Guild Wars 2 Review

[Azahul]

Guild Wars 2 is Vanilla. It's has got to be one of the most overhyped piles of meh. I've ever had the misfortune to spend $60.00 on in a long time. It's not horrible, but the storyline, combat system, voice acting, skill sets, etc are average, predictable and safe.

There is nothing very memorable about the game, it kills time as this "Amusement game" is designed to do. You'll go from one main event to the next, but you'd be hard pressed to remember many of them along the way. So if your looking for a game that is like a comfortable pair of shoes, then GW2 is for you.

Shame you have that opinion. Personally, some of the design and story choices (my favourite being the fact that Sylvari have no concept of the difference between homo and heterosexuality, a fact that becomes abundantly clear in an early story mission of mine where I saved the love of a young Sylvari, as makes sense for a race of plants who all grow from the one tree to whom genders are really just aesthetics) took me by surprise.

Oh, and the Straits of Devastation. That place is amazing. Fighting alongside a guild to help establish a beachhead and hold it against the undead, backed by submarines unloading waves of Pact soldiers, felt like some kind of epic fantasy D-Day and sends shivers down my spine every time I remember it. All of the areas in the game have some kind of awe-inspiring sight, but the Straits of Devastation have them everywhere. Dogfights in the sky between airships and dragons, the cannons of Fort Trinity, the hilarious Jaws moment when I was on the surface trying to heal after being downed in a fight against the Risen Megalodon only to be snapped up in bite a few seconds later. The opening areas in the game (Sylvari sexuality not-withstanding) to run towards the boring a bit more often than not, which is a shame. However, the game becomes steadily more complex with the unfolding event chains and by the time you reach Orr, the stuff going on is just staggering. The Straits of Devastation are now the source of some of my favourite moments in gaming.

 

[Tanakh]

If you want movement, I would reccomend an assassin

Thief

Pff, assassin, my asura main toon is the heir of my GW 1 assassin, like heck he is a thief...

Seriously, i always forget they renamed the class.

 

[Celador]

Not enough "farm" and "grind" words in review. Sure - leveling up was relatively fun. Theres a lot of dynamic events going in every zone (unless they are broken) but when it comes to "endgame" part... you either have to farm same instances over and over again for tokens or focus on completing the world map which means killing a lot of same mobs, doing a lot of similar renown hearts and encountering a lot of broken skill points and events. Theres literally nothing to do on higher levels. Nothing that would include "fun" at least. Except for WvWvW and puzzles.

Main quest was boring as hell. Rewards were pathetic and useless, in fact - developers already had to promise to change them. Economy is broken - trader is flooded with a lot of... everything. Recent mystic forge item dump didn't do anything at all and prices are back to vendor rate yet again.

The game excels only at eliminating the "grind" aspect of the mmo's during leveling but completely botches everything else. Quests, rewards, sense of accomplishment, economy... and don't even get me started on the last boss of main quest, thats gotta be the first time ever in history of the games when you had to click the passive mob to its death to finish supposedly epic battle for survival of all races.

 

[Tanakh]

The game excels only at eliminating the "grind" aspect of the mmo's during leveling but completely botches everything else.

For me this game is the spiritual successor of DaoC, as such I came for the WvW and to a lesser degree for the structured PvP (aka battlegrounds). The PvE? Yeah, kind of reminds me of the old GW 1 grind, painful at the beggining but if you submit your soul to that torture long enough becomes kind of familiar and even comfortable.

 

[crimson sickle2]

It actually looks good, and its combat looks incredibly similar to Xenoblade.

 

[Varis]

Spoiler

Oh thank the gods, finally. Someone who stops using that damn word while reviewing GW2.

"Revolution". Ugh. I hate that Guild Wars 2 keeps advertising itself like that, especially because (as someone who has played the game for hours and LOVES it) I can honestly say it's NOT a revolution, it's an evolution. It takes most of the concepts present in other MMOs and refines them and/or makes them work better than they used to.

The leveling curve and "grind"? A flatter leveling curve and more methods of gaining experience make leveling faster and easier than in most MMOs. Plus, as you point out, the death of "kill tagging" and "kill stealing", in addition to additional behind-the-scenes mechanics that provide players with bonus experience for things like killing mobs with other allied players or reviving your allies/party members, leads to players actively cooperating with each other for the benefit of everyone.

