FA+
Shop
The Guild Wars, Part 2
13 years ago
General
Know that I don't always know what I'm going to say. Games, Entertainment, Self, Weather, Politics, Events, History, Philosophy, all are fair game and any are free without the waring eyes of family or work.
So it's been 3 weeks, I actually wanted to do this in three parts but "part 2" was going to be during FA's down session when I was in the 70s. But time slipped away, and I've been 80 for what feels like a while now.
The world is really fun to explore, and I have made a habit of taking screen shots at every vista I have encountered. I'm only 65% complete with the exploration process and I am determined to finish! The scaling system for levels is a little under-tuned I think; as a actual level 80 revisiting the level 1-40 zones, I still wield the power to slaughter. Sure maybe not take on 5-6 guys at once (sometimes I do ^.^ ) all the time but I think they could have done more to weaken me to the respective zone. Maybe it's also that I've learned how to handle multiple-mobs at my 80-level that the lower level mobs simply feel boring. *bows to the wolf shrine*
Everyone looks different! It's not like WoW where there are 50 clones of the same armor (vs 5000 a few months ago when transmogrify wasn't around). The graphical fidelity is also amazing on characters. Between the color system and their own version of transmogrifying.. everyone can feel like a true individual and not a trooper.
Part of an RPG experience is playing the multiple types of characters and experiencing all that the game has to offer. However if your like me focusing on one beloved character and completing all that can be done on said character is your preferred style. Guild Wars 2 unfortunately starts to slip a little in this aspect. Once you reach level 80 the game does not shift into the classical 10-25+ player instances with epic story and boss encounters; That's "raids" for you WoW addicts! Actually all of your large-manned encounters are world encounters. The final *boss* of the game is one of the 5man dungeon instances. This is not to fault the developers in their placement of instances, what I will fault them on is their techniques for bringing players together to experience them. Or shall I say the lack there of. If you want to run a particular encounter you need to visit that location and call out for party members yourself. I don't want to see a "dungeon finder" like in world of warcraft (evil horrible tool) but I sat around for an hour calling for a dungeon and had zero responses. Simply no one else in the entire world wanted to run it. Keep in mind there's no "best at X" role in Guild Wars 2 - just grab 4 other people and go! So some sort of aid in forming groups would be appreciated.
The economy: Tight! Money itself is hard to come by and unlike world of Warcraft where you can make hundreds of thousands of gold just by fiddling with their auction house (trust me, I talk from experience) the Trading Post ("auction house") in GW2 is designed to make buy-low sell-high very hard. Unless your leveling a profession you will sell trade goods for low and maybe be better off simply vendor anything else. I really appreciate things right now, and hope they continue as-is. Yes people can take real money, and purchase gems, then turn the gems into gold. If that is becoming an outside influence on the market then I'm okay with that. It means if I want something I - who will never take real money to simply buy gold - need to work for it that much harder. Otherwise I earn my money one silver at a time, and I can purchase whatever I need from it.
The important thing about the economy is that there are plenty of gold sinks. Other games let you become inflated with money so you feel like nothing is worth striving for, nothing is a challenge. In GW2 there's always something to put your coin into.
The Objectives: Once you reach level 80 you may wonder "what now". Well PvP is always a strength of the guild wars franchise and I tried a few rounds, it's enjoyable. I haven't gotten the full grasp on World-vs-World-vs-World environments yet so I can't speak for everything. The PvE experience as I stated above tends to die off, unless your working on your exotic armors. Having a profession and crafting items is the route I'm taking.
The future of this game? Well for starters everyone needs to remember they can stop to play another game! No subscription fee so your not on some sort of time-clock expecting to get your moneys worth. I already think I got my moneys worth and intend to keep playing. That being said: I still await Halloween to see if they put in seasonal events. I await to see future plans for bosses. Remember they only introduced maybe 1/3rd of the continent. There's a TON of land to explore. And there's more dragons out there, more evil to fight. Will they release content patches, or wait and do full expansions? Who knows...
The world is really fun to explore, and I have made a habit of taking screen shots at every vista I have encountered. I'm only 65% complete with the exploration process and I am determined to finish! The scaling system for levels is a little under-tuned I think; as a actual level 80 revisiting the level 1-40 zones, I still wield the power to slaughter. Sure maybe not take on 5-6 guys at once (sometimes I do ^.^ ) all the time but I think they could have done more to weaken me to the respective zone. Maybe it's also that I've learned how to handle multiple-mobs at my 80-level that the lower level mobs simply feel boring. *bows to the wolf shrine*
Everyone looks different! It's not like WoW where there are 50 clones of the same armor (vs 5000 a few months ago when transmogrify wasn't around). The graphical fidelity is also amazing on characters. Between the color system and their own version of transmogrifying.. everyone can feel like a true individual and not a trooper.
Part of an RPG experience is playing the multiple types of characters and experiencing all that the game has to offer. However if your like me focusing on one beloved character and completing all that can be done on said character is your preferred style. Guild Wars 2 unfortunately starts to slip a little in this aspect. Once you reach level 80 the game does not shift into the classical 10-25+ player instances with epic story and boss encounters; That's "raids" for you WoW addicts! Actually all of your large-manned encounters are world encounters. The final *boss* of the game is one of the 5man dungeon instances. This is not to fault the developers in their placement of instances, what I will fault them on is their techniques for bringing players together to experience them. Or shall I say the lack there of. If you want to run a particular encounter you need to visit that location and call out for party members yourself. I don't want to see a "dungeon finder" like in world of warcraft (evil horrible tool) but I sat around for an hour calling for a dungeon and had zero responses. Simply no one else in the entire world wanted to run it. Keep in mind there's no "best at X" role in Guild Wars 2 - just grab 4 other people and go! So some sort of aid in forming groups would be appreciated.
The economy: Tight! Money itself is hard to come by and unlike world of Warcraft where you can make hundreds of thousands of gold just by fiddling with their auction house (trust me, I talk from experience) the Trading Post ("auction house") in GW2 is designed to make buy-low sell-high very hard. Unless your leveling a profession you will sell trade goods for low and maybe be better off simply vendor anything else. I really appreciate things right now, and hope they continue as-is. Yes people can take real money, and purchase gems, then turn the gems into gold. If that is becoming an outside influence on the market then I'm okay with that. It means if I want something I - who will never take real money to simply buy gold - need to work for it that much harder. Otherwise I earn my money one silver at a time, and I can purchase whatever I need from it.
The important thing about the economy is that there are plenty of gold sinks. Other games let you become inflated with money so you feel like nothing is worth striving for, nothing is a challenge. In GW2 there's always something to put your coin into.
The Objectives: Once you reach level 80 you may wonder "what now". Well PvP is always a strength of the guild wars franchise and I tried a few rounds, it's enjoyable. I haven't gotten the full grasp on World-vs-World-vs-World environments yet so I can't speak for everything. The PvE experience as I stated above tends to die off, unless your working on your exotic armors. Having a profession and crafting items is the route I'm taking.
The future of this game? Well for starters everyone needs to remember they can stop to play another game! No subscription fee so your not on some sort of time-clock expecting to get your moneys worth. I already think I got my moneys worth and intend to keep playing. That being said: I still await Halloween to see if they put in seasonal events. I await to see future plans for bosses. Remember they only introduced maybe 1/3rd of the continent. There's a TON of land to explore. And there's more dragons out there, more evil to fight. Will they release content patches, or wait and do full expansions? Who knows...
