are. While you can’t cast everything while moving, you can cast some things and you certainly aren’t rooted in one place for a duration of the fight.

It’s more like evolving rather than desperately playing catch up, while GW2 devolved by introducing an obvious, flat out gigantic grind with the introduction of ascended gear.

Warlock 2.5 sec rooted Shadow Bolt fillers and 3 sec rooted Chaos Bolts ftl.

I went back and watched our Heroic kill of Deathwing and it was just awful, sitting there, rocking back and forth casting shadowbolt fillers. Ugh, never again.

Karizee.8076:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

Every class can cast something while moving. I don’t know why some of the people here insist on being dishonest when describing other games.

umm im not being dishonest, unless they have changed every single caster in WoW to cast while moving in the last few months what i said is 100% true.

WoW is incredibly outdated these days in every aspect, they are desperately playing catch up, look at there new expansion, they have copied paste things from more modern mmos.

Yes, you are. While you can’t cast everything while moving, you can cast some things and you certainly aren’t rooted in one place for a duration of the fight.

It’s more like evolving rather than desperately playing catch up, while GW2 devolved by introducing an obvious, flat out gigantic grind with the introduction of ascended gear.

Warlock 2.5 sec rooted Shadow Bolt fillers and 3 sec rooted Chaos Bolts ftl.

I went back and watched our Heroic kill of Deathwing and it was just awful, sitting there, rocking back and forth casting shadowbolt fillers. Ugh, never again.

Cataclysm ended over a year ago. You obviously don’t even play any more, like most of the others here, and therefore have no idea what you’re talking about.

I will say this, however. Roleplaying a zergling and spamming 1 doesn’t sound like much fun.

deathklock.4961:

What aspects are other companies trying to copy from gw2? I keep hearing people saying that TESO is copying the wvsw system, but people fail to realize that DAOC was doing what gw2 does now over a decade ago, and the lead RvR guy at TESO is the one that orginaly made the DAOC RvR/Wvsw system, so if anyone is copying anything is was gw2, thats just fact.

- you have a point there.
that is wrong, most people think about WvW and think GW is the 1st to do it which it didn’t, but I’m not talking about that particular system at all.

features that before gw2 were barely ever present in any mmorpg I know of.
- shared loot, no more mob tagging, kill stealing teso and wow both have adopted this.
- play on any server in your region, wow introduced phasing teso is doing mega servers essentially a different version with the same goal in mind.
- shared resources, think mining nodes and the like, teso is adapting it i head rumors wow will be to but I’m not 100% sure about it.
- making the experience less grindy and more about fun, a lot of games have gone out of their way to make this happen as of late, wonder why (because of GW@ success of course)
- dodge mechanic is not exactly exclusive to GW2 but it is for mmorpg’s in general
before gw2 no body ever dared implement it now they all want it.
- when did anyone seriously abolish the trinity before gw2 came out ?
sure they implemented some kinks here and their but the holy trinity was always strong with them all !
now they all want something different, even if they do sport some form of trinity it’s not exactly the holy untouchable trinity we used to have, for example making it possible to fulfill multiple roles of the trinity with a single character and such is what they think might work. I don’t think it will but hey their failure is our win.
- there are more features of course these are the ones i can think of, of the top of my head.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Karizee.8076:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

Every class can cast something while moving. I don’t know why some of the people here insist on being dishonest when describing other games.

umm im not being dishonest, unless they have changed every single caster in WoW to cast while moving in the last few months what i said is 100% true.

WoW is incredibly outdated these days in every aspect, they are desperately playing catch up, look at there new expansion, they have copied paste things from more modern mmos.

Yes, you are. While you can’t cast everything while moving, you can cast some things and you certainly aren’t rooted in one place for a duration of the fight.

It’s more like evolving rather than desperately playing catch up, while GW2 devolved by introducing an obvious, flat out gigantic grind with the introduction of ascended gear.

Warlock 2.5 sec rooted Shadow Bolt fillers and 3 sec rooted Chaos Bolts ftl.

I went back and watched our Heroic kill of Deathwing and it was just awful, sitting there, rocking back and forth casting shadowbolt fillers. Ugh, never again.

Cataclysm ended over a year ago. You obviously don’t even play any more, like most of the others here, and therefore have no idea what you’re talking about.

I will say this, however. Roleplaying a zergling and spamming 1 doesn’t sound like much fun.

