Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
The Truth?
NorseGod
Member EpicPosts: 2,654
So, I'm looking into either returning to a MMO that I already own, or buying a new one.
I never liked GW2 from the very start. The reason? The vicious, smartassed community on the forums. It is a huge turn off. Game of the Universe Awards mean nothing to me, because it's all political anyways. "No sub fee" doesn't impress me either.
However, I am curious about the game. Nothing really stands out from the rest out there except that it's new, at least in my opinion. It's the ONLY reason I'm giving it consideration.
I have been keeping an eye out on livestreams on Xfire. Seems that only a very few livestream the game. Those end up revieling nothing special at all. Just some guy playing a short-skirt wearing female character in an empty place. In fact, I didn't see 1 other player in the livestream videos I watched. It was a bore.
So, I'm asking the people that have quit playing:
Why did you quit?
What's the pop?
Where are all the players (I saw none on the livestreams)?
Is it like SWTOR in that you max level and get the best gear within 2 weeks, then bored to death?
Is PvP a CC spamming joke?
Is there something else bad that I'm missing that I should know about?
Comments
Did you go to the official forums or are you going by these ones? There are a lot of brainwashed players who were sucked in by the hype of Guild Wars 2, that is a serious issue.
To answer your question, is it's questionable if this game is worth $60. The story was written for kids, it's so simplistic. The only adult thing is that sylvari tend to ignore "Gender" in relationships because they're plants *Cough*. Outside of that, it's pretty empty. It USED to be populated when they limited how much we could access the game and when the game JUST came out. Once people realized the dungeons were just monsters with HP x 10 that you attacked for 5 minutes each, everyone stopped unless they wanted an armor set.
The game is an empty shell of what it once was when it was new. Once the newness wore off, people left. PvP is unbalanced and the PvP rooms are not empty, there are about 16~ rooms that are full, compared to the WHOLE list being populated. Lots of empty space now.
I quit because it was boring and they overhyped the game. No end game content and the story is paper thin. And the dynamic events, they're anything but. If you watched their "Gloat about a game that's not out yet" video, aka the guild wars 2 mannifesto, they talk like events actually matter and what happens effects the world. No they do not. They just repeat regardless of your existance.
That is the reason I don't play anymore. I think the game is fine, too bad the majority of the community I have dealt with has sucked.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Pretty much. Ive been trying to log in lately and lvl some characters - No one in sight lvl 1-25 zone(s)
Infact if you disagree, Come see me on jade quarry i want people to play with!
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
I think the in game community is way different than the forum community. For the most part, no one says anything. They don't have to because there's no kill stealing. The most I've heard people talk was during the clock tower mini-game during Holloween, and that was the high point of my Guild Wars 2 experience. PvP was fun, but when people figured out which classes were unbalanced, not so much. On top of that, the Developers seem to be in love with point capturing PvP and put that in the game instead of the much beloved deathmatch of Guild Wars 1.
There's not even Guild Wars in Guild Wars 2. The game was seriously rushed and has a F2P cash shop shoe horned in.
NorseGod,
You can read the answers to your questions in the GW2 official forums. Its very easy to get to 80 and to get exotic armor and weapons. From there, you just have a Legendary weapon to get (right now is just a different skin from the normal exotics) and that skin takes you a long time to farm. Thats the end game.
Leonard: Penny, you are on fire.
Penny: Yes, so is Sheldon.
[laughs]
Sheldon: Okay, that's it. I don't know how, but she is cheating. No-one can be that attractive and this skilled at a video game.
[walks away]
Penny: Wait, wait. Sheldon. Come back, you forgot something.
Sheldon: What?
Penny: This plasma grenade.
[explosion]
Penny: [laughs] Look! It's raining you.
Sheldon: You laugh now. You just wait until you need tech support. (Big Bang Theory)
I (mostly) stopped playing because I found WvW boring and then they added a new tier of gear which currently requires you to grind instanced dungeons to acquire. All that left was leveling alts or playing sPvP and those ceased being entertaining after playing the game for 3 months.
Population varies of course depending on server, zone, and time of day. I play on Maguuma usually at off hours and it can be pretty lonely except in the very low level and very high level zones.
The bored to death part is fairly accurate, but depending on how much gold you end up with when you ding 80, you can either get the best gear instantly or within a day or two. (This ignores the new Ascended gear since I am not sure how long it takes to acquire and only a couple of pieces are available now with more sure to follow.)
CC barely lasts any time in this game, so it's not the big deal that it is in many MMOs.
Here's a few bad things you don't mention:
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
I am responding to give you the benefit of the doubt. You start off by bashing the community without speciying which one you mean (MMORPG.com, GW2 site, GW2 fans here in general, etc.), then ask for information from...... the community. The game is fun but it has it's downside as well. Without listing these other games you enjoy it is tough to make a comparison to give my best advice on whether the game could be recommended or not. You mention PvP once and that was about it. So I just answered your questions directly. I still play and find the game fun although many of my guild members went back to WoW. I have the bebefit of playing with my wife so I am never solo and that keeps any game somewhat interesting to me.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
Have you not been posting on this forum, On the content of guild wars 2 for an extended amount of time?
