What is your favorite map in Guild Wars 2 so far and why?

[Tukaram.8256]

To go along with the other topic of most hated map, I thought I would ask what is your favorite, and why?

For me it is a toss up between Crystal Oasis and Snowden Drifts. Mostly because they were the most memorably fun. They are also the ones I have done on more characters, because they were so fun.

I will have to say that Grothmar Valley ranks pretty high, but is too small to really count. It is almost as good as GW pre-searing. The pre-searing was the best map/game of all time.

[Randulf.7614]

Copied from that thread

• Frostgorge - the perfect core map. It literally gets everything right from it's look, to its variety, to it's organic feel, to a classic World boss
• Draconis Mons. This just shows off what Anet can do with verticality, exploring nooks and crannies, lots of events, natural beauty and just original design. By far one of their best ever maps
• Silverwastes. For meta simp;licity and storytelling it is perfect. None of the other ones touch it for gameplay, accessibility and longevity
• Sandswept. Prob one of the most naturally organic maps from a geographical design. Simply breathtaking in scope for the small size, with wonderful little stories that take place across the relaxing sea village, through to the Djinn's story, right through to nice little attention to details and Inquest stories around the cube.

There's plenty more I love too - Labyrinth Cliffs, Bloodstone Fen, Mt Maelstrom, Queensdale, Lornar's Pass, Gendarren, Amnoon, Verdant Brink, Grothmar. I certainly like way more than I hate

[Solanum.6983]

Visually I'd have to go for Dragon fall more specifically Melandru's Chalice. It's my Favorite place in the game.After that I'd say Auric Basin and Elon Riverlands.

[hugo.4705]

Metrica province, I like the variety of asura labs: underground, surface, floating in sky, in caves, huge complexes... a thing I enjoy particularly is that the map is full of chain events: assault on luminate/funhouse, exploring oola and calx lab, clearing thaumanova, participing in the contest near rata sum entrance.

The ambient dialogues are also pearls: progenies insults at the college, skritts experiments , dr blent oozes... ton during events.

This is really to me, the more asura-ish map, sandswept is good second, because it doesn't have that experimenting/serious atmosphere, golems are speaking in metrica, not in sandswept and that is really sad. Even when dying, many asura normally say something before dying, but again, it's too silent in sandswept.

The different places, labs and houses are full of furnitures, assets and the outposts are crowded. I like a lot the hexane jumping puzzle. And overall, no map felt like metrica, apart draconic mons and maybe, brisban wildlands.

[Josiah.2967]

Bitterfrost. So much to do. Decent rewards. You never feel dragged around. The perfect zone to balance and variety.

[Cuks.8241]

Tangled Depths closely followed by Verdant Brink. TD especially is a masterpiece of map building.

[Witch of Doom.5739]

That's a tough one. I love the ruins in several Ascalon maps that make me nostalgic for GW1. Desert Highlands has a bit of everything -- desert, mountains, sand, snow, water, trees -- which makes it interesting.

[thehipone.6812]

Sandswept. Ticks so many boxes. Variety of scenery. Has a "chain-type" meta. Various inquest shenanigans and some unique events (e.g. fishing and 3-golem monte) and heart stuff (magnetics lab). Has a loot fiesta meta with decent boss fight. Map offers tons of unique loot, from the inquest skins to the hydra head minis that give you a reason to come back and try to get them all. Related to - reasonably fun bounties. Plenty of stuff to gather, with decently valuable stuff all around the map. Volatile magic and karmic ret drops that mean you can just do whatever and kill stuff and you'll at least get some guaranteed profit. Access to ascended trinkets and 20-32 slot bags. Puzzles. Arguably the best heart vendor item - prototype position rewinder.

[Taril.8619]

Wayfarer Foothills.

It's a nice map. There's some greenery, snow and ice. With a nice mix of everything from Shiverpeaks - Minotaurs, Dredge, Jotun, Sons of Svanir.

It is also quite nice to look at. All of the vistas are places where you can just get a good view anyway.

The map is so good, I 100% it on all of my key farmers for the chance for another key as a reward.

