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Splat.7981

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Posts posted by Splat.7981

  1. 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.
     

     

     

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  2. 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 🙂  

     

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  3. 59 minutes ago, Farohna.6247 said:

    IMO, the storyline in GW2 is not as compelling.  It improves over time, but it's a lot weaker.  There really aren't Wrathgate moments or the feeling of urgency to get to the end baddie.  But it has many moments of humanity, camaraderie, hopelessness, and triumph that still keep it moving forward.  Please don't let the wordiness and slow pace of the core story or living world season 1 drive you away in your personal story lol. 

    Don't take the story super serious, and just go with it.  It's subjective of course, but it's grown on me over the years.  

    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?  

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  4. 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?

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  5. 18 hours ago, Farohna.6247 said:

    WoW you really needed a guild or a solid group of friends to show up regularly to be able to do older content with, people who wanted mounts or achievements.  I had the good fortune to have a guild with the people I played with daily, and was able to do many things that were not new content.  I played WotLK upon release, some of my all time favorite story and content for any game.  

    GW2 can have some of the same issues...but you can join up to five guilds that help fulfill multiple roles for you.  The looking for group tool is very effective, as well as asking on a map or in a city.  The community is very helpful, and one of the best aspects of the game.  Dailies and achievements and how they try to tie in new content to old maps also helps a lot to keep areas active.  

    Core Tyria is a free game....you pay nothing, just play.  If you want more, pick up some expansions when they are on sale.  Remember it is not WoW, it is its own game.  The combat, maps, open world content, and gorgeous mount design are some of the best aspects that often outshine WoW.  Take a breath, relax, and just enjoy adventuring.  

    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.

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  6. 1 hour ago, Farohna.6247 said:

    Hello!  I'm really glad you're trying out GW2, asking some great questions, and I hope you have a great time!  My time in WoW continues to be some of my fondest gaming experiences, some friendships that continue to this day, and I miss it sometimes.  I don't miss paying $15 a month and that feeling like I HAVE to log in or I waste money as well as I'll get behind on gear, etc.  I haven't played in a few years so bear with me if anything I write seems outdated in regards to WoW.O

    Oh yes, there is probably someone sitting in one of the cities in WoW for the past fifteen years. Some never leave their perch lol.  

    GW2 has a ton of content.  If you liked dungeons in WoW, try fractals and dungeons.  Fractals have dailies, and they're usually preferred, and they have a tier system of difficulty.  PvP and WvW have dedicated players in both as well as casuals just doing their daily routines.  Try strikes (one boss mini raid) or raids.  I find them, overall, easier and messier than WoW's, but that's the shining star for WoW... they're raids, that's the end game for PvE, you're gearing so you can do them.  There are challenge modes for more difficulty.  GW2 shines with open world ...lots of events, metas, world bosses, and general exploration.  

    What keeps people logging in.... subjective of course, everyone has their own reasons.  Legendary crafting is a big one, people working on collections for them.  It's a very social community, so a lot of players simply are there for spending time with friends.  There are a ton of achievements, many people enjoy working on those for self satisfaction.  Pretty sure there are people who never come out of WvW and never move from their computer.   To summarize, GW2 is a lot of choose your own adventure...it very much encourages you to try a little bit of everything to find what interests you ..it's almost too open ended.  So try it all, don't try to do it all in one day.

    It's easier to step away from than WoW.  I played the other like a second job lol.... probably not a good thing.  GW2 I find a lot kinder on my personal life, I can play all day, I can skip a day, and not feel like I'm missing out or getting behind.  World of Warcrack is that constant running on the mouse wheel, GW2 is more relaxed or as stressful as you make it.  More about skins and plumage, less about your gear score.  

     

    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.

  7. On 12/3/2023 at 5:15 PM, Farohna.6247 said:

    Some legendary weapons you can buy in the trading post.  Armor you can not.   Legendaries are not a stat advantage over ascended armor...they are a convenience or skin with effects.  They offer nothing that makes you more proficient or better than anyone else. 

