Heart of Thorns CHANGED My Perspective on MMOs!

have you guys ever gone into an MMO expansion like in your life and just after eight hours of playing not understood what the hell is going on well that was my experience [Music] expansion so many messages you've got to start it get going get into it don't do Living World just jump into half Thorns well we did all the Living World so we can appreciate the story and I got blue balls to the end of time and then we jumped into the heart of Barnes expansion I was so hyped for this because I watched the trailer I looked at some of the feature releases and this is when the raids came in I hadn't seen a raid yet only a strike so that was very exciting for me as our project MMO mission is to clear the raids and understand how the end game processes work in all these MMOs so in we went oh boy first things first how beautiful is The Verdant Bank Zone good God I spent the first few minutes just looking around this has to be one of the best intro plateaus I've seen to a new Zone in a really long time if not ever I spent the first couple of minutes just looking around tall from the sky whoa stay sharp people more dremoth hit the packed hard it's up to us to pick up the pieces oh this is cool that is really spooky that is giving me vibes from Outer Wilds I think they felt pissed off about how their story went in the base game like look at this this is so much better but even for the battle for Lions Arch this is so much better the atmosphere the fires the crashes that have occurred following the Living World story and then this funny oppressive world where it look it reminded me of Honey I Shrunk the Kids many of you younger guys might not have seen that but the kids Get shrunk down and they end up in their garden and what they see is nightmarish it's awful when you look at the Garden from that size and that's what I felt like I felt like a tiny minuscule piece of this puzzle looking out upon just hellscape I compare it to the more which was supposed to be a hellscape and looks nothing as dangerous as this place looks with its thorny brambles that were four five 17 times as thick as I was stretching High into the sky and down into The Valleys below so I was pretty excited about that now I went into this based on my Decades of experience experiencing and more expansions not just World of Warcraft but Final Fantasy neocron all these MMOs that I played and so I got started with the story that makes sense to me I've got a mission I've got a quest I should get going and so if I went on my story and okay the next little while is gonna sound like some complaints but stick around to the end of the video I decided to get very very very frustrated I opened the map up because of course it's Guild Wars 2 a lot of the stuff is map completion and I see just so many things all of the map to do things to do all grayed out I spent the first couple of hours just kind of wandering around with like escort missions and pick up supplies and kill things and I can see all these people having fun the zone is still massively populated all these years later and they're all doing stuff and I Can't Take A Part in a God damn thing I I travel because what I started to do is travel to explore a little bit it's like oh this is a bouncy mushroom yeah you can't use that oh there's updrafts around yeah you can't do that oh this these things that are going up people are getting on helicopters for Christ's sake yeah you can't do that you're too poor you're a poor person you can't do that I'm like God damn it man I've exposed this new expansion and all these new features are here I could see the raid by the way I can see it I don't know what to do with it because I didn't understand a key fundamental thing this is already end game there's no leveling this is already endgame now Guild Wars 2 does bend the rules its own rules a little bit like the Holy Trinity right the tank healer DPS classic combo of MMOs after doing this the strike at the end of living world I realized that well that's not entirely true they did bend that a little bit yes there are healers yes you can choose people used to tank who are better at it things like that you can absolutely do that those things do exist in their own farm and I'm already level capped but then at the story I did like maybe three or four missions something like that and then the story went okay you now need to just kind of grind out a Mastery and the Mastery was a new feature that came with heart of thorns so it makes sense that they want you to engage with the system check it out and do stuff but I'm surrounded by things I couldn't do and then it's saying yeah you just kind of need to grind out these not particularly exciting missions we've gotta defend the camp you gotta do this stuff and then the reward for doing those things is things you can't take part in right that's that's what I was presented with is like do the crappy missions and then you can't do anything earn your exalted markings Mastery to continue the story son of a [ __ ] ah so I was definitely getting a little frustrated with this and I was playing around with it and eventually I did unlock my first Mastery actually didn't take long it was just the fact that it took maybe 30 minutes it was just the fact that I couldn't do anything and and the story hard stopped it's like you can't continue the story until you do a Mastery I was like okay so you're just kind of forcing me to go and do these sort of mini quests now all right not particularly great but I also want to go back to the mindset of the people on day one who wouldn't have been able to access anything else as well and there are probably think like what's going on up there what are these helicopters what is What's Happening Here we can't do it yet we need to get going with some stuff So eventually I unlock gliding and I immediately went to the store and purchased the best glider in the game unquestionably anybody who denies this is just a liar and of course the Mastery sets are essentially new leveling