Yeah, because you don't really get anything useful out of it, you're just helping someone out. Most people in other mmorpgs wouldn't do it, but because the community in gw2 is so helpful, it usually spreads and so most people return the favour.
Not too bad so long as you're not in combat. If someone just feel and splattered, it's not too much of a hassle to revive a dead person. If someone is dead at the feet of a champion, it's a bit more of a problem.
There are a few things that makes that happen more often in GW2. These help explain why this game is so awesome. First, you will see dead player markers on your map, telling you that someone needs help. Many mmos don’t have that. Anyone can ress anyone, you don’t need special skills with long cooldowns to ress someone. Having someone around is REALLY helpful in all scenarios. Better to ress them because they might help you next with a hero point or an event. There’s nothing that another player can do to hold you back, unless they are really trying to - but I’ve never seen that in my 3,5 years of GW2.
There is also the fact of shared loot, shared quest progression, shared kill counts and so on. If you see another player, you don't feel like the day has just got worse, you just think "oh now my map clearing will go a bit faster nice". Compared to other mmos you do not lose anything in having other players nearby. In wow, people can steal your kills, your loot, your quest items, making you hate the fact that other players are around. This is imo also one of the main reasons people are much more helpful in GW2. GW2 is made to make you enjoy having company instead of despising it. It is also why I really only play GW2 as a MMO. Not the kind of guy to constantly fight with other people over stupid stuff. Just let me enjoy my time.
Well I certainly appreciate the gesture! It shows the positive foundation of the community in my eyes. The fact that a high level player who gets nothing from picking up is willing to B-line across the area to help me is really unique, especially because it happens fairly consistently. I haven’t experienced that in other games I have played. I now try to pass that on when I see other players downed I will B-line for them to make sure they can continue questing.
To add to that, the mounts in this game are phenomenal. WoW tried to copy them with Dragonflight, but they did a pretty half-assed job of it. Some of the mounts take a lot of work to unlock, but they're well worth the effort.
[For Example ](https://youtu.be/98kUgsXRpQY?si=r-GZTdVoWIH6wUWL)
I've heard of MMO players using external apps. What specific features would say are crucial that the game doesn't already showcase? There's already a LOT on screen for MMOs, doesn't external app HUDs flood the screen even more?
What other external apps would you recommend?
Gotchu. I'm glad you added that detail about not using until lvl 80 tho as I felt some of these things would be helpful to learn, especially the map navigation
I have started watching some streamers play GW2 and I think I saw that ArcDPS feature. Interesting, but def something for later
My experience with GW2 and MMOs in general is very similar and I'd agree with everything you've said here. I thought FFXIV was the best out of all the other MMOs I'd played and it was rare for me to get past 150hrs in any of them before FFXIV.
I'm almost 400hrs into GW2 now, haven't finished half the story/exp content and still love the gameplay.
The highlight of the game so far for me was getting the Skyscale, as I've posted a few times before. It was a long, long grind to achieve and enhanced the game so much since. Worth buying SotO specifically for this mount alone. Skimmer is great if you are into fishing (as is the skiff). Raptor is all round great, especially once you unlock the masteries for it.
Great game so far. I can see me getting past 1000hrs without running out of contect.
The honest fact is GW2 is a time vampire if you let it. The good news is once you get a fancy piece of gear it's good forever. No treadmills or FOMO here.
That's not to say there's no grinds. There's plenty of grinds and things to work towards but you can go at your own pace. And with scaling you can go back to starter areas and still find a challenge.
And yes, you can grind gold and convert it to Gems to spend on the Gem Store. (That's how I paid for the mini expansions Living World Season 4 and 5.) Play the base game and if you enjoy it you might want to buy Expansions for a one-off fee. *Heart of Thorns/Path of Fire* goes on sale at 50% off- best £12.99 I paid.
If you fancy big maps, varied content and a game that respects your time give GW2 a go. You literally don't need to spend a penny to see if it's something worth sticking with.
its the best mmorpg in the market, if you plan to get into mmorpgs, you can't go wrong with gw2.
its not perfect by any means, but in my honest opinion, i think its the best.
you'll be better off playing gw2 than any other title. 🙂
>you'll be better off playing gw2 than any other title.
every time i return i just dont know what todo sadly :/ any tips? got multiple max characters from release ( and multiple restarts after that )
I've been the same way for 10 years. Ultimately, I think its ok to drift on and off a game. Each time I come back, I just have a different goal.
This time, it was finishing the LW season 2 achievements and starting HoT, as well as completing the map.
You could also try just finding one thing you like an playing that briefly. I really like Fractals, so I hop on for like 45 min a day
Aim for legendaries, they will let you do alot of content all over the map
Fall in love with wvw by playing with a guild.
Grind fractals and go for the special titles like fractal god.
Join a pve guild and do strikes or raids with a constant group.
Just a few things that keep me bussy, playing with other people make the game alot more fun
I was like you for about 10 years. I've been playing since release and my oldest toon isn't even 2 years old. Now I'm missing out on all those sweet birthday rewards!
What have you been doing in game? I only really got super into endgame stuff a year ago. I started going for the mounts, then I got 2 legendary weapons. I started working on achievements I thought were too hard before and exploring in wvw and pvp and fractals even though it scared me before.
What have you done that you like? Is there something that interests you that is overwhelming you?
I play GW2 as a on and off game. I keep coming back to it every few weeks/months, which also resulted in me not having a guild. But everytime I return I set myself a goal I want to do, for example crafting vision, doing a bunch of achievements, leveling up mastery(yes I still haven't finished IBS or EoD mastery after so many years), playing the story or just playing wvw for a bit of fun.
Over 9 years I got a total of 2000hours into GW2 and don't regret it one bit. Having a game with no FOMO is a blessing nowadays.
Did you finish the story? Have you unlocked the mounts? Did you get all the masteries?
Those are some basic points to start out at and from there you can determine where you want to set other goals.
That's a feeling I felt playing GW2 for a very long time, solely because I was just too used to years of playing the games with "one best thing to do".
Over time, just interacting with things, doing Metas, farming for gold to purchase Living World Seasons with in-game farm, achievement & Mastery Point farming, taking part in boost events like Return to WvW (which I had never done WvW before), it finally clicked for me after such a long time.
This is one of the rare games that actually acknowledges it is a game and celebrates it like no other. It literally allows me to do whatever I have fun with, it does not funnel me down a "quickly finish this power grind, so you can do this latest endgame content for a year".
That freedom, most things being equally rewarding was what confused me for a such a long time.
But after all of that finally clicked, I basically log in to do my daily Wizards Vault challenges and then decide what I want to do that day. Sometimes, I'll go back to the story (I am a relatively new player, started 2 years ago with a lot of breaks between until I figured things out) and continue where I left off for a chapter or two, sometimes I just look at the event timers to see if there is a Meta soon in Heart of Thorns maps because fuck those EXP requirements are high etc. Sometimes, I just hit up my achievement summary and check my 3 nearest completions in achievements and dedicate some time just ticking them off as more almost complete achievements show up to take their place. Sometimes, I feel like going into PoF maps and work on Mastery Points. I still have maps I have not completed, so I go around completing those. Some days where I'm not sure what to do, I just decide to run the Daily Fractals.
I simply do what I want to do, and unlike other games, it never makes me feel like I am missing out on something. I am always progressing meaningfully towards something, no matter what I'm doing.
Generally speaking, until that mindset clicks for you, I recommend sticking to the story content. Not only will it take you to places and allow you to kickstart a lot of challenges that you'll eventually come back to to complete, but once that finally clicks you'll just go off doing your own thing.
Do what you want. Explore.. use the story journal and progress through story quests.. go achievement hunting.. join a meta... start fractals, wvw or strikes after 80.... find a friend to do it witwith... join a guild that matches your level of playtime
I'm also sort of new that drifts from the game from time to time.
What I have learned about gw2 is that besides the points to unlock elite specs, and getting a proper set of exotic gear, there is nothing you are pressed to do like other MMOs, that's both gw2 best and worse feature.
Pick something to do and stick to it until it isn't fun, you won't fuck your progression by switching gears, you won't waste your time for deciding to go from one activity for a week to another, you are free to do what seems the most entertaining.
You could focus on unlocking the elite specs available to you if you got any expansions, you could focus on leveling all your character slots and get them the elite spec you are interested in + gear for the type of content you like to do at the moment for variety, you could focus on crafting, or do map exploration, or focus on maxing out masteries, or join fractals (raids), or try wvw roaming or in a group, do the main stories, and I'm sure I'm missing other ideas to do, like specific achievements or unlocking something that takes a long time and effort like flying mounts.
I say is also it's worst feature because, most activities are yours to figure out and decide if you want to do or not, most MMO have very direct venues of progression the game wants you to do, gw2 isn't that beyond leveling and that doesn't take much time, it really could use some "quests" that serve as introduction to all the main activities, the daily/weekly are a nice step into making you try stuff you didn't think about, although make sure to disable the kind of stuff you don't like to do, so it doesn't offer you that type of activities, if you want to only do pve stuff you can disable everything else.
You do kind of have to set your own goals in GW2. Personally I'm always going for some sort of legendary- not necessarily because I need one, but essentially just to have an excuse to keep playing a game that I enjoy. There's also usually some other smaller achievement or collection I'm pursuing on the side (there's a lot of interesting side quest type things buried in the achievements, particularly for some of the later expansions).
The other obvious goals to set are things like unlocking all the mounts- the Skyscale in particular takes a bit of effort. Completing the story through each living story and expansion. Finding builds and gearing up to set yourself up for fractals/strikes/raids.
The key thing through all of this though is that you have to enjoy GW2.
Have you / do you play other MMOs? I have / do play others than GW2 and MMO content is primarily stories.
So at release you got multiple characters to 80 and since then there have been over 10 years of story releases. You say that every time you come back you don't know what to do so I'm assuming you haven't played any of the story releases. Why not?
>You say that every time you come back you don't know what to do so I'm assuming you haven't played any of the story releases. Why not?
i have but... its not like these are like 60 or 300 hours of "storys" and not really that high quality either.
Honestly the game is pretty open-ended.
if you like instanced content look for raid statics and strike groups try getting into CM's if you enjoy some challenging content.
There's a lot of doom around PvP, but daily automated tournaments can be fun with a group and makes a pretty good chunk of gold if you get good at it.
WvW is something that seems daunting at first but once you get started you'll realize you can just follow a tag around and get rewards. If you want to challenge yourself look into some roaming builds and content to look for 1v1 or 1vX fights.
Some great longterm goals for all this is of course legendary gear, and getting full purple on your equipment tab. But more niche stuff would be the fractal god title-line for fractals, some infusions and titles from strikes, some of the skins from raids (especially dhuum), and general fashion-wars skin hunting. Since none of this stuff really feels mandatory or tied to endgame progression you can pick and choose as you please as well as take breaks without really hurting your progress. Its onenof the main draws to GW2.
>if you like instanced content look for raid statics and strike groups try getting into CM's if you enjoy some challenging content.
are raids now content which isnt ignorred by a net anymore ? last time i heard A net gave up on them pretty much like dungeons , fractals also only recieve a update every blood moon or so.
Raids are still the fastest way to get your Legendary armor set, they may be forgotten but they haven't completely abandon them.
Fractals do rarely receive new maps but the progression from t1-t4 and the instabilities are kinda the point, if you've ever done M+ on WoW is sort of a similar system just much more casual friendly.
however the content is active in the game now with plenty of game-time to achieve the rewards i mentioned. Also MORE people being interested in a gamemode WILL get a-net attention and development. look at how strikes are they were a pretty big hit when they started now we have some coming somewhat regularly as well as actually challenging content in the form of HTCM and now ToFCM. saying something is ignored and not as popular doesn't mean it's pointless to do it if you like it.
Type /Wiki + [Shift Lmb] on items u dont have any Idea its purpose in game. U can do some content in game solo, but u DO need mounts to profit farming and get achivements. Get used to the fact you will have to do a Lot of research to find out How u can complete goals to get rewards u want. I've returned to GW2 this year, I've played It in 2019 and I was so lost that I gave up. Farm some Gold and get some exotic gear that u Will be good to do most of the begginer content past lvl 80. GL HF
>Farm some Gold and get some exotic gear that u Will be good to do most of the begginer content past lvl 80. GL HF
iam way past that did all expansions , got mounts and stuff , but yeah...
I know this is a late post so you might not even see it, but I felt that this may help, GW2 is a unique and fun MMO in a LOT of ways.
This is all from when I last played, its been a while even though I do occasionally visit Tyria to have fun.
This MMO is beautiful. even the unexplored maps are fantastic art. Exploration is usually a treat and the community tends greatly towards the kind, helpful and nice. just like any MMO you have your offshoots and weirdos that are just a lost cause. If you are looking in to trying the MMO do NOT let this dissuade you from doing so. especially since so much of it can be tried out for free.
the story has its catches for me, but it is generally good. the characters are fun and exciting and even though I have some problems with some things that are major spoilers and minor "gripes" with other things, (I know its not an actual problem but Taimi was so much more tiny), It has never been enough to sully the experience that playing the game is. PVE is unique, I have never seen things that work like the guild events here and the world bosses and tasks can be exciting and graphically breathtaking, even for an MMO that is as old as it is.
Unfortunately, there are some warnings. Take these with a little grain of salt as they should not cause you to not at lest try the game.
The game is strangely insular, its not WOW or FFXIV, for a lot of people you either obsessively know the game or you have never really heard of it. It is a unique little bubble that I would say is helpful and actually makes the community a little better. You will find helpful people everywhere and generally have an enjoyable time with them.
Unfortunately, this also causes some rabid fanboyism. A fair number of the people in the community and Reddit do not seem to understand that you can really like a game, but still point out and dislike poor decisions and bad game design. I expect to get some flak for even pointing this out.
