I am writing this mostly as a review(ish) for other people who are considering coming back or want to get into GW2.
I played this at launch and a lot has changed. I played many other MMOs, WOW has been the one I played the most, but I also played for a good amount of time SWTOR, ESO, Aion, Final Fantasy XIV, Lost Ark, Star Trek Online, New World, Wildstar, TERA, Warframe. I played some games more recently than others.
So I am coming at this with the perspective of someone who has interacted with different approaches to similar things.
Do I Like the Game?
Absolutely, I like the combat, the story, most of the voice acting, the visuals (although some areas are looking a bit old after so many years), the amount of stuff to do. Lack of FOMO from evergreen content means the game respects your time, although there are drawback to horizontal progression which I will get to later.
It suffers a bit from "it gets better later". Having said that, while you can buy a boost to skip the story in core Tyria and reach max level, I still enjoyed what I did in core Tyria, and the game gives you plenty of reasons to revisit all the zones, both old and new.
I like how class spells look, and Guild Wars 2 has a lot of unique mechanics you don't see on other games. Their take on class fantasies is also very interesting and each class has a strong identity.
Moment to Moment Gameplay and Open World
I honestly struggle to think of an open world experience that is as engaging as Guild Wars 2's. One moment you are finding vistas, the next you are caught into an event, then you are gathering something, whether it be a piece of wood or a Hero Point. There is a lot to do. The combat feels dynamic and I shunned it in the past for feeling too floaty. I still think that compared to WOW or New World, it still is a bit floaty. But I got used to it and I find it rather engaging. I like the hybrid target/action system, which is better than just tab targeting, like what you find in SWTOR and WOW. I also think it's better implemented than the hybrid system you get in ESO, but I heard there were a few combat updates since I last played it.
When you compare it to the late Wildstar or New World however, I probably lean towards these two more. Well, Wildstar is gone, but if you played it, at least you have a reference. I like a certain amount of telegraphing so I liked TERA a bit less, that's more because I tunnel vision a bit, and TERA was less forgiving of that.
I'm terms of accessibility, I find GW 2 combat much easier to get into than say Black Desert Online. In fact I tried getting back into BDO after they recently added cinematic story and my brain just melts with the combos. That's why I suck at Street Fighter (although I played it since I was a kid so it remains a favourite) and I play it with the more accessible controls.
But GW2 combat also takes time to actually master but I feel my brain can actually get to that stage eventually.
I also appreciate that I am not having to learn the piano like I would in FF XIV, which remains a tab target game that tries to add complexity through rotation and complicated dances which often you have to execute in a specific order (it depends on the encounter). I am thinking that FFXIV players are probably going to wind up with very good memory in their older age. I am more of a reactive player that likes to act in the moment.
Story
I am a long term Mass Effect fan, so story-driven content, when done well, is right up my alley. I like games like SWTOR and ESO. When Warframe came out with story, I went and played it. Final Fantasy XIV has incredible story but... I just can't get into some of its aesthetics, and humour wise, I prefer seeing Taimi leave a botched recording on the floor somewhere in Heart of Thorns, than... Seeing flying pigs appear out of nowhere as content filler when big baddy is devouring an entire world. I just don't get along with some of the fantasy and the humour there. There is also a lot of... Waffling in FFXIV, lots of walls of text you click through, I just lose interest eventually because of the presentation and wind up just watching cut scenes. Also the fact that the story is unskippable makes it impossible for me to keep up with friends because I never manage to stick to that game. The problem is that without the story you can't do the current content.
The Core Tyria story was ok, but, compared to the BDO one, it was much better, at least from the perspective of how it is presented. I mean, I didn't get to see the BDO one much because it put me off within a few cutscenes. You wake up, you follow this blonde girl who orders you around and you to what she tells you why? And the way the cut scenes are edited is not polished. I respect the change in direction for BDO, but for me it needs a bit more work.
I like that you get origin stories in GW2, you don't really get that in ESO that much and obviously the base game in SWTOR was all about the origin story. So GW2 loses in the base game compared to SWTOR, but in general the story telling of this game just gets better and better each expansion, while SWTOR has varying degrees of quality throughout the expansions. I enjoyed the ESO story but I have not played it as extensively as SWTOR. I don't remember it as much.
