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Guild Wars 2 is an MMO RPG developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft. It was released on 28th August 2012.
The first Guild Wars was released back in 2005 and due to the focus on competitive PvP and the game being instanced outside of resting areas it was said to be a Competitive Online Role Playing game rather than an MMO. It also managed to differentiate itself from most MMOs by having no subscription fee; by allowing players to achieve max level and dive into high level PvP without a major time commitment.
Guild Wars 2 is an MMO because the majority of PvE isn’t instance based and instead you find yourself exploring gameplay areas with many players. The game also follows the original’s payment model of Buy 2 Play with no subscription and periodic releases of expansion packs. The game has an in-game store if you want to buy extras, although the first’s store was outside of the game and cash only. Guild Wars 2 cash shop items are bought using “Gems” but you are given the option to convert in-game gold in to Gems so technically you can get anything you want with in-game currency. That said I haven’t seen the exchange rate so maybe it would take a heavy time commitment to get anything worthwhile this way.
I am not a fan of MMOs as they usually incentivise you to do certain tasks over and over to the point where you are bored stiff whether it is through experience/gold per hour calculations or trying to get the best gear. Although Guild Wars 2 does incentivise some tasks over others it also provides options for those who aren’t so progress minded to level. I say this because I believe that Dynamic Events provide the most experience so those who want to rush to the level cap will try to do them all the time.
Dynamic Events are scripted events that trigger at random occasions and on many occasions one event leads to another. The event that is next triggered in sequence may also change dependant on whether you complete or fail an event e.g. Ogres attack a village and if you fail to stop them they take over the village and kidnap some of the villagers which triggers an event to save them. The point of Dynamic Events was to make you feel like you are making an impact on the world as a player, but ultimately they don’t do a great job of this because it takes a while to gain enough experience to move to a new higher level area so you end up repeating the same events over and over. Also because the events are rarely triggered by an NPC it is sometimes difficult to see the context of the event. It is pretty impressive that they all have context but you do have to be there at the right place and time due to their random nature. I like how the Dynamic events bring about a sense of community between the players and because other players can’t affect your loot drops or experience you wish everyone to do well. The events are also dynamic in that they scale to the number of players participating so that they don’t end too quickly. However, I do feel that events get easier with more players and I find it confusing that some events can’t be soloed while others can.
Apart from Dynamic Events there are also Renown Hearts which can be seen as a side quest where an NPC needs your help and you have to fill a progress bar to complete them. You may have to feed animals on a farm or throw water on villagers to cure them of disease. Sometimes you have to talk to an NPC so that they can give you a device or morph you into a different form e.g. test out a grenade launcher device or transform into a wolf to howl spiders away. I found these to be fairly tedious as you end up doing mostly the same task over and over, but each of these has their own context and you obtain a letter from the NPC after completion with a reward.
I do like how Guild Wars 2 rewards you with exp for exploring the world so you aren’t always focused on killing enemies all the time. It also helps the game show off the environments which look like their concept art. Each area has Points of Interest which may have useful NPCs, Skill Point challenges which allow you to unlock new abilities and Vistas which are vantage points to look at the view around you. If you manage to find 100% of Points of interest, Renown Hearts, Vistas and Skill Point challenges in an area you get a significant amount of experience and some loot. I was sceptical when I heard the phrase “Jumping Puzzle” but I have to say that I found getting to some of the Vistas quite challenging so I enjoyed doing them.
If you don’t wish to level by questing, killing enemies or exploring you can also do crafting to gain levels. Each area has resource nodes scattered around allowing you to gather food items for cooking, mine ores to make jewellery/weapons/armour and cut down trees for logs to make into planks to make weapons and upgrades. These nodes are instanced to yourself so you don’t have to worry about competing for resources with other players. This means that you can travel across the map collecting resources to craft with and you don’t have to fight at all to reach max level if you are dedicated to doing so.
The amount of detail that has gone into cooking recipes is pretty cool and I've read cases where some players have even tried them out at home. The game doesn’t give you quantitative details in ounces, but the ingredients are all there. Crafting seems to be the fastest way to get the best gear in the game so although players could save up money or do dungeon runs, performance driven players probably don’t feel like they have much of a choice here. In Guild Wars 2 I managed to become a master cook, which goes to show how good this game is for escapism; forget tree people and giant dragons in this crazy world I can cook!
World vs World is a game where 3 servers fight each other over control of buildings and buffs so that the winning server gives buffs to all the players on that server for a week. The buildings are Keeps, Castles, Towers and Supply Camps and every 15 minutes each building owned provides points for that server. Supplies are taken from Supply Camps by Doylaks to nearby owned buildings so that players can use the supplies to build defence upgrades such as Pots of oil to pour on players who try to break the gates down, reinforce the walls and build trebuchets to fire at attackers. Those who are attacking buildings can use supplies to build battering rams to take down the gates as auto attacking takes too long and other siege weapons to break down the walls or attack the defending players. WvW has its own events, points of interest and vistas if you want to do PvE inside the game. When entering WvW you will be up scaled to max level but you are disadvantaged if you enter at level 1 as you won’t have unlocked as many skills and weapons/armour and your characters traits will give you more advantages at max level. I have enjoyed the mass scale of WvW but sometimes I feel like it isn’t balanced very well and that it comes down to greater numbers. However, when the numbers are balanced it is fun to communicate with your team to organise what to attack and defend.