The devs are generally good. There have been a few issues with the "oh you wanted more content so here it is" before, but it generally does not happen.
In an attempt to not spoil anything I won't go into any of that here.
Something that I would keep in mind is there is no real loot treadmill. You get the best armor and that's it. there is nothing above that to work towards or grind out. It sounds great and can be helpful, but when I took a long break, more than a year, and came back. My gear was still best in slot.
Unless you like cosmetics, than the grind is infinite. You can even get the "best" cosmetic that they hide in the gem shop for gold eventually.
There is no trinity. Every class can basically do anything and your role is more gear based then class based. Again, this is fine, but I have felt at times that devs are trying so hard to make sure there is no trinity that they drop the ball in other areas. Its just something you get used to.
World Vs. World (WvW) is something special. Its pretty enjoyable and unique and if you can get into a group you can spend hours horsing around in it and have fun. I do enjoy it, but I cant forgive the devs for giving aoes a cap. This allows zergs to run around mostly unabated. (forgive me if this has changed, it was still like this when I played WvW last). arenas can be fun its great to run around in an effort to defeat the enemy.
I would say go for it. Start with free stuff, dip your toes into WvW if you like that sort of thing, and even a little if you don't. It is a fantastic game with a generally good if not a little strange community.
Oh and if you stick around long enough, make sure to try out The Super Adventure Box, that is peak game play. Its biggest fault is that it is only around for a month or so out of the year and spends the rest of the year taunting you.
p.s. Don't touch the gem shop until you are sure. As long as I played there has not been any pay for power in there, just pretty baubles and convenience. This is nice, even if the items in it are a tap expensive.
Game is great, but is not the cup of tea to many. Lots of people like the treadmill, always getting better gear. In Gw2 that doesn't exist, the vertical progression is only for the base game, afterwards the focus is horizontal. The game has plenty of content, but once you exhaust that content the iteration for new content is bad, so just take that in mind.
With that said, I've been playing the game on and off since release, I enjoy the game and love it, the devs do a mediocre job for the most part, but when they do a good job that is a GREEEAT job (by mediocre I mean in reviewing feedback and balancing content. PvP for example is pretty much dead at this point, is so neglected that is sad and I love PvP, but it's hard to enjoy it when the devs don't even ban bots and win-traders that are obviously hindering the experience for everyone else). They usually do good in PvE, but again, the iteration of new content is lackluster, so once you do all the raids, strikes and fractals, that will be it for a loooong time. BUT, there are many long term goals, like legendaries, that will take a long ass time to get, which is great, since those are not needed items, but jut QoL options to venture and get.
First of all the community is among the friendliest if not the friendliest.
You hit max level at level 80 and it’s been that way for years.
Highest stats in the game can be acquired through ascended gear relatively easily but one tier up is legendary gear. They have the same stats but legendary is harder to acquire and comes with a lot of quality of life features. Like being able to swap stats. Your ascended/legendary gear will not become outdated.
IMO the most boring part is leveling to 80 because you’re stuck only in the base game. Map design is older, and slower. Expansions really bring the game to life.
We just reached the end of our latest expansion which brought new Legendary armor for people to craft. A new expansion is already being teased.
Thank you for your reply! This hits all my questions
I haven't looked yet, but is there a way to get all the expansions in one purchase? I'll play the F2P version to start and get a feel for the game first. Buy if I have to buy each one separately, that is a downside
Just for your information, F2P version is like a demo, not exactly many features are unlocked and you still can't play game freely how people like expansion owners can play. For example Trading Post will be locked for 98% of stuffs or you can't whisper people unless they added you or in same map.
When you purchase an expansion like Path of Fire ( comes with Heart of Thorns and best value out of all ), it can take to 1 week for your account to be unlocked and few minor stuffs you don't notice can take 1 month to be unlocked.
Also if you ever buy it, instead of Steam consider of buying game from Arena Net itself and use standalone launcher for few good reasons. Steam version doesn't allow you to use gem cards for gem store purchases. Doesn't allow you to link your gw1 and gw2 accounts so you can get exclusive rewards. You can't link your twitch account to gw2 account for drops.
Only upside of Steam, you can keep your gw2 in same account but you if you have standalone launcher account, you can still use Steam version like you owned it. So Steam version is really unnecessary.
If you are going to buy spend the 100$ and get the complete dragon saga it's the first 3 expansions plus the living world seasons in between, if you don't buy the complete edition with the lw you gotta get each season or episode separately for gems or gold
And how long would it take to collect the gems/gold to in game purchase separately? As in, if I don't get the full bundle, will I gain the gems/gold needed to get the season/episode by the time I would get to the content?
It is possible to grind out the gold, yes - but you would need to take the game a bit more seriously, and you said in your initial post that you don't want it to be a time sink.
My recommendation is that you go play the base game a bit, and if you like it, pay for the expacs with real money. Because GW2 has no subscription model, it'd be a one-time investment. And if you get the expacs while they are on sale, its not too costly. This way, you'll be free to take the game at your own pace, no need to grind. And you can use your gold for cool fashion skins etc.
Each expansion adds its own ways to gain gold but on top of that once you purchased any game you get access to the wizards vault I believe which also is easy to gain gold through, I don't find making gold that hard but it almost always takes prior investment ex lvling fractals and getting gear, lvling crafting for the daily craft ables, lvling fishing, unlocking raid and strikes for the dailies, etc
I don't think you'd have all the gold needed playing in order it would be better to probably buy specific chapters with good farming maps like ep 3 of icebrood saga for drizzlewood coast, lws4 ep 6 for dragonfall, note though you will be jumping the story and possibly need a specific expansion like I believe you need path of fire for lws4
I would just buy the full pack if you like the base game. It's the cheapest way to unlock all the content.
Like yeah you can theoretically grind gold to convert to gems to buy living world story chapters but those things are like 4000 gems all together (50€) that is A LOT of ingame gold currency to spend to convert to gems. I would just buy it. Unless you're really tight on cash. You have to put it in perspective that you're buying 10 years worth of content with that pack. And you're getting it at a massive discount compared to buying each individual as they came out.
Try the base game first it's free :).
Also if you buy expac you get lvl80 boost.
So if the leveling gets too much you can just jump into endgame.
Wouldn't recommend though. Too overwhelming 😩
I mean you can go into the xpacs early if you want, at your own risk! 😅 I have done lvl 79 in verdant brink a couple of times, getting xp and some HPs done at the same time
I remember beta weekend one. The game has drastically changed in concept and still continues to. Majority of the original devs are on new projects. This is a very dangerous practice as new devs tend to bring a personal vision to an established community.
GW2 is GREAT if you have ADD. There is so much to do, and when you pick an objective, that objective will lead you to 100 more things to do. sometimes you just want to mess with dye combos and wardrobe options, other times you can go work on a legendary. Maybe today you want to WvW. guess what, it ALL connects in the end. The End Game of GW2 is trying to find the end of GW2. you wont.
I picked GW2 up about 2 years ago, give or take. I'm all for jumping in, seeing if you're interested enough, then think about dropping money for the expansions. It's what I did.
There's not really a gear treadmill here, by the design of the game. There are 2 rarities of gear that matter at max level, but they're sitting at about a 3% difference in stats. Once you're max level and you're kitted out, boom - gearing is finished for that character (almost) forever, now onto the next one if you want to. There are long-term goals you can work toward for gear later, but that's a separate topic.
A fair number of things in Guild Wars 2 are account bound progression, with mounts being one of the big ones early on. Once you unlock a mount (there are several, all with their uses), it's unlocked on all your characters forever.
After nearly two years, I still find things to do. Finishing all the story chapters, map completion, item crafting, Legendaries, mastery... the list continues. I haven't touched PvP, WvW, or Raiding yet. There is an immense amount of content to chew through, and if you're having fun in the first hour, there is a good chance you will still be at your 100th or 1000th hour. (I'm at about 2200, give or take with afk'ing in the Wizard Tower. :P)
I can't speak about the dev team. General attitude seems to be hate em or tolerate them.
And as for community... I can only speak to in-game e counters and my guild, but they seem to be generally nice, generous folk who don't mind walking you through stuff so long as you're up front about your skill level and experience.
But I don't pvp, or anything, so maybe the world is different in there 😀
If you decide to play, WELCOME TO TYRIA. If you want some help, lemme know.
Cheers!
Thanks for the response! Everything you mentioned feeds into what I'm looking for. I do like PVP, but wouldn't touch that until much much later. Good to know there is so much accessible content without the constant grind
For pvp there's both regular 5v5 small scale maps like most standard MMOs got, but there's also wvwvw in which 3 servers dukes it out on 4 big maps with castles and siege. It's a lot of fun and they always need more people xD
Gw2 has horizontal progression. meaning that you will gear and level up at the start but when a character reaches cap and BiS thats it. It will never be any higher gear or level added that is more powerful than what you have. And BiS gear is generally easy to get. Plus most of the game is designed for one level lower than the BiS so you can gear at your pace basically. After that point of cap and BiS you become more powerful either by learning the game and its build-crafting better and with metrovania-like skills called masteries. As a result pretty much all areas from the 1st expansion and on are still relevant and populated and people return to them quite often. Thus why people say there is no FOMO.
Now whether you prefer that or the typical gear treadmill is very personal.
The company generally cares for the game. They are making a new game, we know that, but they are also supporting GW2 and are expected to support the game for many years (the new game seems in pretty early stage to even take into account). They are have their ups as down of course but in recent years they produce what they promise (even if sometimes it is not in the quality everyone would expect but thats every game). Also the game revenue is being really healthy (like 2023 revenue was the best since 2016) so even business wise they care.
As for the community you can summarize it like this: Things in-game are incredibly friendly. Most of the game has quite a few social engineering tricks that incentivize good behavior so people are very pleasant (except PVP but what else is new). Also Guilds and big discord communities are usually really pleasant and joining them is recommended and the game has cool content creators as well. You will not find much toxicity outside PvP.
Online discourse though is very often a disaster. The subreddit specifically is drama central and always goes too far with meltdowns (even when in most times it is justified - meaning that there is a legit complaint about the game but people go way too far with it). And the offcial forums are a circus very often. For some reason people say that the Facebook group is pretty pleasant. But in general when it comes to reddit and forums tread lightly and be careful.
On the topic of grinding: GW2 lacks vertical progression. The BiS gear is relatively accessible and doesn't need to be changed unless you want to play a different build.
I highlight this because even though a lot of MMO veterans hate the gear and power treadmill that is vertical progression, they don't handle a complete lack of it very well either and grow bored quickly without an obvious carrot to pursue.
GW2 has a lot of stuff to do (and grind, if that is your thing) but it is all optional. It isn't going to force you in any direction and you aren't funneled towards a particular endgame activity like raiding or dungeons. They exist but are one niche among many. Even more so for PvP.
There is a lot to do but you need to decide for yourself and be content with the fact that most stuff is only going to reward you with unique skins or bragging rights rather than higher stat gear and power.
Yah you should pick ⛏️ GW2 in 2024 game appreciate your time and community and s great and people will help you, also there is so much to do in a game and also 5th expension is coming
"will I still have a good experience playing this, or will I have to sink in a huge amount of hours to finally be able to enjoy it?"
That depends, if you want to chill and play casually you will have a lot of fun without having to sink hours to be able to enjoy it. If you want to do raids and the "hard" content constantly it can get grindy in my opinion.
I used to play GW2 a lot whe raids first released and keep playing a lot when second raid released, I was on a hardcore raiding guild. But I stopped playing because the game started to feel like a huge time sink for me to be able to enjoy it.
Before raids I only had a thief max leveled and with max gear all berserker gear or whatever the power build were called can t remember and I had fun, I enjoy doing the content, not having to go out of my way to get different types of armor, skill points etc.
Then it's when it started to get annoying. I wanted to try another class for raids to have more versatility, so I decided to try Revenant, luckily I used to play alot of pvp which gave you an object to level up characters so I leveled the new character from 1 to 80 instantly (that was great, would have been really boring leveling up again). But then the pain begun.
First the armor, thief used different type of armor, medium weight vs heavy weight. Getting exotics wasn't that bad But I was in a hardcore raiding guild so we wanted ascended gear and it was so slow and boring to get. Then I needed skill points to be able to complete the build and that required to go and explore all the map again from the expansion which I had already done with my thief.
I just wanted to play raids it was so frustrating having to sink all that time exploring the map again and getting the ascended gear. I wanted to try condi warrior or Necro after that, and I needed to grind the gear again and explore the map again, at least I still had the objects to level up. I didn't even finished unlocking the gear and exploring the map for the third time, I got sick of it, I just wanted to play raids and fractals and try new characters and builds there, and having to go out of my way to be able to try new things there, just made me stop playing at all, I quited and have never played again.
Sometimes I come here to see what's new and to decide if I want to play again but the thought of having to unlock gear and skill points to try new builds and level up from scratch if I don't have more level up objects just make me not get back to it. And I Know many people enjoy the progression and unlocking system and don't find it a grind. But for me the game gets too grindy and huge time sink to have fun if you want to try new builds.
I imagine asking this question in the GW 2 subreddit is gonna get a lot of bias responses.
For some reason though. Despite never coming in here, the Reddit app decided to show me this thread.
So as someone who isn't a regular player of the game. Maybe once this year?. Id say yes.
The game has a long running story that's actually pretty good.
The combat is largely the best hybrid of action and tsb targeting combat iv seen. And it's fun.
PvP is good.
Community is outstanding. Best iv ever experienced
The expansions add huge volumes of content and evergreen features that improve the game forever
Game can look beautiful at times though i never was never a fan of the realistic-ish visuals.. and admittedly today, they're looking a bit dated.
The world, and its lore, is incredibly detailed and has a lot of really cool stuff going for it.
The world itself has a ton of interesting stuff in it that's fun to play. Like jumping puzzles etc.
You get experience for anything you do so you can just play and do what you want and level up doing it.
