Guild Wars 2 – A must-play MMORPG

ArenaNet once again attempted to break the mould with their second release in the Guild Wars series, and have been mostly successful in doing so. The game has now reached teenage – a realisation which certainly doesn’t make us feel any younger – and its high player count keeps it in the discussion for yearly top MMORPG rankings.

You’ll enjoy Guild Wars 2 if you like games based on the following pillars :  

✅ Fluid action-oriented combat : no global cooldown, high quality animations in general, a mix of tab-target and free targeted attacks
✅ Strong cooperative play : no loot or kill stealing, team synergy, player combos, support roles
✅ Rich worldbuilding / lore : whereas the quality of story arcs has varied over the years, worldbuilding and lore notes have consistently been a strong point
✅ Accessible instanced group content, structured around 5-10-50 player teams : dungeons and raids with interesting challenge modes
✅ No gear treadmill : progression is mostly cosmetics and convenience based, with no endless stat inflation

Areas of improvement or aspects which may deter prospective players are :

📉 Tonal shifts in story : Guild Wars 2’s writing team has shown its potential with incredibly well constructed story arcs, such as the Path of Fire expansion or Season 4 of the game’s Living World. However, some releases (eg. Head of the Snake, End of Dragons) are plagued with characters acting and sounding too real and modern, like they just walked out of a West Coast concept store with an almond milk flat-white coffee. Comic relief is fine in small doses, but the writing often fails to strike the right balance in Guild Wars 2’s recent releases. 

📉 Inconsistent content delivery : ArenaNet has struggled to find its footing over the years and changed its content delivery model so often that it’s become hard to believe they’ll ever find the right formula. We wish all success to their current yearly expansion model.