This summer's hottest release was Guild Wars 2. We've spent the last few weeks giving a few thoughts about the game in our Review in Progress series. Today we wrap it all up and present the official review for your perusal. Read it in its entirety and then leave your thoughts in the comments.

Guild Wars 2 lives up to its hype. If our reviews were one sentence in length, that would be “all she wrote”. I’ve been tallying my adventures, offering insight to the ups and downs of my time in Tyria for weeks now. Finally, I feel confident that I’ve spent enough time in the game’s myriad of systems to offer my own conclusive thoughts in just how much mustard ArenaNet’s sequel cuts.  It won’t be the game for everyone, but it has most definitely proven itself as a compelling next step in the evolution of the theme-park MMORPG. Nearly everything it does, it does with aplomb and swagger. When throughout my weekly logs, I found myself harping on about server queues for World vs. World as the main annoyance; it became apparent to me that my biggest gripe about the game was that a feature was too popular. Guild Wars 2 has and is going to change a lot now that it’s out in the wild and being enjoyed by millions, but as it stands today and after 70+ hours with my characters, this is how I see things.  Please read on, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. 

Read more of Bill Murphy's Guild Wars 2: Raising the Bar.

Inb4 anger about the Innovation score.

Great game, deserves a 9.3 (could do without the bots though, from what I hear).  That's all.

WAT!!!1!! If this game isn't an 11/10, then you are playing it wrong!

Sorry. Anyway, nice writeup. I don't necessarily agree with each score (longevity and Innovation for starters, sorry Eir_S), but it's a fair writeup nonetheless.

Longevity 9?   How in the world did you come up with this number?

Edit:  I guess since "hundreds and hundreds of hours" equals a 9, the expectation is for an MMO to satiate our appetites for a month?  If so, what's the big deal if it's B2P or P2P since all the content is done within that first month and there is never a need to pay past the inital box price?

The potential for longevity is still huge, and I hope they add some soon.. but as it stands, that's the one part of the review with which I'd have to disagree.  None of the systems are really doing the job as well as I'd hoped they would, and it still feels like yet another MMO without much of an endgame, to me.

Overall though, after 200+ hours, I'd still rate it a 9+ too.

LOL what a suprise...

GW2 only jsut about deserves a 7/5 lets alone a 9.3 lol

Innovation at 10??

Ah i give up..

well im glad the reviewer enjoys it so much but i dont feel  like it deserves such a high rating.

i dont believe the reviewer got lvl 80 because he would know how little stuff there is to do, unless you call map completion and grinding buggy dungeons fun.

theres probaly thousands of posts of people on forums complaining about how boring the game is .

i however just quit entirely i got 4 weeks of fun out of the game so i guess it could have been worst

im a long time mmo player over 10 years now and gw2 was the quickest i become bored of any mmo, i even played aion and aoc even swtor for longer .

gw2 just doesnt have any longevity unless you are super casual and play only an hour a night, which im told is their target audience anyway.

i give it 7/10 which is still a good rating if only because they atleast tried to think outside the box

Originally posted by grimal

Longevity 9?   How in the world did you come up with this number?

Edit:  I guess since "hundreds and hundreds of hours" equals a 9, the expectation is for an MMO to satiate our appetites for a month?  If so, what's the big deal if it's B2P or P2P since all the content is done within that first month and there is never a need to pay past the inital box price?

There is tons of longetivity in this game simply with the pvp. Best in the industry, IMO.

like the score- it would of been a score of 10 for me IF there wasnt exploit issues in wvw..hope mmorpg will cover wvw here with the good and the bad.

After reaching level 80 on my first toon ive started to explore pvp, and they still have some issues to work, perhaps becouse its such a huge scale and game altogether-that they maybe trying to please everyone and its a world on its own like 'eveonline' is, but server exploits will turn many players off to participate in wvw, furthermore group qeues for pvp bg feels a bit gimped-not always a sure 5 man group-when you find yourself fighting your guild mates on the opposite end. little things like this and that turn out to be a HUGE turn off on a pvp experience. and the brightside i believe they have acknowledged this and may limit  tranfers as more players reach level 80 and join pvp-but as it stand it feels like the wild west=where anything goes exploits and all.

but over all-this has become my main mmo to play! Anet has won me over!

Right now I'd score it lower on longevity and social scores and overall give it a 9/10 at best.  It's B2P and lost me after three weeks.  I actually played a little longer in SWTOR.

This score makes me really question the SWTOR score.  That game really deserved about a 8/10 when you step back and look at it.