I'm a 14 year WoW veteran who switched to GW2 about 9 months ago. I have zero regrets of switching. I'm now off the gear treadmill and can actually concentrate on having fun. It had been a long time since I had fun instead of always grinding for gear. I just finished the entire story from base game to SotO. It has been a very fun journey. You will not regret playing GW2. The best part, I don't feel bad about taking a break when needed because of subscription fees, because there are none!
Hey mate! same here, bought all the expansions up to SoTO and all Living world seasons and never looked back. I am just now starting my 2nd character as I just completed world exploration and the full story from base game to SoTO and most of the important masteries and mounts. To me, this is just the start of the endgame, which is fun.
Wow, (pun intended) you must have been playing a lot of hours per day to finish all of the story for the base game plus all of the expansions and “Living World” chapters through SotO, in just nine months! Have fun leveling up a few alternate characters and getting more of your Masteries done as you progress further into the game. The nice thing is that you can take as much time as you want to do this, while enjoying the game and not feeling like you are struggling to catch up.
@@traveling.down.the.road56 Yeah, I have spent a lot of time on it. so far i have 214 mastery points and 4 characters at level 80. No boosts used.. I'm really enjoying the Engineer. I wanted to get the entire story completed by the time Janthir Wilds comes out. Mission accomplished.
I played wow since vanilla all the way up to legion. Best decision I ever made coming to gw2. No sub fee and I can dissappear for a year then come back and still do everything with everyone. Genuinely love this game. Been playing 7 years strong.
@@otter3143 I just finished the “Return To” achievements and got my Legendary Amulet as the reward. Looking forward to playing Jathir Wilds tomorrow as soon as it drops. Normally I would wait for a day or two before playing any new expansion, but this time I will jump in on the first day.
Don't skip the core game. It doesn't take long to level to 80, if you rush it you can do it in a weekend. Last year I tagged along as a friend of mine leveled a new character. We took our time and were done in a week. At this point the core game really is just an extended tutorial. Oh, and the combat looks so much like action combat, because it's not tab targeting. It's a hybrid. There are keybinds and camera settings you can experiment with to shift it closer to one or the other, so you can find what feels the best for you.
About the mounts, this game didn't have mounts for 5 years of its existence. The game released in 2012 received its mounts in 2017 expansions. When you play Path of Fire, you *do* have a quest, and lore explained how you got each of the mounts you own. Each mount has its own abilities, own usage in a given environment, and some of them were more difficult than the others to get. You also level up their abilities to make them stronger and even more useful. The fact you get the raptor early on is due to a backlash, which is kinda understandable, that when you are a new player, you join the game, and you see all of those cool mounts, yet you cannot get them unless you are level 80 and bought the expansion - it was really a turn off for many new players. So in the end, once you are level 10, you are given the most basic version of the raptor, just for the sake of faster travel, but if you truly want to enjoy the story behind it, as well as obtain the other mounts, you do have to reach and play Path of Fire expansion, which explains how the mounts came to be. Level 10 raptor is spoiler-free freebie, to allow you faster traversal.
Norns are like viking monks. Their starting zone has a lot to do with their mythology, you’ll be looking after shrines and doing stuff to make your spirit guardians happy. Charr are similar to Rome in that it is a very militarized society, you’ll be loading cannons and killing the ghosts of ancient foes. The humans are the basic medieval fantasy experience you can choose to be a noble, farmer, or street orphan and your tasked with helping townsfolk and farmers. The asura are the nerds. Their entire society is based on being smarter then everyone else and you’ll be helping people with projects gone wrong or stopping the supremacist faction from indoctrinating the youth. The sylvari are new to the world and have that sense of wonder, exploring a new world. Most of the quests/hearts will be about helping those who wondered off as well as helping people who have started to settle down in the wild.
As soon as you start Heart of Thorns if you dont know what you’re doing you will die, a lot. I don’t want to spoil anything so I will just say this, pocket raptors.
people seem to have stopped recommending new players to skip heart of thorns and do it after path of fire. unless you care about the story being coherent, it's easily the better way to progress through the game. A LOT less stress.
@sinchill5424 if you're truly lost in Maguuma, the best advice I can give you is join in the events when there's people around, and use the LFG tool to do the Hero Point challenges, since they're infamous for their difficulty spike.
Here are some of the things that make me like gw2. For context I have about 3.5k hours in the game, my other "main" game is path of exile with about 3k hours, I've dipped my toes into wow and aion and played ff14 up to the third expansion, and play a variety of other games, mostly rpgs. 1. The moment to moment gameplay feels really nice. Because there's no gcd, you can move during almost all casts, and you can dodge roll the combat feels fast paced and actiony. It feels great to press the right buttons really quickly and annihilate a pack of enemies. 2. The movement with mounts is amazing. Each mount has a very different feel, controls very differently and has its own special uses. Mounting and dismounting has no cast time and can be done while moving, so you'll often for example leap foreward quickly on your raptor, use a dismount skill that launches you into the air, mount your skyscale while in the air, dash forewards and upwards 4 times, dismount in the air, start gliding, use a mastery skill to boost upwards with your glider, mount your griffon in the air, dive downwards to gain tons of speed, and then weave across the map, diving under bridges and over trees for a quarter of the map. Or there's whole communities that just build racetracks in their guild halls (and soon their personal homesteads) for their rollerbeetles, a high speed mount that can drift and is very hard to master. 3. The game is from the ground up designed for cooperation. There is no kill stealing because everyone that participates get's full loot and credit, things like gathering nodes are phased for each player and everyone can rez anyone else by just channeling f on them regardless of class and even get's xp for doing so. This combined with the dynamic events that pull players together means that you're always happy to see other players because they are never a detriment to you. This has fostered a largely very friendly and helpful community. 4. There's no sub fee and no fomo. There's essentially no content and no reward that's only available temporarily before being taken away. And old content stays relevant thanks to horizontal progression, so if you don't play something at launch, you'll still find plenty of people to do it with even 10 years later. 5. Massive groups of 50+ players fighting through event chains spanning entire zones and then taking on huge bosses in the open world is a something you can do constantly and without barrier to entry. Players can buy a "commander tag" that they can enable to be highlighted on the map and to form squads of up to 50 people. You can join a squad just by clicking on the tag and pressing "join". Experiencing the game for the first time and seeing a huge zerg of people rushing by you and being able to join them with just one click is a super cool experience. 6. Horizontal progression and no gear treadmill means a lot of big, impactful rewards are account wide upgrades (like mounts or legendary gear that you can use on all of your characters simultaneously) and there's no fomo. 7. There's interesting build craft and even within a single class your playstyle can vary immensely. There's no "best warrior build" because a build for a durable open world solo warrior wil be quite different from a glass canon dps warrior optimized for group content or even a heal/support warrior. That combined with how easily you can level and gear alts enables you to try and master a variety of different playstyles without ever "falling behind" on your main. 8. The map design encourages exploration with tons of achievements, hidden areas and jumping puzzles. Starting with the first expansion the verticality of maps, sometimes having 4 different layers, really takes off. 9. Fashion Wars 2 is real. Skins are permanent unlocks on equip or salvage, most pieces have 2-4 different dye slots, and dyes are also infinite use account unlocks. With 642 different dyes and thousands of different skins (most available outside the cash shop, yes even really cool ones) you can really get your fashion game on.
Another nicety: essentially 0 server downtime/maintenance. Even with patches/expansions, you'll be notified of a new build, but can keep playing and restart at your leisure.
This is something that has spoiled me from playing other games. Can't be bothered with server down time anymore, now that I know it's not at all needed to run a game.
If you're planning on playing the game, and feel like wanting a bit of know how without being handheld: - lvl 1-80 is pretty much about learning the mechanics of the game and knowing how the story/characters progress (do not skip it if you're easily overwhelmed, or want to have a rigid story experience) - living world seasons are kind of like interludes that bridge the base game to the expansions and so on, and provide story, maps and sometimes gameplay benefits too. - The first 3 expansions (HoT, PoF and EoD) all follow a continued story that started with the base game, the last 2 expansions (SotO and JW) are a completely new story arc and allow new players to start with those if they want to.
answering your question about difficulty. it's not really a challenge in terms of gameplay, but in terms of new mechanics, builds, different content and currencies. you can be overwhelmed with so much new stuff if you just boost because there are a lot of things you learn even just completing the core game too. it would be easier to learn some of the basics just leveling all the way to 80 and be prepared for it
As you say and have heard, the open world in guild wars 2 is amazing especially compared to something like 14. If you’re any sort of level or game tourist like me, I think you’ll really enjoy it.
There is a several peoplewho got to lvl 80 in 4 hours. Obvioulsy it was not their first time so they knew the combat and what they could focus on, but my point is you can get to lvl 80 really fast and there is no need of 100 hours to do so. It depends on how you choose to do it. But everything you do in this game including picking flowers and craft give you xp.
@Rubeus I highly recommend watching Laranity’s video on the 5 biggest misconceptions about Gw2. Glad you are interested in gw2. It’s open world exploration is amazing and has much more to offer!
Skipping has less to do with difficulty and more giving you all the mechanics slowly, instead of, all at once, and there's a fuckton of different mechanics.
Hi! I know it's lame, but my advice would be to start in Queensdale zone. It is the human starting zone (you do not need to create a human to access it right at the beginning of your adventure as you can teleport to each of the 5 starting zones from the begining). It is a simple zone, with the familiar feeling a starting zone in MMO gives you. You will not feel too lost and the zone has interesting events. It only lacks a good jumping puzzle. If you really want to have fun with platforming and exploration, then go for Caledon Forest instead, the starter zone for Sylvaris. It is a really cool one too! The first dungeon is unlocked at lvl 30. You have a LFG system on which you can create your own group and people will join (even if you don't see any groups on the LFG, it doesn't mean that no one is looking. Just create your group and it'll fill quickly. I'm talking EU servers here, NA might be different and I don't know where you belong). However, note that dungeons come in two batches: a story mode and 3 exploration paths. For the 1st dungeon, you will unlock the story mode at lvl 30 and the story at lvl 35. Then you will unlock 2sd dungeon story mode at lvl 40 and exploration mode at lvl 45, and so on until lvl 80. Dungeons are really old, almost deprecated content. They are supposed to be done with a group of 5 people, but a seasonned player can easily solo them. For your concern, and especially when going for the story mode, unless you ensure that all players are new to the game, don't go in with a group of more than 3 people. Otherwise, the bosses will die instantly and you'll not enjoy the experience. Regarding the difficulty, the base game is rather easy. It starts being a bit of a struggle in the lvl 70+ zones, but it is nothing too crazy. You can find more challenge if you look for the CHAMPION ennemies on the maps, they offer more mechanics and can be quite hard. The difficulty really suddenly step up when you reach the post base game and especially Heart of Thorns (the 1st expension). But before that you got two living world season that smoothe the difficulty a little bit.
In my opinion, skipping the base game is a bad idea. Simply because the leveling and exploration experience in the base game is fantastic. A LOT of the lore is told through open world events and npc interactions. You'll miss a lot of world building by jumping straight to level 80 and not exploring the base zones. If you don't care about that, tho, then do it. Challenge mostly levels out when everyone is supposed to be level 80, which is with the beginning of the living world seasons and the first expansion. Look at the story journal (H menu) to see the correct order to play the story.
As a brand new player (about two weeks) yes, I think the reason more people don't play is it has very bad marketing. I've never seen a advertisement for it, a commercial, or even a lot of word of mouth. But I can tell you, from my very admittedly lack of experience....it's been absolutely amazing. So so glad I found this game.
Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO I can walk away from and pick back up and not feel like I am so far behind. Yeah there isn't the gear treadmill and that turns off some players. But I think if they tried it they would understand that there's still SO much progression. It's just not gear. There are masteries, quality of life, cosmetics, achievements, and other things to do. And they unlock some awesome features. Like masteries enable you to do things you couldn't before, or make your mounts even better. There's grinds to get better teleports, or quality of life features. It's really hard to explain until you experience it yourself. But there is always some progression to grind for. The ultimate grind is legendary equipment. And while it has the same stats as the best gear in the game (Ascended) it is account bound, can be used on any character without having to transfer it or take up inventory space, and you can freely change the stats. They enable you to have any build at any time and it's quite awesome. I truly believe it is the MMO that feels the best to play. No content is invalidated with new expansions. You can be grinding something from 8 years ago and you'll still see tons of other people doing the same thing and helping out with events or other things. It truly is an amazing game and I love seeing more people experience it. I will say that the leveling process is not indicitive of what the actual game is. Some say its boring but i really enjoyed it. You are rewarded for just exploring and having fun and its so fast. You can make it to max level in a week of casual play really. But like most MMOs the real game starts at max level when you can really start to work on progression.
The challenge is mainly with world events. If you want challenge focus on those until level 30 along with main story quests. Then you can run dungeons. The reason it's so easy is because it's very easy to over level. It's also pretty class based. Some are glass cannons like elementalist where you'll spend a lot of time going down or super tanky like necro. So if you want an early challenge do an elementalist. The main reason it's not flooded with players is terrible marketing.