    The items in the black lion gem store are convenience items... absolutely none of them are necessary, and everyone values them differently.  Want a pretty skin, fine.  Want to have some infinite tools if you farm a lot and hate vendors, sure.   Do they make you a magically higher DPS player...not at all.   Unlocking waypoints is controversial, but it really is a waste of money.  You can join a hero point train or buy them in WvW already, so yeh it's a gimmick.  

    Not pay to win.   Do not stress about leveling, enjoy the journey...it's an MMO.   There is no gear grind like in some games.  The end game is a ridiculously wide variety of things...not just raids or arenas.  Most importantly have fun.

    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.

  8. On 12/3/2023 at 5:24 PM, vesica tempestas.1563 said:

    Good example @Splat.7981 I took a 2 year break awhile back to play ESO.  When i cam back the ascended gear I had was exactly as competitive as it was when i left, the power ceiling had not moved at all.  Ascended gear drops 2 a penny from every game type; pvp/wvw/ open world/raids etc.  As for Legendary gear (ultimate long term objectives), stats = exact same as Ascended with the additional convenience of not having to pay the cost to  change stats that you do with Ascended.

    As suggested above, don't worry about getting to max level and enjoy the journey (including the fun if finding hero and mastery points.) this isn't wow in that everyone will be at the exact same power level now as they will in a years time, so don't rush past great content!

    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 🙂 

  9. @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? 

  10. On 12/3/2023 at 8:30 PM, Nash.2681 said:

    GW1 and the first 10 years of GW2, though certainly not everything was perfect and there always had been some questionable decisions, all in all I always felt like the game was made with passion, with good ideas behind (even some weren't that well executed, but still...), that the Dev's actually tried to think about what would be good for the game as a whole and tried to make stuff most or at least many people enjoyed.

    Sadly this feeling dwindled with more and more half-baked content being released, with SotO being the pinacle of it (calling a new LS chapter "expansion" just to milk money out of players, yet not being able to deliver it right away but over the course of almost a year, while devaluating some BiS items (yes, talking about the legendary rune fiasko)). Also I can see absolutely no direction for the future (not that Arena.Net was ever good at setting and pursuing long term goals, but currently to me it feels like an all time low).

    Don't get me wrong, there's still a ton to experience and plenty to enjoy for new players, but to me (as a dedicated long time player of the franchise) the last two years were a huge disappointment as a whole and Arena.Net lost all its credit.

    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.

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  11. 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. 

  12. On 12/1/2023 at 11:26 AM, Nash.2681 said:

    I want to emphasize this for I feel quite similar. Another thing to note is, that other studios over time naturally copied a lot of innovative and QoL features, so there's less "standing out of the masses" if that makes any sense. One big plus Arena.Net always had for me, was that I felt respected as a player in every way. With the latest additions to the game, I feel like this is less and less the case. 

    Very good and important point. The difference in performance of players that understand the game mechanics, know what they do and practiced to play well is enourmous compared to the average player. The ratio is roughly about 1 good player equals 10 average ones.

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

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  13. 1 minute ago, Ashen.2907 said:

    Sure, I suppose. But:

    1) How many of them are actually challenges rather than just a POI with a different map icon?

    2) Why would a new player do so when getting those HP by playing the game is trivial?

    3) Why should we care that someone else paid real money to skip something that is trivial, has no P2W impact, and has no impact on our own play?

    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.

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  14. 2 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

    Whenever the question, "why do they," or some variation, is asked, the answer is almost certainly, "money."

    In my wife's case it will allow her to finally unlock all elite specs on her massive number of alts.

    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.

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  15. Just now, Ashen.2907 said:

    That has existed in GW2, is at the core of the business model, since launch.

    You buy gems with real money and then can use the currency exchange to trade them to other players for gold. You get gold, they get gems to spend in the black lion store. It allows players with more time than money to get everything they might want by just playing and allows players with less time, but more money, to do the same...all while funding ongoing development of the game.

