Where is it now: Guild Wars 2

[Mike Fang]

It's been some time since I played Guild Wars 2. When it was first announced, I was really impressed with its ambitious-looking design, the way it provided, for its time, a fresh new sort of MMO gameplay with dynamic events and group play taking precedent over linear fetch quests for stationary NPC, a combat system that emphasized mobility and customizing fighting style over spamming special attacks (while standing in place taking turns with the enemy hitting one another), a more personalized storyline, and several other features that are being seen in more MMOs these days. Oh, and most importantly, NO SUBSCRIPTION FEES.

For some time after it first came out the game was -the- hot new contender for the best MMO on the market. You could easily argue that it was revolutionary for its time, or if not revolutionary then at least different from the majority in the combination of elements it brought to the table. I for one was a huge fan of it at launch and for some time afterward. But in time, the game changed. The easygoing pace the developers seemed to be taking with the game's overarching plot was dropped (rather soon, in my own opinion) for what a friend of mine rather accurately referred to as a "monster of the week" format, where a new plot-relevant event that spanned the entire game world would happen. In truth, in GW2's case, it was about once every two weeks, but still that seems incredibly frequent, at least to me. Even at its worst, WoW would usually have content patches that announced the next big event in the overall storyline maybe once a month.

For me, that wore out GW2's appeal fast. Being given time to digest and work through all the content provided in an MMO at my own pace had been, in the beginning, one of the huge selling points of GW2 to me. When the developers suddenly decided they were going to try and run the game like an HBO series, with some time-sensitive event occurring every other week, I got tired of it. I kept missing events because I'd occasionally feel like taking a break and concentrating on another game during my free time. But apparently I was expected to play the game at least once a day. I can only speak for myself, but nothing kills fun for me quicker than turning something into an obligation. I quite even before the end of the Scarlet Briar plot; I was just so sick of feeling like I didn't factor into the plot of a game that had been marketed heavily on the promise of my story being key. I felt the game had turned into just another theme park MMO, with little to no roleplaying value in it.

Sometime after leaving GW2, I'd heard that with the end of the Scarlet Briar arc, there was some sort of change to the game, though exactly what was changed seemed hazy to me. It sounded like there might have been some sort of change to the plot progression, but I wasn't sure and even then, I wasn't motivated enough to go back and see for myself. Now, however, it seems like news about the game has gone silent. I haven't heard anything new about GW2 for some time.

I have to admit, this has me curious. Does anyone know what's going on with GW2 lately? Have they picked the "new plot twist every two weeks" format back up again? Have they given up on the bi-weekly plot events and switched to expansion packs? Is the game just flat-out dead and no longer getting developer support? I'm curious what's happened to this game that started out with so much potential, but seemed to stumble and flag behind after time.

 

[Asita]

Living World's still going on but they've changed the system a bit. Basically you log in while the living world event is available and it becomes permanently unlocked (and replayable) for your account.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I pretty rapidly lost interest in Guild Wars 2. I played from launch up to whatever event that was with the island full of very dangerous crab monsters. At the time I had two characters, a Sword/Pistol Thief and an Engineer spec'd to be a grenadier.

I'm not really sure what killed the game for me. Everything felt polished enough. I liked the character classes and builds, I liked the world events, I liked the jumping puzzles (the Halloween and Christmas ones were a blast)...

... there just wasn't enough of any of it, I guess. I completed the main game and all of the jumping puzzles fairly early, then felt like there just wasn't anything to do.

Also, it kinda pissed me off that the game had a fairly personal main story line where -you- are a central figure, the entire thing soloable, then at the very end, the final quest is for some bullshit reason group-mandatory, and may not even feature your character in the end cutscene. Wtf?

 

[Aramis Night]

I still jump into GW2 here and there but they have made choices that I wasn't entirely happy with. The ascended tier gear kind of annoyed me along with the fractal dungeon since it was gear gated content, which seemed to run counter to a lot of what the dev's promised initially. That being said it is still one of the better mmo's out there still. Also the 2 week development schedule is kind of off-putting since I also want to have a life and maybe play other games from time to time and the schedule they encourage doesn't really allow for that so much if you intend on staying current. The newest zone being an obstacle course just to get around is also pretty ridiculous and not fun.