Quest mechanics? Instead of gathering a list of things to kill and items to collect, you're given two types of "questing": 1) Hearts, which provide an individual questing experience that gives you multiple methods of completing the quest satisfactorily; or 2) Dynamic events, where you're given a group progress meter and everyone has to work together to achieve certain tasks within the confines of the quest, and everyone receives rewards based on their level of contribution. In both cases, the questing feels more life-like because it does away with much of the flavor text, replacing it with actions and events that spawn seemingly out of nowhere that make the world feel alive. But perhaps the best part is that unlike typical quests, you can repeat group events on a fairly regular basis ("farming" them if you so choose), allowing you to keep playing events that you enjoy rather than just completing a quest, turning it in, and moving on.

Skills? Instead of a massive bar full of skills, the game restricts you to five primary combat skills (based on your weapon), a healing skill, three utilities, and an elite (which functions as a more powerful and rarely-used utility). The combat relies far more on a player getting to know the intricacies of their weapons and using them smartly. Something I enjoyed was that I figured out ways to mix my Ranger's longbow with other utility skills to create massively powerful combos that can absolutely crush enemy monsters. That sort of design allows skillful players to really excel, killing things they may not otherwise be able to beat, which is something I truly appreciate.

Really, the game does a lot of things much better than I've seen them in other games, and is worthy of every high rating it gets.

That said, though, there are plenty of issues with it, as no game is perfect. The big ones that come to mind for me personally include:
* Excessive queue times on World vs World
* No direct player-to-player trade (you have to trade via the Auction House, which is often taken down for maintenance, or using the mail system, which leads players vulnerable to potential scamming)
* The episodic design of the Personal Story leads to many seemingly important plot revelations being dropped or forgotten.
* The tail end of the Personal Story veers deeply into the same major flaws that Nightfall's story suffered from (including the introduction of a sylvari who is essentially Kormir 2.0, but with a blander voice and a less interesting backstory)
* The dye system is character-locked, such that dyes must be unlocked individually on each character (which is STUPID).
* The jumping mechanic and significant emphasis on jumping puzzles is downright frustrating, since different races and sizes of character will be perceived as jumping differently, causing players to fall to their deaths on many occasions for a jump they should have made. It doesn't help that the jumping mechanic itself feels somewhat unreliable to boot, as you'll have to push the jump key and forward key in slightly different ways to achieve completely different jumping heights and distances.

And there are others, of course. But even with all of the flaws, the game delivers such a fresh experience that I can't bring myself to hate on it. It takes so many frustrations from other MMOs, things that normally end up convincing me to stop playing those games....and it makes them fun and enjoyable. That alone is worthy of praise: taking things that most people find boring and reducing or even removing the mundane nature from them.

All told, the best MMO I've ever played. And I'll be playing it for a long time.

EDIT: Oh, and Guild Wars 2's charr race has created arguably the best holiday ever. Meatoberfest. I want to celebrate that holiday in real life. Just gather a bunch of friends together to drink alcohol and eat meat-on-a-stick. That's how the charr roll, baby. What, you think that's dumb? You wanna fight about it? Back off, meat.

I just wanted to bumb this comment, I haven't read all the other comments posted here, but I like how the one I decided to quote thought quite similarly as I did. The game isn't REVOLUTIONARY, but it is definately a step in the right direction considering how all the MMOs have stagnated over the years. When somebody connects the awesome way of storytelling of SWTOR and the awesome gameplay of GW2, there. There we would have a Perfect game. IMO <-- Remember ^^ (I just hope it'd be Arenanet, because of the fact that they made GW2 and wanted to "revolutionize" the MMO industry. They'd be pretty good candidates for the Perfect MMO-game.)

 

[Bat Vader]

I am really happy I purchased the Guild Wars 2 Collector's Edition. It is an excellent MMO that I am really enjoying.

 

[Danceofmasks]

I've extensively tested jumping and it turns out that, depending on the order of your key presses and the timing between forward key and jump key, you achieve totally different styles of jumping. Add to this the fact that different races have different jump animations, leading to differences in the height/distance perceived by the naked eye, and you have to be pretty experienced with jumps (or take your time on every single jump) to nail these puzzles. And several puzzles don't give you the time to size up each jump, making them often quite deadly. I honestly am really disappointed in this part of the game and it kills me that they couldn't find a better way to implement it.

Well, it's the difference between a running jump and a standing jump.
Pretty standard learning curve if you're experienced with platformers. Though, for people who don't platform much, man ... I get how it could be horrible.

I've played every race, and sure, the animations can be deceptive, but every character's collision box does move exactly the same way.
I had guessed during the betas that Asura would be overpowered, simply due to you, the player, having better vision. Turns out I was mostly right. Stupid human overpowered racial elite.

