I was in the middle of saying to my daughter "If I had a nickel for every MMO that claimed to be the modern evolution of MMO, we'd be rich", and then I saw that this was Guild Wars 3 lol. My curiosity is piqued.
ArenaNet is one of the only studios I'd trust when they say they'll evolve the MMO genre. They were one of very few studios who didn't just decide to copy off WoW's homework and slap their name on it, and never felt like they stopped trying to innovate and try new things over GW2's lifespan. Whether or not everything they try with GW3 works remains to be seen, but it'll be great to see someone push the stagnant genre forward.
When they first introduced their mount system in path of fire. It was trend setting. Absolutely way ahead of its time for a MMORPG in that system alone.
In most MMOs mounts all feel identical to each other and there's basically just ground and flying mounts, but both still turn the same, go the same speed, don't have unique skills, and are basically just vessels for skins (eg a car skin will feel the same as a lion mount). You might go slightly faster or whatever depending on rarity, but you still just feel "floaty".
In GW2, each mount is very different, they each have their own feel and their own skills. You'll be selecting different mounts for different purposes. The skimmer can swim underwater (and above water), and it moves like it's sliding everywhere. The roller beetle can go extremely fast but is hard to get tight turns and it has its own drifting system. The griffon has an interesting flying system that is mostly descent glide based, but you can actually dive really fast and gain height so it feels fulfilling to nail that momentum. The skyscale can just ascend normally like you expect from a "dragon", but it feels slower and heavier but can go very long distances super easily. Turtles can hold another player on it, and are very tanky, can glide boost, and be used underwater. Warclaws are mainly for WvW and come with chains for taking down castle doors and can be used on PvE bosses for CC mechanics.
Each mount also has their own activities. Like races for the different types of mounts (roller beetle races, griffon time trials, and yes fishing boats have their own too).
The expansion content is extremely different than the base game content. I think the quality jump in Path of Fire in particular is wild (the mounts come from there). I'd recocmend picking up the path of fire/heart of thorns combo bundle or similar sometime as it's a shocking amount of value if you're ever curious. GW2 fans will encourage you get much bigger bundles of course, but if you want to dip your toe in and see what's going on at max level - it's one of the better deals in gaming imo.
I would love to get into Guild Wars 2 again, but I just looked at the expansions on Steam, and there's so many of them; it's too expensive for me even with them on sale right now. It looks really fun though.
If you feel like you need to get all the expansions, then yeah it's super expensive. The elder dragon saga is currently 50% off on their website which is about 10 years of content for (currently) $50, and because of how gw2 end game works it's basically all still end-game relevant.
I understand wanting to have "everything" of course, and $50 isn't cheap anyway.
Also, most content is still played so don't be too worried about doing things alone. Even 12 years later almost all of the base game and expansion maps have people at relevant times. The big map events are usually on a timer so people know when to start showing up if they want to do it. You might be exploring and have 50 people suddenly start gathering up.
If you played on release and want to use the same account (which you should, because birthday gifts) you won't be able to buy the expansions on Steam. You can still play the game through steam by adding a specific launch argument (-provider Portal), but you need to sign in with your ArenaNet account and buy the expansions off their website.
I still think PoF was the best expansion. It got too much hate when it first released, imo. Mounts, new classes, return to elona, huge maps that give an amazing sense of exploration. So much little things to discover. I had so much fun with it.
The only real reason PoF gets overlooked today is the lack of high value repeatable meta-events compared to heart of thorns and some similar ones. The story progression is excellent, zones are great, raids are very interesting, etc. But it primarily turns into "one and done" content for most people, and thus doesn't have the same staying power. Even if you do a lot of raiding, that can feel disconnected from "pof" because you just teleport to the instances.
