End of Dragons, the new expansion for Guild Wars 2, is here. On reddit and in the forum, the new content is receiving a lot of praise. Especially the story and the areas are highlighted. Moreover, the release went completely smoothly.
What kind of expansion is this? With End of Dragons, the main story of Guild Wars 2 continues. In keeping with this, you can explore four new areas on the continent of Cantha. The expansion also offers:
- New elite specializations for all classes
- A new 2-player mount
- Fishing and sailing
- A new guild hall
- Jade Bots as new companions
- New strike missions that are supposed to receive challenge modes for higher difficulty after release
- New legendary weapons
Players and fans of the game are showering the new expansion with praise. There are numerous threads highlighting the positive aspects, and only a few detailed decisions are criticized.
Praise for story, areas, and strike missions
What are players praising? Above all, the story! In almost every thread, it is mentioned as a highlight. User ryanmahaffe writes, for example, (via reddit):
The story (no spoilers) is the best GW2 has ever offered, with the highest production quality the game has ever seen. It is excellent and introduces new characters that fit perfectly into the existing cast and leave their mark on the franchise. This closes a book and we are ready for the next one to be opened.
User EducationalWin3363 says about the story:
The voice acting! Without spoiling the story: There are new voices and characters in the main plot, and their emotional delivery is excellent. By far better than other MMOs.
Some players also criticize a change for the endgame where buffs no longer affect 10, but only 5 players. This is an adjustment that, however, gets a bit lost in all the hype surrounding the new content. Also, missing hotkeys for the new siege turtle and fishing/skiffing are mentioned as issues that could easily be fixed quickly.
The last meta event divides opinion
Where do players disagree? In the last area of the expansion, there is a large event where the whole map has to cooperate and it contains many mechanics. This event currently fails in more than 90% of cases because players are overwhelmed by the mechanics.
On one side, many players think it’s good because it is a challenge and highlights the best of Guild Wars 2. The whole map has to cooperate with over 50 players to bring down a giant world boss. Some also refer to the event as “Top Tier.”
On the other side, however, players criticize that this event must be completed to get the new mount, the siege turtle. This mount is one of the core features of the expansion but is currently only accessible to very few players. Moreover, each meta event takes about an hour of gameplay and an hour of waiting time because it only starts at the top of the hour.
However, many players and groups improve over time, and such an event is achieved time and again. It’s quite possible that in a few weeks it won’t be considered too difficult anymore.
Is it worth starting Guild Wars 2 with the new expansion?
Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons is primarily aimed at the veterans of the game and of course at fans of Guild Wars Factions, as it revisits the old areas. However, beginners can also get into the expansion quite well.
To experience the new content, you must first purchase the expansion. After that, you need to level up to 80. You can:
- Explore areas and follow the story
- Level through professions
- Run the old dungeons
- Activate the boost included with the purchase of the expansion
The boost should only be an option if you really want to jump directly into the expansion with friends. Because on one hand, you would miss the beautiful world of Guild Wars 2, and on the other hand, you would start completely unprepared and without experience in content that can be quite overwhelming in the first hours.
If Guild Wars 2 is generally worth it for you, you can find out here: Is it still worth starting Guild Wars 2 in 2022?
What do you think of the new expansion? Have you already played End of Dragons, or is Guild Wars 2 completely uninteresting to you?
We at MeinMMO were already very taken with the story:
What else is being praised? Not only the story is receiving praise. The areas and the music are also positively highlighted in many contributions:
- “The areas are amazing. I don’t think many other developer teams have to keep things like GW2’s mounts in mind during design. I always think: ‘Surely there will be an invisible wall up here’, and then: ‘No, they just let me traverse the map however I want.’ Quite brilliant.”
- “I agree. The new expansion is great! I’m enjoying fishing and the skiffs more than I ever expected.”
- “So far, I’m really enjoying it. I’m fully immersed in everything that’s happening. The graphics are simply stunning, and the music. The story is also so captivating. I can’t say much about the elite specializations. I’ve only played Untamed briefly, but I’m too familiar with Soulbeast to switch to anything else right now.”