For some of the more challenging jumping puzzles, I'd recommend finding a source (preferably multiple sources) of swiftness.
Running jumps are modified by movement speed, which means you're going to clear 33% more distance with swiftness on, vs. no speed buffs at all.

Grouping with a mesmer (who's good at jumping) also breaks the game. "just beam me up, kthx"
It's probably the main reason my mesmer is still level 2, whilst my 7 other characters are mid to max level. I have no interest in being bugged to be a puzzle-aid.

 

[jimplunder]

I've never been a fans of MMOs. I liked the first GW, although I stopped playing it because everyone else who was playing it with me left for WoW or another MMO. And although I had tried other MMOs, none really grabbed my attention for more than 30 minutes. When GW2 was coming out, everyone was telling me how different GW2 was going to be from other MMOs and that I should play it since it wasn't going to be like WoW. So, I broke down and decided to buy it and after playing it for a few hours, I began to think to myself, "This is almost exactly like WoW..." Sure, there are a lot of differences to the trained MMO player, but for me, the combat is still push a button, wait for the result, push another button, and keep spamming buttons until the target is dead. I did have some fun in the RvR combat, but I found the whole questing portion annoying (I MUCH, MUCH preferred the instance-based questing of GW to the open-world questing of GW2). For me, part of the reason I hate MMOs so much is that the world never changes. The decisions you make don't mean anything. And while your personal quests allow you to make some moral choices, the overall world doesn't change. If I complete the quest bar for that one guy sitting out in a field somewhere, that stuff doesn't go away, it stays there... forever. I feel no sense of accomplishment, and experience for experience's sake isn't fun for me either. It also made the game feel so much more grind-ier. People are still competing over those kinds of objections, and while they respawn fast, it just makes me feel like I'm accomplishing less. I was promised a different experience by friends and the developers and in my opinion, I just got more of the same... the stuff I don't like. But, I'm a whiny little MMO-hater, so what do I know?

P.S. Nice Panth avatar, Slycne

 

[TrollFase]

I am really happy I purchased the Guild Wars 2 Collector's Edition. It is an excellent MMO that I am really enjoying.

Same here.

I find it very laid back and even though it can be approached with a casual gaming session in mind, it is still extremely engaging. The events keep things fresh and the classes are very well developed and fun to experiment with.

Im currently a 48 Warrior (Bow/Twin Axes) on Maguuma.

 

[Bat Vader]

I am really happy I purchased the Guild Wars 2 Collector's Edition. It is an excellent MMO that I am really enjoying.

Same here.

I find it very laid back and even though it can be approached with a casual gaming session in mind, it is still extremely engaging. The events keep things fresh and the classes are very well developed and fun to experiment with.

Im currently a 48 Warrior (Bow/Twin Axes) on Maguuma.

My highest character is a level 8 Ash Legion Engineer. I have four different characters that I devote time to so leveling is kinda slow. I love the views that you can get. I tend to take a screenshot whenever I find one.

 

[Shuguard]

I found the first 100 hrs of getting to level 80 to be enjoyable. After that I've been pretty bored. It's like going to a theme park and after riding all the rides maybe 2-3 times, it gets really repetitive and eventually you run out of things to do. Either i have burned out in 1 month or this game just didn't have enough since it recently launched.

The end-game really isn't there, or a good chunk has been absent because of bugs (haven't been able to do bathazar, and only melandru once). I've also gotten very tired of doing grenth, lyssa, and dwayna events over and over again, to hopefully get good drops and money. But just doing the same linear events has kinda pushed me over a bit. I think guild wars 2 could really improve in adding more variables to the events, instead of the same repeatable over and over again.

I find Spvp rather boring since the maps are the same cap 3 different points to win(no really just turn the map a little sideways and add sharks/trebuchet/ or npc's in corners). I really want just a 5v5 arena or something that doesn't make me PvE in a PvP setting.

Right now the only end-game objective i can see is grinding my way to a legendary weapon, but it just honestly looks like a giant padded timesink (which includes grinding up 250 skill points, gift of mastery (about 525,000 karma, then i have to rng clovers which are about 2,100 karma a piece... etc. etc.). I understand it's hard, but doing events that only give 360-380 karma a piece to grind my way to 525k is just useless padding. I don't exactly know if i'm doing it right, but the end-game just really isn't there for me. Not to mention Wv3 is a giant zergfest.

Edit: I will say though, either the creator of those jump puzzles is a masochist or a very sadistic person, who's hand i would love to shake.

 

[Aposthebest]

And then Arenanet adds diminishing returns to absolutely everything and diminishes the game to 1 hour sessions of doing something before you start getting punished for playing.

