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GW2: Yes or No?
McK_TheGauntlet
Member Posts: 2
Hi everyone!
World of Warcraft has been my first and favourite online game (I've been playing it for 7 years now) but I feel like it's time for me to move on. I'm looking for a new MMO and Guild Wars 2 seems to have everything I ask for: a huge world with puzzles and that promotes exploration, balanced and challenging PvP, cool massive events and stuff like that. I have, however, some doubts and I was wondering if you guys could help me out with them.
1) Classes and PvP: I've been watching a lot of videos about the different classes and I have to admit none of them really appeal to me: they all seem to be very AoE-oriented and the only good heavy melee is the Warrior, but it seems like it could be nuked down by pretty much every other class before it can even get in close range. Is that true? If I buy the game I'm most likely going to try all the classes out so the "appeal" thing is probably not going to matter in the end; on the other hand, I'm not sure I like the idea of PvP being uniquely based on two big zergs hitting each other with long ranged AoE spells... I need someone who plays the game to tell me if this is actually the case.
2) Population (early and late): let's face it, the game is 1 and a half years old. I have one or two friends I would play with, but I don't want my party to be alone in an empty world while we level up - let alone when we get to 80 (that's the level cap, isn't it?).
3) Performance: this is kind of a silly one, but still. My PC isn't great and even though I seem to understand that the game is very well optimised, I'm afraid that FPS drops could occur when a lot of stuff is going on around me (just to be clear, I have a 1GB video card and 2GB of RAM, although I'm probably going to get 2 more soon).
So what do you think? Should I or should I not try GW2 out? 
thanks for your help!
Comments
Personally, I think GW2 is better than ESO. I played GW2 A LOT and at this point, I'm just tired with it right now. BUT I had a great time with it.
The combat is fun, the classes are all interesting, and it has great PvP.
I would give it a shot.
Also, a lot of people here like to hate on GW2 for some reason...not really sure why...
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
1) Classes are personal preference.. I play 4 classes regularly... they're different and I love trying different builds. Every class is unique and they all have melee possibilities. Also PvP isn't just WvW, there's tPvP as well. WvW isn't just zerging.. one of my favourite things is to solo roam.
2) I play on Gandara and there's ALWAYS lots of people around.
3) The game has good performance in general... I played it with a 3 year old PC with no problems. However I have upgraded recently so performance problems in general are a thing of the past.
All in all it's a very good game and it's Buy to Play. I played in betas, played at launch... stopped playing for a while and played other games.. then went back. It feels great to know that you can always go back to the game. Subscription-based games are just evil.
Also there's a new patch coming in April that changes things quite a bit and adds more new stuff.
..Cake..
Absolutely agree.
..Cake..
I bought Gw2 at launch and still play to this day. Easily got my $60 worth of gaming and then some.
I think Anet has learned a lot from the last living story and excited for the upcoming changes and second living story once it goes live. A lot of people bash the pvp but it has been my favorite part of the game. There are some *OP* builds (like all games) but some have some pretty big tells and you can handle them well once you get the hang of it.
I would highly recommend it.
I played wow for a long time, then i bought GW2, its amazing at the beginning but I got bored fast, from lvl 1 to 80 its incredible but after that you'll get bored.
I would go to ESO or WildStar, both are very good i played both betas.
ESO is good, but isn't for me because i think i get more from skyrim and dont need to pay monthly fees for that.
WildStar is also amazing, with the gameplay reminding me of GW2 and a little of WoW, some people dont like the style of wildstar but it's pretty good.
Its very personal, only you can decide, but if you are looking for something to play for a long time, I wouldn't recommend GW2 simply because i think it bores after some time, but GW2 is the best gameplay i've seen in a mmo.
That's just my opinion, some people may think different.
I m away from GW2 some months now. As a GW1 fan i was expecting much more from it tbh. Anyway GW2 is a quality game with very nice graphics and a good client performance.
If i was to choose between GW2 and TESO then it would be GW2 by a mile. Not saying TESO is not good or whatever, but i prefer GW2 in general.
Anyway i wish the best to TESO and those who play it. We need good mmo's, both for the players and the genre.
1) Every class shines in different aspects to be honest. At the moment the warrior has the most brute force raw power, yep. This and thanks to the heavy armor its wearing is a really huge plus. Also most people already claim that warrior is the easiest class to get to. I personally think its fun. I play my warrior when I want to do some mass pvp carnage, its really good for that.
Remember that its very important how you build your profession. You can be tanky as hell or you can be glassy, or a little bit of both.