Honestly, my only qualm about it is how awful the Help Lodge Keeper Kevach heart is. With the keg tossing and water splashing being buggy af and the wurms and kegs from the cave being worth like 0.00001% completion. (Also, defeating the Veteran Wurm event doesn't even give any progress to the heart)

From the HoT/LW3 maps I'd say Bitterfrost Frontier.

It's a nice zone. Icy and cold, like my heart.

It's also quite lucrative, with all the chests and the boss rush meta event.

My qualms with it are the utter uselessness of the Svanir Hive, Wayward Cave and The Bitter Cold areas are and the Hot Springs event. Like, outside of the literal 1 story quest segment that takes you to the three areas they're literally pointless (Svanir Hive is useful up until you've no reason to visit the heart vendor) and the Hot Springs event is fairly chaotic for little reward (Not even particularly good heart progress either)

From PoF/LW4 maps, Desert Highlands.

It has a nice mix of biomes. You've got the initial deserty area. To the east you've got brand crystals (With NO brandstorms!). To the north you have mountains. To the north west you've got snowy mountains and to the south west you've got the beach and waterfall.

There's a number of interesting things in the zone too. Such as the random village of Choya that is a heart, for some reason. The exploring of the ruins over in Fortune's Vale. The strange building in the Enchanted Bluffs. The Tomb of the Primeval Kings...

My main qualm with the zone is it's laggy as all heck... Makes it really not fun to do anything there. (Also the Jeppa escort is buggy too, where after the 3rd stop she'll teleport halfway across the map for a few seconds. Which has actually caused her to die one of the times I was doing the event... Meaning I had to rush across half the map to the middle of the event in the Awakened camp in the Salt Flats and revive her within the 1 minute timer AND then she teleported back to where she was supposed to be and so had to run all the way back there before she got killed again...)

[Croc.1978]

Verdant Brink. It's pretty much perfect. Incredible verticality, great events, nice loot. I just wished people would play it more.

Draconis Mons. For its sheer epicness.

Auric Basin. Same verticality as VB, but this time with buildings. Plus one of the best and most popular metas in the game.

[BlackLotus.8349]

Core Tyria: Timberline Falls - Perfect atmosphere for me; this has been my favorite zone since the game came out.HoT: Auric Basin - This zone has so much going for it. It is easily navigated compared to other HoT zones, has an active and rewarding meta event, and aesthetically I love the golden colors around the Exalted areas.PoF: Desert Highlands - This is tough for me because I really like all of the zones in PoF for various reasons, but I picked Desert Highlands in large part because of The Tomb of Primeval Kings being there. I enjoyed that dungeon a lot in GW1 and getting to visit it again was awesome. Also the main story that takes place inside the Tomb and the Mists was very enjoyable for me.

I cannot pick any Living Story zones as I've barely dipped my toe in the water so to speak with that content. One day I will get there when my friend and I are ready to explore it together.

[AliamRationem.5172]

Tangled Depths is my favorite, for all the reasons other players hate it.

[Fueki.4753]

There are many maps I like and refuse to rank them.

QueensdaleLornar's PassSiren's LandingDesert HighlandsElon RiverlandsJahai CliffsThunderhead PeaksGrothmar Valley

[QuirkyDM.2351]

Verdant Brink for it's great story off of the start of Heart of Thorns. There's so much going on there that its perfectly as a follow-up to the crashing of the Pact fleet that I wanted to experience all the meta events. And also for upping the difficulty in the game and making it a place to feel a real sense of accomplishment when you managed to master the area.

I'll agree with hugo.4705 on Metrica as well. There's no place else that gives the impression of a magic-based race and environment. I started as Asura, but there's a lot more air of mystery and awe when experiencing Metrica as a low level player than there is with the other starting player areas which are more generic and less mystical.

[Raknar.4735]

Sandswept Isles: Didn't like it at first because I dislike Asura/inquest stories, but when I had to farm diffluorite I realized how much I've skipped the first time around. It became my favourite map. It contains hidden things like the wyvern boss and one of the best utility items (the personal port one).

