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MMO Reroll - Guild Wars 2 | MMORPG.com
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MMO Reroll - Guild Wars 2 | MMORPG.com
Mitch is back with another MMO Reroll article, this time taking Guild Wars 2 through its paces.
Comments
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
As for the classes feeling like any other MMO....I'm gonna guess you didn't try out Mesmer then (how many games have a clone class?), or take much of a gander into how the Thief actually plays past the tutorial. Ranger I can half forgive, but from the beginning you have excellent melee options, which helps to give it its own feel, and the pets you choose have a significant gameplay weight, seeing as they all have their own unique skillsets (each with advantages and drawbacks).
The personal story...well. If you don't like it you don't like it, but given that this is meant to be a re-examination of the game, it's quite a shame you didn't bother to look at anything other than the entry level stuff. With a max-level character you can skip ahead to the more recent content, which has really changed a lot from the core, at-launch story. Overall, I can't help but feel that you went into this specifically looking for the flaws.
GW2 isn't perfect, for sure. But there's a lot more to it that you wrote off without examining (HoT, the PoF mounts system, the Fractal endgame dungeons which play differently every week and), which makes this a pretty sloppy examination. If you didn't have time, you didn't have time. But then, to be honest, you probably shouldn't be reviewing MMOs
Reality Bites. I'm only Barking
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
He did the same thing with DAOC. Played as a Cleric solo, and then complained it took too long to kill stuff.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
GW2 is one of those games that I can't put my finger on what's wrong with it, but I can't really tell anything that I like about it either.....I guess that just makes it lukewarm so I move on quickly....I know I found the quests to be boring (as I do in most MMOs) and the events get old after you do the first few.
Sorry about the races. Sylvani was an autocorrect thing but Norn was just me having a brain fart.
As for this being a sloppy review, it isn't a review. I never has and never will be a complete review of a game. It's about one person going back to games he abandoned (or never played in the first place) to give them another try. It's not meant to be a comprehensive look at every facet of a game, bit rather whether I think it's worth getting back into an old MMO. I'm even pretty sure that I began this article saying that my opinion of GW2 could be completely off base.
Thank you for adding your take of the game and classes. I always hope that there will be some good conversation about the games I play coming from this article.
The core story of gw2 is 9 years old. When I play the game I no longer interact or bother with this content at all. It's the much newer content or non core content/story I've come to enjoy the most. I truly feel like gw2 gets better with time. As the game has improved with more stuff to do/ different variations of stuff you can do.
I really love the combat system and prefer it over all other MMOs. However I do get the whole "I can't seem to put my finger on as to why I can't seem to enjoy it" feeling.
GW2 is kinda all over the place with its design. It's as if over the years different design leads came in and tried executing their own vision of the game instead of keeping things consistent.
The story for gw2 does get way better with time, but it's told in a much different way.
Living story 1 is somewhat completely missing, but you can still play fragmented versions of it if you visit this place called "Eye of the North" and interact with the Scrying Pool all the way in the back. You aren't really told this, so most players have no idea.
You also aren't told that you need to purchase the living world episodes if you want to continue understanding the story of the game. If you don't play them, you will further not care for the story or what's even happening. You do get the story episodes for free if you just log into the game when its out, but for new players this isn't explained unless you ask or someone tells you.
Instead of adding more dungeons, they abandoned that and made Fractals, which are dungeons, but called a different name and has a different system. If you are coming from different games that always call their group content dungeons, the word fractal is probably going to go right past your head.
Instead of adding more Fractals or raids, they created 10 man instanced strike missions and 5 man instanced dragon response missions. In the new expansion, they are introducing "Encounters." Yeah, whatever the hell that is.
Instead of adding more open world bosses, they added in two giant instanced bosses.
Most of the best "quests" in the game are hidden in the achievements panel. Which most new players never check.
I can go on and on. The game is a mess of systems, currencies, meta complexility, fragmented story experiences, and design decisions that might make sense when it first comes out, but makes 0 sense for new or returning players.
Personally, for me and alot of my friends who've been playing for a long time, it makes a lot more sense why they do what they do, but if you haven't been following the game inch by inch all this stuff will probably put you off and make you frustrated. Hence why a lot of people want Anet to make a gw3 where they can just do a big restart and follow a consistent design that isn't fragmented all over the place.
This is also why you may encounter a lot of people fanboying the game. Because gw2 is still a great game. But it's great if you understand all of its underlying complexly. Like, to truly appreciate it more, you'll have to play it slow and spend 100s of hours combing through a ton of stuff. If you can't bring yourself to do that, you most likely may not enjoy it.
They are path to legendary armors, a thing very few players posses due to the difficulty involved in making them.
And the QoL that comes out of legendary armors especially since they added legendary armory few weeks ago, legendary armors trump any sort of vertical progression benefits.
