Splat.7981

Hello everyone. I recently started my journey in GW2, I come from World of Warcraft, I'm trying to keep an open mind at times I compare the 2 but I guess that this is inevitable having playing that one MMORPG for so long. I just discovered this topic on Reddit, here's the link if anyone wants to take a look. I wonder what are your opinions about what OP has stated there. does GW2 have enough staying power for you? This is something that I have asked myself, but since I'm at the beginning of my journey I will wait and see where the road takes me, but I see questions like this one or similar often. In games any game but especially MMORPG's it's normal that we take breaks from time to time but at it's core when I look at a game like WoW, GW2, ESO and many others out there i wish that they feel worth getting into and give me the desire of keeping login in every day if it to do all sorts of activities/content. That has been my biggest question about GW2, i understand that the leveling to 80 isn't the focus of the game and it can be done very quickly, but in terms of content (dungeons, raids, PvP, fashion wars, achievements, exploration, lore etc...) does GW2 manage to keep players interested? Player retention is important for online games.

Hello everyone. I am a new player to GW2 and yes I am enjoying my time in Tyria, I'm taking my time to explore the zones i go through, the cities and so on. Since I'm new to the GW2 community i don't know any worthy content creators worth watching, i watch a few pvp videos here and there but I'm still discovering. Last night i was browsing Youtube for GW2 content and i discovered this video from Moopliss, now he didn't hate on GW2 or nothing like that, for those that want to watch this video, or maybe many of you already watched it, what worried me the most was when he felt that End of Dragons was a lackluster expansion, that Arenanet dropped the ball there, mentioned that it takes long time between patches for an update that took him roughly 2 and a half hours to complete, he mentions the layoffs, lack of marketing from Arenanet, players being left in the dark about the content that is coming in the future. One thing that also is, somewhat, worrisome is that apparently Arenanet has chosen the path for mini expansions because they are working on a new game built in Unreal Engine. Now I am a new player so all looks like wonderland for me as i am discovering this for the first time, but how does GW2 appeal to veteran players to keep interesting in the game? On a personal gamer choice i prefer games that get me interested, hooked and not wanting to log out for a certain amount of time, play something else until the new GW2 content comes along. I look forward to reading your thoughts. Have a great day 🙂

Hello Farohna and thank you for keeping up with this post, i tend to ask a lot 😞 About the story it's ok i can't expect excellence in all the aspects of a game I'm just diving into, WoW also has it's issues and yes i can agree that the story in WoW possibly is more compelling than GW2, i would hope so since WoW has been around since 2004 but i think that at times even the people responsible for the game and it's lore they messed up at times with the direction of the story but that's another topic. I don't know how Arenanet developed GW2 story, i honestly hope that it goes in a different way than WoW did, i hope that i can get into the lore or discover some of it while exploring, talking to characters at times and even with the main story or even something inside a dungeon or a raid, what i think WoW did very poorly was the way that the lore unravels before the eyes of players either veterans or new players, i feel that a lot of parts of the lore and at times big parts of it are found outside of the game, comics and mainly books, i mean i don't mind reading at all, i love it but i think that the game has to do a good job explaining to the player what he's part of, the world he/she is in and so on by playing the game and not by having to resort to books or comics to have a grasp of what the hell is going on. One thing and this is unrelated to the topic, i was in Divinity's Reach last night and i notice a human player with a different hairstyle that i didn't see when creating my character, are there unique hairstyles? Do we have to go to the store or we unlock them in game with achievements?

Hello everyone i was in Divinity's Reach looking around the big capital when i saw a fellow human with a different hairstyle, i was almost sure that i didn't see that one when creating my character so i wanted to be sure, indeed such hairstyle isn't there. Are there unique hairstyles in the game? How can we get them?

You mentioned that for you WotLK was your favorite story and content in any game...so i guess that GW2 lacks on those aspects? It's ok if it does, i can't expect to have everything.

I love WoW as i mentioned above and although it pains me to say this yes, WoW does indeed feel more like a chore than to actually playing a game for the fun of it, now i don't doubt that many play WoW in a fun way that enjoy the game as it is, maybe in a RP server or smaller servers, i also agree with what you said if i don't log in each day i start to have these 2 feeling, 1 is that i feel like i'm starting to fall behind and that if i don't play it every day i'm wasting money. I believe that MMORPG's with a monthly fee have their benefits but for me WoW isn't there anymore, now I'm sure i will miss Azeroth, the graphics i loved those it seemed that i was playing a video game inside a painting, everything seemed like it was handcrafted, it has great music, the world feels huge but i feel like it's time to move on from a game which focus is directing it's players always towards chasing their next item level upgrade and because the game creates this hamster wheel where the main focus of people is their next big gear or weapon upgrade. Me for example I am or I was playing Wrath of the Lich King classic, i was currently leveling but once i reach level 80 i wouldn't be able to do any of those big raids of that expansion like Ulduar or Naxxramas, for example, because everyone is spamming Icecrown Citadel and the players will not want to waste their time (completely normal) with outdated or old content. This is something that i always regretted that WoW never had or mismanaged awfully to make whole world feel relevant and not just a waste of time in the minds of many because it has become "old content"...and i have been wondering if i haven't been playing the wrong MMORPG for years? Isn't the point of a MMORPG to be a massive game? To make the world feel alive and relevant and simply not a afterthought? Again, WoW to me was and still feel addicting in the sense that i love the art style, places like Orgrimmar, Borean Tundra, Dalaran, i love the music and many other things...i even love the pvp in WoW, maybe GW2 will surprise me, but the pvp in WoW was satisfying but then the game focus itself , by design it seems, to place the players (example) in Dalaran and press a few buttons to get into the high level dungeons or raids, to focus on gear score...it just makes such a huge world, created by awesome minds, to feel so small at the same time. I don't know, the unknown is always scary or clouded with doubt, i feel a bit optimistic because many here, on youtube, reddit seem to praise GW2 a lot and a lot of positives for this game are about exploration, old content, zones, dungeons, raids don't feel outdated because the game design has decided to make the whole world of Tyria to feel alive...in more ways than one I am excited about this new adventure, the WoW chip is still deep on my mind, but i will try to go into GW2 with a open mind. One thing, in WoW i never managed to do or kill a world boss because of the flow of the game, "old content", in Lich King no new world bosses were added, it's great to see that the bosses that came out in 2012 or since then are still a challenge to this day and that they keep adding new ones. I'm not saying that Arenanet is a perfect company, hopefully NCSOFT isn't a big obstacle to their vision, I'm sure that many of you will have complaints or bad things to say about certain times in the game but at least they seem to have a good grasp as to how a MMORPG should be.

Hey there Farohna 🙂 in WoW i always loved to explore the world, sometimes i just wanted to do quests or dungeons and so on but most people, maybe by design of how the game is conceived, are just focus on either instanced pvp or dungeons but mostly raids, i have seen many players, mostly max level ones, just standing in a capital waiting for the group to be ready or for the raid/group finder pulls them in to a dungeon or raid...it feels like a login in/out game... I would be a huge hypocrite if i said that i don't care for either dungeons and raids or even PvP, i love that content, i hope that GW2 can give me some content and enjoyment on that part but i'm happy to see that it isn't the only focus in the game. One thing that i have been wondering, because i haven't seen it or experienced it, is what can GW2 or what does this game do to keep players wanting to login everyday? Again i apologize for the comparison once again, but in WoW when i was playing on my own or doing group content, i could keep playing for the entire day (damned IRL) i mean i always had this feel of keeping playing the game. Hopefully within GW2 i can discover such a feeling again because i really want to, and it's very sad to me to say this, i really want to put WoW behind me, i do love that game but i can't keep playing a game that feels lackluster to me, probably i will miss a lot of cool things but it's time to move on for me.