Only start with an Ele if you are comfortable with a high APS, can learn 20 skills per weapon and how they interact with each other easily, and don't mind spending significant time on the floor and money on reviving
I have seen a lot of people give GW2 a try, and I have always seen the same mistake, 99% of them where streaming, and GW2 first 10 levels or so, demand your full attention so you can understand everything and READ the tutorials, GW2 is my to go mmo, and I encourage you to go and try it, but please for those first early levels, do not pay attention to the chat, unless you are asking them questions. also do not assume how things work, 90% of the time you will be wrong, as an example a lot of people make theior first wrong assumption while creating a character, a lot of players who come from other MMO's think "I want a ranged character" so they already limit their profession desicion, but EVERY proferssion in GW2 has melee and range option, so please, if you play this, forget everything you have learned in other MMO's GW2 is great, I have try every MMO that crosses my path, and FW2 is the only one I keep coming back
@@AzureRoxe I think "so you can understand everything and READ the tutorials" is the answer. Basically, during the first 20 levels they explain everything that is important mechanically in the game: weapon skills, profession skills, combos, specialisations and so on... If you do not pay attention during this part of the game, good chance are that you will be lost at one point or another later.
Level up or skip to expansion? Don't skip the base game. Level up organically the first time through. Levels come quickly & you won't be bored... you'll probably wish the game didn't level you up so quickly. You can level up in a multitude of ways, including pure exploration. They give you different abilities at a good pace, so you learn your class as you play (which is very very important). Jumping to level 80 right away is not helpful, even as a veteran. When I got one of the expansions, I spent my level 80 boost on the new class... and I was lost. I didn't know the abilities & it just wasn't fun trying to learn the class abilities as a level 80. The BEST use for Boosts is to re-roll a character class that you already know well... like, if you rolled a Charr Necromancer and would rather go with the Human Female meta for Necromancer. If you boost to 80 right away, you'll be lost. You'll need to read a lot of guides to figure out what you're supposed to do... even simply setting up your character will be overwhelming. (Even with level 80 characters, I go back to starting zones ALL the time to kill World bosses.) As others say, the first expansion (Heart of Thorns) ramps up the difficulty by a ton. If you aren't solid with your class abilities & combat skills, you die. There's a LOT of player skill involved with HoT. It's not a good area to learn how to play at all.
My oldest character got the "8 year"-birthday present two weeks ago and I´m still in love with this game. Now being totally excited for the new expansion next week 🤩😊
Played osrs for 2 years before switching to gw2. Been playing for almost a year now. Never goin back. Between the amazing community and the engaging combat and sick world bosses this game has everything I want from an MMO and more. Plus we're getting player housing soon and it looks dope AF
Really love your perspective on MMos based off this video. Started GW2 earlier this year, and it's the only MMO I feel good about investing in. Really looking forward to seeing your experience with it.
GW2 is the ANTI MMO it does so much against the standard design of the modern MMO. it focuses on teaming you up with players, it rewards you for reviving, it rewards you for just being casual. there is no gear tredmill and the BIS is convience. Legendaries have to be crafted and have the stame stats as the gear one tier below. but legendaries let you take out the upgrades in them and let you switch their stats AND are account wide. make ONE Legendary greatsword. you now have a greatsword for every character on your account. This is also why I love Gw2 expansions actually expand the content, never replace older content. Octovine is still one of the most ran Metas and that came out a decade ago. Gw2s problem is consistency and marketing. consistency may be solved since theyre going to yearly xpacks.
An information that someone gave on Roze's video: during the design process, the designers refused the company's demands on making the female Charr having a pair of breasts, explaining that since they're based on felines, they'd either have 3 pairs or none at all.
Necro is really fun but you *have* to have Expansions for them to Big Sword, But everyone I know who plays Big Sword Necro refuses to do anything else "its too fun" they say XD I dont have any super strong preference for starter zone because you can just go to any of the others immediately, however I would say I think its worth for _lore reasons_ playing a Sylvari Necromancer it creates strong lore ties to the Core games Storyline as well as Heart of Thorns and you actually kind of Nailed what the games strength is: Exploration, somewhat generally speaking. The game does a good job at making you want to be in the world and explore.
Of new players that I've seen quit, the majority of them were people who boosted a character to 80 and waltzed in to the second expansion area and couldn't stay alive. The reason people suggest not boosting your first character is so that you can get a handle on, not only how the game plays, but also how the class you've picked works, because once you get in to the harder content you could just die without knowing why. On that note though, I have met new players that went straight to expansion content and had a blast challenging themselves right off the bat, so you never know haha
One word of warning! Dungeons GW2 Dungeons are old and have not been touched since 2012. IMHO, they are good, but I strongly suggest that you DON’T play them with veteran players, unless you know them well and they have ALL agreed to allow you to experience the Dungeons properly the first time through. This is extremely important, because GW2 Dungeons are run through by veteran players now, as a purely speed run experience and you will NOT enjoy missing 90% of the Dungeons content because the other players in your party have skipped ahead and killed everything just to complete the Dungeons ASAP and get their rewards, so they can go do something else quickly. GW2 Dungeons have a great amount of story content, or “Lore”, that you don’t want to miss, and players who have already completed them hundreds of times won’t wait for you to watch the cutscenes, before moving forward to the next section of the Dungeon. Get a party of other new players, or friends from one of the guilds you have joined who agree to let you experience the Dungeon the way it should be experienced, and then play the “Story” version first, before you attempt to play any of the 3 “Explorable” Dungeon paths. If possible, also do each of the “Explorable” Dungeon paths this same way, for your first time through each Dungeon. You will thank me later. I would repeat this advice for all content in the game. If you can, always find other players who will slow down and enjoy the content you are playing for the first time. Just speak up and explain that you are new to the game and that you want to fully experience each event in the game the first time you play through it. If the other players in your party or squad don’t want to do that, then find another group.
My advise as a veteran is go in it open minded. Few keypoints: - The combat is hybrid Tab-target/Action - Mounts have weight, they are not just fast travelers. Each has their own speciality. They have combat abilities and are not immune to damage themselves. - Downscaling, combined with appropiate rewards and sometimes even Legendary Collections makes max level players return to starter maps. - Mega-Server system: What the game does is put everyone in the same map instance untill it is full, then a 2nd instance starts for the overflow... in reverse, if a map becomes empty of players, you are given the ability to move to a more populated version, so even in off hours, maps always feel alive. - Max level was, is and always will be 80. Level and Gear cap are never increased. So if you're max level, leave for a while and return, you are still relevant. People in general advise against boosting the first character due to the steap learning curve by doing so... but end of the day, it's up to you, if you feel comfortable to try it out, you can do so. There is a trial when you use the boost, you have to use it a 2nd time to confirm or revert your boost
I did Human Necromancer, And I love it, started Jan 2024 so in the "new=boat" category. personally didn't enjoy levelling too much, did at first then levle 60 got bored of spamming hearts. Game defo "clicked" at 80, I know alot of endgame can be done before 80 but 80 you actually feel pretty well rounded in the game tbh. GL in your journey :) I also saw this review early on
These games self-selected fans before 2000. I needed a map to get out of Neriak in Everquest, then I accidentally attacked a merchant. Lost my corpse in a dark dungeon. It took all my desire to play in virtual dungeons with friends to get me back into that game.
@@worshadar150 What does anything you wrote have to do with Guild Wars 2? I’m not complaining, just curious how your comment ties into this discussion?
Guild Wars 2 has the same problem as moba-games have with dota and lol: Everyone is already playing WoW and/or FF. Paired with the fact that GW2 marketing is abyssmal. Non-existant. Everyone remembers GW2 from when it was released back in 2012. I started playing in beta and some time after that but stopped playing just before the first expansion Heart of Thorns. I started playing again in the end of Path of Fire, before End of Dragons and still am. Lovin it. My advice is, unfortunately, to buy the single most convenient and on my opinion mandatory item from the "pay 2 win"-store the *Copper-salvage-o-matic* . Put it on the shared backpack slot on the top so every character can use it from there.
Just something i want to say about the mounts in GW2, they all require grinding (especially Griffon and Skyscale the living world S4 version), even the Raptor in this video is just the basic one so you need to max it out (or at least improve the jumping ability) to reach the full potential of the mount or make unlocking other mounts easier. And in order to do that you'll need Mastery points and Exp.
So the reason most people consider the entire base game as "the tutorial" is that the 1st expansion is a BIG jump up in difficulty. You'll want to be very familiar with the combat system and have basic understanding of different build types for your class before going there. While you can get away with an all glass-cannon build in the core game, you'll want to spec for at LEAST some survivability for tackling the expansions, or you'll be be dying to the point of frustration. Having said that, the DLCs are also a BIG jump up in game quality. You'll get better maps, more ways to get around, MUCH better story content and improved graphics in general. The game is VERY alt friendly, so take the long way the 1st time and skip as you wish for your alts. Teaming up with friends is a good way to get thru any boring bits you come across. GW2 is also a very friendly "put down and come back to" game in the sense that you can play the new content and move on to other games while you wait for the next DLC to drop. There's no gear grind, so you will never be missing out, you just pick up where you left off.
My recommendation for race is Sylvari. I love them so much. I really like all but 1 of their opening stories and they are quite unique in my opinion. also, you get to glow in the dark. Also Caithe. Alternatively, you can go with whatever feels right for you.
I have played a little bit of gw2 the thing I love about it is that once u get the best gear for your class u can quit for 5 years and come back and your items are still just as good as it was back then
GW2's biggest problem has historically been its inconistency. Wall of text history lesson incoming: There have been several long content droughts and for a majority of the game's lifespan it has struggled to really find its own identity. The game started out as this big open world thing with a severe lack of long term goals and kind of tried to pivot you into its two pvp modes. Then they quickly changed their minds and largely dropped support for pvp and, failing to establish an esports scene, decided they wanted to make a "living world" in pve by releasing small content patches every few weeks that changed existing maps and got removed from the game afterwards. That was obviously a horribly unsustainable fomo mess, so they changed model again. They decided to make larger story updates on new open world maps less frequently and to make them available permanently, still under the name "living world". After a while this eventually led to them releasing their first actual expansion 3 years into the game's life after the stance had previously been that there weren't going to be any traditional expansions. This expansion also came with 10 man raids, another thing the game initially wasn't supposed to have. After an almost year long content drought they decided to go back to living world (which by the way at the time was free, if you logged in while it was new, but cost money afterwards), but this time with bigger open world and story updates every 3-4 months, each containing a full new open world map. The plan was to have these "living world seasons" and then seamlessly slot in major expansions every 2 years. This worked for exactly 2 seasons and one expansion, which is by many considered gw2's golden age (great story, regular content, introduction of mounts) even though it also had its issues, until they changed their model again. This is also where, after severely lacking behind in schedule and very low engagement from players, they stopped making raids. After being almost shut down due to some missmanagement they decided they didn't want to do expansions anymore and instead wanted to deliver "expansion level content" in the living world system and rebranded it as "sagas", which included 10 man instanced single boss encounters called "strike missions", which were supposed to "bridge the gap" to and kinda replaced raids. This wasn't well received at all and the whole model of giving all your content out for free for existing players but putting new players in front of the paywall also didn't seem to work out. So after the first few releases, which were honestly pretty good, they made a hard turn and in the middle of a huge story arc they pulled almost all devs from this "saga" to instead make an expansion again. They then spent the next half year drip feeding sub standard content and delivered a very premature out of nowhere "finale" to the story arc. After that they spent another year just bringing back the content from the very first living world season because it originally introduced a large chunk of the game's main cast of characters, so having it unavailable was really awkward for new players. Then finally they dropped their third expansion, which was pretty well received and sort of "saved the game". However they then immediately went into another year long content drought and the future of the game was very uncertain. Eventually they released another "living world"-like content update that wasn't called living world and also wasn't well received after the long wait. This led them to rethink what the game is supposed to be and culminated in their current system: yearly smaller scale expansions with free quarterly content updates as part of the expansion. They also wanted to readjust their work flow to allow them time to iterate on existing systems (including pvp) and make regular qualitiy of life and balance updates. The first of these expansions released a year ago and I think the consensus is largely that it was overall "pretty okay" content wise with some really nice systems and qol changes. The next expansion is releasing next week and people are pretty hyped because we're going to have the first new raid in 5 years and they are also finally adding housing.
Great summary. I'm pretty sure GW2 was meant to be more PvP focused in the start, a lot of how the combat works feels optimized for PvP. That's also why there was no holy trinity and everyone was a damage dealer with a heal button. Basically all stat combos except berserkers (direct damage) was useless in PvE endgame - which was only dungeons/open world bosses at that point. DoT builds didn't exist because there was a DoT cap (I think max 25 stacks of each) on bosses. (Which, again looks like it was built with PvP in mind) It took them a long time to remove that, but finally DoT builds became viable. They realized that people like dedicated healer roles so they made them viable too. At some point they added two very powerful boons (alacrity and quickness), which together is like a heroism/bloodlust from WoW - making them defacto a requirement for grouped endgame PvE. So we went from "the holy trinity is bad" to a "soft trinity", where you slot 1 healer with 4 dds and two of the group supplying everyone with these two boons. WvW, which was meant to be the great endgame staple was kind of forgotten (and I'm pretty sure standard PvP had the same faith although I'm not playing that game mode) and only gets small updates, mostly balance these days. That said, WvW was a hot mess at the beginning too, almost zero rewards, you lost gold by playing it, because dying often meant you had high repair costs of your gear (which they thankfully removed at some point). Now you have synthesizers, reward tracks and pips which give claim tickets you can make into gold or legendaries. Honestly I'm glad they shifted how you play because the whole game plays much better with a lot more variety these days. I just wish they would have found their footing sooner so less time would've been wasted to get here.
@@Nellyaa I think you’re right about PvP being more important at launch, which makes it even more surprising that Anet is so bad at balancing the game and how they have virtually abandoned providing meaningful updates for that game mode.