Also it's pretty fucking nice playing the game casually on and off and not feeling as if my efforts have been wasted. I mean, I stopped playing WoW after Legion and I had BiS gear. If I logon right now, I suppose starter gear today would be better than Legion's BiS. None of that shit applies for Gw2. My armor from yesteryear is still valuable. I can go to either fractals or WvW and not feel out of place as long as I get the hang of the mechanics.
It certainly has its charms but it takes some time and understanding. It's not your typical themepark MMO. It is one, but it's different.
Some shit is ridiculous though, like have you tried the collection about the skyscale mount? Holy shit.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
That's how i've been playing the game. Playing GW2 like the other more traditional mmos is the fastest way to burn out. I take my breaks (however long they may be) when i feel i don't want to do stuff, then when i come back it's as fresh as the first day. I do hope the Cantha expansion is better than HoT and PoF although i did enjoy PoF and some of the new systems it added.
The group content was the nail in the coffin for me... back in 2012, it was horrible. Like the article headline says, it was quite literally a zerg. There was no strategy or any group synergy in dungeons, thanks to the "nO hOlY tRiNiTy" nonsense. It was rush in, die, rush in again, die again, rush in again. It was the most boring, monotonous, pointless crap I had ever experienced in a game calling itself a MMORPG.
So no character progression, no gear progression, no meaningful PvE... What is even the purpose of the game?
I'm all about character progression via a deep skill system and diverse loot. The skill system is horrible and loot is as non-diverse as any game I've ever played.
I want to like it but it just offers nothing that I enjoy.
By your description it looks like you want every mmorpg to do exactly the same thing as every mmorpg that came before it. Why not go and play those instead? GW2 is not perfect, and i hope they improve whatever needs improving, but 9 years later i'm still happy as hell GW2 isn't a copy of every mmorpg that came before it.
Just to give a personal example, when I play WoW and only do it for the story and don't care about anything else. When I play BDO, i do for the female characters and spectacle combat. When I play ESO, i do for the ESO lore so i end up going back to Skyrim. When i play GW2 i do for both story, combat and gameplay, similarly to FFXIV.
TLDR: 9 years later, GW2 still caters to a different group of people, and i'm ok with that.
That said GW2 Fractals are equal to or better than pretty much any dungeon MMO content out there. WvW has practically no equal. Its MMO PvP system is one of the better designs and thoroughly enjoyable. The Living World story lines and continually expanding world have hundreds of hours of enjoyable story content. The seasonal events are very fun particularly the numerous mini games. The expansions bring a new feel and playstyle to virtually every class which creates a tremendous amount of diversity in effective builds.
The hard player and gear cap will turn off some hardcore players that continually seek to improve their characters stats but it makes returning to the game and enjoying content fantastic particularly in PvP and WvW. No need to grind endlessly just to keep up but that also means there is no need to grind in the endgame. Masteries do help extend high level characters though.
I have near 9k hours in GW2 but the vast majority of it is in WvW and PvP.
I know this was mentioned by other commenters, but this is piss poor journalism, even for an opinion piece. When you write an article on a gaming website, even if it is just opinion, there is some expectation that it is done with 'authority' and quality, and you can't even get the basics right in this article. It may be nit-picky, but...is this quality? No wonder gaming websites of yesteryear are going down the pooper.
Regarding professions as well, I disagree whole heartedly. The vanilla descriptions and first couple hours may seem vanilla, but that's like saying "everyone get's a sword" in a high fantasy game, or something. It is writing that doesn't really benefit anyone. I feel your analysis shallow, and not even worth the words you used to write them.
Anyway, games are very subjective as they share many aspects of art. I think GW2 is a solid game, and a stellar MMO (given all our current choices), but it is definitely not everyone's cup of tea.
I hope it is clear that this comment was less to do about disagreeing with your "opinion" as it is to urge you to write better articles. At least do better research before you set out, and don't blame "autocorrect" for something that should be proofread. This is in the column section, not a reddit post/comment.
For me, I didn't really like Fractals. That seemed to be where a lot of the group PvE was at, at least end-game, and that's usually the kinda thing I like. But Fractals are part of the general trend in MMOs to turn the group aspect into quick, bite-size, forgettable and easy to drop-out as they are to jump-in. I guess it's unfair to criticize GW2 for following the trend, which I think was started by WoW. I ran tons of Fractals, auto-joining and running through them and leaving them. Almost no coordination or communication was necessary. Everyone had done them ad nauseum and knew the steps, since they give you tiny rewards and are all pretty short. I guess they aren't really challenging, as long as you know how to play your class.
It's been a while since i played, so i might be remembering this all wrong. Or i missed something that was way more fun to do. There's a lot i liked about GW2, so if there's a really good reason to jump back in to it, I'd like to know.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
What an absolute joke.