Hello again 🙂 i really don't intend to rush it, i love exploring, in previous MMORPG's that i have played like WoW, FF14, SWTOR, Destiny (maybe not a full mmorpg) i always loved exploring, i love to find bits and pieces of the story as i explore, some mmorpg's are better at this than others, i don't know how GW2 does this but i will try to discover for myself. In the few videos i watched people say that the story and world exploration are good or an important part in the game so i hope i can find some nice stuff around Tyria 🙂

@vesica tempestas.1563 @AliamRationem.5172 I thank you for your feedback, i apologize for taking this long to reply. I'm more assured now 🙂 if it is like you have said then i don't see GW2 as P2W. I wanted to ask you another question, this isn't related to the topic but in this way i avoid opening new threads, about the crafting in GW2 is it viable? Is it worth one investing into it? In MMORPG's i always loved to try and sell items, from armor, weapons, recipes, materials etc in the market/auction house, i love interacting with the economy on games that have it, is this possible in GW2 and can we make any silver or gold from the trading post using crafting?

I understand what you have said and reading what you wrote now i'm sort of hesitating to give GW2 a proper go because of that unknown future and the direction Arenanet might go. I love MMORPG's of course for me WoW was a big impact and still is, i can't avoid comparing the game of this genre to WoW because of everything that represented over the years but lately with each passing day i feel less and less interest in WoW, i stopped caring for retail - currently Dragonflight - for years now, if it wasn't for classic i wouldn't be playing it, so we currently have wrath of the lich king classic (many say it was the best expansion but the issue as always in WoW for me is that i feel behind especially if i stop playing for a few days or even weeks), Classic Hardcore (die and start over - not for me), a few days ago they released Season of Discovery (Vanilla+) and Classic Era (Vanilla), while i see this with good eyes meaning that WoW today can be played by different people with different interests or ways to play the game i also fear that this might fracture the player base and you already see in forums, reddit etc, players having intense debates than often cross the line, another thing is that i fear that Blizzard with so many different versions of the same game might jeopardize the quality of the product. To me personally the issue is, i think it is, a lost of interest over time for the game in general. I have GW2 since it's release in 2012, all those years ago i bought it because i had a few friends heavily invested in the game, the famous quote "this one will be the wow killer" often surfaced in our conversations, years later all of them were playing WoW, and at the present day none of them plays WoW anymore. I often think that i have been an idiot and disrespectful for GW2 in the sense that i never gave the game a proper go, just to see if it suits me and me it, and i bought it in 2012. I don't know what Arenanet has in plans for the future of this game, i don't know if they interact with the community in the sense of feedback and all that, i saw this with Blizzard that the more they grow and become a bigger community they seem or feel more distant of their community, i hope that in a way Arenanet is still a bit better at this...or maybe they are not. I have searched in a few websites and even on many videos GW2 is considered one of the big 5 or one of the most popular and good MMORPG's out there, i hope that Arenanet doesn't wish to ruin that. I really want to give this game a go, at least a fair chance to show me what it has to offer, probably it has many hours of content to offer (i have the base game + all expansions with the exception of Secrets of the Obscure), so i guess that i have many hours ahead of me and if the game pleases me i would love to stick around but what you said just leaves me fearing for a grey future for the game.

Hello everyone. So i started playing GW2 a few days ago. I'm really enjoying it so far, i have a question how long can it take to reach max level? I'm curious because some people have said that it can be done in 24 hours which is very impressive if this is true. But isn't 24 hours a bit short for a leveling journey? Now the topic at hand, i noticed a few days ago that Arenanet now sells Hero Points in the gem store, now i don't think that this will disrupt my gameplay but i wonder where Arenanet will go after this and how much more impact NCSOFT has in their decisions for this game's monetization. I have read on these forums some replies from people saying that GW2 is P2W because we can simply swipe our credit card and buy legendary weapons and armor...is this true? I'm not saying in any way that GW2 is P2W but i had a bad experience with Lost Ark, i went in there at release after being in the waiting line for so long and i was loving the game but one i got to see it's true nature and P2W and how they incentivize players to throw money at the shop to buy materials so that you can craft to have a chance to upgrade your gear and weapon (and even then you are not guaranteed an upgrade because the craft can fail/break), they actually tell players that's actually better to spend money in their shop for materials than to actually grind them...and this happens in a MMORPG. So i wonder how things really are in GW2? I know and understand paying for convenience but how deep it goes? I'm just curious about this and to read the opinions of people that know more about this game than me and that have been here for a long time.