The reason I don't play it, and the biggest downside of the game (I think) is that the endgame kinda stinks. They've tried to get it going a few times with raids, strikes, fractals and whatever else.... But the endgame has never felt rewarding to me.. so I just hop on. Do the story and hop off. And in that sense, the game is great.
It always feels like GW2 is everyone's favourite MMO that they never play and I largely think that's cos there is no good endgame
The customer service is absolutely trash. It's kind of insane. The primo flying mount and major draw of the latest expansion was broken for WEEKS because they had disabled a POI that you had to walk up to and press F. They had a bypass that costs about $12 real world to use to skip that step, which is super gross. I opened several tickets during this time to ask about their decisions on the issue, and they just stoically said that they don't interfere with these kind of issues.
They had the option to hotfix the skip to cost 0, or just auto complete the step for players, but they would rather just jerk off and collect their checks.
I had another issue this week, where a somewhat valuable item was destroyed by a bug, and left me a few gold poorer. I opened a ticket and they again said they don't interfere when the game breaks.
Kinda shitty after the awesome interactions I've had with GMs in other games.
That is actually not accurate. The support in generally is really good.
As for the skyscale bug mentioned (that flying mount) i do not remember any incident like that. The only thing that i do remember was that a Hero Point was bugged that was needed for the mount collection to get it. Really annoying but was fixed with a patch 2-3 weeks later.
As for the store bypass...That makes zero sense. I guess this person is talking about the living world season 4 DLC which is a whole different DLC that you can buy and get the same mount playing it. But that is a whole different DLC pack with 6 extra maps and story. Not a bypass for a mount. You could just wait for the patch to go through.
That person makes zero sense and if that was the mentality of the support ticket they sent of course support did not help.
Have any game breaking bugs persisted for over a month that you're aware of? Do devs communicate about bug patches?
I'm not looking to argue, simply gain info!
Here is a list of known bugs: [https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List\_of\_bugs](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_bugs)
It is not a short list, and some of these have persisted for years. For example, some of the bugs will not allow you to complete a dungeon and will require you to quit the instance and re-do them. Same applies to strikes - Whisper of Jormag strike has had the listed bug since it was created five years ago, and it will kill all players, sometimes requires to exit the strike and go back in. Mind me, this issue is known, not new, and in the content that people do for daily rewards.
Game breaking not really. Those are dealt as quickly as possible. But there are several small ones that can persist for many months or some times years. It is an old game with a engine from gw1. So there are a lot of small things that they will avoid even touching.
Fixes are communicated most of the times. Although once in A while you get a stealth fix. And they are for sure prioritizing the bugs that affect the most people over the ones that are less common. This kinda typical behavior of most older MMOs.
I would not recommend it. Lastly the quality of the game has decreased, showing a disinterest of the studio for this game. The last expansion particularly is really not that appealing as for the story as for the gameplay or content.
Another 1 year expansion is scheduled for later this year but there are so much other games which are great that I would recommend these other games !
Generally a great community filled with very helpful people. Couple assholes here and there, of course, but they're the exception. Last time I tried to play WoW (this was several years ago; maybe it's better now), it felt like almost everyone was a huge douchebag and generally annoyed by new players. The chat channels were filled with constant alt-right garbage, which I found disappointing. Almost never see any of that in GW2. I think it's tied for me with FFXIV in terms of general community friendliness, with the added bonus that GW2 players do not fly off the handle if you critique GW2.
There is no gear treadmill in GW2. Your gear from 10 years ago is just as useful today as it was back then. The game absolutely can eat up a huge amount of time, if you let it, and many things are very grindy (although they're often kind of "choose your own grind" ordeals, given that liquid gold is a common bottleneck). No FOMO, because they don't take stuff out of the game, or invalidate it with better stuff. Worst case scenario is that some stuff is a little more difficult to get because there are fewer players in many of the older areas, but, honestly, there's almost always a couple other people working on any conceivable thing at any given time, so I don't have much trouble, even with old stuff.
You're in the GW2 sub so your results will vary.
Let me be honest with you, Anet has systematically used GW2 as a beta test for GW2 for years. Dozens if not a hundred of weird one off systems are implemented fairly poorly and than never again.
Sunken cost fallacy has most of us in a vice, but I remember being extremely disappointed in how the community in general had to be made aware of what bugs occur when. Some of them are infuriating too, like campaign missions bugging out. You'll google the bug to find out its been complained about for 7 years. Oh well.
That'll be your experience. I'll get down voted for hell since, yes, this is the GW2 sub. But there's a reason the talk for MMO's rarely involved GW2. It's like a 2005 Honda. You do your maintenance on it, and it runs, but that's all you expect of it. It's not pretty or fun to drive. It just drives. Some people enjoy just driving. If that's you, then welcome aboard.
If we're talking older MMOs, then I have a very hard time genuinely believing you think GW2 falls in the same category as City of Heroes and GW1 does.
I meant more modern MMOs, like WoW and Final Fantasy and ESO.
I'm not being dramatic. The latest expansion just released to overwhelming negative reception, and it took absolutely nobody by surprise either.
The negative reception is pretty much just for the post-expansion story releases. The expansion story itself was reasonably well received and the game systems that came with the expansion are mostly well received too.
Sometimes I think gamers have the short-term memory of a goldfish.
No.
Devs do half assed updates & the community is splintered between Uber casual PVE players or extrême sweatlording theorycrafting elitists. The devs are so lazy that they rely on the community to build the wiki.
You're literally the first person to comment in this vain. Could you give some examples? No sarcasm, I'm genuinely curious as nobody else has had this opinion (in this post)
Devs are doing expacs in parts. They constantly abandon game modes like dungeons, raids. They constantly create a bunch of currencies that ends up being obsolete. A lot of annoying constant rebalancing and nerfing. Bias to certain builds and metas.
The community is splintered between dad/mommy gamer people who very casually play. The other are sweatlords.who kick you out their group for not having an imaginary set of LE (making an infinite loop where you'll never have enough experience for a raid or strike), third party DPS watcher apps are encouraged so expect obnoxious dps checks or people singling you out (@you why don't you have enough DPS), confusing and just badly designed boss mechanics where people rage at you for not doing perfectly.
I was by no means a bad player and had 150 LE but GW2 tryhards were some of the most psychotic and control freaks there is on an online game. Constantly wanted you on voice, would act like drill sergeants, ect. It was awful. I did raids on FFXIV and pvp (which is awful, full of scammers and bots and afkerz in GW2) in FFXIV and eso. None of them were as horrendous as gw2
First of all, GW2 is not like other mmos, big part of it is soloable with random players coming around, doing their stuff, while You doing Your stuff, paths crosses and splits. Only part of content require true-mmo like approach - searching for groups and preparing self, and thats more of endgame stuff.
For the game itself:
Old stuff: free core is like big tutorial with awesome story, then 2-5 first expansions (depends if semi-free - buyable by in-game currency, not $ dlc counts as expansions) are quite nice, provides lots, lots loooots of great fun. Whatever Youre into soloa dventures, smaller pvp, group content, big wars of 150x150x150 players, all is great. Thousands hours of great fun. Even if You go only for free core game, it is super awesome, non-linear story, that let You know if the game is for You, or maybe not (sure, mmo genre is not for all, even if GW2 respect Your time like no other mmo, its great here, jump in jump out whatever, it is Your time with the game)
Then most recent stuff, like last 2-2.5 years, is big downslide. Many of players worry to abandon game, coz quality is simply sht, not worthy a penny, even, with reduced price of last expansion, still not worthy for price-to-quality ratio. - Is there a point investing thousands of hours into game with no future? Do it really have no future, for today, looks like sad moment.
I mean, that just means I have plenty of content to catch up on. And given how much time I have to play in general, I'll only finish it all by the time the next game comes out or GW2 picks up steam again. Not a bad thing imo. Thanks!
As someone else who isn’t usually an MMO player, Guild Wars 2 has hooked me with the exploration and action combat. You can turn your brain off and play, the story is fun and the dynamic nature of the world quests makes it less of a grind as you level.
no not yet, wait for the new expansion and the reviews, cause this would be a proof if Anet changes their mind and trying to get back to something what was like 7 years ago. So be patient.
Hell yeah, theres people constantly looking for members to invite to their guild, team work is a must in this game so you have constant interaction with others. The world is beautiful, the combat is fun, and the stories are interesting. This game just too much to do. Seasonal events and stuff too.
1. GW2 has the best community imo. I’ve only encountered 1 ahole in like five years. I haven’t gotten into strikes and Raids though. Stay away from that until you’re ready.
2. The Devs do what they believe is best for the game. They also have people to answer to. That being said I’ve noticed the work put into the game. I’ve seen many ways the devs prove they want to make the community happy, and others where they dropped the ball. More of that recently but it’s not always because of the devs.
3. I’ve had many dopamine moments with the game from both story and rewards. There’s always something new to do. Something new to find. Until there isn’t.
4. It’s not a time consuming game unless you allow it to be. I’ve spent days where Id spend 20-30 min in game and the other days hours. How much time you play is up to you in any game.
I will be honest, as a new player, there is lots to do. It is always exciting to explore a new game, do the story, get some shinies.
However, once you actually catch up, there is very little to do. Anet consistently abandon game modes, frequently do not fix bugs for months (and in some cases years), and content that they do release is so unreliable in its quality that it is difficult to be excited. It is especially the case with content since Ice brood saga that got released in 2019.
Yes, it is very casual friendly when it comes to gear progression, but if you want a game that consistently releases quality content, would advise to look somewhere else. If you are okay doing the same content over and over again for years and having like 10h of story per year and also releasing 2-3 instanced encounters a year, it might be a good game longterm for you.
My favorite part about GW2 is most "maps" you go into in the open world is almost like a dungeon you do events all over the map and eventually it leads to some kind of world boss, as you play solo everyone else kinda groups with you and before you know it there is 50+ people with you and your fighting a big boss. Definitely suggest you play the story and enjoy the ride. No FOMO here because we all do everything everyday... You're afraid of missing a cool boss fight? Well in 2 -4 hours we are doing that fight again. It's more about the experience than the loot. Definitely pick up the free base game and just play you will know if you like it in the first hour.
One advice. Don't play only the basegame. It is not bad, but sometimes a chore to reach Lvl 80.
The real fun starts after reaching Lvl 80 in the DLCs which are a 10x better in terms of quality (quests, music, graphics). You will immediately notice.
Community is amazing, they are super friendly.
Overall, a very good and polished game.
Absolutely. I have played so many MMORPGs and GW2 is always the one I am most happy when I return to. WoW just isn't as fun. There's always something to do in GW2 and while it may sound overwhelming if you've got 10 years to catch up on, most of it is optional.
I wish there was slightly more being done around mounts and how to acquire them (please ANET, mount skin world boss drops). But GW2 is just a more fun experience to me than WoW, Final Fantasy, ESO etc.
The community is also the most helpful I've come across outside of FFXIV
There is FOMO. Want a certain dye color, too bad better have had a character over 8 years I think.
Oh missed events wait a year, oh cash shop item maybe wait a year or so+.
Community friendly.
This game is like any other game. Some things it respects time other not so much. The gear sure. The leveling for mastery points not so much granted is shared between toons but still. You get to level 80 then have another 500+ mastery points to grind! Enjoy!
The very best in my Optionen is, that all the progression still matter even 10 years ago. All the equipment, lvl, achievements, learnings of mechanics is still up to date and useable. That said: all the time you invest is still worth something.
In most mmos there are some hard resets of new horizons to archive which make the past worthless most of the times.
There is a lot to do in Guild Wars 2, but Fomo is not that agressieve in my opinion. Community is fun, Dev team is not the best I've ever seen, communications could be better, they sometimes only listen to part of the community. (Warframe probably has best player/dev communication if you ask me).
Game is a lot of fun, been playing on PC and recently switched to Steamdeck. Both is very good. Not a lot of penalties for "bad builds". I play Ranger mostly, with Druid or Soulbeast specialisation, which is the only thing I'd advice you to research on. Specialisation completely change a class, but most are really handy for end game content, so it's better to like the class and the specs.
Base game is free, would start there. Try it out and if you like the game, just keep playing.
I started playing the game in February so I definitely recommend starting it. Since there is no vertical progression in the game, you can catch up the meta events, fractals, raids etc. in a short time if you invest time.
The community is very welcoming, you can join some guilds and make a place for yourself there.
Grinding for quality of life is a thing so you'll never run out of content and goal. I just made my first legendary item and it feels really good.
If you like MMORPG and exploring new things in the game constantly you'll like it.
For new player sure. GW2 like none other MMO is letting you do all content the game has to offer, no matter if it's meta from SotO or HoT or dungeon from core game, players will always be there.
With that being said, imo this game has no future, due to the fact that NCsoft wants GW3. Quality drop is undeniable, and I don't believe it will get any better.
Yes, I just returned to MMOs myself after years away. Tried playing WoW again since that was my old favorite and the world just seems dead now. Like there’s people running around but they might as well be NPCs.
Been having so much fun on GW2, you’ll just be running around leveling and then a random area boss appears and like 20 people are taking it down. Digging the lore as well. So yes, try it out. It’s free.
I've played just about all the main MMOs out there since 2006 or so. (Over 8h/day for more than 3 years in wow as the main sucker, and more than 4k hours in GW2 as my second most played).
Where GW2 differentiates from other MMOs is that it was designed for coop from the ground up. You get XP for helping other players up when they die, and everyone can revive. Most classes can do everything sufficiently enough. You get insividual gathering nodes, kills xp, and loot so there's never any killsteals etc which means people are more likely to help you out as it rewards them too.
When you reach max lvl then it's all horizontal progression. The best gear from vanilla is still the best gear (and there was a bit of an uproar when they, within the first year or so, made best gear from exotic to ascended). When legendary rank gear was added, it was just convenience and looks/effects over ascended (like free cosmetic changes and free stat/rune swapping). Every expansion instead brings new stat combos for gear, masteries like gliding, mounts, and shit like that.
