Guild Wars 2 Review: Anarchy Makes You Less Alone

The buy-to-play fantasy MMORPG Guild Wars 2 has attracted many admirers and fans since its release in August 2012. Some have remained loyal to the game, while others have not.

Like no other game, Guild Wars 2 emphasizes the solidarity of a server community or guild. Additionally, GW 2 gives its players the feeling of being an explorer in an unknown, exciting land where new stories are constantly unfolding.

We have packed our backpacks and ventured into the vastness of Guild Wars 2 to introduce you to the game.

The classes, races, masses, and the question: What am I playing now?

The original Guild Wars was somehow different. While the game’s competitors were huge giants like World of Warcraft or Everquest, the first Guild Wars occupied an outsider niche. This attracted many hardcore players, who especially praised the PVP.

When Guild Wars 2 launched amidst great hype and rave reviews, the developer ArenaNet had some surprises in store that would shake up a stagnant MMORPG world. The first was the class design. Guild Wars 2 abolished the holy trinity of Tank, Healer, and Damage Dealer. A sacrilege at the time!

Each class was meant to be able to tank a bit, have decent self-healing capabilities, and be able to deal damage. The latter is self-explanatory. The intention was primarily to free healers from their supposed yoke, long lamented since time immemorial.

The Mesmer is a particularly sophisticated class that relies on illusions, clones, surprise attacks, and other tricks. It is somewhat of a mix between a wizard and a cloak-and-dagger duelist, like one might find in the France of the Three Musketeers and Cardinal Richelieu.

Tell me what weapon you wield, and I will tell you what skills you have

Another innovation in game design is that classes change their abilities with the weapon they are currently using. A warrior wielding a bow has an arsenal of skills that one would associate with a hunter in other games. Thus, it is possible to design and play a ranged fighter with incredibly strong armor in Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 2 offers an active real-time combat system that is very action-oriented.

If the same warrior picks up a sword in his right hand and a war horn in his left hand, he becomes a melee fighter who can buff and support the group through the war horn. If he carries a two-handed sword, he has a skill set reminiscent of the barbarian from Diablo 2. Conversely, if he takes a shield in his off-hand, he is considerably more defensively oriented.

A small excerpt from the skills interface

These weapon differences apply to all classes. At first glance, it seems that the characters have an incredibly high number of ways to develop and specialize. This is certainly somewhat true, but there is no elaborated skill tree with combinations of various skills like in other games known.

Once you have committed to a warrior running around with a two-handed weapon and decided on certain class and ultimate skills, the quick bar will be quite sparsely populated. Of course, you can switch at any time, but even with another weapon, the final selection will still be limited.

The selection of abilities in the game sometimes seems as if you are standing with a tiny plate before a huge buffet. Although you’d ideally like to shovel 20 things onto the plate, there is only room for 6.

In any case, the class and skills system is an innovation that brings surprisingly many variations and benefits.

The peoples of Tyria: Less Tolkien, more Manga

The different races available determine the “personal story” of the main character and have effects on the gameplay that go far beyond merely changing the starting area.
The peoples of Tyria include:

• the Charr, a cat-like warrior race with a bloody past
• the Norn, a hardy northern people accustomed to cold and deprivation
• the Humans, a race full of contradictions and opposites
• the Sylvari, a nature-bound people wrapped in myths and legends
• and the Asura, a small, highly intelligent, and super-cute species

The races differ significantly from each other, both visually and historically.

Even at the selection of races, it’s clear that the universe of Tyria has nothing to do with standard Tolkien fantasy. While Sylvari appear somewhat similar to elves in orientation, there are numerous differences and nuances in detail and the well-crafted story quests. It is exciting to discover and get to know the various peoples, their stories, and ideas. The world of Guild Wars 2 is not a generic fantasy, but a world with history, personality, and character.

The gameplay: The dynamic events

The revolutionary element in Guild Wars 2 is the gameplay or how one shapes the ordinary day of an adventure. While in competing games, a hero arrives in an area, accepts quests, and then gradually works through them, he moves much more freely in GW 2.

[pull_quote_center]The player reaches a new zone and experiences adventures.[/pull_quote_center]

Dynamic events happen around him. In a certain area, there are “quests,” but they are modern and not so formally designed.

For example: The brave Mesmer reaches an area that has a clear problem: Perhaps meteorites are falling from the sky and crushing deer that need to be saved, or there are way too many sharks in the pond (ArenaNet put a lot of effort into underwater combat) or something else is amiss. Intuitively, the hero now follows his natural urge to do good, and is rewarded in-game for it.

When major events occur – when a dragon lands or an ogre tribe goes amok again – the individual player doesn’t have to worry about stepping on the toes of any guild if they just want to see what happens. The big events are like a big family gathering: Everyone is welcome, everyone can take what they want from the buffet. And the more, the better.

Impressive world bosses like Tequatl present the greatest challenge in GW2 and should only be tackled with combined forces.

War of the Worlds instead of Ganking

Epic mass battles are guaranteed.

This somewhat chaotic and anarchistic game principle, where something happens around me and I react to it, is taken to the extreme in PVP. While in other games things are neatly organized and clear, Guild Wars 2 feels dynamic and fluid: Everywhere seems to be on fire. Wherever you look, there is something to do, and the adventure has no beginning and no end.

In PVP, entire servers collide. Three worlds participate in a battle. But fans of battlegrounds or arenas will also get their money’s worth. ArenaNet remains true to the roots of the first Guild Wars. The coordination of players is supposed to determine victory and defeat, and significant gear advantages from optimized equipment do not exist.

Overall, GW 2 breaks away from the convention of faster, higher, further – for max level characters, gear improvement is more about style. The game offers an incredible variety of earnable style items – there should be something for everyone, here are a few examples:

Innovative design decisions create the discreet charm of GW 2

Through some clever design decisions, a player can continually set their own goals that do not necessarily have to relate to a linear development of the character. When a single zone or map is completely completed, a premium reward is given. But a zone is not considered complete when all “quest points” are checked off as though they were on a to-do list. No, to fully explore a zone, it might also include climbing a series of plateaus to reach a mountain peak and take in the beautiful view.

This dynamic game principle has been adopted by ArenaNet even in the expansions and is followed consistently. While other games bring new content into the game at fixed intervals, which is simply added to the existing mass, Guild Wars 2 regularly features small stories occurring in the game that are only available for a limited time. With this concept of the “living world”, there is always something to do, and some story in Guild Wars 2 is continually advancing. This fits well with the rest of the game.

The living story regularly brings new momentum to the game!

[pull_quote_center]Guild Wars 2 breaks with many conventions of the fantasy genre that have made it predictable and cozy over the years, but also somewhat bland.This anarchistic approach of Guild Wars 2 should definitely be worth a visit for anyone who is looking for something new.

The conclusion on Guild Wars 2