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

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  16. 20 hours ago, Urud.4925 said:

    The GW2's horizontal progression, historically, was a way to praise how in this MMORPG you weren't forced to play constantly to keep up with the veteran players. It attracted a different kind of players, especially in the West. It kinda is still like that, at least for important things, but it started to change in the last 2 expansions, probably due to the influx of many WoW refugees indeed (or the lack of good ideas/development time, so chores increased year after year).

    In the past for example, ArenaNet used to mock games that asked you to gather hundreds of items, just to keep you busy (they made an NPC in Ember Bay, with a stupid fetching quest for example, as mockery). Nowadays GW2 has a lot of weapon collections, random rare ascended weapons that are also part of a collection, and a lot of RNG drops tied to achievement points, and quests that ask you to repeat the same group content 100 times, like the recently added Convergences. I guess that that NPC in Ember Bay is mocking GW2 as well now. If we speak about power though, it doesn't take much to reach the cap, for a new player. There are still things that have been added in the last 2 expansions that make you slightly stronger, but it doesn't take much to farm them. Ascended gear for example (the best gear, stats wise) can be acquired even doing daily quests now. If you care about achievement points, you must be prepared to spend thousands of hours and gold. But if you only care about being strong, it doesn't take much (which means that no, you are not too late to start playing; also the player-base increased in the last years, so I don't see the end behind the corner, although I wouldn't be surprised if they began to think about a new project, that would be totally normal).

    It really depends on what you like (liked?) about WoW. If you like to grind to become stronger, then GW2 is not a good choice, WoW is better. If you like to grind to get some achievement, like legendary armor doing raids, GW2 has some something to offer (but it doesn't make you stronger, that's the point, and personally the skin is not even good). It has a generally more adult player-base, with people that play 2-3 hours per day, after work, and less students that can play for 5-6 hours (like I used to do in MMOs that I played before). This being said, casual doesn't mean noob: the level of difficulty in raids is a bit lower than WoW (it heavily depends on the boss), but higher than FFXIV.

    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.

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  17. 20 hours ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

    Flipping/crafting and selling on tp is very doable in GW2 and you can really lose yourself in the process of min-maxing profits. I've accumulated well into 5-digit gold amounts playing the trading post. Even while farming some other stuff, making even more profits while waiting for my items to sell/get new supply.

    As most of your initial questions have already been answered I would just like to add that you should really push through to level 80 and play endgame content before making up your mind about gw2.
    Coming  from GW1 I was pretty disappointed after release and left at level 50 or so. After a break I also gave it another chance and got to know my then guild leader, got to 80 and had a blast. GW2 has been my default mmo ever since. The focus on horizontal progression also really helps as I never fall behind for current content and have to go raiding to get on-par with current power levels or kitten like that.
    The biggest benefit of this system, however, is that no content gets completely obsolete so you definitely can still benefit from all expansions. All of them gives new perks like in HoT you can learn to glide (which you can do almost everywhere in the game), with PoF you get mounts and in EoD you get a skiff and can fish (maybe less interesting tho but the expansion is quite good).

    And ignore the GW3 calls, Anet is still very much focused on GW2 (and renewed their focus after they were forced to abandon side-projects during the last living story chapter) and iirc they've already announced that there's also another expansion in the works after Secrets of the Obscure, yes.
    Some people are just super unhappy with how GW2 evolves and the neglect for competitive game modes (sPvP and WvW have been pretty much the same for the last 8 years+ with only minor additions and tweaks) and/or are tired after spending thousands of hours in the game, so they want Anet to start from square one and have a fresh start with something new. Not really realistic for many many reasons so yea.. not really worth giving a kitten about this in my opinion.
    There has been some reason to believe they were working on GW3 but right now it's highly unlikely. And even if they are working on a new game in the future, it would very likely not be a successor to GW2 but maybe a (mobile) spin-off or something like that. Not a replacement for a game where people have already poured in thousands of hours and possibly also thousands of dollars to continue doing the exact same thing. At least I don't think Anet's next game would be an mmo.