Structured PvP works like it did in the original Guild Wars and you are automatically level 80 with access to all skills and the highest level armour, weapons and traits. In sPvP the only game mode they have available at the moment is Conquest where your team has to fight for control over 3 capture points on various maps which have differing environmental objectives or events such as an enemy spawn that gives buffs and points to your team on last hit. Your team has to be aware of how many should split up and which points to guard or when to involve the map objective. For example at the start I decided to go over to the enemy side of the map and managed to get the last hit on the enemy spawn whilst they were attacking it giving our team an extra buff and points for the team. I had a lot of fun in sPvP even though there was only one game mode. This mode is helped by the enjoyable combat which feels more action oriented when you can dodge any attack, although it still uses the standard tab targeting of most other MMOs.
When you create your character your race will decide what your starting area is and you will be asked some questions about your character which will affect the storyline quests you start off with. What sets the storyline quests apart from most other MMOs is that you can choose what you want to do to so solve the issues of your leader NPCs. The amount of choices allows you do many different missions even when playing the same race again. I thought most of the characters in the personal story were forgettable, but I did like a couple of them which made it memorable when one of them got killed off in my story. I felt that the personal story wasn’t very personal and that the game didn’t do a great job of getting me attached to my character or what I was doing.
The races you can pick from in Guild Wars 2 are Human, Norn, Asura, Sylvari and Charr. I do like that each races starting areas have cultural differences like the Asura having their own version of chess and the Norn having a game where you battle over Kegs on ice and you can knock them over to gain possession which reminds me of the football game Red Card which had no rules and allowed you to get in a punch-up without consequences.
You can also take part in Dungeon Story Mode or Exploration mode where you enter in an instance of five players and fight creatures and bosses and sometimes there are loads of traps to avoid. I like the dungeons as you feel essential in a limited team and the game has some varied ways of defeating bosses and in explore mode you also get to pick from multiple routes to face different bosses. The fact that every class can perform the role of dps, healer or tank makes it so that you aren’t waiting around for a specific role in a party which makes forming groups easier and quicker. The problem with Dungeon story mode is that they have made it give good rewards the first time you complete it and then poor rewards every time afterward which means that you may find it difficult to form a group as players only do it once.
In summary, I enjoyed finding out the different strategies and cooperating with other players to overcome the Dungeons in Explore mode the most. I’ve had fun in WvW and sPvP but like the MOBA genre there is only one mode and it doesn’t take long for it to wear on me and balance is an issue in WvW. I also find it strange that they had free for all and team deathmatch modes in the first Guild Wars but not in the sequel; not even 1v1 Duels. I appreciate the design changes that improve on the structure of a typical MMO such as not having to visit or go back to an NPC for quests; having your own loot and exp so you don’t feel like you are competing against others; multiple storyline branches; being put on a level playing field in PvP; being rewarded for exploration and no dedicated tank, healer or dps roles making grouping easy so you can form random groups with new people all the time; being able to craft to max level and no subscription helps for players who feel like they are wasting money when they aren’t playing the game. There is still a fair amount I haven’t covered such as underwater combat and missions; Mesmer, Engineer & Guardian classes; one & two handed weapon combinations, traits, cross skill combinations, the trading system and scripted NPC conversations but these also make the game stand out from other MMOs.
I feel that Guild Wars 2 isn’t a major evolution of the genre but it is a step in the right direction. If you don’t like MMOs you still might hate it, but although this isn’t saying much I haven’t played a better MMO than this.
8.5
The first Guild Wars was released back in 2005 and due to the focus on competitive PvP and the game being instanced outside of resting areas it was said to be a Competitive Online Role Playing game rather than an MMO. It also managed to differentiate itself from most MMOs by having no subscription fee; by allowing players to achieve max level and dive into high level PvP without a major time commitment.
Guild Wars 2 is an MMO because the majority of PvE isn’t instance based and instead you find yourself exploring gameplay areas with many players. The game also follows the original’s payment model of Buy 2 Play with no subscription and periodic releases of expansion packs. The game has an in-game store if you want to buy extras, although the first’s store was outside of the game and cash only. Guild Wars 2 cash shop items are bought using “Gems” but you are given the option to convert in-game gold in to Gems so technically you can get anything you want with in-game currency. That said I haven’t seen the exchange rate so maybe it would take a heavy time commitment to get anything worthwhile this way.
