One of the most anticipated games of the year has finally arrived. The stress testing and the beta weekends have finally come to a close and Guild Wars 2 is now live! While the game is still relatively new and a lot of end-game content hasn’t been tested at this current point in time, here are some of the main features and insights on Guild Wars 2.
One thing I have noticed so far is that I’m currently getting experience for doing just about anything. No matter if you’re picking berries to level a gathering profession or you’re slaying demons, you get experience for doing just about anything. This gives you a feeling of accomplishment and that nothing is a complete waste of time in the game. It’s great to know that you don’t have to follow a linear progression path such as questing from Point A to Point B doing the same thing over and over with every single character in order to unlock more rewards.
While I noticed that slaying monsters and grinding random monsters resulted in very slow experience gains which would take forever to level, the events and story based quests gave much more experience. This is a great change from the typical MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) model which is basically slaying 20 monsters or picking up a few items. It becomes a tedious grind after a while, but ArenaNet has eliminated that almost entirely with Guild Wars 2. Players can choose how they want to level, as there’s a lot of different options for almost any kind of gamer.
Here Are Some Of The Differences Between Guild Wars 2 And The Number One MMO As Of Current (World of Warcraft):
– Subscription Fees: Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have a subscription fee which is great for gamers on a budget who don’t have $15 a month to spend on one game.
– Different Roles: In Guild Wars 2, there are no defining roles such as DPS/Tank/Healer; everyone is responsible for their own survival through the use of dodging attacks and evasion techniques.
– Factions: While WoW has two different factions that are battling against each other and only certain races can play certain classes, Guild Wars 2 races can be any class they desire to be. There’s also no different factions, servers battle against each other instead. – Combat: One of my biggest complaints about WoW was the fact that you had to stand still and not move to cast the majority of your abilities and spells. Guild Wars 2 so far has been pretty awesome with the fact that you can move freely and cast the majority of your spells. This only makes sense since your survival depends on you.
My final thoughts on Guild Wars 2: so far, the game is shaping up to be one of the best games of the year. The questing and levelling system has its own unique approach rather than constant grinding or linear questing. They took a unique approach to Player Versus Player that allows players to all be equal on the battlefield that I can see being an issue in the future for people who enjoy being rewarded with better gear than other players for their efforts and time spent.