Why you feel like the game less and less respects you as a player?

So now a new player like me can just buy them with cash without the worries of exploring the world and find them... It looks and seems kinda mobile gaming monetization.

I never mentioned P2W or that had an impact on my gameplay. We can discuss and debate about things right or do we have to stay silent just because many see this as a simple convenience for alts for example? So you say it's trivial...i see so a game that was originally based on world exploration can, bit by bit, become trivial, or introduce new ways to avoid random POI's...i wonder if one day GW2 will be like WoW, where most of the people sit afk in a capital just waiting for that "enter instance" pop up.

Good for her. But now a new player instead of exploring the world of Tyria can just buy the hero points at the store right? They don't need to complete challenges in order to obtain hero points.

Ok so it's already in the game, cool, so now why sell Hero Points?

I'm not saying that this is that but seems that could be Arenanet next step. The WoW token is an item/currency you buy on the cash shop with real money and then when in game you can convert it to gold.

Being a new player that recently decided to give this game a proper go it's very disappointing to see this. I don't know if this decision on their part will not hurt the game in a medium to long term. What's the next step? Arenanet adding their version of the WoW token?

From what you have written what i understand is that you seem divided with the state of the game. I mean even a game like GW2, a MMORPG, has to find ways to keep players busy, giving them things to do, to collects (yes), to grind even in a horizontal progression game like this one, unless you wish that, after a while and people have reached their goals, we all stand in Lion's Arch staring at each other's gear, skins and so on. My understanding of this game is limited but i bet hat even in a horizontal progression game you will find bits of verticality, just like WoW and others have their bits and pieces of horizontal progression. I came here with the clear notion that GW2 isn't perfect or the best MMORPG in the market, i also bet that many of you here think that it is the best MMORPG and that's fine, we can have different tastes and opinions. For example i think that GW2 is underrated, i think that they could do a better job at marketing the game but it's their choice, and if this game still manages to have a big player base or to be considered one of the most popular MMORPG's out there it must be because they are doing something right.

Hello @DoomNexus.5324 i thank you for your reply, you guys so far have been super friendly and helpful, i guess that i start to see why some say that GW2 has one of the best communities in the genre. This leads to that final part that you mentioned about toxic individuals and you are right they are part of many online games, maybe every online game has them, i played FF14 for around 700 hours a few years ago (i loved that game mainly for the story) and even there i have come across a few of those, i was quick to ignore them, i guess that here i can do the same. Now I'm just starting in GW2 but i still think and come in with the mindset from WoW, looking for the next "?" quest marker, and stuff like that, i think that for a while i will have that on my head since i played WoW and other similar games that had that system. One thing that i have been wondering, since many say that GW2 puts a lot of focus in world exploration, is if there is vertical exploration and by this i mean finding underground areas like caves, mines, maybe a big underground area where we can fight a boss or find secrets, i also noticed that when going in water we have underwater gear and combat so i wonder if there are big underwater areas to explore or even bosses and other things we can find there. This game, even at first glance, seems rich in many ways.

