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[Review] Guild Wars 2: Raising the Bar
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
This summer's hottest release was Guild Wars 2. We've spent the last few weeks giving a few thoughts about the game in our Review in Progress series. Today we wrap it all up and present the official review for your perusal. Read it in its entirety and then leave your thoughts in the comments.
Guild Wars 2 lives up to its hype. If our reviews were one sentence in length, that would be “all she wrote”. I’ve been tallying my adventures, offering insight to the ups and downs of my time in Tyria for weeks now. Finally, I feel confident that I’ve spent enough time in the game’s myriad of systems to offer my own conclusive thoughts in just how much mustard ArenaNet’s sequel cuts. It won’t be the game for everyone, but it has most definitely proven itself as a compelling next step in the evolution of the theme-park MMORPG. Nearly everything it does, it does with aplomb and swagger. When throughout my weekly logs, I found myself harping on about server queues for World vs. World as the main annoyance; it became apparent to me that my biggest gripe about the game was that a feature was too popular. Guild Wars 2 has and is going to change a lot now that it’s out in the wild and being enjoyed by millions, but as it stands today and after 70+ hours with my characters, this is how I see things. Please read on, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
Read more of Bill Murphy's Guild Wars 2: Raising the Bar.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
Inb4 anger about the Innovation score.
Great game, deserves a 9.3 (could do without the bots though, from what I hear). That's all.
WAT!!!1!! If this game isn't an 11/10, then you are playing it wrong!
Sorry. Anyway, nice writeup. I don't necessarily agree with each score (longevity and Innovation for starters, sorry Eir_S), but it's a fair writeup nonetheless.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Longevity 9? How in the world did you come up with this number?
Edit: I guess since "hundreds and hundreds of hours" equals a 9, the expectation is for an MMO to satiate our appetites for a month? If so, what's the big deal if it's B2P or P2P since all the content is done within that first month and there is never a need to pay past the inital box price?
Guild Wars 2 Youtube Croatian Maniacs
My Guild Wars titles
The potential for longevity is still huge, and I hope they add some soon.. but as it stands, that's the one part of the review with which I'd have to disagree. None of the systems are really doing the job as well as I'd hoped they would, and it still feels like yet another MMO without much of an endgame, to me.
Overall though, after 200+ hours, I'd still rate it a 9+ too.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
LOL what a suprise...
GW2 only jsut about deserves a 7/5 lets alone a 9.3 lol
Innovation at 10??
Ah i give up..
It appeals to a different type of gamer. Which should hold it in good stead in the future.
Some people don't like it because it doesn't have progression pve and what have you. But that's the point, its not aimed at you guys, you already have plenty of choice with wow, rift and plenty of other games. Gw2 is aimed at players who don't like gear carrot gameplay.
well im glad the reviewer enjoys it so much but i dont feel like it deserves such a high rating.
i dont believe the reviewer got lvl 80 because he would know how little stuff there is to do, unless you call map completion and grinding buggy dungeons fun.
theres probaly thousands of posts of people on forums complaining about how boring the game is .
i however just quit entirely i got 4 weeks of fun out of the game so i guess it could have been worst
im a long time mmo player over 10 years now and gw2 was the quickest i become bored of any mmo, i even played aion and aoc even swtor for longer .
gw2 just doesnt have any longevity unless you are super casual and play only an hour a night, which im told is their target audience anyway.
i give it 7/10 which is still a good rating if only because they atleast tried to think outside the box
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
There is tons of longetivity in this game simply with the pvp. Best in the industry, IMO.
like the score- it would of been a score of 10 for me IF there wasnt exploit issues in wvw..hope mmorpg will cover wvw here with the good and the bad.
After reaching level 80 on my first toon ive started to explore pvp, and they still have some issues to work, perhaps becouse its such a huge scale and game altogether-that they maybe trying to please everyone and its a world on its own like 'eveonline' is, but server exploits will turn many players off to participate in wvw, furthermore group qeues for pvp bg feels a bit gimped-not always a sure 5 man group-when you find yourself fighting your guild mates on the opposite end. little things like this and that turn out to be a HUGE turn off on a pvp experience. and the brightside i believe they have acknowledged this and may limit tranfers as more players reach level 80 and join pvp-but as it stand it feels like the wild west=where anything goes exploits and all.
but over all-this has become my main mmo to play! Anet has won me over!
