Guild Wars 2

Hello folks, I’ve gotten an itch to know what the world of GW2 is like after a year of hiatus.

Is it possible to revisit old content that I my have missed?

Could someone sum up important changes since the start of 2013?

Many thanks,

It is not possible within the game to revisit or play or even see the majority of the old content missed.

I think South Sun was actually introduced in late 2012 so that one doesn’t count, that leaves the new Aether Path in Twilight Arbor. They removed an existing dungeon path and replaced it with a new path. The path is fun if you really enjoy running dungeons, the path is a nightmare if you do not play them at all. It is a challenge path.

They revamped fractals and gave us a lot of new bugs, er features I mean. Actually with fractals you can see segments of some of the temporary LS dungeons. However since you’ve missed out on the LS content you may not be able to distinguish the original fractals from newly added ones that came and went. There’s no context for returning or new players to distinguish or care about. Furthermore if you were never a fan of fractals none of this would even matter.

Kessex Hills got a make over, if I were Kessex I’d demand my money back. You can go see what’s left of it I do not think it has or will revert back to what it looked like a year ago, so that’s something …

New features

1) Zerg trains/champ farms. Go to Queensdale and ask where the zerg is and follow
2) the highest grade of gear is no longer orange, it’s pink. gathering is awesome
3) there’s a variety of new back items, oh you wasn’t there sorry =(
4) there’s a lot of new weapon skins, i hope you’re rich
5) As far as I know Scarlet is still alive, so you may or may not have the privilege of seeing her demise. If you don’t know who that is I’ll let the community fill in the blank but I will say this, your GW2 life is perfectly capable of going on without her presence.

I don’t do SPVP much so I can’t weigh in here

WvW

They drained the lakes and added control points, the server that holds these control points gets a bonus to stats at the player level. Thus giving the servers with the least amount of players a fighting chance so long as the larger populations don’t Zerg the control points because why would they? Also because WvW players felt left out they added some LS elements and Achievement Point opportunities to WvW. I’m sure they appreciated the new influx of new targets from the PVE Achievement Point hunters. Well they would have if the queues to get into WvW weren’t so long because there was a sudden influx of new players.

I think i’ve hit the major highlights of 2013, there was a story, but you can’t see it but don’t fret you weren’t missing much anyway. I may have missed something, other members of the community here can feel free to add some insight or counter points, i’ve said my piece.

Edit

Oh I left out our dear zombie dragon Tequatl, it got a massive buff. It’s fun if you’re with an organized guild, otherwise well go see for yourself =D

First of all you have come to a bad place to ask a question like this. The forums is filled with hate because if people are happy they usually keep quiet however when they are mad they usually complain on the forums. I personally have loved the game for the past year. Have I agreed with the story all the time, no. With that said most of the new content and improvements have been in a positive direction for me. There have been many new systems added to make the game to make it function better. Unfortunately there is not a system in place to allow you to revisit old content yet. I have heard rumors of something that will allow returning players to catch up with the story and changes easily but it is not in place yet. There have been many new additions such as Ascended Armor and Weapons, Laurels, Account Bound Wallet, Many New Weapon Skins, New Gem-Store Armors, and more…. So ya there have been some significant changes for the better in my opinion. In the end I would definitely recommend you come back to the game, I have had a great time with it.

Sadly most of the content added over the last year is inaccessible. Personally I still think it’s incredibly wasteful to simply throw out so much content like they do, but I digress.

There are some new/revamped locations you can visit and some content that is still around to enjoy. Namely Kessex Hills got a rather large makeover thanks to the most recent LS, you can see the fallout there now.

The Great Collapse in Divinity’s Reach has been rebuilt into the Crown Pavilion and is a very nice location now. Sadly you cannot access the arena built into the bottom of the pavilion anymore.

There are a few new mini-games you can try your hand at, there’s Sanctum Sprint; a sort of magical “mario-kart meets parkour” that’s actually rather fun once you get the hang of it. As well as Southsun Survival, which seems to be a revamped version of the hunger games inspired event used at the end of one of the betas. There’s also Crab Toss but I’m not actually sure that one’s still around. Regardless these minigames (in addition to good ole’ Keg Brawl) are available on a daily rotation by talking to “Activity” Npcs in major cities.

The world boss Tequatl in Sparkfly Fen got a massive revamp and is now essentially an open world raid, expect to be completely lost and/or useless unless you’re in a guild/group dedicated to it.

Check this link:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Release

Here you’ll find a general summary of what’s changed/added, and below that you’ll find a See Also section with a list of new features added as well as a LS summary.
Two dungeons from past releases were cut down into two pieces(fragment+boss, and introduced as separate fractals for the FotM dungeon + boss rotations.

As someone has said, these forums aren’t the best place to ask stuff unless you have a very selective mind, some people just whine about things when they don’t go the way they expected.
Personally, I’m really happy with the direction ANet is taking. 2013 was a great year, and without a doubt a year of learning for them. I believe the actual LS and what we “hoped” for in the past will start with Season 2.
Welcome back!

I find it amusing that if you don’t like content with good reasoning behind it because you see something that’s broken or unnecessary from your perspective you’re labeled a whiner. Did I label or attack a group of players for liking LS/LW? No I did not. I merely pointed out some of the flaws this game has added this year because it’s worth taking that into consideration. OP left the game for about a year, GW2 has only been out for 1 year and about 4 months maybe they had pressing personal issues to attend to, but my guess is they got bored with it or was turned off by the game for some reason. They just popped by to see how the game is doing to see if it’s worth their time to play again.

lol @ P2P, since this is one of the rare few games where whether you invest $1000 or nothing, you will be on equal footing.

As far as forums go, I can only reiterate what people already mentioned in this thread. In fact, IMHO, forums are by far the worst part of GW2, and that’s coming from someone who originally came to GW2 because of the promises of epic PvP “eSports”.

You can come back for no charge and pick up where you left off. No subs, no gimmicks, just come on in and scratch your own itch. People will give views of what has happened through their own biased viewpoints, for good or for ill… it’s just the way it is. Trust your own experiences when you log back in. Remember, Wintersday is here, it’s a great time to just pop on in and have a little fun.

My advice to the OP would be to start again with a new character.

I played the game for a couple of months when it first came out and then drifted away having completed most of the map and got a little bored (spvp and wvw seemed to hard to get into).

I returned 4 weeks ago and started a new character (thief this time) and I have really enjoyed it. The new living story content is fun and easy to drop in and out of. I tried fractals for the first time and they are good (and challenging) and as an acheivement hunter I tried wvw out and discovered it is GW2 at its finest. I love it and have become and wvw convert, dropping into pve now and then for a quick fix.

Now you even have wintersday which I think adds even more to a great game. My feeling is that GW offers so many different quality experiences within the same game that I cannot recommend returning enough.

Many thanks all of you,

Guess I might get a proper graphics card and play through the game again with one of my lowbies. I blitzed two characters to 80 and did a lot of PvP with little care to the beauty of the world as I do not the graphical capability to support it.