That's something I'd expect from Ubisoft or EA, but well, it's their call, they will be the ones to face the concequenses. Which is a pitty, because everything else is actually promising to say the least.

 

[GrandmaFunk]

The amount of backlash over the DR system is pretty silly, imho.

-you're not getting punished for playing too much.

-you're not getting punished for sticking to one type of content.

what you are getting is slightly less rewards for doing the exact same specific task over and over and over.

 

[Shuguard]

The amount of backlash over the DR system is pretty silly, imho.

-you're not getting punished for playing too much.

-you're not getting punished for sticking to one type of content.

what you are getting is slightly less rewards for doing the exact same specific task over and over and over.

Actually it does have problems. I was doing the lyssa event last night where we didn't have enough people to finish it. i got maybe 4-5 events done with the surrounding events. Then i teleported to do Grenth in a different zone. So i could get one of them finished and after one part of the event failed i was immediately getting DR for events and loot. I had to wait for the event to reset and be drawn out over a long fight(took at least 30 mins) for the DR to reset, but there is no reason to have DR like this when they want to combat farming where many game requirements (i.e. legendary weapons) require a lot of farming. Not to mention being cut off from loot while participating is very demoralizing.
If they are doing this to stop say chinese gold farmers then they are going about it the very lazy way.

 

[GrandmaFunk]

since loot is randomized, how would you be able to be certain that you were in fact getting immediately affected by DR?

Anywho, they have admitted that the system is currently still buggy and that it does need tuning.. but ppl aren't complaining about the implementation, it's like they're offended by the very idea of having this kind of system. even though it's perfectly inline with plenty of other design decisions they've made.

also: you can just say "gold farmer", you don't need to specify "chinese"

 

[Bat Vader]

The only real problem that I have with Guild Wars 2 is the down leveling part. I don't mind being down leveled when I am questing. I hate being down leveled when I am doing my personal story. I just died like 3 or 4 times because even though I am level 11. my personal story was level 8 so therefore it down leveled me to level 8.

It would be nice if they gave players a choice if they want to be down leveled for their personal stories.

 

[Shuguard]

since loot is randomized, how would you be able to be certain that you were in fact getting immediately affected by DR?

Anywho, they have admitted that the system is currently still buggy and that it does need tuning.. but ppl aren't complaining about the implementation, it's like they're offended by the very idea of having this kind of system. even though it's perfectly inline with plenty of other design decisions they've made.

also: you can just say "gold farmer", you don't need to specify "chinese"

The easy way to tell is after getting maybe a few greens, blues, maybe 1 yellow or whites, you start only getting grey items like bones for a solid 5-10 groups of mobs or nothing at all, also when an event ends you can also tell because your karma, money, and exp gain is cut in half or less.

I wouldn't say in line with design decisions. They put in anti-farm decisions, when the only way to get a legendary weapon is to farm. If you have to get 525,000 karma for the gift of mastery (not even counting how much gold is required) and you get only 360-390 karma per event in the 70-80 zones that's about 1,347-1459 events (not being reduced by DR). So they don't want you to farm, but the way to achieve it is by farming. I don't think Arenanet knows that some people find farming for loot actually fun.

 

[Maleb]

Nice review! That said:

For me this game is the spiritual successor of DaoC, as such I came for the WvW and to a lesser degree for the structured PvP (aka battlegrounds). The PvE? Yeah, kind of reminds me of the old GW 1 grind, painful at the beggining but if you submit your soul to that torture long enough becomes kind of familiar and even comfortable.

DAoC is my unconscience standard for any mmo I try to avoid . But this one stands out in pve and pvp. I haven't seen any real structured keeptakes or massive threeserver battles though, but haven't been a lot in wvw lately (or maybe me being on gandara doesn't help either ). And btw, I would support a "darkness falls"-type dungeon in wvw. Oh boy! The joy of storming in DF just when realmacces shifted...
./victory

 

[lowkey_jotunn]

The leveling curve and "grind"? A flatter leveling curve and more methods of gaining experience make leveling faster and easier than in most MMOs. Plus, as you point out, the death of "kill tagging" and "kill stealing", in addition to additional behind-the-scenes mechanics that provide players with bonus experience for things like killing mobs with other allied players or reviving your allies/party members, leads to players actively cooperating with each other for the benefit of everyone.

Define "more methods of gaining XP" because really, it's the exact same methods in a lazier presentation.

