Hello,

I've seen a certain number of people (a minority yes, but still), saying the game is "not good" because there's "nothing special" in it. So for all the people who didn't have the chance to test it this week end, please let me bring a grain of salt in these reviews.

First, so you know I'm not just yadda-yaddaing from nothing, I'm a Thief (the class who dies the most), I'm lvl 9 (= 8 hours of playing), and I've covered only 2 zones (= 5% of the world).

Here's 3 game chat experiences I had with people with a negative opinion :

1) guy : "The first quest is a mess, I'm thrown against a boss but I don't even know how to use my character".

me : "Did you see that there are tons of lvl 1 neutral mobs next to the village to try your skills ?" guy : "No. they should have been more visible." (said mobs were indeed really visible, and lots of them, right next to the first quest point).

2) guy : "I can't stop dying, this is crazy." or even by seeing tons of "anyone to rez me ?" prove how much people die generally. 

me : "did you use your heal skill ? or did you try to weapon swap ? Some weapons are a real advantage in some situations"

guy : "No, what ? How can I heal ? How can I swap weapon ?". 

3) guy : "It's boring, there are only the same dynamic events."

me : "Did you try to lurk around the woods ? or behind the mountain ? Or did you try to talk to that long view icon NPC ? She can unveil all points of interest for you." guy : "No, how am I supposed to know that there are some stuff over here ?"

____________

So, all in all, there some people who are expecting a themepark, and to be held by hand like in other MMOs. Thing is, GW2 is holding by hand for a lot of things. But there is so much to do in only one zone, challenges, events, quests, gathering, lurking, hidden places to discover, etc ... that people who expect the game to tell them all what they are supposed to do are actually missing 50% of it. 

So yes, for the gamer who doesn't want to invest in lurking, discovering, trying, dying to trials and errors, then the game might not be anything special or revolutionary. And it's the same for combat skills : anyone who just mashes buttons (because in starting area, in 1 vs 1, it does work) will not see any difference between skills except with visuals.

But I can assure you that :

- combat is far more than mashing : from lvl 1 to 4, I discovered my class, Thief. And any time I wanted to take on more than 2 mobs, I just died in no time. But something happened at lvl 7-8, when I finally understood how combat work, and which skills / weapons were more efficient in certain situations. There, I found myself rushing through packs of 4 mobs, slay them, and (rarely) dying. And to even more justify my argument, I often did it next to packs of 3 players who didn't dare to engage packs, visibly afraid to die (still learning their skills I guess, nothing wrong with that).

- the world is freaking huge. There are tons, tons of things to do, it's impressive. To tell you, I spent nearly 1 hour this afternoon just attacking random packs of mobs, trying to push the boundaries of how many and how fast I could kill without dying (I was destroyed in seconds at times, don't worry thief is not OP). I also enjoyed completing a quest, having the choice to go east, west or north, and then only let my instinct/inspiration guide me where I should go. And it worked, never did I find repeating the same event too often, or the same activity. Also, concrete example : 8 hours spent, 2 huge zones where I didn't even fullfilled every quest point, and my map is saying right now : "World exploration : 2%".

- Activities are very varied. Example : I chained a quest where I had to protect a shaman in a parallel spirit world, with a quest where I had to aim & throw snowballs on children (the way they giggled when they hit me really made me smile, it was refreshing). Then suddenly the village I was playing in was attacked by litterally an army of bears, lol. Players were being destroyed one by one by furious grizzlies, until we started to pack & organize ourselves.

But enough wall of texts, you get the point :

_________________

TL;DR : GW2 is offering so much freedom that themepark players (or players who don't want to invest in exploration) will without a doubt feel lost, miss a lot of things, and therefore find nothing new here. So if you're looking for fair & objective reviews, search the elaborated ones, from people who took time to explore every aspect of the game. And the game is huge, so it won't be short ones.

This is absolutely not a themepark game (and thank you ANet for that). So if you're really interested in GW2, either play it (and EXPLORE), either search for reviews from people who don't like to rush things, people who are used to invest themselves in MMOs. You'll have to read walls of text I guess, like this one, as they're the invested type, but don't be afraid if you're looking for well thought critics.

___

Personal conclusion : the game is absolutely good, and has a lot of potential. As I wrote  here : http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/4940859#4940859 , any type of player can enjoy this game. For example, as someone who doesn't have as much time as 6 years ago, I'll find myself perfectly pleased with having 2 hours per day to play. I'll just dive into the world, let the wind guide my steps. I did it for 8 hours this weekend and it worked very well.

Just explore, don't try to rush things, and learn your class. The game is too big to have a solid opinion before lvl 50.

Originally posted by TwoThreeFour
Great post, times like these I wish there was a "increase reputation" button in this forum. I specially like how you appear to have taken time to avoid exaggerating and generalizing, which I know can be tempting to do.

Thanks TwoThreeFour :)

I don't want to put the game on a pedestal yet, 9 levels is really not enough to judge. But I thought it at least deserves to be given a chance up to lvl 80. 

Cheers

Combat is easy against most melee, since you can pretty much kite indefinitely. Range mobs are the only thing that make the game challenging.

