Level 80 for a week now or so, still actively playing and exploring the world, currently at 85% world completion. Got loads of gold, full exotic self-crafted Magic Find set, bought many cash shop upgrades and items for gold, nothing for RL cash, so that part too works perfectly. WvW is awesome and I can see spending loads of time there.

The game has a solid foundation, ther are bugs still and things that need to be done, but seeing this as the new  foundation of MMO's, it's as good as it could have been. From now on, every MMO should build and expand on this, I can't imagine playing the old style MMO's again. For example the current Dynamic Event system is more of a skeleton, a template, and I hope ANet and other developpers will expand and build on it. Heck I hope to see it in single player titles too, such as in the next TES game and maybe even GTAV.

60+ gold?? What game are you playing. You can get a FULL EXOTIC set for 9g TOTAL. I can craft it, in fact I did, for myself and a kinmate. Yes, people, that's it, 9g for a complete set, my char is already set. Where is the grind? Name one other MMO that lets you get the endgame set so fast? Takes about a few hours to get 400 in leatherworker to be able to craft it. You can make 1-2g casually playing the game without farming, a day. Some make 5g and more. I'm no't even counting crafting and selling profits. That means after one week even the slowest players can afford the endgame set, by doing NOTHING, bu exploring the game. No farming, no grinding.

And grind for a legendary is EXPECTED. Why, would you like to get a LEGENDARY weapon in a week, or a month even? Nope sir, you can get endgame wepons easily anyway. Keep in mind, a legendary is merely a skin. I don't know if I'll bother getting one, not sure if I like the riffle skin, but I love the complexity and difficulty of getting one. That's what I call a legendary weapon.

Surprisingly, I do on my Asura engineer. The story is about on the level of any other decent fantasy game, from Baldur's Gate through Mass Effect to Skyrim and such. Not quite on par with Planescape Torment, but then what game is haha. Pretty much your standard heroic fantasy, but it manages to captivate you. It's not Tolkien, that's for sure, so don't expect too much depth, but it does get epic, with pretty awesome sieges and battles. I like how the story is presented, I was sceptical at first about the strange dialogue cutscenes, but they work well, mainly because of pretty awesome line delivery by the voice actors, including your own character. I'm level 70 btw.

I'm positively in love with the combat system so far, I'm a level 34 engineer. The sheer amount of possible choices is overwhelming, but I'm tending to favor explosives. Dynamics work flawlessly, there is not 1 split second of boredom even in the most basic fights. I don't feel I have even begun to master the finer nuances of condition management and skill timing, but the sheer epicness and edge-of-the seat action is hard to miss. Just watch the vid I decided to record this morning to demonstrate it.

Engineer L30 vs Champion War Beast, also 1 vs 3-4 NPC combat preview, and some group action near the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVSDfhwmtaE

Post your combat vids, so people stop propagating the uninformed myth that all it takes is pressing 1-1-1 to win every battle ;)

It was the only BWE event I was in, and thought it was rather boring in execution but an interesting concept nontheless. Since I have not seen the Hunger Games yet at that  time, I had no idea what I should be doing - staying alone, hiding, collecting rations, avoiding combat. Instead I tried to stay in group and of course got zerged which was not fun. But then I did not expect we would get an event that needed us to stay away from the action, instead of an action packed one. So it failed as an event, but as a new PvP or WvW mode this has a lot of potential.

It has not changed and it's still frowned upon in any grind based game, where buying boosts reduces the endless grind, or serious boosts that work in PvP. Which means any game apart of GW2 :)

We were all wearing the sun glasses in the final BWE3 event :P And considering the heavy Hunger Games reference in the event, I think we will see a LOT of contemporary influences in Tyria, similar to what WoW was doing, I guess (though I didn't really play that abomination, just heard that it did :P). So Expect Dark Charr Rising capes stuff and what not in the shop.

I don't necessarily like it, but then Tyria is not Middle-earth and this lore is not that important to me to be pissed about such random out-of-place additions. Looks like they will put all the stress on "fun" and less on the "setting" part, keeping it funny and relaxed. Who knows, Maybe that's what it takes to have 10 million casual players?

Sure this is a problem when you're all level 1 and make 13 copper of a dynamic event in 10 minutes :P You have to take the income of a level 80 into account, which, if it's anything like in any other average MMO, will be astronomically higher. I wouldn't be surprised if 1g was pocket money, especially if you take market trading into account.

And btw, 100gems for 50 silver is a very very bad ratio. Isn't the other way around something like 125 gems for 14 silver? It's rather silly to waste real money this way on something as short lasting as taking a keep. The player didn't win.. he lost, hard.

Of course it's not P2W.. wait.. you buy GW2 - and that's a Win :O Therefore P2W. OMG how could we  have ben so blind, ANet tricked us! xD

Maybe they added the ratings for each subsystem, and forgot to divide? :P

No. MMO's can work without sub fees, once that finally came out, there is no justification for any sub fee. Would you start paying your car's producent 50$ a month starting from now, for no extra service? Just 50$ on top, for no reason, jsut to pay it? Thats what a MMO sub fee is. People should really understand that, the sooner this happens, the sooner all will benefit. As long as people pay, studios will try to rip them off. In other words, if you pay a sub, you are indirectly hurting everyone else, espeically those who can't afford it. Unless the game is FTP and the sub is optional, then you are helping, of course.

