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Why isn't Guild Wars 2 more popular?

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
Really? Why do you say that? I haven't played since launch but I followed post launch content a bit.
Scarlet is the antagonist for the first season correct? Why do you think the story is garbage?
Very sad to hear though.

You got all these mysterious enemy factions (like the flame legion and dredge united, a splinter nightmare court faction and krait united, steampunk sky pirates) apparently commandeered by a "Joker"-archetype sylvari who apparently is so special because she learned from asura (smarter than many asura) and managed to mastermind a huge, pointlessly complex plan all for the sake of drilling something in Lion's Arch

Scarlet (said sylvari) is a poorly written, poorly thought out character who relies heavily in plot armor and contrivance to get things going
 

Syril

Member
You got all these mysterious enemy factions (like the flame legion and dredge united, a splinter nightmare court faction and krait united, steampunk sky pirates) apparently commandeered by a "Joker"-archetype sylvari who apparently is so special because she learned from asura (smarter than many asura) and managed to mastermind a huge, pointlessly complex plan all for the sake of drilling something in Lion's Arch

Scarlet (said sylvari) is a poorly written, poorly thought out character who relies heavily in plot armor and contrivance to get things going

And before Scarlet was introduced, the flame legion/drege and nightmare court/krait alliances both had really long multi-part events that were completely self-contained, so it really bugged me that they wrote Scarlet being behind them retroactively too.
 
Does Wooden Potatoes have a video summarizes the events of Season 1? I hear that's not playable for new players because the story seemed pretty fun. Can't look right now, at work unfortunately.

Yeah, what happened was that they had no infrastructure. When people talk about how much the game has evolved, they aren't kidding!

Season 1 starts out with them not taking a lot of things into consideration. The updates are every 14th days. Two weeks. That is no time to be able to do proper content, so what we got was mini story.
Some NPCs would be run away home at various parts in the world, and enemys would appear. You had to find a help rescue villagers and slowly uncovered a plot.

The way they build Season 1 was as temporary content. It was open world event based content that once introduced, the world was changed and they could never change it again. It was in Season 2 that they realeased they had to make something more replayable.
The quality of the narrative also changes, and the core characters are also mostly replaced by a new band of much more likeable ones. It's quite shocking how good it becomes.

In a way this is good for new players, because they are not going to miss out of anything narrative-wise that was essential in Season 1. Season 1 did have some incredible moments but some of them were tied to gameplay, and you had to have been there.
That is an unsatisfying thing to say, and it's something that pisses people because they rightly feel they missed out.

Noteable, the core GW2 faction city in the game, got totally destroyed and weeks of story and event was about defending, escaping and retaking the city. It was pretty incredible stuff.

As was a open world raid that was added to the game. 200 random players had to separate and organize in 5 groups on a random map to try and work together, which is really difficult. This is not 40 people organized on raid with voice IP, but 200 people all talking at once.

I wouldn't worry about Season 1. There is a youtube who has a 3 hour video that showed how the releases were sort of introduced. These released came mixed with everything else, and there where many patches and updates that came out which brought other quality of life improvements. They also added a ingame recap video which is pretty good.








Those look absolutely stunning. Wish I could see them in a higher resolution. So small :( I've always loved the aesthetic of the game. As proven, the zones ooze style, hoping they have substance though as others have said they are dull but, visually are amazing.

You've convinced me. I'm going to pick the expansion up and start playing again soon, hopefully will coincide with the new expansion launch too. This time mostly avoiding the hearts if possible and try to experience more of the dynamic events which I personally enjoy. I will also take time out to explore and discover things naturally.

The best way I can describe a better approach to playing it is looking at the Lazy Peon.

This was his first time with the game - He absolutely hates it, doesn't know how it works. Tries to play it like WoW. It's painful to look at, but unfortunately it's how a lot of people approach it:(

This was his second time playing - By request and lots of messages he got about how he should approach it differently, he ended up having a lot more fun with it the second time.

It's the best way I can illustrate my anecdotes, but of course I don't know if this is related to your experience!

