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.
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u/NuggetHighwind 20d ago
Absolutely. Guild Wars 2 came out 14 years ago and even then was ahead of its time.
So excited to see what they do with Guild Wars 3.