Just looked it up on WoWhead, buddy. Nothing has changed, those spells root you like a turret making for the most BORING combat mechanics ever created.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Karizee.8076:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

Every class can cast something while moving. I don’t know why some of the people here insist on being dishonest when describing other games.

umm im not being dishonest, unless they have changed every single caster in WoW to cast while moving in the last few months what i said is 100% true.

WoW is incredibly outdated these days in every aspect, they are desperately playing catch up, look at there new expansion, they have copied paste things from more modern mmos.

Yes, you are. While you can’t cast everything while moving, you can cast some things and you certainly aren’t rooted in one place for a duration of the fight.

It’s more like evolving rather than desperately playing catch up, while GW2 devolved by introducing an obvious, flat out gigantic grind with the introduction of ascended gear.

Warlock 2.5 sec rooted Shadow Bolt fillers and 3 sec rooted Chaos Bolts ftl.

I went back and watched our Heroic kill of Deathwing and it was just awful, sitting there, rocking back and forth casting shadowbolt fillers. Ugh, never again.

Cataclysm ended over a year ago. You obviously don’t even play any more, like most of the others here, and therefore have no idea what you’re talking about.

I will say this, however. Roleplaying a zergling and spamming 1 doesn’t sound like much fun.

if you’re still spamming 1 after a year I’m sorry to tell you this but you’re playing it wrong !

people claim trinity is so much better when in fact it’s less about skill than gw2 is in a big way, I mean all you need is a tank with enough threat to keep the moron AI from ever looking at the guy that is actually stabbing it to death !
how does that take any skill ?

at least in gw2 a lot of unexpected things happen from time to time, you thought the fight would go left when it actually went right, surprise !

those things don’t happen in trinity games ever !

the only oh kitten moment in trinity games is when the tank dies and everyone is forced to fend for themselves. which is what gw2 is all about in trinity the only meaningful players are the tank to generate threat and the healer to mitigate the damage the tank is taking the dps is just dps and all they do is follow rotations while not pulling to much threat away from the tank BORING !!!

removing the threat and removing the clutch of a healer to get you out of trouble is a great change imo.

no threat forces people to think on their feet and react to what is actually going on instead of following a rotation like it is a bible.

Karizee.8076:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Karizee.8076:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

Every class can cast something while moving. I don’t know why some of the people here insist on being dishonest when describing other games.

umm im not being dishonest, unless they have changed every single caster in WoW to cast while moving in the last few months what i said is 100% true.

WoW is incredibly outdated these days in every aspect, they are desperately playing catch up, look at there new expansion, they have copied paste things from more modern mmos.

Yes, you are. While you can’t cast everything while moving, you can cast some things and you certainly aren’t rooted in one place for a duration of the fight.

It’s more like evolving rather than desperately playing catch up, while GW2 devolved by introducing an obvious, flat out gigantic grind with the introduction of ascended gear.

Warlock 2.5 sec rooted Shadow Bolt fillers and 3 sec rooted Chaos Bolts ftl.

I went back and watched our Heroic kill of Deathwing and it was just awful, sitting there, rocking back and forth casting shadowbolt fillers. Ugh, never again.

Cataclysm ended over a year ago. You obviously don’t even play any more, like most of the others here, and therefore have no idea what you’re talking about.

I will say this, however. Roleplaying a zergling and spamming 1 doesn’t sound like much fun.

Just looked it up on WoWhead, buddy. Nothing has changed, those spells root you like a turret making for the most BORING combat mechanics ever created.

The spec that casts chaos bolt, doesn’t have access to shadow bolt. And each spec has the ability to cast their main spell while moving, if they so choose. Stop being dishonest.

What makes the combat here so great? Dodge? I tried this game and found it to be awful. What strategy is there? What optimization? You just run up and spam your tiny number of buttons because it doesn’t matter. And dodge once in a while, randomly, because you can’t see past the particle spam.

Solo PvE isn’t a challenge, in dungeons you pull to a wall and stack, and in WvW/world champ farming, you roleplay a zergling and spam 1.

I do not fault you if you like your automatic proc’s blocks dodge reflect all is procced in those games it is all about numbers player skill has no place there at all. you could just as well play a spreadsheet called “insert mmorpg name here.xls” and have just as much fun, meaning it’s no fun at all.

go try to beat even an elite equivalent 4 levels higher than you in those games and see how you die horribly.

here you can use your player skill to actually beat it.
you may call dodge what you want but it’s better than automatic no skill proc’s that leave no room for player skills what so ever.

here words like dynamic, action, reaction, twitch, and instinct actually mean something.
no matter how much of these you try in a proc based game like oh all trinity based games to date on the market will allow you to solo kill an elite level mob 4 levels higher than you EVER !