Progression
So the expression "horizontal progression" gets thrown around a lot. Level wise, you hit 80, and you can't get further. Everything released will stay at 80. Gear you get in one expansion doesn't necessarily go out of date later. But you do still get masteries to work towards which don't give you player power in the sense of raw DPS power (if you set aside unlocking specs), but it gives you player power in the sense of open world utility
Generally, a TON of character progression, including specs, is tied behind open world, and you won't be able to do PvE instances content effectively if you don't engage with the open world (or PvP). The way this progression is crafted into the open world however, is done much better than in any other MMO I can think of. The open world feels like part of the endgame, it's lively, it's not just a temporary zone where you do dailies and log out until the next expansion comes up — which makes entire questing areas obsolete.
Systems that have been introduced in certain expansions remain as they are, so if you want to unlock certain mounts, you will have to go through a certain amount of open world content to get them and level them and you can only do that in Path of Fire.
Once you hit 80 you can do anything in any order if you don't care about story. However, if you do want to follow the story in the exact order it was released, you will not access things that will make the open world easier until quite late. For some this is fine. I keep wishing I had SOME more QoL from later expansions without having to see spoilers, but not so much that it makes the open world completely trivial. Obviously once you have done the story with your first character this conundrum disappears, but until then, there is mountains of content. That's a good thing, mind you.
Arena Net has made a couple of changes, you get the Raptor at level 10 now, but you can't upgrade it until you level up your Mastery in Path of Fire. The way you get the Skyscale will be simplified in August. But the bulk of the mounts still reside with Path of Fire. This means that if you want them as a fresh 80, you have to skip ahead with the story and get potential spoilers.
I am not used to vertical maps, and I will be in the minority, but I find the HOT open world is frustrating. I am sure there will be people who love it, and I think doing it when it came out would feel very different from doing it now. That was your end game at the time, it made sense to work towards unlocking your gliding, your mushrooms etc. But I am not the biggest fun of jumping puzzles, and I feel HOT without mounts is a huge jumping puzzle, and I don't enjoy it. I wound up skipping the story to go straight to PoF for the mounts and will go back after.
As part of a horizontal progression system where other expansions give you better tools, HOT feels left behind and that's the main downside of the horizontal progression system for me. However the MAJOR upside of the horizontal progression, is feeling like 90% of what you do is as relevant today as it was yesterday.
Again, probably in the minority here, I'd rather have just a couple a mounts because swapping all the time is annoying. A ground mount and a flying mount. The Masteries add skills to those two mounts so you don't have to keep swapping between raptor, springer, skimmer, etc. It just feels clunky. I figure that once I get a flying mount the swapping will be lessened.
I have a love and hate relationship with unlocks in general in this game. You don't get access to all your specialisations in PvE. You have to unlock them with expansions and that's fine but... You then have to go around and grab hero points to actually use them (or do a load of WvW PvP). I have just paid for it, can I just have the spec? Or can you make Hero Point collections account wide? So you do it once, then you have those points banked for your next level 80 character? Masteries are account wide, so it's not like you need the experience for them once you hit 80.
Core Tyria completion would be nice account wide but I am not sure how you'd hit 80 without it, I guess if you get a lot of Tomes of Knowledge or you craft a lot you could. Or maybe they could do a modified version of what SWTOR did, which is make the main story XP enough to get you to max. But unlike SWTOR, do it only for alts.
The problem is that then core Tyria will slowly become obsolete, I guess. You'll still have world bosses and dailies. I don't know. Like I said... I have a love and hate relationship with unlocks in this game. They give you lots to do but they also feel a bit frustrating.
Instanced Content
I can't really speak to this as I have not done it, but what puts me off it mostly is the lack of Trinity. But you have to bring boons. So you still have to care about group composition. From my understanding the tanks are the ones that are basically not needed now, whereas healers are still used, but mostly you want high DPS that also buffs. I would like the Trinity to come into play, I don't think it would impact build diversity more than having to spec for specific boons.
PvP
I have not done much of it.
Edited by Xariann.5071