@@traveling.down.the.road56 Yes, it's a little sad, I'd like to see them give WvW more love, it's a great game mode that supports a variety of playstyles (roaming, small scale or big zerg, more strategic, ppt or fight focused etc.), but with the new servers change it's becoming even more difficult to get into. I might add I heard the sentiment a lot in PvP that the balance was a lot better back in the day. I have the theory all the ne new boons, stats and healing abilities they added over the years makes it a hell to balance these days. They probably invest their time more into PvE because it's more popular. It is what it is, sadly. I think WvW is in an okay place right now so it can be fun, just the lack of new things is making it stale. (PvP is supposedly a shitshow because balance is so off.) I am glad PvE is fun these days though.
Regarding the question at 15:25 : There was a power creep in the last 6 years. Leveling and the base game is quite easy, but the end game and the competitive mode are quite complex. They difference between an average player damage and good player damage (with the same gear) is roughly 14x (very different from WoW). You SHOULD really play the base game because it's really amazing gameplay and exploration, but if you really want a combat challenge till the early level, one thing you could do is trying to do the hero Ascent challenge. Basically you only equip your weapon (no gear, food, trinkets, etc) and you try to never die. It is quite fun and challenging. When they talk about the "difficulty of boosting at level 80" it's the complexity of the game and the character build system, and also the combat gameplay
Starting race... best choice, story-wise? Asura (humor/sarcasm) or Charr (building your warband is cool)... but Charr arguably have the worst outfits, and Asura also look strange. Looks-wise? Most pick Human... with Norn and Sylvari also in the mix since they all use the same "human" character model. Human female meta. Favorite starting zone? They are all 100% interchangeable since it only takes a short trip through the Asura gates to go from one starting city to another. I think the Norn starting area is my favorite (thanks to Skyrim, plus Jeremy Soule's music in both Skyrim & core GW2), with the Charr starting area as my least favorite (half the enemies are the vengeful ghosts of murdered humans who were massacred in the Searing, the cataclysm that starts the game in Guild Wars 1). You can level up wherever you like, though. Cosmetics, the fit of your armor & your cultural armor choices, tend to be the bigger consideration for many players. My top characters... Human Female Elementalist, Asura Female Ranger, Human Female Warrior. My oldest characters... Human Female Guardian, Sylvari Female Necromancer, Human Female Elementalist.
when it comes to the difficulty, a lot of the core maps have been power crept a bit. I would say, by the time you get to Orr, you'll need a good build, or know what you're doing to hold out. You need a good build and know what you're doing by heart of thorns. (if you're doing things in chronological order). Especially the elite specializations give quite a powerboost, but you can only get those after level 80. Since it's not that hard, you do have a lot of freedom to explore what to do and all that. That being said: if you're starting, don't worry to much about where to spend your hero points, you'll get enough to unlock everything by level 80 (or earlier if you chase down hero challenges)
I have 15k hours in WoW and did a lot cutting edge raiding, and I still love GW2. GW2 has a lot of stuff to love about it but it's definitely different in the gearing department. If you go into it thinking you're going to play it like WoW and rush to the end-game you're gonna have a bad time. Experiencing it in order with the Metroidvania elements in tact is the best, in my opinion. (For example, using any mount besides the raptor in HoT maps completely breaks them). I ended up just going slowly and not leaving Heart of Thorns zones until I had explored everything and had a blast.
worth playing,. my advice is play it in order including living world episodes, dont let the cool stuff(mounts, specializations or anyother mastery related feature) make you steer away from this to truely appreciate the journey/progress (since there is no vertical grind). come in the game with a fresh perspective, dont expect it to play the way traditional mmos work and finally the tutorial is base game from lvl 1-80 with the base story. ive seen lots of ppl reach end game or new contact and still dont know about core mechanics like CC bars, boons and conditions (no guide but you are ment to find out via leveling and thinkering with builds)
Hello! I played GW2 in 2012, and after a year I fell off. Partially due to not having a PC anymore and also just no expansions/new content. I started playing again this year and am having a blast, but I do highly recommend the expansions. The world meta events are very fun, story is a lot better, mounts, glider, and elites make a huge difference. Not that the OG is terrible, but the expansions really do make a better experience. Path of Fire for story and mounts especially. Also if you are interested in Necromancer, I made my first alt Necro, then unlocked the Elite Specialization Reaper. I have into say Reaper is very fun and strong. I think you'll like it. Don't be afraid to try other professions though if you don't like Necro.
As a long time mmo player, and who has played gw2 since launch, the base game is relatively easy. The only times playing the base game i had any issues was trying to do event alone which even then the likelyhood of other players jumping in with you is pretty high. But if you pull a lot of enemies or fight a high rarity mob alone then you will probably die. The reason why most people say "dont use a level boost it will ruin the game" is because instead of gradually learning your class and the mechanics of the game, you are now lvl 80 most of the classes mechanics and abilities are unlocked and you have to now sit there and read everything. I have boosted many alts on classes i didnt level and it was not a fun experience to learn at lvl80 instead of slowly learning the class as i level. As an alternative to this, i have an IRL friend who is a raider in WOW and i recommeneded that he lvl boost and we quickly got him set up with a solid meta build cause all he wanted to do was raid/endgame pve.
I'm not your "typical" MMO player, I don't really care about bossing or PVP, in OSRS I'm a skiller that just makes addy bars and afk fishing all day, but what I remember *LOVING* about Guild Wars 2 was the jumping puzzles. The platforming in this game is absolutely unlike any other MMO I've played. I also really liked the general "vibe" of GW2 compared to WOW but it's hard to reccomend to someone based off of that lol
I’m kind of the same way I never really got into combat in Classic, OSRS, or RS3. Instead I’d hang around skilling watching other players walk around and do their own thing. I also enjoyed unlocking locations on the map and watching that percentage meter reach 100% in each zone.
@@powerman2442 definitely! It's very zen, and I enjoy watching the number go up while chatting with other chill people around me doing the same. It's great to not have to be worried about losing all my stuff dying while catching up on an anime or book lol
Honestly, the only thing you will ever feel you actually need out of the cash shop is bank tabs and maybe the material bank expansions. That's it... Rest of it is just very nice.
As someone who has dumped 15 years of playing RS3, and WoW, I've also dumped my most recent 3 years of MMO's into Guild Wars 2 Some standouts from Guild Wars 2 versus games like RS, or WoW (Also, I'm a primarily PVE driven player): 1. The Endgame is fashion and convenience. Legendary Weapons and Armors and crafting them are the true end game 2. The Achievement system has about as much content and depth as comping in RS3 or Maxing in OSRS 3. Out of all of the MMO's I've played, its IMMENSELY similar to RS where it respects your time and dedication into the game. It boasts a Horizontal Gear progression system. New Expac? Don't need to re-grind for gear. New playstyles and stat combos emerge. Your old playstyle will likely be intact and remain relevant 4. The mounts are very fun compared to any other MMO. 5. The story content and the outdoor content does become harder and if you dont dodge or "get out of the bad" you'll have a bad time 6. Community is some of the nicest and most supportive I've seen in an MMO that are not "Hidden" like in RS3, or WoW. These folks will show up in loud af Transmogs and encourage you to join up with them Some things I don't like: 1. Endgame combat seems to be like a deathball. This game specifically relies on short term buffs for big time damage. So when doing endgame content you basically deathball together and buff eachother up 2. Once you're done with the LONG and I mean LONG story content, all thats left is achievements, fashion, and legendaries to work towards. Turning enjoyable "Map Meta" (Big map events) into grindfests that are time gated 3. In-game LFG system is trash. You basically gotta rely on using discords to group with people for Raids or "Fractals" (Another word for Dungeons in this Game, that is separate from Dungeons). Why people haven't tried Guild Wars: It's marketed really poorly. They also just went through a very LONG period of fixing the beginning of the game where they re-placed the original initial story pack of content after the base vanilla story that had been missing for years. But most of all, you gotta be an experienced gamer who has had their time disrespected to appreciate and understand what Guild Wars attempts to do. Should you try it? Absolutely, give it a shot. I'd say it's easier to get into Guild Wars 2 than it is to get into RS3 as a fresh player right now.
1. Almost EVERY mmo has tons of fashion and GW2 has LESS than both WoW and FFXIV. 2. It has the same crappy achievement system as any other MMO, it only bothers to give you stuff. 3. It "Respects your time" cause there's NOTHING to earn once you have level 80 gear, unless you want Ascended [which are just slightly stronger] or want to bother grinding your nuts off for Legendaries [which are Ascended level of power]. 4. The only true one, except the little issue of the mounts obliterated any exploration the game has since you can just fly with the Skyscale anywhere. 5. This is never true, as the devs themselves mentioned. The game is ridiculously simple, to the point ANet themselves have mentioned that most players never learn their class and do abysmally low DPS. 6. PvP and raiding says otherwise.
Ah yes, we successfully baited you watching a roze video - nice. I know you said no other vids, but mitchmanix could be contributing in setting your expectations. In the plenty of questions you had, to my memory: when does it become difficult? If you are unlucky and have the human starting zone and wander of into a corner… you can meet an bandit as early as lvl 10 and he will wipe the floor with your face. Experienced players can solo her, but new players need overwhelming numbers. When it comes to the main story, I would say lvl 40 (halfway to max level) can get tricky at some point. Best starting zone ? All are good and all are different - pick the flavor you want to try first. It is very alt friendly. You can swap to pvp immediately after the tutorial mission. All equipment is egalized and all stat combinations and skills are unlocked. Looking forward to learn if gw2 and you vibe, or not.
I used to be anti-small toons till I played the Azura in GW2. Now I have mostly little narcissistic psychopathic sward welding ancle biters with superiority complexes that make Napolean look like a beet down Ercle. You will like the versatility of the Necro and its survivability is great. I'm currently running dule sward Reaper and I am verry comfortable on any Map. Bewar the PocketRockets!
I personally love the starting area for the sylvari, but in the end just play what feels right to you, since you can got to every starting area, if you wish to. And the base game might feel easy, but starting with the expansions you will get your ass kicked from time to time.
I uninstalled / reinstalled 3 times in 48 hrs before I gave the game a long shot try and after that I was hooked. There are things to love and hate about the game but still I can't stop playing. If I get tired or annoyed by something petty there are 100 other things I can do to have fun. Truly a goated mmo!
GW2 has the best monetization out of any of the big MMOs. Free base game, no sub fee, cheap expansions. Anything in the shop (which is only cosmetics and utility, ZERO power) can be bought by converting ingame currency. There is NOTHING locked behind real money. Impatient players can swipe to get stuff faster and that will pay the bills for all of us. I'm 1.5 years in and have all I could want without swiping once.
Almost every generation thinks when they're younger it was easier or simpler or more fun. A reason for that is we had fewer responsibilities and more time to focus on what we enjoyed. The biggest things planned were the next event and not when we had to pay an adult tax.
Dungeons become available at level 20. If I am not mistaken but they are hardly the content that you want to go for. I strongly recommend concentrating on the open world exploration because that is the hook for the game. Other than that, take your time, GW2 has a lot of content and when I say a lot, I do mean tons of it. Don't try to go through all of it in a heartbeat because it will burn you. Instead try taking your time. Concentrate on what caught your interest at that given moment and take your time to explore it fully, learn about it, etc. And yes, the game becomes quite more challenging with time and progress, especially when you reach the last levelling zones, and start the living seasons. And even more later on with challenge modes and Nightmare modes. However, do not rush to it, gear, skills, masteries, crafting you need all of that to even consider challenging mode and you have to be fully aware of tacs, have experience and high APM (in some content). So yes, take your time and do not rush it. You will easily sink at least a thousand hours in the game when you start playing it.
So you asked about race and peoples favourite starter zone. Honestly, all are good, but it is a matter of perspective so I'll give you a basic idea of what to expect. Human - Big believers in the gods, and as typical for humans in fantasy, a well rounded race of people that excel in a bunch of areas but don't stand out in any tremendous matter other than that good ol' human spirit. The starter zone takes place in a hilly/plains farmland type area with various farming and small town settlements, where the biggest dangers faced are bandits and centaur. There's also a eerie swamp area with a wonderful event that I will not spoil. Charr - Cat-like in appearance, but a very industrial type civilization that favours a warriors lifestyle. They have huge machinery and weapons and are arguably the most fearsome race in the lands, but have brokered peace with humans after many long centuries of fighting. Their starter zone is a plains like area that is saturated with tons of industry, farm land and settlements aimed at training the charr for battle. The biggest threat here are the human ghosts from a centuries old charr-human battle that ended brutally, as well as Flame Legion charr, who are very outcasted from normal charr society due to their religious fanaticism. Norn - Tall humans. Ok, joking aside, they are a more nomad style people, and while they have large settlements, those are often places of worship, events, and endless ale drinking. They have the ability to shapeshift into great animals such as bears, panthers, ravens, wolves, etc, as they primarily live off the land and worship the spirits, ancient animal deities. The starter zone is in the mountains, with forest terrain and icy lakes and snow covered plains. The largest threats they face are the dredge, a mole like race, and Svanir, misogynistic Norn who are worshippers of an elder dragon, and want to corrupt all beings to their dragon. Asura - This games diminutive race, they are technological geniuses, and will remind you of their genius every chance they get. They don't have any religion, but are instead steeped in the combining of magic and science, the Eternal Alchemy. Their only goals are the advancement of their own race and the many sciences of the world. The starting zone is a swampy/jungle type area, filled with many research bases for various study and experiments. The largest threats are the Inquest, asuran supremacist's who hold nothing back when it comes to testing their theories and will sacrifice anyone in any way in order to learn more. They're basically tiny nazi's. Sylvari - A plant like race that is not born, but grown in giant seeding pods. All sylvari share in a single mother, the Pale Tree, and many sylvari share in Ventari's values. Ventari is an old centaur who, along with a human friend, planted the original seed that eventually grew into the Pale Tree, and sowed much wisdom in a tablet that the sylvari hold dear and live by its tenants. The starting zone is a wild jungle of large plans and many various and large rooted trees. Some of the largest threats are the risen, the undead elder dragons minions that can corrupt all dead except for the sylvari who are for reasons you will discover, immune to that corruption. The other massive thread are the Nightmare Court, sylvari who do not believe in Ventari's teachings and wish to corrupt all sylvari to the nightmare. I hope this very very generalized list gives you some inspiration.
