Guild Wars 2 is a success story. Launched with huge hype, the fantasy MMORPG received excellent reviews, sold incredibly well, and was praised for its innovative approach.
So why are we still playing another MMO?
And what are the reasons that Guild Wars 2 couldn’t conquer the market as many once thought? Our tester Schuhmann investigates these questions.
The Beta – Catchment area for failed MMO relationships
At the moment, I’m hanging out in many betas. Betas are kind of the catchment area for homeless MMORPG players. Or better yet: Betas are like those apartment blocks where only freshly divorced men live, pretending to enjoy a happy bachelor life while eating frozen pizzas. If you watch the chat, it’s all about the exes. And you pick up a lot:
- WoW is played out!
- Aion? An Asian grinder! The whole concept was flawed from the start.
- Tera? Nice graphics, but what else?
- Star Wars: The Old Republic – a massive flop from the very start, lots of hype – nothing behind it!
- Lord of the Rings Online? Ruined by free-to-play!
So sound disappointed ex-gamers. There is almost never talk of EVE Online. Whoever has fallen for it seems to remain in space forever. Also, hardly anything is heard about The Secret World. If you ask someone about it, they raise their eyebrows in surprise: “Is that a TV series?”
By the way: The highly anticipated feature release coming out on April 15 might give GW2 a solid boost!
But when you chat with someone about Guild Wars 2, you get responses like: “Yeah, that’s true. That was quite good. I could actually play that again.” And then the beta player turns around, steers their level-4 character into a dangerous adventure, and seems to have forgotten the conversation already. Hmm! That got me thinking.
What does Guild Wars 2 lack to transform us all into marauding cats, tree people, or mesmer forever? And why am I not playing it right now?
Problem No. 1 – The missing Holy Trinity
The Holy Trinity is a simple concept. Tanks are there to tank, healers to heal, and damage dealers ensure that the mob falls quickly. This system has been known for decades. It has its problems:
- The tank has an enormous amount of responsibility and an ungrateful job.
- The healer has an ungrateful job and an enormous amount of responsibility.
- The damage dealers often fight more for the top spot in the damage meter than against the boss.
Every class is forced into a specific role, the gameplay is somewhat monotonous, in PvP tanks are often redundant, and when a healer or tank wants to venture out solo, they have to switch to DD.
The unloved kiting
What could have been more innovative than to toss the system out the window? Everyone is a bit of a tank, everyone can heal a bit, and everyone deals damage well anyway. And thus the strange bastard class system in Guild Wars 2 was born.
Now – the system is fantastic for solo play, PvP, or the general game feeling, but in instances or during mass fights against world bosses, it feels chaotic, disorderly, and annoying.
If you ask a player how they experienced Guild Wars 2, they might say: “I played to the max level, then I completed the main quest, it was all great. Then I was in an instance and because there was no tank, we kited a mob around for hours and it was completely stupid.”
For some a boss, for others the biggest loot piñata
in the world
Now there will surely be ways for experienced players to establish some order in a 5-player instance, but the impression of total chaos has stuck.
As a casual player, you encounter fantastic mass events: A new threat lands somewhere in the world. It requires hundreds of players to defeat it. But it ends up being 100 people standing around a mob and everyone bashing away like crazy. Because there is no tank to heal, the mob design is limited to AoE attacks, and in the end, it feels like you are beating on a massive piñata until it finally bursts open and the sweet loot spills out.
Conclusion: The lack of a holy trinity severely restricts encounter designers. Some players miss identification with their class.
Reason 2: The high barrier to entry in PvP
The PvP in Guild Wars 2 imposes high tactical demands: The single player is initially nothing. Only in the company of numerous others does he become something, namely part of a zerg. These masses of players stay together on the map, follow a leader, conquer castles and fortresses, and contribute to the success of the realm.
The PvP in Guild Wars 2 overwhelms every beginner at first with a plethora of information, requirements, bonuses, and other things. While the PvP in other MMORPGs is relatively easy to understand: “The one still standing wins.” Or limited to the well-known capture-the-flag scenarios, the PvP in Guild Wars 2 initially expects the player to really dive in.
And even if you have done that, you are dependent on the fate of your realm. Although Guild Wars 2 also has instanced battlegrounds that you can win and lose, the focus is on a battle that lasts a week, during which you are just a grain of sand on the beach. Sometimes PvP in Guild Wars 2 feels like being down 0:3 in a football game after just 2 minutes and only looking forward to the final whistle.
Conclusion: The entry into PvP is difficult and frustrating for many.
Reason 3: The lack of hunting and gathering
Every time I log into Guild Wars 2, I have no idea what I actually want to do. In other games, it’s clear: Finish that quest, farm reputation, join that raid, get a few more points in PvP – because then you get a better item!
So I do that, get a better item, log out, and feel stronger.
Diablo 3, the game that is currently driving half of the MMO gaming community into an early grave and into rampant madness (“Schnitzel!”) has perfected this behavior.
In Guild Wars 2 with the flat item curve, I can buy pretty good gear directly from the auction house. At boss events, little better drops. Somehow, you could have weapons crafted or farm some dailies or start with “fractals,” but even before that, there is a hurdle that a casual player will probably never overcome.
Conclusion: The item and character progression is unclear.
[What is it about Guild Wars 2 that I and many other players can’t overcome these three hurdles? Are you a certified Guild Wars 2 expert and can explain to us why it is your game? Do you have to really dive into the endgame to appreciate the mechanics? Or did you also quit Guild Wars 2 fairly quickly?
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