Not what i was expecting at all, feels nothing like the original game and tbh my first impression is that it doesn't work.

Everything seems to evolve around those dynamic open group quests when something happens and you have to follow set goals, apart from this mobs are few and far between.

The whole exploration thing is wearing thin as well, its not like the old game you had quests to do or could farm mobs for xp and loot, the new game is made up of you basically exploring zones to hit achievements having found everything and at each exploration node you usually have to do one of those dynamic open group quests, apart from this i can't find anything else to do.

I think to sum it up, i'll give it a go but i my first impression is that i don't like it, its way too far from the original game, they have taken everything that made Guild Wars good and removed it.

I am seriously disappointed.

I love it. It's one of the best MMO's I've played and one of the few I'm actually sticking with alongside EVE Online and Star Trek Online (the latter only because it's a Star Trek game, not because it's particularly good). It's everything The Old Republic should have been but wasn't. Essentially it's just good fun and fixes everything that was drastically wrong with the original Guild Wars.

Nice article that sums up some of the reasons why I like it so much:

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/10/05/the-heroic-habits-of-guild-wars-2

They have indeed ditched a lot that made Guild Wars 1 unique. There is much that I think could have been done better, or differently. The spawning of mobs is a real bummer for story continuity, it just doesn't seem right. There are no or very few other players at very high percentage of the events I have attended. The World v World v World PvPvE area is a balancing nightmare, most won't even bother looking into it or leave fairly quickly once their world is losing. Then the skills being tied to the weapon is a bummer for me, I generally end up wishing I could select the skills I wanted as in GW1.

Some of it is incredibly difficult. Some of the jumping puzzles and dungeons have beaten me - my control isn't anywhere near what it was when I was playing Tomb Raider 1. And if you fail it tends to be back to the start if nobody else is there.

Then the bias seems to be entirely on milking as much money as possible out of those willing to pay for tat.

I admit, it isn't the shining jewel I asked Bacon about several years ago, before buying a pack with Prophecies and EotN, ending up with me having 3 accounts and 30 characters.

But somehow it has just enough to keep me occupied when I can play it. TBH I needed to shell out on a Razer Nostromo and Naga for it to be even remotely playable for me, a normal mouse/keyboard would have meant that it was virtually impossible for me to control a toon.

I was hoping that the elementalist would play better than it does but it is rather too squishy for my preferences. The Mesmer is that in name only, although decent in PvP. Neither the Warrior or Guardian are true tanks. Thief needs you to keep mobile too, although it is more an assassin. The Necro is very survivable, if you have a couple of minions and keep a little mobile. Despite misgivings I found that I preferred it to the other classes. The Ranger is probably the best of it's kind, it has a pet to tank, high damage output and can do some melee too.

Which leaves the engineer, a capable gun user with a lot of packs and that add to it's capabilities. It's just a shame I can't get used to it.

Its been another week or so and i have gained 5 levels only, anyone thats knows me well knows i love these games and i'm usually hooked from start to level cap but i just can't play it.

I come home from work now and i'd rather just do anything else than play it, its quite sad really, the end of another good game franchise, and as you pointed out Serious it is literally all about milking the people who will pay for all the gimmicks, sad that a company who was so community focused can pull a trick like this.

They have just had a massive 3 day weekend special event, and allowed a load of people in to 'test the waters' free. I was going to put up an offer but I'm glad I didn't, been a lagfest throughout.

Friday there was so much lag people couldn't see where friend or foe was, your only option with AoE damage was just guesstimated a position and hit it.

Saturday was, to a large extent no different.

Sunday was attack them in their base, not easy when you have huge bosses which can roll and crush everyone in their path, even worse when your first sight of them is after they have killed you...

Then I got to the area where the end chest reward was supposed to be. I got separated from the main group and killed by a horde of smaller foes. I slaughtered literally dozens of them before being overcome. I tried to re-spawn at a point and the thing locked up. I finally restarted the game after several minutes and then, when I got to the chest location, there wasn't one.

So pissed off with the weekend event and the lack of reward.

The fact they have already introduced a free weekend is a bit shocking and shows that sales must be dwindling, tbh though what do they expect, its nothing like the original, i really hope it flops just to put the point across.

Quote from: Bacon on November 19, 2012, 18:51:25 PM
I really hope it flops just to put the point across.

Seriously? A bit selfish there, don't you think? "I didn't like it so I don't want anyone else to enjoy it".

I don't think that's how he meant it to come across, more to get the developers to re-evaluate the direction they have gone in should there be a third installment.

