MMOs: Guild Wars 2 Impressions

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to play Guild Wars 2 during an invite-a-friend trial. While I really only scratched the surface of the game, I still wish to put down my initial thoughts to spark a discussion or possibly put my doubts to rest. Frankly, I did not particularly enjoy the time I spent with Guild Wars 2. That is not to say it's a bad game by any means, but there were certain aspects that really kept me from enjoying the experience. Before we get into those concerns though, let me tell you what I did like about the game.

Positives

For starters, Guild Wars 2 certainly gets the scale of an MMO correct. The world is gigantic and each area is appropriately wide open and explorable. The environments I went through were brightly colored and absolutely beautiful with just enough variance in scenery without keeping every area looking the same or resulting in jarring changes. The best part of this world is the exploration. The more you explore, the more experience and potential quests you get to do. Really, just staying on the paths from area to area is something you should not do as you'll miss out on several opportunities for experience or loot. I did enjoy the fact Guild Wars 2 encouraged exploration of entire areas, but sometimes this can send mixed signals which I'll discuss later on.

This game also has tons of options for character creation and customization...possibly the most I've ever seen in an MMO. The sheer amount of preset body types and facial structures is impressive enough, but the game then allows you to customize those features using sliders for different regions of your character (similar to the Elder Scrolls games). Add in dozens of dyes for your character's clothing and there's enough content right there to take up an hour of your game time. This kind of character customization is really something other MMOs need to take notice of. Because of this, Guild Wars 2 is one of the few MMOs where players will very rarely look the same and this helps add that sense of uniqueness other MMOs have tried for years to perfect.

Another aspect of the game I found to be more interesting than anything else was the weapon/skill system. Having your skills tied to your weapon helps add a certain degree of variation to the combat, and the ability to swap weapon sets on the fly ensures there's no battle that certain classes can't partake in. Not only that, but unlocking all of the skills for your weapons takes all of 5-10 minutes. This means that the unlocking is less of a grind fest and more just the game's way of ensuring you get used to the new abilities before handing you another one.

Negatives

Now we come to the part where I lay out my issues or concerns with the game. I would just like to restate that these do not make Guild Wars 2 a bad game; they are merely personal issues that I am explaining.

As I said before, the world of Guild Wars 2 is massive and exploration plays a large part of the game. In each area there will be places marked as "areas of interest" that you can go to for additional experience. This would give the signal that exploration is something highly encouraged, but...that's not quite the case. Let me provide an example.

Guild Wars 2: "Hey player! There's a point of interest nearby so you should go check it out!" ^_^

Player: "Well, alright, that sounds pretty interesting...."

Guild Wars 2: "LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL Have fun with that!"

See, when it comes to "points of interest", there's nothing to distinguish a named hill or a monument from an encampment of powerful ogres ready to crush your bones into dust the second you walk in the front door (yes, that did happen to me). This is where the mixed message comes in. The player gets rewarded for exploring the world, yet there are areas where the player will get absolutely destroyed if they try to go near. It's almost as if Guild Wars 2 expects you to have a posse at all times if you want to actually just, you know, look around.

This was actually a personal issue when I was trying to quest because the starting zone I was in was dead. I would see another player maybe every hour or two if I was lucky. I don't know if that's just because people don't like rolling Charr or questing in that zone, but it made trying to experience the content really frustrating. And that is, actually, another flaw I find with this game: you must group with other players to really accomplish anything. What I mean by this is, if you don't want to fall behind in levels, you will have to do pretty much everything in a zone. I did everything except a few group events in the Charr area and I was still only level 14 and a half when I was supposed to be over 15  and moving on. I don't see anything wrong with encouraging people to group up and cooperate, but it felt like the game was forcing me to play that way. And it's not like I'm some anti-social jerk who wants to be alone in an MMO, but, like I said before, I could not group at all because there weren't any players to group with. It seems Arena Net is really banking on there being tons of players in every zone without any real plans in place for the eventuality that there might not be.

(I do have to thank Bob and Tara for helping me out with a few things and getting me as far as I did. You guys are awesome.)

When I rolled up my Charr, I made the choice of making him a Ranger so, as expected, I spent most of my time with a ranged weapon. This I found to be incredibly boring since ranged attacks are just the same animation of firing arrows or a gun on loop. I'm not blaming this on Arena Net or anything like that, but the problem I have is comparing those animations to melee attacks. Melee attack animations are incredibly flashy, over-the-top and...it just makes combat more intense; more fun to look at. Seeing my character frantically swing around a sword is so much more entertaining than just standing 50 feet away and shooting arrows over and over until the mob dies. I'm pointing this out as a flaw because the drastic difference in animation between ranged and melee attacks makes playing those ranged classes dull. I even started running around on my Ranger with a sword and dagger just because it made combat exciting and I could actually get invested. Ideally, each play style should have some kind of appeal to it, but I could really find no appeal whatsoever in primarily using a ranged weapon.

The last thing I'll touch upon as far as flaws go is the enemies themselves and some of the environments they are put in. See, there are certain areas that are just confusing clusters of enemies. This made playing a squishy ranged class difficult since my pet not only acts like a magnet for any enemies around it, but it can also hold their attention for only so long before they all charge at me. There was more than one occasion when I tried to dodge roll and attack only to end up aggroing even more enemies that were either close by or I had just killed not even 20 seconds earlier. Of course not every area is like this, but the parts that are can be very frustrating to get through. This, again, seems to be part of Arena Net's mindset that people will always be in groups leaving only a frustrating experience for those who have to or wish to play solo.

I'll state again that those flaws do not make Guild Wars 2 a bad game, there is plenty to enjoy about it; heck, probably a lot more than I was able to get to. These are merely the positives and negatives I came across while playing on my Charr Ranger up until level 17 or so. I may pick this game up for the holidays and keep playing, but I'm uncertain how much I'll enjoy it. I am interested in what you all think, especially if you've played GW 2 for any extended amount of time. If there's any point I made you would like to discuss or any experiences you'd like to share, feel free to leave a comment and I'll more than likely respond to it.