I’ve been progressing fairly quickly through Tyria, a much faster pace than before. As I have talked about in previous posts, taking this “casual” approach has been very beneficial. As a person who works a job with varying shifts and typically long hours, I love how I can just jump into the game and not worry about playing catch up. Anyways, enough talk about that. I wanted to discuss a couple of things this time around. Let’s start out with a pretty big concept: Progression.
The amount of ways to progress in the game is more than most MMORPGs. That design aspect alone allows for many, many different playstyles. Whether you want to progress in the traditional sense of an MMORPG, quest after quest, storyline after storyline or if you want to take the road off the beaten path you can mix and match what you want to be doing. Do you want to PvP? Go right ahead. You want to craft and explore? You can do that as well. There is no real punishment for ever doing what you want - sure some ways will take longer than others but does that really matter if you are enjoying yourself? Despite that, Guild Wars 2 does an amazing job of trying to cater to everyone. There are games that cater to a certain PvP crowd or a certain PvE crowd but I think there is something for everyone to love.
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Progression doesn’t have to be linear and it doesn’t have to be boring. What are the fun ways you all progress in Guild Wars 2? What would you recommend other players do to progress? Like I said before, I try to do everything the game allows me to do. I typically save the storyline missions for last. I will say that I really do enjoy the stories in the game. The voice acting adds huge production value and allows players to immerse themselves more into the narrative. I tend to care a little more when storylines are voice acted and I don’t have to read everything to stay involved.
I have this routine I go with now when I log into the game. Complete any dailies I can do right away, complete a few hearts and try to be 2-3 levels ahead of the next heart and do anything “extra” I can find while going through each zone. I find myself being less bored this way.
With other MMORPGs I have played currently and in the past, I can’t really get myself to do all this “extra” stuff. I think it is because it is so easily accessible in this game. You don’t want to quest anymore? Go find a group and hunt down the events going on in your zone. Go kill some zone bosses and make some friends in the process.
It’s super easy to find or even start a group to do all these events. In all the people I have run into in Guild Wars 2, I would say less than 5% I have met have been toxic in any shape or form.
I don’t know if it’s just the community enjoys helping or what but It’s nice to ask questions or try to form groups without being trolled. I’m not trying to make it out that other games are like this but Guild Wars 2 like I said in the past has really set a standard for MMORPG communities and how they should interact. Despite all the drama going on outside the game, inside the game has still been very helpful, despite the few heated discussion about the drama. Progression in Guild Wars 2 has become fun and I wish other MMORPGs could try the Guild Wars 2 formula.
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I don’t think they could do better but it would nice if other companies took more of a horizontal approach to progression. What do you think? Do you like how you can progress in the game or do you wish it was more traditional? I honestly don’t think it would be as fun if it were to have the approach that World of Warcraft has or FFXIV has. That’s the reason I am playing Guild Wars 2 and not those games, you know?
As I continue to progress in the game and hit that “End Game” what should I expect? I could look it up, but I would rather have opinions from you all first. What should I do first? What shouldn’t I do first? What advice would you give players like myself who have taken it easy and enjoyed the ride to end game? Let's hear it for the veterans to all us noobies in Tyria these days.
