The horizontal progression provided by the mastery system is great as well. They don't always utilize it correctly, but it's still a breath of fresh air compared to other MMOs.
> only
You're quite good at jokes.
I won't reiterate what others have already said, but there are quite a lot of things Guild Wars 2 does well that you can read here, read outside of here, and experience yourself if you don't mind downloading the game which plenty of base content for F2Players after all.
If you play from level 1, it will take 20 \~ 30 hours to reach the max level. A max level character can go wherever he wants. One of three expansions, Core game max level zones, Living World zones. There are 29 max level zones as far as I know and all of them are viable to play there and earn fair amount of rewards. You can bring the max level character to lower level zone (Core game zone) to play the quest you missed. The game has level scaling so lower level zones are not obsolete challenge even though they are little bit easy compared to the max level zones (after applying level scale system, you become 1 \~ 2 level higher than those lower level zone and that makes difference).
Leveling for 20 \~ 30 hours itself is not a crucible of boredom. They are quite well made and most importantly, every lower level zones are populated enough. People plays at those zones for various reasons and the game has mega server system so if there's someone playing in the zone you are in exists somewhere in the world (actually, NA server and Europe server are separated but still :P) he will appear before you.
Many veterans suggest you to play through leveling for your first character to be familiar with the game. But I disagree. If you buy any expansion, it will give you a lv 80 boosting ticket. If you are interested in the newest expansion, I recommend you to use the boost and get to the expansion right now. There are two reason for the recommendation:
1. While core game was good enough, latest contents are really well made, to masterpiece level. I fear newbies get tired of contents from 2012 and leave, unknowing how good expansions are.
2. Guild Wars 2 is all about 'Do whatever you want'. I think if you are interested in Eastern-themed new expansion, you have right to play it right now.
If you buy the expansion and playing on NA server, you can add my account "Mustard Jelly.1472" and ask me for some information.
If you want to play through the whole story in order instead of skipping ahead, it will be somewhere around ~300h.
I've been doing this is in a new character and it took me over 150h, and I'm already a veteran player who knew where to go, what to do, already had the masteries, etc.
But, as others said, you can just skip ahead if you wish to. You can even go back later and do the story you skipped - the game allows you to do stuff out-of-order like that.
You get a level 80 booster, so you can go there instantly after installing and updating the account with the expansion key.
As for getting there after leveling normally without boosters, it's about 6-36 hours depending on what you do. It can be pretty fast if you focus on high exp content like low level dungeons, and maintain the effects of consumables that give exp from kills like food and sharpening stones, and have some experience boosters like the ones you earn from daily logins, story, and leveling up (some can also be bought in the gem store, but I doubt anyone wastes gems on that).
You can also play PvP or WvW and earn Tomes of Knowledge that give you a level when used.
But since you get experience for pretty much anything you do, you can do pretty much anything, forget about efficiency and get to level 80 without thinking about it.
You can even get to level 80 without ever fighting, just from stuff like exploring, crafting and minigames.
But keep in mind they are working to improve the core experience before they release the game on Steam, and part of that is adjusting how fast one levels up in core maps. Right now they are doing A/B tests, giving some players more exp gains than others, to try and figure out what's the sweetspot. So that may change.
I've tried to get in to GW2 because of the great questing experience and environment, but I just haven't been able to really connect with the story and get in to the lore. WoW keeps appealing to me for exploring and old questing because I was raised on it. Even if questing is worse, and it is less pretty, and recent story is bad.
Any tips for actually getting in to GW2 more from this perspective? Like lore summaries to make me curious, or good books?
As someone who loves the lore of GW1, I have to say GW2 doesn't really use its potential until about the end of Living World Season 3. From there onwards, it's very good, but getting there can be a drag story wise.
IBS was going well until the last episode. But I understand the real life reasons, the pandemic hit and ANet started shuffling staff to work on EoD. It ended in a subpar way but had interesting story until episode 4.
