How to relive that initial sense of wonder like when starting GW2 for the first time?

I have been playing casually on and off since the head start so many years ago ... I loved the feeling of immersion when entering a new area on a character ... but nowadays that immersion is completely gone for me.

Once i went through all the content with a one character ... redoing it all right away with another character seems tedious, while at the same time teleporting to get to a distant map or using mounts to get there and skip content seems gamey ...

The world and stories is what I love most about GW2 ... and right now I'm falling out of love with it, as if it got stale.

What do you do about it?

A really hard hit to the head might do it but otherwise, you cant really get the emotions of the past back.

I still play it for WvW, new fights every night and new servers every week. Well, almost.

I hope for an expansion. PoF was the last time I felt that and it was great to have a large content dump again and a wide area to explore and discover. The seasons just don’t do that for me.

Otherwise recapturing the original wonder is pretty much impossible

I don't think there is a way to genuinely get back the feeling you had the first time around. A while ago I downloaded Legends of Kyrandia - a series of games I loved as a kid. I hadn't played them in 15 years or more and thought I only vaguely remembered them (and my memory is notoriously unreliable) but as soon as I started playing them again it all came back. Which in a way was great but it meant I didn't get that sense of wonder and discovery - I knew what the next screen would look like before I got there and even remembered the solutions to a lot of the puzzles (it's a point and click game so it's pretty much all puzzles) so there wasn't the same challenge. I got a new appreciation for pixel art because in spite of it's age it looked as good as I remembered, but that was about all. If 15+ years isn't long enough to re-discover a game like it's your first time I don't think there's a way to do it with a game you're currently playing.

The nearest I've been able to come in GW2 is to try to play like I did when I was new, through a combination of 'rules' and trying to forget about any concept of having specific goals. I make a new character and try to avoid using mounts or gliding, and don't waypoint unless it's necessary (or unless I've gotten to the level 30 story and there's only so many times I'm willing to walk back and forth across the same two maps because apparently we can only make plans in the city). Then I start playing and just let myself go wherever looks interesting and do whatever I come across. Fortunately (?) I'm easily distracted so it doesn't take long to get into that mindset and genuinely forget about any specific goals. I'll talk to NPCs I'm not sure have anything useful (or anything at all) to say, I'll do events just because there's an event here, run around the city poking into corners just in case there's something there I've forgotten about (this game is much bigger than Kyrandia after all). It doesn't always work but it can be quite enjoyable to play like that.

There is a rule in gaming. Developpers can never make content as quickly as we can play it. (this also applies for most other media, like books, movies, tv, etc). It also goes a step further. The higher quality comes with the price of time. For e.g. game of Thrones they release 8 (average) episodes per year while for "As the world turns", there are over 200 episodes per year produced.In games the solution is grind. One way of doing it is replaying (just like re-reading a book or re-watching a movie). It often depends on the quality, but the more often you do this, the lesser it gets and it will never be like the original time you experienced it.

This all is unavoidable. You can delay it. One way is to grind. Another is find a good social guild with lots of ingame activities. playing again with specific rules as Danikat mentioned above. All tricks to delay the inevidable that you experience the game getting stale.

If you reach this point, there is another option. That is to move along. Not forever. Not for good. No goodbye, but as with movies, youy see other movies, with books, you get another book, you can also play other games. And you do not even have to abandon GW2 fully. You can login daily for the login bonus, or even the daily achievement for the 2k gold. You can just once every while to unlock the new living world episodes. Or just to check up with friends. Just take a distance away and return after a while. I'm sure it will be much better when you do.

Unfortunately, the only way to get that special first time wonder will always be "play another game". The first magic can never be recaptured - even with new content, because part of it is figuring out how the world works.

However, trying new things and taking breaks are ways to keep enjoyment up and maintaining a sense of magic. Just don't expect to keep that wide-eyed wonder. It's a lot like love and infatuation: that head-over-heels state will pass, hopefully translating into a more solid love.

I just came back to the game and decided all am going to do is story and map completion quest. And I'm really enjoying the game now. Not going to chase after things I don't need to pose in at player hubs.

@"Kovac.4372" said:How to relive that initial sense of wonder like when starting GW2 for the first time?

You mean the initial sense of "What happened, this isn't Guild Wars!?! What did they do to their franchise!" ?

It took me over three years to get over it and give the game a second chance as a whole new product. I really don't want that initial feeling of complete disappointment back. ;)

isnt that the case for all games? I quit wow vanilla at patch 1.9 and started GW, went back to wow wrath patch 3.3.2 with a brand new account, the sense of exploring vanilla maps never came back, neither did cataclysm changes do anything

@crepuscular.9047 said:isnt that the case for all games? I quit wow vanilla at patch 1.9 and started GW, went back to wow wrath patch 3.3.2 with a brand new account, the sense of exploring vanilla maps never came back, neither did cataclysm changes do anything

Indeed ... there is only once change at a first impression.

Well unless there is some sort of memory loss involved.

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"Kovac.4372" said:How to relive that initial sense of wonder like when starting GW2 for the first time?

I actually enjoyed everything except how races were equally represented everywhere ... I still can't get over seeing norn/charr cooks in Pact camps ... or the Order of Whispers having non-human members ...

For me, it was playing Zelda BotW. It gave me just the same kind of feeling of just looking out over a huge wast landscape and know that I was going to enjoy exploring every single bit of it!

Sadly you can't and this apply to every game. I'll never forget the day when i finished downloading gw2 and first thing was to figure out how to make the game stop lagging. Also learning weaponsmith but can't make rifleWish i can go back

Go back to GW1 and play for a while. No matter your character level, if you have, Nightfall, Factions, or EotN, it's great!

I always have a throw-away character slot in each game. It is fun to level even if you've been playing since 2005.