    So far every expansion and virtually every newer map has a meta event with a pretty big world boss at the end that matches the theme of the map, often times with varying amounts of preparation (pre-events) and difficulty. Since these require a lot of players you'll most likely find groups in LFG whenever the meta event is up and players still do them as they typically give good rewards either through volume or the chance of an extremely rare and valuable drop. Another benefit of keeping the maximum power level steady, as - again - most content is still very relevant. Which is great for variety. I still sometimes join the RIBA farm, a farm rotation in the Silverwastes, which was released in 2014 and is actively played throughout the day.

    A lot of players coming from WoW do have an issue with the lack of gear treadmill in the endgame tho, so I'd recommend to maybe just getting to know your class, the game, maybe play through the story, etc. Just go through the game at your own pace and try to immerse yourself.
    Once you get to the expansions a great goal to achieve are unlocking the masteries. This includes the gliding I've mentioned earlier and improving your mounts for example.

    Another big goal (or a series of big goals) is legendary equip. It has the same stats as ascended gear but it does give you a lot of "quality of life", especially if you are changing builds/gear a lot (for example for raiding or in WvW). With legendary weapons, armor and trinkets you can just change stats, infusions and sigils/runes on the fly without any extra consumables or anything. Plus, legendary items are available to all characters on your account simultaneously, no need to move account-bound equip between characters or have 3 different armor sets for the same char in your bank.
    Obviously very good when you want to do fractals/strikes/raids with multiple characters/roles.

    Personally, I wouldn't recommend to immediately start raiding tho. Raids in GW2 were mainly designed to carry on the story and to introduce legendary armor. Fractals and strikes offer a better gameplay experience in my opinion. Fractals start off quite easy and you can adjust the difficulty level as you play through them. Early strikes are not very difficult but are still quite enjoyable imo while strikes with EoD ramp up the difficulty a bit, especially with challenge mode.

    That being said, just do what you like. You can also always just hop into PvP or WvW for example. There are some meta builds online but I've actually never really played meta. As long as you aren't dogshit and fulfill your role and/or play the objective reasonably well, nobody is going to take an issue with you playing your own stuff. Apart from maybe some toxic individuals but I think they are present in any game and just need to be ignored. One time, several years ago, I was playing pvp in plat 1 or 2 and I played a build that was considered super unviable at that time (a variant of it later became meta until it was hard-nerfed). After a 10 match win-streak or something I joined the next match and some idiot just threw the game because they refused to play with me running that build. Annoying but eh.. it is what it is.

    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.

    • Confused 1
  18. 17 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

    The short answer is that vertical progression is about replacing what you had with a better version, and horizontal progression is about getting more options.

    In GW2 you will reach a point where your character is not going to get significantly stronger, but that doesn't mean there's no goals to aim for or new things to unlock. Importantly though it does mean they're almost entirely optional, so you can focus on what you want to do, not what you have to do to unlock the next thing. For example raids are generally seen as an extension of dungeons in that they're also instanced group areas but they're much harder than dungeons (and require bigger groups) but it's entirely possible to play raids without ever doing dungeons. It's the same with everything else, you could jump straight into the new expansion and the biggest problem would be not understanding references to previous stories and characters.

    You've mentioned one type of goal, which is collecting new skins and other cosmetics, but there's others as well. In terms of progression the main one is probably masteries, which are new (usually non-combat) abilities. For example each mount has a mastery track which lets it do new things or improves on what it does. There's a mastery track for gliding, ones for Riads and Fractals (which are like mini dungeons) and ones for each expansion which give you new abilities to use in those maps. None of them increase your stats but they all give some type of upgrade.

    There's also achievements to aim for (ranging from very quick to long-term, multi-step collections which are effectively side-quests) areas of the game with their own progression systems like Fractals and WvW and also just completing stuff for it's own sake because it's fun to do.
     

