Guild Wars 2

[Kharash]

Bought this game at launch but never played much. Judging by my characters I made like 3 attempts over the years but never got to max level. I've been playing again for like a week now and I'm kind of hooked. Thanks to current XP buffs out the ass I'm already max level somehow which makes my previous attempts seem kind of pathetic. Anyway since the last time I've played it I have gone though GW1, still in Factions but I've done the Prophecies campaign and I just want to say: TOTAL CHARR DEATH.
The Charr in GW2 disgust me. The way the devs excuse everything they did. The way they retcon shit while they were obviously irredeemably evil. The way they try to paint the humans as the aggressors. The way you explore Ascalon "haha look at the cauldron the Charr used to burn every man, woman, and child from an entire kingdom to death 'defeat their foes' better suck a hero point out of it" All the hearts where you have to kill endless human separatists(so evil) for the Charr who oh so mercifully granted us peace.
Even the way nature is returning in Ascalon almost seems to say "See what the Charr did wasn't so bad" All that and the Charr NPCs will still tell you it was justified to your face while your PC will just nod along and agree.
Other than that in a vacuum the Charr are pretty cool. Shame about everything else.

Edit: Also I'd forgotten that Felicia Day's in this game. God she's terrible.

 

[Back me up!]

The beta will probably tell us a lot and if GW3 will be able to replace GW 2. But doubt that because I don't see what ANET could come up with that is better than GW2. What exactly will be the big hook to draw people in ? Not to mention how much content will be there at launch to keep people playing, and how fast can they pump out new stuff to maintain the player base so it can spend money on the game.

The Guild Wars games have also been a reaction to the current MMO Market designs and gameplay flow so I'm more curious what they considered the top of the 2024 MMO Market and functional areas Anet wants to fix/improve.

 

[Drifting Panzer]

I decided to get gw reforged since it was pretty cheap and Anet made it a early 2000s experience. Buy it with my Anet account->download and run the game->create a gw1 account and filll in the keys I got one by one->link the gw1 account with my Anet account.
There is atleast 3 steps here that was not neccessary. Hope the gameis worth it.

 

[CasketBase]

The power creep (creep isn't really the right word) trivialised earlier content. I used to do Tequatil regularly. I don't think I ever saw the event fail and even seeing the bone wall was rare.

I used to do that one with my guild and we saw the bone wall every time. Was before the megaservers though.
It happens when you're not doing enough DPS or something, iirc?

Speaking of old bugs and draghons bossfights and walls and shit, have they fixed the rocket launcher you get during the Claw of Jormag fight in Frostgorge Sound?
#5 on that one was a channeled, stand-in-place invulnerability, but it went on like a two-second cooldown instead of the full 30 secs if you interrupted the channel.
Useless for any shenanigans but really funny because knowing about the bug trivializes the ice-wall part of the fight (that you're supposed to use the rocket launcher for).

Also, imma drop a neutron blackhole truthnuke on you guys: GW2 never actually had "action combat". It's tab-target with skillshots, cone/fan spread attacks and just enough window dressing to fool you.

 

[I Know 孤独のせい]

Reached 80 with my Necro, and now I am not sure what to do. I would like to unlock the Harbinger spec, but it seems I need to do the expansion packs for the points.

 

[Kwisatz00]

The Luxon and Kurzick maps still work in GW1/reforged?

I loved that stuff, Mesmer or Elementalist

Necro was my favourite though, Droknar dungeon runs would make me feel young again xD

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

The Luxon and Kurzick maps still work in GW1/reforged?

JQ and FA are regular-enough these days, I think. Back in the lull, they were only active on bonus weekends but even then, you could grind the faction rep easily enough

The addition of Dhuum and Melandru's have made the game a new treat to play, and I really hope to find myself with a chunk of time soon to start up a Melandru's covenant run

 

[Kharash]

I reached Living World S1 and the amount of marvel/reddit dialogue compared to the base game is absolutely unbearable. The story missions are also absolute slogs and I really hope it doesn't stay like this.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

I reached Living World S1 and the amount of marvel/reddit dialogue compared to the base game is absolutely unbearable. The story missions are also absolute slogs and I really hope it doesn't stay like this.

"Holy shit! A new exciting expansion! Time to- sit through ~20 mins of exposition". Think back to WoW expansions: Holy shit, people lagging, 50000 dudes around you, chasing through the portal/the boat/the teleport. GW2 is the most singleplayer esque mmorpg on earth.

I decided to get gw reforged since it was pretty cheap and Anet made it a early 2000s experience. Buy it with my Anet account->download and run the game->create a gw1 account and filll in the keys I got one by one->link the gw1 account with my Anet account.
There is atleast 3 steps here that was not neccessary. Hope the gameis worth it.

Don't you just need a single game off of steam to get all of them? Reforged I'm pretty sure is "Own anything GW1 and you get it all". Why wouldn't you buy it on steam then?

 

[Drifting Panzer]

Don't you just need a single game off of steam to get all of them? Reforged I'm pretty sure is "Own anything GW1 and you get it all". Why wouldn't you buy it on steam then?