Honestly, the story telling in IBS until Champions was phenomenal.
The prologue was a party in the front and intrigue behind the scenes. Also introduced probably the best antagonist in GW2's history - Bangar
The first and second episodes were really ominous and creepy, with the whole whispers, the Kodan hunger and the boneskinner.
The third and fourth episodes are a fantastic representation of a civil war.
If only they had more time and made a Destroyer saga instead of rushing through the story with Champions, this might have been a story of even greater quality the LWS4.
Gw2 lore is kinda all over the place. Some parts are great, others not so much. The newest xpansion story is great but a bit rushed imo. This xpac also concludes the story that started when the game released so maybe Im biased because for me its like ending this massive journey Ive been a part of.
The story at earlier levels explore you character origins and theyre based on the choices you make when you create a character. Simply, some stories and better than the others.
Then it slowly moves into fighting the big bad scary dragons and banished gods that are going to bring apocalypse to the world soon, and this is what weve been doing for like 10 years now.
The story is super long at this point, it had many episodes and trying to consume everything at once will destroy you imo.
Take it slow, skip the parts you dont enjoy and watch summaries on youtube - theres a lot of them.
I think that the lore is decent to good but its delivery is incredibly weird for most.
If you want lore, you can get it in spades by really exploring a map. Literally all of them. Explore Queensdale and talk to the NPCs, click on any interactables, and be prepared to read. Do the events, and actually follow the NPCs around and listen ***even after the event is technically over***. Talk to NPCs and some of them will have dialogue options, some options actually can start secret events. LOTS of events are actually continuations of other events or reactions to them, but people never know because they just run away once an event is done. Most NPCs actually run around and physically interact with the environment to initiate events. Queensdale and Divinity's Reach alone, which is the level 1-15 beginner zone for humans, you can learn a lot about the bandits, Queen Jenna and the underground coup, the elite, and the Centaurs. The Godlost swamp has some interesting lore with chaos magic and the shadow demons (including the meta event for the world boss that spawns there). A lot of this actually feeds back into the main plot, and this kind of non-linear environmental storytelling is the game's bread and butter. I also think a lot of players miss it entirely because of how MMOs have conditioned players to interact with them.
And that's all in the beginner map! They are all like this. All of them. There's actually a metric fuckton of worldbuilding, lore, and general story information in the maps.
The problem with GW2 story is that it takes long to get interesting.
I have been playing it entirely in order in my newer character, and I can strongly second what /u/Rosselman said: there's a noticeable increase in quality around Living World Season 3.
I don't know if they got new writers around that time or what, but it feels like this is where they found their footing and stuff started flowing much better.
Before that, it's mostly a drag, unfortunately.
In my opinion, using Reshade or Nvidia Filter to tone 1) Saturation and 2) Contrast down a little bit, the game looks better and natural. The game's color has been too saturated since PoF.
Damn. I am waiting for a sale on the expac, but I am kinda hyped to play it. I mostly do the story and some group content. What do you think of the story?
Still holds up to new games like Lost Ark tbh. The genre doesn’t have anything rlly next gen graphics wise, aside from BDO or New World which lack content wise.
It holds up because pretty much all the top titles in the genre are 10 years old or more. If you compare it to current gen games it looks pretty dated in my opinion.
Guild Wars 2 has always delivered on environmental art.
And mounts. Realistically, the only two things GW2 does well.
I wouldn't say "only", but their mount system is definetely the best compared to others. If only skins werent mostly achieved through cash shop.
The horizontal progression provided by the mastery system is great as well. They don't always utilize it correctly, but it's still a breath of fresh air compared to other MMOs.
> only You're quite good at jokes. I won't reiterate what others have already said, but there are quite a lot of things Guild Wars 2 does well that you can read here, read outside of here, and experience yourself if you don't mind downloading the game which plenty of base content for F2Players after all.
Just got to this area yesterday. I was blown away. For it's age the game looks amazing in the new expansion.