protocols so although the actual character levels have stayed the same you have got the system on the side where you can level other things which are called masteries and they're the gliding one is the one for The Verdant Bank where I was and it was okay you you've unlocked gliding now but you've kind of got hobo flying and you need to level all the other masteries in other people flying you're gliding to be better which is a lot of grinding out well and after the start I'd had in the zone I had no interest in that whatsoever but the story had unlocked a bit more for me okay so I've actually got something I can go and do now and I did I went back into the story as I would do in any other MMO and carried on and very quickly like 30 minutes after that the Zone came to an end and it was moving me on to the next Zone which is kind of what atypical if I think of something like World of Warcraft that's exactly what would happen I would follow through the story I would complete the quests and then it would take me off to the next Zone whenever I was ready and because there's no levels to speak of then it's just keep going I was like okay and I looked back at the map before I went off to the next Zone I looked back and I realized I've only uncovered like half of it or at least what I thought was half of it that would be more accurate description of what at the time I thought I've only seen half this Zone there's still half of it uncovered but I didn't really enjoy this Zone I wasn't having any fun I was just denied to be able to do a ton of stuff so I was like I'm ready to move on like I don't know what's going on here but whatever so I move into the next Zone and it happens again it happens again I am again I open the map there's loads of stuff going on there's watchtowers there's base camps there's all this kind of stuff going on there's a big Central City and I can't take part in anything and after a couple of missions once again the game says okay that's enough story for you for right now you now need to grind out a Mastery level before you can continue and I was like God damn it and again the missions were kind of lackluster it was basic stuff it was escort Quest it was find this missing doctor find this missing weaponsmith things like that to get me back into the mix of things I was like oh my God this is like and in the back of my mind I'm streaming this obviously and I'm trying not to like really bad mouth the expansion because I've only been playing it now for maybe four or four or five hours at this point and part of me is like I don't think I'd want to continue with this that thought has entered my head it's like I'm not having any fun I'd rather play something else at the moment than be [ __ ] tease with all this stuff and just end up grinding and grinding and grinding to level masteries so I can play around with this stuff that sounds just really boring that sounds not great as much as I enjoy the story and I do the story is actually getting much much better now in Guild Wars 2. it's it's because it's something I'm invested in and then what happened is and mini spoilers here uh for people who haven't played this so just bear that in mind they killed off two characters just completely unceremoniously to the point that I just felt nothing even though I enjoyed those characters they just died [Music] ah rude I'll play it ah we're not killing uh surely [Music] why is her face all Goofy [Music] yeah we're killing her okay where was Bram jumping in front of that one odd choice to kill off air so early just let me say goodbye to him not until I see more drama it just seems so abrupt and random right we didn't even get a refresher of with uh every time before this well I guess they're falling Straight From the Living World season two [Music] we lost a lot of good soldiers in the past few days guys listen up I need a volunteer it was too sudden I don't feel anything that is time but he needs someone to watch his back I was like what the hell just happened I think this happened in the previous Zone but at the same point I was like wait we're just killing off those characters and it felt like a lie it felt like oh they're gonna come back and one of them kind of does and I was like did that their voice actors just not get the job or something they just like wipe these characters out I was like is this what we're doing now we're just killing off these characters like I appreciate the fact that you're willing to kill off Story characters but certainly from my back histories like these characters needed a more ceremonious send-off than what just happened I'm I'm like more annoyed now I'm like okay this is more annoying so I'm walking around the second Zone everything's the same I'm joining in this again very heavily populated lots of people doing things and they happen to stumble into the city because I was exploring I stumbled into this Central City and while I was there while I was there a big event started a war an attack on the city these massive Goliath Elite monsters spawned and I was like what the [ __ ] is going on like what is happening and then some of these walls appeared that needed flamethrowers and turrets and I swear to you like a waterfall falling from the sky and it reminded me very much of when a Dam breaks in a movie like the fall of Isengard when the dam broke and just suddenly people just came crushing down the sides of the city because the city is like sunken into the ground hundreds of people just flooding down I'm like what the hell is happening here this is MMOs this is gaming this is something going on and I had no clue what was happening so I'm trying to figure out I suddenly get this progress bar of north south east and west towers and doors need to be dealt with and defeated and I can see the health going down and like well West isn't so how the hell do I get around there and I'm trying to find typical to how we started this channel is how do you become the baller and the baller is the guy who is doing a lot of stuff making success for the group