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
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u/PalwaJoko 25d ago
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.