That being said the game does have the best pvp I've ever enjoyed in any mmo, and I'm usually not that into pvp. And they did redo the trait system and added more traits which I like. Also dyes are now account wide unlocks. And I do really enjoy the dungeons more than in most games since it really is more skill based. I play a lot of mmo's but I don't see GW2 coming off my desktop anytime soon.

 

[OpticalJunction]

I had a ton of fun levelling up my first character, but then my interest waned and I stopped playing. It wasn't the frequent updates that turned me off, it just seemed like the game ended, and there was nothing else to do. Still the best mmo I ever played though.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I can only speak for myself, but nothing kills fun for me quicker than turning something into an obligation.

You can hereby speak for me too in this regard then because I wholly agree. I reached this point years ago in Eve Online and a little while later in WoW. You realise at some point you're no longer playing and enjoying the game, but performing busywork in routine daily quests and housekeeping duties.

I think in a way it's an endemic and fundamental part of MMOs. Everything has to be padded out to extreme lengths to urge players to keep on subbing, to play a game for 100s of hours when most SP titles might push 40hrs. From the sounds of it, GW2 tries to keep people interested by these events you describe. In fairness, MMOs can't really stand still for very long and there's only so much padding even the most ardent of players will accept so it's an impossible one to crack.

 

[visiblenoise]

I always thought that the story was uninteresting, and also very PG on top of that, sort of like the Harry Potter or Chronicles of Narnia movies.

 

[prpshrt]

If you're a fan of the original Guild Wars, I'd say play the new living world story missions. As people have mentioned, they're pretty personal with YOU being the focus, but I think that's intentional because that's how the original gw was. I'd recommend you hop back on just for the story missions.

 

[Durai]

I have to admit, this has me curious. Does anyone know what's going on with GW2 lately? Have they picked the "new plot twist every two weeks" format back up again? Have they given up on the bi-weekly plot events and switched to expansion packs? Is the game just flat-out dead and no longer getting developer support? I'm curious what's happened to this game that started out with so much potential, but seemed to stumble and flag behind after time.

I still play, but only because I was able to find a guild that had active members(Most of the original guilds I was apart of became inactive, and not being able to socialize, even a bit, makes this game less appealing).

The "new plot twist every two weeks" format, or Living World Story, is still going strong, but for good reason this time.

The original problem for the LS(Living Story) was that it was a server-wide event that had a specific time frame. If you wanted to partake in it, you needed either to be there when everyone was doing it, or find a group of people to help when no one was doing it. If you never logged in during the LS, you missed out with no way to experience it.

However, if you log in ONCE, you character gains the LS event in their Personal Story Journal(needs to be done for each LS that is released). Once added, you can complete the story WHENEVER you see fit. Not only that, but the LS can mostly be soloed by any of your characters. And those bits that can't be soloed? Arenanet found a solution to that as well. What they've done is incorporate standard world events into the new LS missions. I was in Frostgorge Sound (Lv80 artic area) and the LS had me talk to an NPC that already existed in the zone. This NPC now had dialouge that made the event that it had always given players relevant to the LS, so not only were players who were doing the LS there, but random passerby's who happened to come across us were there too, contributing to the event w/o being forced to!

And that feeling that once you've done it, there's nothing else to do? Covered! Once you've completed a particular chapter of the LS, you unlock the ability to replay each mission for achievements! Each chapter has it's own set of achievements, with enough prerequisites to tide you over until the next LS is released.

If you're thinking about logging in, I can highly recommend it. It's still a great game to come back to whenever you get the itch for an MMO experience.

 

[TristanBelmont]

I liked the story, played through all the plot I could stomach, then left and went back to WoW like I always do.

 

[LostCrusader]

I really wanted to like GW2 mainly because I enjoyed the first game and liked that it didn't have a subscription. But the game just never hooked me and I quit about a week after it launched. I think my main problem was that the combat felt so minimal even compared to other MMOs. IIRC, I really didn't like that you only got 5 skills and 3 of them were based on the weapon you had equipped. It felt to me like instead of WoW or other MMOs where you keep clicking your abilities, it was the exact same but with even less to do.