Quote from: Clock'd 0Ne on November 19, 2012, 22:45:37 PM
I don't think that's how he meant it to come across, more to get the developers to re-evaluate the direction they have gone in should there be a third installment.

Guild Wars 2 is far more successful than it's predecessor at the moment. Obviously time will be the real judge but at the moment far more people are enjoying it so I fail to see what they have to re-evaluate.

It is far more successful because of the success of GW1.

They are trying something that in many ways is ground breaking, but it has many issues too.

Things like World V World V World is brilliant but severely flawed. People who play WvWvW are moving frequently to the more successful servers, leaving the lower ones in severe difficulty. Few players means that they get overrun easily. Players get despondent if their world isn't doing well and don't bother playing WvWvW. The whole thing runs 24 hours a day, for 7 days, then resets. That means the servers who have lots of people who can put in long hours and preferably from many different time zones have a drastic advantage. Those who rely on just the evening European players get screwed as soon as the working peeps go off to bed or to work in the morning.

Guild Wars 1 had missions and quests. Missions being major repeatable quests, these are part of the main story line that you can do as often as you wanted. You can also go back and do the quests you chose to avoid after you have finished. The Guild Wars 2 personal story line isn't like this and as such loses a lot of repeat play options. The only way you can experience the bits you chose not to do is either do it on another toon or with someone else.

Once you have completed the main GW2 storyline the main things left are farming for items and doing WvWvW, or other PvP. Because of that I don't think it has the same longlevity built in as the original.

These are issues I pointed out to MARA (my guild) before the first beta test. They were obvious then and are still obvious now.

They have just introduced new weapons and armor. They also have crafting for these kinds of item. Unfortunately the crafted items are very slightly less good than the new items and identical to things you can buy from NPCs for gold, reputation points or various tokens. That means it is often hardly worth crafting stuff to sell and quite often the market price is so low it is much more profitable to sell the materials than make things for sale. Some items you have to buy to make things are extremely expensive, in order to make an 8 slot bag you just need a few materials, to make the largest 20 slot bag you need the materials and a rune of holding that costs 10 gold, a very large sum in GW2 and this dictates almost the whole price of a 20 slot bag, you can buy them for 11 to 12 gold depending on type.

The cooking profession has to either go out and find lots of plant nodes to get materials, buy them from the in game market or in some cases from NPC traders. There is no farming profession to produce foodstuffs, a rather strange option.

Events keep falling over and some items are disabled. Exactly when they are going to fix them is unknown but they are adding new content regardless.

Quote from: Quixoticish on November 20, 2012, 09:15:08 AM

Quote from: Clock'd 0Ne on November 19, 2012, 22:45:37 PM
I don't think that's how he meant it to come across, more to get the developers to re-evaluate the direction they have gone in should there be a third installment.

Guild Wars 2 is far more successful than it's predecessor at the moment. Obviously time will be the real judge but at the moment far more people are enjoying it so I fail to see what they have to re-evaluate.

Time to prove me wrong.

And ps. Clocked explained it how i meant it, not how you read it.

They have to constantly re-evaluate stuff, once people get bored or otherwise finish with the content there is often little to do in an area. They then move on to somewhere else. If there is nothing else they find interesting people often abandon the game for another one. People who stay on will often pay for extras, which means those who leave are lost potential earnings.

They made separate areas for each of the races to level to 80, this might have been a mistake as it would have been better to limit the paths a bit and provide more lvl 80 content.

One of the things they shouted about when in beta was the fact that there will be no dedicated healers, you have to avoid damage by dodging. This is fine until you find many foes can freeze you in place for a short time. One boss does so with an 'ice crystal' which makes you helpless, no skills work. He then drops one hit kill AoE damage on you. I went in there - once - haven't been back.

Back to this.

They have finally set up a price to transfer between worlds and set up guesting. They have also fixed some of the bugs. That's the good news.

Bad news is guesting only works on same side of the Atlantic, so EU can't guest to US and they can't guest here, no matter where you actually are. Most of the bugs are still there and loads of events are still ending up stuck. In WvWvW a lot of guilds jumped server just before the deadline, resulting in the worlds being totally unbalanced.

Then I'm regularly hearing complaints about certain professions in WvW, most complaints are still about the Thief. Get one on you and they go invisible, from that point they can attack you and return to invisibility repeatedly. They can even kill you outright without you seeing them.

Biggest let down of 2012 for me.

I returned to GW1 and it seemed a LOT of people had the same idea.