Guild Wars 2

Mahes

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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It has been a long time since I played this. I have all the mounts and such but got to the point where the grind kicked in pretty hard. This game would have so much more if gear were not designed with such a large drop off in power once you got to max level. The really difficult stuff is for looks and gains nothing in power. Once I got to that point, I just felt like I had done everything that interested me. I do like what they did with housing and mounts. The story was not to bad and leagues above New World. Honestly almost everything about GW2 is better than New World.
 
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Warrik

Potato del Grande
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For someone brand new, this worth a run through? Last MMO I spent any time with was New World and Lost Ark (other than Destiny 2, which I consider a pseudo MMO)

Also, if yes, should you get all the xpacs from the jump?
 

Hekotat

FoH nuclear response team
12,041
11,510
For someone brand new, this worth a run through? Last MMO I spent any time with was New World and Lost Ark (other than Destiny 2, which I consider a pseudo MMO)

Also, if yes, should you get all the xpacs from the jump?

To me this MMO has the best exploring of any other MMO I've played. If you like that type of thing it's worth it. The combat is fun and if you have the itch it'll scratch it. However, it's easy to get overwhelmed if you start trying to do a specific thing. I'd say jump in and follow the story and if you like it keep going.

Be warned though, the story is slow in vanilla but is better in HoT, PoF then back to shit in Dragon's End. You have to buy all the in between stories unless you logged on when they started. Sometimes they'll have a big sale on them and most of them are really fun to explore and complete. It's not a modern MMO though, no holy trinity and you're basically on your own for heals and survivability.

HoT will absolutely kick your ass in difficulty, the maps kind of suck (All vertical). PoF has a perfect balance of everything with difficulty scaled back a bit and mounts that matter for completing and accessing parts of the world. EoD takes a step backwards in all aspects of story and difficulty but I can't say the world isn't still fascinating. There is tons of content to enjoy.
 

Randin

Trakanon Raider
1,924
875
Also, if yes, should you get all the xpacs from the jump?
For the most part, expansions are purely level 80 content, so assuming that you don't want to just skip leveling with a level 80 boost (which each of the expansions will give you for free), you can wait on buying them.

The only wrinkle to that is a a recent change they made to acquiring mounts. Originally, you had to play through the first mission of Path of Fire to unlock the first mount (when End of Dragons came out, they made it so you can also get the mount there are well), but they recently made it so that you will automatically get the first mount when you hit level 10 (or 20? I can't recall exactly). However, if you don't own any of the expansions, it's only a 24 hour trial of the mount, while it's a permanent unlock if you own any expansion.

You don't actually need a mount before PoF, but it's obviously convenient to have, so worth keeping in mind.
 
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Animosity

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
6,520
5,504
For someone brand new, this worth a run through? Last MMO I spent any time with was New World and Lost Ark (other than Destiny 2, which I consider a pseudo MMO)

Also, if yes, should you get all the xpacs from the jump?
Yea big time. One of the funnest games to level in. Lots to do in each zone with good overarching stories. You can even go back to lower level zones and get scaled exp.
 
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Zindan

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
6,638
4,417
For someone brand new, this worth a run through? Last MMO I spent any time with was New World and Lost Ark (other than Destiny 2, which I consider a pseudo MMO)

Also, if yes, should you get all the xpacs from the jump?
Hm, hard to say at this point. I think the original GW2 was/is really fantastic, but this all gets ruined by the introduction of new set of characters that your character has to run the Story with... a pair of lesbians, an emo jock, a crippled asura brat, and a charr (the most tolerable). Going through the main storys and the Living World stuff with that set of npc's sucked.

Everything else about the game is pretty top tier, imo. Fantastic world to explore, fun combat. I wasn't a fan of the dungeons / fractals, those all felt a bit too puzzle heavy and too much instant death.
 
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Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
<Gold Donor>
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It has been a long time since I played this. I have all the mounts and such but got to the point where the grind kicked in pretty hard. This game would have so much more if gear were not designed with such a large drop off in power once you got to max level. The really difficult stuff is for looks and gains nothing in power. Once I got to that point, I just felt like I had done everything that interested me. I do like what they did with housing and mounts. The story was not to bad and leagues above New World. Honestly almost everything about GW2 is better than New World.
The "horizontal progression" is a fun thought experiment and break for me. Like a lot of people here I've probably played 100+ stat progression-centered games from Rogue to Elden Ring. In GW2 I was max level 3 days after release and had BiS gear two days later. Over a decade later that gear is still nearly BiS. Never the less there are tens of thousands of hours of progression to get through for all the ranks, achievements, mastery points, mounts, ascended gear, legendaries, fractals etc etc. Some of them bring about massive benefits in some areas or modest benefits in most/all areas, but in many combat situations there still isn't that much that separates the character with ~100 hours of playtime and ~10,000.

This might take away the endorphin kick of +1 numbers, and combat is somewhat static because new gear / abilities don't unlock new playstyles, but they've managed to keep things pretty fresh with all those limitations and I commend them for it.
 
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Hekotat

FoH nuclear response team
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11,510
Hm, hard to say at this point. I think the original GW2 was/is really fantastic, but this all gets ruined by the introduction of new set of characters that your character has to run the Story with... a pair of lesbians, an emo jock, a crippled asura brat, and a charr (the most tolerable). Going through the main storys and the Living World stuff with that set of npc's sucked.

