Wars 2 Early Thoughts

Oh, look! I posted something. Happy New Year et cetera! Anyway, as the title suggests, today’s topic is Guild Wars 2. I’d been hankering for a new MMORPG to no-life for a while, and it looks like this one has come out on top. There’s a lot that has won me over with the game: the classes are quite a lot of fun, characters are super customizable, exploration is a big part of the experience, enjoyable story, and its horizontal progression approach is just great. There’s probably a bunch of other stuff I really like too, but that is already a really big laundry list and we’ll be here forever if I put more stuff up there.

I’ve played plenty of MMOs over the years. They provide worlds I wind up getting quite absorbed in. My first in the genre was Everquest, plenty of years were spent on WoW, Final Fantasy XI was pretty great, and a worrying amount of time was poured into Final Fantasy XIV. At this point, I’m pretty burned out on all of those, and Guild Wars 2 has proven an enjoyable world to lose myself in.

Compared to these other games, GW2 is much more sandbox and much less theme park, so it felt a bit unusual hopping into a game where the zones generally transition into one another much more gradually / naturally. If anything, it was kind of nice levelling high in the mountains and going from one zone to the next either meant more snowy regions or a slow receding of the snow into grass lands. Sometimes if one wanders far enough, players will find themselves on the coast, standing on a sandy beach. The whole trip there was a gradual shift in terrain and it felt so much more natural than the popular theme park games out there.

What’s also nice about wandering the various zones is how much the game invites exploration. It does a good job of having enticing ruins on the horizon, or the ever-present possibility of stumbling across a beautiful waterfall or vista in one’s travels. Vistas are actually an ingrained part of the experience as there are locations that offer brilliant views of their surroundings. However, they are often in high up, hard to reach spots that require traversing jumping puzzles. It is satisfying to figure them out, though. (Or you can just wait until you have unlocked flying mounts in one of the later expansions and simply fly to the vista location!) The landscapes themselves range from grasslands to jungles to forests to deserts to mountains. They don’t have over the top designs like a theme park RPG do, but are often punctuated by impressive, memorable structures, or locations with a story to them.

While wandering these lands, the levelling process is quite nice, and fairly open-ended. Instead of running to towns and looking for quest givers with icons over their heads, there are simply tasks that need to be accomplished in different areas of a given map. These are represented by empty hearts. When entering the area of said heart, players will hear a ding and see a list of things to they can do to fill the heart in the top-right of their screen. Once the heart is filled, that area has been completed and it even unlocks a vendor where players can get some helpful gear in exchange for one of the game’s currencies.

There are also group events that periodically spawn across the map. These are identified by orange icons on the map with areas circled to show their area of effect. Early in the game, these are fairly soloable, but as one gets higher in levels, grouping up ranges from helpful to necessary. In expansion content where levelling has already been completed, these events are a major piece of content while grinding masteries (unlockable, account-wide abilities that are part of GW2’s horizontal progression system). These can be a lot of fun in small groups, but when a train forms, if you can hop onboard, by all means do. Trains are large groups of players that will zerg maps, methodically clearing events for a lot of rewards in a short period of time. They’re fun for the opportunity to simply melt some particularly nasty monsters as well as possibly getting some nice loot or other goodies.

While bopping baddies on the head, one thing that impressed me was how much customization was available to my character. In GW2, every class (they’re called “Professions” here) can equip several different weapon types, and many of their attack abilities will depend on what weapon or weapons are equipped and on what hand the weapon is being held. I’ve never seen that before in an MMO. On top of this, your character will have specializations. There will be a series of normal specializations, and at level cap elite specializations become available. Each of these is a mini talent try and each profession has 5 normal ones and a choice between two elite ones. These can then be plugged into something called “Builds” where players can equip three of these talent trees at a time (usually two normal and one elite). So, there are a lot of options as to how one can play their character. Of course, like most games, the community has calcified around certain metas whereby a smaller amount of agreed upon builds, stat priorities, and weapons will be used in high-end raiding and pvp. However, that’s a small percentage of the game, and there are a ton of opportunities for players to do as they please. The meta isn’t nearly as set in stone in GW2 as it is in other MMORPGs.

The game’s story has also been pretty good so far. Each character gets a “personal story” that players follow while making their way to level cap. It’s reasonably enjoyable, but nothing amazing. Expect lots of ancient evils and forgotten empires that fell to hubris. There are some memorable characters met along the way that help to spice things up, though. GW2 does have periodic content with new story that is called “Living World”. If you happen to be playing the game while this is active, it will be available to you forever. If not, it gets locked away and has to be purchased through the game shop. Luckily, it isn’t mandatory to use real money for this. Gold earned in-game can be exchanged for gems that are used as currency in the store. These Living World chapters are actually quite involved and can even add more zones to explore.

Oddly, the first Living World story is not available to anyone. It basically leads to the destruction and rebuilding of a major city, so maybe the game’s developers had trouble accommodating that long term. As such, players have to visit an NPC who launches a cut scene that explains that story and can be asked about all of the major characters from it. This makes going into future stories VERY jarring because there is a major changing of the guards in terms of main characters in the game. When I got there I was like, “Who are these people?” “What happened to all the people I was adventuring with?” Thankfully, it sounds like Arena.net is bringing the first Living Story back in GW2’s next expansion due in 2022. So, that’s good news, because in its current form Living Story One is all sorts of terrible.

Finally, Guild Wars 2’s horizontal progression system is a nice change of pace. Knowing that once a character is at level 80 it will be staying there is surprisingly reassuring. Unlocking masteries or having a wander while doing what I like is liberating compared to the constant treadmill I’d become accustomed to in games like WoW or FFXIV where there were always new dungeons and raids coming along with slowly increasing gear stats. That just isn’t the case in GW2. Players aren’t even funnelled strictly into specific content for high end gear either. Often one can just do what they like and eventually get a nice set for their character. I really like this sort of freedom. It’s very open-ended and the onus is more on the player to figure out what they want to do rather than the game guiding them down very specific rails.

It’s also worth mentioning that the community in Guild Wars 2 is actually quite friendly. Obviously, there will be a few bad eggs like any online game, but my experience in the game has been entirely positive so far. I’d go so far as to say that GW2’s players are just as, if not more nice than Final Fantasy XIV’s community, and that’s saying something given the accolades heaped that game’s player base.

So, I can see myself playing the game for quite some time as what it has to offer has been pretty fun so far. Mostly, I just need to decided what profession I like best. Mesmer has been a lot of fun. It’s a sort of utilitarian illusionist mage (hard to explain and kind of unique in how it functions). On top of that, I’ve spent time with warrior (melee dps), guardian (tank, mostly), and necromancer (mage with undead minions). While WoW and FFXIV are getting a lot of attention in the MMORPG space, Guild Wars 2 is still one to consider. The base game and first expansion are free to play, so there's a lot to check out at no cost. While the game is Windows native, apparently it plays well in Linux as well, so if you’re on that OS don’t be shy to give it a whirl as well. There’s probably a lot of other things I could wax on about in the game, but this article has gone on long enough. Suffice to say that I’m quite enjoying myself in GW2.

- Pennywhether

(pennywhether@posteo.net

January 4, 2022