I got gw2 at launch, before it got on steam, and any rewards I get on the steam version of gw1 will only carry over to the steam version of gw2. So I had to get the stand alone version since those rewards are pretty much the only reason I got it.

 

[Kotol]

I reached Living World S1 and the amount of marvel/reddit dialogue compared to the base game is absolutely unbearable. The story missions are also absolute slogs and I really hope it doesn't stay like this.

It really feels strange that they were pushing so hard for new characters like Braham and Rox to retire the old guard, when there were still so many unresolved conflicts and stories to be told with them still.

One thing I can say is that Living World Season 1 was for a very long time unplayable, with the devs saying that the content could not be restored, or that it was subpar or hard to pull off since a lot of the "Living World" storyline back then meant that the maps actually began to change and players would have to do world events etc to progress and unlock rewards. So yeah, I guess they tried to find a middle ground, but it makes some missions pretty shit to play, like the Tower of Nightmares or whatever the fuck it was called.

I think they did a better job with story missions in LW Season 2, but if you wanna hunt for achievements, you really feel why nowadays most story-heavy dialogues are optional or can just be skipped. Wanna redo a fight because an achievement demands that you do not get hit once? That'll be 5 minutes of mindlessly running around, talking and waiting for your RP-walking companions before you can try again, sorry.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

I got gw2 at launch, before it got on steam, and any rewards I get on the steam version of gw1 will only carry over to the steam version of gw2. So I had to get the stand alone version since those rewards are pretty much the only reason I got it.

I spent god knows how many years playing GW1 off-steam (duh), but I just bought both and restarted. Turns out I had achieved fuck all back then.

 

[I Know 孤独のせい]

I reached Living World S1 and the amount of marvel/reddit dialogue compared to the base game is absolutely unbearable. The story missions are also absolute slogs and I really hope it doesn't stay like this.

The writing isn't winning any prizes that's for certain, but it's not that bad. It's not good either but that's an MMORPG for you. Between this, WoW and FF14 it's just pick your poison. If they spent more time establishing the story and characters it would be better but gotta speed run everything and throw in more awful combat encounters. The pacing is just fucking dogshit.

Wanna redo a fight because an achievement demands that you do not get hit once? That'll be 5 minutes of mindlessly running around, talking and waiting for your RP-walking companions before you can try again, sorry.

I started doing S2 and no idea why I just can't read through a dozen of text boxes on my own. It's just waiting around thinking constantly that the game broke since nothing is happening with the NPC's. No idea why they thought that forcing you to get the achievements for the mastery points was a good idea either.

 

[Kotol]

The writing isn't winning any prizes that's for certain, but it's not that bad. It's not good either but that's an MMORPG for you. Between this, WoW and FF14 it's just pick your poison. If they spent more time establishing the story and characters it would be better but gotta speed run everything and throw in more awful combat encounters. The pacing is just fucking dogshit.

I started doing S2 and no idea why I just can't read through a dozen of text boxes on my own. It's just waiting around thinking constantly that the game broke since nothing is happening with the NPC's. No idea why they thought that forcing you to get the achievements for the mastery points was a good idea either.

While we are at the topic of tying some cool rewards (like cosmetics and mastery points) to achievements, you will definitely encounter more frustrating moments like that in Heart of Thorns and Living World Season 3, like an achievement that can only be done by a Sylvari character, or an achievement that requires very very specific build setups that you probably cannot do on every class (my poor Engie...!)

But yeah, I think with Path of Fire, they did a middle ground between waiting for dialogue and being able to skip it all together, and the further into the story you get, the more the Quality of Life improvements start to appear throughout.

 

[I Know 孤独のせい]

While we are at the topic of tying some cool rewards (like cosmetics and mastery points) to achievements, you will definitely encounter more frustrating moments like that in Heart of Thorns and Living World Season 3, like an achievement that can only be done by a Sylvari character, or an achievement that requires very very specific build setups that you probably cannot do on every class (my poor Engie...!)

I understand that that can be frustrating but to be honest with the amount of classes and races to can play and considering that having some alts is useful, and that you might replay a lot of stuff anyways, I don't think that approach is actually too bad. But providing an alternative route would for people who don't want to redo it would have been nice.

But yeah, I think with Path of Fire, they did a middle ground between waiting for dialogue and being able to skip it all together, and the further into the story you get, the more the Quality of Life improvements start to appear throughout.

That's good to hear since I am kinda constraining myself to whatever content is story related even though I would like to just play whatever. But I skipped story the last time I played and just dropped the game.

 

[Shieldman]

Seems this went under the radar: "Mistbound" is a GW-themed card game

As for the story. I would skip LW1 and LW2, there's really nothing to be gained. I only fire up story modes for useful account unlocks, specially maps.

To this day, I haven't finished EoD, I got to the chapter where the main hub is unlocked so that all my characters could port there and grab hero points. I finished SoTo story mode only for the Obsidian armor crafting. I haven't even started VoE.

I do the same stuff I do in the non-voiced scenes in FF14 and just Alt+Tab. Some playable parts in them are insufferable and way too long.