Guild Wars 2 PC Review - PAGE 1

Guild Wars 2 has been several long years in the making, to a point where many of ArenaNet’s fans wondered if the MMO would ever be released. Well, a month ago, it did, and while the end result isn’t exactly what Guild Wars loyalists quite imagined, ArenaNet is reminding us once more why they have so many followers.

The biggest change between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 is that the latter plays much more like a typical MMO – on the surface, anyway. Guild Wars was an entirely instance-based game, to a point where many online gamers didn’t consider it a “true” massively multiplayer online game. Now, five years after the last expansion, the series is given a fresh makeover, turning this long-awaited sequel into a formidable contender in the booming MMO industry. Certain staples like a persistent world, crafting, large-scale PVP, and world events have been introduced to the franchise, but if you’re thinking this turns Guild Wars 2 into another World of Warcraft clone, you’d be dead wrong.

Your Story

Over two centuries after the events of Eye of the North, Tyria is in turmoil. Every race – asura, norn, human, charr, sylvari – is besieged by enemies on the homefront, as the Elder Dragons awaken and spread their corruption from the Ruins of Orr. Beyond this grand overarching tale, your character has his or her personal story, one that progresses every few levels and serves as a roadmap for less experienced or more casual MMO players. Depending on the stage (level) your personal story quest is at, it’ll lead you to a zone of the appropriate level, and award gear based on such.

A secondary plot revolves around the members of Destiny’s Edge, the band of multi-species heroes from the books. This is really just an excuse to introduce the game’s numerous dungeons, though if you enjoyed the Guild Wars books, seeing these characters return is probably a nice treat. All of this story-related content is entirely optional, however, completable at any point in time.

Strangers Could be Friends

Guild Wars 2 is more of an MMO than its predecessor was, but ArenaNet kept innovation a top priority. Perhaps the most obvious trait that sets the game apart from other titles is the community atmosphere. Generally speaking, Guild Wars 2 boasts a much friendlier tone than any of its competitors, where players are encouraged to work together as much as possible. To achieve this, the game utilizes several unusual features.

Other games tend to bestow credit for mob kills on whoever hits the target first, turning crowded PVE zones into an unpleasant competition. Not so in Guild Wars 2, where the same principle of sharing holds true in nearly every aspect. Loot, as far as most can figure, is randomized, but so long as you “tag” an enemy by dealing damage to it, you’ll get XP and credit for the kill. Players are never in competition for, well, anything. Even resource nodes – metal, wood, cooking ingredients – are shared. The end result is actually very surprising. Competition gives way to cooperation, where practically every player you run into is willing to lend a hand, whether or not you ask for it.

Killing, Leveling

Guild Wars 2 also makes an effort to shake up the MMO “holy trinity” by muddying the healer, tank, and damage roles. For the most part, players still gravitate toward the conventional team comp, tasking tankier characters like Guardians and Warriors to initiate, while bringing along Engineers or Elementalists to heal, and so forth. But the game does successfully create new possibilities because every class is so self-sufficient. There is no one healing or DPS class; everyone has the potential to do almost anything. Dungeons can be cleared with an entire team of casters, Guardians can spec to heal or tank. This is made possible, in part, by the absence of skill trees. The primary skills at your disposal are determined by weapons and class, not trees, as each weapon will grant a special set of abilities based on player class.

This same freedom is afforded to the leveling process. The absence of traditional questing makes leveling a rather unusual experience in Guild Wars 2, but it’s also surprisingly enjoyable as a result. The game offers a number of paths to level 80, only one of which entails zone events. Exploration, crafting, instances, and personal story progression are all equally viable options, so it comes down to how each player prefers to tackle the grind. Perhaps the most amazing part of this MMO is how it manages to smooth out the leveling process, to a point where your 1-80 experience feels more as a game ought to, without the fatigue that comes from level grinding. Where you go and what you do is left almost completely to the player’s discretion.

Guild Wars 2 has no actual quests either, at least not the sort we’re used to seeing. Rather than go from NPC to NPC, picking up random tasks, players can participate in various events in each zone. Special “Karma” NPCs offer one-time quests that reward money, Karma, and XP; random gathering and escort quests can be found across every map; bosses of varying difficulties spawn periodically. All events are designed in a way that promotes cooperation, so players are actually completing these world tasks together rather than competing for credit. It’s difficult to really understand just how revolutionary this system is. Gone is the frustration of sifting through a cluttered quest log, struggling with what quest to drop, what order to complete them in. Instead, your time is spent examining the world map and checking Chat to see where the current action is.

That’s not to say the pacing doesn’t falter here and there. At later levels – namely the 70-80 range – the grind begins to slow for players who go the traditional route of events and exploring. Ask anyone in the game why, and they’ll agree that late-game areas just aren’t very appealing. The mobs are more numerous, tougher (or more annoying), and have less variety. As such, you won’t find nearly as many players populating endgame zones, which means completing zone events or other activities in the area are tougher than they need to be, if not downright impossible at times.

And then you have the money issue. Armors and other supplies are rewarded freely up until you hit endgame, often through drops, Karma vendors, or by completing personal story quests. Money is fairly scarce in Guild Wars 2, and most loot doesn’t sell for a whole lot either at vendors or the Trading Post (a.k.a. Auction House). Problem is, some endgame gear and certain essentials like skill books do cost a lot. In the case of armor, I can understand if the developers wanted to make level 80 gear more difficult to obtain, but the transition feels pretty jarring when you’ve gone through 70 levels without this issue. Even crafting becomes ridiculously expensive at the highest tier. Interestingly, the in-game store lets players buy gold directly from ArenaNet – not that including this option has deterred gold farmers. Bottom line is the pricing of most things at level 80 feels off at the moment, though in a recent patch, ArenaNet did raise the drop rate of dungeon tokens (also a means of acquiring gear at 80) while making them less farmable.