I personally lately play thief more often because everybody seem to be warrior xD. I also don't mind going frontline with my guardian but that's when I feel going with the masses.
2) I also play at Gandara and the game is full of life in that server. I was at Underworld before but there is this fag, Robert Fenwick, that pretty much fucked it up for everybody so me and my guild left. Think he followed but thank god he's a nobody there and I hope for Gandara's sake he stays that way
Also the game is 1.5 years old.
3) Ah yes, that's kind of the only achilles heel of this game. Don't get me wrong, my girlfriend plays it using a 8 year old AMD CPU and recently upgraded her GPU to Radeon HD 7850 and she was able to make the jump from low setting to medium and some even high, but yeah, the game IS CPU throttled. With that said, WvW perfomance in mass fights might get choppy. I've overclocked my i5-2500k recently and the lag is simply gone. So if you could juice some 4 GHz out of your CPU, I think you'll be just fine. The RAM of course is a no brainer, the game is 32-bit so it really cannot allocate much.
With that being said, if you decide to roam the WvW you can easily do that. I made 95 kills the other day in ~3 hours and I made it my task to avoid our zerg.
On the bright side, the game has no subscription fee (Guild Wars 2), it has no paywalls, so you pay once and you get all the content currently available (future too) never having to spend a dime.
Sure the game does have a cash shop but it is in no way pay 2 win or stuff like that. Also you can convert in-game gold to cash shop currency and buy stuff with no hustle.
And the game is simply gorgeous, from the art style to the tiniest little detail, every frame is like a painting. The jumping puzzles are tons of fun. The freedom of the jump is amazing. If you see a ledge, you can probably jump on it. There are invisible walls only if you try to go out of the map's boundaries otherwise, everything goes. The character animations are as if they are motion captured, your character feels alive. It's those small things that add up to how polished this game truly is.
And there really are millions of reasons why you should pick Gw2 and I haven't said a single thing about the combat. But don't let me spoil it all for you. In the end, Gw2 is one of the best bangs for the money you pay.
P.S: That should be enough to secure a job interview at ArenaNET LOL xD j/k
I can only echo this. Which is why ESO is free 30 days and out for me. Nice game but feels dated.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
QFT. I put so many hours into the game. While there are some things I prefer in other titles, I don't knock Anet for their design decisions. Because they went with a different progression formula than I am used to, I ran out of stuff to do because I am used to gear grind and raids and actually enjoy that stuff. That aside, I find myself constantly popping back in to see the changes and mess around with it a bit.
I'd like to also add that I felt GW2 provided one of the best leveling experiences I have ever had in an MMO. I didn't enjoy the static weapon skills attached to the weapons and felt like I got all of my abilities too early leaving me nothing to look forward to later on, but the map designs, DE's, and exploration were an awesome way to progress through the game.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
GW2 for something fun, casual and different that you will pick up and put down over the years or until a new mmo comes along that finally moves the wow experience on to the next level.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
1. Warrior: very strong, deadly and dynamic in terms of movement. In PVT armor/survival build like impossible to kill him.
2. Population is OK. Just be a human or asura. Norn and Charr started-area are much less populated. Don't know about Sylvary. Anyway noob-land will be passed very soon, because of fast level-up. And if something happens in any area (living story), it wil be immediately overpopulated. Like LA in February.
3. Perfomance: Video is much less important. Much more important to have fast CPU. Game is heavily CPU-depending.
ps. TESO is crap in comparison with GW2. I played 3 beta-weekends in TESO and 1.5 years in GW2 so I can compare. Just my opinion.
I will address the first two points to help you understand the situation.
1) Class and PvP
Right now warrior is widely considered by many as the top of the classes with very strong survivability. Guardian is also another good melee class. In WvW zerg battles are mostly fought by two melee trains consists of warriors and guardians collide with each other, you rarely if ever see two zergs just standing there hitting each other with ranged aoe spells. That said GW2 tend to be a bit AoE heavy, even some of the warrior melee attacks are aoe based.
If you are not interested in zerg battles, WvW offer plenty of side objectives (camps, supply yaks, a special buff called bloodlust etc) for solo/small group roamers to make a difference. There is also spvp which is instanced arena type of pvp for small scale event fights.
2) The population is very healthy on most of the servers. If you are in NA I would suggest you join a server in the top 6 in order to find constant pvp action any time of the day in WvW. For PvE, since you can guest to any server, if you find your current server is a bit empty, just guest to a more populous server. Leveling areas generally have less activities now days due to game age, but you should still be able to find plenty people in early areas with at least on top servers.
