I want to give this game a proper go (Sorry if it's a long post)

[Splat.7981]

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.

[Danikat.8537]

5 hours ago, Splat.7981 said:

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 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.
 

5 hours ago, Splat.7981 said:

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?

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.)
 

5 hours ago, Splat.7981 said:

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?

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.
 

5 hours ago, Splat.7981 said:

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?

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.

[Splat.7981]

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?

[DoomNexus.5324]

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.

Edited November 28, 2023 by DoomNexus.5324

[Urud.4925]

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.

[Splat.7981]

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.

[Splat.7981]

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.

[Urud.4925]

I'm a bit divided, you saw correctly. And I think that also GW2 is in a middle-age identity crisis. The game started with very innovative ideas (and after 11 years it is still surprisingly innovative), but unfortunately got the attention of a small part (or smaller part than the game deserved) of MMO players. I also tried the game briefly, 8-9 years ago, but then forgot it for  1 year.

In the first 2 expansions there were also collections to do, sure, but they were normal collections, weapons that you could buy with map currency doing auric basin, tangled depths... and you wanted to play those meta anyway because they were fun, regardless of the achievements (today they are not fun anymore, due to the power creep, but they are still played). Then with Icebrood Saga we started to receive useless rare collections, fire & icy ascended weapon collections (the ones in Thunderhead peaks were actually fun, because you had to use the weapons for some mini-achievements; in IBS they were just filler). It was the point where ArenaNet was busy with the next expansion, and they dropped chores to keep us busy: understandable, at that time. But it's not understandable when you release an expansion. If you need to ask players to play 100 times a convergence, put rare ascended drops in strikes tied to an achievement, or RNG drops in meta events like in Gyala Delve (while in the past you could complete the collections with map currency), it means that you are scared that players won't play the content long enough before the next release. Ironically, players stop to play that content even sooner, once they notice the RNG. If the content is fun, you don't need to force players to play what you want. People keep playing old meta, raids and (some) strikes even if they already completed the achievements, because they are fun (or have good rewards). This is how a game should be. And how GW2 was: it offered a lot of "horizontal" options and you could choose what to play. Now we have boring collections to complete and once we do it, we often don't touch that content anymore and go back to the old one.

However, for the business, adding more chores and forcing people to farm content is a winning move, because most of the MMO players want exactly this. I'm aware that my opinion represents only a niche of players and that the game today thrives because it started to target players that play MMORPGs in the "traditional way". And I'm happy because it has the success that it deserves.

[Donari.5237]

The other part of the lack of vertical progression is that you can still get better, you just don't need new gear to do it.  You can set up better builds, get more practice in, learn to jump-dodge, challenge yourself with soloing group content.  Basically you improve your play skill rather than your character's stats.  A good player with exotic stats can run rings around an inexperienced player in full legendaries.

[Buran.3796]

   GW2 has plenty of vertical progression, since in one hand each expansion keeps adding masteries and specs which makes your character and builds sttronger, and also because when you already have your main in full ascended gear you discover that it will require different sets fir different game modes and roles, so instead of crafting more ascended sets you'll probably want to move to craft legendary gear, which is also shared with your alts and is int¡finitely more convenient than ascended but also way more grindy. So the game has PLENTY of things to do if you want a character which is not only capa¡ble but also wants to swap in a blink or change skins, runes and sigils at 0 cost.

[SpacePenguin.9731]

There's a load of vertical exploration in the game too. Most maps have caves around the place even if some of them just contain a few spiders. But the best map in the game, Tangled Depths (part of the Heart of Thorns expansion), is basically a huge muddled up cave system. Even 8 years on I still get lost on this map, though I still visit regularly for the big meta event. Some people think this is the worst map in the game but they are just a bit confused!
Underwater exploration was a nice idea but it's a bit disappointing and we haven't really seen any big new water areas for a while. There's an underwater meta event in Seitung Provice (part of End of Dragons) but it's not very interesting (though people still play it as it's a pretty reliable source for a valuable item used for crafting legendary weapons).