I am not a fan of MMOs as they usually incentivise you to do certain tasks over and over to the point where you are bored stiff whether it is through experience/gold per hour calculations or trying to get the best gear. Although Guild Wars 2 does incentivise some tasks over others it also provides options for those who aren’t so progress minded to level. I say this because I believe that Dynamic Events provide the most experience so those who want to rush to the level cap will try to do them all the time.
Dynamic Events are scripted events that trigger at random occasions and on many occasions one event leads to another. The event that is next triggered in sequence may also change dependant on whether you complete or fail an event e.g. Ogres attack a village and if you fail to stop them they take over the village and kidnap some of the villagers which triggers an event to save them. The point of Dynamic Events was to make you feel like you are making an impact on the world as a player, but ultimately they don’t do a great job of this because it takes a while to gain enough experience to move to a new higher level area so you end up repeating the same events over and over. Also because the events are rarely triggered by an NPC it is sometimes difficult to see the context of the event. It is pretty impressive that they all have context but you do have to be there at the right place and time due to their random nature. I like how the Dynamic events bring about a sense of community between the players and because other players can’t affect your loot drops or experience you wish everyone to do well. The events are also dynamic in that they scale to the number of players participating so that they don’t end too quickly. However, I do feel that events get easier with more players and I find it confusing that some events can’t be soloed while others can.
Apart from Dynamic Events there are also Renown Hearts which can be seen as a side quest where an NPC needs your help and you have to fill a progress bar to complete them. You may have to feed animals on a farm or throw water on villagers to cure them of disease. Sometimes you have to talk to an NPC so that they can give you a device or morph you into a different form e.g. test out a grenade launcher device or transform into a wolf to howl spiders away. I found these to be fairly tedious as you end up doing mostly the same task over and over, but each of these has their own context and you obtain a letter from the NPC after completion with a reward.
I do like how Guild Wars 2 rewards you with exp for exploring the world so you aren’t always focused on killing enemies all the time. It also helps the game show off the environments which look like their concept art. Each area has Points of Interest which may have useful NPCs, Skill Point challenges which allow you to unlock new abilities and Vistas which are vantage points to look at the view around you. If you manage to find 100% of Points of interest, Renown Hearts, Vistas and Skill Point challenges in an area you get a significant amount of experience and some loot. I was sceptical when I heard the phrase “Jumping Puzzle” but I have to say that I found getting to some of the Vistas quite challenging so I enjoyed doing them.
If you don’t wish to level by questing, killing enemies or exploring you can also do crafting to gain levels. Each area has resource nodes scattered around allowing you to gather food items for cooking, mine ores to make jewellery/weapons/armour and cut down trees for logs to make into planks to make weapons and upgrades. These nodes are instanced to yourself so you don’t have to worry about competing for resources with other players. This means that you can travel across the map collecting resources to craft with and you don’t have to fight at all to reach max level if you are dedicated to doing so.
The amount of detail that has gone into cooking recipes is pretty cool and I've read cases where some players have even tried them out at home. The game doesn’t give you quantitative details in ounces, but the ingredients are all there. Crafting seems to be the fastest way to get the best gear in the game so although players could save up money or do dungeon runs, performance driven players probably don’t feel like they have much of a choice here. In Guild Wars 2 I managed to become a master cook, which goes to show how good this game is for escapism; forget tree people and giant dragons in this crazy world I can cook!
World vs World is a game where 3 servers fight each other over control of buildings and buffs so that the winning server gives buffs to all the players on that server for a week. The buildings are Keeps, Castles, Towers and Supply Camps and every 15 minutes each building owned provides points for that server. Supplies are taken from Supply Camps by Doylaks to nearby owned buildings so that players can use the supplies to build defence upgrades such as Pots of oil to pour on players who try to break the gates down, reinforce the walls and build trebuchets to fire at attackers. Those who are attacking buildings can use supplies to build battering rams to take down the gates as auto attacking takes too long and other siege weapons to break down the walls or attack the defending players. WvW has its own events, points of interest and vistas if you want to do PvE inside the game. When entering WvW you will be up scaled to max level but you are disadvantaged if you enter at level 1 as you won’t have unlocked as many skills and weapons/armour and your characters traits will give you more advantages at max level. I have enjoyed the mass scale of WvW but sometimes I feel like it isn’t balanced very well and that it comes down to greater numbers. However, when the numbers are balanced it is fun to communicate with your team to organise what to attack and defend.
Structured PvP works like it did in the original Guild Wars and you are automatically level 80 with access to all skills and the highest level armour, weapons and traits. In sPvP the only game mode they have available at the moment is Conquest where your team has to fight for control over 3 capture points on various maps which have differing environmental objectives or events such as an enemy spawn that gives buffs and points to your team on last hit. Your team has to be aware of how many should split up and which points to guard or when to involve the map objective. For example at the start I decided to go over to the enemy side of the map and managed to get the last hit on the enemy spawn whilst they were attacking it giving our team an extra buff and points for the team. I had a lot of fun in sPvP even though there was only one game mode. This mode is helped by the enjoyable combat which feels more action oriented when you can dodge any attack, although it still uses the standard tab targeting of most other MMOs.