Another thing about gw2's pve population is that the population on maps tend to shift a lot depends on where the living story is happening at. When it is a launch week of another living story episode, other maps tend to empty out as players congested to 1 or 2 maps for the living story content.
As you can guess I strong recommend GW2. Just be mindful that it is really different from traditional MMO like WoW. If you cannot live without raiding/gear treadmill/holy trinity, you probabely won't like the game.
1) All classes are melee and ranged. Melee does much higher damage than ranged.
WvW is army vs army. There are opportunities for small groups but don't expect to capture towers and keeps with 5 people.
There is also sPvP that is small scale PvP.
2) The game is not 2 years yet.
You will have plenty of opportunity to suddenly see 50 people popping up out of nowhere, either for a World Meta Event, for a guild rush or a champion train. I'm not sure which MMORPGs are packed while leveling aside from launch. WoW certainly wasn't when I played with Outlands and Northrend being sparsely populated.
3) It helps to have a reasonably recent processor - a quadcore intel i3/i5 prefereably but an amd phenom ii x4 or higher will do for a decent mid range experience. 4GB+ ram and an SSD will also improve the overall experience.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I enjoy GW2, and have since launch. I think it is well worth the investment, and I intentionally buy things from the gem store that I don't need so I can continue to support their decision on revenue streams. I haven't felt inclined to try ESO at all, so there isn't much I will say about that game.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
Imo GW2 is the best MMO out there today, no sub and you don't have to buy anything in the cashshop to be in the game it's mostly cosmetic stuff. I have 8 lvl 80 one of each profession and I can say that they are totally different from eachother. I have a "healing" elementalist, full burst berserk warrior, the classes are totally different from each other.
The game can be played on older computers I played on my old PC and it's 5 years old without any problems. You can however can a lagg issue when big zerges fill your screen in big dragon fights or wvw with an older pc then just set your setting to best performance and you should be ok.
The game is beautiful, and my advise is to not rush to lvl 80 but enjoy the world and take it slow since most of the things you can still do as a low level.
OP here. Thanks to all of you for your replies, here are some additional points I'd like to cover:
1) I wrote that the game is 2.5 years old already but I meant 1.5. I'll try to correct that.
2) When I said that the Warrior seemed the only solid melee class I meant that I didn't want to play it because from what I've seen it doesn't really fit my playstyle. I am of course going to try it out but do you think that Guardian is a good melee too or is it too much support-oriented? I want to be able to smash faces while having good survivability... I'm going to try all the classes out anyway.
3) Is there a way to pick a race and level it up in a zone that is not that race's initial one? Like, if I'm Asura and my friend is Norn or something like that...
4) I don't want to play ESO. I don't like The Elder Scrolls in general (I realize that's asking to be sh*tstormed, but still) and I'm done paying monthly fees.
Anyway, thanks again to everyone! I'm happy to read that GW2 could very well be what I'm looking for
PS: do people really believe that I could be from the US? Because that's very flattering ^c^
2) In terms of raw damage pretty much every class will deal the most damage in melee range. There is a guardian build using mace/shield+staff that is very tanky albeit with low damage, there is supportive builds and there is glass cannon scepter/torch+greatsword that will really on dodges and blocks to survive.
Ranger can also bash faces with its sword and greatsword, engineer have their tool kit to bash people or just drop bombs or use flamethrower at close range, elementalists can use dagger/dagger or conjure a lightning hammer to bash people at melee, etc.
There are many choices in both PvE and WvW to go close combat.
3) Yes. From your race main starting city you can use a portal to the central hub (previously Lion's Arch and now the vigil keep) or just go into the PvP hub from the UI (press the cross swords icon on the top left) and use the portal to the central hub. From the central hub you have portals available to all races capitals/starting areas.
The start of your personal story will be located around your race starting are though, before branching around the world and joining after level 20.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I bought ESO the other day and I can already say that Im very dissapointed. It was already annoying at the beggining and didn't get better. I played for a whole day and it's like 60gb size so it alot bigger than gw2. Probably a bigger world in ESO.
Regarding GW2 well atleast I played that much longer and that's something. The only annoying thing about GW2 is you have only 10 skills at a time and when you turn around its really slow even if you up it. I played the PVP I dont know if it was blue vs red or some kind of deathmatch I've forgotten but it was decent.
It's somewhat boring when you level in GW2 and know that is all there is to it, and leveling to many is the worst part of an mmo.
For me, leveling and questing is the most interesting part of an MMORPG and that is why GW2 is my MMORPG of choice.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders