As a Guild Wars 1 player, I was very excited and really followed the hype for GW2. Only to be disappointed to how different it was from the one. Can’t blame them for innovating, but it was not the continuation of what me and my friends wanted. The shift to being more of an actual MMO made me feel completely insignificant in PvE, using just the basic automatic attack or doing my best to combine my skills didn’t make a difference, the mob would kill the monster anyways. In GW1, all of PvE is instantiated just for your small group, so in general, everyone’s action is important. The PvP felt very generic and didn’t have the uniqueness of the 8v8 of the 1 anymore.
I really appreciated the constant gameplay innovation from Mike O’Brien (Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, Guild Wars) and the art direction of Kekai Kotaki, but it was just too different of a game.
You can definitely still get that thrill of highly impactful combat, just not at any of the major meta events. The world at this point is so big that if you’re anywhere that’s not on the event timer you’ll probably be roaming by yourself. If you find a small event chain and it’s just you pushing it, it can be exciting and suspenseful. Knowing that if you get downed, all of your progress will reset, it’s a great moment when someone else runs up and starts reviving you and helps you succeed.
There are also instanced scenarios like dungeons, fractals and raids where you and a team have to be strategic with your classes and builds and how they synergize, and then there’s the added dimension of much more demanding movement and maneuvering than in the first game. I loved both games, they’re different but both great in their own ways IMO. If you only ever played in some of the starting maps I highly recommend giving it another go.
Thank you for the additional information. I think I did the main campaign when it was released and I didn’t follow the rest. It was also not a good time for me to focus on such a big game and my gaming group was fading away.
As a Guild Wars 1 player, I was very excited and really followed the hype for GW2. Only to be disappointed to how different it was from the one. Can’t blame them for innovating, but it was not the continuation of what me and my friends wanted. The shift to being more of an actual MMO made me feel completely insignificant in PvE, using just the basic automatic attack or doing my best to combine my skills didn’t make a difference, the mob would kill the monster anyways. In GW1, all of PvE is instantiated just for your small group, so in general, everyone’s action is important. The PvP felt very generic and didn’t have the uniqueness of the 8v8 of the 1 anymore. I really appreciated the constant gameplay innovation from Mike O’Brien (Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, Guild Wars) and the art direction of Kekai Kotaki, but it was just too different of a game.
You can definitely still get that thrill of highly impactful combat, just not at any of the major meta events. The world at this point is so big that if you’re anywhere that’s not on the event timer you’ll probably be roaming by yourself. If you find a small event chain and it’s just you pushing it, it can be exciting and suspenseful. Knowing that if you get downed, all of your progress will reset, it’s a great moment when someone else runs up and starts reviving you and helps you succeed.
There are also instanced scenarios like dungeons, fractals and raids where you and a team have to be strategic with your classes and builds and how they synergize, and then there’s the added dimension of much more demanding movement and maneuvering than in the first game. I loved both games, they’re different but both great in their own ways IMO. If you only ever played in some of the starting maps I highly recommend giving it another go.
Thank you for the additional information. I think I did the main campaign when it was released and I didn’t follow the rest. It was also not a good time for me to focus on such a big game and my gaming group was fading away.