Yeah, the power creep and the mounts have neutered the core game to the point of being meaningless. 1~ 80 sure ain't Dark Souls. Challenge hits in the Living World DLCs and then it really hits in the expansions. Hard. But by then you need to know how the enemies, your skills, and your builds all work or else you'll be respawning a lot. That's why vets tell you to save the level boost until you play through the core game at least once. However nothing says you can't skip levels with the boosters and level tomes as you do it. Why are few people treating it like the classic it is? Roze covers all of the reasons over the course of his review series. You should watch the rest of it when you can.
bare with my ASD just this time pls, since im not fit to be a youtuber to clarify these questions XD: 1:02 this is exactly one of the biggest problems of GW2, the game present itself as easy on early lvl but does nothing to to encourage players to read the fricking tutorials. 7:37 personal favorite early MSQ are the norn, since you dont start big then goes pest control BUT just for maps alone it doesn't really matter since every starting zone has a teleport point if you want to change zones (be advised that if you that you gonna need to teleport back to your racial starting zone to complete your MSQ) 15:20 boosting characters is not a Good idea for your first one since you Will be bombarded with too many systems to learn all at once, the main MSQ nowadays acts as sort of tutorial presenting players most of the game system/mechanics in a timely fashion. you'll be challenged overtime as you come of age of lv 80 but the MSQ up to lv 80 might not be really challenging if you pay attention to the game mechanics. 22:03 ANET marketing department is awful, it kinda redeemed themselves during End of dragons expansión launch but its been pretty much non existent during all the game life, they even released a really Good launch trailer for that expansión but… thats it ruclips.net/video/a-iol-TY3wU/видео.html 23:03 A&D binded for strafe is just a recent change, it wasnt like that until EoD i believe. 23:24 that is partly true since the game doesn't really teach you critical mechanics for "end game" during the vanilla experience, they added a training yard in EoD that fits really Good for vanilla experience but they seems unwilling to port that (mostly maybe for the mess of a code they have on the core game) 34:34 you Will receive a letter notifying you when you can Access your first dungeon. dungeons has a mandatory first clear called story mode that unravel some lore and once you clear that you can then Access explorable mode where you can select 3 different paths to clear. be aware that dungeons so far are some kind of discontinued piece of content that so far only Works if you need an specific wardrobe unlock or if you are working on some legendaries, so RN it might not be a really Good time to try a random comp formed from looking for group if you want to experience them as intended. BTW dungeons were abandoned for the sake of fractal of the mist, take the as a kind of mythic+ from wow (they were "inspired" by this content) thats accesible at lv 80 even for free accounts. 34:55 that error message was something even ANET devs hasnt seen ever (they even contacted roze to see what the hell happened)
Hmm, I have to remind you that core game of gw2 is much different from expansion ;D And... I wish you put down your hype while playing it lmao Keeping an open mind would be nice^^ 15:29 once you step into HoT you got deleted if you haven't learned your class ;) However, if you don't want to level up that long(actually, it is very fast tho... but you can make your own judgement after you try it yourself). You can step into pvp right away bc you would be lvl 80 right away and learn your class there is a way too
I have an unpopular opinion: skip the hole base game, and the leveling part. Buy an expansion and use the level 80 ticket. You are veteran mmorpg player, so you will be fine. Go and do fractals, raids, strikes, craft/find/buy your ascended build, go to the golem and start to practice your rotation, go and do meta events and start to make gold for legendaries. Your goal should be something like craft a full set of legendary pieces: armor, weapons, rings, accessories, backpack, relics, sigils and runes. And complete all the raids wings in challenge mode, all the strikes in challenge mode and the last strike added in Legendary Challenge mode, also, complete all the fractals doing the last 5(96,97,98,99,100) in challenge mode aswell.
So as far I know, I played about 4yrs now going on 5yrs. Guild Wars is pretty populated but not overall very popular in the general public is that ArenaNet doesn't market themselves like it's predecessors. Only time, the game getting eyes on its products is when a new expansion is being advertised.
GW2 has gotten(on average) better over time with each release, but like with FFXIV that means the older content is not representative of the modern content and can be, for some players, a slog to get through. GW2 base game does hold up in a lot of ways but story replayablity is not one of them. If you get to the first expansion you've gotten through the worst of it and the difficulty increases
skip the base game if you want a lot of ppl its a bad idea n shit but who cares, the base game is enjoyable for a lot of people but not everyone, if you think you will get bored no point forcing yourself (i say this because i played for like 5+ years exclusively pvp, all my characters were and still are getting leveled only through pvp modes and i didnt see the appeal of other game modes and story until post path of fire). If you decide to craft a legendary (the only non instanced pve endgame activity) theres a chance you will need to do a map completion and see the world that way. The game gets hard at the first expansion or maybe even living world season 1 (just before the first expansion) with the strike mission, but if youre used to playing mmos i dont see how you would mess up, the dont skip the base game argument applies alot more to extremely casual players imo.
dungeons are dead content, only high level ppl rushing them do them if they are weeklies, but i guess if you ask kindly you might find some other newish ppl or ppl who are ok with not rushing the instance. Nowadays the real instanced pve endgame content are Fractals (modular mini dungeons), Raids (literally a new map with a couple event and bosses you take on with 9 other people) and strike missions (a singular fight taken from the story that a lot of time they have a "challenge mode" which amps up the difficulty, sometimes just a harder version of normal mechanics and extra hp, sometimes literally extra phases and mechanics that you have to learn)
The expansion content is significantly harder than the base game, but it's recommended to go through it at least once because it's more of an extended tutorial now. You need a base understanding of how the game and your class play before you start getting into elite specs or you're not going to have any idea what you're doing and you'll have a bad time. Jumping directly into Heart of Thorns would hammer that point home HARD lol. As for the perception that the game isn't extremely popular...I don't know where you're getting that. It's almost always in the top 5 most played, and ALWAYS in the top 10. It's easy for it to maintain population because ALL content progresses something, no matter how much you've done. Even at 3 in the morning I seldom have difficulty doing events that need a group because there's always several people around in every area. Also, the bug he encountered with the dungeon...I haven't seen anything like that in 12 years playing. Many people under that video say they haven't either.
My friend just started playing GW2 and while he was powerful for the first levels, around lvl 70 he already started to complain that the story instances are kicking his butt.
dont skip core, its fast and helps you learn combat rotations etc, sure itll be mostly easy ppl might have a hard time soloing the final msq if they are new, the earlier time you will feel like you got a challenge will likely be if u try to do dungeons early on, or if you do fractals once 80, early fractals are easy but if its a group of all fresh 80's itll likely be a challenge, later fractals are difficult until you get used to them, and CM (challenge mote) fractals are hard and enjoyable but not too many ppl try to do them (i think due to fear, i personally think ppl make them sound more difficult then they are as someone who used to do them) ALSO early Heart of Thorns expansion might completely destroy you when u first get there with the elites. I think GW2s biggest issue for players, is that it has an issue with keeping players, people are fine playing it then dropping it for a few months and coming back for a month then repeat, the game itself is fine but progression to get bis gear being so easy even with new expansions coming out where gear DOESNT get better just easier to get. Also the cash shop isnt really about buying best in slot gear since that has never been an issue to get in the first place ingame, its more about buying storage spaces/bank slots/ bigger inventories (bag slots) which people cant visually see but it is a huge QOL if you have them and dont really notice unless you dont (it feels weird to not have these things if u make a brand new arenanet acc, but if u never had them in the first place you dont really know)
I’ll be honest I’ve hardly played GW2, but I played the shit out of GW1 (pre expansions) back in the day. I’ve dabbled in GW2 and enjoyed it so far but I haven’t had time to really play it.
In the German community, some WoW streamers tried it out but quickly gave it up because it didn't make them any money. People just play GW2 and aren't interested in the kind of content they present with WoW streams. Basically, I'm quite happy that GW2 is flying under the radar!
And heart of thorn the first expact will for sure be harder in the open world !! Altho base game open world isn't complete crap if u ignore bosses abilities u will die even to showdow behemoth the first human world boss u can reach at level 2
hope you enjoy ur foray into gw2. U get access to dungeons at lvl 30 and can get a party through the LFG. I would stress that u should form your own party and let people know u are a new player and want to experience the story. dungeons are old content and veteran players might rush through(skip mobs and cutscenes) them unless u let them know beforehand that u actually want to experience them as intended.
I remember rushing my revenant to level 80 without even researching how the class functions, I went to heart of thorns and dear god that shit was playing a game on nightmare difficulty, worst and best decisions for me thank god my herald build now takes no brain cells to play hahahhaha
Look, people miss the points alot. Horizontal progression means that you spend time mastering your character and then you begin fine-tuning it after reaching max level. That's the logic here. Besides that, GW2 offers Specialization and Mastery points system, so no - the endgame isn't "boring". Specialization allows you to try a different version of the class, which operates on same basis, except the class skill template is altered into a new variant. Like if it was a concept art contest and you get to choose another version. But the main class variation isn't even about these Specializations, it's in being able to make ANY class work as a Tank/Healer/Dps, or anything in between. Even a Warrior class can be a teambuffing support that puts down Banners and Shouts warcries if you select that in the Build and equip appropriate gear. Mastery system otoh allows you to unlock bonus abilities for your characters and mounts that improve everything from movement to combat, or reward you in numerous other ways. So becoming a real veteran in GW2 takes anywhere from several months to an entire year since the amount of things to learn or explore is huge. That's why GW2 is everlasting. Plus? It respects your time, money and is designed in such a way that inspires cooperation. Since everyone gets individual loot, scaled to their current level anytime and anywhere. It is objectively a great game worth every cent with a positive and quite large community.
Guardian/Norn Main since Beta. You can set a key to use "Action camera" They don't advertise like other mmos do. Also, people talk shit and say the game is dead. So other people won't even give it a chance. Game client has been out August 28, 2012. Steam has been out for only a little while. They look at steam charts and think its dead. Dungeons are DEAD. It's all about raids, strikes and fractals. I will subscribe to watch you play it!
If you want early game challenge try project 1999. It's a legal everquest private server. It's brutal for the uninitiated, vanilla wow is baby mode compared to it.
Base Game's mostly easy, but the expansions *will* kill you a lot if you just jump right in. It shouldn't take you very long to get through base game, to be honest. My recommendation would be to start playing the base game normally first, and when you find you're having no fun anymore, use the boost. And if you happen to just not use the boost...well, ain't that nice for the inevitable alt? XD
12 year vet of WoW 365 days played on my main. I left before Shadowlands because of gear grind and the toxic, toxic community. Over 1k hours on GW2 and never missed WoW. Absolutely the best community of players I have ever encountered and have been doing the rpg circuit since Ultima IV on Commodore 64,
Also, the MAIN reason people dont stick to gw2, is the fact that the game throws a TON at you, and you basicly can do whatever u want to, so most people get overwhelmed, not knowing where to start or continue, which results in quitting, that being said, for me, personally, in the end, i did not feel much for the combat, it feels empty, non-impactful, and for experience with the game, i got almost every legendary in the game, reached diamond in pvp, got a TON of hours, was a guild leader in a raid learning guild etc
I'm a 14 year WoW veteran who switched to GW2 about 9 months ago. I have zero regrets of switching. I'm now off the gear treadmill and can actually concentrate on having fun. It had been a long time since I had fun instead of always grinding for gear. I just finished the entire story from base game to SotO. It has been a very fun journey. You will not regret playing GW2. The best part, I don't feel bad about taking a break when needed because of subscription fees, because there are none!
Hey mate! same here, bought all the expansions up to SoTO and all Living world seasons and never looked back. I am just now starting my 2nd character as I just completed world exploration and the full story from base game to SoTO and most of the important masteries and mounts. To me, this is just the start of the endgame, which is fun.
Wow, (pun intended) you must have been playing a lot of hours per day to finish all of the story for the base game plus all of the expansions and “Living World” chapters through SotO, in just nine months! Have fun leveling up a few alternate characters and getting more of your Masteries done as you progress further into the game. The nice thing is that you can take as much time as you want to do this, while enjoying the game and not feeling like you are struggling to catch up.
@@traveling.down.the.road56 Yeah, I have spent a lot of time on it. so far i have 214 mastery points and 4 characters at level 80. No boosts used.. I'm really enjoying the Engineer. I wanted to get the entire story completed by the time Janthir Wilds comes out. Mission accomplished.
I played wow since vanilla all the way up to legion. Best decision I ever made coming to gw2. No sub fee and I can dissappear for a year then come back and still do everything with everyone. Genuinely love this game. Been playing 7 years strong.
@@otter3143 I just finished the “Return To” achievements and got my Legendary Amulet as the reward. Looking forward to playing Jathir Wilds tomorrow as soon as it drops. Normally I would wait for a day or two before playing any new expansion, but this time I will jump in on the first day.