Right now I'd score it lower on longevity and social scores and overall give it a 9/10 at best. It's B2P and lost me after three weeks. I actually played a little longer in SWTOR.
This score makes me really question the SWTOR score. That game really deserved about a 8/10 when you step back and look at it.
I've put in almost 300 hours in the last month and ... theres still a ton of stuff for me to do. Contents there and will last you a good while.
Game is very good and deserves a real good review, but there is actually not a single critical point in this one o.O
Innovation 10? With those mindless hearts and dynamic events, which are not really dynamic at all? A nicely done crafting system, that unfortunately repeats itself after 75 points everytime?
Gameplay 10? With a difficulty throughout the game where you just faceroll through hordes of monsters. Also the dungeons are not very well done, have no story and are far away from polished imho. Not to speak of the weapons, which are not very well balanced at this moment?
and longevity 9? No PvE endgame at 80? No housing? SPvP on actually 1 (one!) type of map? WvW which is either waiting in queue or running in zergs mostly?
Social of 8? In a game where no one groups and noone talks to each other? Goddamn where are the old times of playing together and not just play to tap every mob to get the most loot?
Oh come on. This is just a little bit too shiny. Not a single critical point?
Pandaria gets 80-90% scores for a piece of software which is another copy of the last copy of their copy, Diablo3 gets scores which can only be written in drunk condition, Max Payne3 which is a shame to its predecessors gets 90 scores.... Its a mess. More paychecks from Rockstar, Blizzard, Arenanet and Bioware please!
Hodor!
Great review. Agree with pretty much everything. I don't agree about post level 80. I still have quite a few things to work on - there's definitely a gear grind, crafting, exploration, dungeons, etc. Same stuff as most other MMO's. I will agree it's a little light, but it seems average for a new MMO. My biggest gripe is the lack of different forms of sPvP. Also broken events. These don't seem to be getting fixed soon enough. In fact in leveling my second character to 80 there were more broken events then leveling my first 80 at launch.
Steam: Neph
Granted, reviews are just opinions, but I think 9.3 is way too generous. The story, imo, is less than average and the presentation of the stories is sub par, especially the wierd cut scenes. The whole story element seems like an afterthought shoehorned into the game.
I agree no quest hubs are great, but GW2 really does have quest hubs - they're just more like quest areas: i.e. players go from one heart zone to the next and complete the open group quests. Same thing, different delivery. TSW does questing better, imo. Explore and find side quests, rather than just going to a zone and have them automatically pop up. Boils down to preferences, really, but to say GW2 doesn't have quest hubs is just incorrect.
GW2 also gets very repetitive very quickly. Go from one quest area to the next and kill things. Endlessly killing things. A true MMO staple to be sure, but beyond killing things, there really isn't muh to do. Exploration leads to killing more things to satisfy a counter on a quest area. Yay?
And let's face it, the combat boils down to hotbar cooldown watching, exactly like every other outdated MMO out (and what killed TSW for me, ultimately). Where's the innovation here? I'm so sick of hotbar cooldown watching. If a game is going to revolve around killing everything that moves in the game world, at least make combat interesting and action-packed. Take a cue from DCUO or Tera and innovate off that. I'm not saying either of those two games are the ultimate awesome, but at least their combat mechanics are fun, different and require a degree of skill.
For me, GW2 is a solid 7.5. It's fun in short bursts, but I don't see a lot of long lasting, engaging game play to keep me interested for the long haul. It's just too limited in its overall scope - limited combat mechanics, limited variety in quest hubs/areas, crafting is a bore (to be fair, I hate crafting in every game), and other than grinding for better gear, there's nothing to do (where's the player generated content, like housing, or bounties, etc.?).
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
Fair review, on par with metacritic's.
The game still have some bugs, and it's not for everyone but certainly it's a well done game, beautiful, fun and rewarding experience. So many choices and so much to do.
I agree 100% with the score.