 

[laggyteabag]

I really enjoyed GW2, but after I got my first character to Level 80, I just kinda lost interest. I never completed the story, and the Living World updates never really went anywhere. I had grinded the Shatterer world boss, and looking at the stats, the other dragons almost never were defeated, so they weren't really an option. PvP was never really my thing, but the PvE events never really caught on with me because of the lack of a dedicated healer, and as a result it just ended up being a case of dying in order. It is a pretty fun MMO, but im pretty sure that I just lost interest in the genre as a whole more so than anything else.

 

[Magix]

I mean to play it past the story/level cap you really need to go out of your way to set goals for yourself. There is ascended armour and legendary weapons, which are barely better than exotics, but take a decent amount of money and other activities to get. So you end up doing daily dungeons, which is actually quite fun.

I personally also set myself the goal of soloing Arah on thief, which is the endgame dungeon, possibly one of the harder things to do in the game and would take a lot of practice. But I lost interest before that ended up happening.

So yeah, if you're just interested in absorbing the content, GW2 will bore you after a while. You need to be a bit of a completionist/the guy that hunts down all the collectibles, in order to really enjoy it for a prolonged amount of time. They're still doing story updates, the game is not abandoned, but the story is just about as uninteresting as it's always been. Story has never been GW2's strong suite, and that hasn't changed

 

[Worgen]

I'm still loving me some gw2, they new living story has a really interesting plot and is really what I think they wanted the original dragon story to be. There have been a ton of changes to game systems too, like now you unlock all armor and weapon designs just by equipping it and you can apply its look at any time with a transmute token, so its much easier to find the look you want. They changed how abilities are gathered, I think for any new characters you unlock abilites by completing events. And there are a ton of other ui changes and such.

 

[Mike Fang]

You can hereby speak for me too in this regard then because I wholly agree. I reached this point years ago in Eve Online and a little while later in WoW. You realise at some point you're no longer playing and enjoying the game, but performing busywork in routine daily quests and housekeeping duties.

I think in a way it's an endemic and fundamental part of MMOs. Everything has to be padded out to extreme lengths to urge players to keep on subbing, to play a game for 100s of hours when most SP titles might push 40hrs. From the sounds of it, GW2 tries to keep people interested by these events you describe. In fairness, MMOs can't really stand still for very long and there's only so much padding even the most ardent of players will accept so it's an impossible one to crack.

When I played WoW, the ironic thing is I actually did enjoy the dailies. To me they were relatively uncomplicated, simple quests I could do for some guaranteed "income" in the form of this or that special chit that could be traded for handy items. I guess you could see it as busy work. To me they looked like things that, once I'd finished all the one-time quests there were to do, I could relax more, log on for an hour to knock off whatever dailies I chose to do, see if anyone from my guild was on and maybe do a dungeon raid or something, and if nobody was on, call it a day and try again the next time.

The problem was I felt like those one-time quests weren't anything I could enjoy. I felt pressed to get through that shit as fast as I could before the plot got too far ahead of me. And that made it feel like 90 percent of the game was an obstacle rather than fun. Not very appealing to me.

 

[Mike Fang]

I still play, but only because I was able to find a guild that had active members(Most of the original guilds I was apart of became inactive, and not being able to socialize, even a bit, makes this game less appealing).

The "new plot twist every two weeks" format, or Living World Story, is still going strong, but for good reason this time.

The original problem for the LS(Living Story) was that it was a server-wide event that had a specific time frame. If you wanted to partake in it, you needed either to be there when everyone was doing it, or find a group of people to help when no one was doing it. If you never logged in during the LS, you missed out with no way to experience it.

However, if you log in ONCE, you character gains the LS event in their Personal Story Journal(needs to be done for each LS that is released). Once added, you can complete the story WHENEVER you see fit. Not only that, but the LS can mostly be soloed by any of your characters. And those bits that can't be soloed? Arenanet found a solution to that as well. What they've done is incorporate standard world events into the new LS missions. I was in Frostgorge Sound (Lv80 artic area) and the LS had me talk to an NPC that already existed in the zone. This NPC now had dialouge that made the event that it had always given players relevant to the LS, so not only were players who were doing the LS there, but random passerby's who happened to come across us were there too, contributing to the event w/o being forced to!

And that feeling that once you've done it, there's nothing else to do? Covered! Once you've completed a particular chapter of the LS, you unlock the ability to replay each mission for achievements! Each chapter has it's own set of achievements, with enough prerequisites to tide you over until the next LS is released.