When you create your character your race will decide what your starting area is and you will be asked some questions about your character which will affect the storyline quests you start off with. What sets the storyline quests apart from most other MMOs is that you can choose what you want to do to so solve the issues of your leader NPCs. The amount of choices allows you do many different missions even when playing the same race again. I thought most of the characters in the personal story were forgettable, but I did like a couple of them which made it memorable when one of them got killed off in my story. I felt that the personal story wasn’t very personal and that the game didn’t do a great job of getting me attached to my character or what I was doing.
The races you can pick from in Guild Wars 2 are Human, Norn, Asura, Sylvari and Charr. I do like that each races starting areas have cultural differences like the Asura having their own version of chess and the Norn having a game where you battle over Kegs on ice and you can knock them over to gain possession which reminds me of the football game Red Card which had no rules and allowed you to get in a punch-up without consequences.
You can also take part in Dungeon Story Mode or Exploration mode where you enter in an instance of five players and fight creatures and bosses and sometimes there are loads of traps to avoid. I like the dungeons as you feel essential in a limited team and the game has some varied ways of defeating bosses and in explore mode you also get to pick from multiple routes to face different bosses. The fact that every class can perform the role of dps, healer or tank makes it so that you aren’t waiting around for a specific role in a party which makes forming groups easier and quicker. The problem with Dungeon story mode is that they have made it give good rewards the first time you complete it and then poor rewards every time afterward which means that you may find it difficult to form a group as players only do it once.
In summary, I enjoyed finding out the different strategies and cooperating with other players to overcome the Dungeons in Explore mode the most. I’ve had fun in WvW and sPvP but like the MOBA genre there is only one mode and it doesn’t take long for it to wear on me and balance is an issue in WvW. I also find it strange that they had free for all and team deathmatch modes in the first Guild Wars but not in the sequel; not even 1v1 Duels. I appreciate the design changes that improve on the structure of a typical MMO such as not having to visit or go back to an NPC for quests; having your own loot and exp so you don’t feel like you are competing against others; multiple storyline branches; being put on a level playing field in PvP; being rewarded for exploration and no dedicated tank, healer or dps roles making grouping easy so you can form random groups with new people all the time; being able to craft to max level and no subscription helps for players who feel like they are wasting money when they aren’t playing the game. There is still a fair amount I haven’t covered such as underwater combat and missions; Mesmer, Engineer & Guardian classes; one & two handed weapon combinations, traits, cross skill combinations, the trading system and scripted NPC conversations but these also make the game stand out from other MMOs.
I feel that Guild Wars 2 isn’t a major evolution of the genre but it is a step in the right direction. If you don’t like MMOs you still might hate it, but although this isn’t saying much I haven’t played a better MMO than this.
8.5
Yeh my first dungeon run in Arah was horrible. Had focused on the story up until then, so it was my first run in a dungeon. Was getting abuse left right and centre from this one person for not knowing the 'tactics'. Not entirely sure how I was supposed to learn these tactics without first playing through the dungeon. Safe to say, the dude with the hammer killed me many times...
Well I don't see it often but it happened the last time someone asked a question.
one guy: what are the mystic coins used for?
other guy: lol thats a noob question
Then I answer it. I mean the game doesn't tell you much about them does it? I read about it on the wiki page.
As for other people I just finished a dungeon run but one player was swearing (filter did a good job) and raging because some players were ignoring him. He knew what he was talking about but still so much rage >.<
On the other end I've had allies make mistakes which make runs a lot harder but I don't get mad. After all I've made a few as well.
one guy: what are the mystic coins used for?
other guy: lol thats a noob question
Then I answer it. I mean the game doesn't tell you much about them does it? I read about it on the wiki page.
As for other people I just finished a dungeon run but one player was swearing (filter did a good job) and raging because some players were ignoring him. He knew what he was talking about but still so much rage >.<
On the other end I've had allies make mistakes which make runs a lot harder but I don't get mad. After all I've made a few as well.
I've even played dungeons to death. Must've done Arah 100 times at least.
As for other players, they seem more mature than most MMORPG's (well it seems so on my server anyway), however everyone seems to be very unhelpful. I see a lot of players asking for help and they get sarcastic responses.
Really can't see myself returning to it too often. Even WvWvW seems to suck. Sounds amazing, but it's actually quite bland. Bring on the expansion packs.
As for other players, they seem more mature than most MMORPG's (well it seems so on my server anyway), however everyone seems to be very unhelpful. I see a lot of players asking for help and they get sarcastic responses.
Really can't see myself returning to it too often. Even WvWvW seems to suck. Sounds amazing, but it's actually quite bland. Bring on the expansion packs.
