The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[Shagnak]

Oh, is there a codex guild for this iteration?

 

[Hoaxmetal]

There is one but I've never seen anyone else online these last ~2 years :D

 

[Lhynn]

There is one but I've never seen anyone else online these last ~2 years :D

Sounds like a codex guild alright.

 

[Black]

We had a Codex guild called "Tyranny of Choice"

Not Tranny?

 

[Rahdulan]

So apparently Arena Net has fully taken over the publishing rights of Guild Wars 2. First step towards going independent from NCsoft or latter bailing out under suspicious circumstances? Conspiracy theories abound.

http://massivelyop.com/2015/09/01/p...ness-model-and-the-arenanet-base-on-the-moon/

Since we were talking about the business model, I also asked about the rumors floating around regarding the change in the EULA. If you look closely, you might notice that all mentions of NCSoft have mysteriously disappeared. O’Brien shrugged that question off and said, “There is nothing tricky about that. ArenaNet is taking over the publishing of Guild Wars 2.”

 

[Shammy]

see? you're not even listening. dismissing or outright inverting stuff i JUST said.

I directly responded to your points. How is that me not listening?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

one of many examples, i said

tabula rasa had almost nothing but grind but the game was tons of fun.

then you proceed with

What makes it 'korenan' to you? The graphics? Action oriented combat?

please, there are better places to be a shameless plant in.

 

[Lhynn]

So i made it to level 10, i was yawning since around level 2. My god people, how can you stand this game?

 

[Shammy]

one of many examples, i said
then you proceed with
please, there are better places to be a shameless plant in.

So going by what you posted, if it's grindy and you enjoy grind (tabula rasa) then by all accounts you should enjoy GW2. But that kind of logic is piss poor, which is why I asked you for clarification. I'm not ignoring your points nor am I a shameless plant in, I just want an explanation is all, one that you don't even have to give if you don't want to.

 

[Erzherzog]

So i made it to level 10, i was yawning since around level 2. My god people, how can you stand this game?

I can only answer "With friends, and out of sheer nostalgia for what GW1 was." Said friends won't play GW1 anymore. Because graphics. I'm not joking and it hurts. They say that even though GW1 had an amazing art direction, and to its credit so does GW2.

I wish I had the first one back in all the glory of it's prime, I'm amazed whenever people chide the original for limited skill bars. Like they were mad that the game had the audacity to force you to plan ahead for your encounters instead of just unleashing the unholy hell of everything you have. Too bad in GW2 they dumbed it down locking it to equipped weapons. I feel like they did it because they struggled so bad to balance the skills, yet I heard some Euro team won a tournament this month running a five man team with four elementals running the exact same build. When no class specializes in a role and they are all DPS/CC/Support mish-mashes of course a single build is likely to just simply be the best. (For a laugh, look at their rule changes. They are legitimately the worst I've ever seen to balance any competitive game.)

My big hope for the expansion is if the elite specializations bring in some of that missing opportunity cost GW1's skill bar had. I don't have much hope but I have some. I just want that feeling of experimenting again.

 

[Shagnak]

The biggest stumbling block for me in GW1 was the first expansion (Factions). I still haven't finished it.
In the early days there were less fuckwits and teaming up with strangers wasn't all that painful. By the time Factions came along, where there was a bigger emphasis on teaming with non-AI to succeed, I just couldn't stomach the dickheads. Last few times I looked at it it was a ghost town (in my timezone at least), so I've given up on the idea of trying to finish it.

The later expansions I enjoyed a lot more due to being able to succeed with just AI companions, but I don't think I entirely finished those either.

Does GW2 have companions? I guess I should read up on some shit.

 

[Shammy]

Does GW2 have companions? I guess I should read up on some shit.

It does not. Compared to GW1 it's a very, very different game. Of course there's lots of nods to the first game, lots of lore stuff too if you're into that business, but overall it plays completely differently.

 

[Black]

How can people be nostalgic for GW1 and play 2 when it's nothing like 1??

 

[Erzherzog]

Because I'd rather play with friends, and if I pretend to turn off my frontal lobe, the weapon based skillbars is totally just like GW1. What's funny some people actually believe that though.

Plus it's not totally devoid of GW1's merits. The art design is just as good and imaginative and the music is actually better this time around.

The biggest stumbling block for me in GW1 was the first expansion (Factions). I still haven't finished it.
In the early days there were less fuckwits and teaming up with strangers wasn't all that painful. By the time Factions came along, where there was a bigger emphasis on teaming with non-AI to succeed, I just couldn't stomach the dickheads. Last few times I looked at it it was a ghost town (in my timezone at least), so I've given up on the idea of trying to finish it.

