Guild Wars 2

If you have a problem with finding groups as a Mesmer and have problems doing things as a Mesmer, I think it’s safe to say we can all guess what the problem is.

“Never have I heard a mouth so foul! I will whip you until the Lord’s word is all that you speak, child!” Tears followed these words as they always did, and poor Swiftpaw closed her eyes hoping that the beating would be over soon. The priests at her boarding school treated her especially nasty since young Swiftpaw refused to memorize her multiplication tables and scriptures like the other good children. Swiftpaw wanted something more, she wanted to feel alive and experience life in a way that didn’t involve mindless memorization and dreary school uniforms.

Her fifteenth birthday around the corner, Swiftpaw lay in bed pondering life. It was dark, the other students were asleep, and she had spent enough of her life in this terrible place. Her parents didn’t want her, her teachers beat her, and her classmates ridiculed her for desiring to be different. She sat up in the middle of the night, grabbed her guitar case, and jammed as much of her clothes into it as she could fit. She lightly tossed it out of the window, careful not to make too much noise, and hopped out after it. The grass was damp from the light rain of the English country side, and the night smelled fresh. Tomorrow would be a new start.

On her twenty-first birthday, Swiftpaw had finally saved enough money to buy a computer- something that she had dreamed of owning for years. She unpacked the computer from it’s slightly dented cardboard box and placed it on the one table she could afford to furnish her one-bedroom apartment with. Life had not been kind to her thus far, but now she had an escape. Videogames.

After installing and booting up Guild Wars 2, Swiftpaw felt a magic like she had never felt before. She could create a new identity for herself and get lost in an online world, free of the noise found on the busy streets outside. She could be quiet, but her Guardian could growl “Retreat!” as she prepared an Aegis to block a devastating blow from the Champion Giant in Harathi Hinterlands. All of these fantastic people were learning to play a wonderful game together, sharing fun and exciting experiences all over Tyria. This was possibly the greatest thing yet that had happened to dear Swiftpaw.

The screen turned grey again, informing Swiftpaw that she had been defeated. “I HATE THESE PUGS” she screamed out loud, throwing her keyboard across the room and watching the key caps fly off as it crashed to the floor. “I wish that these bads would just leave and play something else, I can’t do this. I’ll die if I have to continue on.” Swiftpaw passed out from the intense anger and remembered the days of being harassed in boarding school. The beatings, the ridicule, the angry teachers, the terrible and itchy uniforms. Hours later, Swiftpaw awoke and looked at her screen. She had been kicked from the party and disconnected due to inactivity. A sad smile came over her face, and she headed to the closet.

She took out her favorite leather belt, and then walked into the kitchen to grab a hammer and some nails leftover from hanging her paintings on the walls of her bedroom. She looped the belt through the buckle, nailed it the wall in her kitchen that faced the window overlooking the street below, and slipped it around her neck. She would not be defeated by the pugs or by memories of old, she would take care of her life all on her own. As her breath ceased and her faced turned a pale shade of blue, there was a snapping of fingers and Swiftpaw shot up from her therapist’s couch. Astonished at the how vivid and troubled the description of her dream was, her therapist reached into his desk and poured a glass of whiskey, looking to Swiftpaw and saying “You only live once.”

Fin.

The night was dark, and the soft pitter-patter of footsteps was becoming louder…

“I told you this was going to be bad,” said xXNoScopeXx the bowbear Ranger. The Guardian replied with “You just have to circle strafe the Crusher and kite him after i Take aggro on the patrol of mobs. My Rabid gear has Toughness,” a tactic he frequently used in his guild of friends he had known since the fifth grade. “We should just kill the Hunter first so there isn’t any poison,” Brazil typed as he let out a sigh and took another drink from his Mason jar containing Newcastle Brown Ale.

After the 3 complete wipes, the group of insubordinates defeated the pair of bosses and made their way to the Magecrusher, taking the aggro of every enemy that met their eyes. xXNoScopeXx frantically typed “I keep dying because my mom is bothering me with dinner again” into party chat as his photo in the party UI turned a deep shade of gray for the sixth or seventh time. The heroic Guardian felt he could offer his fellow pug a helping hand. Both lads took the waypoint and ran in tandem through the vile group of enemies, dodging and diving between purple circles and waves of green projectiles as they went.

