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shivverI've mentioned a number of times that my husband and I play Guild Wars 2, starting from its launch in 2012 and only taking a couple of years off from it sometime in the teens. I've created cosplay characters of all the Doctors in the game and have been meaning to post them here. Well, the devs of GW2, ArenaNet, just announced the sequel, Guild Wars 3. Yay, I guess?
Part of my lack of enthusiasm for a new game is just that: it's a new game and won't have all the things we've worked on for the last fourteen years. Personally, I love starting new games, exploring the world, and developing my characters, so that part is exciting, but it does mean no longer playing the old game, which is where all my stuff is! My characters are max level and have all the best gear, and I love them, and it feels awful to throw all that away.
It also doesn't help that development on GW2 will be largely shut down. They're no longer going to be releasing expansion packs for the game, so if we stay with the game, it will be the same thing forever: no updates, no new things to do. They have promised that about a year after GW3 comes out (and that date has not been set yet), they will release a "content update" for GW2 which will include revamping the final quest in the original story. Just in case it isn't clear what that means, they're saying that the big update they've got planned for GW2, which will arrive no earlier than two years from now, has as its showcase feature a new version of a quest that they first released sixteen years earlier.
So, basically, the game we've loved all this time is being sunsetted. (That's the term for long-term shutting down of a game.)
Except... you know, I'm not really sure I can say I've loved GW2, at least not in the last few years, and that's a large part of the reason I'm not excited about GW3.
The thing is, GW2 is called a "horizontal progression" game. When you first start out, it's like every other RPG game: you're low level and you're in a low-level zone, and you do activities that increase your level and your power. When you get stronger, you go to a more difficult map in order to increase your level and power, so that you can progress to an even more difficult map. This is called "vertical progression".
However, GW2 caps your level at 80. At this point, the game becomes horizontal progression, where you stop leveling up and instead do other things to add to your character, such as change into a new class or get better equipment. But, the problem here is that everything else that you might do is also limited. For example, there is a top tier of equipment and it's all the same, so once you are able to outfit your character in that top tier, your character will be the same as everyone else's and there's nothing more to strive for. Yes, it does take a bit of time and work to get there, but even casual players will get there in a couple of years. Those couple of years will be fun, but then afterwards, what is there to work toward?
The answer is: cosmetics. There's a reason why GW2 is called Fashion Wars 2. That's what the elder game is, trying to collect wardrobe pieces for your character to wear. The game has tons of clothing, armor, and weapon skins to collect, which is how I've managed to make some pretty darn good Doctor cosplays. Of course, the most gorgeous or exciting pieces are exceedingly rare.
One main type of exciting skin comes from raids, which are extremely difficult quests. The basic concept is that you join a team of ten players who try to conquer a difficult dungeon. It'll probably take dozens of attempts to learn the dungeon, but once you figure out how to beat it, you run the dungeon once a week to earn a few tokens, and maybe after a few months of this, you'll have enough to buy a piece of armor. (It takes six pieces of armor to cover the entire body.) Raid armor must be acquired this way; you cannot buy raid armor from other players.
The second main type of exciting skin comes from "meta" events. The world in GW2 is divided into about forty different areas called "maps", and each map has a meta, which is a series of events that culminates in a big boss fight that everyone (each instance of a map can hold fifty people) works together to defeat. The prize for winning the meta is treasure chest that has an infinitesimal chance of awarding you its prize, the exciting skin that you want. As a note, in all my time of playing GW2, I have never gotten one of these prizes from a meta. My husband, who plays more than I do, hasn't either. These prizes are sellable, so your other option is to grind for gold to buy them in the marketplace, because of course, since they are hyper-rare, they are also hyper-expensive.
The third main type of exciting skin is called a "legendary", which, in a nutshell, requires you to gather ridiculous amounts of materials and craft into the item you want. Most new players, who don't have any resources saved up yet or gold to buy them, take six months to a year to gather what they need for a single legendary. Legendaries can be bought from other players, and they're not as expensive as the hyper-rares.
So, since there's no vertical progression in this game, all you end up doing is 1) doing the same raids every week (there's about ten of them), 2) doing the same metas every day (and each of these forty metas take 20+ minutes apiece, so you have to do as many as you can but you can't do them all), and 3) grind, grind, grind materials and gold.
Or, if you're not into collecting skins (and I'm not), then there's really no reason to do anything in the game. I've spent the last many months (actually, yes, years) logging in every day to do the basic "daily" tasks to accumulate currency and then logging out, because there is nothing to do. The only time the game is fun is when they release a new expansion, because there are new maps to explore and new quests to do, but that fizzles in a month and then it's back the same old nothing. There's just no challenge.