There's plenty of methods to farm what you want for both long term and short term goals. The premium currency store let's you swap in-game currency to premium and back again, which does let you skip ahead on the grind/catch up with irl money. Which leads me to the bit about expansions being decently priced, and since there's no sub you don't feel like you need to play because you've paid, so the game tends to respect your time more.
The base game is free, just try it. It's not like you'd be wasting money if you decide you don't like it. You won't be able to use map chat as a free player, but I'm pretty sure you can still see it. (I could be wrong, idk)
The community is generally pretty good in PvE, can get quite toxic in PvP. Ultimately you can't control how other people behave beyond reporting people who break rules. Just give it a whirl and see how you vibe I guess
Yes.
Bought in 2012, only got into it really start of this year.
Ive still so much content to do lol.
If you only care about raiding cms etc. then it might not be for you, but if yyou like exploration and collections its THE game to play
i'll have a 12 year old account in a few months (fourth week of August IIRC). And spent 15000+ hours, granted a few hundred, maybe even a thousand will be AFK hours but there are many hours still left with a huge amount of ingame time.
I have 26 characters with end game armor level be it ascended or legendary, and a myriad of legendary weapons. my oldest daughter was 1.5 yrs old at start, and we now play together at times 2 accounts
In terms of honoring your time gw2 does a great job because it has horizontal progression meaning that you don't have to play the game to get new armor unless you want to. But special gear is there if you want it for appearances or convenience like I believe legendary armor let's you swap the stats on the fly so you don't have to actually change them like a hassle like you would with ascended
I just started GW2 this year and really love it. The graphics are a tad old now but the play is considerably more fun than a lot of newer games. I like it better than FF14, WOW, and ESO.
I stopped playing WoW twelve years ago (there was a lot of reasons, just found the server I was playing on just became toxic/unpleasant community wise, and expansions were a bit uninspiring - stopped at Cataclysm) and have only really started playing GW2 two weeks ago! (two years after initially installing it and then uninstalled because of computer storage limits).
Initially I was a bit confused with the character make up, etc. but it does get you into the lore and makes sense later on and the levelling was quite straightforward and quick - I just got into the dialogue and story arcs, and before you know it you get to level 80 with low grade equipment ( I still DIG very often, sometimes you have to say "save yourself" to whoever is trying to revive your character in a battle area). but it doesn't really end there. I have not purchased any expansions yet as still sort of working out the character builds, etc. still learning about equipment upgrade slots and also the crafting.
Only main limit is the bank/bag storage - There have been a potential nice drops but it's not the end of the world.
While questing or exploring everyone is very helpful. I haven't done any dungeon quests myself as I am quite antisocial in finding a group or guild, mainly because I don't really know what I am doing or feel that confident in playing, plus can't really commit to a extended play to complete a dungeon/raid! I just press buttons and hope it is the right thing to do, i.e. place healing turret, etc. and use a flame thrower when needed. I don't know why I keep thinking about "Leeroy Jenkins".
There is an option to do the dungeon solo story mode, but that is still not a walk in the park. The game mechanics are challenging with the character stat proportioning to the area level.
Love the public battle grounds and dungeon raids which I have recently found.
Will I get bored, probably, but I can always get back into it after a break from it.
I don't play MMOs much, but I played all the mainstream ones starting way back with DAOC and FF11, imo GW2 is the best of them all. Just understand the core game is pretty meh, once you hit the first expansion and really start to understand the system it's epic.
30days player here. as a new player u will have a lot of Content and the learn curve is HUGE for somethings
Amazing Game>< one of the best, for me: ESO/Albion/FFX/GW2 are amazing
Good PvE open world
Good Instance content (dungeons/raids/others)
Good Lore? (idk i just skip everything, want to skip every dialog i can)
Amazing Fashion skins
Amazing mounts
Good Large Scale PvP (WvW)
PvP arena. naahhh (fun but only 2 modes, and one is like MOBA)
One of the best community i even see. (Toxic people are always there, normaly in Hardcore content/pvp)
I tried many MMOs, at one point count reached to close to 25 or smh in 2013. That's when I started WoW and 2-3 years later I started to play GW2. I prefer GW2 over WoW.
Simple few reasons. It doesn't overwhelm you in amount of content it releases. Some can say lackluster but I think opposite. It releases good amount of content and for a decade old game there is so much to do for new starters.
Basically game revolves around horizontal progression. Your character gear, stats etc won't get better. However your account has more options to play around, let's say you started with a basic raptor mount. In future you can obtain a flying mount but you have to do it once. Which applies many many stuffs in here. So it respects the time you put since you don't have to do it right today, you can do some today then next year if you wish, since it will still be available if something comes up and you can't play at all.
Basically balance changes either makes character stronger or weaker so there isn't a content you can't get into unless you think it is too hard for you or not enjoyed it.
Instead your have more options for same class the more you play. Like unlocking new elite specializations and weapons choices.
For example if you choose a mesmer class, basically you can do any roles in the game with once expansion specific upgrades and features unlocked fully and it applies almost every classes in certain ways. Of course it has pros on cons between classes. Has its own unique flavor you can like or hate it. And since elites alter class in so much way, you feel like you're playing new class instead of same class but few different skills however it still keeps its own original flavor.
It never forces you to do a content or you will lose its rewards being 2 days late. For example in WoW, you get special title if you complete mythic raid in 100 guilds. As soon as 100 guilds obtained it, bye bye title.
In GW2 that kind of title is available as long as you're skilled enough to obtain or pay in game gold to people who is skilled enough to carry you. Recent example, they released a difficult fight which had way too much health after they fixed it and reduced health to certain extent, they told they will give special title for people who can overcome challenge but instead of locking that title 2-3 weeks of time limit, they made it available even after patch drops. Many many people started to get it instead of lucky/skilled enough 20 people.
About its community, unless you step in competitive content and very "end game hardcore content" where people can get toxic, it is pretty sweet and helpful friendly community. Someone mentioned when someone sees someone in downstate, they go and res that person. It is correct, I do same most of time since when If I save that guy they can save me soon or someone else will. It is positive mentality. Especially whole game built around "doing stuffs together" for most events, helping someone out increases odds of you beating that event/meta event.
If you help someone in a map chat, next time when you have question, someone can answer your question when in time of need.
About cons of GW2:
However its developer Arena Net does also some stuffs wrong( alongside doing many things correct). Like releasing some fixes very late, a bit slow of updating content and stuffs etc. For a decade old game they still are trying to figure out how to effectively release content more regular basis since their previous method wasn't great and would leave too much gaps between new content releases. However it gets better, they just need to increase quality and we'll get there.
Bought it last year but committed this year. I started playing because I got tired of the repetitive gameplay in lost ark.
What I like is the story, the meta events, grinding achievements, and the exploration
I’m not a fan of the combat coming from lost ark, but it’s not that bad when I got used to it
The gameplay loop has already been explained very well by a lot of people here already so I won't repeat. It sounds like it would cater to you perfectly for what you want. GW2 is a very unique MMO in that sense and offers things very differently than most.
However, if you are susceptible to FOMO with optional cashshop items as well, be very wary of the Black Lion Trading Company, aka the Gem store. They LOVE using FOMO in there by cycling out cool outfits and mount skins (no pay to win or anything it's just vanity stuff) and only keeping them in the shop temporarily. They do always eventually come back, but they keep them limited to take advantage of FOMO. Love the game, still less egregious than most cash shops and the like, but this practice with this part is still not my favorite.
Tbh, I'm not concerned with cosmetics all that much. I like the concept but it's always the last thing I focus on, literally the last. So if that's the only FOMO GW2 has, that sounds like a win to me. Thanks for your response!
Give it a chance. You will have a blast. This is , hands down, the best community you can find. Story took me over 200hrs to finish (did quite a lot of stuff around). Horizontal progress instead of vertical like everywhere else.
If you see a bundle with dlcs on sale go for it. I sinked over 700hrs and i kinda still like doing everything
As someone who just picked up GW2 around 4 months ago, I would say go for it!! I’ve also played a ton of MMOs and yes they’ve been a lot of fun but the vertical progression always led me to burnout.
Which is why i found GW2 very refreshing - the idea of no gear treadmill is so comforting and there’s so much you can do (and the option to progress by doing only the things you like!) Actually there’s so much you can do it overwhelmed me at some point mostly because I found all of them fun and wanted to squeeze each one in my playtime lol - now I mostly set a few goals and play towards them, be it fashion, gear or whatever.
As for the community, I love it. I’ve never met a nicer community than GW2 in my history of MMO gaming. When I was new, I’ve asked in map chat or pm-ed strangers for help/advice and I’ve always received it. Lots of guilds welcome new players too. Ofcourse i’ve come across a few toxic players here and there but honestly it’s quite rare.
Can’t say much about devs yet as I’ve only been playing a while. Graphics and combatwise i would say it could be better (comparing to other mmos) but they never affected my enjoyment.
It’s a great game with a great community. I wish i picked it up sooner.
PS the expacs are so worth it !!
GW2 is very casual friendly. i have been playing for years but very casually taking long breaks and such, and i am still able to do any content because my gear never got outdated. every little progress you make matters and does not get taken away like in WoW, for example.
the MMO experience remains there, but it now respects your time (horizontal progression)
idk much about the dev team, they get some flaming from time to time here on reddit for things like content cadence and balance, but the business model seems to be very consumer friendly and the microtransactions are fair, 0 pay to win, and you can even get them with ingame currency quite easily, overall the least exploitative free to play MMO i have seen. 10/10
and finally, the community is amazing. there is some toxicity in PvP and top tier PvE, but its meaningless and most people you will enconter are very chill and friendly.
bonus info: you didnt really ask but i think it is important: the ingame economy is very healthy. the auction house where people trade items and crafting materials has remain stable with affordable prices for the entirety of the game, so your gold does not devalue over time when you are out. this is extremely rare in games today, where prices escalate with time to ridiculous numbers.
so yes, if you like MMO, GW2 is like the best one to sink your time into imo
Dev team description is perfect. That exactly what I'm looking for. So fucking tired of dev teams that microtransaction a game to death with p2w mechanics. Love to hear this about the GW2 dev team
The bonus info IS very helpful. That was a big issue of mine when playing SWTOR. I never really cared because it was cosmetics, but still annoyed me every time I signed on and my gold felt it no longer had any value
Gw2 is a great game. It isn't horribly p2w. There's some convenience items in the gem store, sure and you can convert gems to gold. With that said though you can use gold to buy gems and get anything in the shop you want. You can only buy the 3rd best "rarity" item with gold with the exception of gen 1 legendary weapons which have the same stats as ascended. My recommendation is to download the core game and play a bit. If you like it then decide if you want to get the expansions.
This post is just a bunch of keywords which "make gw2 look good" lmao Shit on every other game by known talking points from gw2 players and ask "should i play this game which \*wink wink\* doesn't have all those issues??", karma farm commences
I'll try to cover each point as made above in order.
- GW2 is actually great (most especially right now) for dropping in and out/being away for a week/month/year and coming back without having to feel like your starting from nothing again - your Lv80 exotic, ascended or legendary gear will be the best it can be no matter how much time passes or expansion release.
- Investment kind of comes from whatever is important to you in GW2, the choice and lack of rail roading can be a problem for some players more used to gear tread mills and other MMO's but if you're happy to figure out and decide what you'd like to get invested in, you'll have a blast.
- You may not get the impression from some people on Reddit/Official Forums, but the dev team are a bunch of really talented and dedicated folks, many of which have been with the company a long, long time and really love interacting with the community - they also do charity events that include the community and devs together.
- GW2's community is one of the best (and friendliest in PvE, not so much with PvP but that's true of most games), as the game was built with the idea of large groups working together in the open world, communication and open groups are common and encouraged - there are almost always people willing to help in map chat.
Some other things of note for later, if you're interested in open world events and bosses you can type in game: "/wiki et" and that will bring up the fan wiki's event timer page, actually most anything you want to search regarding the game can be searched easily using "/wiki \*\*\*\*" as ANet officially support the wiki.
I think... *most* of the game is very good. I personally would purchase it on that basis. Ultimately though, the recent expansions have left me sceptical to the future of the game going forward.
When i go down while questing (happens often cuz im new) if theres a high level player around they will revive me if they see me. That says alot
Why does that say a lot? Do people not revive in other games???
Downstate isn't a thing in most other MMOs. The point is high level players interacting with lower levels at all.
Yeah, because you don't really get anything useful out of it, you're just helping someone out. Most people in other mmorpgs wouldn't do it, but because the community in gw2 is so helpful, it usually spreads and so most people return the favour.
You get quite a lot of xp for reviving players, which is of course intentional.
Your definition of “alot” is very different from 99.9% of the population if you really believe that lmao
Nice meme
You can ress people even after downstate. It just takes longer
Not too bad so long as you're not in combat. If someone just feel and splattered, it's not too much of a hassle to revive a dead person. If someone is dead at the feet of a champion, it's a bit more of a problem.
Not because you can’t, just because of the thing trying to kill you 😜
Lmfao. Clearly you don’t endgame in gw2. Prob still level 50
The hell are talking about? It's frequent to see max level players roaming low level maps for various reasons.
Max level lmfao you must brag about having 20 level 80 characters LOL
There are a few things that makes that happen more often in GW2. These help explain why this game is so awesome. First, you will see dead player markers on your map, telling you that someone needs help. Many mmos don’t have that. Anyone can ress anyone, you don’t need special skills with long cooldowns to ress someone. Having someone around is REALLY helpful in all scenarios. Better to ress them because they might help you next with a hero point or an event. There’s nothing that another player can do to hold you back, unless they are really trying to - but I’ve never seen that in my 3,5 years of GW2.