If you're thinking about logging in, I can highly recommend it. It's still a great game to come back to whenever you get the itch for an MMO experience.

That does sound appealing and a better way to handle it than they did the whole Scarlet Briar fiasco. Sadly since I've missed several episodes of this "second season" it doesn't look like I can pick up the new LS where I left off, even if I wanted to.

 

[DementedSheep]

It still gets updated every 2 weeks. You now only have to log in once every two weak to unlock the story and then can play it any time you like though its going to be a bit weird sometimes because of the plot changes to the maps. Like one of the towns getting attacked by vines but NPC's needed for the plot still hang around and during the quests don't seem to notice their fellows hanging dead right next to them. If you missed it you can unlock it for gems (bleh). We are finally onto another dragon (Mordremoth. The forest dragon who controls plants, you can probably see where that's going and why the previous arc was about an insane Sylvari).They still have a lot of time gating for crafting and laurels though which tries yo get you log in everyday to do.
They have mega servers now which cause problems in trying to organise with large groups of people and get them in the same map but it means their are always people around doing events which they are now are incorporating into the story.

 

[Scarim Coral]

That does sound appealing and a better way to handle it than they did the whole Scarlet Briar fiasco. Sadly since I've missed several episodes of this "second season" it doesn't look like I can pick up the new LS where I left off, even if I wanted to.

I think at the moment since you didn't log in at the start of season 2, you now have to buy it via the gem store for the start of it.

Anyway as for me, I think I'm the only one who had played the game the longest out of the The Escapist Guild (pretty much a ghost guild but there is one or two people who does logged in) but in saying so I am a die hard GW fan. Even then however I do got my limits!

I do admit that I am getting fed up that I need to played it every single day if you want to advance your Achivement rewards since you get good loot out of it. The game should be played daily due to how fun the game is, not cos of some addiction.

Sure the new way they're doing with the season is good for those who don't logged in weekly but it is a pain on the achivements side of things. I didn't attempt the achivements when the new episodes were up since I just couldn't be bother but now I got the time to do so, trying to find a party for the harder achivements is a pain even when using the LFG tool.

 

[AuronFtw]

If you're a fan of the original Guild Wars, I'd say play the new living world story missions. As people have mentioned, they're pretty personal with YOU being the focus, but I think that's intentional because that's how the original gw was. I'd recommend you hop back on just for the story missions.

Considering the original Guild Wars was developed as an 8-player team-based PvP game, I don't think single player PvE missions are at all a draw to players who were "fans" of the original. The PvE content in GW1 was token at best, with pretty much every zone being piss easy and none of the NPC characters being particularly noteworthy or memorable. The game died early from a lack of attention to PvP, while the developers attempted (and failed) to shift the focus to PvE content creation, apparently without realizing how flawed it would be to try to eek out PvE content largely based on PvP mechanics. After only a couple of PvE-focused releases, they gave up and tried to make a fully PvE MMO.

Very few people who "enjoyed" what made Guild Wars 1 unique play GW2, because it's got none of it. It's grindy, the content is samey, and it has no depth in the PvE or the PvP content largely due to skill selection being minimal (largely tied to weapon, which means only 1 or 2 weapons per class are "viable" and you only get 2-3 utility slots to actually choose) and the skills themselves being shallow. It's an incredibly beautiful game, but... it doesn't feel fleshed out, at all. The tedious repetitive easy content just grates as you try to slog through the same dungeon for the 50th time to get money to save up for your super grindy legendary item... zzz. Very little about GW2 appeals to anyone who truly liked GW1. Lack of skill choice, lack of dual profession freedom, lack of individual skill complexity (compared to GW1 cornerstones like dshot, diversion, bull's strike, etc), all leads to a fairly bland final product.

At least it doesn't have a sub.

 

[prpshrt]

snip

I agree with you on almost all the GW2 criticisms but I would't go as far as saying PvE was token... I do know quite a few people that enjoyed the PvE and did nothing but. I was in a PvE guild for a while and we did a lot of elite missions which were a ton of fun. The guild was rather large and active too. As for the expansions, I recall a lot of people enjoying them. I should also note that I never played GW1 as an MMO. I played it as an online coop RPG. Kinda like diablo. Guess it all comes down to personal preference though :|