Anet's art team is unbelievable...

I think this game has the worst special effects of any game I played. There are too many blindingly bright flashes that hurt my eyes and obstruct gameplay. Going through LWS4 ep1, I was pretty upset at the effects of the first story mission. I had to turn off postprocessing to get through the mission. I was in a pretty bad mood when I got to Istan and just... wow... The map looks so amazing. I got tired of trying to avoid spoilers so I just bought ep1 and was planning on rushing through the story as fast as I could. I spent 10 minutes just flying around the level, gazing at how amazing Astralarium looks, forgetting about rushing through the story. I only wish the stupid enemies didn't have the ridiculous aggro range to constantly disrupt me (like it's doing right now, as I'm trying to type this -_-).

Seriously, mad props to Anet's level design team. I remember being disappointed when I heard that Guild Wars Nightfall was going to be in the desert, thinking it'll look boring. It turned out to look great, especially Vabbi. Then, I was surprised again when I saw PoF, especially the Garden of Seborhin. Now, my jaw's dropped yet again! Not that I think the rest of Anet isn't good. I really love the game. Awesome and fun combat system. Its open world is amazing. The mounts are very fun and not boring speed boosts like in other games. The music is also great and I don't use custom music while playing. I think the forums team is also great at keeping the place much cleaner than most forums on the internet.

Anyways, enough rambling. I just wanted to give two thumbs up for the beautiful level design. :+1: :+1:

GW2 art makes for some amazing screenshots. It makes for terrible gameplay however, since you can't see wtf you are doing.

Well, the combat effects and environment art are separate things, and I think it's fair to say you can get both right.

GW2 probably has classes attacking a bit too much, which means there's going to be effect spam as a result. Compare that to GW1 and you can see they've over-corrected a bit.

I agree. Guild Wars 1 had way better artist. Lion's Arch loading screen is just a mess! I cant make out what its suppose to be. Please bring back the original release LA load screen.

@Robin Skyshroud.1863 said:I agree. Guild Wars 1 had way better artist. Lion's Arch loading screen is just a mess! I cant make out what its suppose to be. Please bring back the original release LA load screen.

bring back the original LA back and we have the correct LA loading screen.