[Nabbut.7480]

Short answer would be your character doesn't get stronger but content keeps getting harder so you have to improve your brain instead of gear.

Progression in story is locked behind several puzzles you can't solve with farming for better items.

[Nash.2681]

On 11/29/2023 at 2:37 PM, Urud.4925 said:

I'm a bit divided, you saw correctly. And I think that also GW2 is in a middle-age identity crisis. The game started with very innovative ideas (and after 11 years it is still surprisingly innovative), but unfortunately got the attention of a small part (or smaller part than the game deserved) of MMO players. I also tried the game briefly, 8-9 years ago, but then forgot it for  1 year.

In the first 2 expansions there were also collections to do, sure, but they were normal collections, weapons that you could buy with map currency doing auric basin, tangled depths... and you wanted to play those meta anyway because they were fun, regardless of the achievements (today they are not fun anymore, due to the power creep, but they are still played). Then with Icebrood Saga we started to receive useless rare collections, fire & icy ascended weapon collections (the ones in Thunderhead peaks were actually fun, because you had to use the weapons for some mini-achievements; in IBS they were just filler). It was the point where ArenaNet was busy with the next expansion, and they dropped chores to keep us busy: understandable, at that time. But it's not understandable when you release an expansion. If you need to ask players to play 100 times a convergence, put rare ascended drops in strikes tied to an achievement, or RNG drops in meta events like in Gyala Delve (while in the past you could complete the collections with map currency), it means that you are scared that players won't play the content long enough before the next release. Ironically, players stop to play that content even sooner, once they notice the RNG. If the content is fun, you don't need to force players to play what you want. People keep playing old meta, raids and (some) strikes even if they already completed the achievements, because they are fun (or have good rewards). This is how a game should be. And how GW2 was: it offered a lot of "horizontal" options and you could choose what to play. Now we have boring collections to complete and once we do it, we often don't touch that content anymore and go back to the old one.

However, for the business, adding more chores and forcing people to farm content is a winning move, because most of the MMO players want exactly this. I'm aware that my opinion represents only a niche of players and that the game today thrives because it started to target players that play MMORPGs in the "traditional way". And I'm happy because it has the success that it deserves.

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. 

On 11/29/2023 at 9:00 PM, Donari.5237 said:

The other part of the lack of vertical progression is that you can still get better, you just don't need new gear to do it.  You can set up better builds, get more practice in, learn to jump-dodge, challenge yourself with soloing group content.  Basically you improve your play skill rather than your character's stats.  A good player with exotic stats can run rings around an inexperienced player in full legendaries.

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.

[Cyninja.2954]

I'm going to go in a different direction with my recommendation. Eveything others have said is true, vertical progression, horizontal progression, etc.

Here is the main crux, as you've said yourself, players are usually conditioned and trained in one way or another or even just molded/shaped by their previous experiences. No amount of rational discussion or arguments is going to magically make this go away and some of GW2 biggestvstrengths setting it appart go against some of the molds in this genre.

What you are essentially asking for is a step by step guide/suggestion how to break away from that mold. Here is a couple of pointers I would give:

1. Embrace this games combat system. That's easier said than done but once you find something that works for you and have gotten used to this games flow, it can be really fun. It's not uncommon for players to return to other MMOs to find those games slower and boring (in the combat department)

2. Give yourself short-, medium- and longterm goals. This game lacks the traditional carrot on a stick that many players are used to. Setting up things to work towards can help break that mold. At the end of this transition you'll find just as much, if not more enjoyment in building, playing and mastering many different builds/classes/roles

3. Change your approach to gaming. There are quite a few time dependant things in this game. Be it meta events ar certain fixed times, certain windows for specific content or just waiting a few days to get some materials crafted. The sooner you learn to be patient and work towards multiple goals simultaneously, the faster you will be able to appreciate things getting done when they are done

4. Socialize! This is the be all, end all. Yes, being that loner can be easier and fun, but having others to play with usually will be more fun. Not only that, other players might be working towards similar goals or might have ideas/inspirations for what you can do, helping you with the earlier points.