I loved the first Guild Wars, played it to death, played it some more when the expansions arrived, then stopped.
Due to the age old issue of relying on the mysterious OTHER PEOPLE to complete quests...
Sorry, but OTHER PEOPLE spoil online games for me. They gripe and winge and moan about those that are not quite so "great" at the game as they are, then duck out at a vital moment (probably because mummy says it's bed time, or their tea is ready).
Probably won't be buying Guild Wars 2 for this reason.
Good review though! :-)
Due to the age old issue of relying on the mysterious OTHER PEOPLE to complete quests...
Sorry, but OTHER PEOPLE spoil online games for me. They gripe and winge and moan about those that are not quite so "great" at the game as they are, then duck out at a vital moment (probably because mummy says it's bed time, or their tea is ready).
Probably won't be buying Guild Wars 2 for this reason.
Good review though! :-)
If it weren't for the dungeons I would probably feel the same way, as I doubt PvP or WvW would hold my interest for much longer but then again can you name an MMO with a large endgame? WoW, Tera, SWTOR, Rift they all offer the same "end game" stuff: Dungeon Raids, PvP and Crafting. If those things can't hold your interest then you will always feel like there is nothing to do when you reach the level cap in an MMO because it seems to be an industry standard. If ArenaNet decided to reduce the rate of experience gain from everything then you would just spend even more time doing the same dynamic events in areas of your level range over and over. Most MMOs do make you level a lot slower than in Guild Wars games, but that's just to drag out the time spent killing mobs with your desire to reach max level being the only reason you put yourself through it all. I appreciate that leveling is quicker so that I can do what I actually want to do a lot quicker. One thing that Guild Wars 2 is missing is an easy way to do sPvP with friends as their hotjoin system doesn't make it easy and the only reliable way to play with friends is to compete in a tournament.
Was level 80 within a week. Have got nothing to do in this game now, just sits on my deskstop.
Guild Wars 2 is an MMO RPG developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft. It was released on 28th August 2012.
The first Guild Wars was released back in 2005 and due to the focus on competitive PvP and the game being instanced outside of resting areas it was said to be a Competitive Online Role Playing game rather than an MMO. It also managed to differentiate itself from most MMOs by having no subscription fee; by allowing players to achieve max level and dive into high level PvP without a major time commitment.
Guild Wars 2 is an MMO because the majority of PvE isn’t instance based and instead you find yourself exploring gameplay areas with many players. The game also follows the original’s payment model of Buy 2 Play with no subscription and periodic releases of expansion packs. The game has an in-game store if you want to buy extras, although the first’s store was outside of the game and cash only. Guild Wars 2 cash shop items are bought using “Gems” but you are given the option to convert in-game gold in to Gems so technically you can get anything you want with in-game currency. That said I haven’t seen the exchange rate so maybe it would take a heavy time commitment to get anything worthwhile this way.
I am not a fan of MMOs as they usually incentivise you to do certain tasks over and over to the point where you are bored stiff whether it is through experience/gold per hour calculations or trying to get the best gear. Although Guild Wars 2 does incentivise some tasks over others it also provides options for those who aren’t so progress minded to level. I say this because I believe that Dynamic Events provide the most experience so those who want to rush to the level cap will try to do them all the time.
Dynamic Events are scripted events that trigger at random occasions and on many occasions one event leads to another. The event that is next triggered in sequence may also change dependant on whether you complete or fail an event e.g. Ogres attack a village and if you fail to stop them they take over the village and kidnap some of the villagers which triggers an event to save them. The point of Dynamic Events was to make you feel like you are making an impact on the world as a player, but ultimately they don’t do a great job of this because it takes a while to gain enough experience to move to a new higher level area so you end up repeating the same events over and over. Also because the events are rarely triggered by an NPC it is sometimes difficult to see the context of the event. It is pretty impressive that they all have context but you do have to be there at the right place and time due to their random nature. I like how the Dynamic events bring about a sense of community between the players and because other players can’t affect your loot drops or experience you wish everyone to do well. The events are also dynamic in that they scale to the number of players participating so that they don’t end too quickly. However, I do feel that events get easier with more players and I find it confusing that some events can’t be soloed while others can.
Apart from Dynamic Events there are also Renown Hearts which can be seen as a side quest where an NPC needs your help and you have to fill a progress bar to complete them. You may have to feed animals on a farm or throw water on villagers to cure them of disease. Sometimes you have to talk to an NPC so that they can give you a device or morph you into a different form e.g. test out a grenade launcher device or transform into a wolf to howl spiders away. I found these to be fairly tedious as you end up doing mostly the same task over and over, but each of these has their own context and you obtain a letter from the NPC after completion with a reward.