One point that many were skeptical about is the new strike missions – boss instances for 10 players. Yet even here, the conclusion of many players is positive. They are said to be challenging and varied, but not too difficult. The rewards are good (via reddit).
For the future, challenge modes are planned that should increase the difficulty.
You can check out one of the strike missions here:
An absolutely smooth launch without downtime
How was the launch of End of Dragons? Perfect. Players could play until 6:00 PM when the new patch was released on time. At 6:02 PM, the first players had downloaded the update and were able to play the new content.
There was no maintenance, no server down, no queues, and no lags or major bugs. Only two items were problematic and they were disabled in a hotfix a few hours later.
As a result, the players’ praise here was particularly positive, especially those who were used to long server wait times from other MMORPGs.
The scope of the expansion is okay
Many players were concerned that the expansion might be very small when it was announced. However, in the end, the content for 30 euros is absolutely sufficient.
The story comprises about 8 to 12 hours of content. In addition, there are numerous new contents such as the mount or the legendary weapons, new achievements, collections, and new stat combinations that you can earn.
In terms of scope, it clearly exceeds the recent expansions of ESO or SWTOR.
Criticism for elite specializations and new weapon collections
What is not well received by players? Criticism mainly comes for the new elite specializations. Each class received such a specialization and it brings a new weapon, new abilities, and new passive effects. However, you can only utilize one elite specialization at a time, and now there are three per class.
The latest specializations are criticized for their weak design and are often weaker than existing class builds. Here, many players wished for more creativity and greater innovation.
In a reddit thread, the user ymorai asked which elite specializations players currently like. The responses are very negative:
- “So far, none has excited me, the quality/design of this set is too low.”
- “None. They all look bad and feel bad to me. I’m very disappointed that very little to no changes were made from the last beta to now.”
- “I have played all the specializations during the beta and yesterday in the PvP lobby for a while, but my first impression is that the elite specs do not trigger the hype I had with PoF and HoT.”
In addition to the specializations, the associated weapon sets are also criticized. They require too much grind, the strike missions, and force players to repeatedly complete story instances and listen to dialogues (via reddit).
Some players also criticize a change for the endgame where buffs no longer affect 10, but only 5 players. This is an adjustment that, however, gets a bit lost in all the hype surrounding the new content. Also, missing hotkeys for the new siege turtle and fishing/skiffing are mentioned as issues that could easily be fixed quickly.
The last meta event divides opinion
Where do players disagree? In the last area of the expansion, there is a large event where the whole map has to cooperate and it contains many mechanics. This event currently fails in more than 90% of cases because players are overwhelmed by the mechanics.
On one side, many players think it’s good because it is a challenge and highlights the best of Guild Wars 2. The whole map has to cooperate with over 50 players to bring down a giant world boss. Some also refer to the event as “Top Tier.”
On the other side, however, players criticize that this event must be completed to get the new mount, the siege turtle. This mount is one of the core features of the expansion but is currently only accessible to very few players. Moreover, each meta event takes about an hour of gameplay and an hour of waiting time because it only starts at the top of the hour.
However, many players and groups improve over time, and such an event is achieved time and again. It’s quite possible that in a few weeks it won’t be considered too difficult anymore.
Is it worth starting Guild Wars 2 with the new expansion?
Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons is primarily aimed at the veterans of the game and of course at fans of Guild Wars Factions, as it revisits the old areas. However, beginners can also get into the expansion quite well.
To experience the new content, you must first purchase the expansion. After that, you need to level up to 80. You can:
- Explore areas and follow the story
- Level through professions
- Run the old dungeons
- Activate the boost included with the purchase of the expansion
The boost should only be an option if you really want to jump directly into the expansion with friends. Because on one hand, you would miss the beautiful world of Guild Wars 2, and on the other hand, you would start completely unprepared and without experience in content that can be quite overwhelming in the first hours.
If Guild Wars 2 is generally worth it for you, you can find out here: Is it still worth starting Guild Wars 2 in 2022?
What do you think of the new expansion? Have you already played End of Dragons, or is Guild Wars 2 completely uninteresting to you?
