Guild Wars 2

So, I started playing GW2 about a month-ish after launch, played for about 3 weeks, and quit. I find it very strange how a MMO game can continue with hardly no PvE end-game content… or am I missing something? Even though I’m only level 61, I haven’t heard of anything aside from, 5 5-man dungeons I believe. Is that really all there is? Farming 5 mans once you’re max level?

I understand WvWvW and the PvP deal, but I’m a 50/50 player, I’d like to have some PvE in my game, too.. Can someone please explain the situation to me to make me want to come back to this game? I really enjoy it but the thought of just 5 5-man dungeons really turns me the other direction.

Not really sure there’s a good answer here – although I think there are more than five dungeons, and the new fractals dungeons is like a buffet table of nine separate one hour long dungeons that gets progressively harder and drops Fractal weapons at higher levels (which look cooler than many of the legendary weapons). The new loot drops of level 80 gear in level 55+ zones adds some replay value to Mt. Maelstrom, Sparkfly Fen, and similar level zones.

Personally I do WvW, Fractals, and search for jumping puzzles that I haven’t completed yet (the Mt. Maelstrom hidden glade has been a standout puzzle that I stumbled upon) with my fully geared level 80s. I tend to level alts also because I personally find it more rewarding then just killing stuff with no character development.

End game? Up until the introduction of creeping gear progression that was introduced through the Fractal of Mists dungeon, there wasn’t any kind of gear progression system beyond getting Exotic gear and grinding for the specific weapon and armor skins that you wanted. Nor is there any kind of true raid progression, though some of the large Group Event dynamic events do easily reach raid level populations.

This game has always been marketed as having a “non-grinding” end game that also lacked dungeon flagging and raid progression. What does that mean in layman’s terms? Basically GW2 lacked a “traditional” MMO end game scene. It’s always been marketed like this over the years. If you read between the lines, your end game consisted of PvP (sPvP & WvW) and making countless alts. I’ve always felt that GW2 was marketed more towards “the climb” and not “the destination”.

The new dungeon that was opened up Saturday has taken the 1st step towards changing that. A new gear tier called Ascended was introduced and it introduced a very real gear check system through the introduction of their Agony damage dot system (which ticks off a % of max health per tick) and their Agony Resistance items. To make an Infusion that gives you the needed resistance, you have to do some mega grinding and cash / crafting farming. This new time sink is Phase #1.

Based on ArenaNet’s article from last weekend, Phase #2 will roll out mid December to introduce something else that will also grant Ascended loot for other gear slots. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

If you’re looking for a game that has a more traditional MMO scene, then GW2 is currently not the MMO for you. Having said that, things could radically change within the next 3 – 6 months based on what ArenaNet has done and said within the past week.

The game was designed without traditional “end game” in mind.

Q: Why rush through content to get to max level in other games?
A: because thats where the fun starts (if you think raiding is fun)

Guild wars 2 wanted to step away from this type of structure, the fun starts at level 0, everything you associate with mmo end game, big boss battles, dungeons, exploration, pvp they’re all available in gw2 right from the start.

In my opinion, stop worrying about max level, and what there is there, and enjoy the content thats around you right now.

The deal with the lack of endgame in GW2 was -supposed to be- that you would find “end-game activities” nearly every step of the way. No one forces you to grind dungeons once you reach max lvl. You could also go for world completion, do all the jumping puzzles, participate in WvW, level alts to experience the story from different viewpoints,…
What do you really expect of endgame? And why did you stop playing if you had fun? Why not at least try to reach the end of the journey? You could still stop playing after reaching lvl 80, until they come up with an extension that you like…

Well problem about end game is that no matter what they add to keep people busy, there will always be people who burn through it then say there’s nothing else to do. They can only add so much content at a time. So far it looks like they are serious about adding stuff to do each month.

What I’m interested in is some type of raid-type progression. I’m not a completionist with achievements, story lines, things like that. I like the raid style gameplay for pve. Nor would leveling 10 different characters be interesting to me. I usually like to focus on a few characters, yes, but leveling those characters would be more of a drag for me, I think, than grinding 5-mans.

Thanks for the answers, everyone. Guess I’ll give it another shot.

If you’re looking for “raid progression”, then I believe the new Fractals of the Mist meta-dungeon suits your needs. FotM starts out with a pool of nine dungeons, each run takes you through a random three. Completing a set of three allows you to progress to the next difficulty level, etc. etc. The beauty of this setup is two-fold:

a. Unlike other existing dungeons, there are no way points or repair masters available once you begin, thus making player deaths more meaningful, instead of the infamous corpse runs.