I do like how Guild Wars 2 rewards you with exp for exploring the world so you aren’t always focused on killing enemies all the time. It also helps the game show off the environments which look like their concept art. Each area has Points of Interest which may have useful NPCs, Skill Point challenges which allow you to unlock new abilities and Vistas which are vantage points to look at the view around you. If you manage to find 100% of Points of interest, Renown Hearts, Vistas and Skill Point challenges in an area you get a significant amount of experience and some loot. I was sceptical when I heard the phrase “Jumping Puzzle” but I have to say that I found getting to some of the Vistas quite challenging so I enjoyed doing them.
If you don’t wish to level by questing, killing enemies or exploring you can also do crafting to gain levels. Each area has resource nodes scattered around allowing you to gather food items for cooking, mine ores to make jewellery/weapons/armour and cut down trees for logs to make into planks to make weapons and upgrades. These nodes are instanced to yourself so you don’t have to worry about competing for resources with other players. This means that you can travel across the map collecting resources to craft with and you don’t have to fight at all to reach max level if you are dedicated to doing so.
The amount of detail that has gone into cooking recipes is pretty cool and I've read cases where some players have even tried them out at home. The game doesn’t give you quantitative details in ounces, but the ingredients are all there. Crafting seems to be the fastest way to get the best gear in the game so although players could save up money or do dungeon runs, performance driven players probably don’t feel like they have much of a choice here. In Guild Wars 2 I managed to become a master cook, which goes to show how good this game is for escapism; forget tree people and giant dragons in this crazy world I can cook!
World vs World is a game where 3 servers fight each other over control of buildings and buffs so that the winning server gives buffs to all the players on that server for a week. The buildings are Keeps, Castles, Towers and Supply Camps and every 15 minutes each building owned provides points for that server. Supplies are taken from Supply Camps by Doylaks to nearby owned buildings so that players can use the supplies to build defence upgrades such as Pots of oil to pour on players who try to break the gates down, reinforce the walls and build trebuchets to fire at attackers. Those who are attacking buildings can use supplies to build battering rams to take down the gates as auto attacking takes too long and other siege weapons to break down the walls or attack the defending players. WvW has its own events, points of interest and vistas if you want to do PvE inside the game. When entering WvW you will be up scaled to max level but you are disadvantaged if you enter at level 1 as you won’t have unlocked as many skills and weapons/armour and your characters traits will give you more advantages at max level. I have enjoyed the mass scale of WvW but sometimes I feel like it isn’t balanced very well and that it comes down to greater numbers. However, when the numbers are balanced it is fun to communicate with your team to organise what to attack and defend.
Structured PvP works like it did in the original Guild Wars and you are automatically level 80 with access to all skills and the highest level armour, weapons and traits. In sPvP the only game mode they have available at the moment is Conquest where your team has to fight for control over 3 capture points on various maps which have differing environmental objectives or events such as an enemy spawn that gives buffs and points to your team on last hit. Your team has to be aware of how many should split up and which points to guard or when to involve the map objective. For example at the start I decided to go over to the enemy side of the map and managed to get the last hit on the enemy spawn whilst they were attacking it giving our team an extra buff and points for the team. I had a lot of fun in sPvP even though there was only one game mode. This mode is helped by the enjoyable combat which feels more action oriented when you can dodge any attack, although it still uses the standard tab targeting of most other MMOs.
When you create your character your race will decide what your starting area is and you will be asked some questions about your character which will affect the storyline quests you start off with. What sets the storyline quests apart from most other MMOs is that you can choose what you want to do to so solve the issues of your leader NPCs. The amount of choices allows you do many different missions even when playing the same race again. I thought most of the characters in the personal story were forgettable, but I did like a couple of them which made it memorable when one of them got killed off in my story. I felt that the personal story wasn’t very personal and that the game didn’t do a great job of getting me attached to my character or what I was doing.
The races you can pick from in Guild Wars 2 are Human, Norn, Asura, Sylvari and Charr. I do like that each races starting areas have cultural differences like the Asura having their own version of chess and the Norn having a game where you battle over Kegs on ice and you can knock them over to gain possession which reminds me of the football game Red Card which had no rules and allowed you to get in a punch-up without consequences.
You can also take part in Dungeon Story Mode or Exploration mode where you enter in an instance of five players and fight creatures and bosses and sometimes there are loads of traps to avoid. I like the dungeons as you feel essential in a limited team and the game has some varied ways of defeating bosses and in explore mode you also get to pick from multiple routes to face different bosses. The fact that every class can perform the role of dps, healer or tank makes it so that you aren’t waiting around for a specific role in a party which makes forming groups easier and quicker. The problem with Dungeon story mode is that they have made it give good rewards the first time you complete it and then poor rewards every time afterward which means that you may find it difficult to form a group as players only do it once.