Alot of times you are just spamming one skill until you run out intiative. Then you autoattack while kiting until you build up more.

I was also dissapointed by the lack of world changing so far in dynamic events. This is key because Arenanet went on and on ad nausem about this. As far as I can tell so far I have yet to run into a dynamic event that changes anything.

For the most part all quest activities fall into kill mobs and collect objects.

Like I said before, the game isn't bad it's just not as good as people have been claiming.

Originally posted by TwoThreeFour
Great post, times like these I wish there was a "increase reputation" button in this forum. I specially like how you appear to have taken time to avoid exaggerating and generalizing, which I know can be tempting to do.

Agreed.  Thanks for the post.

Originally posted by Banisco
I dont usually say this but good post, its good to read something diferent from the "i cant play im mad this is bad"

Not really a good post.  It's called a strawman argument.  Maybe these are real quotes from the game, maybe not, but the people who are taking time to post legitimate reviews and impressions aren't these people, so his argument basically has no value.

It's like saying "I went to University Alabama and some idiot couldn't find his first class and was frustrated.  He's an idiot, therefore University of Alabama is a better school than Stanford and MIT."

All it really proves (if the OP isn't fabricating things) is that some idiots are pre-purchasing GW2.

Well said and i agree game is just great.

Im agains holding hands and i invest alot in game and my character so np for me guildwars 2 is perfectly suited for my needs.

If you want game that have waxmuseum and kill 10x quest and it hold your hand then GW2 is not for you.

If you dont mind explore invest and die alot and dont wanne grind endless for gear but have exciting gameplay and fun then GW2 is for you:)

Originally posted by k-damage

Hello,

I've seen a certain number of people (a minority yes, but still), saying the game is "not good" because there's "nothing special" in it. So for all the people who didn't have the chance to test it this week end, please let me bring a grain of salt in these reviews.

First, so you know I'm not just yadda-yaddaing from nothing, I'm a Thief (the class who dies the most), I'm lvl 9 (= 8 hours of playing), and I've covered only 2 zones (= 5% of the world).

Here's 3 game chat experiences I had with people with a negative opinion :

1) guy : "The first quest is a mess, I'm thrown against a boss but I don't even know how to use my character".

me : "Did you see that there are tons of lvl 1 neutral mobs next to the village to try your skills ?" guy : "No. they should have been more visible." (said mobs were indeed really visible, and lots of them, right next to the first quest point).

2) guy : "I can't stop dying, this is crazy." or even by seeing tons of "anyone to rez me ?" prove how much people die generally. 

me : "did you use your heal skill ? or did you try to weapon swap ? Some weapons are a real advantage in some situations"

guy : "No, what ? How can I heal ? How can I swap weapon ?". 

3) guy : "It's boring, there are only the same dynamic events."

me : "Did you try to lurk around the woods ? or behind the mountain ? Or did you try to talk to that long view icon NPC ? She can unveil all points of interest for you." guy : "No, how am I supposed to know that there are some stuff over here ?"

____________

 

So, all in all, there some people who are expecting a themepark, and to be held by hand like in other MMOs. Thing is, GW2 is holding by hand for a lot of things. But there is so much to do in only one zone, challenges, events, quests, gathering, lurking, hidden places to discover, etc ... that people who expect the game to tell them all what they are supposed to do are actually missing 50% of it. 

So yes, for the gamer who doesn't want to invest in lurking, discovering, trying, dying to trials and errors, then the game might not be anything special or revolutionary. And it's the same for combat skills : anyone who just mashes buttons (because in starting area, in 1 vs 1, it does work) will not see any difference between skills except with visuals.

But I can assure you that :

- combat is far more than mashing : from lvl 1 to 4, I discovered my class, Thief. And any time I wanted to take on more than 2 mobs, I just died in no time. But something happened at lvl 7-8, when I finally understood how combat work, and which skills / weapons were more efficient in certain situations. There, I found myself rushing through packs of 4 mobs, slay them, and (rarely) dying. And to even more justify my argument, I often did it next to packs of 3 players who didn't dare to engage packs, visibly afraid to die.

- the world is freaking huge. There are tons, tons of things to do, it's impressive. To tell you, I spent nearly 1 hour this afternoon just attacking random packs of mobs, trying to push the boundaries of how many and how fast I could kill without dying (I died at times, don't worry thief is not OP). I also enjoyed completing a quest, having the choice to go east, west or north, and then only let my instinct/inspiration guide me where I should go. And it worked, never did I find repeating the same event too often, or the same activity.

- Activities are very varied. Example : I chained a quest where I had to protect a shaman in a parallel spirit world, with a quest where I had to aim & throw snowballs on children (the way they giggled when they hit me really made me smile, it was refreshing). Then suddenly the village I was playing in was attacked by litterally an army of bears, lol. Players were being destroyed one by one by furious grizzlies, until we started to pack & organize ourselves.

But enough wall of texts, you get the point :

_________________

TL;DR : GW2 is offering so much freedom that themepark players (or players who don't want to invest in exploration) will without a doubt feel lost, and find nothing new here.