Sub fees lead directly to lazy devs, grind based content, and dumbing down of the gameplay. If that's what you want, pay up.

Originally posted by Malcanis

Is merely keeping the server open and spending a buck or two on the bandwidth enough, or do you demand more for your $10-$15 a month?

In my opinion, paying a subscription fee should entitle the MMO customer to expect at minimum the following:

(1) Frequent, regular bug-fixing and exploit-patching

(2) Competent, active GMs

(3) A game that's in a fully working condition to play, and which fufills the promises made by advertising (or at the least, has the reasonable expectation of fulfilling those not currently delivered in the near future)

(4) An active, responsive community team

 

I think paying subscribers should also reasonably expect at least some of:

(5) Access to all the content in the game without further payment

(6) An expectation that the game will continue to be developed and expanded, and for that direction to be communicated

(7) Some level of input or interaction with the Dev team as to the future direction of the game.

(8) Proper game documentation and tutorials

 

What are your thoughts? Which subscription MMOs actually deliver to your expectations for a subscription? Should subbed MMOs which don't deliver go F2P or should they raise their game, so to speak?

All you said should be included in the box price. Bandwidth costs so little nowadays, its neglible.

Today, if a MMO charges for a sub, I would expect all the above plus:

- a full blown expansion each year with loads of content, available for free to subscribes who already paid enough in sub costs. i.e. if someone played 6 months paying 15$/mo, he will get it for free (value of 60$ game + 50% more for other costs, but if he played only 3 months with a sub, hell have to pay half the price and so on.

- constant updates with new content, instances, small zones, throughout the year, free for all.

Any additional revenue can be obtained with a fluff based cash shop.

A fun article, nice work. About the siege machines placed in 'special unreachable spots' - that's completely useless,  waste of gold, once placed you can't move them again, and the big army you wanted to cleverly ambush - can simply move away :) In GW2 you are not forced to attack a keep in 1 spot, you can attack from many sides and take the walls down.

Originally posted by cooper85

I'm not the type to be filling hearts and chasing DEs. I'm not really the questing type, plus I wouldn't be rewarded with anything meaningful for rerunning DEs. No gear, no AA, just pets and cosmetic gear.  

So you don't like playing fun content, ok. I can magically dispell your worries, for I can write a game you will enjoy, forever! In 1 day, guaranteed. It consists of a window panel, a button and a counter. All you have to do is click the button and the counter increases! You become more powerful! Yay! And - I feel so generouns now - I will let you increase the counter up to 1 million - for FREE! Yes, and every next million in increase will cost you ONLY 1.99$. Come on you must admit it's a deal of a lifetime, the best MMO ever, one you can play forever and ever and ever for so cheap. You get more powerful each day, and even after 10 years of this, there is still SO MUCH TO DO! Reach 10 million, 100 million, a BILLION! Tell me where to send you a copy :)

Oh and of course its online, everyone else is increasing the same counter! Yes! It's true! You can do it all together and become more powerful each day, isn't it fun! And it will never end, I can use double precision variables, you can all do it till the Universe ends :D Beats the other MMOs that close after some 20 years, all your progress is wasted.

Why do beta weeks when you can have beta years! At least that's what LOTRO did 5 times in a row now, 6th in progress :D

Clearly you haven't been following either game to make such inacurrate claims lol. Everything ArenaNet said will be in the game IS already in the game. You can't have two vastly different hype types as TOR and GW2. But maybe you like to compare The Phantom Menace to The Dark Knight, I don't know.

The complaints are easy to explain even though I don't agree with them in the least. The complainers are simply playing the game wrong, stuck in the WoW mindset, thinking they can level all the way to 80 by simply doing hearts, going from one to the next, therefore atempting to force GW2 to be what it's not - a hub based game.

There are 3 starter zones at the moment, each zone should easily get you to around level 12 before encountering a level gap. But there are  2 more zones you can and should visit! Linear leveling curve means you could in theory reach level 30 in starting zones alone (1-17) without any grind whatsoever :P That's not including the 2 zones that will come in release.

The complainers forget unlike the old games, here you are level scaled, and are not forced to skip content/zones. I simply explored the game and had no issues with leveling. On top of that going to a zone below your level is awesome fun, you feel like an Epic Hero yet without being completely overpowered :D So glad there are no grey mobs anymore.

Originally posted by Mephster

Perhaps I'll check out Dust 514 or Planetside 2. I think I am done with the basic fantasy mmo with a twist. These types of mmos have been done before time and time again.

Boy, will you be bored with these. Shoot, kill, shoot, kill, move, shoot, kill, geez lol. If you think GW2 boring, how in earth did you play any other MMO? The standard static mob grind of old was fun to you? :S Maybe you should stick to single player games like Mass Effect 3.. there it's like talk, move, press button, shoot, talk, move, use console, shoot, repeat.. oh wait xD

Myself I'm having a blast in GW2 and so far the only complaint I have is that the game looks ready and I'd like to play for real and not a beta anymore ;/