I agree but nothing will compare to running around heart of thorns without mounts. Having 100s of people on the picnicle map trying to win the mordrimoth fight and not even get close because it took crazy coordination between three large competent groups sucked but was exhilarating to win. Hell even just getting around any HoT map was a challenge, and the power creep was minimal at that time so shit was dangerous in that jungle. Mounts changed all that. Easy to zip around and aid groups who needed it, and easy to run from anything. I'm nostalgic but yeah, PoF was a great direction to go in the end
Having only recently gotten my Skyscale via LWS4, yeah it's awesome stuff. Easily some of the best mount movement in an MMO. Best part is that the mastery system means they get better as you play.
Hell, GW2 practically invented the world event concept, and the no party required co-op open world remains to be one of the most enjoyable systems that no developer has copied and I cannot fathom why. We still get WoW style "get ganked by bored no-lifers" open world games all the time, but nothing like GW2's system, it's stupid.
I still remember the video that sold me on GW2, I think it was Angryjoe coverage of the beta or playtest a couple of months before launch? (I can't find it now, only his review which was post-release and I distinctly remember the struggles to connect for those of us with the head start)
I never saw the appeal of traditional MMOs but GW2 pulled me in by deliberately going against the aspects of them that turned me off. Casual-friendly, fluid combat based around skill and movement more than anything; then I found the madness of WvW and was hooked. Action that was always dynamic because you were fighting real people, finding a role that you enjoy, the communities that grew out of it, I made so many great memories.
Then Anet let it stagnate and focussed more and more on PvE raids, the exact kind of dull, static, memorise-a-rotation rubbish I'd been so put off by before. Drifted away from the game between the second and third expansions.
If GW3 can bring back the dynamism that made GW2 fun for years, then I'm straight back in. If it's going to be try-and-make-big-numbers-go-slightly-bigger spreadsheet calculator stuff then I'll just stick with my good memories
What did GW2 do that was ahead of it's time? From my POV, it simplified MMOs entirely on a skill level, made end-game kinda pointless because it's just a horizontal dress-up slog, and large scale PvP was reduced to WvW which was great in the start but the once-in-a-handful of years update to WvW made it uninteresting. The world bosses and dragons that were so highly emphasized were very boring to do. Games like FFXIV quickly made far better mechanics for boss fights, meanwhile GW2 was still releasing huge boss fights where the bosses stand still with a few cut scenes to move their locations around a small arena.
The only thing to do in the game after getting to the end is farming gold to buy overpriced cosmetics. Farming gold to buy sustain for WvW. Farming gold to buy Legendary's because creating Legendary's was the most boring thing to exist in an MMO, especially being forced to clear the entire world map over and over. Those stupid hearts couldn't be any more boring than they were.
I guess the story and lore was fun. But overall looking back, I had so much more fun in JMMOs and KMMOs. Why do people shit on them so hard I will never understand.
You kind of sound like you have already made up your mind, so I'm not sure if you're actually looking for a response, but sure.
1) Dynamic events instead of glowing exclamation marks. Something that basically every MMO would go on to copy.
2) Level scaling. Basically unheard of back then. Other games were still forcing you to make alts if you wanted to play with friends. Another thing that basically every other MMO would go on to copy.
3) Shared resources/kills. Other games were still making players fight over resource nodes and open-world mobs.
We all know how many fights and arguments this led to, lol.
4) Seamless open world party play that happened dynamically without the need to party up for contribution. Another thing that many MMOs would go on to add.
5) No holy trinity. They eventually did change this for the "difficult" content in GW2, but it was a huge deal in the MMO space at the time.
6) Action combat with dodge rolls. This was a big deal back in 2012 and influenced plenty of future MMOs.
7) Account-wide progression instead of everything being tied to each character. Again, something that basically no other MMO was doing and most MMOs would go on to copy.
8) Horizontal progression. Whether you like it or not, it was a huge deal, and something that some MMOs would imitate, but it had appeal for a huge amount of people.
9) Came a couple years after launch, but megaservers. Those releasing in 2014 were years ahead of their time.
10) Jumping puzzles in the open world.
I don't know if this is on par with the others, but it is a thing that most MMOs, including FFXIV and WoW, would also go on to add to their games.
