Guild Wars 2 Ranking: A
I’ll make a disclaimer up-front that I never actually “finished” this game, i.e. completed the storyline.
The game is beautifully crafted and the characters, both playable and not, are written very well. The world feels vibrant and huge. Unfortunately, the world feels static, because this is an MMORPG (see my discussion on World of WarCraft to hear about why this happens). The game’s developers tried to steer the direction away from grind-and-fetch style gameplay, where for instance some guy tells you to go kill bears and collect their asses until you have 100 bear asses, then report back to him. In Guild Wars 2, the game gives you a choice of what tasks you want to complete in order to satisfy a quest-giver. It’s a nice try, but after awhile it still feels like a long grind. You’re still doing pretty much the same things over and over again. The grind is necessary, too – you need to do quests to level up so you can complete the main story missions, which are pretty tough. The main reason I never finished the main storyline is due to burnout from doing the repetitive quest tasks too much.
Maybe I’m just not an MMORPG person, but this really didn’t appeal to me. That being said, I still give this game props where it deserves it – having a gigantic open world full of varied and interesting characters, featuring a dynamic history and a well-crafted premise. I think if this were a single-player game and the grind were decreased, it’d be an amazing game.
I’ll make a disclaimer up-front that I never actually “finished” this game, i.e. completed the storyline.
The game is beautifully crafted and the characters, both playable and not, are written very well. The world feels vibrant and huge. Unfortunately, the world feels static, because this is an MMORPG (see my discussion on World of WarCraft to hear about why this happens). The game’s developers tried to steer the direction away from grind-and-fetch style gameplay, where for instance some guy tells you to go kill bears and collect their asses until you have 100 bear asses, then report back to him. In Guild Wars 2, the game gives you a choice of what tasks you want to complete in order to satisfy a quest-giver. It’s a nice try, but after awhile it still feels like a long grind. You’re still doing pretty much the same things over and over again. The grind is necessary, too – you need to do quests to level up so you can complete the main story missions, which are pretty tough. The main reason I never finished the main storyline is due to burnout from doing the repetitive quest tasks too much.
Maybe I’m just not an MMORPG person, but this really didn’t appeal to me. That being said, I still give this game props where it deserves it – having a gigantic open world full of varied and interesting characters, featuring a dynamic history and a well-crafted premise. I think if this were a single-player game and the grind were decreased, it’d be an amazing game.