She's got the loot
Guild Wars 2 is not all about a boss fight, and I spent a lot of time fixing stuff and stomping stuff. Underwater battles, once I learned to dive, have never been so appealing or immersive, especially with my brilliant harpoon gun.
That dude's smoking brown
One of my favorite quests was chasing prodigies with a gun to restore them to full size but avoiding the mosquitoes because if I increase their size, I'm in a whole world of pain. When I finish a quest, my loot is doled out through in-game mail putting an end to faffing about.
What no healer? No, Lucy, you’ll just have to heal yourself. Gone is the holy trinity of Tank, Healer and ranged DPS. By swapping my weapons I can fulfil the roles of all three no matter what class I play. Guild Wars 2 has a single row of ten abilities for combat.
Lamp-hibians
The first five abilities switch automatically based on the weapon I have equipped, and the other five can be filled by skills that I earn as I level. It's experimenting with these endless combinations of weapons and skills that make me feel unique.
Yay! No more getting ganked by twinks in PVP! Guild Wars 2 starts everyone on an equal footing making it inclusive and accessible. It’s all about understanding how your class works.
Hoarding wealth
World vs World is gigantic but, hey, considering the wait in the queues maybe not gigantic enough! You're going to need siege weapons, lots of trebuchets and catapults! Watching people trying to break into keep by smashing on the front door was funny but if I want to reap server-wide benefits I’ll need to concentrate and evolve a strategy.
Verdict
Guild Wars 2 does have its flaws - what, no trading? - but Arenanet is working on them as I write. By rewarding skill and social interaction, Guild Wars 2 amplifies the genre strengths and I worry it will make The Mists of Pandaria seem like a pale shadow of an expansion by comparison. Blizzard, be warned - my monthly direct debit has been cancelled. ®
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Guild Wars 2 game review
COMMENTS
Re: Hmmm
Grind isn't grind unless you're repeating the SAME content because you have to. If you're playing, and enjoying the tasks you're doing, that is by definition, not a grind.
Good example of a grind is doing WoW heroics over and over to get the correct number of badges so you can ride into raids. Not many different pieces of content, but the same pieces of content over and over.
Loving it at the moment
I'm a casual 'casual mmo'er' and I'm loving GW2. While the main game is fun and they've cracked the whole 'other people being in the area is a good thing', it's the little things that have hooked me. Being able to gather all materials is a great start, automatically storing crafting goods in the bank from anywhere is a great point and crafting materials don't use up bank slots is the icing on the cake. They've sat down, looked at the hoops people jump through by creating 'bank alts' and removed them. Very little gets in the way of enjoying the game.
As I get bored of mmo's very easily, the little distractions they've added are great. My aimless wandering now earns XP woot. There may even be a chance I'll have completed the story by the time the first expansion comes out, it's that good. I was only 55 when the burning crusade came out for WoW and I had been playing since day one.
For the more casual player, end game content just isn't an issue. Life is too short to grind away at end game content, and making a continuous chunk of my time available for a raid is not something I'm prepared to do. I want to be able to stop for a cuppa/go to bed when I need to.
For me, the vast majority of my time would be spent on the main game content (before the end game content). It took me at least three months of playing WoW to level a single character to around 60, at which point I stopped playing because it's just too expensive to justify a monthly subscription if you are a casual gamer. Not to mention the fact that everyone else I played with seemed to have levelled way faster, because they put more time in.
When you look at the cost of GW2, and the amount of content it has, it seems like a great proposition for the more casual gamer. It solves a number of problems with the WoW model for me. I just want to have a chat with my brother while mucking about smashing monsters once in a while.
Very tempted (all I have to do now is tear him away from his new panda - he's more dedicated).
There's the usual complaint about 'lack of endgame content'; but what most people miss is that the level counter, in this game, is just a arbitrary number fixed at a cap of 80. even after that, you keep getting XP and skill points as you level further. In a sense, the entire game is the same as the 'levelling' part - which just about everyone agrees is fun as it is.
Most certainly not a game where rushing to level 80 is mandatory. Just sit back, slow down, and have fun. I know WoW trained us all to rush, but this isn't WoW, and it shows. Play it for fun, not as a job.
Re: Trading?
I believe Lucy is referring to the game's lack of a method to directly trade items between characters. You have to use the TP or mail system.