Hello @Danikat.8537 thank you for everything you have said, there's so much to it and probably i will be coming here to eventually remember things that i will forget. I wanted to ask a few more things, some of it you talked about above but in terms of the world, well when i started my first character last night the first thing i did was to look at the map, at first sight it seems huge but in games like this one i always wonder how well the devs have created it or designed it so that players can explore, i often think that in game of the genre we lack vertical exploration, what i love in WoW, for example, is that in the classic world vanilla to lich king the world is big, it is but it also feels like it's worth exploring and sometimes i will find caves, mines, i wonder if GW2 offers underground areas to explore not only for rewards but to give depth to Tyria. I'm really glad that with each new expansion they keep adding more gear and weapons that players can aim to obtain. For a big part of GW2 history i always heard and saw a few videos where people would come together to face a big dragon or another huge foe in the open world, do the devs keep adding new world bosses? I really don't mind if they don't add raids to the game anymore but you mentioned that now we got fractals and i also know that there are the so called strikes, i guess that's Arenanet version of raids and dungeons, i hope they keep adding those as well with each patch or at least expansion, i bet that many love to do those. When i read posts like yours and other people that have reached out to me on reddit the more i realize that unlike other games in the genre, GW2 places a lot of stock on the fact that the player is free to do any content he/she wishes to without feeling limited or that those limitations can me surpassed fairly easily, unlike WoW where the main goal of the game and for the majority of the player base is to always aim for the next gear and weapon upgrade, personally i feel that the world in WoW, especially in old expansions, is worth exploring, you can find so many things that you wouldn't expect but i think that all of that is regarded as trivial or a waste of time compared to what one can do to raise the item level. In WoW i love the raids and the dungeons, i think many are good and pleasing, maybe GW2 can also provide me that, the think about GW2 is that the devs seemed to care to make a MMORPG feel alive and relevant by working many parts of it like dungeons, raids, world exploration, puzzles, crafting, lore and so on...i can be 100% when saying this but it feels that unlike WoW where the focus is the gear treadmill, GW2 tries to offer more variety, this isn't a critique, on the contrary for this alone i applaud Arenanet, i wish that more games MMORPG's or not would do this, especially online games. This can be a risk for Arenanet as well that they are trying to do so many things, to offer a rich and diverse experience for players that one can wonder if the quality of what they deliver is good. I bet that if i looked into i would find people unhappy with GW2 or wishing that it could be better in some areas, again no game is perfect not even WoW that has been the MMORPG titan for years. I realized that GW2 at this moment is in it's 4th expansion (base game + 4 expansions) this looks like a lot of content for one to go through for sure but then i have this doubt, am I late for the party? Does Arenanet have plans to add more expansions after Secrets of the Obscure? I ask this because in a few reddit pages some people talked (this was like 1 year even 3 years ago) about a GW3, i mean i don't have an issue with this, I'm barely starting to take my first steps here, so people see it with good eyes but others say that making a new MMORPG is risky and has a financial cost plus a less positive cost if things don't go well. Personally i think that if GW2 wasn't viable to Arenanet anymore they wouldn't have launched End of Dragons and a year later or so Secrets of the Obscure, in a mmo population website GW2 is considered one of the most played MMORG's in this day and age so i guess that the game is doing good. Oh i forgot to ask you, about the crafting you were already clear that it is viable and it's not here just for show and that's great, can we use crafting to make gold in the auction house? I did notice that GW2 has a auction house and in WoW i loved to waste time gathering or crafting to then sell it for profit, is this doable in GW2?