In summary, I enjoyed finding out the different strategies and cooperating with other players to overcome the Dungeons in Explore mode the most. I’ve had fun in WvW and sPvP but like the MOBA genre there is only one mode and it doesn’t take long for it to wear on me and balance is an issue in WvW. I also find it strange that they had free for all and team deathmatch modes in the first Guild Wars but not in the sequel; not even 1v1 Duels. I appreciate the design changes that improve on the structure of a typical MMO such as not having to visit or go back to an NPC for quests; having your own loot and exp so you don’t feel like you are competing against others; multiple storyline branches; being put on a level playing field in PvP; being rewarded for exploration and no dedicated tank, healer or dps roles making grouping easy so you can form random groups with new people all the time; being able to craft to max level and no subscription helps for players who feel like they are wasting money when they aren’t playing the game. There is still a fair amount I haven’t covered such as underwater combat and missions; Mesmer, Engineer & Guardian classes; one & two handed weapon combinations, traits, cross skill combinations, the trading system and scripted NPC conversations but these also make the game stand out from other MMOs.
I feel that Guild Wars 2 isn’t a major evolution of the genre but it is a step in the right direction. If you don’t like MMOs you still might hate it, but although this isn’t saying much I haven’t played a better MMO than this.
8.5
The first Guild Wars was released back in 2005 and due to the focus on competitive PvP and the game being instanced outside of resting areas it was said to be a Competitive Online Role Playing game rather than an MMO. It also managed to differentiate itself from most MMOs by having no subscription fee; by allowing players to achieve max level and dive into high level PvP without a major time commitment.
Guild Wars 2 is an MMO because the majority of PvE isn’t instance based and instead you find yourself exploring gameplay areas with many players. The game also follows the original’s payment model of Buy 2 Play with no subscription and periodic releases of expansion packs. The game has an in-game store if you want to buy extras, although the first’s store was outside of the game and cash only. Guild Wars 2 cash shop items are bought using “Gems” but you are given the option to convert in-game gold in to Gems so technically you can get anything you want with in-game currency. That said I haven’t seen the exchange rate so maybe it would take a heavy time commitment to get anything worthwhile this way.
I am not a fan of MMOs as they usually incentivise you to do certain tasks over and over to the point where you are bored stiff whether it is through experience/gold per hour calculations or trying to get the best gear. Although Guild Wars 2 does incentivise some tasks over others it also provides options for those who aren’t so progress minded to level. I say this because I believe that Dynamic Events provide the most experience so those who want to rush to the level cap will try to do them all the time.
Dynamic Events are scripted events that trigger at random occasions and on many occasions one event leads to another. The event that is next triggered in sequence may also change dependant on whether you complete or fail an event e.g. Ogres attack a village and if you fail to stop them they take over the village and kidnap some of the villagers which triggers an event to save them. The point of Dynamic Events was to make you feel like you are making an impact on the world as a player, but ultimately they don’t do a great job of this because it takes a while to gain enough experience to move to a new higher level area so you end up repeating the same events over and over. Also because the events are rarely triggered by an NPC it is sometimes difficult to see the context of the event. It is pretty impressive that they all have context but you do have to be there at the right place and time due to their random nature. I like how the Dynamic events bring about a sense of community between the players and because other players can’t affect your loot drops or experience you wish everyone to do well. The events are also dynamic in that they scale to the number of players participating so that they don’t end too quickly. However, I do feel that events get easier with more players and I find it confusing that some events can’t be soloed while others can.
Apart from Dynamic Events there are also Renown Hearts which can be seen as a side quest where an NPC needs your help and you have to fill a progress bar to complete them. You may have to feed animals on a farm or throw water on villagers to cure them of disease. Sometimes you have to talk to an NPC so that they can give you a device or morph you into a different form e.g. test out a grenade launcher device or transform into a wolf to howl spiders away. I found these to be fairly tedious as you end up doing mostly the same task over and over, but each of these has their own context and you obtain a letter from the NPC after completion with a reward.
I do like how Guild Wars 2 rewards you with exp for exploring the world so you aren’t always focused on killing enemies all the time. It also helps the game show off the environments which look like their concept art. Each area has Points of Interest which may have useful NPCs, Skill Point challenges which allow you to unlock new abilities and Vistas which are vantage points to look at the view around you. If you manage to find 100% of Points of interest, Renown Hearts, Vistas and Skill Point challenges in an area you get a significant amount of experience and some loot. I was sceptical when I heard the phrase “Jumping Puzzle” but I have to say that I found getting to some of the Vistas quite challenging so I enjoyed doing them.
If you don’t wish to level by questing, killing enemies or exploring you can also do crafting to gain levels. Each area has resource nodes scattered around allowing you to gather food items for cooking, mine ores to make jewellery/weapons/armour and cut down trees for logs to make into planks to make weapons and upgrades. These nodes are instanced to yourself so you don’t have to worry about competing for resources with other players. This means that you can travel across the map collecting resources to craft with and you don’t have to fight at all to reach max level if you are dedicated to doing so.