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
And? I never visit official forums, was my point. Too many deeply involved sorts of people there. You don't need to go to them to enjoy a game, it's just a suggestion not to. Sounds like more hassle than it's worth. In contrast, MMORPG is neutral ground..
Exactly. I fail to see how a vast minority of the playerbase on a forum outside of the game can affect how much a person enjoys the game itself.
Now if the community inside the game is really bad that is another thing. That can definitely kill your experience. Mute or ignore or whatever the game might have is your friend. But if there are hundreds of irritating assholes that can overwhelm your ability to mute them.
However, as others have said GW2 really doesn't have a ton of chat going on anyway. Which in itself can be annoying, if you are into being a chatty kathy.
Personally I can't tell of the current state (got a refund thank you!) but as far as I seen its not a game you grind up to max quickly. Its something that can get stale pretty quickly as you won't feel progression at all as you play. So... pros and cons list!
Pros
1.) Stylish Graphics, focusing primarily on characters as well as some fancy environmental graphics. This does a great job.
2.) Questing: Changes up the questing formula to be different. Events are more ephasized as a means to leveling.
3.) Crafting, particularly the discovery system is quite an inivative way to handle crafting. It is quite an interesting system that, while not used to its maximum potential, is a good step in the right direction.
Cons
1.) Combat: Combat is... bleh. Quite clunky and feels like it decided to change to action combat last minute. Really begging to have aiming with mouse. Can't emphasize this flaw enough, a major flaw in the game. Its a very very simplistic combat system, as dodge tends to be the replacement for a good chunk of skills being taken away from use. With 1 being an auto attack, you will find yourself doing nothing but dodging.
2.) The quest format, while different, becomes quite boring quick. Its essencially quests hubs compressed into one giant quest, as such you might be grinding MORE on it due to attempting only one or two objectives of the total. Events aren't dynamic much at all and appear in a quite static pattern, making them more fun then regular heart quests but still becoming tedious and extremely predictable. High levels expect to do zerg laps around a zone.
3.) Lack of progression. This is a glaring issue, particularly while leveling up. You don't get the feeling your doing any progress at all with your character. Virutally from level 1-2 you have a good idea what you will be doing the whole way through, with level 30 getting your last skill and having all of what you will be doing before you. Talents don't feel that much of an impact and just feel tacked on.
4.) Grind: For having no gear treadmil, it does have a very long grind, even showing up some traditional games. To do good in wvw, your going to likely have to farm which involves tediously farming mobs. There is very little variety and this farming is very 'mindless' in terms of being done with minimal effort. Dungeon gear will take a good deal of time.
5.) Dungeon Difficulty: And by difficulty I mean more so 'very group specific'. Its actually mostly getting difficulty off trash in which you need the GW2 trinity. The problem here is they love preaching 'no trinity' yet they basically enforce having the damage/support/Crowd control model. Without it you will wipe far more often. Even with it, your going to likely have some trouble sometimes just due to how chaotic it can be and difficult to adjust. It doesn't feel like difficulty based off skill as much as just having a group doing stuff at the right time and to the right mobs. Bosses are in many cases a joke, its just the trash that really suffers for the group.
6.) Fanboys: I know, its not part of the game but seriously... SHUT UP. Your making me hate this game and have even more negative bias against it due to how ignorant you guys are. Blindly listening to devs preaching stuff... seriously stop your making it hard to even think posative things about this game!
7.) Game environments: Graphics are nice on this game but unfortunately the zones are quick to become dule. There is no real determining factors for each area. This bothers me mostly since its graphic style cries out for a unique feel to zones, yet it fails to deliver that. The graphics have a cartoony edge so it SHOULD capitalize on it to really give zones a more unique feel to them. Instead you basically enter generic snow area, generic jungle area.
The actual community in game is superb. I get that people who decided to dislike the game before playing it don't like people on game forums who defend the game and thus challenge their under-informed view of the game. However, to use the enthusiasm of the game's fans as a reason to not try the game seems pretty silly.
I'm getting close to 600 hours played and I'm still going strong. I am not a player who latches onto a game remains a vocal fan and prolific player in spite of the actual quality and state of the game and the play experience. I've had a few promising starts that have fizzled and if it's time to move on, I accept it and move on. For me and many others, this game is most certainly not some flash in the pan.
So, a big reason that the game's community is so quick to defend the game is that it's actually a game, the first in some time, worth playing for hundreds of hours and most certainly worth defending.
Nothing anyone can say is going to convince the hold outs that this might be the game for them. If you can put aside the anti-GW2 mindset and you think you can actually approach the game with a truly open mind, go for it. If you are just looking for GW2 haters to validate your decision not to play the game, then just take a pass and save everone the drama.