Bjora Marches: Light Puzzles, Drakkar and the general story direction. Many dark undertones with NPCs giving up and jumping off of ledges etc.

[Jokubas.4265]

Oh, good question! I don't talk enough about what I like around here. I don't think I can pin it down to a single favorite right now, but maybe a few things I like is better than nothing. :P

Grothmar Valley was a lot of fun. I liked how it managed to do some very different things, like barely have a single enemy on the map, but still feel like a real part of the game. It's not easy to leave enemies out of a game designed around action and combat, but Grothmar Valley pulled it off for me. I really felt like we were taking a break from all the world saving and doing some celebrating.

The Silverwastes is not the sort of thing I'd like on the surface. The barren landscape isn't particularly inviting and saying that the enemies can be annoying is an understatement. However, the way it all just built up to a single meta was something that was really cool at the time. It also felt like a direct improvement on the Marionette, which was an interesting idea that was hampered by the fact that a single troll or simply less-skilled player could ruin the meta for everyone. I don't find myself in the Silverwastes often anymore, but when I do I often find myself helping to finish off the meta just because it pulls me into it so naturally.

Dragonfall was a really cool map on several levels. How it tied into the story was very nicely climactic and it built upon a lot of what I liked in the Silverwastes. The variety in the lanes made them feel even more organic (despite the actually artificial nature of their placement) and gave more replay value to working on the various achievements for the regions. Simultaneous boss take-downs stress me out and the early experiment in a bonus boss rush really drove me nuts originally, but that didn't stick with me as much as the zone and its meta as a whole package.

Bloodstone Fen may have been the first season map, as we know them now, and thus was very small and not really used for a lot aside from its relevant gimmicks, I nevertheless had a lot of fun with those gimmicks. There were a few times I wanted to grind... was it Bloodstone Dust? for something, and the way that there's always something to do close by in Bloodstone Fen made it easier for me to turn my brain off for that grind, but I mean that in a good way!

Verdant Brink was an amazing introduction to Heart of Thorns. It was also unfortunately the peak for me, but I do think the entire expansion had beautiful zones. I've never seen a game really capture the idea of being so deep in a tangled jungle and it made me realize how basic environmental design is in most games compared to what it could be (especially in fantasy). Verdant Brink just happened to balance everything very well. The multiple layers were mostly clear here and I never got lost for long, it just made for a massive map with several very different things going on at the same time. The meta could be annoying depending on how many people were in the map, but it was still a really organic way to roll out the concepts of the expansion to you and really let you feel each bit of progress you were making with your gliding and mushroom Masteries.

Finally, I want to give an honorable mention to the whole of the Crystal Desert. Individually they don't have elements that stand out the way that the maps I listed above do, in amazing metas or awe-inspiring landmarks, but not every map needs those (exploring all of the launch maps was a huge draw to the original game and they weren't designed around any gimmicks). Instead, what these maps did well was just be wide-open vistas that were a blast to explore. Certainly the mounts helped with that, but the entire point was to design them with mounts in mind. Being a fan of the art and architecture of Elona certainly contributed. It was a pleasant surprise in Guild Wars 1 and I was happy to return.

[Katelynn.6593]

The Grove. It's beautiful and nothing will hurt me there except my own stupidity.

[Harak.8397]

That's going to be tough.

Core: The Ascalon zones ( all of them ) I remember them from GW1 as verdant and beautiful/charred black and dead. It was nice to see them recovering along with the various ruins of place I once knew dispersed among them. Plus, I like fall and their entire color palette is keyed to that season.

HoT: Verdant Brink. It's super well done, the verticality of it made it awesome to explore once I got better at gliding. It's like 3 zones in one. If anything, I wished they had developed the lower part more so reaching the bottom did not automatically mean death.

PoF: Difficult to say for different reasons. I did not really enjoy that expansion passed the mounts. I'm going to say the Desolation. It was fun to explore and the vistas ( in the true sense of the word ) were spectacular, if well... desolate. Riding through that ancient cataclysm had its particular charm.