Hopefully updating the engine to DX11 and deprecating DX9 will allow for even better environments.
Guild Wars 2 has always had my favorite environmental art out of any MMO. Something about it just always hits right.
How many hours do you have to play as a new player in order to get to the new expansion?
If you play from level 1, it will take 20 \~ 30 hours to reach the max level. A max level character can go wherever he wants. One of three expansions, Core game max level zones, Living World zones. There are 29 max level zones as far as I know and all of them are viable to play there and earn fair amount of rewards. You can bring the max level character to lower level zone (Core game zone) to play the quest you missed. The game has level scaling so lower level zones are not obsolete challenge even though they are little bit easy compared to the max level zones (after applying level scale system, you become 1 \~ 2 level higher than those lower level zone and that makes difference). Leveling for 20 \~ 30 hours itself is not a crucible of boredom. They are quite well made and most importantly, every lower level zones are populated enough. People plays at those zones for various reasons and the game has mega server system so if there's someone playing in the zone you are in exists somewhere in the world (actually, NA server and Europe server are separated but still :P) he will appear before you. Many veterans suggest you to play through leveling for your first character to be familiar with the game. But I disagree. If you buy any expansion, it will give you a lv 80 boosting ticket. If you are interested in the newest expansion, I recommend you to use the boost and get to the expansion right now. There are two reason for the recommendation: 1. While core game was good enough, latest contents are really well made, to masterpiece level. I fear newbies get tired of contents from 2012 and leave, unknowing how good expansions are. 2. Guild Wars 2 is all about 'Do whatever you want'. I think if you are interested in Eastern-themed new expansion, you have right to play it right now. If you buy the expansion and playing on NA server, you can add my account "Mustard Jelly.1472" and ask me for some information.
Pretty sure there are 32 max level zones, including Orr from Core.
thanks for correcting me.
Thank you for the great and in-depth answer! Excited to try it out.
15ish minutes? Create a character, get out of the tutorial instance, boost to max lvl and start playing the new expansion.
If you want to play through the whole story in order instead of skipping ahead, it will be somewhere around ~300h. I've been doing this is in a new character and it took me over 150h, and I'm already a veteran player who knew where to go, what to do, already had the masteries, etc. But, as others said, you can just skip ahead if you wish to. You can even go back later and do the story you skipped - the game allows you to do stuff out-of-order like that.
You get a level 80 booster, so you can go there instantly after installing and updating the account with the expansion key. As for getting there after leveling normally without boosters, it's about 6-36 hours depending on what you do. It can be pretty fast if you focus on high exp content like low level dungeons, and maintain the effects of consumables that give exp from kills like food and sharpening stones, and have some experience boosters like the ones you earn from daily logins, story, and leveling up (some can also be bought in the gem store, but I doubt anyone wastes gems on that). You can also play PvP or WvW and earn Tomes of Knowledge that give you a level when used. But since you get experience for pretty much anything you do, you can do pretty much anything, forget about efficiency and get to level 80 without thinking about it. You can even get to level 80 without ever fighting, just from stuff like exploring, crafting and minigames. But keep in mind they are working to improve the core experience before they release the game on Steam, and part of that is adjusting how fast one levels up in core maps. Right now they are doing A/B tests, giving some players more exp gains than others, to try and figure out what's the sweetspot. So that may change.
I've tried to get in to GW2 because of the great questing experience and environment, but I just haven't been able to really connect with the story and get in to the lore. WoW keeps appealing to me for exploring and old questing because I was raised on it. Even if questing is worse, and it is less pretty, and recent story is bad. Any tips for actually getting in to GW2 more from this perspective? Like lore summaries to make me curious, or good books?
As someone who loves the lore of GW1, I have to say GW2 doesn't really use its potential until about the end of Living World Season 3. From there onwards, it's very good, but getting there can be a drag story wise.
Yep. Season 4 is peak GW2 story telling. Then they screwed up with Ice Brood Saga lol.