And that's why I'm not excited about GW3, because it's going to be horizontal progression again, and while I know that the beginning of the game will be fun, I also know that eventually, within a year or so, it'll just be the same old, same old. I'm not sure I'm willing to do that again.
Part of my lack of enthusiasm for a new game is just that: it's a new game and won't have all the things we've worked on for the last fourteen years. Personally, I love starting new games, exploring the world, and developing my characters, so that part is exciting, but it does mean no longer playing the old game, which is where all my stuff is! My characters are max level and have all the best gear, and I love them, and it feels awful to throw all that away.
It also doesn't help that development on GW2 will be largely shut down. They're no longer going to be releasing expansion packs for the game, so if we stay with the game, it will be the same thing forever: no updates, no new things to do. They have promised that about a year after GW3 comes out (and that date has not been set yet), they will release a "content update" for GW2 which will include revamping the final quest in the original story. Just in case it isn't clear what that means, they're saying that the big update they've got planned for GW2, which will arrive no earlier than two years from now, has as its showcase feature a new version of a quest that they first released sixteen years earlier.
So, basically, the game we've loved all this time is being sunsetted. (That's the term for long-term shutting down of a game.)
Except... you know, I'm not really sure I can say I've loved GW2, at least not in the last few years, and that's a large part of the reason I'm not excited about GW3.
The thing is, GW2 is called a "horizontal progression" game. When you first start out, it's like every other RPG game: you're low level and you're in a low-level zone, and you do activities that increase your level and your power. When you get stronger, you go to a more difficult map in order to increase your level and power, so that you can progress to an even more difficult map. This is called "vertical progression".
However, GW2 caps your level at 80. At this point, the game becomes horizontal progression, where you stop leveling up and instead do other things to add to your character, such as change into a new class or get better equipment. But, the problem here is that everything else that you might do is also limited. For example, there is a top tier of equipment and it's all the same, so once you are able to outfit your character in that top tier, your character will be the same as everyone else's and there's nothing more to strive for. Yes, it does take a bit of time and work to get there, but even casual players will get there in a couple of years. Those couple of years will be fun, but then afterwards, what is there to work toward?
The answer is: cosmetics. There's a reason why GW2 is called Fashion Wars 2. That's what the elder game is, trying to collect wardrobe pieces for your character to wear. The game has tons of clothing, armor, and weapon skins to collect, which is how I've managed to make some pretty darn good Doctor cosplays. Of course, the most gorgeous or exciting pieces are exceedingly rare.
One main type of exciting skin comes from raids, which are extremely difficult quests. The basic concept is that you join a team of ten players who try to conquer a difficult dungeon. It'll probably take dozens of attempts to learn the dungeon, but once you figure out how to beat it, you run the dungeon once a week to earn a few tokens, and maybe after a few months of this, you'll have enough to buy a piece of armor. (It takes six pieces of armor to cover the entire body.) Raid armor must be acquired this way; you cannot buy raid armor from other players.
The second main type of exciting skin comes from "meta" events. The world in GW2 is divided into about forty different areas called "maps", and each map has a meta, which is a series of events that culminates in a big boss fight that everyone (each instance of a map can hold fifty people) works together to defeat. The prize for winning the meta is treasure chest that has an infinitesimal chance of awarding you its prize, the exciting skin that you want. As a note, in all my time of playing GW2, I have never gotten one of these prizes from a meta. My husband, who plays more than I do, hasn't either. These prizes are sellable, so your other option is to grind for gold to buy them in the marketplace, because of course, since they are hyper-rare, they are also hyper-expensive.
The third main type of exciting skin is called a "legendary", which, in a nutshell, requires you to gather ridiculous amounts of materials and craft into the item you want. Most new players, who don't have any resources saved up yet or gold to buy them, take six months to a year to gather what they need for a single legendary. Legendaries can be bought from other players, and they're not as expensive as the hyper-rares.
So, since there's no vertical progression in this game, all you end up doing is 1) doing the same raids every week (there's about ten of them), 2) doing the same metas every day (and each of these forty metas take 20+ minutes apiece, so you have to do as many as you can but you can't do them all), and 3) grind, grind, grind materials and gold.
Or, if you're not into collecting skins (and I'm not), then there's really no reason to do anything in the game. I've spent the last many months (actually, yes, years) logging in every day to do the basic "daily" tasks to accumulate currency and then logging out, because there is nothing to do. The only time the game is fun is when they release a new expansion, because there are new maps to explore and new quests to do, but that fizzles in a month and then it's back the same old nothing. There's just no challenge.
And that's why I'm not excited about GW3, because it's going to be horizontal progression again, and while I know that the beginning of the game will be fun, I also know that eventually, within a year or so, it'll just be the same old, same old. I'm not sure I'm willing to do that again.