Living World: Dragonfall for the meta and the sheer coolness of being on top of this huge dragon. Special mention to Bloodstone Fen and Thunderhead peaks. I would have liked about 200% more exploration of the depths of the old keep and far less goofing off outside in the zap brandzapstozaprm.

On this note, I'd love to see a 100% underground map with old ruins, traps, puzzles and relics, where darkness plays a role and mystery is around every corner.

[Jokubas.4265]

A tangentially related thing I also want to give credit to is that I recently grew to really appreciate the waypoint fast travel system in this game.

I've always liked it, but common knowledge is that fast travel makes worlds feel smaller and hampers the immersion. I recently realized (although I don't remember what triggered it) that I think Guild Wars 2's fast travel system actually benefits its world in comparison to similar games rather than the opposite.

The reason why, I think, is that without instant travel, game developers are actually encouraged to make their worlds smaller anyway. Several early MMOs experimented with some truly large and open maps for the sake of immersion, but they mostly ended up abandoned for all that space being wasted and just making the game tedious. It's often critiqued in other MMOs that no one is in any maps but the most recent one or two. Now, a good chunk of that is due to the way other MMOs handle leveling (and level caps) compared to Guild Wars 2, but the waypoints have a subtle yet profound effect on that as well. Maps in most games are now small so that you never have to spend too much time between what's actually content, and most people are going to hang out in the absolutely most relevant content because no one wants to take horse paths back and forth to distant corners of the world for thirty minutes every time they play.

Guild Wars 2 found a way around that. There's always the initial travel time to unlock the waypoints the first time around, so you always get the original context for any journey you're making, but that's perfect. By just allowing us to teleport at will after that, travel times are no longer an issue, so the maps can do whatever they want and it's not a drawback, it's a feature. When anywhere in the world is just a click away, you can spend more time enjoying those locations instead of hesitating to move around too much because how much time it's going to take you. Instant travel is more common these days, but still not on the broadly and consistently-applied way the waypoints are in Guild Wars.

This also means (for the most part), for the sake of this thread, I can like any map at any time. I don't have to just say "well, I liked this map when it was relevant".

[zealex.9410]

The hot maps for me personally both visually and for meta reasons, if i had to rank them i would go with DS, TD, VB and Auric basin.

The rest either i find have a cool meta or are pretty (mostly pretty tho):

Syren's reefBitterfrost frontierSandswept islesDragon Fall

[Yggranya.5201]

All of the core tyria maps are enjoyable, more or less. Except maybe southsun cove. Of course, i really like snow and ice so the shiverpeaks are the best of the best.

[b k.1648]

Grothmar Valley. It is a bit of a themepark map, but it's got a good ambience to it. Elon Riverlands is a close second, but there's not much reason to go back there often.

[AliamRationem.5172]

While Tangled Depths tops my list of favorites, I have to give credit to several other maps that have been mentioned in this thread.

Verdant Brink is a fantastic map! I feel it is a great example of a map being well-integrated with the story. The event chains during the day cycle on that map are just perfect! They're fun and varied and they go hand-in-hand with the story. On top of that, the map is just plain cool and unique! What other map is like Verdant Brink (or any HoT map, really!)?

Auric Basin, of course. Even people who can't stand HoT in general tend to appreciate this map. It's beautiful and the meta is quite popular. It's also great if you're a solo player who enjoys combat as some of the most dangerous enemies reside here, including plenty of champions-on-demand from the hero point challenges!

Grothmar Valley. This map is both visually stunning and fun! The metal concert is one of my favorite events in the whole game! Honorable mention to the chef event. It's not exactly compelling gameplay, but I love the voicework on the chef!

Bloodstone Fen. The events here aren't anything to write home about and the map is tiny, but I'm just gonna go with cool factor here. It's another one of those maps where I don't feel like I've played through it 10 times before the first time I see it (like most of core!).

[coso.9173]

Orr!All of it.So creepy and twisted...

[Rex.3602]

Most of the central Tyria maps. They are pretty and have lots of things happening to make the world feel alive, including events. Also Dragonfall. I like the variety of landscapes in that map, and the events are relatively challenging and rewarding.