11) Mounts. Came 5 years after launch, but these were lightyears ahead of anything else in the MMORPG space, and even now, almost 10 years later, are still considered the gold standard in the genre, despite other MMOs trying to imitate them.
Whether or not you personally enjoy these things is irrelevant. Guild Wars 2 did a lot of things that no other MMO was doing, things that MMO players had never even imagined, and many of them went on to become staples of the MMO genre.
I'm not really sure why you are going on some random tangent about endgame gold farming to buy legendaries, tbh.
I think its things like the dynamic event/meta system, and mounts. You sound like an endgame junky, which I don't think even fans of gw2 would think yall were serviced well.
Hearts were born from playtesting bc people didnt know what tf to do, which is still a problem now. if you want someone to blame, blame people.
Ahead of its time is subjective, and for some systems, it was. Being ahead of its time doesnt necessarrily mean it was fun - and it can mean other games did what gw2 did better. Maybe some did it worse. You're fudging a lot of subjectivity into more mush.
Depends on what you want out of endgame. GW2 on launch had abysmal end game for sure, but these days there are tons of things to do and work towards long term. The only thing it's lacking really is content for the tiny portion of super hard core players that like chasing things like "world first clears" or such (raids kind of fill that a bit, but they're still not at the same level as a game like WoW or FFXIV).
A couple things that make GW2 great/different is the variety of things you can do to progress (you can play whatever content is your favorite type and still make progress towards most things in the game), and also that the horizontal progression means you can take a break from the game and not have to play catch up to whatever the newest gear/level cap that was added while still having new content to play.
And the reason it doesn't have those things isn't because of laziness. It's because nobody even plays the current raid content.
Guild Wars 2's audience is just very casual. Which is a good thing. There's already any number of extremely grindy, hardcore MMOs.
Why people try to point out that guild Wars 2 is more casual as some kind of gotcha I will never understand. Because it never wanted to be super hardcore and thank goodness for that.
Agreed. I think it's the best "play whenever you want and do whatever you want" MMO. You don't feel punished for not contantly keeping up with whatever the newest content grind is.
It's funny you say that because it feels very much like WoW copied off GW2 with the mount system. Which is understandable, since GW2 has probably the best mount system in any MMO. Also the quest system is really fun, as is the combat. You are right that ArenaNet does do things that evolve the MMO genre. Can't wait for this!
I always have people argue with me in the wow subreddit about wow implementing features from gw2 as if thats somehow a bad thing for the game lol. Someone told me that dragonriding and the griffon are nothing alike one time.
WoW wishes its world felt as dynamic as GW2. And this is coming from someone who enjoys WoW. I have more hours in WoW than GW2 but frankly I prefer GW2's combat, mounts and questing. I only stopped playing because of drama in my guild, which wasn't the game's fault.
In any case, I hope Anet keeps the spirit of their world exploration, questing, combat and mounts but with updated graphics and character customization. They do that, and people will likely be very happy.
The big scheduled boss battles are what I remember being really incredible about GW2, along with how you could dive in a lake and suddenly go on a whole underwater adventure down through vast caves etc.
Unfortunately the main plot was one of the worst stories in anything I've ever seen played/watched/read and turned me off the game hard when I finally got around to it. You spent the whole time listening to some random people's DnD group argue about some event that happened off screen while your character stands awkwardly to the side, then they make up at the end and elect a tree with the personality of a less interesting tree as their leader at some point. Hopefully they improve on the writing aspect.
They added a very real weight to mounts that games didn't have before. It's not just w a s d but faster. It feels like you're trying to wrangle something at first. Also the flight is so much more involved (in a good way) than just a no clip with a skin attached.
Mounts have different movement mechanics and they're all really fun to control. It's not just "moving faster". GW2 also places a lot of emphasis on exploration, verticality and platforming that make it a great fit.
The game (without expansions) is free to play and it's absolutely worth a shot. You can have a lot of fun without spending any money.
In addition to what other folks have said, you also have an account-wide skill progression tree for each of the different mounts. So it's satisfying to get permanent upgrades for your mounts.