Don't skip the core game. It doesn't take long to level to 80, if you rush it you can do it in a weekend. Last year I tagged along as a friend of mine leveled a new character. We took our time and were done in a week. At this point the core game really is just an extended tutorial.
Oh, and the combat looks so much like action combat, because it's not tab targeting. It's a hybrid. There are keybinds and camera settings you can experiment with to shift it closer to one or the other, so you can find what feels the best for you.
About the mounts, this game didn't have mounts for 5 years of its existence. The game released in 2012 received its mounts in 2017 expansions. When you play Path of Fire, you *do* have a quest, and lore explained how you got each of the mounts you own. Each mount has its own abilities, own usage in a given environment, and some of them were more difficult than the others to get. You also level up their abilities to make them stronger and even more useful.
The fact you get the raptor early on is due to a backlash, which is kinda understandable, that when you are a new player, you join the game, and you see all of those cool mounts, yet you cannot get them unless you are level 80 and bought the expansion - it was really a turn off for many new players.
So in the end, once you are level 10, you are given the most basic version of the raptor, just for the sake of faster travel, but if you truly want to enjoy the story behind it, as well as obtain the other mounts, you do have to reach and play Path of Fire expansion, which explains how the mounts came to be.
Level 10 raptor is spoiler-free freebie, to allow you faster traversal.
Norns are like viking monks. Their starting zone has a lot to do with their mythology, you’ll be looking after shrines and doing stuff to make your spirit guardians happy. Charr are similar to Rome in that it is a very militarized society, you’ll be loading cannons and killing the ghosts of ancient foes. The humans are the basic medieval fantasy experience you can choose to be a noble, farmer, or street orphan and your tasked with helping townsfolk and farmers. The asura are the nerds. Their entire society is based on being smarter then everyone else and you’ll be helping people with projects gone wrong or stopping the supremacist faction from indoctrinating the youth. The sylvari are new to the world and have that sense of wonder, exploring a new world. Most of the quests/hearts will be about helping those who wondered off as well as helping people who have started to settle down in the wild.
As soon as you start Heart of Thorns if you dont know what you’re doing you will die, a lot. I don’t want to spoil anything so I will just say this, pocket raptors.
Those speedy, runty little shits!
If anyone complains, then Heart of Thorns did its job perfectly
people seem to have stopped recommending new players to skip heart of thorns and do it after path of fire. unless you care about the story being coherent, it's easily the better way to progress through the game. A LOT less stress.
*anxiety intensifies*
@sinchill5424 if you're truly lost in Maguuma, the best advice I can give you is join in the events when there's people around, and use the LFG tool to do the Hero Point challenges, since they're infamous for their difficulty spike.
Here are some of the things that make me like gw2. For context I have about 3.5k hours in the game, my other "main" game is path of exile with about 3k hours, I've dipped my toes into wow and aion and played ff14 up to the third expansion, and play a variety of other games, mostly rpgs.
1. The moment to moment gameplay feels really nice. Because there's no gcd, you can move during almost all casts, and you can dodge roll the combat feels fast paced and actiony. It feels great to press the right buttons really quickly and annihilate a pack of enemies.
2. The movement with mounts is amazing. Each mount has a very different feel, controls very differently and has its own special uses. Mounting and dismounting has no cast time and can be done while moving, so you'll often for example leap foreward quickly on your raptor, use a dismount skill that launches you into the air, mount your skyscale while in the air, dash forewards and upwards 4 times, dismount in the air, start gliding, use a mastery skill to boost upwards with your glider, mount your griffon in the air, dive downwards to gain tons of speed, and then weave across the map, diving under bridges and over trees for a quarter of the map. Or there's whole communities that just build racetracks in their guild halls (and soon their personal homesteads) for their rollerbeetles, a high speed mount that can drift and is very hard to master.
3. The game is from the ground up designed for cooperation. There is no kill stealing because everyone that participates get's full loot and credit, things like gathering nodes are phased for each player and everyone can rez anyone else by just channeling f on them regardless of class and even get's xp for doing so. This combined with the dynamic events that pull players together means that you're always happy to see other players because they are never a detriment to you. This has fostered a largely very friendly and helpful community.
4. There's no sub fee and no fomo. There's essentially no content and no reward that's only available temporarily before being taken away. And old content stays relevant thanks to horizontal progression, so if you don't play something at launch, you'll still find plenty of people to do it with even 10 years later.
5. Massive groups of 50+ players fighting through event chains spanning entire zones and then taking on huge bosses in the open world is a something you can do constantly and without barrier to entry. Players can buy a "commander tag" that they can enable to be highlighted on the map and to form squads of up to 50 people. You can join a squad just by clicking on the tag and pressing "join". Experiencing the game for the first time and seeing a huge zerg of people rushing by you and being able to join them with just one click is a super cool experience.
6. Horizontal progression and no gear treadmill means a lot of big, impactful rewards are account wide upgrades (like mounts or legendary gear that you can use on all of your characters simultaneously) and there's no fomo.
7. There's interesting build craft and even within a single class your playstyle can vary immensely. There's no "best warrior build" because a build for a durable open world solo warrior wil be quite different from a glass canon dps warrior optimized for group content or even a heal/support warrior. That combined with how easily you can level and gear alts enables you to try and master a variety of different playstyles without ever "falling behind" on your main.
8. The map design encourages exploration with tons of achievements, hidden areas and jumping puzzles. Starting with the first expansion the verticality of maps, sometimes having 4 different layers, really takes off.
9. Fashion Wars 2 is real. Skins are permanent unlocks on equip or salvage, most pieces have 2-4 different dye slots, and dyes are also infinite use account unlocks. With 642 different dyes and thousands of different skins (most available outside the cash shop, yes even really cool ones) you can really get your fashion game on.
Another nicety: essentially 0 server downtime/maintenance.
Even with patches/expansions, you'll be notified of a new build, but can keep playing and restart at your leisure.
This is something that has spoiled me from playing other games. Can't be bothered with server down time anymore, now that I know it's not at all needed to run a game.
At the cost of loading screens every time you use a WP. So the downtime is still there, just spread out.
If you're planning on playing the game, and feel like wanting a bit of know how without being handheld:
- lvl 1-80 is pretty much about learning the mechanics of the game and knowing how the story/characters progress (do not skip it if you're easily overwhelmed, or want to have a rigid story experience)
- living world seasons are kind of like interludes that bridge the base game to the expansions and so on, and provide story, maps and sometimes gameplay benefits too.
- The first 3 expansions (HoT, PoF and EoD) all follow a continued story that started with the base game, the last 2 expansions (SotO and JW) are a completely new story arc and allow new players to start with those if they want to.
You can convert gold to the cashshop currency so you can buy anything in there with gold if there is something catching your eye.
The only thing you cannot buy with ingame currency are the expansions. Other than that, you can grind to your hearts content and achieve 100% unlocks.
@@DarthKastos you can't buy expansions but you can buy Expansion`s Deluxe Upgrade there. I thought it is worth mentioning it.
@@procerator and you can also buy the Living World seasons with gems!
answering your question about difficulty. it's not really a challenge in terms of gameplay, but in terms of new mechanics, builds, different content and currencies. you can be overwhelmed with so much new stuff if you just boost because there are a lot of things you learn even just completing the core game too. it would be easier to learn some of the basics just leveling all the way to 80 and be prepared for it
As you say and have heard, the open world in guild wars 2 is amazing especially compared to something like 14. If you’re any sort of level or game tourist like me, I think you’ll really enjoy it.
There is a several peoplewho got to lvl 80 in 4 hours. Obvioulsy it was not their first time so they knew the combat and what they could focus on, but my point is you can get to lvl 80 really fast and there is no need of 100 hours to do so. It depends on how you choose to do it. But everything you do in this game including picking flowers and craft give you xp.
@Rubeus I highly recommend watching Laranity’s video on the 5 biggest misconceptions about Gw2.
Glad you are interested in gw2. It’s open world exploration is amazing and has much more to offer!
Skipping has less to do with difficulty and more giving you all the mechanics slowly, instead of, all at once, and there's a fuckton of different mechanics.
Dont skip story. Do it chronologicaly with living world included. No need to rush it. Yo will get to max level in 2-3 days
""what the hell is that?" is so accurated, i love exploring in this game even if i just past for the same zone or same event or same quest, etc
Hi!
I know it's lame, but my advice would be to start in Queensdale zone. It is the human starting zone (you do not need to create a human to access it right at the beginning of your adventure as you can teleport to each of the 5 starting zones from the begining). It is a simple zone, with the familiar feeling a starting zone in MMO gives you. You will not feel too lost and the zone has interesting events. It only lacks a good jumping puzzle. If you really want to have fun with platforming and exploration, then go for Caledon Forest instead, the starter zone for Sylvaris. It is a really cool one too!
The first dungeon is unlocked at lvl 30. You have a LFG system on which you can create your own group and people will join (even if you don't see any groups on the LFG, it doesn't mean that no one is looking. Just create your group and it'll fill quickly. I'm talking EU servers here, NA might be different and I don't know where you belong). However, note that dungeons come in two batches: a story mode and 3 exploration paths. For the 1st dungeon, you will unlock the story mode at lvl 30 and the story at lvl 35. Then you will unlock 2sd dungeon story mode at lvl 40 and exploration mode at lvl 45, and so on until lvl 80.
Dungeons are really old, almost deprecated content. They are supposed to be done with a group of 5 people, but a seasonned player can easily solo them. For your concern, and especially when going for the story mode, unless you ensure that all players are new to the game, don't go in with a group of more than 3 people. Otherwise, the bosses will die instantly and you'll not enjoy the experience.
Regarding the difficulty, the base game is rather easy. It starts being a bit of a struggle in the lvl 70+ zones, but it is nothing too crazy. You can find more challenge if you look for the CHAMPION ennemies on the maps, they offer more mechanics and can be quite hard. The difficulty really suddenly step up when you reach the post base game and especially Heart of Thorns (the 1st expension). But before that you got two living world season that smoothe the difficulty a little bit.
you can change to action combat style with press of button and return back ,depend what style you like
I've loved GW2 for a long time, but switching to action cam has brought me so much joy
In my opinion, skipping the base game is a bad idea. Simply because the leveling and exploration experience in the base game is fantastic.
A LOT of the lore is told through open world events and npc interactions. You'll miss a lot of world building by jumping straight to level 80 and not exploring the base zones.
If you don't care about that, tho, then do it.
Challenge mostly levels out when everyone is supposed to be level 80, which is with the beginning of the living world seasons and the first expansion.
Look at the story journal (H menu) to see the correct order to play the story.
As a brand new player (about two weeks) yes, I think the reason more people don't play is it has very bad marketing.
I've never seen a advertisement for it, a commercial, or even a lot of word of mouth.
But I can tell you, from my very admittedly lack of experience....it's been absolutely amazing. So so glad I found this game.
Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO I can walk away from and pick back up and not feel like I am so far behind.
Yeah there isn't the gear treadmill and that turns off some players. But I think if they tried it they would understand that there's still SO much progression. It's just not gear. There are masteries, quality of life, cosmetics, achievements, and other things to do. And they unlock some awesome features. Like masteries enable you to do things you couldn't before, or make your mounts even better. There's grinds to get better teleports, or quality of life features. It's really hard to explain until you experience it yourself. But there is always some progression to grind for. The ultimate grind is legendary equipment. And while it has the same stats as the best gear in the game (Ascended) it is account bound, can be used on any character without having to transfer it or take up inventory space, and you can freely change the stats. They enable you to have any build at any time and it's quite awesome.
I truly believe it is the MMO that feels the best to play. No content is invalidated with new expansions. You can be grinding something from 8 years ago and you'll still see tons of other people doing the same thing and helping out with events or other things.
It truly is an amazing game and I love seeing more people experience it.
I will say that the leveling process is not indicitive of what the actual game is. Some say its boring but i really enjoyed it. You are rewarded for just exploring and having fun and its so fast. You can make it to max level in a week of casual play really. But like most MMOs the real game starts at max level when you can really start to work on progression.
The challenge is mainly with world events. If you want challenge focus on those until level 30 along with main story quests. Then you can run dungeons.
The reason it's so easy is because it's very easy to over level. It's also pretty class based. Some are glass cannons like elementalist where you'll spend a lot of time going down or super tanky like necro. So if you want an early challenge do an elementalist.
The main reason it's not flooded with players is terrible marketing.
Only start with an Ele if you are comfortable with a high APS, can learn 20 skills per weapon and how they interact with each other easily, and don't mind spending significant time on the floor and money on reviving
And about overleveling, the game scales you down if you done it, making any area you visited matter for your growth
@@siperog It does! But you'll still have gear that lets you steam roll stuff.
@@sevenember3332 All true lol. It's weird too because a lot of the skills feel almost worthless.
I have seen a lot of people give GW2 a try, and I have always seen the same mistake, 99% of them where streaming, and GW2 first 10 levels or so, demand your full attention so you can understand everything and READ the tutorials, GW2 is my to go mmo, and I encourage you to go and try it, but please for those first early levels, do not pay attention to the chat, unless you are asking them questions.
also do not assume how things work, 90% of the time you will be wrong, as an example a lot of people make theior first wrong assumption while creating a character, a lot of players who come from other MMO's think "I want a ranged character" so they already limit their profession desicion, but EVERY proferssion in GW2 has melee and range option, so please, if you play this, forget everything you have learned in other MMO's
GW2 is great, I have try every MMO that crosses my path, and FW2 is the only one I keep coming back
Gw2 is the easiest and most braindead MMO, what do you mean "demands your full attention"?
And every class now can heal and/or support, and have a dps option. Not being role locked is big reason I love gw2.