After a safe go at the Magecrusher by means of ranging him from on top of a rock, the group of pusillanimous pugs casually strolled to the light orbs. “We can skip these gorillas, I saw it in Strife’s video” murmured the Staff Necro that had been quite up until this point. Brazil bravely said “I’ll just take the first one alone” as his face had become more red from alcohol ingestion as the dungeon run had “progressed” onward. The first orb was taken flawlessly with a swift Rush and Bull’s Charge, but the Guardian would not be outclassed as he took his own orb and died when he realized there was no light fixture to place it in. The gorillas swarmed in, and the Guardian swore and blamed keybinds as xXNoScopeXx spammed “LOLNOOB” repeatedly in map chat. After a quick 45 minutes of negotiating who would run the orb, the Mesmer had an epiphany. “I could just portal you, you know.” Everyone in the party was livid, and there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The road to Lupicus was not easy, but after clearing the entire group of mobs, only the Champion Orrian Warrior remained. Blade Trails went without dodges, Bleed stacks went without cleanses, and Staff Guardians face planted into the explody corpses in the side of the room. After a brief 20 minute struggle between kiting and ranging, the Champion fell and the loot boxes were picked up, rewarding the group’s effort with a green pants and Bloodstone Dust. It was now time to fight the boss of bosses.

Lupicus stood up, and in the panic of watching Brazil move into melee range, the pugs screamed and moaned in chat about how Warrior DPS was needed to kill grubs. Brazil would not have it, though, and cleverly typed “You are a horse and you can ride to knob head land. Get it.” into chat. The Cursed Shore loading screen appeared, and an alcoholic rage commenced in Brazil’s silent and dark room like there had never been. The Sugar Glider’s cage was broken open, the Les Paul was thrown violently out of the window, and screams were heard through the wall as someone banged on the door and yelled “THE POLICE ARE ON THEIR WAY!” Brazil ran naked into the night, with red and blue flashing lights following in close pursuit. All he could remember at that point were lines from The Fast and the Furious, as he collapsed in the road, hoping that Paul Walker would bail him out with the keys to a 1993 Toyota Supra.

Fin.

As the title says, being an elitist has completely destroyed this game for me. My inner elitist drove me to learn strategies for each dungeon and boss, execute them flawlessly, become the self-declared best Guardian in Guild Wars 2, and create top-of-the-food chain-guides for Warrior and Ranger. After accomplishing feats like killing Lupicus in 46 seconds with my super group of guildies and clearing Arah path 4 in 30 minutes, I’ve realized something that really took me all too long: Guild Wars 2 is a casual’s game, and that isn’t going to change.

The last few patches have brought nothing but temporary content that has taken me no longer than a few hours to complete at most, and very little changes to dungeons, if any at all. Fractals are in a state of chaos and the only people that have motivation to do them are people that enjoy harming themselves or people caught in an infinite loop of grinding for a weapon skin that will most likely never drop for them. I cannot keep myself entertained with a game that offers no new challenge, and the little challenges that did exist were destroyed after discovering the trinity of Warrior, Guardian, and Mesmer. I can understand that someone with no desire to master dungeon content or someone that only wants to log on and do dailies would have trouble with this game, but Guild Wars 2 simply offers nothing for the hardcore player, and I don’t think that I’m alone in thinking this.

People that play casually don’t really bother me, they can do what they want and that’s fine. If the idea of Guild Wars 2 is to produce temporary content for someone to log on and see once a month and buy some minis from the gem store, then I don’t have a problem with that either; I just don’t feel I can be a part of it any longer. I’m quite disappointed, because I had fun playing this game for several months, whether it was hunting for Final Rest when it was hiding with Shadow Behemoth all along, or practicing Lupicus alone for hours so I could master his mechanics and teach them to other people. I’m not posting this thread to trash Anet or to make drama and cause people to quit the game, I’m posting it so people can read my thoughts on Guild Wars 2 and discuss them in hopes that maybe some day there will be some content that challenges hardcore players.

In closing, perhaps taking a casual approach to Guild Wars 2 is the best way to go about playing this game, but being an elitist and mastering the PvE content the game offers eradicated any sort of drive to continue playing a game that doesn’t seem to be targeted towards someone like me