The later expansions I enjoyed a lot more due to being able to succeed with just AI companions, but I don't think I entirely finished those either.

Does GW2 have companions? I guess I should read up on some shit.

Honestly you reached the low point for that. Factions definitely tried to +1 the strength of PvE with some plain and out stats boosts for enemies so I understand if you didn't like that it forced you into some rage inducing PuGs, but Nightfall did introduce companions and EotN expanded on it. Honestly you could get one good friend and do nearly all the pve content no problem after that. Factions was when I got into the game so maybe I'm biased but it seemed like it was worth enjoying since I fully believe the assassin and ritualist brought more to team comps, and the assassin was amazing at soloing content. I remember I had some build based off of crit strikes, where defensive abilities refreshed on crit and then some +crit chance etc and with that I can get through half of Kaineng City with just henchmen supporting.

I always felt like GW1 was all about that sweet sweet pvp though. Well designed. Even if you got a gimped team on random arena, matches were so short all you had to do was wait like 2 minutes and queue again.

 

[Average Manatee]

Factions was all about a streamlined campaign to prepare you for PvP builds. Specifically, EoE bomb

 

[Iajawl]

I have gotten up to level 8 playing with a friend. Even with someone to talk to on skype I found it pretty boring. Group questing doesn't feel more efficient than questing on your own either.

 

[Zewp]

One of my major annoyances with the game is that GW1 had a pretty serious feel, but GW2 just feels... goofy. It feels like a Disney MMO at times.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Factions

AFFLICTED SOUL EXPLOSION

 

[Black_Willow]

One of my major annoyances with the game is that GW1 had a pretty serious feel.

Dude, no. Only Nightfall and EOtN had serious feel. Prophecies and Factions were so cringeworthy and non-sensical in their plots that there was no way to view them as serious.

 

[Night Goat]

Nightfall and EotN were the good parts, so I can't fault someone for only remembering them.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Fuka yu, Prophecies was the best

 

[Erzherzog]

Nightfall and EotN were the good parts, so I can't fault someone for only remembering them.

The paragon was evidence that the well was dry on character class ideas. Though the balls to release a class whose primary mode of attack was chucking spears and hollering in an African themed expansion was amazing. If that happened now the SJW types would be FURIOUS.

Fuka yu, Prophecies was the best

I would love to argue the merits of each release in excessive detail, but I'll just say, playing through Prophecies after Factions felt like a very slow trek through grimdark, nearly generic fantasy world with cats. Enjoyed it, but Factions put me on ADHD.

Though every release was quality to me. The fact that every release had to be self-sustaining definitely made sure there was, for lack of a better way to describe it, some width to the depth. The highlight was always added skills to use. So they had a hard time balancing PvE skills and PvP. I figured the solution were more story based PvE skills such as that sunspear goofiness. I'm just so mad they went the way they did with it for GW2. I don't know, they are adding to the weapon pool for each class maybe if they stick to that we end up with an inferior yet similar diversity to GW1, I just want to hope and dream dammit.

 

[Shagnak]

Well, got to 9th lvl yesterday. So far seems a lot more "generic MMORPG" to me than GW1 was, but it's early days yet.
I created a fat blonde Nord Ranger, mainly because I enjoyed Rangers in GW1. He looks hilarious.

 

[Shammy]

Dude, no. Only Nightfall and EOtN had serious feel. Prophecies and Factions were so cringeworthy and non-sensical in their plots that there was no way to view them as serious.

Yup, for all the love Factions/Shiro gets people tend to overlook just how bad of a narrative drove that expansion. And Shiro was an awful, awfully written antagonist. Like mustache twirling levels of bad. But Kurzicks/Luxons was the real business, fuck Shiro.

 

[Average Manatee]

AFFLICTED SOUL EXPLOSION

It's nice how GW has such memorable enemy races, just based on a single monster skill or a single class build they run that is particularly effective. I can only vaguely recall what populated GW2 regions, and even then I'm only remembering what they looked like rather than what they fought like (since everything in GW2 fought the same).

Dude, no. Only Nightfall and EOtN had serious feel. Prophecies and Factions were so cringeworthy and non-sensical in their plots that there was no way to view them as serious.

Playing GW2 makes you re-adjust your expectations. Prophecies and Factions were quite competently written in comparison. Prophecies gets sidetracked a LOT (like 300 miles into Maguuma), and Factions is simply simple, but neither of them can really be considered bad compared to most other MMOs/Diablo 2, which are where it the game sits on the genre scale.