Everything else about the game is pretty top tier, imo. Fantastic world to explore, fun combat. I wasn't a fan of the dungeons / fractals, those all felt a bit too puzzle heavy and too much instant death.

I personally liked the PoF story because it touched on some of the lore of the original game which was really well done since I'm a lore nerd. Now, with that being said the new characters did suck ass.
 

Caeden

Silver Baronet of the Realm
7,369
11,941
Ouch. I thought all the characters and writing through HoT sucked ass. I only stuck because the gameplay felt great.
 

Daidraco

Golden Baronet of the Realm
9,217
9,326
Ouch. I thought all the characters and writing through HoT sucked ass. I only stuck because the gameplay felt great.
All of the fucking stories in MMO's fucking suck. I dont know why people keep bringing that BS up - create a world thats fun and people are there. Thats it, no mystery involved in that.

Instead you have Chris's around the world pushing the MSM agenda of :
Have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV? With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restrictions on playtime.
 
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Caeden

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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All of the fucking stories in MMO's fucking suck. I dont know why people keep bringing that BS up - create a world thats fun and people are there. Thats it, no mystery involved in that.

Instead you have Chris's around the world pushing the MSM agenda of :
Have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV? With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restrictions on playtime.
Oh I agree. I did enjoy almost all of vanilla SWTOR stories. That’s why I was asking how much was gated by it. FF? Everything.
 
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Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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GW2 needs a counter-culture character like


who is just there to clown everyone. Not only do they have all this social justice + feeling crap in, but they take it extremely seriously and there is no comedic relief. A common theme of party RPGs is that you can select the party members you want, allowing you to define the banter in the game. You can't do that in GW2 but if you could, I'd take Johnny Lawrence every time so he could tell people to stop being so annoying.
 
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Caeden

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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GW2 needs a counter-culture character like


who is just there to clown everyone. Not only do they have all this social justice + feeling crap in, but they take it extremely seriously and there is no comedic relief. A common theme of party RPGs is that you can select the party members you want, allowing you to define the banter in the game. You can't do that in GW2 but if you could, I'd take Johnny Lawrence every time so he could tell people to stop being so annoying.
I feel the vast majority of western games are this way. Be curious to see if they somehow manage to cram social Justice into the next elder scrolls. Weird how I’d completely dropped most Japanese games. Now they seem to be the only ones making non-liberal soaked sjw AAA titles. Outside that it’s indie stuff.
 
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rhinohelix

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I am bored already with Tower of Gatcha Money and just updated FFXIV to start another run. I stopped just into Heavensward last time at 60 ish? Let me just state again how much I was crestfallen at HoT. I don't normally play a game all the way through, and I was so enthralled with GW2. HoT was SO Different, the verticality, the difficulty (it was tuned much harder at launch than it is now, IIRC), it was so different than the base game. It was the biggest disappointment of my MMO life. I came back fully for a while with PoF but I have never been a huge fan of the Living Story stuff. I thought the base campaign was so much better than the stuff they did afterward. It was for jumbled and I never got hooked into it, and then in HoT it started weird (everything you know from the Original Campaign we used to beat this other Dragon is DESTROYED) and was tough to follow when combined with all the other changes.
 

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
<Silver Donator>
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HoT is also what drove me off the game. They replaced level-based access to zones with unlocks piled on unlocks, curtailing the freedom of the original game.

The Living Story bits were always meh, but the one that reminds fresh in my mind is the one when Lion's Arch got invaded, and you participated in a massive raid to strike back in Lion's Arch, running against the timer to gain as much points as you could, until you needed to run away because you were going to be killed if you remained inside. Ten years later, it's still one of the most fun events I've ever seen.
 
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Tearofsoul

Ancient MMO noob
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GW2 focus on neither PvE nor PvP/WvW. It's brillant at its own way. The endgame via PvX is ultimately unlocking pretty weapon/gear skins. A fashion show.
 

Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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Ya im having fun pvping here n there with pals on this staff guardian, plan to invest 0$ on pve

People definitely care about farming items from transmogging a lot on other games so why not go full bore I guess? These guys are still afloat after a decade on it
 

Caeden

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Ya im having fun pvping here n there with pals on this staff guardian, plan to invest 0$ on pve

People definitely care about farming items from transmogging a lot on other games so why not go full bore I guess? These guys are still afloat after a decade on it
Tmog, mounts and mythic dungeons carried me through wow a long time when I didn’t care to deal with cramps on time for mythic raiding. MMOs are pretty pretty dress up for nerds.
 

Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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19,636
Tmog, mounts and mythic dungeons carried me through wow a long time when I didn’t care to deal with cramps on time for mythic raiding. MMOs are pretty pretty dress up for nerds.

It's kept gw2 going who can fault their bet on this design?

Good God did they get a flood of people in from steam, seriously. Lot of ppl who prob full suited paid mtx and will be gone when the fad passes.

I was doing some work stuff watching floods of new chars pop in at the spawn point, step aside and prob get their credit card for mtx.

The PvE end game is zerg bosses with those who survive being rewarded more or something?