    Yes. For example here's the lists of new armour sets and standalone pieces and new weapon sets and weapons added in End of Dragons, and the main page for the expansion lists other types of rewards added as well. There's equivalents for all the other expansions as well (although stuff from Secrets of the Obscure is still being added to the Wiki).

    One thing I think is very different to WoW is the majority of in-game items are not random drops, if you rely purely on drops you'll only ever get a tiny sub-set of the skins available. Many of them are purchased from NPCs with region-specific currencies, or come from completing achievements, crafting and other sources so you need to look out for what's available, or use the Wiki to find out where to get things.

    Gem store items are more visible, and some people say they're better than what you can get in-game but of course that's subjective (personally I usually prefer in-game items) but they're the minority of items. (With the exception of mount skins, annoyingly very few of them are obtainable in-game, but for armour and weapon skins and other stuff there's a lot of options.)
     

    See what I said earlier about horizontal progressiom meaning everything is an option. One way some people describe it is the whole game is end-game.

    I think one of the big differences from WoW is that there's a lot to do in open-world maps even after you've levelled up and got the best equipment. Dynamic Events are a big part of this game - they're like quests but they'll start, progress and end on their own schedule. Some are stand-alone things, some are part of short chains (for example you might help a researcher collect strange rocks in one event, then defend them while they cast a ritual, then fight the earth elemental they accidentally summoned) and some maps have 'meta-events' made up of lots of event chains which span the entire map and need multiple coordinated groups of players (up to about 150 people) to complete them. That's a big part of the end-game for a lot of people.

    There's also various types of instanced areas for small group: dungeons, raids, Fractals and stikes, which are all slightly different. There's PvP of course, and World vs World which is large-scale PvP fighting over objectives like supply camps, towers and keeps, kind of like being one of the units in an RTS (which makes me wonder why WoW didn't do it), a lot of people enjoy doing the main story which has a continuous narrative running through the base game and all the expansions and which can be played solo or with up to 4 other people. Probably other things I'm forgetting as well. And yes, all these areas have their own unique rewards.
     

    It is, but mainly so you can craft things for your own use. It's a reliable way to get top-tier equipment and a lot of collections require crafted items. It's possible to make gold by crafting as well but that can be tricky. Crafting is very accessible so most players will fully level at least a few crafts, which reduces demand for crafted items and because the Trading Post is shared across all servers and the vast majority of trade goes through it there's a lot of competition for selling most crafted items. Profitable stuff is typically time-gated or uses annoying or hard to get materials - people are paying for the convenience.

    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?

    • Sad 1
  19. 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.

    • Sad 1
  20. 38 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

    Why should it directly compete with WoW?  They are different business models with (probably) different goals.  I'm glad that GW2 isn't a WoW clone.

    Or, you could convert gold to gems and not pay anything.  That's what I expect a lot of players do.  I know that it works for me.  I've only paid for the original game and expansion content; other than that, I've been converting gold to gems for years and I have all of the cosmetics that I want.  So, yeah, I've "earned" my cosmetics in-game by simply playing.  I've not had to spend any money every so many weeks, unlike in WoW where I'd be forced to pay a subscription for all of the "free" stuff you mention.

    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.

    • Like 7
  21. 2 hours ago, Puck.3697 said:

    some people get weird regarding WoW. I know people in rl who have a perception WoW is for children 😂😂

    I can agree with the sentiment, gw2 doesn't need to copy WoW. But it does need to compete. 

    We have systems that can directly compete with WoW systems, we have abandoned projects that could be reiterated and started. 

    Anet just doesnt seem to great at competing tbh. 

    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.

    • Like 1
  22. 12 minutes ago, Dayra.7405 said:

    The difference between raids and strikes is mainly one fight per strike vs several in a row per raid. The last raid was released June 11, 2019. Since then we got strikes (5-7 (depends if you want to count cold war and forging steel as strikes or not) in IBL, 5 in EoD+LS1, 2 in SotO).

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

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