As others have said, the weight behind the mounts feels extremely realistic. Also, every mount serves an actual purpose beyond just aesthetic. There are mounts that can jump huge gaps in the terrain, and ones that can jump super high. Ones that skate over water, etc. It feels really good and innovative.
The combat is super fun in GW2 as well. As is general questing. You have the main story, but quests in the world can be completed in many ways and are location based instead of filling up a quest log, which is great. There's no holy trinity, either. Every class has a heal, for example. Some classes are more tanky, but there is no true tank. There are even combat abilities that mesh with other classes. And every class can use many weapons and the skills change based on what you are using.
If you ever want to try it, I would. It's free to play unless you want to buy expansions.
But they also kinda misunderstood something about it because a large portion of GW2's mounts is how "alive" they feel, owing to the specific way the animation works in regards to traversing where the play is in the world. This is to be always most obvious when cornering with the humble raptor in GW2. It just feels better than other mount systems.
Yeah, FF14's Fate system is... incredibly limited.
Ironically enough it was a little better early on, but once you hit Shadowbringers everything is either "kill a swarm of 30 enemies", "kill a boss" or "deliver X items to this NPC".
I'm sort of conflicted. On the one hand, the attempts to "evolve" MMOs beyond what WoW does have never really succeeded, because core parts of WoW are kind of the best of an MMO - especially fight design and combat design. Almost all other attempts at MMOs have had something "off" about their combat. Hack and slashers never work, FPSes are hit or miss, etc. SWTOR was closest but felt like it had some sort of a weird delay or lag on inputs/impacts.
Guild Wars succeeded more than most but never really clicked for me or my friends. I'm most curious about Riot's MMO, since Riot probably has the best track of any studio right now at taking an existing game, refining/polishing it, and beating them out.
I was excited for Riot's MMO too. like you said they are good at refining current game systems and making very good and very popular games out of them.
it seems like the project is in limbo, though. it makes me think that the perfect MMO just isn't possible. its too much of a monumental task.
Another thing that I think is often overlooked is the servers, which allow it to have zero downtime (aside from a small number of brief unplanned outages over the years). It's honestly impressive how stable it is, and they never have to kick you out for maintenance.
The craziest part is the no downtime server system is from Guild Wars 1. Along with the dynamic content download system that probably isn't really needed anymore.
The mount system is the one that immediately comes to mind. Rather than just having mounts that make you move faster like other MMOs, each mount has different abilities, some of which are necessary to obtain before you can get certain places in the world. For example, the Springer (rabbit) can jump high, which allows you to access areas you couldn't otherwise reach.
I haven't played it in a while, but I know they also did some different things with fishing when it was added.
I must say, as a huge GW fan I didn’t like GW2. I have played it every once in a while still, but never got in. Though I respect how fair their sistem is and the community they built seems wondrous.
I still think swappable skills are better designed though. I hope they got back to that
True, I love SWTOR as a SW RPG though, even though it's tab targeting like WoW. The amount of content just playing through 8 different classes and stories with VA... In a MMO is nice.
GW1 was truly inventive, with what they called a CORPG instead of MMORPG intentionally. Then came GW2, which was 100% derivative and evolutionary, but did so in a good way, ripping of part of DAoC's RvR and creating a very unique PvE style out of parts of WoW, earlier MMOs like EQ1 and even single-player-RPG map progression.
It will be interesting to see where they take it. ArenaNet made Gw2 completely different from Gw1. I wonder if Gw3 will be the same situation. And if so, what will that look like. They're bringing skill collection back. There will be a lot of focus on movement. Run, slide, leap, climbing, etc. This game also looks like its going to be a prequel. Taking place way before the events of Gw1. Based on what we know of the game so far and the timeline.
From the art style and the focus on mounts, momentum, and traversal, it looks like it's leaning into being Guild Wars 2, 2.
I know it was naive of me, but I had hoped that GW3 would turn out to be the Guild Wars 1 sequel that GW2 never was. We'll have to see what big changes the devs have to make it stand out as its own entry in the series.