The amount of detail that has gone into cooking recipes is pretty cool and I've read cases where some players have even tried them out at home. The game doesn’t give you quantitative details in ounces, but the ingredients are all there. Crafting seems to be the fastest way to get the best gear in the game so although players could save up money or do dungeon runs, performance driven players probably don’t feel like they have much of a choice here. In Guild Wars 2 I managed to become a master cook, which goes to show how good this game is for escapism; forget tree people and giant dragons in this crazy world I can cook!
World vs World is a game where 3 servers fight each other over control of buildings and buffs so that the winning server gives buffs to all the players on that server for a week. The buildings are Keeps, Castles, Towers and Supply Camps and every 15 minutes each building owned provides points for that server. Supplies are taken from Supply Camps by Doylaks to nearby owned buildings so that players can use the supplies to build defence upgrades such as Pots of oil to pour on players who try to break the gates down, reinforce the walls and build trebuchets to fire at attackers. Those who are attacking buildings can use supplies to build battering rams to take down the gates as auto attacking takes too long and other siege weapons to break down the walls or attack the defending players. WvW has its own events, points of interest and vistas if you want to do PvE inside the game. When entering WvW you will be up scaled to max level but you are disadvantaged if you enter at level 1 as you won’t have unlocked as many skills and weapons/armour and your characters traits will give you more advantages at max level. I have enjoyed the mass scale of WvW but sometimes I feel like it isn’t balanced very well and that it comes down to greater numbers. However, when the numbers are balanced it is fun to communicate with your team to organise what to attack and defend.
Structured PvP works like it did in the original Guild Wars and you are automatically level 80 with access to all skills and the highest level armour, weapons and traits. In sPvP the only game mode they have available at the moment is Conquest where your team has to fight for control over 3 capture points on various maps which have differing environmental objectives or events such as an enemy spawn that gives buffs and points to your team on last hit. Your team has to be aware of how many should split up and which points to guard or when to involve the map objective. For example at the start I decided to go over to the enemy side of the map and managed to get the last hit on the enemy spawn whilst they were attacking it giving our team an extra buff and points for the team. I had a lot of fun in sPvP even though there was only one game mode. This mode is helped by the enjoyable combat which feels more action oriented when you can dodge any attack, although it still uses the standard tab targeting of most other MMOs.
When you create your character your race will decide what your starting area is and you will be asked some questions about your character which will affect the storyline quests you start off with. What sets the storyline quests apart from most other MMOs is that you can choose what you want to do to so solve the issues of your leader NPCs. The amount of choices allows you do many different missions even when playing the same race again. I thought most of the characters in the personal story were forgettable, but I did like a couple of them which made it memorable when one of them got killed off in my story. I felt that the personal story wasn’t very personal and that the game didn’t do a great job of getting me attached to my character or what I was doing.
The races you can pick from in Guild Wars 2 are Human, Norn, Asura, Sylvari and Charr. I do like that each races starting areas have cultural differences like the Asura having their own version of chess and the Norn having a game where you battle over Kegs on ice and you can knock them over to gain possession which reminds me of the football game Red Card which had no rules and allowed you to get in a punch-up without consequences.
You can also take part in Dungeon Story Mode or Exploration mode where you enter in an instance of five players and fight creatures and bosses and sometimes there are loads of traps to avoid. I like the dungeons as you feel essential in a limited team and the game has some varied ways of defeating bosses and in explore mode you also get to pick from multiple routes to face different bosses. The fact that every class can perform the role of dps, healer or tank makes it so that you aren’t waiting around for a specific role in a party which makes forming groups easier and quicker. The problem with Dungeon story mode is that they have made it give good rewards the first time you complete it and then poor rewards every time afterward which means that you may find it difficult to form a group as players only do it once.
In summary, I enjoyed finding out the different strategies and cooperating with other players to overcome the Dungeons in Explore mode the most. I’ve had fun in WvW and sPvP but like the MOBA genre there is only one mode and it doesn’t take long for it to wear on me and balance is an issue in WvW. I also find it strange that they had free for all and team deathmatch modes in the first Guild Wars but not in the sequel; not even 1v1 Duels. I appreciate the design changes that improve on the structure of a typical MMO such as not having to visit or go back to an NPC for quests; having your own loot and exp so you don’t feel like you are competing against others; multiple storyline branches; being put on a level playing field in PvP; being rewarded for exploration and no dedicated tank, healer or dps roles making grouping easy so you can form random groups with new people all the time; being able to craft to max level and no subscription helps for players who feel like they are wasting money when they aren’t playing the game. There is still a fair amount I haven’t covered such as underwater combat and missions; Mesmer, Engineer & Guardian classes; one & two handed weapon combinations, traits, cross skill combinations, the trading system and scripted NPC conversations but these also make the game stand out from other MMOs.
I feel that Guild Wars 2 isn’t a major evolution of the genre but it is a step in the right direction. If you don’t like MMOs you still might hate it, but although this isn’t saying much I haven’t played a better MMO than this.
8.5