Ok first of all I want to apologize probably many of you have seen and read topics like this more than once, I have to admit myself has a coupe of posts about this or very similar but I want to look at this as a fresh start, for me personally and the other topics are somewhat old so I want to start from scratch. I have to also admit that for years, on and off, but for years I played World of Warcraft, I haven't touched retail WoW since Shadowlands and since I took my first steps into Classic (vanilla, burning crusade and currently on lich king) I completely lost interest in retail. The issue here is that for several reasons, IRL, wanting to play/try other games at times I don't play WoW at all for a few days, sometimes a new raid tier comes and I miss it as an example in Classic Lich King people are doing the Icecrown raid nobody is doing Ulduar so I will not be able to do that content unless I try and put a group together, that can take hours or more. Maybe WoW isn't for me, I don't know, maybe one day if they allow players to do content again from vanilla and forward I will go back to it and try to keep up to experience all that content. I don't know exactly what it is but I feel like I should give Guild Wars 2 a proper go, a real chance to see if the game will fit me and I it, now I have to say I have GW2 since it's release, I bought the game's physical copy in 2012 but I never gave it a chance, I leveled a mesmer back in the day for like 10 levels or a bit more but I never got to see or experience what this game is about. Now please understand this, my brain, by force of habit and games that i played, is used to this treadmill of always pursuing the next upgrade or best piece of gear, weapon and so on, now writing this I am in no way saying that WOW is better over GW2, I'm sure that both games have their positives and negatives, nothing is perfect in life but please talk to me like I'm a hamster in that treadmill because I am even as I am writing this post. One element that I see or that many people mention that sets GW2 and WoW apart from each other is the way that the devs design the progression, in WoW the progression is vertical, we are always seeking the next gear, better weapons, the next raid tier or dungeon which award better rewards; Guild Wars 2 seems to be designed around horizontal progression. In a game like GW2 what does horizontal progression entail? To this day I don't understand very well what it is and it's impact in a MMORPG like GW2. The times I ask around about what makes people wanting to keep playing GW2 or to login every day they mention quite often the fashion wars, now I like that I mean I love to have a character that looks good in my eyes, I understand that GW2 has a cash shop for cosmetics and quality of life stuff, i don't have a issue with that, the game has to make money so the cash shop and paying for expansions isn't a big deal for me, WoW asks players to buy the latest expansion, a monthly subscription and also has a cash shop. My thing is that while understanding the existence of a cash shop for skins I also love to get gear and weapons that look great by just playing the game, by killing a raid or world boss, quests and so on and not just by a swipe of a credit card. If I'm not wrong people mentioned before that in the game itself we can get a lot of gear and weapons that look great, that's awesome, but I wonder do they keep adding more with new patches or expansions? This last point is maybe the one that has made me to always be reluctant to give this game a proper chance. I love MMORPG's, I do think that a game in this genre if it's really good people should feel like login in every day and go about their business and not just play the game when a new patch is about to it or a new expansion about to drop. I guess what I'm talking about is player retention, how the game and the devs actually make it worth and appealing as to people wanting to play this game every day? I understand the fashion wars but is there more to it? Maybe this isn't a nice term to use here but is there another end game for players, to keep them interested? Now I think that raids aren't a thing anymore, I think they were replaced my something else and I think that there's also dungeons, do they add more? The level cap has been the same since the game released so we can't go beyond level 80, I don't have an issue with that at all but can I get a new set of gear or even a new weapon? In these games I love crafting, in WoW the crafting in classic feels much more important compared to what they had in retail for several expansions. Is crafting worth getting into in GW2? I probably have more questions, I don't remember them now and also I the post is long enough and I'm really sorry for that. Thank you for reading this.

Some of us just love to get that cool gear or weapons from looting bosses and such, from raids, dungeons and so, some prefer it that way instead of converting gems to gold to use on a cash shop. You like it the way it is it doesn't mean that it couldn't be better/improved for others, the fact that you like it as it is now doesn't make GW2 GOTY material.

I don't know if they are great to compete or not, I just think that saying that WoW is trash or that it is for children doesn't help at the time that someone like me, friends etc could have an interest in starting playing GW2...but it is what it is, i guess some people in here prefer it that way and for GW2 to have somewhat a niche community instead of new people coming in, checking the game out and some of them ending up staying eventually improving the income money that the company would have that could help to do more content. It's all great that people only want a grown up audience here, on the other hand i think it would be interesting to see and explain as to why, since 2018, GW2 has lost to old school Runescape in terms of player numbers.

So the strikes now, which have replaced raids, only have 1 fight/boss?