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Karizee.8076:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Karizee.8076:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

Every class can cast something while moving. I don’t know why some of the people here insist on being dishonest when describing other games.

umm im not being dishonest, unless they have changed every single caster in WoW to cast while moving in the last few months what i said is 100% true.

WoW is incredibly outdated these days in every aspect, they are desperately playing catch up, look at there new expansion, they have copied paste things from more modern mmos.

Yes, you are. While you can’t cast everything while moving, you can cast some things and you certainly aren’t rooted in one place for a duration of the fight.

It’s more like evolving rather than desperately playing catch up, while GW2 devolved by introducing an obvious, flat out gigantic grind with the introduction of ascended gear.

Warlock 2.5 sec rooted Shadow Bolt fillers and 3 sec rooted Chaos Bolts ftl.

I went back and watched our Heroic kill of Deathwing and it was just awful, sitting there, rocking back and forth casting shadowbolt fillers. Ugh, never again.

Cataclysm ended over a year ago. You obviously don’t even play any more, like most of the others here, and therefore have no idea what you’re talking about.

I will say this, however. Roleplaying a zergling and spamming 1 doesn’t sound like much fun.

Just looked it up on WoWhead, buddy. Nothing has changed, those spells root you like a turret making for the most BORING combat mechanics ever created.

The spec that casts chaos bolt, doesn’t have access to shadow bolt. And each spec has the ability to cast their main spell while moving, if they so choose. Stop being dishonest.

What makes the combat here so great? Dodge? I tried this game and found it to be awful. What strategy is there? What optimization? You just run up and spam your tiny number of buttons because it doesn’t matter. And dodge once in a while, randomly, because you can’t see past the particle spam.

Solo PvE isn’t a challenge, in dungeons you pull to a wall and stack, and in WvW/world champ farming, you roleplay a zergling and spam 1.

Because plugging in macros and boss mods make a game challenging?

WoW is such a borefest spreadsheet game, it got completely ridiculous when we could predict down to the hour when we would take a boss down because a tank got a shield drop or a healer got a trinket. It’s no wonder they lost 3 million subs since GW2 launched.

Tera had a dodge mechanic before gw2 did so your wrong about that too, swotor graphics and gw2 are pretty close , the story line is swotor is awsome, the garbage personal story in this game looks like it was put together by middle school kids on a class project, i have yet to finish one, because its one long slide show of yawn and boor.

Less grindy? Do i need to even comment on that. I guess if your happy with exoctics then ya, but if you want full ascended and legendary, i think not. Lets not mention how meaningless pretty much everything you do in this game is, loot wise, oh hey i just spent my time killing that dragon and got 2 silver and a worthless yellow to de (golf clap) i have never played a game before were you literally get bags full of worthless garbage, no matter what you are doing.

Latinkuro.9420:

- For the particle effects issue, there is actually something that does wonders atm.
SweetFX, has reduced my particle effects problem to the point I can actually see the Boss telegraphs and all, and I’m a melee warrior so.

what settings do you use for making SweetFX reduce the particle effects? I wonder if it’s worth downloading it.

Latinkuro.9420:

deathklock.4961:

Rift has bad camera angles and a bad interface? At least it has a highly adjustable interface, what can you do with gw2, oh thats right nothing, i hate neverwinter because you feel pressured to buy zen, but saying that games art work and combat system is inferior is a joke, its ok 2014 is here, this place will be a ghost town buy summer, gw2 had 0 real competition last year, this year will be different.

I dont dislike this game, but acting like its the best thing since sliced bread is pretty stupid.

- if you have not noticed, the single most telling thing about gw2 success is how now all upcoming companies are trying to copy some parts of it to integrate into their own creations instead of trying to continue to copy wow.

As a beta tester of some upcomming mmos, I’d have to agree with this 100%!

I agree with the OP. I miss GW2 staples when I go to other games now. When I all knew of was WoW systems, I could do other wow clones and still be happy. Now I’m spoiled

That being said… I miss the trinity. I love healing and tanking. GW2 has a different system of DPS and Utility. Its a duality instead of a trinity. It can be messy, hard to track and includes a lot of player skill and reaction timing. While I’m not necessarily complaining about that, they haven’t balanced the classes to be good at both damage and utility, opting to make the damage weapon specific and the utility class specific. So we are still not “bringing the player, not the class” when optimizing gains are based on one class having the utility we need or one class being able to deal more damage.