@@AzureRoxe I think "so you can understand everything and READ the tutorials" is the answer. Basically, during the first 20 levels they explain everything that is important mechanically in the game: weapon skills, profession skills, combos, specialisations and so on... If you do not pay attention during this part of the game, good chance are that you will be lost at one point or another later.
Level up or skip to expansion?
Don't skip the base game. Level up organically the first time through. Levels come quickly & you won't be bored... you'll probably wish the game didn't level you up so quickly. You can level up in a multitude of ways, including pure exploration. They give you different abilities at a good pace, so you learn your class as you play (which is very very important).
Jumping to level 80 right away is not helpful, even as a veteran. When I got one of the expansions, I spent my level 80 boost on the new class... and I was lost. I didn't know the abilities & it just wasn't fun trying to learn the class abilities as a level 80. The BEST use for Boosts is to re-roll a character class that you already know well... like, if you rolled a Charr Necromancer and would rather go with the Human Female meta for Necromancer.
If you boost to 80 right away, you'll be lost. You'll need to read a lot of guides to figure out what you're supposed to do... even simply setting up your character will be overwhelming. (Even with level 80 characters, I go back to starting zones ALL the time to kill World bosses.)
As others say, the first expansion (Heart of Thorns) ramps up the difficulty by a ton. If you aren't solid with your class abilities & combat skills, you die. There's a LOT of player skill involved with HoT. It's not a good area to learn how to play at all.
This❤
My oldest character got the "8 year"-birthday present two weeks ago and I´m still in love with this game. Now being totally excited for the new expansion next week 🤩😊
Played osrs for 2 years before switching to gw2. Been playing for almost a year now. Never goin back. Between the amazing community and the engaging combat and sick world bosses this game has everything I want from an MMO and more. Plus we're getting player housing soon and it looks dope AF
Really love your perspective on MMos based off this video.
Started GW2 earlier this year, and it's the only MMO I feel good about investing in. Really looking forward to seeing your experience with it.
It delivers much more than it needs to in many more categories than it needs to.
yes GW2 has jumping puzzles, and an interesting open world to explore with hidden areas, events that lead to hidden parts of the map and bosses, etc.
There's a ton of voice acting in the game and the main cast plus the player characters and it's done by some big names in gaming.
GW2 is the ANTI MMO it does so much against the standard design of the modern MMO. it focuses on teaming you up with players, it rewards you for reviving, it rewards you for just being casual. there is no gear tredmill and the BIS is convience. Legendaries have to be crafted and have the stame stats as the gear one tier below. but legendaries let you take out the upgrades in them and let you switch their stats AND are account wide. make ONE Legendary greatsword. you now have a greatsword for every character on your account.
This is also why I love Gw2 expansions actually expand the content, never replace older content. Octovine is still one of the most ran Metas and that came out a decade ago.
Gw2s problem is consistency and marketing.
consistency may be solved since theyre going to yearly xpacks.
An information that someone gave on Roze's video: during the design process, the designers refused the company's demands on making the female Charr having a pair of breasts, explaining that since they're based on felines, they'd either have 3 pairs or none at all.
Necro is really fun but you *have* to have Expansions for them to Big Sword, But everyone I know who plays Big Sword Necro refuses to do anything else "its too fun" they say XD
I dont have any super strong preference for starter zone because you can just go to any of the others immediately, however I would say I think its worth for _lore reasons_ playing a Sylvari Necromancer it creates strong lore ties to the Core games Storyline as well as Heart of Thorns
and you actually kind of Nailed what the games strength is: Exploration, somewhat generally speaking. The game does a good job at making you want to be in the world and explore.
I played HoT for the first time on a Sylvari and it felt so bloody personal. I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
Played Great Sword Reaper for years! Changed for dual sword when it was added and it is also fun imo! :)
Of new players that I've seen quit, the majority of them were people who boosted a character to 80 and waltzed in to the second expansion area and couldn't stay alive. The reason people suggest not boosting your first character is so that you can get a handle on, not only how the game plays, but also how the class you've picked works, because once you get in to the harder content you could just die without knowing why. On that note though, I have met new players that went straight to expansion content and had a blast challenging themselves right off the bat, so you never know haha
One word of warning! Dungeons
GW2 Dungeons are old and have not been touched since 2012. IMHO, they are good, but I strongly suggest that you DON’T play them with veteran players, unless you know them well and they have ALL agreed to allow you to experience the Dungeons properly the first time through. This is extremely important, because GW2 Dungeons are run through by veteran players now, as a purely speed run experience and you will NOT enjoy missing 90% of the Dungeons content because the other players in your party have skipped ahead and killed everything just to complete the Dungeons ASAP and get their rewards, so they can go do something else quickly. GW2 Dungeons have a great amount of story content, or “Lore”, that you don’t want to miss, and players who have already completed them hundreds of times won’t wait for you to watch the cutscenes, before moving forward to the next section of the Dungeon. Get a party of other new players, or friends from one of the guilds you have joined who agree to let you experience the Dungeon the way it should be experienced, and then play the “Story” version first, before you attempt to play any of the 3 “Explorable” Dungeon paths. If possible, also do each of the “Explorable” Dungeon paths this same way, for your first time through each Dungeon. You will thank me later.
I would repeat this advice for all content in the game. If you can, always find other players who will slow down and enjoy the content you are playing for the first time. Just speak up and explain that you are new to the game and that you want to fully experience each event in the game the first time you play through it. If the other players in your party or squad don’t want to do that, then find another group.
My advise as a veteran is go in it open minded. Few keypoints:
- The combat is hybrid Tab-target/Action
- Mounts have weight, they are not just fast travelers. Each has their own speciality. They have combat abilities and are not immune to damage themselves.
- Downscaling, combined with appropiate rewards and sometimes even Legendary Collections makes max level players return to starter maps.
- Mega-Server system: What the game does is put everyone in the same map instance untill it is full, then a 2nd instance starts for the overflow... in reverse, if a map becomes empty of players, you are given the ability to move to a more populated version, so even in off hours, maps always feel alive.
- Max level was, is and always will be 80. Level and Gear cap are never increased. So if you're max level, leave for a while and return, you are still relevant.
People in general advise against boosting the first character due to the steap learning curve by doing so... but end of the day, it's up to you, if you feel comfortable to try it out, you can do so. There is a trial when you use the boost, you have to use it a 2nd time to confirm or revert your boost
It's definitely worth doing the beginning story. Once you get to 80, you'll probably be completely confused on what to do.
I did Human Necromancer, And I love it, started Jan 2024 so in the "new=boat" category. personally didn't enjoy levelling too much, did at first then levle 60 got bored of spamming hearts. Game defo "clicked" at 80, I know alot of endgame can be done before 80 but 80 you actually feel pretty well rounded in the game tbh. GL in your journey :) I also saw this review early on
These games self-selected fans before 2000. I needed a map to get out of Neriak in Everquest, then I accidentally attacked a merchant. Lost my corpse in a dark dungeon. It took all my desire to play in virtual dungeons with friends to get me back into that game.
@@worshadar150 What does anything you wrote have to do with Guild Wars 2? I’m not complaining, just curious how your comment ties into this discussion?
Guild Wars 2 has the same problem as moba-games have with dota and lol: Everyone is already playing WoW and/or FF. Paired with the fact that GW2 marketing is abyssmal. Non-existant. Everyone remembers GW2 from when it was released back in 2012. I started playing in beta and some time after that but stopped playing just before the first expansion Heart of Thorns. I started playing again in the end of Path of Fire, before End of Dragons and still am. Lovin it.
My advice is, unfortunately, to buy the single most convenient and on my opinion mandatory item from the "pay 2 win"-store the *Copper-salvage-o-matic* . Put it on the shared backpack slot on the top so every character can use it from there.
Just something i want to say about the mounts in GW2, they all require grinding (especially Griffon and Skyscale the living world S4 version), even the Raptor in this video is just the basic one so you need to max it out (or at least improve the jumping ability) to reach the full potential of the mount or make unlocking other mounts easier. And in order to do that you'll need Mastery points and Exp.
So the reason most people consider the entire base game as "the tutorial" is that the 1st expansion is a BIG jump up in difficulty. You'll want to be very familiar with the combat system and have basic understanding of different build types for your class before going there. While you can get away with an all glass-cannon build in the core game, you'll want to spec for at LEAST some survivability for tackling the expansions, or you'll be be dying to the point of frustration. Having said that, the DLCs are also a BIG jump up in game quality. You'll get better maps, more ways to get around, MUCH better story content and improved graphics in general. The game is VERY alt friendly, so take the long way the 1st time and skip as you wish for your alts. Teaming up with friends is a good way to get thru any boring bits you come across. GW2 is also a very friendly "put down and come back to" game in the sense that you can play the new content and move on to other games while you wait for the next DLC to drop. There's no gear grind, so you will never be missing out, you just pick up where you left off.
My recommendation for race is Sylvari. I love them so much. I really like all but 1 of their opening stories and they are quite unique in my opinion. also, you get to glow in the dark. Also Caithe.
Alternatively, you can go with whatever feels right for you.
I have played a little bit of gw2 the thing I love about it is that once u get the best gear for your class u can quit for 5 years and come back and your items are still just as good as it was back then
GW2's biggest problem has historically been its inconistency. Wall of text history lesson incoming:
There have been several long content droughts and for a majority of the game's lifespan it has struggled to really find its own identity. The game started out as this big open world thing with a severe lack of long term goals and kind of tried to pivot you into its two pvp modes.
Then they quickly changed their minds and largely dropped support for pvp and, failing to establish an esports scene, decided they wanted to make a "living world" in pve by releasing small content patches every few weeks that changed existing maps and got removed from the game afterwards. That was obviously a horribly unsustainable fomo mess, so they changed model again.
They decided to make larger story updates on new open world maps less frequently and to make them available permanently, still under the name "living world".
After a while this eventually led to them releasing their first actual expansion 3 years into the game's life after the stance had previously been that there weren't going to be any traditional expansions. This expansion also came with 10 man raids, another thing the game initially wasn't supposed to have.
After an almost year long content drought they decided to go back to living world (which by the way at the time was free, if you logged in while it was new, but cost money afterwards), but this time with bigger open world and story updates every 3-4 months, each containing a full new open world map. The plan was to have these "living world seasons" and then seamlessly slot in major expansions every 2 years. This worked for exactly 2 seasons and one expansion, which is by many considered gw2's golden age (great story, regular content, introduction of mounts) even though it also had its issues, until they changed their model again. This is also where, after severely lacking behind in schedule and very low engagement from players, they stopped making raids.
After being almost shut down due to some missmanagement they decided they didn't want to do expansions anymore and instead wanted to deliver "expansion level content" in the living world system and rebranded it as "sagas", which included 10 man instanced single boss encounters called "strike missions", which were supposed to "bridge the gap" to and kinda replaced raids. This wasn't well received at all and the whole model of giving all your content out for free for existing players but putting new players in front of the paywall also didn't seem to work out. So after the first few releases, which were honestly pretty good, they made a hard turn and in the middle of a huge story arc they pulled almost all devs from this "saga" to instead make an expansion again.
They then spent the next half year drip feeding sub standard content and delivered a very premature out of nowhere "finale" to the story arc. After that they spent another year just bringing back the content from the very first living world season because it originally introduced a large chunk of the game's main cast of characters, so having it unavailable was really awkward for new players.
Then finally they dropped their third expansion, which was pretty well received and sort of "saved the game". However they then immediately went into another year long content drought and the future of the game was very uncertain. Eventually they released another "living world"-like content update that wasn't called living world and also wasn't well received after the long wait.
This led them to rethink what the game is supposed to be and culminated in their current system: yearly smaller scale expansions with free quarterly content updates as part of the expansion. They also wanted to readjust their work flow to allow them time to iterate on existing systems (including pvp) and make regular qualitiy of life and balance updates. The first of these expansions released a year ago and I think the consensus is largely that it was overall "pretty okay" content wise with some really nice systems and qol changes.
The next expansion is releasing next week and people are pretty hyped because we're going to have the first new raid in 5 years and they are also finally adding housing.
Very accurate summary of what the development process has been from initial release to the present day. Well done!.
Great summary. I'm pretty sure GW2 was meant to be more PvP focused in the start, a lot of how the combat works feels optimized for PvP. That's also why there was no holy trinity and everyone was a damage dealer with a heal button. Basically all stat combos except berserkers (direct damage) was useless in PvE endgame - which was only dungeons/open world bosses at that point. DoT builds didn't exist because there was a DoT cap (I think max 25 stacks of each) on bosses. (Which, again looks like it was built with PvP in mind)
It took them a long time to remove that, but finally DoT builds became viable.
They realized that people like dedicated healer roles so they made them viable too. At some point they added two very powerful boons (alacrity and quickness), which together is like a heroism/bloodlust from WoW - making them defacto a requirement for grouped endgame PvE.
So we went from "the holy trinity is bad" to a "soft trinity", where you slot 1 healer with 4 dds and two of the group supplying everyone with these two boons.
WvW, which was meant to be the great endgame staple was kind of forgotten (and I'm pretty sure standard PvP had the same faith although I'm not playing that game mode) and only gets small updates, mostly balance these days. That said, WvW was a hot mess at the beginning too, almost zero rewards, you lost gold by playing it, because dying often meant you had high repair costs of your gear (which they thankfully removed at some point). Now you have synthesizers, reward tracks and pips which give claim tickets you can make into gold or legendaries.
Honestly I'm glad they shifted how you play because the whole game plays much better with a lot more variety these days.
I just wish they would have found their footing sooner so less time would've been wasted to get here.