Otherwise just give it a go. 

[evilcat.6817]

Crafting: If you dont feel like you have to do it, you dont need to. You may want some crafting levels for daily achievments. There is a case that you could craft a lot of ascended armours for all your alts.

Unlock 9 classes with 3 specs. And get enought gear/skill tabs. So you can just switch to different builds and really have fun with experiments.

Or just buy expansion once a year, have some fun with the story, maybe do some new builds, and then switch to other games. You can cheat on GW2 with other games.

[Vayne.8563]

5 hours ago, evilcat.6817 said:

Crafting: If you dont feel like you have to do it, you dont need to. You may want some crafting levels for daily achievments. There is a case that you could craft a lot of ascended armours for all your alts.

Unlock 9 classes with 3 specs. And get enought gear/skill tabs. So you can just switch to different builds and really have fun with experiments.

Or just buy expansion once a year, have some fun with the story, maybe do some new builds, and then switch to other games. You can cheat on GW2 with other games.

Easiest crafting for dailies is just saving some luck up and upgrading it to a higher level of luck before consuming it. Done on artificer.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Vayne.8563

[Splat.7981]

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?

[Nash.2681]

4 hours ago, Splat.7981 said:

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

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.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Nash.2681

[Vayne.8563]

On 12/4/2023 at 7:30 AM, 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 feel this is absolutely rose colored glasses. I could list community outrage all along, particularly in Guild Wars 2, almost from the start.  When ascended gear was introduced only a few months after launch, the community uproar was huge. A lot of people saw this as a betrayal and it was very early on in the piece. There was resistance to many of the things Anet introduced, including the megaserver.  I don't think Anet has lost anything resembling what you're saying. I think your honeymoon relationship has a different emotional attachment than your I'm married for 11 years now relationship.

I remember the outcries from the casual community when HoT came out and I remember playing a game that you couldn't finish the last story because it was so buggy that it was impossible. I remember a downhill falling damage bug that persisted for years. Culling in WvW that made it almost impossible to play. There was resistence by some people to the megaserver, particularly role-players who felt betrayed. Raiders felt betrayed when Anet said they weren't going to make any more raids. The list of people who got angry at Anet over the years is pretty long and none of it meant that the programmers of the game didn't have passion, or weren't trying.  

We've always been a divided community and different groups of people want different things. Depending on what group you're in at what time, you might very well feel betrayed by Anet, or think the game was phoning it in.  There are so many examples of this sort of thought process over the years, that it's hard to imagine that anyone who's been paying attention thinks this is some sort of new idea. But the older a game gets, the more likely it is that people will feel this way.

[Splat.7981]

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.

[kharmin.7683]

40 minutes ago, Splat.7981 said:

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 understand this point; however, as GW2 is F2P/B2P, you're really not risking too much investment in getting on board.  With no sub fee, you can decide how much time to dedicate to playing GW2 and not worry about wasting money and if you end up taking some time away, everything you've built up will still be relevant when you return.  /shrug

[Vayne.8563]

47 minutes ago, Splat.7981 said:

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.

I don't understand your point. Every MMO I've ever played has players that have expressed similar sentiments. Other people, however, express different sentiments. Saying oh look this guy said something, and you're willing to accept that, because of your experiences in WoW. Other people are saying other things. The game is highly rated almost everywhere it's rated, if you bother to look at fan ratings. Of course, some people won't like it or they'll be disatisfied.

No one can guarantee you any game is going to last five years.  It's not possible. Anything can happen, including game companies getting bought out and the game closing, due to whatever circumstances they decide are big enough.

I preordered Landmark from Sony Entertainment, Daybreak bought out Sony's game divison and the game never got out of alpha before they canceled it. There are no guarantees.

I watch TV series that get canceled, and I'm still waiting for some book series that never got finished.

But the game is doing fine, and plenty of people are saying they like it. Seems to me, the issue here is you want guarantees no one can possibly give you. That surety of the future doesn't exist in anything. It doesn't mean we stop trying things.