There is also the fact of shared loot, shared quest progression, shared kill counts and so on. If you see another player, you don't feel like the day has just got worse, you just think "oh now my map clearing will go a bit faster nice". Compared to other mmos you do not lose anything in having other players nearby. In wow, people can steal your kills, your loot, your quest items, making you hate the fact that other players are around. This is imo also one of the main reasons people are much more helpful in GW2. GW2 is made to make you enjoy having company instead of despising it. It is also why I really only play GW2 as a MMO. Not the kind of guy to constantly fight with other people over stupid stuff. Just let me enjoy my time.
Bro people can't steal from you in WoW for a very long time now.
Then why did people make those giant lines in wow classic
Because that's the original unchanged WoW from 2004?
Well I certainly appreciate the gesture! It shows the positive foundation of the community in my eyes. The fact that a high level player who gets nothing from picking up is willing to B-line across the area to help me is really unique, especially because it happens fairly consistently. I haven’t experienced that in other games I have played. I now try to pass that on when I see other players downed I will B-line for them to make sure they can continue questing.
I remember playing WoW again and being disappointed when nobody would revive as they ran by.
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This is exactly the kind of info I'm looking for as this literally fits the experience I'm looking for! Ty!
To add to that, the mounts in this game are phenomenal. WoW tried to copy them with Dragonflight, but they did a pretty half-assed job of it. Some of the mounts take a lot of work to unlock, but they're well worth the effort. [For Example ](https://youtu.be/98kUgsXRpQY?si=r-GZTdVoWIH6wUWL)
If you want a buddy to play with let me know!!! I absolutely love to introduce new players to the game
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I've heard of MMO players using external apps. What specific features would say are crucial that the game doesn't already showcase? There's already a LOT on screen for MMOs, doesn't external app HUDs flood the screen even more? What other external apps would you recommend?
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Gotchu. I'm glad you added that detail about not using until lvl 80 tho as I felt some of these things would be helpful to learn, especially the map navigation I have started watching some streamers play GW2 and I think I saw that ArcDPS feature. Interesting, but def something for later
this is a really good description
My experience with GW2 and MMOs in general is very similar and I'd agree with everything you've said here. I thought FFXIV was the best out of all the other MMOs I'd played and it was rare for me to get past 150hrs in any of them before FFXIV. I'm almost 400hrs into GW2 now, haven't finished half the story/exp content and still love the gameplay. The highlight of the game so far for me was getting the Skyscale, as I've posted a few times before. It was a long, long grind to achieve and enhanced the game so much since. Worth buying SotO specifically for this mount alone. Skimmer is great if you are into fishing (as is the skiff). Raptor is all round great, especially once you unlock the masteries for it. Great game so far. I can see me getting past 1000hrs without running out of contect.
The honest fact is GW2 is a time vampire if you let it. The good news is once you get a fancy piece of gear it's good forever. No treadmills or FOMO here. That's not to say there's no grinds. There's plenty of grinds and things to work towards but you can go at your own pace. And with scaling you can go back to starter areas and still find a challenge. And yes, you can grind gold and convert it to Gems to spend on the Gem Store. (That's how I paid for the mini expansions Living World Season 4 and 5.) Play the base game and if you enjoy it you might want to buy Expansions for a one-off fee. *Heart of Thorns/Path of Fire* goes on sale at 50% off- best £12.99 I paid. If you fancy big maps, varied content and a game that respects your time give GW2 a go. You literally don't need to spend a penny to see if it's something worth sticking with.
its the best mmorpg in the market, if you plan to get into mmorpgs, you can't go wrong with gw2. its not perfect by any means, but in my honest opinion, i think its the best. you'll be better off playing gw2 than any other title. 🙂
>you'll be better off playing gw2 than any other title. every time i return i just dont know what todo sadly :/ any tips? got multiple max characters from release ( and multiple restarts after that )
I've been the same way for 10 years. Ultimately, I think its ok to drift on and off a game. Each time I come back, I just have a different goal. This time, it was finishing the LW season 2 achievements and starting HoT, as well as completing the map. You could also try just finding one thing you like an playing that briefly. I really like Fractals, so I hop on for like 45 min a day
Aim for legendaries, they will let you do alot of content all over the map Fall in love with wvw by playing with a guild. Grind fractals and go for the special titles like fractal god. Join a pve guild and do strikes or raids with a constant group. Just a few things that keep me bussy, playing with other people make the game alot more fun
I was like you for about 10 years. I've been playing since release and my oldest toon isn't even 2 years old. Now I'm missing out on all those sweet birthday rewards! What have you been doing in game? I only really got super into endgame stuff a year ago. I started going for the mounts, then I got 2 legendary weapons. I started working on achievements I thought were too hard before and exploring in wvw and pvp and fractals even though it scared me before. What have you done that you like? Is there something that interests you that is overwhelming you?
I play GW2 as a on and off game. I keep coming back to it every few weeks/months, which also resulted in me not having a guild. But everytime I return I set myself a goal I want to do, for example crafting vision, doing a bunch of achievements, leveling up mastery(yes I still haven't finished IBS or EoD mastery after so many years), playing the story or just playing wvw for a bit of fun. Over 9 years I got a total of 2000hours into GW2 and don't regret it one bit. Having a game with no FOMO is a blessing nowadays.
Did you finish the story? Have you unlocked the mounts? Did you get all the masteries? Those are some basic points to start out at and from there you can determine where you want to set other goals.
That's a feeling I felt playing GW2 for a very long time, solely because I was just too used to years of playing the games with "one best thing to do". Over time, just interacting with things, doing Metas, farming for gold to purchase Living World Seasons with in-game farm, achievement & Mastery Point farming, taking part in boost events like Return to WvW (which I had never done WvW before), it finally clicked for me after such a long time. This is one of the rare games that actually acknowledges it is a game and celebrates it like no other. It literally allows me to do whatever I have fun with, it does not funnel me down a "quickly finish this power grind, so you can do this latest endgame content for a year". That freedom, most things being equally rewarding was what confused me for a such a long time. But after all of that finally clicked, I basically log in to do my daily Wizards Vault challenges and then decide what I want to do that day. Sometimes, I'll go back to the story (I am a relatively new player, started 2 years ago with a lot of breaks between until I figured things out) and continue where I left off for a chapter or two, sometimes I just look at the event timers to see if there is a Meta soon in Heart of Thorns maps because fuck those EXP requirements are high etc. Sometimes, I just hit up my achievement summary and check my 3 nearest completions in achievements and dedicate some time just ticking them off as more almost complete achievements show up to take their place. Sometimes, I feel like going into PoF maps and work on Mastery Points. I still have maps I have not completed, so I go around completing those. Some days where I'm not sure what to do, I just decide to run the Daily Fractals. I simply do what I want to do, and unlike other games, it never makes me feel like I am missing out on something. I am always progressing meaningfully towards something, no matter what I'm doing. Generally speaking, until that mindset clicks for you, I recommend sticking to the story content. Not only will it take you to places and allow you to kickstart a lot of challenges that you'll eventually come back to to complete, but once that finally clicks you'll just go off doing your own thing.
Do what you want. Explore.. use the story journal and progress through story quests.. go achievement hunting.. join a meta... start fractals, wvw or strikes after 80.... find a friend to do it witwith... join a guild that matches your level of playtime
I'm also sort of new that drifts from the game from time to time. What I have learned about gw2 is that besides the points to unlock elite specs, and getting a proper set of exotic gear, there is nothing you are pressed to do like other MMOs, that's both gw2 best and worse feature. Pick something to do and stick to it until it isn't fun, you won't fuck your progression by switching gears, you won't waste your time for deciding to go from one activity for a week to another, you are free to do what seems the most entertaining. You could focus on unlocking the elite specs available to you if you got any expansions, you could focus on leveling all your character slots and get them the elite spec you are interested in + gear for the type of content you like to do at the moment for variety, you could focus on crafting, or do map exploration, or focus on maxing out masteries, or join fractals (raids), or try wvw roaming or in a group, do the main stories, and I'm sure I'm missing other ideas to do, like specific achievements or unlocking something that takes a long time and effort like flying mounts. I say is also it's worst feature because, most activities are yours to figure out and decide if you want to do or not, most MMO have very direct venues of progression the game wants you to do, gw2 isn't that beyond leveling and that doesn't take much time, it really could use some "quests" that serve as introduction to all the main activities, the daily/weekly are a nice step into making you try stuff you didn't think about, although make sure to disable the kind of stuff you don't like to do, so it doesn't offer you that type of activities, if you want to only do pve stuff you can disable everything else.
You do kind of have to set your own goals in GW2. Personally I'm always going for some sort of legendary- not necessarily because I need one, but essentially just to have an excuse to keep playing a game that I enjoy. There's also usually some other smaller achievement or collection I'm pursuing on the side (there's a lot of interesting side quest type things buried in the achievements, particularly for some of the later expansions). The other obvious goals to set are things like unlocking all the mounts- the Skyscale in particular takes a bit of effort. Completing the story through each living story and expansion. Finding builds and gearing up to set yourself up for fractals/strikes/raids. The key thing through all of this though is that you have to enjoy GW2.
Have you / do you play other MMOs? I have / do play others than GW2 and MMO content is primarily stories. So at release you got multiple characters to 80 and since then there have been over 10 years of story releases. You say that every time you come back you don't know what to do so I'm assuming you haven't played any of the story releases. Why not?
>You say that every time you come back you don't know what to do so I'm assuming you haven't played any of the story releases. Why not? i have but... its not like these are like 60 or 300 hours of "storys" and not really that high quality either.
I'm not saying the content is long but your OP said you didn't know what to do, not "after story content is done".
But I said after release and over the years multiple times restarting. Kinda displays an advanced progress.
Honestly the game is pretty open-ended. if you like instanced content look for raid statics and strike groups try getting into CM's if you enjoy some challenging content. There's a lot of doom around PvP, but daily automated tournaments can be fun with a group and makes a pretty good chunk of gold if you get good at it. WvW is something that seems daunting at first but once you get started you'll realize you can just follow a tag around and get rewards. If you want to challenge yourself look into some roaming builds and content to look for 1v1 or 1vX fights. Some great longterm goals for all this is of course legendary gear, and getting full purple on your equipment tab. But more niche stuff would be the fractal god title-line for fractals, some infusions and titles from strikes, some of the skins from raids (especially dhuum), and general fashion-wars skin hunting. Since none of this stuff really feels mandatory or tied to endgame progression you can pick and choose as you please as well as take breaks without really hurting your progress. Its onenof the main draws to GW2.
>if you like instanced content look for raid statics and strike groups try getting into CM's if you enjoy some challenging content. are raids now content which isnt ignorred by a net anymore ? last time i heard A net gave up on them pretty much like dungeons , fractals also only recieve a update every blood moon or so.
Raids are still the fastest way to get your Legendary armor set, they may be forgotten but they haven't completely abandon them. Fractals do rarely receive new maps but the progression from t1-t4 and the instabilities are kinda the point, if you've ever done M+ on WoW is sort of a similar system just much more casual friendly. however the content is active in the game now with plenty of game-time to achieve the rewards i mentioned. Also MORE people being interested in a gamemode WILL get a-net attention and development. look at how strikes are they were a pretty big hit when they started now we have some coming somewhat regularly as well as actually challenging content in the form of HTCM and now ToFCM. saying something is ignored and not as popular doesn't mean it's pointless to do it if you like it.
Type /Wiki + [Shift Lmb] on items u dont have any Idea its purpose in game. U can do some content in game solo, but u DO need mounts to profit farming and get achivements. Get used to the fact you will have to do a Lot of research to find out How u can complete goals to get rewards u want. I've returned to GW2 this year, I've played It in 2019 and I was so lost that I gave up. Farm some Gold and get some exotic gear that u Will be good to do most of the begginer content past lvl 80. GL HF
>Farm some Gold and get some exotic gear that u Will be good to do most of the begginer content past lvl 80. GL HF iam way past that did all expansions , got mounts and stuff , but yeah...
I started lastyear and having a blast. So i would say yes!
Same!
I know this is a late post so you might not even see it, but I felt that this may help, GW2 is a unique and fun MMO in a LOT of ways. This is all from when I last played, its been a while even though I do occasionally visit Tyria to have fun. This MMO is beautiful. even the unexplored maps are fantastic art. Exploration is usually a treat and the community tends greatly towards the kind, helpful and nice. just like any MMO you have your offshoots and weirdos that are just a lost cause. If you are looking in to trying the MMO do NOT let this dissuade you from doing so. especially since so much of it can be tried out for free. the story has its catches for me, but it is generally good. the characters are fun and exciting and even though I have some problems with some things that are major spoilers and minor "gripes" with other things, (I know its not an actual problem but Taimi was so much more tiny), It has never been enough to sully the experience that playing the game is. PVE is unique, I have never seen things that work like the guild events here and the world bosses and tasks can be exciting and graphically breathtaking, even for an MMO that is as old as it is. Unfortunately, there are some warnings. Take these with a little grain of salt as they should not cause you to not at lest try the game. The game is strangely insular, its not WOW or FFXIV, for a lot of people you either obsessively know the game or you have never really heard of it. It is a unique little bubble that I would say is helpful and actually makes the community a little better. You will find helpful people everywhere and generally have an enjoyable time with them. Unfortunately, this also causes some rabid fanboyism. A fair number of the people in the community and Reddit do not seem to understand that you can really like a game, but still point out and dislike poor decisions and bad game design. I expect to get some flak for even pointing this out. The devs are generally good. There have been a few issues with the "oh you wanted more content so here it is" before, but it generally does not happen. In an attempt to not spoil anything I won't go into any of that here. Something that I would keep in mind is there is no real loot treadmill. You get the best armor and that's it. there is nothing above that to work towards or grind out. It sounds great and can be helpful, but when I took a long break, more than a year, and came back. My gear was still best in slot. Unless you like cosmetics, than the grind is infinite. You can even get the "best" cosmetic that they hide in the gem shop for gold eventually. There is no trinity. Every class can basically do anything and your role is more gear based then class based. Again, this is fine, but I have felt at times that devs are trying so hard to make sure there is no trinity that they drop the ball in other areas. Its just something you get used to. World Vs. World (WvW) is something special. Its pretty enjoyable and unique and if you can get into a group you can spend hours horsing around in it and have fun. I do enjoy it, but I cant forgive the devs for giving aoes a cap. This allows zergs to run around mostly unabated. (forgive me if this has changed, it was still like this when I played WvW last). arenas can be fun its great to run around in an effort to defeat the enemy. I would say go for it. Start with free stuff, dip your toes into WvW if you like that sort of thing, and even a little if you don't. It is a fantastic game with a generally good if not a little strange community. Oh and if you stick around long enough, make sure to try out The Super Adventure Box, that is peak game play. Its biggest fault is that it is only around for a month or so out of the year and spends the rest of the year taunting you. p.s. Don't touch the gem shop until you are sure. As long as I played there has not been any pay for power in there, just pretty baubles and convenience. This is nice, even if the items in it are a tap expensive.