In old MMOs (i.e. WoW, because let's not kid around, it's the yardstick by which all other MMOs are judged) you would arrive in a town with a dozen quest givers, they would each ask one or two tasks of you:
Can you kill a dozen bandits for one NPC.
Can you kill some squirrels until a magical acorn drops, for another.
Can you collect 10 magical sparkly leaves for the Elf-ish NPC.
Can you kill some bears for their ass meat, it is delectable. I require 10 bear asses.
etc etc etc

In GW2, there's a single NPC, standing on a heart on the map who just says : Kill some bandits, squirrels and bears. Click on sparkly things. Don't bother coming back when you're done, I'll mail you some money

That's not better, that's not an improvement. There is NO story progression there. It's just grind. There isn't a continuation of the bandits you killed and tracking down their masters. There's no explanation of why you gathered the magical sparkly things, or what the purpose of the acorn is ... it's all closed off so as not to conflict with other heart-guys on the map. The only halfway decent story line is the personal story, which is great.

Or it would be, if I got more than 1 or 2 quests every 3 levels. Each link of the chain is a fun and enjoyable 5-10 minute breadcrumb that points me towards the next breadcrumb, a mere 6 or 7 hours of grinding away.

Compare to the old Defias quest lines in WoW. You had a few quests to kill bandits, steal some of their stuff, kill stronger bandits, scout the bandit area etc ... eventually leading to the bandit hideout dungeon. How did you get introduced to your first dungeon in GW2? Was it a long quest chain that laid out the backstory of what was going on there? Or was it a letter in the mail "Hey check out AC if you've got some time to kill."

GW2 is boring. I wanted this game to be fun, I really did. It's simply ... not. GW1 had the overarching mission with the group quests that you could work through. This thing has nothing outside the sparse (VERY sparse) personal storyline. Sure, the leveling is faster. I probably got to level 50 in GW2 faster than I could get to 50 in WoW. But that matters little when it feels like I spent the majority of those 50 levels watching paint dry.


I guess when you said "more methods of earning XP," you might've been talking about XP from PvP : WoW has had that for -what- 3 years now? Hardly new. Maybe you meant Vistas or PoIs : WoW has had exploration XP for ever (since the start?) Crafting? WoW has gathering professions grant XP, and specific crafting profession quests for XP. both old news. Though I guess this implementation is new. More on crafting later.

What other "more methods" did you mean?

I loved the jumping Vista's, especially some of the hidden puzzles (like the hidden pirate cave in Lions Arch). I thought a lot of them were really quite clever, with some of the puzzles being massive in scope and easily the equal to several levels of a traditional platformer, taking 10-15 minutes to complete. The inclusion of Vista's and puzzles into GW2 was one of my favorite features.

But will you love them when you have to repeat them on every character? In case you missed it, 100% map completion (including all Vistas, all Hearts, all PoI *ugh*, etc) is required for the basic level of "top tier" weapons. Getting 100% completion gives you two tokens, one of which is required for each weapon. Which really sucks if you're a dual-weilding class, you get one pair and that's it. Or if you want to change weapons down the line? Nope. Sucks for you.

---

But it wasn't all bad. I will say that the dynamic grouping is a nice change. No group in invites or loot rolls. Just help people kill the giant monster and get your treasure. Good call ANet.

It's still Boring.

The crafting system seems like a step in the right direction. Cooking especially feels like someone spent a LOT of time on the discovery system. It's fun to play around, but there are WAY to many high level recipes that call for long-grey materials. You want to cook up a high level soup thing? First cook a couple dozen low-level soup stock. You can either farm old zones for minimal XP or just buy it on the AH ... tough luck. It's unnecessary grinding and padding out a game that's already 90% padding and grinding.

---

Also, unrelated gripe ... Give my elementalist the ability to freaking weapon swap.

I already hear you, "but you've got 4 elements so it's 20 powers per weapon."

No it's not. All of those powers that aren't fire are just crappy copies of the fire powers. Every other class gets two distinctly different power-sets via weapon swap*. My thief can switch mid-combat from Ranged AoE with a shortbow to double daggers for up close and personal, or to Pistol/Dagger for some nice movement powers or to Sword/Pistol for sweeping melee AoE and stun/blind.

My ele gets one weapon. If I'm wielding a staff, I can switch from good Ranged AoE with Fire to crappy Ranged AoE with Water or Earth, to decent Ranged AoE damage with Air. WTF is the point, except maybe juggling cooldowns? And no, the tiny heals or debuffs from Water and Earth don't make up for losing out on the ability to switch from Ranged to Melee, or AoE to Single Target on the fly.

*My engi doesn't get weapon-swap either, but being able to switch from pistols, to bombs or grenades, to a freaking flamethrower fits the bill.

/soapbox