but like people don't really notice it in MMOs like No One's Gonna Give You a Pat in the back but that's your role is to try and guarantee success whether it be in dungeons or whatever and I'm like how do I make myself useful here and I'm trying to figure it out because I'm not quite sure what's going on so trying to figure it out it's like do I move to the West Side do I stay here how does this work with these turrets and how do I Melt Away these layers of slime that are clearly blocking our way how do I do all this stuff and I'm trying to figure it out and muddle it through as people are barking orders and stuff and like wow the chat is a frenzy with people trying to organize things and then we failed the event the event failed and suddenly all four doors open because the event was over and just everybody from every corner of the city just piled together and we're exploring and doing stuff and that's when it started to dawn on me I've been doing this wrong I've been doing this wrong because I came in with the mindset of other MMOs when new content and expansion comes out you kind of work through it all of it you see all the new zones you just kind of get introduced to some features and then at the end of the story then at the final Zone then the game opens up with its end game that's when it kind of blossoms it's like a mushroom essentially you have this thin Stark that kind of shows you where to go and then at the end it just balloons out into more stuff that's not how Guild Wars 2 works and I should have known this I should have known this because that's how I felt playing the bass game I remember distinctly on our first day of this project ingold was too saying the game isn't pushing me to do anything because you can do anything if you want to stay in the first two zones and level to the cap you can do that if you want to or you can go and see every Zone and do a little piece of the pie you can do whatever you want the story is kind of showing you where to go and Guild Wars 2 has taken this approach that hey you're already level shots every single zone here is designed to last forever from the start there's no just showing you the zone and then you'll come back to it later you could stay in that first Zone forever but the problem was of course I'd played The Living World Series since then and I kind of forgotten that because the Living World stuff is very story focused it's very unrails it's very linear and so I'd forgotten that aspect of Guild Wars too and also I don't have the benefit of actually playing Guild Wars 2 on a day-to-day basis after I've completed the main story in the main campaign and stuff I haven't done that because there's so much concept for me because consume in which case I would have understood how these zones were likely to work so I did something I've never done before I said I'm gonna go back I'm not gonna push forward even though the story is telling me I can go on and do other stuff I'm not gonna do that actually I'm gonna go back to Zone one I'm gonna start again that's what I'm gonna do and I'm gonna come into this with fresh eyes with a fresh perspective and see what this zone is about because this zone is already at its end game level I just didn't appreciate that at the time so that was the next mission I spent the next six to seven hours just in zone one of the expansion and good God was it fun once I understood what was going on and how to unlock all the things that were on this map for me to do I I don't think I've ever seen and dense a denser zone of content Than The Verdant bank and I haven't gone to the second Zone yet this is just my first experience with the expansion land right on it angle was slightly to the right we might get branched good let's get the correct height s good three two one we need to rescue the noble baby game easy game he can barely shaved the whole [ __ ] second off it yeah oh [ __ ] gets in there baby me that was more stops my [ __ ] we've done in ages 159.3 buddy 150 that we had time to spit it's so dense and so vertical in design that there's what four like three distinct planes up on the top of the canopy of the trees the Midland and down very low in The Valleys but there's a ton of places in between that that needs to be seen as well with all thing going on and then you got Guild Wars two players have had razor Geth for years for literally years because I was eventually able to get onto the Choppers I could start using the bouncy mushrooms I could start gliding and stuff properly and so I took part in this meta event which then was like right now the Choppers are here that takes you up to massive World bosses the patriarch and The Matriarch where we're on top of giant spiers of towers fighting enormous dragons and we're hanging on the edge of the platforms to find eggs and then we're doing bombing runs with our gliders over the top of the dragons to break its shield and then everybody floods on top and then it's throwing you off in the big Razz against style getting back in and fighting it is like okay that's one of like five bosses now we've got another one to go and do so everybody get here I joined a commanders Squad who was leading his troops across the battlefield assigning them to different camps to make sure we got the absolute Mega bonus reward which boss are we all going to next and just like any proper true MMO we're all flooding to the locations to deal with these enormous and deadly bosses that are so well designed that they should be end game raid bosses and dealing with all that stuff and no lag like played perfectly it was really cool it was really awesome to experience that as well something I know is like there's like two 300 people here no lag totally fine absolutely great and I had an amazing time in there I also had an experience and this is probably the happiest part of my day was I had an experience I haven't really experienced in an MMO since vanilla World of Warcraft now I just said we were playing with hundreds of people I do the same thing in Final Fantasy if we're