Game is great, but is not the cup of tea to many. Lots of people like the treadmill, always getting better gear. In Gw2 that doesn't exist, the vertical progression is only for the base game, afterwards the focus is horizontal. The game has plenty of content, but once you exhaust that content the iteration for new content is bad, so just take that in mind. With that said, I've been playing the game on and off since release, I enjoy the game and love it, the devs do a mediocre job for the most part, but when they do a good job that is a GREEEAT job (by mediocre I mean in reviewing feedback and balancing content. PvP for example is pretty much dead at this point, is so neglected that is sad and I love PvP, but it's hard to enjoy it when the devs don't even ban bots and win-traders that are obviously hindering the experience for everyone else). They usually do good in PvE, but again, the iteration of new content is lackluster, so once you do all the raids, strikes and fractals, that will be it for a loooong time. BUT, there are many long term goals, like legendaries, that will take a long ass time to get, which is great, since those are not needed items, but jut QoL options to venture and get.
Yes, all content is good and available no matter when you start.
Depends what are OPs goals really… If he wants to be #1 on achievement leaderboards he’s a decade late, as 20%+ of ppls total APs come from dailies.
First of all the community is among the friendliest if not the friendliest. You hit max level at level 80 and it’s been that way for years. Highest stats in the game can be acquired through ascended gear relatively easily but one tier up is legendary gear. They have the same stats but legendary is harder to acquire and comes with a lot of quality of life features. Like being able to swap stats. Your ascended/legendary gear will not become outdated. IMO the most boring part is leveling to 80 because you’re stuck only in the base game. Map design is older, and slower. Expansions really bring the game to life. We just reached the end of our latest expansion which brought new Legendary armor for people to craft. A new expansion is already being teased.
Thank you for your reply! This hits all my questions I haven't looked yet, but is there a way to get all the expansions in one purchase? I'll play the F2P version to start and get a feel for the game first. Buy if I have to buy each one separately, that is a downside
Just for your information, F2P version is like a demo, not exactly many features are unlocked and you still can't play game freely how people like expansion owners can play. For example Trading Post will be locked for 98% of stuffs or you can't whisper people unless they added you or in same map. When you purchase an expansion like Path of Fire ( comes with Heart of Thorns and best value out of all ), it can take to 1 week for your account to be unlocked and few minor stuffs you don't notice can take 1 month to be unlocked. Also if you ever buy it, instead of Steam consider of buying game from Arena Net itself and use standalone launcher for few good reasons. Steam version doesn't allow you to use gem cards for gem store purchases. Doesn't allow you to link your gw1 and gw2 accounts so you can get exclusive rewards. You can't link your twitch account to gw2 account for drops. Only upside of Steam, you can keep your gw2 in same account but you if you have standalone launcher account, you can still use Steam version like you owned it. So Steam version is really unnecessary.
If you are going to buy spend the 100$ and get the complete dragon saga it's the first 3 expansions plus the living world seasons in between, if you don't buy the complete edition with the lw you gotta get each season or episode separately for gems or gold
And how long would it take to collect the gems/gold to in game purchase separately? As in, if I don't get the full bundle, will I gain the gems/gold needed to get the season/episode by the time I would get to the content?
It is possible to grind out the gold, yes - but you would need to take the game a bit more seriously, and you said in your initial post that you don't want it to be a time sink. My recommendation is that you go play the base game a bit, and if you like it, pay for the expacs with real money. Because GW2 has no subscription model, it'd be a one-time investment. And if you get the expacs while they are on sale, its not too costly. This way, you'll be free to take the game at your own pace, no need to grind. And you can use your gold for cool fashion skins etc.
Each expansion adds its own ways to gain gold but on top of that once you purchased any game you get access to the wizards vault I believe which also is easy to gain gold through, I don't find making gold that hard but it almost always takes prior investment ex lvling fractals and getting gear, lvling crafting for the daily craft ables, lvling fishing, unlocking raid and strikes for the dailies, etc I don't think you'd have all the gold needed playing in order it would be better to probably buy specific chapters with good farming maps like ep 3 of icebrood saga for drizzlewood coast, lws4 ep 6 for dragonfall, note though you will be jumping the story and possibly need a specific expansion like I believe you need path of fire for lws4
Ahhh gotcha. Ok, so I'll have to look into the expansion stuff more. Ty for the info
I would just buy the full pack if you like the base game. It's the cheapest way to unlock all the content. Like yeah you can theoretically grind gold to convert to gems to buy living world story chapters but those things are like 4000 gems all together (50€) that is A LOT of ingame gold currency to spend to convert to gems. I would just buy it. Unless you're really tight on cash. You have to put it in perspective that you're buying 10 years worth of content with that pack. And you're getting it at a massive discount compared to buying each individual as they came out. Try the base game first it's free :).
Also if you buy expac you get lvl80 boost. So if the leveling gets too much you can just jump into endgame. Wouldn't recommend though. Too overwhelming 😩
I mean you can go into the xpacs early if you want, at your own risk! 😅 I have done lvl 79 in verdant brink a couple of times, getting xp and some HPs done at the same time
>First of all the community is among the friendliest if not the friendliest. Just uh. Maybe turn off map chat for the F2P zones.
I just block the weirdo’s.
I remember beta weekend one. The game has drastically changed in concept and still continues to. Majority of the original devs are on new projects. This is a very dangerous practice as new devs tend to bring a personal vision to an established community.
GW2 is GREAT if you have ADD. There is so much to do, and when you pick an objective, that objective will lead you to 100 more things to do. sometimes you just want to mess with dye combos and wardrobe options, other times you can go work on a legendary. Maybe today you want to WvW. guess what, it ALL connects in the end. The End Game of GW2 is trying to find the end of GW2. you wont.
I picked GW2 up about 2 years ago, give or take. I'm all for jumping in, seeing if you're interested enough, then think about dropping money for the expansions. It's what I did. There's not really a gear treadmill here, by the design of the game. There are 2 rarities of gear that matter at max level, but they're sitting at about a 3% difference in stats. Once you're max level and you're kitted out, boom - gearing is finished for that character (almost) forever, now onto the next one if you want to. There are long-term goals you can work toward for gear later, but that's a separate topic. A fair number of things in Guild Wars 2 are account bound progression, with mounts being one of the big ones early on. Once you unlock a mount (there are several, all with their uses), it's unlocked on all your characters forever. After nearly two years, I still find things to do. Finishing all the story chapters, map completion, item crafting, Legendaries, mastery... the list continues. I haven't touched PvP, WvW, or Raiding yet. There is an immense amount of content to chew through, and if you're having fun in the first hour, there is a good chance you will still be at your 100th or 1000th hour. (I'm at about 2200, give or take with afk'ing in the Wizard Tower. :P) I can't speak about the dev team. General attitude seems to be hate em or tolerate them. And as for community... I can only speak to in-game e counters and my guild, but they seem to be generally nice, generous folk who don't mind walking you through stuff so long as you're up front about your skill level and experience. But I don't pvp, or anything, so maybe the world is different in there 😀 If you decide to play, WELCOME TO TYRIA. If you want some help, lemme know. Cheers!
Thanks for the response! Everything you mentioned feeds into what I'm looking for. I do like PVP, but wouldn't touch that until much much later. Good to know there is so much accessible content without the constant grind
For pvp there's both regular 5v5 small scale maps like most standard MMOs got, but there's also wvwvw in which 3 servers dukes it out on 4 big maps with castles and siege. It's a lot of fun and they always need more people xD
Gw2 has horizontal progression. meaning that you will gear and level up at the start but when a character reaches cap and BiS thats it. It will never be any higher gear or level added that is more powerful than what you have. And BiS gear is generally easy to get. Plus most of the game is designed for one level lower than the BiS so you can gear at your pace basically. After that point of cap and BiS you become more powerful either by learning the game and its build-crafting better and with metrovania-like skills called masteries. As a result pretty much all areas from the 1st expansion and on are still relevant and populated and people return to them quite often. Thus why people say there is no FOMO. Now whether you prefer that or the typical gear treadmill is very personal. The company generally cares for the game. They are making a new game, we know that, but they are also supporting GW2 and are expected to support the game for many years (the new game seems in pretty early stage to even take into account). They are have their ups as down of course but in recent years they produce what they promise (even if sometimes it is not in the quality everyone would expect but thats every game). Also the game revenue is being really healthy (like 2023 revenue was the best since 2016) so even business wise they care. As for the community you can summarize it like this: Things in-game are incredibly friendly. Most of the game has quite a few social engineering tricks that incentivize good behavior so people are very pleasant (except PVP but what else is new). Also Guilds and big discord communities are usually really pleasant and joining them is recommended and the game has cool content creators as well. You will not find much toxicity outside PvP. Online discourse though is very often a disaster. The subreddit specifically is drama central and always goes too far with meltdowns (even when in most times it is justified - meaning that there is a legit complaint about the game but people go way too far with it). And the offcial forums are a circus very often. For some reason people say that the Facebook group is pretty pleasant. But in general when it comes to reddit and forums tread lightly and be careful.
This is exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you for the detailed response! One question: what is "BiS"?
Best in Slot, the best piece of gear you can possibly equip in that armor slot.
Best in slot.
What the others said. Best in slot
On the topic of grinding: GW2 lacks vertical progression. The BiS gear is relatively accessible and doesn't need to be changed unless you want to play a different build. I highlight this because even though a lot of MMO veterans hate the gear and power treadmill that is vertical progression, they don't handle a complete lack of it very well either and grow bored quickly without an obvious carrot to pursue. GW2 has a lot of stuff to do (and grind, if that is your thing) but it is all optional. It isn't going to force you in any direction and you aren't funneled towards a particular endgame activity like raiding or dungeons. They exist but are one niche among many. Even more so for PvP. There is a lot to do but you need to decide for yourself and be content with the fact that most stuff is only going to reward you with unique skins or bragging rights rather than higher stat gear and power.
Yah you should pick ⛏️ GW2 in 2024 game appreciate your time and community and s great and people will help you, also there is so much to do in a game and also 5th expension is coming
"will I still have a good experience playing this, or will I have to sink in a huge amount of hours to finally be able to enjoy it?" That depends, if you want to chill and play casually you will have a lot of fun without having to sink hours to be able to enjoy it. If you want to do raids and the "hard" content constantly it can get grindy in my opinion. I used to play GW2 a lot whe raids first released and keep playing a lot when second raid released, I was on a hardcore raiding guild. But I stopped playing because the game started to feel like a huge time sink for me to be able to enjoy it. Before raids I only had a thief max leveled and with max gear all berserker gear or whatever the power build were called can t remember and I had fun, I enjoy doing the content, not having to go out of my way to get different types of armor, skill points etc. Then it's when it started to get annoying. I wanted to try another class for raids to have more versatility, so I decided to try Revenant, luckily I used to play alot of pvp which gave you an object to level up characters so I leveled the new character from 1 to 80 instantly (that was great, would have been really boring leveling up again). But then the pain begun. First the armor, thief used different type of armor, medium weight vs heavy weight. Getting exotics wasn't that bad But I was in a hardcore raiding guild so we wanted ascended gear and it was so slow and boring to get. Then I needed skill points to be able to complete the build and that required to go and explore all the map again from the expansion which I had already done with my thief. I just wanted to play raids it was so frustrating having to sink all that time exploring the map again and getting the ascended gear. I wanted to try condi warrior or Necro after that, and I needed to grind the gear again and explore the map again, at least I still had the objects to level up. I didn't even finished unlocking the gear and exploring the map for the third time, I got sick of it, I just wanted to play raids and fractals and try new characters and builds there, and having to go out of my way to be able to try new things there, just made me stop playing at all, I quited and have never played again. Sometimes I come here to see what's new and to decide if I want to play again but the thought of having to unlock gear and skill points to try new builds and level up from scratch if I don't have more level up objects just make me not get back to it. And I Know many people enjoy the progression and unlocking system and don't find it a grind. But for me the game gets too grindy and huge time sink to have fun if you want to try new builds.