This is absolutely not a themepark game (and thank you ANet for that). So if you're really interested in GW2, either play it (and EXPLORE), either search for reviews from people who don't like to rush things, people who are used to invest themselves in MMOs. You'll have to read walls of text I guess, like this one, as they're the invested type, but don't be afraid if you're looking for well thought critics.

___

Personal conclusion : the game is absolutely good, and has a lot of potential. As I wrote  here : http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/4940859#4940859 , any type of player can enjoy this game. For example, as someone who doesn't have as much time as 6 years ago, I'll find myself perfectly pleased with having 2 hours per day to play. I'll just dive into the world, let the wind guide my steps. I did it for 8 hours this weekend and it worked very well.

Just explore, don't try to rush things, and learn your class. The game is too big to have a solid opinion before lvl 50.

Ok, when Rift, TOR, WAR, and others came out we were only suppose to listen to user reviews because we all seem to know that all of the review sites have been bought and paid for to do good reviews, now for GW2 we're not suppose to listen to player reviews?  Or only certain player reviews?  It is so confusing to know who to listen to these days, nobody seems to know.  I would love to "try it for myself" as people will claim others should do, but I'm not going to pay a non-refundable 60 for a game that I may or may not like.

Originally posted by grimfall

All it really proves (if the OP isn't fabricating things) is that some idiots are pre-purchasing GW2.

I can assure those were real quotes (not exact quotes of course, I didn't cut/paste, but this was the essence). First one they were a group of 2 (friends I guess), second one is basically all my 8 hours long experience, chat being flooded with "please rez me", and third was one guy in the Norn starting area.

Originally posted by Atlan99

Like I said before, the game isn't bad it's just not as good as people have been claiming.

Imo, like most things in life, things are never a great as people make them sound.  People exaggerate, or simply value things differently.

For me, I prefer to look at the middle of the road reviews, and just look for a good game -- with the understanding that no game is going to be with out problems and issues.      I am content if a game has simply taken what is the current standard and raised the bar a little --- basically moving from good MMORPG 2.0 to good MMORPG 2.5 or 3.0. 

All I have to say is that this is only the second post I have seen that is positive. The negatives are outweighing the positives by a large margin.

Just saying.

Look to the login screen...haha...

Originally posted by k-damage

Originally posted by grimfall

All it really proves (if the OP isn't fabricating things) is that some idiots are pre-purchasing GW2.

I swear to god those were real quotes (not exact quotes of course, I didn't cut/paste, but this was the essence).

I think many of us have seen similar comments in other MMOs, so it is not that far fetched that you saw such in GW2 Beta.

Most MMORPGer players can play games, but there are those few gamers that really do need to be hand held, are poor gamers, or simply are decent gamers that are simply over looking the obvious.   

Originally posted by niceguy3978

Ok, when Rift, TOR, WAR, and others came out we were only suppose to listen to user reviews because we all seem to know that all of the review sites have been bought and paid for to do good reviews, now for GW2 we're not suppose to listen to player reviews?  Or only certain player reviews?  It is so confusing to know who to listen to these days, nobody seems to know.  I would love to "try it for myself" as people will claim others should do, but I'm not going to pay a non-refundable 60 for a game that I may or may not like.

I understand, and was in the same boat. That's why I only give this thread as an advice (not the ultimate review, just an advice) to people who really want to have an objective opinion about the game's potential. It's not easy to find I admit, but search for reviews where people describe a lot things. Basically walls of text.

Originally posted by Badaboom
When I was playing yesterday there was just so much going on and so many people it was not fun.  Played a little bit this morning and it was a lot better. 

Now you've done it.  You ended  MMORPG.com forums world record streak of posts about a game that provide no useful information to the readers.

More posts like Badaboom's please.

Originally posted by niceguy3978

Originally posted by k-damage
*snip*

Ok, when Rift, TOR, WAR, and others came out we were only suppose to listen to user reviews because we all seem to know that all of the review sites have been bought and paid for to do good reviews, now for GW2 we're not suppose to listen to player reviews?  Or only certain player reviews?  It is so confusing to know who to listen to these days, nobody seems to know.  I would love to "try it for myself" as people will claim others should do, but I'm not going to pay a non-refundable 60 for a game that I may or may not like.

Exactly. I wasn't going to buy D3 before I played, now I can't wait for it to come out, but I'm not buying this until I can at least try it either.

OP makes it sound like it's all sunshine and rainbows which I highly doubt.

Originally posted by jusomdude

OP makes it sound like it's all sunshine and rainbows which I highly doubt.

You're really overexaggerating. Read all my post, and the other ones below it, you'll find words contradicting that.

Plus this one : http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/4940859#4940859

Originally posted by grimfall

Originally posted by Badaboom
When I was playing yesterday there was just so much going on and so many people it was not fun.  Played a little bit this morning and it was a lot better. 

Now you've done it.  You ended  MMORPG.com forums world record streak of posts about a game that provide no useful information to the readers.

More posts like Badaboom's please.

Thanks for the laughs grim.