Looking to try out guild wars 2 while waiting for War Within. Any one here play it? and if so how casual friendly is it? I don’t want another game that you have to spend endless hours grinding and massive RNG to it. Also will i need to buy all the expansions for it to enjoy the game? I know the base game is free.
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Try the base game to see if you like it. Buy expansions if you do. It’s early action combat. It’ll likely feel a little clunky compared to WoW combat, but it has its charm. I like the effects you get from combining spells on the field. Leveling is basically alternating between the equivalent of World Quests and actual Story Progression at level thresholds.
As far as expansions go, I loved Heart of Thorns as a story and the world events in those zones were some of my favorites too. If you end up buying expansions, definitely go through that one, and I’d recommend playing a plant person, it’s minor but you get a couple neat little bits that others don’t during that story. Path of Fire or whatever, the one after HoT, was good enough, but didn’t hook me like HoT. Still worth a once-through for story though. I haven’t played the newest one yet.
Generally that’s my opinion on the whole game though. I don’t really see it as much of an MMORPG. Just play through it as a single player Story-centric RPG.
In terms of being casual friendly though, yeah, it’s pretty solid. Gear is not nearly as big of a deal as it is in WoW. The difference between levels of gear is pretty small. You can buy some exotics off the AH pretty damn cheap and you’ll be good enough for pretty much everything provided you have stats that make sense for your build. And it’s a horizontal progression thing. You can come back 4 years later and you will not be in worse shape than you were when you quit.
Personally that last bit makes me less interested in playing, but it does make it easy to get into and come back to when content drops. The incentive to stick around is more to get access to seasonal story content without having to pay for it, I guess? I’m not invested enough in the game to actually do that though. If I’m playing when it drops I do it, otherwise I probably won’t see it.
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GW2:
- Tried it, didn’t stick around
- Pretty casual friendly and easy to get into. Community was super nice too.
- it isn’t really an endless gear grind. Gear difference isn’t insane and zones are horizontal progression
- They kinda lock a fair bit of mobility behind the Path of Fire expac because it gives you mount riding so there is a high incentive to buy it ($30) I resisted the urge to do so personally but most people do it. Besides that you can still have a lot to do with the free game.
Not to divert your attention but FFXIV is also pretty good for the parts it offers free. I found it slightly more satisfying personally.
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I quite like GW2. I’ve played a fair amount of time between my “WoW Breaks.” I think it’s in my “top 3 best MMOs.”
It operates differently from WoW, both in combat mechanics and movement (Action combat) and character progression (Horizontal).
The community is super nice. Of course, there are a few mean people here and there, but overall, it’s a 10/10.
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Whether or not FFXIV is worth the time depends almost entirely on if you can get invested in the story being told or not. But, I mean, free game for a good long while into that story so doesn’t hurt to give it a shot at some point, same as GW2.
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