That being said, GW2 is a step in the right direction when so many other MMOs are still climbing up on the shoulders of others.

Just fix some “anti-human nature” measures to keep the market equitable would be nice. Adopting a bit more “choose your own adventure” appeal couldn’t hurt either… The living story, after having a few choice paths in the personal story, feels like a step in the wrong direction. There are plenty of ways to write good story that brings your choices back around to a similar place to rejoin the main storyline with everyone else.

That, and the ability to actually create your own story and surroundings in the world make for incredible endgame content.. Not much can top Improbable Island for that. http://www.improbableisland.com/home.php?

@SweetFX question: nevermind, just read that I can’t use Teamspeak and SweetFX at the same time —> not interested anymore

gw2 is a nice step forward in the mmo market but i am sure that when mmo’s that are using voxels will come out few people will look back at gw2 again. I personally play gw2 because of the lack of trinity which i enjoy and the smooth gameplay performance i get. As for gameplay it’s meh… i enjoy tera alot more because of the action combat and skill required but i can’t take full advantage of that because in large fights you need a strong pc to handle the game and seeing as how you need to aim everything there having small freezes gets you dead.

The things this game does better than the others out there (and I have played a lot of MMOs, including taking breaks from this game to try some others out):

- Dynamic Events: I still love when I’m exploring an area I haven’t seen a lot and things start happening around me I didn’t expect. Or when NPCs run up to me to let me know that things are going on. Or an attack suddenly happens someplace that I thought was going to be 100% safe. Other MMOs tend to “say” that things are happening, like wolves are attacking…but they’re just wandering around doing nothing most of the time.

- Jumping Puzzles: Jumping puzzles are awesome. I love them. I want more. Don’t see those too often in other MMOs.

- No Party Required: Another great innovation. I don’t need to join someone’s party to get involved in what they’re doing. And they don’t have to join mine if they want to help me with something. I mean, I’m more than happy to party up with people, and have done it many times, but if I’m just passing through the area and need help with a champion, I like that others will come and help me because they will get credit too.

- Raising the Downed and Dead: In another MMO, if I’m not a healer, I guess you are completely out of luck. But, in GW2, regardless of my profession, I can help you (and I probably will). That’s because I know that the surest way to beat a tough enemy or event is to have more help, so I always devote time to getting people back on their feet (and I know I’m not alone, I watch others do it too).

- Minor Death Penalties: I hate penalties from dying. Having to run back to your body or losing experience points is a terrible mechanic (not to mention losing items, which can also happen in some MMOs). GW2 didn’t invent the minor death penalty, but I thank them for including it. Worst that happens is you have to port somewhere and pay a minor fee to fix your armor. I call that a win.

There’s a ton of other things…but I’m with the OP. I’ve played other games since GW2 has come out (and I played a ton before it came out), and there’s something in the formula of this game that works. It isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely the closest to it that I’ve found.

Opinions will vary, naturally.

Karizee.8076:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Karizee.8076:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Karizee.8076:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

Every class can cast something while moving. I don’t know why some of the people here insist on being dishonest when describing other games.

umm im not being dishonest, unless they have changed every single caster in WoW to cast while moving in the last few months what i said is 100% true.

WoW is incredibly outdated these days in every aspect, they are desperately playing catch up, look at there new expansion, they have copied paste things from more modern mmos.

Yes, you are. While you can’t cast everything while moving, you can cast some things and you certainly aren’t rooted in one place for a duration of the fight.

It’s more like evolving rather than desperately playing catch up, while GW2 devolved by introducing an obvious, flat out gigantic grind with the introduction of ascended gear.

Warlock 2.5 sec rooted Shadow Bolt fillers and 3 sec rooted Chaos Bolts ftl.

I went back and watched our Heroic kill of Deathwing and it was just awful, sitting there, rocking back and forth casting shadowbolt fillers. Ugh, never again.

Cataclysm ended over a year ago. You obviously don’t even play any more, like most of the others here, and therefore have no idea what you’re talking about.

I will say this, however. Roleplaying a zergling and spamming 1 doesn’t sound like much fun.

Just looked it up on WoWhead, buddy. Nothing has changed, those spells root you like a turret making for the most BORING combat mechanics ever created.