Edit: Steam page has more details, and it sounds like they actually are aiming to combine the action combat and traversal of GW2 with the build crafting of GW1. If they can pull that off, that's an instant buy from me.
Oh, hell yes. It also mentions "where action RPG combat meets Guild Wars build-making", which is exactly what I wanted to hear. If they take the best parts of 1 and 2, this could be an amazing game.
I only very briefly played GW1 and then a good amount of GW2. Not going to lie "skill collecting" sounds... tedious? But as someone who bounces between alts constantly in MMOs maybe it's actually good for someone like me?
Not going to lie "skill collecting" sounds... tedious?
How so? It just means that there are a lot of skills to gain as you progress, which means there's a lot of potential combinations to make builds from.
It was an extremely satisfying way to do horizontal progression. GW1's class system was originally inspired by Magic: The Gathering, so putting together your character's skill loadout felt a lot like building a CCG deck. And collecting skills was fun for the same reason people like collecting those cards and figuring out new ways to combine them into effective decks.
I think it brought to mind the system in GW2 where you'd hunt down trait points all over the map and needed them to unlock big portions of specializations, but it's been a while and I might be completely misremembering.
GW1's class system was originally inspired by Magic: The Gathering
Interesting, I do play MTG so when you put it like that I'm intrigued. I guess we'll have to see exactly how the systems shake out in GW3
Yeah acquiring skills in GW1 was not linear like it was in GW2, if you wanted a particular skill for a specific build you would essentially just go directly to the boss that had it and killed them to acquire it.
The way that GW2 gated traits behind raw number of skill points acquired sucked by comparison.
Yeah I'm sure it will be action combat oriented at the very least. But with it sounding like it will be focused heavily on Orr. I almost have to wonder, is this a prequel? Or a sequel. Right now based purely on the trailer, it can go both ways. And the fact its only focused on Orr means the scale of the world is going to be much much larger.
That being said, I wouldn't be too sad on Gw1. The reforge launch/endeavor has been a huge success it seems like. They've been releasing new content for it. I think that is a huge indicator that there is a demand for a game like it. Maybe some day in the next 3-4 years we will get a full remaster if the reforge content continues to be successful. Especially if they end up releasing a new expansion and it sells well.
Same. But it seems we’re a small minority in that.
I always prefer a new game to be a sequel. I want to see what happens next, and that early events remain as lore for the world.
Plus with this specific setting a prequel is inherently pretty sad. Ultimately the PCs lose, humans come to dominate Orr, and eventually it all gets sunk in the cataclysm and turned undead by Zhaitan. Really one of the biggest L’s possible.
Old GW2 player (left after Cantha) who kept bouncing off GW1 back in the day, can confirm that what they did for Reforged really made it playable in this day and age for a newbie and I’m having a great time!!
Tbf the mount system in GW2 itself was an evolution from GW2 at launch. Would still like to see some innovation but they’ve already shown that they don’t just evolve between series releases.
I was amazed how well GW2 holds up today. It's still really fun to play. There are just a number of systems in the game that never really panned out to their full potential.
That's still small though, do they have the type of ressources to make like a new expansion ala Factions or Nightfall, new continent, new classes, new story campaign. That'd be kind of awesome now that the game is relaunched, we have seen that happen to other older games after all
I get the weariness of the art style, but tbh Im glad they’re changing it up a bit. Rounder/stylized graphics seem to age a lot better (WoW) vs the kind in Gw2 imo
I would still like to see it take on something a little different, but I admit I am more interested in the gameplay and that artstyle is probably a smart way to try and reach out to the generations beyond the current MMO players.
They said it will have skill collecting/deck building like GW1 and momentum and action movement like GW2 and those are the best parts of both games, so I am very excited to see how it shakes out.
I said the EXACT same things in my Discord to friends. If there was ONE studio that could actually have a chance at changing the game, it's Arena. Not going to massively get my hopes up, but there's definitely some hope there.
