Thinking about starting again, haven't played since 2013.

Hey all, so a few weeks ago I got a message of someone trying to log into my account. After sorting that out I'm now playing with the idea of starting to play again. I haven't played since 2013.

So my questions are:Is the game still fun?How strong is the community?Is there new content regularly coming out?Is the mesmer still a top tier class?Will me basically starting a new character be hell to play?Anything I should know?

YesVery strongYesYesNo

The amount of content since 2013 is staggering. You will never see season 1 of the living world again but 2 expacs and 3 dlcs are available to buy

Do you recommend any youtuber that I watch to, to get caught up on?

Two warning from me:

1 Base game is rather easy (save maybe Orr), so it might get a bit boring. Know that what you do in base version is little more then tip of the iceberg that is your character's potential and possible builds.

Wheather in pvp, wvw or expacs (or all of above) there's a whole new world of challenge. Also xpacs hold a lot of great runes and stat sets for you to experiment with.

2. Early game on engineer is a bitch. It smooths out later on, but first levels suck.

I just got back into it recently myself. I am currently up to Path of Fire but I would be willing to play with you if you're looking for people to play with, cause I am looking for new people to join up with. :)

I also last played in 2013 and just came back.

1. The game is fun, but that's subjective. It wasn't fun in 2013 for me but it's fun now. Tastes change...
2. Community seems about the same as it did in 2013 to me. It's clearly active.
3. Yes. Lots of content was added in 6 years and LW s4 ch 6 was very recently added. Anet seems to be very committed to adding game content.
4. Never played Mesmer but it's described as a complex class that can be very strong in skilled hands.
5. Starting a new class is what I did and leveling to 80 wasn't a problem.

I purchased both xpacs and ended up doing all of PoF but haven't touched HoT much. I plan on revisiting HoT after getting the skyscale mount. I didn't complete the core Tyria story either before jumping to PoF. It really doesn't matter that I did things out of order.

With my 2013 character I did run into a couple of things.

1. Never ending list of stuff got showered on it during my first login.
2. My build was changed and I didn't have enough hero points (former skill points) to max out an elite spec and at first it seemed impossible to get both elite specs (you need both xpacs to access both elite specs), but in PoF and HoT, 1 hero challenge=10 points and maxing out both specs is very possible.
3. My professions were messed up. I had tailoring and weaponsmithing at 400 in 2013 but on login in 2019 I somehow had 2 different professions selected. I think they were professions I put some effort in but they weren't professions I really wanted. Recheck your profs.

I recently did the whole game with my Mesmer. It was a build I found on the mesmer subforum and got me through the whole game + expansions + living stories.I had way more fun than I did in the beginning. The HoT specialisations and the PoF mounts included in that fun, although in the beginning i was so very skeptical towards them.I would advice the expansions since they are well worth the prize.Also I would get gliding for HoT and the raptor mount from PoF regardless where I would start. Both will make things a bit easier and are very fast to get.GL and HF.

@"EmmetOtter.8542" said:

2. My build was changed and I didn't have enough hero points (former skill points) to max out an elite spec and at first it seemed impossible to get both elite specs (you need both xpacs to access both elite specs), but in PoF and HoT, 1 hero challenge=10 points and maxing out both specs is very possible.

The hero points provided just for levelling up are exactly enough to train the "core" class spec lines with no points left over. You can get 220 additional points from hero challenges in Central Tyria.

The elite specs cost 250 points each to fully develop, and there are enough points in the game (including those 220) to be able, on one character, to fully train both elite specs and have (more than) enough left over to be able to fully train the next elite the day it releases. (This is not speculation. My Guardian who has done all the story content has both Dragonhunter and Firebrand fully trained, and she has, if memory serves, 290 unused points.)

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:

@"EmmetOtter.8542" said:

2. My build was changed and I didn't have enough hero points (former skill points) to max out an elite spec and at first it seemed impossible to get both elite specs (you need both xpacs to access both elite specs), but in PoF and HoT, 1 hero challenge=10 points and
   maxing out both specs is very possible
   .

EDIT: On top of that figure of 290, there's a bunch from HoT and PoF that I haven't bothered to collect.

EDIT-THE-SECOND: The figure is 270, not 290, but it's still more than the (probable) 250 that will be required to fully open the next elite.