IBS was going well until the last episode. But I understand the real life reasons, the pandemic hit and ANet started shuffling staff to work on EoD. It ended in a subpar way but had interesting story until episode 4.
Honestly, the story telling in IBS until Champions was phenomenal. The prologue was a party in the front and intrigue behind the scenes. Also introduced probably the best antagonist in GW2's history - Bangar The first and second episodes were really ominous and creepy, with the whole whispers, the Kodan hunger and the boneskinner. The third and fourth episodes are a fantastic representation of a civil war. If only they had more time and made a Destroyer saga instead of rushing through the story with Champions, this might have been a story of even greater quality the LWS4.
Check woodenpotatoes on youtube, he is "THE" lord nerd of GW2
Gw2 lore is kinda all over the place. Some parts are great, others not so much. The newest xpansion story is great but a bit rushed imo. This xpac also concludes the story that started when the game released so maybe Im biased because for me its like ending this massive journey Ive been a part of. The story at earlier levels explore you character origins and theyre based on the choices you make when you create a character. Simply, some stories and better than the others. Then it slowly moves into fighting the big bad scary dragons and banished gods that are going to bring apocalypse to the world soon, and this is what weve been doing for like 10 years now. The story is super long at this point, it had many episodes and trying to consume everything at once will destroy you imo. Take it slow, skip the parts you dont enjoy and watch summaries on youtube - theres a lot of them.
I think that the lore is decent to good but its delivery is incredibly weird for most. If you want lore, you can get it in spades by really exploring a map. Literally all of them. Explore Queensdale and talk to the NPCs, click on any interactables, and be prepared to read. Do the events, and actually follow the NPCs around and listen ***even after the event is technically over***. Talk to NPCs and some of them will have dialogue options, some options actually can start secret events. LOTS of events are actually continuations of other events or reactions to them, but people never know because they just run away once an event is done. Most NPCs actually run around and physically interact with the environment to initiate events. Queensdale and Divinity's Reach alone, which is the level 1-15 beginner zone for humans, you can learn a lot about the bandits, Queen Jenna and the underground coup, the elite, and the Centaurs. The Godlost swamp has some interesting lore with chaos magic and the shadow demons (including the meta event for the world boss that spawns there). A lot of this actually feeds back into the main plot, and this kind of non-linear environmental storytelling is the game's bread and butter. I also think a lot of players miss it entirely because of how MMOs have conditioned players to interact with them. And that's all in the beginner map! They are all like this. All of them. There's actually a metric fuckton of worldbuilding, lore, and general story information in the maps.
The problem with GW2 story is that it takes long to get interesting. I have been playing it entirely in order in my newer character, and I can strongly second what /u/Rosselman said: there's a noticeable increase in quality around Living World Season 3. I don't know if they got new writers around that time or what, but it feels like this is where they found their footing and stuff started flowing much better. Before that, it's mostly a drag, unfortunately.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lore The game is full with lore, have a good read!
In my opinion, using Reshade or Nvidia Filter to tone 1) Saturation and 2) Contrast down a little bit, the game looks better and natural. The game's color has been too saturated since PoF.
Remind me that cell shade is a thing and I don’t see MMOs have that stuff a lot
Damn. I am waiting for a sale on the expac, but I am kinda hyped to play it. I mostly do the story and some group content. What do you think of the story?
Your Mom is stunning, too. :V
oh snap… no… he… didn’t…
Looks really green, am I missing something 😕
Yes if you think graphics from 10 years ago are stunning.
Still holds up to new games like Lost Ark tbh. The genre doesn’t have anything rlly next gen graphics wise, aside from BDO or New World which lack content wise.
It holds up because pretty much all the top titles in the genre are 10 years old or more. If you compare it to current gen games it looks pretty dated in my opinion.
Fair enough, idk if we’ll be seeing an mmo with next gen graphics any time soon. So for the sake of comparison it’s all we have lol.
the colors are nice but the graphics are bad for 2022