doing a hunt train or something the sky is filled with people and it's beautiful it's glorious but I generally know what's going on I'm usually taking part in it before it starts or being aware of it and as a streamer there are definitely people there who have come along because we're streaming we're playing and we want to play together and they're members of our community who've also come along on this journey with me they're trying out Guild Wars 2 for the first time and we're kind of playing side by side so there's that aspect to it but when I was in the Virgin bank and I'm doing the hero points which are now group focused missions which is interesting because they're so they were soloable up until this point but now they're very much group focused I turn the corner and I just see a good couple of hundred people just flood past me on mounts doing stuff nothing to do with me at all I was hoping that if you oh Jesus Christ what in the [ __ ] is that that is the sight I have not seen before this is just MMO Gamers doing MMO stuff in an MMO and it made me really sad for Wow spacing technology and I understand why they do the phasing technology but at the same time there's something lost there because I basically reverted back to uh being like a 17 year old being stunning on Garo crater and watching two guilds on Epic mounts which I'd barely seen in Epic Mount by that time of playing the game flood across Angora crater to go into silithus to fight thunderan and I didn't know that's what's happening I just turned a Conor in a stampede was coming past me of people in shiny glistening armor on these things that I couldn't hope to afford these Heroes these actual Knights flying past me on some sort of mission that I had no concept of the level or scale that was available in this MMO and it really sold me on the game and I had that moment again and they were doing a hero Point train and I'm sure it's a very average thing to a lot of players but if you're new to an MMO and you're like experiencing playing an MMO with thousands of people and you see something like that it just gives you intrigue it gives you mystery it gives you desire to see what the hell is going on and I had that feeling again while going back and replaying The Verdant bank and I'm so happy I did because eventually I kind of understood the Zone I was diving down and obviously completing these missions unlocked a lot of stuff that was locked off including the adventures feature a new feature of Heart Of Thorns was the adventures which are just mini games I had no idea what they're going to be like little side quests little chain Quest whatever they might be but no they have that as standard these are just mini games which are a hit and miss I gold medaled them all I had a lot of fun doing it besides I think the thought burned the Thorns which was not fun and chased the bugs I didn't enjoy that one but certainly Flying Circus I spent an hour and a half I think doing Flying Circus because I had level one Mastery which is just the ability to use the glider and I believed it was doable stubborn preach kicked in stub and preach exists uh and I like that challenge I knew if I went and got another Mastery points which I could have done very quickly it would have made it too easy and so I wouldn't have had anywhere near as much fun overcoming the challenges the fun part right and I felt it was doable and it was I beat it after an hour and a half it was beatable as much as the Thai streams like this is just not doable dude like why are you doing it uh we managed it with some real heavy Min maxing to get across that Finish Line uh together I really hope Arena that was watching they have been watching the streams we've had the devs appearing game to say hi I really hope they saw that because it was just ridiculous it was such a massive waste of time I know that but God I had fun I had so much fun doing it that it doesn't particularly matter and I explored this whole zone so I've now played this expansion for about 14 hours I think and I I would consider that I haven't even seen zone two as much as I have been there and I've seen the event I don't know how we lead into it do anything like that and now I understand this expansion and I Now understand Guild Wars 2 expansions I think they obviously might change this formula going forward but God damn what a refresh it way to look at an MMO expansion so refreshing so just enlightening is like hey everything here is not just a breadcrumb you to the end and then we'll put stuff in at the end for you this is like yeah you're an expansion go to it have fun it doesn't matter if you want to spend all day in zone one move straight into zone two just complete the story you could do that too if you're just here for the story you could do that pretty quickly but you're gonna miss out on a hell of a lot of stuff but that's your choice to make that's your choice it's optional everything here is optional and I'm glad I took this option so I cannot wait to see where this expansion goes I'm so excited for it and of course I'll let you know but God what an eye-opening experience this whole thing was thank you so much for watching guys and I will see you again bye

Channel: Preach Gaming

Views: 154,174

Keywords: Preach, preachgaming, preach gaming, ffxiv, ff14, ff 14, ff xiv, ffxiv dungeon, mmo, mmo gameplay, final fantasy 14, final fantasy xiv, rp, ff14 expansion, ffxiv expansion, preach ffxiv, preach ff14, story, ffxiv story, msq, wow, wow gameplay, guild wars, guild wars 2, gw2, heart of thorns, end of dragons, gw2 levelling, gw2 guide, guild wars 2 levelling, blind, blind playthrough, first time playthrough, living world, mordremoth, HoT, expansion, guild wars 2 expansion, gw2 expansion

Id: 8a5H06XJD3E

Length: 23min 54sec (1434 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 24 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Portgas]

GW2 made me stop playing mmos altogether

[u/Hot_Mess_Express]

I'm glad to see other people are enjoying /r/GuildWars2. It's a great MMO.