Guild Wars 2

I just couldn’t resist popping in here.

I am someone who loves this game. I’ve had a LOT of fun, and have sold it to several friends, who also really enjoy it. The fractals can be a bit frustrating (given client crashes and the general inability of folks to get back into the run thereafter), but are really cool all the same. Content, grouping, Halloween, the whole nine yards—ANet gets an A+ from me for basically every aspect of this game.

Except the Ancient Karka event. Words cannot describe my frustration at this event. The grind in the hive was tough, but okay. The Rich Ori node at the top was a very classy touch. When we had to chase down that Ancient Karka, though… good god, was that obnoxious. The reinforcements were outrageous, both in terms of their toughness and the sheer volume which was required for progress. Two phases of this remarkably dull, uninteresting grindfest—a grindfest which, by the way, resulted in almost no loot drops, despite a solid amount of +MF—is simply beyond the pale. I worked on it for two and a half hours before I got a client crash, and upon re-entering the game only about 45 seconds after crashing, I was apparently dumped into an overflow server where the event was done.

No chance to claim partial credit for my (considerable) work.
No chance to finish.
No second chances.

GW2 is free to play, and I appreciate that, but this degree of poor planning is simply unprofessional. I expected better of ANet.