@@Nellyaa I think you’re right about PvP being more important at launch, which makes it even more surprising that Anet is so bad at balancing the game and how they have virtually abandoned providing meaningful updates for that game mode.
@@traveling.down.the.road56 Yes, it's a little sad, I'd like to see them give WvW more love, it's a great game mode that supports a variety of playstyles (roaming, small scale or big zerg, more strategic, ppt or fight focused etc.), but with the new servers change it's becoming even more difficult to get into.
I might add I heard the sentiment a lot in PvP that the balance was a lot better back in the day. I have the theory all the ne new boons, stats and healing abilities they added over the years makes it a hell to balance these days. They probably invest their time more into PvE because it's more popular. It is what it is, sadly.
I think WvW is in an okay place right now so it can be fun, just the lack of new things is making it stale. (PvP is supposedly a shitshow because balance is so off.)
I am glad PvE is fun these days though.
Regarding the question at 15:25 :
There was a power creep in the last 6 years. Leveling and the base game is quite easy, but the end game and the competitive mode are quite complex. They difference between an average player damage and good player damage (with the same gear) is roughly 14x (very different from WoW). You SHOULD really play the base game because it's really amazing gameplay and exploration, but if you really want a combat challenge till the early level, one thing you could do is trying to do the hero Ascent challenge. Basically you only equip your weapon (no gear, food, trinkets, etc) and you try to never die. It is quite fun and challenging. When they talk about the "difficulty of boosting at level 80" it's the complexity of the game and the character build system, and also the combat gameplay
Rubeus, I was on the fence subbing to you. The second you mentioned Legend of Dragoon, instant sub. Not many gamers know of that gem
One of my favorites of all time!
Starting race... best choice, story-wise? Asura (humor/sarcasm) or Charr (building your warband is cool)... but Charr arguably have the worst outfits, and Asura also look strange.
Looks-wise? Most pick Human... with Norn and Sylvari also in the mix since they all use the same "human" character model.
Human female meta.
Favorite starting zone? They are all 100% interchangeable since it only takes a short trip through the Asura gates to go from one starting city to another.
I think the Norn starting area is my favorite (thanks to Skyrim, plus Jeremy Soule's music in both Skyrim & core GW2), with the Charr starting area as my least favorite (half the enemies are the vengeful ghosts of murdered humans who were massacred in the Searing, the cataclysm that starts the game in Guild Wars 1). You can level up wherever you like, though. Cosmetics, the fit of your armor & your cultural armor choices, tend to be the bigger consideration for many players.
My top characters... Human Female Elementalist, Asura Female Ranger, Human Female Warrior. My oldest characters... Human Female Guardian, Sylvari Female Necromancer, Human Female Elementalist.
when it comes to the difficulty, a lot of the core maps have been power crept a bit. I would say, by the time you get to Orr, you'll need a good build, or know what you're doing to hold out. You need a good build and know what you're doing by heart of thorns. (if you're doing things in chronological order). Especially the elite specializations give quite a powerboost, but you can only get those after level 80. Since it's not that hard, you do have a lot of freedom to explore what to do and all that. That being said: if you're starting, don't worry to much about where to spend your hero points, you'll get enough to unlock everything by level 80 (or earlier if you chase down hero challenges)
I have 15k hours in WoW and did a lot cutting edge raiding, and I still love GW2. GW2 has a lot of stuff to love about it but it's definitely different in the gearing department. If you go into it thinking you're going to play it like WoW and rush to the end-game you're gonna have a bad time. Experiencing it in order with the Metroidvania elements in tact is the best, in my opinion. (For example, using any mount besides the raptor in HoT maps completely breaks them). I ended up just going slowly and not leaving Heart of Thorns zones until I had explored everything and had a blast.
worth playing,. my advice is play it in order including living world episodes, dont let the cool stuff(mounts, specializations or anyother mastery related feature) make you steer away from this to truely appreciate the journey/progress (since there is no vertical grind). come in the game with a fresh perspective, dont expect it to play the way traditional mmos work and finally the tutorial is base game from lvl 1-80 with the base story. ive seen lots of ppl reach end game or new contact and still dont know about core mechanics like CC bars, boons and conditions (no guide but you are ment to find out via leveling and thinkering with builds)
i linked this video to you yesterday and I went back to see if you did watch it and im glad you did! lol super ahead of me
Hello! I played GW2 in 2012, and after a year I fell off. Partially due to not having a PC anymore and also just no expansions/new content. I started playing again this year and am having a blast, but I do highly recommend the expansions. The world meta events are very fun, story is a lot better, mounts, glider, and elites make a huge difference.
Not that the OG is terrible, but the expansions really do make a better experience. Path of Fire for story and mounts especially.
Also if you are interested in Necromancer, I made my first alt Necro, then unlocked the Elite Specialization Reaper. I have into say Reaper is very fun and strong. I think you'll like it. Don't be afraid to try other professions though if you don't like Necro.
As a long time mmo player, and who has played gw2 since launch, the base game is relatively easy. The only times playing the base game i had any issues was trying to do event alone which even then the likelyhood of other players jumping in with you is pretty high. But if you pull a lot of enemies or fight a high rarity mob alone then you will probably die.
The reason why most people say "dont use a level boost it will ruin the game" is because instead of gradually learning your class and the mechanics of the game, you are now lvl 80 most of the classes mechanics and abilities are unlocked and you have to now sit there and read everything. I have boosted many alts on classes i didnt level and it was not a fun experience to learn at lvl80 instead of slowly learning the class as i level. As an alternative to this, i have an IRL friend who is a raider in WOW and i recommeneded that he lvl boost and we quickly got him set up with a solid meta build cause all he wanted to do was raid/endgame pve.
I'm not your "typical" MMO player, I don't really care about bossing or PVP, in OSRS I'm a skiller that just makes addy bars and afk fishing all day, but what I remember *LOVING* about Guild Wars 2 was the jumping puzzles. The platforming in this game is absolutely unlike any other MMO I've played. I also really liked the general "vibe" of GW2 compared to WOW but it's hard to reccomend to someone based off of that lol
I’m kind of the same way I never really got into combat in Classic, OSRS, or RS3. Instead I’d hang around skilling watching other players walk around and do their own thing. I also enjoyed unlocking locations on the map and watching that percentage meter reach 100% in each zone.
@@powerman2442 definitely! It's very zen, and I enjoy watching the number go up while chatting with other chill people around me doing the same. It's great to not have to be worried about losing all my stuff dying while catching up on an anime or book lol
Honestly, the only thing you will ever feel you actually need out of the cash shop is bank tabs and maybe the material bank expansions. That's it... Rest of it is just very nice.
As someone who has dumped 15 years of playing RS3, and WoW, I've also dumped my most recent 3 years of MMO's into Guild Wars 2
Some standouts from Guild Wars 2 versus games like RS, or WoW (Also, I'm a primarily PVE driven player):
1. The Endgame is fashion and convenience. Legendary Weapons and Armors and crafting them are the true end game
2. The Achievement system has about as much content and depth as comping in RS3 or Maxing in OSRS
3. Out of all of the MMO's I've played, its IMMENSELY similar to RS where it respects your time and dedication into the game. It boasts a Horizontal Gear progression system. New Expac? Don't need to re-grind for gear. New playstyles and stat combos emerge. Your old playstyle will likely be intact and remain relevant
4. The mounts are very fun compared to any other MMO.
5. The story content and the outdoor content does become harder and if you dont dodge or "get out of the bad" you'll have a bad time
6. Community is some of the nicest and most supportive I've seen in an MMO that are not "Hidden" like in RS3, or WoW. These folks will show up in loud af Transmogs and encourage you to join up with them
Some things I don't like:
1. Endgame combat seems to be like a deathball. This game specifically relies on short term buffs for big time damage. So when doing endgame content you basically deathball together and buff eachother up
2. Once you're done with the LONG and I mean LONG story content, all thats left is achievements, fashion, and legendaries to work towards. Turning enjoyable "Map Meta" (Big map events) into grindfests that are time gated
3. In-game LFG system is trash. You basically gotta rely on using discords to group with people for Raids or "Fractals" (Another word for Dungeons in this Game, that is separate from Dungeons).
Why people haven't tried Guild Wars:
It's marketed really poorly.
They also just went through a very LONG period of fixing the beginning of the game where they re-placed the original initial story pack of content after the base vanilla story that had been missing for years.
But most of all, you gotta be an experienced gamer who has had their time disrespected to appreciate and understand what Guild Wars attempts to do.
Should you try it? Absolutely, give it a shot. I'd say it's easier to get into Guild Wars 2 than it is to get into RS3 as a fresh player right now.
1. Almost EVERY mmo has tons of fashion and GW2 has LESS than both WoW and FFXIV.
2. It has the same crappy achievement system as any other MMO, it only bothers to give you stuff.
3. It "Respects your time" cause there's NOTHING to earn once you have level 80 gear, unless you want Ascended [which are just slightly stronger] or want to bother grinding your nuts off for Legendaries [which are Ascended level of power].
4. The only true one, except the little issue of the mounts obliterated any exploration the game has since you can just fly with the Skyscale anywhere.
5. This is never true, as the devs themselves mentioned. The game is ridiculously simple, to the point ANet themselves have mentioned that most players never learn their class and do abysmally low DPS.
6. PvP and raiding says otherwise.
@@AzureRoxe pretty biased comment
Ah yes, we successfully baited you watching a roze video - nice. I know you said no other vids, but mitchmanix could be contributing in setting your expectations. In the plenty of questions you had, to my memory: when does it become difficult? If you are unlucky and have the human starting zone and wander of into a corner… you can meet an bandit as early as lvl 10 and he will wipe the floor with your face. Experienced players can solo her, but new players need overwhelming numbers. When it comes to the main story, I would say lvl 40 (halfway to max level) can get tricky at some point. Best starting zone ? All are good and all are different - pick the flavor you want to try first. It is very alt friendly. You can swap to pvp immediately after the tutorial mission. All equipment is egalized and all stat combinations and skills are unlocked. Looking forward to learn if gw2 and you vibe, or not.
I used to be anti-small toons till I played the Azura in GW2. Now I have mostly little narcissistic psychopathic sward welding ancle biters with superiority complexes that make Napolean look like a beet down Ercle. You will like the versatility of the Necro and its survivability is great. I'm currently running dule sward Reaper and I am verry comfortable on any Map. Bewar the PocketRockets!
If you want a challenge, try out the early dungeons (Ascalon catacombs etc) a true challenge WAY before heart of thorns
I personally love the starting area for the sylvari, but in the end just play what feels right to you, since you can got to every starting area, if you wish to. And the base game might feel easy, but starting with the expansions you will get your ass kicked from time to time.
I uninstalled / reinstalled 3 times in 48 hrs before I gave the game a long shot try and after that I was hooked. There are things to love and hate about the game but still I can't stop playing. If I get tired or annoyed by something petty there are 100 other things I can do to have fun. Truly a goated mmo!
GW2 has the best monetization out of any of the big MMOs. Free base game, no sub fee, cheap expansions. Anything in the shop (which is only cosmetics and utility, ZERO power) can be bought by converting ingame currency. There is NOTHING locked behind real money. Impatient players can swipe to get stuff faster and that will pay the bills for all of us. I'm 1.5 years in and have all I could want without swiping once.
Almost every generation thinks when they're younger it was easier or simpler or more fun. A reason for that is we had fewer responsibilities and more time to focus on what we enjoyed. The biggest things planned were the next event and not when we had to pay an adult tax.
the storys combine at some point
get your boots on the ground and jump in...should of watched Roze to the end, his "out-roze" are a treat
Dungeons become available at level 20. If I am not mistaken but they are hardly the content that you want to go for. I strongly recommend concentrating on the open world exploration because that is the hook for the game. Other than that, take your time, GW2 has a lot of content and when I say a lot, I do mean tons of it. Don't try to go through all of it in a heartbeat because it will burn you. Instead try taking your time. Concentrate on what caught your interest at that given moment and take your time to explore it fully, learn about it, etc. And yes, the game becomes quite more challenging with time and progress, especially when you reach the last levelling zones, and start the living seasons. And even more later on with challenge modes and Nightmare modes. However, do not rush to it, gear, skills, masteries, crafting you need all of that to even consider challenging mode and you have to be fully aware of tacs, have experience and high APM (in some content). So yes, take your time and do not rush it. You will easily sink at least a thousand hours in the game when you start playing it.
So you asked about race and peoples favourite starter zone. Honestly, all are good, but it is a matter of perspective so I'll give you a basic idea of what to expect.
Human - Big believers in the gods, and as typical for humans in fantasy, a well rounded race of people that excel in a bunch of areas but don't stand out in any tremendous matter other than that good ol' human spirit. The starter zone takes place in a hilly/plains farmland type area with various farming and small town settlements, where the biggest dangers faced are bandits and centaur. There's also a eerie swamp area with a wonderful event that I will not spoil.
Charr - Cat-like in appearance, but a very industrial type civilization that favours a warriors lifestyle. They have huge machinery and weapons and are arguably the most fearsome race in the lands, but have brokered peace with humans after many long centuries of fighting. Their starter zone is a plains like area that is saturated with tons of industry, farm land and settlements aimed at training the charr for battle. The biggest threat here are the human ghosts from a centuries old charr-human battle that ended brutally, as well as Flame Legion charr, who are very outcasted from normal charr society due to their religious fanaticism.
