Tyrian Times –Six Reasons You Should be Playing Guild Wars 2
By Meredith Watson (MerryQuiteContrary), OnRPG GW Reporter
With over one million players pre-purchasing Guild Wars 2, it is all the rage right now. It seems everyone is jumping on the Guild Wars 2 bandwagon because of its multitude of great features and dynamic gameplay. Here are my top six reasons why you should be playing Guild Wars 2.
Buy to play. The best reason to play Guild Wars 2 is there isn’t a subscription fee. For merely the price of the game, which is on par with other titles, you can play whenever you want without having to worry about getting your money’s worth. With some subscription model titles the player can often feel they must play because they are paying good money for it. With Guild Wars 2 it is easy to pop in and out of the game guilt free.
There is an item mall in Guild Wars 2 but it is currently very limited with costumes, boosts and services. No doubt much more will be added in the future. It isn’t necessary to spend money in the item mall. Guild Wars 2 can be played successfully and enjoyably without ever spending your hard earned cash. However, it is such a great game you may want to purchase just as a way to say thanks for the awesomeness.
Combat. As we all know combat in MMOs is a series of key presses. That won’t change given that is how the genre works on a PC. Games in the past have claimed innovative combat but it never took the gaming world by storm (and was just more key presses). Think Age of Conan. With Guild Wars 2 you get the usual fare but there are a couple of differences between Guild Wars and other games in its category. The first being the weapons swap. Oh sure games like Fallen Earth allow for weapon swapping but it is very clunky. Guild Wars 2 has made it very fluid illustrating that is an integral part of gameplay. As well as weapon swap GW2 gives us the ability to actively evade either through double tapping WASD or the V key. Many of your spells and abilities also will focus around evading. Combat in GW2 is all about movement, evading and choices but more importantly it is about knowing when to use the all the tools in your toolbox.
Crafting. Not everyone loves crafting in MMOs but in most of them it is a rather important component to gameplay. Guild Wars 2 has given us a moderately deep craft system with many recipes and materials. Cooking for example can have recipes with up to six steps to make one dish. Cooking is one of the hardest crafts but also extremely valuable because not only do you get the stat buffs from eating but also XP bonuses. Who doesn’t love XP bonus per kill? Cooks aren’t the only ones that can make buffs. Most crafting professions can (though you will have to discover them). Discovering in crafting makes one feel a bit like a mad scientist by combining materials to hopefully come up with something useful. You won’t be locked into just two crafting professions unlike most current games. You can learn them all and save your progress on all but can only have two active at a time. Did I mention you gain experience for crafting and discoveries? The experience is a decent chunk as well.
Sharing is Caring. Sharing is a common theme in Guild Wars 2. This is most evident with events. Everyone can contribute. There isn’t any kill stealing or tapping targets. If you helped kill it or contributed in some way you get rewarded with experience, cash and karma. Sharing also applies to gathering. Nodes, herbs, or trees don’t disappear once they’ve been used once. The harvesting of resources is phased so that everyone can use them. Once you have depleted a resource it is no longer interactive for you but can be used by someone else. All this sharing doesn’t stop here however. Your personal bank is shared between your characters, which is good and bad. Personal banks are rather small but having them shared between alts is very handy. Not only is your bank shared between your characters but all crafting materials are as well through the crafting interface.
No Holy Trinity. If you play MMOs you know what a holy trinity is. The healer, the tank and DPS are the cornerstone for any group. You undoubtedly already play one of the trinity and know how stressful it can be at times for tanks and healers especially. In games such as World of Warcraft it would be impossible to do higher level difficulty dungeons and raids without the holy trinity but not so in Guild Wars 2. All classes have a self-heal and all classes are DPS. There isn’t a healing class standing at the back spamming heals on a tank. The elementalist class is the closest thing to a healer which has the ability to AoE heal but it certainly isn’t a traditional healing role. There are classes that have more defence but they don’t tank in, again, the traditional sense. How does that work you ask? Very well, actually. Self-healing, not getting hit and killing quickly are vital.
Art. Most would disagree that this would be a reason to play a game and normally I would agree if it were the sole reason but in conjunction with the above mentioned reasons it needs to be given consideration. Vistas in Guild Wars 2 are views that the player can get to more or less by completing a jumping puzzle. These vistas are all over Tyria for one reason and that is so we can enjoy the beauty of the game as well as the creativity and talent that has gone into the making of Guild Wars 2. It isn’t only stunning views but also the attention to detail in character models, armour, and weapons. For the artists that worked on Guild Wars 2 it must have been nothing short of a labour of love.
What are you waiting for?
