Guild Wars 2

I’ve had Guild Wars 2 for about 2 years now but never really gotten into the game because it didn’t really interest me at the time, although I’ve been looking at game play especially for the new Heart of Thorns expansion and it’s starting to catch my attention but before i spend my money and jump into this game i just wanted to ask the community a few questions about the game so if you could fill me in i would be very grateful.

How long does it take to get to max level?
What is PvP like?
Is there new introduction to Raiding any good?
How good is the community? P.S Can’t be any worse than WoW
Is the game difficult to comprehend?

Can’t answer many.

Doesn’t take too long depending on what you are willing to do to maximize XP. The rule I used for “normal” play is 80 hours. However dailies in PvE will give you 5% level XP. Food boosts provide 10% boost in earned XP. Then there are normal XP boosters. Going off path to go after “older” critters will nab you a nice bonus XP per kill. I honestly never tried to see how fast I could level with out living in a EotM farm group in WvW.

Never did PvP, you can check out some footage at the Guild Wars 2 Youtube or Twitch pages.

Don’t know about raiding other than some streams

I think that most of the time it’s a very friendly and helpful community. Less so on the forums due to the fact that as a B2P game, unhappy people will hang around indefinitely and complain to anyone who will listen about how lousy the game is and that it would have only been great if they did X, Y, Z like <insert other MMO>.

If you played other MMOs you may have to adjust your way of thinking. It’s an action combat MMO so you can’t/shouldn’t stand still against a critter. Moving and the game’s dodge mechanic is necessary to survive. It’s also not the standard Tank/Healer/DPS trinity, professions are more jack of all trades than being ultra specialized. You also have to understand that the game won’t lead you about as you level. It requires the player to have the initiative to explore and stumble into event content rather than quest giver to quest giver. The PvE portion is designed around extreme co-op with very little ability to troll other players. One of the game’s mantras was players shouldn’t be upset to see other players who want to help.

Sorry I couldn’t help with PvP and Raiding.

Max Level : Depends on what you do. If you do only PVE without Tomes of Knowledge (instant 1 level, got from dailies/PVP), my personal experience is around 2 week of 2hour/day playing time. You can make it much faster with XP boosters, food/util buffs, crafting etc. Personal story is also a good source of experience.

PVP : More team oriented than 1v1. PVP is done only in organized areas though, so you can skip that totally.

Raids : It will take a while for a new character to be prepared for Raids, but general opinion is that it’s good and not too hard once people know what they’re doing.

Community : In game, GW2 has a good community. In the forums, not so much.

Difficulty : The wiki does a good job compiling the info. The game itself doesn’t really teach you that much though. Much of what you learn is more from trying it yourself or community info than in-game info.

How long does it take to get to max level?
First character takes longer since you need to learn the way of the game and it also depends how much you play. I would say anything from a week to maybe a month or two if you play normal.
It is how ever not hard at all to level in GW2 and you have loads of options such as heartquests, world exploration, events, more events, personal story, world bosses, world verses world (big scale pvp), dungeons, pvp (were you get level scrolls as reward), crafting, gathering well pretty much everything you do in game give you xp.

What is PvP like?
Coming from Wow (as i understood you did due to your comment below) i would say pvp is amazing. It is not about grinding gear for 2 years so that you then can gank the players that just started. You have to rely on your build and your skills.
You can start doing pvp at lvl 2 and still have the exact same stats as a person that done it for years. You will have access to all skills/traits/runes/sigils/amulet that the other players have, even if you just started the game. Everybody get this when they enter the pvp-lobby.
BUT, with this said, pvp do have issues, and a lot of them, and the players that played pvp for a while are a bit unhappy at this point. This will not change your omg this is amazing feeling when you try it out. I had it my self coming from RIFT 3 years ago, simply because it is so different, but a good different. Today I do how ever also feel pvp have some issues that need to be worked on.
We also have world verses world, which is pvp i huge battle in several big maps going on 24/7 and resets one time each week.