As to populations, there are still tons of people playing the game on a regular basis. Lion's Arch, the defacto hub city, is just as busy as it has always been and I can't head there with out ending up in the overflow. The population distribution is much more spread out, so the density in any given game zone is lower than when the player base was compressed into a narrower level range. That's to be expected in a game this massive, espescially when there are additional outlets for play, like sPvP, WvW and Dungeons.
The world is massive, PvE content is broad and deep. sPvP, WvW and Dungeon play are compelling for some people. Professions are versatile and distinctive, so pretty much any MMO player should be able to find a match to their playstyle, (probably several matches). There is almost too much to do in the game, so the $45-$60 box price on a Buy to Play title is honestly the best bet the cynical MMO gamer is going to find on the market. If you give it a real shot and don't like it, well, you aren't out any more than you were on all the other MMOs you've purchased and found wanting.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
I quit because once you hit level 80 I did not see anything wortwhile to do. I was hoping for the PvP to be special but there is no point to it and little reason to do it besides just to be able to do PvP. I got LoL for that so dont need to play an MMO for some casual PvP.
PvE did not impress me much either. It was fun up to 80 but kind of anti-climactic after that. So same with PvP, not much reason to do PvE after you reach the cap.
However the game is fun for a month or two but so are many single player B2P games out there...
My gaming blog
If you listened to people that posted on forums, you would never play any game. But I had fun in GW2 for almost 800 hours, you need to join a guild and pick a populated server so there is always some WvW going on unless your into PvE which is a barren waste land now for the lower level areas.
I do not play it anymore, burnt out from it until they do something with WvW because it is stale right now.
I stopped playing because:
The heavily instanced gameworld doesnt work for me.
I never warmed up to the everyone take care of themselfs class system
Dungeons constisted of tumbling and running away from the mobs
I LIKE gear progression, GW2 doesnt have one
I actually missed a gamworld with a story and purpose and not the level by attended outdoor event concerts with other people
There is no reason to really work with other people while leveling, everyone just shows up does their own thing and quitely moves on. There is no social interaction in this game.
It plays more like an arcade game or a console game then a true MMO.
Not enough depth in skills or abilities. IN other words my ability bar doesnt have enough meanfull things on it
There are other things but this list is long enought
I quit after a month because: SURPRISE!!!! I'm all burnt-out at MMO's. I really wanted for GW2 to bring the change, and it did for a while. But sadly, I was left with that same bad taste in my mouth like all the other MMO's.
So I'm sticking to EvE Online and Planetside 2. The former always beckons me, so it must be doing something right, the latter because........well, I find it bloody awesome.
Between the two, I don't have any more time to play something else.
This. Not saying GW2 is a perfect game - I doubt it has longevity, but it's a one time purchase so I'm not bothered by that. But taking to heart what most say on MMO forums is just asking for the game to be ruined.
1. I hit a wall at level 48ish. It felt like the samething over and over. I looked the same as I was when I was 14, I was fighting the same things, srits and cenitars over and over, and it felt like the cash shop was constantly tugging at my pocket.
The cash shop isn't like the WoW, or TSW cash shop or even the PS2 cash shop. In WoW and TSW, you never in the slightest feel that you need or even that it would be benificial. The PS2 cash shop, you want to buy, not that you need to buy, or should by. The entire in game economy in GW2 is set up to keep you broke (sub 80) and to incourage you to buy gems.
2. Pop was great for the first 3 weeks 200+ Spvp matches going and WvW servers full. Now there's never more than 20 Spvp matches running and WvW never has a queue.
3. Looking at every indicator with a number associated with it show that the game has lost a large portion of the players.
4. Even more so in GW2. Level in 4-5 days, then buy some gems, then buy your armor, or just buy it.
5. No the CC is extremely limited, and so are the strats. You wont see any RMP, or LSD in guild wars 2. Nothing close.
I bought the game for the Spvp. I ended up playing more WvW because Spvp was the most pointless battleground system I have ever played. All battle grounds are pointless, but in every other game I played, you atleast got stuff you could use, and built a hatred of the other faction. In GW2 everything you earn in Spvp is completely worthless outside of the mist (mist is the pvp lobby, about the size of a match book.) You can't even equip what you earn in the real game world. No factions, no rewards limited )if any) strats = no good
WvW was awesome for about 3 weeks. That's when I realized it was part of the gold sink- incourage you to by gems system. Sub 80 seige equipment is expensive. You will go broke if WvW is all you do. You'll end up buy siege equipment hoping to make you money back.
WvW quickly became a circle zerg too with no room for smaller groups or solo players. If 3 faction pvp is what your looking for play Planet Side 2.
No bro your not missing a thing. It is exactly what you think it iis. The casual mmorpg pve/pvprs dream game. IF that's what your looking for, there is no more streamlined, no threat of losing game on the market.