The spec that casts chaos bolt, doesn’t have access to shadow bolt. And each spec has the ability to cast their main spell while moving, if they so choose. Stop being dishonest.

What makes the combat here so great? Dodge? I tried this game and found it to be awful. What strategy is there? What optimization? You just run up and spam your tiny number of buttons because it doesn’t matter. And dodge once in a while, randomly, because you can’t see past the particle spam.

Solo PvE isn’t a challenge, in dungeons you pull to a wall and stack, and in WvW/world champ farming, you roleplay a zergling and spam 1.

Because plugging in macros and boss mods make a game challenging?

WoW is such a borefest spreadsheet game, it got completely ridiculous when we could predict down to the hour when we would take a boss down because a tank got a shield drop or a healer got a trinket. It’s no wonder they lost 3 million subs since GW2 launched.

And yet only a small percentage of people manage to complete heroic raids.

Your oversimplification is dishonest.

As someone said before, if you’ve played other MMOs before GW2, there is a chance you may turn back to them, but if GW2 is your first MMO then you will not like others more

Can we get away from the word dishonest and chock it up to a difference of perspectives?

Seriously, its like you feel lied to by them. They aren’t fully wrong and you aren’t fully right. Just let it go

Ronah.2869:

As someone said before, if you’ve played other MMOs before GW2, there is a chance you may turn back to them, but if GW2 is your first MMO then you will not like others more

I’ve played WoW for years. After GW2 I couldn’t play without dodge, the ability to hit without target or casting on the move. And no Mesmer… no thanks!

I also agree on most points in OP, GW2 is just well designed.

I went from WoW to Rift and then to GW2 and now I occasionally play a little Rift (now that it’s f2p) just to remind myself why I left it.

Combat in Rift is reduced to compiling all your skills in order of cooldowns, write a macro putting these in order from highest to lowest (one for ranged & one for melee) and assigning these to 1-3 keys. Walk up to an enemy mob, stand rooted (no reason to move unless out of a rare AoE) and start clicking your macro and wait until they are dead.

The combat in GW2 by comparison is so much more dynamic and skill based that I find myself spending hours just running around killing the same mobs over and over. Not to farm, not as part of any daily or gear ‘grind’, just because I love the dance that the GW2 combat system affords.

I also don’t understand how attaining things like ascended gear can be considered a grind in GW2. In WoW the only grind I decided to do was to get the mount I wanted. This could only be done by staying in one location, killing a specific group of mobs on a small hill…over and over and over and over….ad nauseum. I might as well have been playing the same level of PacMan for days on end. After days of this I finally got my mount, carpel tunnel, and a vow to never do a grind again.

By contrast look at what is considered a ‘grind’ in GW2 to get ascended materials. You can do temple events in Orr, jumping puzzles or mini dungeons, WvW, hunt down Champs, go to lower level zones and do some casual gathering, slay dragons or other world bosses, do dungeons or fractals…in other words playing the game. If one doesn’t enjoy doing any of those things and consider them a tedious grind then I find it hard to think they enjoy the game at all.

For me GW2 far outshines all other mmo’s on every level, and even most games in general. So much so that all it takes is a few minutes of stale mindless gameplay of other games to having me running and dodge-rolling back to GW2.

@Wasbunny: I think most of the people who talk about grind in GW2 are those who limit themselves to one specific kind of content and ignore the rest. If you never play WvW, for example, your source of Dragonite Ore is relatively limited.

Wasbunny.6531:

I went from WoW to Rift and then to GW2 and now I occasionally play a little Rift (now that it’s f2p) just to remind myself why I left it.

Combat in Rift is reduced to compiling all your skills in order of cooldowns, write a macro putting these in order from highest to lowest (one for ranged & one for melee) and assigning these to 1-3 keys. Walk up to an enemy mob, stand rooted (no reason to move unless out of a rare AoE) and start clicking your macro and wait until they are dead.

The combat in GW2 by comparison is so much more dynamic and skill based that I find myself spending hours just running around killing the same mobs over and over. Not to farm, not as part of any daily or gear ‘grind’, just because I love the dance that the GW2 combat system affords.

I also don’t understand how attaining things like ascended gear can be considered a grind in GW2. In WoW the only grind I decided to do was to get the mount I wanted. This could only be done by staying in one location, killing a specific group of mobs on a small hill…over and over and over and over….ad nauseum. I might as well have been playing the same level of PacMan for days on end. After days of this I finally got my mount, carpel tunnel, and a vow to never do a grind again.

By contrast look at what is considered a ‘grind’ in GW2 to get ascended materials. You can do temple events in Orr, jumping puzzles or mini dungeons, WvW, hunt down Champs, go to lower level zones and do some casual gathering, slay dragons or other world bosses, do dungeons or fractals…in other words playing the game. If one doesn’t enjoy doing any of those things and consider them a tedious grind then I find it hard to think they enjoy the game at all.

For me GW2 far outshines all other mmo’s on every level, and even most games in general. So much so that all it takes is a few minutes of stale mindless gameplay of other games to having me running and dodge-rolling back to GW2.

And what mount was that?

Latinkuro.9420:

- empty by summer, hahahahah I guess everybody can dream

- if you have not noticed, the single most telling thing about gw2 success is how now all upcoming companies are trying to copy some parts of it to integrate into their own creations instead of trying to continue to copy wow.

- Acting like it’s the best thing since sliced bread is also something you thought of by yourself mate.
no where does it say that at all and I did say it has it’s issues but….
even with it’s issues it’s a hell of a lot better than all the crap out there on the ether.

It is funny you say this since you seem to have a bunch of mmo experience. But outside of the speed of the updates, I can’t really think of much that gw2 is the first to do, so I’m not sure how people would steal it from them. Almost every thing in the game has been seen before in another mmo or Arpg, since really gw2 is sort of like smashing the two together.

Now don’t get me wrong. They did the same thing wow did. They took everyone else’s ideas and did them better, or fine tuned them. But both WoW and GW2 simply copied what had been done before, and then did it better.

I’m in a worse place than most of you, it seems. I don’t play other MMO’s because I was spoiled by many of the features of GW2, and I don’t play GW2 because of my three pet peeves:

• Particle spam and the headache inducing light show
• Anything new, or which counts towards gaining rewards, is all herd all the time
• Boring crafting as the only realistic means to obtain Ascended Armor/Weapons

How would I fix those things?

• Effects slider, one end is effects off, the other is as-it-is-now
• Work on diversifying rewards across all content rather than concentrating them
• Ascended weapons/armor via at least three other, equivalent effort, routes

What OP said about combat goes for GW1 also (not the skills, but movement while using skills). 

I went back this month and for a bit of nostalgia, took my Spirit Lord Ritualist out for a bit of Hard Mode fighting. And it was boring. Your character autoruns up to the target and starts autattacking. Your heroes/mercenaries/henchmen run up with you and start autoattacking also. If you need to move you have to stop combat as you are rooted. It’s very static compared to GW2. 

I remember after the first GW2 beta, seeing videos of people strafing while fighting and thinking, How are they doing that? And demonstrating to guild mates what the video showed. “While attacking, you run around in a circle!” (Runs in a small circle to show them). My guild mates are going "Ooohhhh" 

It was really a shock going back to GW1. I ran up to a ledge and hit jump. Oh yeah, can’t. When combat started I immediately started strafing, except it was so awkward as all attacks root you and it’s difficult to break the root. No dodging of course. The combat style feels so old school now that for me it’s unplayable. 

@Marcus Greythorne: The ways to obtain Dragonite don’t seem that limited to me. I don’t WvW so I get all I need by doing temples in Orr, world bosses and dungeons…I guess my point being I enjoy doing those things anyway so I never feel like it’s a grind.

@Dark Catalyst: I want to say…Netherwing? I don’t know, black & dark bluish flying thing…really liked it once I got it though. Forgot to add too that I wasn’t the only one grinding for it so was constantly fighting over the mobs with other players…not fun, not fun at all.

Wasbunny.6531:

@Marcus Greythorne: The ways to obtain Dragonite don’t seem that limited to me. I don’t WvW so I get all I need by doing temples in Orr, world bosses and dungeons…I guess my point being I enjoy doing those things anyway so I never feel like it’s a grind.

Well maybe the game isn’t handholding the player that much (which is a good thing to a lot of people), so many people “forget” that there are different options and feel that they have to grind to reach their goals.

Latinkuro.9420:

I purposely didn’t log in to Guild Wars 2 for a week for 2 reasons:

- 1 to prevent burn out.
- 2 to see how I would view the game after a week of playing other mmo’s.

The result is well read on:

- In that week I played aion, STO, Rift, Neverwinter, Tera, Eden Eternal, Vindictus, Aura kingdom and so on you get the picture.

What I found is that:
- They all have awkward camera’s that are not smooth, at all !
- character responsiveness is awful.
- reaction times are awful.
- Boring combat.
- quality of life is none existent, when compared to GW.
- messy, badly coded interfaces, and ugly as hell.
- GCD, this didn’t use to bother me at all now I can’t stand it.
- need target to cast anything, annoying much.
- No global Trading post, yeah I missed it.
- art style, I’m gonna censor myself here.

Conclusion

A lot of people say Guild Wars 2 lacks this and that and whatever.
But I say to you, all those other games are missing a hell of a lot more
that we as GW2 players take for granted everyday.
I believe we have been spoiled so much by all the nice good features of GW2 that now we expect an even higher level of quality and polish

The fact of the matter is give credit where credit is due

Guild Wars 2 is an amazing game with many small things in it we take for granted and because they seem so small you might not give it a second thought and think all games out there have those features, when the reality is, I have yet to see any other game that has as much polish, attention to detail and quality of life features as GW2 has, not even wow comes close to this level of refinement, yes I dropped the elephant in the room !

Many consider wow the pinnacle of polish, well I’m here to tell you that is no longer true and hasn’t been since the day GW2 launched.

I’m not saying GW2 is perfect, cough RNG cough Time gating !
but when put into perspective against all the crap that is swirling the ether,
GW2 is a 24k diamond in the rough

I also took break periods. Once I renewed my sub to WoW for a month, and once renewed sub for SWTOR. Both of which were horrible experiences and I missed GW2 rigth away.

The only thing I did like, is I reinstalled mass Effect 3 since it had a bunch of DLCs released since I played it, so I got them, and finished it one more time going through all the DLCs which were on sale back around Labor Day.

It is definitely worth taking a break, because it does bring to light the strong points of GW2 again.

Can’t comment on the other games but several of those do not seem true for Vindictus. That game certainly has problems (cheating can be pretty bad but maybe not that bad considering the shenanigans people pull in GW2 dungeons, repetitive dungeons where the same same map is used backwards/forwards/palette swapped/etc) but boring combat isn’t one of them at least not in comparison to GW2. Responsiveness is(was?) dependent on the connection of person hosting the instance. That one is hard to compare but the lag in GW2 is sometimes pretty bad as well.

It does have one major thing in common though. Time gated crafting materials. Admittedly it is much worse in Vindictus since it can be a random drop from a 1/day instance that you must pay if you want to repeat.

- They all have awkward camera’s that are not smooth, at all !
- character responsiveness is awful.
- reaction times are awful.

These are all in GW2 as well. Try turning with A & D, and it’s like moving a truck on ice. Also, try jumping, and you’ll notice that your head hits a ceiling. The physics for GW2 characters needs to be adjusted.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Karizee.8076:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Arnath.2319:

Dodge.

I went back to WoW for a few days when they were offering free play time and the one thing i missed more then anything was dodging, that and moving while casting.

Also the graphics in GW2 are superior to any other mmo.

Every class can cast something while moving. I don’t know why some of the people here insist on being dishonest when describing other games.

umm im not being dishonest, unless they have changed every single caster in WoW to cast while moving in the last few months what i said is 100% true.

WoW is incredibly outdated these days in every aspect, they are desperately playing catch up, look at there new expansion, they have copied paste things from more modern mmos.

Yes, you are. While you can’t cast everything while moving, you can cast some things and you certainly aren’t rooted in one place for a duration of the fight.

It’s more like evolving rather than desperately playing catch up, while GW2 devolved by introducing an obvious, flat out gigantic grind with the introduction of ascended gear.

Warlock 2.5 sec rooted Shadow Bolt fillers and 3 sec rooted Chaos Bolts ftl.

I went back and watched our Heroic kill of Deathwing and it was just awful, sitting there, rocking back and forth casting shadowbolt fillers. Ugh, never again.

Cataclysm ended over a year ago. You obviously don’t even play any more, like most of the others here, and therefore have no idea what you’re talking about.

I will say this, however. Roleplaying a zergling and spamming 1 doesn’t sound like much fun.

You act as if WoW has radically changed or something. It’s combat is still the same. Stop trying to defend it as if it’s combat is similar to GW2, because it’s not.

You cannot move while casting spells. Period. The only exception is if you have certain talents or glyphs. I play WoW everyday, so stop trying to make excuses.