Is there new introduction to Raiding any good?
Raiding came out about 2 months ago. You will not be able to rush in to raiding as soon as you hit lvl 80. You will need at least exotic gear and weapons for the first bosses. Exotic gear is not hard to get and can be crafted or obtained by numerous sort of marks or gold.
In the end you will want to level your crafting proffesions so you can craft your ascended gear. You also need to learn your skills and build and it is also good to know more then one class. Joining a guild that raids is probably a good start.
Again if you come from WoW then you need to understand that GW2 is different. There are no holy trinity with dedicated healers/tanks/dps in this game, but this does not mean you can not do hard content, believe me, you can, you just need to understand that you manage your health and share what boons and heal you can share. You will learn the way when you play the game

How good is the community? P.S Can’t be any worse than WoW
GW2 is well known to have a good community. Like any other games we have trolls too, but the amount of them is very few compared to how many nice people there are.
But we also don’t have issues like stealing a kill, or quest objects, and all players get their own loot so those issues never create drama.

Is the game difficult to comprehend?
Like most mmo’s GW2 have very easy starting areas, and the game gets more difficult the higher you get. How ever when you learned how to use your skills it will probably feel very easy in the open world as long as you move around heart quests, but as soon as you try to solo a champion or make your first dungeons you will probably run in to a shock. You will have to work with other players, but this is normal in this game, you group up and make what ever open world content there is.

In world verses world you will run in to difficulty that you need to learn to deal with. PvP is also hard until you learn and can be very challenging as well especially in the beginning when you don’t have a clue and your enemies do.
When you reach level 80 you will have the old lvl 80 zones which is probably more annoying then hard. I can still get a rage fit over mobs in Orr because they are just annoying. How ever join Silverwaste and then move over to the new maps in HoT and you have a open world that is not super hard, but not super easy either. Some people find it hard to deal with the new maps, but don’t worry you will learn.

So overall, GW2 have a lot to offer you and many hours to spend. You can play it casual or you can do the hard core way. Allthough what i have noticed from players coming from other mmo’s is that they need to relearn and understand that gw2 is different in so many ways were you have to be the person that drives you forward to explore and go and do what ever you want or feel like for the day. There are no special way of playing gw2, it is what you want it to be.

If you’re posting on this forum you’ve already bought the game. There’s no subscription and you can still play even if you don’t have the expansion, so if the only thing holding you back is not wanting to spend money I’d say just log in (reinstall if necessary) and play and see what you think for yourself.

All the expansion content is only available at level 80, so you don’t need to worry about buying it until you get to that point (and maybe later because there’s lots of things to do in the base game at level 80). There is nothing in the gem store (cash shop) you need to buy, even things like XP boosters don’t make a big difference and you get some free in the game anyway so you don’t need to worry about that either.

I can’t answer most of your questions, because I’ve never played WoW, don’t do PvP, go out of my way to level slowly and I’ve not gotten around to raiding yet.

But I can tell you this game is in some ways very different from most MMOs and RPGs so I recommend starting a new character (keep any you’ve already got though) and just taking your time getting to grips with it, pay attention to the info on the level-up notifications and pop-ups. You can also use the chat command /wiki [search text] (e.g. /wiki seraph) to look up anything you aren’t sure about.

Phantom.8492:

Is the game difficult to comprehend?

Reasonable application of logic and common sense will get you through 80-90% of the game.

Phantom.8492:

I’ve had Guild Wars 2 for about 2 years now but never really gotten into the game because it didn’t really interest me at the time, although I’ve been looking at game play especially for the new Heart of Thorns expansion and it’s starting to catch my attention but before i spend my money and jump into this game i just wanted to ask the community a few questions about the game so if you could fill me in i would be very grateful.

How long does it take to get to max level?
What is PvP like?
Is there new introduction to Raiding any good?
How good is the community? P.S Can’t be any worse than WoW
Is the game difficult to comprehend?

-I don’t know anymore. You can probably get to 80 just running story with the present buffs and easy mode skills.
-Pvp? I find it boring but I never liked it to begin with. I just do WvsW (pvp+pve) which is glitched and broken to the farthest corner of the earth.
-Can’t say on raiding
-Community is pretty meh. It’s not out of control or anything, and there are enough polite people maintaining convention. It’s just meh. UPs and downs all over the place.
-More so than alot of games I would say it is fairly difficult to understand….especially when knowing and taking advantage of glitches/exploits is often pivotal to success.

Hopefully that provides some degree of insight.