Vanndril said:
I played Guild Wars 2 a fair bit when it first came out (got the CE), so I can tell you that it's definitely well made. It's not an extremely hardcore MMO, from what I've experienced, and is more tuned toward the casual crowd. Personally, I felt the graphics were the biggest draw. The character designs in particular were extremely appealing. To this day, I'd argue it has the best-looking character models of any MMO. Another draw is that lack of sub fee and, while they have a cash shop, it's completely not pay to win. Absolutely everything in that shop only changes aesthetics or Quality-of-Life. And, of course, I absolutely LOVE the world of GW2. They baked exploration into leveling as a core component. You can level off of just exploring, like I did. Not that you really need to level much if you're a PvPer, since everyone has predetermined stats in PvP, which rewards aesthetics and the like rather than actual gear.
Ironically, though, my biggest complaint with the game was the combat. It's all sorts of great for a while, but eventually it ends up boiling down to a rotation of pressing the keyboard buttons 4, 5, 3, 2, 1 (autocast), or at least that was mine. The action bars are very restrictive in that your main non-large-cooldown abilities are limited to a count of 5 and depend on your weapon choice. Most classes can have two weapons that they can change between in combat, allowing for 10 weapon abilities. Other classes can only use one weapon type but have "stances" (called attunements), such as elementalist. My problem with this setup was that you're completely gimped if you don't weapon hop, or attunement hop (for elementalists), to gain access to your other abilities. I hate stance-dancing as a core mechanic to gameplay if only because I can't see all of my abilties and cooldowns on one screen at the same time. I'm a strategic combat player, so not having enough information available at a glance is absolutely game-breaking for my kind of play.
Anywho, it's a solid game. It doesn't hurt to give it a try, since there's no sub fee and only an up-front cost equal to that of console games. It's especially a great game to make your first MMO, if you're interested in finally breaking into the genre.
Just thought I'd make this short write-up to help people on the edge decide.
What my charm an grace was not enough!? I WILL KILL YOU!