You don't need to purchase the expansion before you're lvl 80. The expansion will become F2P once the second expansion comes out. We expect more about it to be revealed once the last living world update of season 3 gets released, in september I believe.
So what you could do, is to just remain a F2P player, get to lvl 80, buy Season 2 and really absorb that. And then if you're still really thirsty and engaged, you could buy the expansion Heart of Thorns (it's on sale fairly often) or simply wait until expansion 2 gets released, with expansion 1 becoming absorbed into the F2P aspect.
The expansion has some nifty things, but the only thing you can really do before lvl 80 is playing as the Reverent class, which is really cool. Every other class gets a new sub class, and many of them are wonderful, but they cannot be unlocked before lvl 80.

There is a goal that most people aim for in Guild Wars 2, which in my mind is one of the most rewarding solo player endevours I've ever untaken in a MMO, and that is getting 100% world completion.
This requires you do to 100% exploration of every area, every zone. Every hidden jumping puzzles (and some of them are crazy), every Point of Interest, every vista. You're being awarded with a symbol next to your name, and it's a sort of "Mark of a veteran". This is a really really awesome challenge, and I recommend you aim for it as you explore the world.
At the end you also get some materials you need to create a legendary weapon, if that is your fancy.
This game is huge, and it's almost creepy how you'd find content hidden in places where it feels like you're not supposed to go.


Second thing I'll tell you that makes a big difference is that, the community organize via a LFG tool( when you press Y). Using this, people make squads where you, just right click and join, and then you're transported to where the player are.
This tool is invaluable because there are many places in the world where things are going on that requires 100s of players in the world at once, and so what happens is that you can sometimes end up in a map with "not a lot of people". You dont feel engaged and you're just running around aimlessly.
Well, thats why you can use the LFG tool to join people and be part of it.
This tool makes all the difference. But once again, it's one of those things you won't necessarily know about unless someone has told you to.

The thing is, a fuckton of things of going on at all times. GW2timer.com is an invalueable tool to really see what is going on and where. Then you can use the LFG tool to join a squad, and jump in.
GW2 added a megaserver which connects all servers into one. When 200 players are in one area, the game opens up another copy of the area, and 200 player fills up in that, and so on. And so if you have an area with a boss, you might have 800 player who quickly transport to that area, separated over 4 map instances. So you can see that the LFG tool is good for finding your friends and people you want to play with to swap to the correct map. :)
 

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
And before Scarlet was introduced, the flame legion/drege and nightmare court/krait alliances both had really long multi-part events that were completely self-contained, so it really bugged me that they wrote Scarlet being behind them retroactively too.

Exactly. I think the only one that didn't get thoroughly involved was the Consortium/Southsun event. I remember people guessing back then that Scarlet was in cahoots with them lmao
 

Firstly I just want to thank you for taking the time to type all this info. It honestly proved to be a very fascinating read. I'm glad it seems they are righting the ship at last so to speak.

I'll watch the videos this weekend when I have some free time, will definitely prove interesting and helpful for when I do start playing again.

Can I check out the recap of S1 before completing the base game/personal story or will that spoil it?

The LFG tool you talk about, is that more for max level or were you mostly talking about leveling?

I don't mind buying the expansion before hand, it goes on sale a lot it seems. I might like to experience the Revenant class to see how it plays. I got a warrior to around 70 at launch and when I tried coming back to the game, I started a new warrior as I totally forgot how to play and got overwhelmed with all the new features but soon got bored not just of spamming hearts but of the playstyle of the warrior. Can't put my finger on what it was.

I just don't like how the whole weapons and class together can change playstyle so drastically. So I have no idea what class to play since they can change completely with every different weapon :/
 
There's not so much that in dislike about gw2 its just that there's not much I liked about it.

Its just kind if boring. Tried the wpvp spvp pve and nothing felt fun classes were boring to play. Jumping puzzles ended up being the best content sadly enough.

Besides the art, why the fuck they stopped selling the artbook I'll never know, I regret not getting it.

Its a real shame gw1 was great at its time.
 

renzolama

Member
Personally, it's because every time I try to start playing again after 6-12 months away I'm so overwhelmed with garbage in my inventory / bank / etc that I have to take some extra medication and uninstall immediately.
 

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
So essentially complaints all boil down to "I am unwilling to try something that isn't a tradition".
 

Magusx

Member
I really love almost everything about Guild Wars 2. I love PVP the most.
The biggest problem for me is that with small PVP you cannot progress in strenght/gear.
That really ruined the game for me:(

With the Stormblood expansion of FFXIV , I thought I was finally able to put down WoW.
But it seems FFXIV Stormblood expansion also went into the direction of no progress in strenght/gear in PVP.
 
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