Norn - Tall humans. Ok, joking aside, they are a more nomad style people, and while they have large settlements, those are often places of worship, events, and endless ale drinking. They have the ability to shapeshift into great animals such as bears, panthers, ravens, wolves, etc, as they primarily live off the land and worship the spirits, ancient animal deities. The starter zone is in the mountains, with forest terrain and icy lakes and snow covered plains. The largest threats they face are the dredge, a mole like race, and Svanir, misogynistic Norn who are worshippers of an elder dragon, and want to corrupt all beings to their dragon.
Asura - This games diminutive race, they are technological geniuses, and will remind you of their genius every chance they get. They don't have any religion, but are instead steeped in the combining of magic and science, the Eternal Alchemy. Their only goals are the advancement of their own race and the many sciences of the world. The starting zone is a swampy/jungle type area, filled with many research bases for various study and experiments. The largest threats are the Inquest, asuran supremacist's who hold nothing back when it comes to testing their theories and will sacrifice anyone in any way in order to learn more. They're basically tiny nazi's.
Sylvari - A plant like race that is not born, but grown in giant seeding pods. All sylvari share in a single mother, the Pale Tree, and many sylvari share in Ventari's values. Ventari is an old centaur who, along with a human friend, planted the original seed that eventually grew into the Pale Tree, and sowed much wisdom in a tablet that the sylvari hold dear and live by its tenants. The starting zone is a wild jungle of large plans and many various and large rooted trees. Some of the largest threats are the risen, the undead elder dragons minions that can corrupt all dead except for the sylvari who are for reasons you will discover, immune to that corruption. The other massive thread are the Nightmare Court, sylvari who do not believe in Ventari's teachings and wish to corrupt all sylvari to the nightmare.
I hope this very very generalized list gives you some inspiration.
Yeah, the power creep and the mounts have neutered the core game to the point of being meaningless. 1~ 80 sure ain't Dark Souls.
Challenge hits in the Living World DLCs and then it really hits in the expansions. Hard. But by then you need to know how the enemies, your skills, and your builds all work or else you'll be respawning a lot. That's why vets tell you to save the level boost until you play through the core game at least once. However nothing says you can't skip levels with the boosters and level tomes as you do it.
Why are few people treating it like the classic it is? Roze covers all of the reasons over the course of his review series. You should watch the rest of it when you can.
bare with my ASD just this time pls, since im not fit to be a youtuber to clarify these questions XD:
1:02 this is exactly one of the biggest problems of GW2, the game present itself as easy on early lvl but does nothing to to encourage players to read the fricking tutorials.
7:37 personal favorite early MSQ are the norn, since you dont start big then goes pest control BUT just for maps alone it doesn't really matter since every starting zone has a teleport point if you want to change zones (be advised that if you that you gonna need to teleport back to your racial starting zone to complete your MSQ)
15:20 boosting characters is not a Good idea for your first one since you Will be bombarded with too many systems to learn all at once, the main MSQ nowadays acts as sort of tutorial presenting players most of the game system/mechanics in a timely fashion. you'll be challenged overtime as you come of age of lv 80 but the MSQ up to lv 80 might not be really challenging if you pay attention to the game mechanics.
22:03 ANET marketing department is awful, it kinda redeemed themselves during End of dragons expansión launch but its been pretty much non existent during all the game life, they even released a really Good launch trailer for that expansión but… thats it ruclips.net/video/a-iol-TY3wU/видео.html
23:03 A&D binded for strafe is just a recent change, it wasnt like that until EoD i believe.
23:24 that is partly true since the game doesn't really teach you critical mechanics for "end game" during the vanilla experience, they added a training yard in EoD that fits really Good for vanilla experience but they seems unwilling to port that (mostly maybe for the mess of a code they have on the core game)
34:34 you Will receive a letter notifying you when you can Access your first dungeon. dungeons has a mandatory first clear called story mode that unravel some lore and once you clear that you can then Access explorable mode where you can select 3 different paths to clear. be aware that dungeons so far are some kind of discontinued piece of content that so far only Works if you need an specific wardrobe unlock or if you are working on some legendaries, so RN it might not be a really Good time to try a random comp formed from looking for group if you want to experience them as intended. BTW dungeons were abandoned for the sake of fractal of the mist, take the as a kind of mythic+ from wow (they were "inspired" by this content) thats accesible at lv 80 even for free accounts.
34:55 that error message was something even ANET devs hasnt seen ever (they even contacted roze to see what the hell happened)
Hmm, I have to remind you that core game of gw2 is much different from expansion ;D And... I wish you put down your hype while playing it lmao Keeping an open mind would be nice^^
15:29 once you step into HoT you got deleted if you haven't learned your class ;) However, if you don't want to level up that long(actually, it is very fast tho... but you can make your own judgement after you try it yourself). You can step into pvp right away bc you would be lvl 80 right away and learn your class there is a way too
I have an unpopular opinion: skip the hole base game, and the leveling part. Buy an expansion and use the level 80 ticket. You are veteran mmorpg player, so you will be fine. Go and do fractals, raids, strikes, craft/find/buy your ascended build, go to the golem and start to practice your rotation, go and do meta events and start to make gold for legendaries. Your goal should be something like craft a full set of legendary pieces: armor, weapons, rings, accessories, backpack, relics, sigils and runes. And complete all the raids wings in challenge mode, all the strikes in challenge mode and the last strike added in Legendary Challenge mode, also, complete all the fractals doing the last 5(96,97,98,99,100) in challenge mode aswell.
So as far I know, I played about 4yrs now going on 5yrs. Guild Wars is pretty populated but not overall very popular in the general public is that ArenaNet doesn't market themselves like it's predecessors. Only time, the game getting eyes on its products is when a new expansion is being advertised.
Honestly all the starting zones are great imo xD
GW2 has gotten(on average) better over time with each release, but like with FFXIV that means the older content is not representative of the modern content and can be, for some players, a slog to get through. GW2 base game does hold up in a lot of ways but story replayablity is not one of them. If you get to the first expansion you've gotten through the worst of it and the difficulty increases
you can go to any starting zone from character creation so race is literally only cosmetic
skip the base game if you want a lot of ppl its a bad idea n shit but who cares, the base game is enjoyable for a lot of people but not everyone, if you think you will get bored no point forcing yourself (i say this because i played for like 5+ years exclusively pvp, all my characters were and still are getting leveled only through pvp modes and i didnt see the appeal of other game modes and story until post path of fire). If you decide to craft a legendary (the only non instanced pve endgame activity) theres a chance you will need to do a map completion and see the world that way. The game gets hard at the first expansion or maybe even living world season 1 (just before the first expansion) with the strike mission, but if youre used to playing mmos i dont see how you would mess up, the dont skip the base game argument applies alot more to extremely casual players imo.
dungeons are dead content, only high level ppl rushing them do them if they are weeklies, but i guess if you ask kindly you might find some other newish ppl or ppl who are ok with not rushing the instance.
Nowadays the real instanced pve endgame content are Fractals (modular mini dungeons), Raids (literally a new map with a couple event and bosses you take on with 9 other people) and strike missions (a singular fight taken from the story that a lot of time they have a "challenge mode" which amps up the difficulty, sometimes just a harder version of normal mechanics and extra hp, sometimes literally extra phases and mechanics that you have to learn)
Charr best race best storyline love their starter zone (biased as hell I love my charr)
The expansion content is significantly harder than the base game, but it's recommended to go through it at least once because it's more of an extended tutorial now. You need a base understanding of how the game and your class play before you start getting into elite specs or you're not going to have any idea what you're doing and you'll have a bad time. Jumping directly into Heart of Thorns would hammer that point home HARD lol.
As for the perception that the game isn't extremely popular...I don't know where you're getting that. It's almost always in the top 5 most played, and ALWAYS in the top 10. It's easy for it to maintain population because ALL content progresses something, no matter how much you've done. Even at 3 in the morning I seldom have difficulty doing events that need a group because there's always several people around in every area.
Also, the bug he encountered with the dungeon...I haven't seen anything like that in 12 years playing. Many people under that video say they haven't either.
My friend just started playing GW2 and while he was powerful for the first levels, around lvl 70 he already started to complain that the story instances are kicking his butt.
omg you will love SAB when it comes back around next year 8:25
dont skip core, its fast and helps you learn combat rotations etc, sure itll be mostly easy ppl might have a hard time soloing the final msq if they are new, the earlier time you will feel like you got a challenge will likely be if u try to do dungeons early on, or if you do fractals once 80, early fractals are easy but if its a group of all fresh 80's itll likely be a challenge, later fractals are difficult until you get used to them, and CM (challenge mote) fractals are hard and enjoyable but not too many ppl try to do them (i think due to fear, i personally think ppl make them sound more difficult then they are as someone who used to do them) ALSO early Heart of Thorns expansion might completely destroy you when u first get there with the elites.
I think GW2s biggest issue for players, is that it has an issue with keeping players, people are fine playing it then dropping it for a few months and coming back for a month then repeat, the game itself is fine but progression to get bis gear being so easy even with new expansions coming out where gear DOESNT get better just easier to get.
Also the cash shop isnt really about buying best in slot gear since that has never been an issue to get in the first place ingame, its more about buying storage spaces/bank slots/ bigger inventories (bag slots) which people cant visually see but it is a huge QOL if you have them and dont really notice unless you dont (it feels weird to not have these things if u make a brand new arenanet acc, but if u never had them in the first place you dont really know)
I’ll be honest I’ve hardly played GW2, but I played the shit out of GW1 (pre expansions) back in the day. I’ve dabbled in GW2 and enjoyed it so far but I haven’t had time to really play it.
In the German community, some WoW streamers tried it out but quickly gave it up because it didn't make them any money. People just play GW2 and aren't interested in the kind of content they present with WoW streams. Basically, I'm quite happy that GW2 is flying under the radar!
I'll watch if you do a playthrough. I would like to see the a new player experience. Have fun sir 😜👍
Dont skip the base game. Never. You will fail instantly entering the first lv. 80 (max lv) map.
i really recomand you to watch rose reaction to mukluks reaction to rose´s video xD its pure gold !
For when it gets harder it depends u can go for dungeons early on it won't be so easy no matter your level until you have optimized your build
And heart of thorn the first expact will for sure be harder in the open world !! Altho base game open world isn't complete crap if u ignore bosses abilities u will die even to showdow behemoth the first human world boss u can reach at level 2
hope you enjoy ur foray into gw2. U get access to dungeons at lvl 30 and can get a party through the LFG. I would stress that u should form your own party and let people know u are a new player and want to experience the story. dungeons are old content and veteran players might rush through(skip mobs and cutscenes) them unless u let them know beforehand that u actually want to experience them as intended.
I remember rushing my revenant to level 80 without even researching how the class functions, I went to heart of thorns and dear god that shit was playing a game on nightmare difficulty, worst and best decisions for me thank god my herald build now takes no brain cells to play hahahhaha
Look, people miss the points alot. Horizontal progression means that you spend time mastering your character and then you begin fine-tuning it after reaching max level. That's the logic here. Besides that, GW2 offers Specialization and Mastery points system, so no - the endgame isn't "boring".
Specialization allows you to try a different version of the class, which operates on same basis, except the class skill template is altered into a new variant. Like if it was a concept art contest and you get to choose another version. But the main class variation isn't even about these Specializations, it's in being able to make ANY class work as a Tank/Healer/Dps, or anything in between. Even a Warrior class can be a teambuffing support that puts down Banners and Shouts warcries if you select that in the Build and equip appropriate gear.
Mastery system otoh allows you to unlock bonus abilities for your characters and mounts that improve everything from movement to combat, or reward you in numerous other ways. So becoming a real veteran in GW2 takes anywhere from several months to an entire year since the amount of things to learn or explore is huge.
That's why GW2 is everlasting. Plus? It respects your time, money and is designed in such a way that inspires cooperation. Since everyone gets individual loot, scaled to their current level anytime and anywhere. It is objectively a great game worth every cent with a positive and quite large community.
Guardian/Norn Main since Beta. You can set a key to use "Action camera" They don't advertise like other mmos do. Also, people talk shit and say the game is dead. So other people won't even give it a chance. Game client has been out August 28, 2012. Steam has been out for only a little while. They look at steam charts and think its dead. Dungeons are DEAD. It's all about raids, strikes and fractals. I will subscribe to watch you play it!
I had to do a bunch of quests for my dinosaur mount??? They just hand those out now i guess? i
If you want early game challenge try project 1999. It's a legal everquest private server. It's brutal for the uninitiated, vanilla wow is baby mode compared to it.
Base Game's mostly easy, but the expansions *will* kill you a lot if you just jump right in. It shouldn't take you very long to get through base game, to be honest. My recommendation would be to start playing the base game normally first, and when you find you're having no fun anymore, use the boost. And if you happen to just not use the boost...well, ain't that nice for the inevitable alt? XD
12 year vet of WoW 365 days played on my main. I left before Shadowlands because of gear grind and the toxic, toxic community. Over 1k hours on GW2 and never missed WoW. Absolutely the best community of players I have ever encountered and have been doing the rpg circuit since Ultima IV on Commodore 64,
Lookin to crafting
In how many MMO’s do players stop way they are doing to rez you. It is a game where most people are helpful and positive.
I think there is 60% of voice acting in the game itself.
You're actually not given the mounts. It's a trial phase
Also, the MAIN reason people dont stick to gw2, is the fact that the game throws a TON at you, and you basicly can do whatever u want to, so most people get overwhelmed, not knowing where to start or continue, which results in quitting, that being said, for me, personally, in the end, i did not feel much for the combat, it feels empty, non-impactful, and for experience with the game, i got almost every legendary in the game, reached diamond in pvp, got a TON of hours, was a guild leader in a raid learning guild etc