Guild Wars 2

[BaconSoda]

I was a pretty dedicated GW1 player (got about 5000 hours of gameplay throughout accounts and characters overall) and I must say GW2 was the game I had been waiting for for years... Our whole community was on toes for quite a while.

Eventually we tried the Betas and most of the hardcore players sold their accounts or just weren't happy. I was a firm supporter of the game until the last couple of BWEs, when I realized I wanted to open up Disco FL more than GW2.

The amazing, unmatched and unique PvP gameplay of the first game is completely gone.:(I kept insisting that the game will be fixed, but it won't. A person that is actually spending their time playing a product like ToR (the nerve Bioware had to release that piece of crap...) will perhaps be drooling over GW2. Same goes for WoW players (I've been a WoW player myself for a while as well). But regardless, the game mechanics are bound to become boring over a longer period of time. Everything about the game is awesome, everything except the PvP.

Our forum has enough material to publish a book with detailed content analysis done exclusively on GW2 and the juxtaposition of GW2 and GW1. It is what it is - ArenaNet (/bow) need to make money, had they kept the mechanics of the previous game that wouldn't have been possible. Their target audience is exactly WoW and ToR players, but not GW1 players that much.

I am sure you won't agree as you are feeling as I was before I spent a week playing the game. It really IS awesome, it's just not the Guild Wars 2 we were promised. It's not nearly as complex as it used to be and that will put off hardcore players. Tactical thinking and preparation are more or less left in perspective, while the focus is more on arcade-like combat. The game reminds of a mixture between MOBA games and FPSs.

I will be brave and I will say that GW2 is not the game it was supposed to be.

Quite the contrary, Guild Wars was not the game it was supposed to be. In fact, Arena.Net said that pretty bluntly when they announced Guild Wars 2 back in 2007. It's those very mechanics that the minority of Guild Wars players love that made the game unsustainable and created Guild Wars 2. I've got about 4,200 hours in Guild Wars and I've played the Ranger to level 49 and 33 in the betas, just in case you doubted me.

Arena.Net originally imagined a world like Dark Age of Camelot where people played together instead of alongside each other. That concept is so mind-staggeringly different that the game has to make you unlearn all the crap MMOs have taught everyone. I was running around the Brisbain Wildlands with my brother and we saw a group of people. That's not the important part. In the event where you have to confront the Sinister Triad, the Ebon Knight representing the Nightmare Court used a skill that pulled us all in. This is the important part. In World vs World, there's a skill Champion Keep Lords use where they pull everyone near to them and then stomp, downing us. In that level 25 zone, I'm learning that there are some bossed which can pull me in and how to react to that. Later, when they kill me, I'll know what to do. This game is so different that it teaches us all the way through to the Gendarran Fields. I don't know if that's where it stops teaching, but literally the entirety of the beta so far is a tutorial and most people haven't passed it.

You talk about complexity, but what is the difference between Power Attack and Furious Axe? It's literally a trait. There are thousands of skills in Guild Wars and they can really be split into a few categories: enchantment, hex, melee attack, ranged attack, spirit, signet, shout, stance, and spell/chant, and skill (glyph/trap/ashes/etc.). Most of them do the same thing with minor differences. This is what traits do. Traits are those minor differences. That is the complexity of build making in Guild Wars 2.

Also, if by unique you mean exclusive and intimidating, then I agree with what you say about PvP. I dare you right now to go into Lion's Arch or whatever and ask when the last time anyone GvGed was. Look at how many people even respond. The "hardcore" PvPers in Guild Wars were an absolute minority to the rest of the game. The reason why was that it was a completely different game. Even if you were really good at Random Arenas, Fort Aspenwood, or Jade Quarry, you have to relearn the entire game to play GvG or HA. Most people won't do that. If you look at any successful esport, the base game is the same. The execution of strategy skyrockets, but a six-pool-rush is always a six-pool-rush. If you're good at playing Zerg, you can get out of newb servers and play the game with more skilled players without relearning what you're doing but by still increasing your skill ceiling. That's the kind of PvP Guild Wars 2 has. If you're good, entering a tournament isn't a completely new thing. The maps are the same maps and the strategies are the same strategies. It's called accessibility. That's something MMOs have never had.

But I know you don't care about that. You just wanted another Guild Wars. That's not the game they wanted to make. If it was, they'd have kept making standalones for it. What's funny is that there's a thousand World of Warcraft and The Old Republic players making this same kind of post on their own forum. Guild Wars 2 isn't pandering to anyone to make money. It's the game they wanted to make from the beginning. It's the game they wanted Guild Wars to be but the players refused to play.

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[8:32:45 PM] Dusty Lens: Oh no, let me get that. Hello? Oh it's my grandma. She says to be roleplay.
[12:49:19 AM] Elgatodiablo: You know its nice that you have all that proof and all, Bacon... but I just don't believe you.