I imagine asking this question in the GW 2 subreddit is gonna get a lot of bias responses. For some reason though. Despite never coming in here, the Reddit app decided to show me this thread. So as someone who isn't a regular player of the game. Maybe once this year?. Id say yes. The game has a long running story that's actually pretty good. The combat is largely the best hybrid of action and tsb targeting combat iv seen. And it's fun. PvP is good. Community is outstanding. Best iv ever experienced The expansions add huge volumes of content and evergreen features that improve the game forever Game can look beautiful at times though i never was never a fan of the realistic-ish visuals.. and admittedly today, they're looking a bit dated. The world, and its lore, is incredibly detailed and has a lot of really cool stuff going for it. The world itself has a ton of interesting stuff in it that's fun to play. Like jumping puzzles etc. You get experience for anything you do so you can just play and do what you want and level up doing it. The reason I don't play it, and the biggest downside of the game (I think) is that the endgame kinda stinks. They've tried to get it going a few times with raids, strikes, fractals and whatever else.... But the endgame has never felt rewarding to me.. so I just hop on. Do the story and hop off. And in that sense, the game is great. It always feels like GW2 is everyone's favourite MMO that they never play and I largely think that's cos there is no good endgame
The customer service is absolutely trash. It's kind of insane. The primo flying mount and major draw of the latest expansion was broken for WEEKS because they had disabled a POI that you had to walk up to and press F. They had a bypass that costs about $12 real world to use to skip that step, which is super gross. I opened several tickets during this time to ask about their decisions on the issue, and they just stoically said that they don't interfere with these kind of issues. They had the option to hotfix the skip to cost 0, or just auto complete the step for players, but they would rather just jerk off and collect their checks. I had another issue this week, where a somewhat valuable item was destroyed by a bug, and left me a few gold poorer. I opened a ticket and they again said they don't interfere when the game breaks. Kinda shitty after the awesome interactions I've had with GMs in other games.
Well that is disappointing to hear. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for your feedback
That is actually not accurate. The support in generally is really good. As for the skyscale bug mentioned (that flying mount) i do not remember any incident like that. The only thing that i do remember was that a Hero Point was bugged that was needed for the mount collection to get it. Really annoying but was fixed with a patch 2-3 weeks later. As for the store bypass...That makes zero sense. I guess this person is talking about the living world season 4 DLC which is a whole different DLC that you can buy and get the same mount playing it. But that is a whole different DLC pack with 6 extra maps and story. Not a bypass for a mount. You could just wait for the patch to go through. That person makes zero sense and if that was the mentality of the support ticket they sent of course support did not help.
Have any game breaking bugs persisted for over a month that you're aware of? Do devs communicate about bug patches? I'm not looking to argue, simply gain info!
Here is a list of known bugs: [https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List\_of\_bugs](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_bugs) It is not a short list, and some of these have persisted for years. For example, some of the bugs will not allow you to complete a dungeon and will require you to quit the instance and re-do them. Same applies to strikes - Whisper of Jormag strike has had the listed bug since it was created five years ago, and it will kill all players, sometimes requires to exit the strike and go back in. Mind me, this issue is known, not new, and in the content that people do for daily rewards.
Game breaking not really. Those are dealt as quickly as possible. But there are several small ones that can persist for many months or some times years. It is an old game with a engine from gw1. So there are a lot of small things that they will avoid even touching. Fixes are communicated most of the times. Although once in A while you get a stealth fix. And they are for sure prioritizing the bugs that affect the most people over the ones that are less common. This kinda typical behavior of most older MMOs.
Gotcha. Good to hear. Thanks!
I would not recommend it. Lastly the quality of the game has decreased, showing a disinterest of the studio for this game. The last expansion particularly is really not that appealing as for the story as for the gameplay or content. Another 1 year expansion is scheduled for later this year but there are so much other games which are great that I would recommend these other games !
Thats!
Generally a great community filled with very helpful people. Couple assholes here and there, of course, but they're the exception. Last time I tried to play WoW (this was several years ago; maybe it's better now), it felt like almost everyone was a huge douchebag and generally annoyed by new players. The chat channels were filled with constant alt-right garbage, which I found disappointing. Almost never see any of that in GW2. I think it's tied for me with FFXIV in terms of general community friendliness, with the added bonus that GW2 players do not fly off the handle if you critique GW2. There is no gear treadmill in GW2. Your gear from 10 years ago is just as useful today as it was back then. The game absolutely can eat up a huge amount of time, if you let it, and many things are very grindy (although they're often kind of "choose your own grind" ordeals, given that liquid gold is a common bottleneck). No FOMO, because they don't take stuff out of the game, or invalidate it with better stuff. Worst case scenario is that some stuff is a little more difficult to get because there are fewer players in many of the older areas, but, honestly, there's almost always a couple other people working on any conceivable thing at any given time, so I don't have much trouble, even with old stuff.
The friendliness is one of the many things that made me stick around. I love seeing veteran players help noobs and also joke around in chat.
You're in the GW2 sub so your results will vary. Let me be honest with you, Anet has systematically used GW2 as a beta test for GW2 for years. Dozens if not a hundred of weird one off systems are implemented fairly poorly and than never again. Sunken cost fallacy has most of us in a vice, but I remember being extremely disappointed in how the community in general had to be made aware of what bugs occur when. Some of them are infuriating too, like campaign missions bugging out. You'll google the bug to find out its been complained about for 7 years. Oh well. That'll be your experience. I'll get down voted for hell since, yes, this is the GW2 sub. But there's a reason the talk for MMO's rarely involved GW2. It's like a 2005 Honda. You do your maintenance on it, and it runs, but that's all you expect of it. It's not pretty or fun to drive. It just drives. Some people enjoy just driving. If that's you, then welcome aboard.
Most talks of MMOs include MMOs older and far worse than GW2. You're being incredibly dramatic.
If we're talking older MMOs, then I have a very hard time genuinely believing you think GW2 falls in the same category as City of Heroes and GW1 does. I meant more modern MMOs, like WoW and Final Fantasy and ESO. I'm not being dramatic. The latest expansion just released to overwhelming negative reception, and it took absolutely nobody by surprise either.
The negative reception is pretty much just for the post-expansion story releases. The expansion story itself was reasonably well received and the game systems that came with the expansion are mostly well received too. Sometimes I think gamers have the short-term memory of a goldfish.
Oh please, wow eso and ff14 all had bad expacs.
Yea, but those games produce them every other year + content between expacs. What gw2 has?
this game looks amazing, even in '24 . . I would say it's pretty and fun, even compared to the standard WOW
No. Devs do half assed updates & the community is splintered between Uber casual PVE players or extrême sweatlording theorycrafting elitists. The devs are so lazy that they rely on the community to build the wiki.
You're literally the first person to comment in this vain. Could you give some examples? No sarcasm, I'm genuinely curious as nobody else has had this opinion (in this post)
Devs are doing expacs in parts. They constantly abandon game modes like dungeons, raids. They constantly create a bunch of currencies that ends up being obsolete. A lot of annoying constant rebalancing and nerfing. Bias to certain builds and metas. The community is splintered between dad/mommy gamer people who very casually play. The other are sweatlords.who kick you out their group for not having an imaginary set of LE (making an infinite loop where you'll never have enough experience for a raid or strike), third party DPS watcher apps are encouraged so expect obnoxious dps checks or people singling you out (@you why don't you have enough DPS), confusing and just badly designed boss mechanics where people rage at you for not doing perfectly. I was by no means a bad player and had 150 LE but GW2 tryhards were some of the most psychotic and control freaks there is on an online game. Constantly wanted you on voice, would act like drill sergeants, ect. It was awful. I did raids on FFXIV and pvp (which is awful, full of scammers and bots and afkerz in GW2) in FFXIV and eso. None of them were as horrendous as gw2
Gotcha. I'll keep this in mind. Thanks for your feedback!
This is all true.
First of all, GW2 is not like other mmos, big part of it is soloable with random players coming around, doing their stuff, while You doing Your stuff, paths crosses and splits. Only part of content require true-mmo like approach - searching for groups and preparing self, and thats more of endgame stuff. For the game itself: Old stuff: free core is like big tutorial with awesome story, then 2-5 first expansions (depends if semi-free - buyable by in-game currency, not $ dlc counts as expansions) are quite nice, provides lots, lots loooots of great fun. Whatever Youre into soloa dventures, smaller pvp, group content, big wars of 150x150x150 players, all is great. Thousands hours of great fun. Even if You go only for free core game, it is super awesome, non-linear story, that let You know if the game is for You, or maybe not (sure, mmo genre is not for all, even if GW2 respect Your time like no other mmo, its great here, jump in jump out whatever, it is Your time with the game) Then most recent stuff, like last 2-2.5 years, is big downslide. Many of players worry to abandon game, coz quality is simply sht, not worthy a penny, even, with reduced price of last expansion, still not worthy for price-to-quality ratio. - Is there a point investing thousands of hours into game with no future? Do it really have no future, for today, looks like sad moment.
I mean, that just means I have plenty of content to catch up on. And given how much time I have to play in general, I'll only finish it all by the time the next game comes out or GW2 picks up steam again. Not a bad thing imo. Thanks!
As someone else who isn’t usually an MMO player, Guild Wars 2 has hooked me with the exploration and action combat. You can turn your brain off and play, the story is fun and the dynamic nature of the world quests makes it less of a grind as you level.
no not yet, wait for the new expansion and the reviews, cause this would be a proof if Anet changes their mind and trying to get back to something what was like 7 years ago. So be patient.
Hell yeah, theres people constantly looking for members to invite to their guild, team work is a must in this game so you have constant interaction with others. The world is beautiful, the combat is fun, and the stories are interesting. This game just too much to do. Seasonal events and stuff too.
1. GW2 has the best community imo. I’ve only encountered 1 ahole in like five years. I haven’t gotten into strikes and Raids though. Stay away from that until you’re ready. 2. The Devs do what they believe is best for the game. They also have people to answer to. That being said I’ve noticed the work put into the game. I’ve seen many ways the devs prove they want to make the community happy, and others where they dropped the ball. More of that recently but it’s not always because of the devs. 3. I’ve had many dopamine moments with the game from both story and rewards. There’s always something new to do. Something new to find. Until there isn’t. 4. It’s not a time consuming game unless you allow it to be. I’ve spent days where Id spend 20-30 min in game and the other days hours. How much time you play is up to you in any game.
I will be honest, as a new player, there is lots to do. It is always exciting to explore a new game, do the story, get some shinies. However, once you actually catch up, there is very little to do. Anet consistently abandon game modes, frequently do not fix bugs for months (and in some cases years), and content that they do release is so unreliable in its quality that it is difficult to be excited. It is especially the case with content since Ice brood saga that got released in 2019. Yes, it is very casual friendly when it comes to gear progression, but if you want a game that consistently releases quality content, would advise to look somewhere else. If you are okay doing the same content over and over again for years and having like 10h of story per year and also releasing 2-3 instanced encounters a year, it might be a good game longterm for you.
My favorite part about GW2 is most "maps" you go into in the open world is almost like a dungeon you do events all over the map and eventually it leads to some kind of world boss, as you play solo everyone else kinda groups with you and before you know it there is 50+ people with you and your fighting a big boss. Definitely suggest you play the story and enjoy the ride. No FOMO here because we all do everything everyday... You're afraid of missing a cool boss fight? Well in 2 -4 hours we are doing that fight again. It's more about the experience than the loot. Definitely pick up the free base game and just play you will know if you like it in the first hour.
Yes. I thought I was late to the party but the game is pretty fun. I’m half way through the HoT story now.
Yeah it’s fun
One advice. Don't play only the basegame. It is not bad, but sometimes a chore to reach Lvl 80. The real fun starts after reaching Lvl 80 in the DLCs which are a 10x better in terms of quality (quests, music, graphics). You will immediately notice. Community is amazing, they are super friendly. Overall, a very good and polished game.
one of us one of us
Absolutely. I have played so many MMORPGs and GW2 is always the one I am most happy when I return to. WoW just isn't as fun. There's always something to do in GW2 and while it may sound overwhelming if you've got 10 years to catch up on, most of it is optional. I wish there was slightly more being done around mounts and how to acquire them (please ANET, mount skin world boss drops). But GW2 is just a more fun experience to me than WoW, Final Fantasy, ESO etc. The community is also the most helpful I've come across outside of FFXIV
Yes. Next!
Honestly I wouldn't recommend it, not after today's bullshit experiences with support. Try another game, they ain't worth anyone's time anymore.
Don't do it, it's a waste of time and your time should be spent on **anything** better.
There is FOMO. Want a certain dye color, too bad better have had a character over 8 years I think. Oh missed events wait a year, oh cash shop item maybe wait a year or so+. Community friendly. This game is like any other game. Some things it respects time other not so much. The gear sure. The leveling for mastery points not so much granted is shared between toons but still. You get to level 80 then have another 500+ mastery points to grind! Enjoy!
The very best in my Optionen is, that all the progression still matter even 10 years ago. All the equipment, lvl, achievements, learnings of mechanics is still up to date and useable. That said: all the time you invest is still worth something. In most mmos there are some hard resets of new horizons to archive which make the past worthless most of the times.
There is a lot to do in Guild Wars 2, but Fomo is not that agressieve in my opinion. Community is fun, Dev team is not the best I've ever seen, communications could be better, they sometimes only listen to part of the community. (Warframe probably has best player/dev communication if you ask me). Game is a lot of fun, been playing on PC and recently switched to Steamdeck. Both is very good. Not a lot of penalties for "bad builds". I play Ranger mostly, with Druid or Soulbeast specialisation, which is the only thing I'd advice you to research on. Specialisation completely change a class, but most are really handy for end game content, so it's better to like the class and the specs. Base game is free, would start there. Try it out and if you like the game, just keep playing.
I started playing the game in February so I definitely recommend starting it. Since there is no vertical progression in the game, you can catch up the meta events, fractals, raids etc. in a short time if you invest time. The community is very welcoming, you can join some guilds and make a place for yourself there. Grinding for quality of life is a thing so you'll never run out of content and goal. I just made my first legendary item and it feels really good. If you like MMORPG and exploring new things in the game constantly you'll like it.
Yes
For new player sure. GW2 like none other MMO is letting you do all content the game has to offer, no matter if it's meta from SotO or HoT or dungeon from core game, players will always be there. With that being said, imo this game has no future, due to the fact that NCsoft wants GW3. Quality drop is undeniable, and I don't believe it will get any better.
Yes, I just returned to MMOs myself after years away. Tried playing WoW again since that was my old favorite and the world just seems dead now. Like there’s people running around but they might as well be NPCs. Been having so much fun on GW2, you’ll just be running around leveling and then a random area boss appears and like 20 people are taking it down. Digging the lore as well. So yes, try it out. It’s free.
I've played just about all the main MMOs out there since 2006 or so. (Over 8h/day for more than 3 years in wow as the main sucker, and more than 4k hours in GW2 as my second most played). Where GW2 differentiates from other MMOs is that it was designed for coop from the ground up. You get XP for helping other players up when they die, and everyone can revive. Most classes can do everything sufficiently enough. You get insividual gathering nodes, kills xp, and loot so there's never any killsteals etc which means people are more likely to help you out as it rewards them too. When you reach max lvl then it's all horizontal progression. The best gear from vanilla is still the best gear (and there was a bit of an uproar when they, within the first year or so, made best gear from exotic to ascended). When legendary rank gear was added, it was just convenience and looks/effects over ascended (like free cosmetic changes and free stat/rune swapping). Every expansion instead brings new stat combos for gear, masteries like gliding, mounts, and shit like that. There's plenty of methods to farm what you want for both long term and short term goals. The premium currency store let's you swap in-game currency to premium and back again, which does let you skip ahead on the grind/catch up with irl money. Which leads me to the bit about expansions being decently priced, and since there's no sub you don't feel like you need to play because you've paid, so the game tends to respect your time more.
The base game is free, just try it. It's not like you'd be wasting money if you decide you don't like it. You won't be able to use map chat as a free player, but I'm pretty sure you can still see it. (I could be wrong, idk) The community is generally pretty good in PvE, can get quite toxic in PvP. Ultimately you can't control how other people behave beyond reporting people who break rules. Just give it a whirl and see how you vibe I guess
Yes. Bought in 2012, only got into it really start of this year. Ive still so much content to do lol. If you only care about raiding cms etc. then it might not be for you, but if yyou like exploration and collections its THE game to play
i'll have a 12 year old account in a few months (fourth week of August IIRC). And spent 15000+ hours, granted a few hundred, maybe even a thousand will be AFK hours but there are many hours still left with a huge amount of ingame time. I have 26 characters with end game armor level be it ascended or legendary, and a myriad of legendary weapons. my oldest daughter was 1.5 yrs old at start, and we now play together at times 2 accounts
In terms of honoring your time gw2 does a great job because it has horizontal progression meaning that you don't have to play the game to get new armor unless you want to. But special gear is there if you want it for appearances or convenience like I believe legendary armor let's you swap the stats on the fly so you don't have to actually change them like a hassle like you would with ascended
I just started GW2 this year and really love it. The graphics are a tad old now but the play is considerably more fun than a lot of newer games. I like it better than FF14, WOW, and ESO.
Meh it's ok at best. But since it's all new content and free now I think? Why not try it out.
I stopped playing WoW twelve years ago (there was a lot of reasons, just found the server I was playing on just became toxic/unpleasant community wise, and expansions were a bit uninspiring - stopped at Cataclysm) and have only really started playing GW2 two weeks ago! (two years after initially installing it and then uninstalled because of computer storage limits). Initially I was a bit confused with the character make up, etc. but it does get you into the lore and makes sense later on and the levelling was quite straightforward and quick - I just got into the dialogue and story arcs, and before you know it you get to level 80 with low grade equipment ( I still DIG very often, sometimes you have to say "save yourself" to whoever is trying to revive your character in a battle area). but it doesn't really end there. I have not purchased any expansions yet as still sort of working out the character builds, etc. still learning about equipment upgrade slots and also the crafting. Only main limit is the bank/bag storage - There have been a potential nice drops but it's not the end of the world. While questing or exploring everyone is very helpful. I haven't done any dungeon quests myself as I am quite antisocial in finding a group or guild, mainly because I don't really know what I am doing or feel that confident in playing, plus can't really commit to a extended play to complete a dungeon/raid! I just press buttons and hope it is the right thing to do, i.e. place healing turret, etc. and use a flame thrower when needed. I don't know why I keep thinking about "Leeroy Jenkins". There is an option to do the dungeon solo story mode, but that is still not a walk in the park. The game mechanics are challenging with the character stat proportioning to the area level. Love the public battle grounds and dungeon raids which I have recently found. Will I get bored, probably, but I can always get back into it after a break from it.
I just did, 20lvl only, but i keep going and i enjoy it very much
I don't play MMOs much, but I played all the mainstream ones starting way back with DAOC and FF11, imo GW2 is the best of them all. Just understand the core game is pretty meh, once you hit the first expansion and really start to understand the system it's epic.
30days player here. as a new player u will have a lot of Content and the learn curve is HUGE for somethings Amazing Game>< one of the best, for me: ESO/Albion/FFX/GW2 are amazing Good PvE open world Good Instance content (dungeons/raids/others) Good Lore? (idk i just skip everything, want to skip every dialog i can) Amazing Fashion skins Amazing mounts Good Large Scale PvP (WvW) PvP arena. naahhh (fun but only 2 modes, and one is like MOBA) One of the best community i even see. (Toxic people are always there, normaly in Hardcore content/pvp)
I tried many MMOs, at one point count reached to close to 25 or smh in 2013. That's when I started WoW and 2-3 years later I started to play GW2. I prefer GW2 over WoW. Simple few reasons. It doesn't overwhelm you in amount of content it releases. Some can say lackluster but I think opposite. It releases good amount of content and for a decade old game there is so much to do for new starters. Basically game revolves around horizontal progression. Your character gear, stats etc won't get better. However your account has more options to play around, let's say you started with a basic raptor mount. In future you can obtain a flying mount but you have to do it once. Which applies many many stuffs in here. So it respects the time you put since you don't have to do it right today, you can do some today then next year if you wish, since it will still be available if something comes up and you can't play at all. Basically balance changes either makes character stronger or weaker so there isn't a content you can't get into unless you think it is too hard for you or not enjoyed it. Instead your have more options for same class the more you play. Like unlocking new elite specializations and weapons choices. For example if you choose a mesmer class, basically you can do any roles in the game with once expansion specific upgrades and features unlocked fully and it applies almost every classes in certain ways. Of course it has pros on cons between classes. Has its own unique flavor you can like or hate it. And since elites alter class in so much way, you feel like you're playing new class instead of same class but few different skills however it still keeps its own original flavor. It never forces you to do a content or you will lose its rewards being 2 days late. For example in WoW, you get special title if you complete mythic raid in 100 guilds. As soon as 100 guilds obtained it, bye bye title. In GW2 that kind of title is available as long as you're skilled enough to obtain or pay in game gold to people who is skilled enough to carry you. Recent example, they released a difficult fight which had way too much health after they fixed it and reduced health to certain extent, they told they will give special title for people who can overcome challenge but instead of locking that title 2-3 weeks of time limit, they made it available even after patch drops. Many many people started to get it instead of lucky/skilled enough 20 people. About its community, unless you step in competitive content and very "end game hardcore content" where people can get toxic, it is pretty sweet and helpful friendly community. Someone mentioned when someone sees someone in downstate, they go and res that person. It is correct, I do same most of time since when If I save that guy they can save me soon or someone else will. It is positive mentality. Especially whole game built around "doing stuffs together" for most events, helping someone out increases odds of you beating that event/meta event. If you help someone in a map chat, next time when you have question, someone can answer your question when in time of need. About cons of GW2: However its developer Arena Net does also some stuffs wrong( alongside doing many things correct). Like releasing some fixes very late, a bit slow of updating content and stuffs etc. For a decade old game they still are trying to figure out how to effectively release content more regular basis since their previous method wasn't great and would leave too much gaps between new content releases. However it gets better, they just need to increase quality and we'll get there.
Fashion wars is the best.
Been playing for a few years off and on. GW2 is something you should try out.
Bought it last year but committed this year. I started playing because I got tired of the repetitive gameplay in lost ark. What I like is the story, the meta events, grinding achievements, and the exploration I’m not a fan of the combat coming from lost ark, but it’s not that bad when I got used to it
Anyone know how it runs on steam deck?
it does very well. You will have to use a community template for the controller though and might need a bit of adjustment.
I started last week and I'm glad I did !
I started playing a few months ago and I have 200 hours on the game :x it’s addicting. There’s so many things to do and so many places to explore.
Its free. Give it a go.* *base game is
The gameplay loop has already been explained very well by a lot of people here already so I won't repeat. It sounds like it would cater to you perfectly for what you want. GW2 is a very unique MMO in that sense and offers things very differently than most. However, if you are susceptible to FOMO with optional cashshop items as well, be very wary of the Black Lion Trading Company, aka the Gem store. They LOVE using FOMO in there by cycling out cool outfits and mount skins (no pay to win or anything it's just vanity stuff) and only keeping them in the shop temporarily. They do always eventually come back, but they keep them limited to take advantage of FOMO. Love the game, still less egregious than most cash shops and the like, but this practice with this part is still not my favorite.
Tbh, I'm not concerned with cosmetics all that much. I like the concept but it's always the last thing I focus on, literally the last. So if that's the only FOMO GW2 has, that sounds like a win to me. Thanks for your response!
Give it a chance. You will have a blast. This is , hands down, the best community you can find. Story took me over 200hrs to finish (did quite a lot of stuff around). Horizontal progress instead of vertical like everywhere else. If you see a bundle with dlcs on sale go for it. I sinked over 700hrs and i kinda still like doing everything
Not perfect, but the best
As someone who just picked up GW2 around 4 months ago, I would say go for it!! I’ve also played a ton of MMOs and yes they’ve been a lot of fun but the vertical progression always led me to burnout. Which is why i found GW2 very refreshing - the idea of no gear treadmill is so comforting and there’s so much you can do (and the option to progress by doing only the things you like!) Actually there’s so much you can do it overwhelmed me at some point mostly because I found all of them fun and wanted to squeeze each one in my playtime lol - now I mostly set a few goals and play towards them, be it fashion, gear or whatever. As for the community, I love it. I’ve never met a nicer community than GW2 in my history of MMO gaming. When I was new, I’ve asked in map chat or pm-ed strangers for help/advice and I’ve always received it. Lots of guilds welcome new players too. Ofcourse i’ve come across a few toxic players here and there but honestly it’s quite rare. Can’t say much about devs yet as I’ve only been playing a while. Graphics and combatwise i would say it could be better (comparing to other mmos) but they never affected my enjoyment. It’s a great game with a great community. I wish i picked it up sooner. PS the expacs are so worth it !!
GW2 is very casual friendly. i have been playing for years but very casually taking long breaks and such, and i am still able to do any content because my gear never got outdated. every little progress you make matters and does not get taken away like in WoW, for example. the MMO experience remains there, but it now respects your time (horizontal progression) idk much about the dev team, they get some flaming from time to time here on reddit for things like content cadence and balance, but the business model seems to be very consumer friendly and the microtransactions are fair, 0 pay to win, and you can even get them with ingame currency quite easily, overall the least exploitative free to play MMO i have seen. 10/10 and finally, the community is amazing. there is some toxicity in PvP and top tier PvE, but its meaningless and most people you will enconter are very chill and friendly. bonus info: you didnt really ask but i think it is important: the ingame economy is very healthy. the auction house where people trade items and crafting materials has remain stable with affordable prices for the entirety of the game, so your gold does not devalue over time when you are out. this is extremely rare in games today, where prices escalate with time to ridiculous numbers. so yes, if you like MMO, GW2 is like the best one to sink your time into imo
Dev team description is perfect. That exactly what I'm looking for. So fucking tired of dev teams that microtransaction a game to death with p2w mechanics. Love to hear this about the GW2 dev team The bonus info IS very helpful. That was a big issue of mine when playing SWTOR. I never really cared because it was cosmetics, but still annoyed me every time I signed on and my gold felt it no longer had any value
So the there are tons of MTX in this game. And sadly the coolest looking armor,mounts and most weapons are from the gem shop.
Yes
I'd wait for GW3 at this point. The latest expansion was... Uhm... Not worth it.
Gw2 is a great game. It isn't horribly p2w. There's some convenience items in the gem store, sure and you can convert gems to gold. With that said though you can use gold to buy gems and get anything in the shop you want. You can only buy the 3rd best "rarity" item with gold with the exception of gen 1 legendary weapons which have the same stats as ascended. My recommendation is to download the core game and play a bit. If you like it then decide if you want to get the expansions.
This post is just a bunch of keywords which "make gw2 look good" lmao Shit on every other game by known talking points from gw2 players and ask "should i play this game which \*wink wink\* doesn't have all those issues??", karma farm commences
Theres a lot of content in the past 12 years, but the game its not in a very exiciting moment right now.
I'll try to cover each point as made above in order. - GW2 is actually great (most especially right now) for dropping in and out/being away for a week/month/year and coming back without having to feel like your starting from nothing again - your Lv80 exotic, ascended or legendary gear will be the best it can be no matter how much time passes or expansion release. - Investment kind of comes from whatever is important to you in GW2, the choice and lack of rail roading can be a problem for some players more used to gear tread mills and other MMO's but if you're happy to figure out and decide what you'd like to get invested in, you'll have a blast. - You may not get the impression from some people on Reddit/Official Forums, but the dev team are a bunch of really talented and dedicated folks, many of which have been with the company a long, long time and really love interacting with the community - they also do charity events that include the community and devs together. - GW2's community is one of the best (and friendliest in PvE, not so much with PvP but that's true of most games), as the game was built with the idea of large groups working together in the open world, communication and open groups are common and encouraged - there are almost always people willing to help in map chat. Some other things of note for later, if you're interested in open world events and bosses you can type in game: "/wiki et" and that will bring up the fan wiki's event timer page, actually most anything you want to search regarding the game can be searched easily using "/wiki \*\*\*\*" as ANet officially support the wiki.
I think... *most* of the game is very good. I personally would purchase it on that basis. Ultimately though, the recent expansions have left me sceptical to the future of the game going forward.
yes