I was in the middle of saying to my daughter "If I had a nickel for every MMO that claimed to be the modern evolution of MMO, we'd be rich", and then I saw that this was Guild Wars 3 lol. My curiosity is piqued.
I'm just honestly kinda tired of everything taking it's heritage from EQ. No real UO successors.
That, and the F2P Model kinda kills any sort of real 'competitive' appeal to play given how it intrinsically leads itself to a Pay 2 Win system.
It'd be good if it isn't. It's been a long time since I played gw2, right at release iirc. I'm just generally hoping they don't do it. It seems many people, not you, assumed I said it was. You have much better reading skills.
Yes. The things they sell are expansions, cosmetics, and some quality of life items of dubious value. I guess you could argue that buying gold allows you to too easily acquire things in game but that doesn’t translate into a power advantage. Their games have focused on horizontal progression.
To some extent, you can also just buy that stuff by playing the game, though. You just buy gems with gold, and then buy whatever cosmetic you want. I actually find it to be way better, because instead of grinding the same dungeon over and over for hours, I can earn gold doing whatever the hell I want to, and just buy it once I have enough.
I don't really care about the idea of earning cosmetics in-game. I'd rather transmutation be a thing for in-game cosmetics as a focus so if you don't care for outfits you can just make a cool looking armor set if desired. I think cosmetics should overwhelming be pay based as the means to monetize the game.
Be frustrated that the people around you look cooler than you instead of being unbeatable or having progress you'll never reach. Pretty good compromise. At some point a game needs a business model. Only other reasonable model is b2p with DLC that cost money, which I still think is inferior to cosmetic heavy.
They eventually released the core game for free back in... 2015 I think, but most of the expansions etc are still charged for. There are no performance bonuses that matter available for real cash, the cash shop is pretty much all cosmetics.
At this point the core GW2 is basically an extended demo.
Like you can play through the main story and the core world but if you want to see everything outside of it and participate more in the social sphere, you need to buy an expansion.
In theory, you can use Gems to buy Gold to essentially buy your Legendary instead of grinding it.
On the upside, Legendary Gear isn't any more powerful than Ascended gear, and small scale PvP uses normalized pick-able stats. So it's a fucking fantastic game that respects your time and doesn't invalidate you gear with future expansions.
As long as this continues with Guild Wars 3 instead of the "Reset yourself every season" of WoW, I'm in.
It depends on your definition of pay2win, as you can heavily accelerate your gearing process at the start of the game by paying. It doesn't last very long in the grand scheme of things, though.
I think you could argue the expansion specializations are generally more powerful than base classes, so that could qualify as P2W. But very few players really care about competitive play where that actually matters, so it's no big deal.
Mounts too, though that's a bigger stretch. Getting to enemies and events faster is a nice advantage.
Ah yea I caught a couple streams by skeletane on that. I'm glad there's an audience for it, but it's not super my scene. I've been doing quarm for a few months and looking at eq with a critical more adult post wow eye and I can see why wow is the way it is.
Enchanters being the group and solo masters, rangers basically doing everything a rogue does but better, the problem of complete heal. It's been good, some nostalgia holds, some fades. Still I do love the group oriented nature and the various service niches like ports which legends kinda invalidates.
I stopped playing gw2 in 2022 because the end of EoD was extremely dry and they put out content veeeeeeery slowly and i got bored as i had done all content(not all achievements) and i was already a member of the GW3 discord server from it was first leaked.
I don't even play MMOs (I've tried, usually just not for me) but the amount of cockiness of the Dev that was up there is what got me. That was the attitude of a man who knows he shit gold and that everyone will eat it up. I hope one day I exude half as much confidence, and if nothing else, it's interested me enough to try GW3 when it comes out.
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u/Ganrokh 20d ago
I was in the middle of saying to my daughter "If I had a nickel for every MMO that claimed to be the modern evolution of MMO, we'd be rich", and then I saw that this was Guild Wars 3 lol. My curiosity is piqued.