This MMO Deserves Better... Guild Wars 2 In 2022

action combat a massive world fully voiced storylines the most modern open world design scene in an mmo guild wars 2 at its time of launch was the big wow killer that got people excited it was a game that was new it was different it was trying to push the genre forward it did wild things like foregoing a server being a server in a rigid sense embracing a sharding model the hopes were really high guild wars 1 fans however were confused but had an explosive launch and then fizzled away guild wars 2 as far as i can tell totally fell out of the public consciousness certainly not helped by arenanet's bafflingly sparse and ineffective marketing hopes were high for this by once play forever mmo and while it playtested and seems to have launched very well it just evaporated that level up experience that was so new and fresh fell away to an end game that existed but didn't fit the mold people expected the usual mmo end game wasn't really there the near wholly horizontal progression system is not what people had been trained to expect from other mmos its build craft-oriented combat design felt confusing and long-time guild wars 1 fans they felt like the extremely open build craft options they had had fallen away and the competitive pvp that they had loved so much was no longer a priority guild wars 2 kind of shipped without the guild wars yet guild wars 2 absolutely did find a player base one who played a game wholly different to the likes of world of warcraft and while i'm not going to say it was a sleeper hit i do think it's a game that ticked along all while developer arenanet worked on the next big thing and the fate of that is actually what makes guild wars 2's future brighter than ever right now we do not have sub counts for this game but we do have quarterly revenue which tells us all that we need to know be it subscription or the gem store the cosmetics monthly revenue will correlate with people playing the game what's incredible then is that publisher nc soft discloses this per game every quarter since the launch of guild wars 2. let's look at how it performed oh dear box sales spiked in that launch quarter but then the game settled in at around 20 000 million korean won of course it is a american game but it's a korean publisher heart of thorns their first expansion boosted its quarter up but not by a massive amount and this matches many people's experience mine included i played this game for a bit at launch i some people i didn't but some people maybe reached max level and then they just wondered away 2017 saw things get real bad and while path of fire's really innovative mounts kept that existing guild wars 2 audience super hyped revenue did kinda plummet shortly after all while lineage one and two mobile look at these numbers they made significantly more money path of fire had a drama with mount skin loot boxes that sucked and was eventually redone but the game's dwindling revenue explains why they tried that revenues were falling and while 20 000 million won is about 16 million us dollars that's a lot of money but it's nowhere near what other nc soft titles were doing and worst of all for guild wars fans they would soon feel abandoned by arenanet they were thinking that not a lot of that money was going back into the game path of fire released in 2017 end of dragons releases february 2022 four and a half years later that is sheer madness for an mmorpg and the main reason i believe is arenanet's other project we do not know what it was but we do know that 143 layoffs in 2019 signaled that project's cancellation and from that point forward guild wars 2 basically was arenanet ish they're rumored to have a mobile console project but the overall non guild wars 2 team size decreased and they put more resources into guild wars 2. and that is good news for the game we can actually play today while four and a half years of no expansion seems wild and technically is true a lot of people won't know that they did actually continue the game via living world which had its fourth and fifth seasons the fifth season was bigged up it was branded the ice brewed saga and in spite of a lackluster ending that we'll have world of warcraft fans thinking about n'zoth it did bring a lot to the game this isn't just a bunch of small patches it was bringing out full zones or maps as they're called in guild wars 2. that for the mmo genre are extremely innovative and really cool absolutely something other mmorpg should look at as ice brewed rolled out the game began to feel like it was cared for a little bit more like arenanet we're putting more resources in and that's what takes us to today just before the release of end of dragons revisit the revenue chart and you will see the guild wars 2 has been stable but low-ish in terms of its revenue ice brute saga has kept people there but as world of warcraft's explosive business model shows us there is nothing like a heavily marketed expansion to inject life back into an mmo marketing of course is something that arenanet are frankly a little bit useless as as of the time of writing the community's actually frustrated at end of dragon's february 2022 launch window and the vague way that arenanet have been handling things there and a constant thing that i hear from guild wars 2 influencers is bafflement at the marketing and i can see why that takes us to today end of dragons is going to come out i am diving into guild wars 2. now that we have a brief history of guild wars 2 the horizontal progression mmo with a pretty neat worldview world system an mmo that hasn't had major power creep and has had the same level cap for a decade it's the mmo that does things differently maybe so differently that mmo gamers conditioned by the rest of the market could hardly see how they themselves fit into the game's mold so it's time to see if i can stuff myself into that mold immediately i'm presented with this gorgeous art yeah guild wars 2 character creation is simply fantastic it's just so immersive this ui and right out of the gate it's bringing this level of polish that i'm just so alert to that i'm not used to and then i realize oh arenanet have really interesting playable races at least a few of them so look humans you know him i know him we are them let's move on silvery sylvari those are the ones that i'm drawn to these plant people with and well english accents and then lord that feels a little bit more irish welsh and scots gaelic so that's a funny mix but you know whatever internet is fine i'll let you off the hook they really are plant people though like you pretty much get spawned out of a tree they they aren't playing lip service to the idea the lore actually doubles down on this and reflects it which is just awesome the char the villains of the first game and if this were blizzard entertainment they would have gigantic bazongas but no arenanet actually says hey these are big savage cat people they were the antagonist of the previous game they'll kick your ass you know men and women both so i really like the char i like how they properly made a beast race they did not cop out and try to humanoidize them then of course we've got the azura who are this time our small and smart race and the norn funny enough they're a bit scandinavian feeling it's a nice mix basically overall of tried and true sort of safe bets and then more interesting unique races like those loads of people just want to be a human for a lot of people they you know they'd love being a norn but for me i went sylvari but what about my class well here they're actually called professions and they're a bit wild i mean the way that it works is you get five active abilities based on the weapon that you are equipping and that is obviously based on your profession you then do have other abilities as well like loads of utility things that come from your profession now of course you add in the ability to swap weapons mid combat or for the elementalists that i ended up going with swap elements and you've got a lot to choose from now this system means that a ranger can be a tanky healer with a staff a ranged control dps with a bow a melee focus dps of the great sword and a whole bunch more now guild wars 2 it really doesn't have a rigid trinity of tankular dps everyone's a bit of a hybrid and now professional-wise overall there's warrior thief guardian and ranger i think kind of self-explanatory same goes for necromancer which is more of a like a sort of a horde class then engineer well that comes in to give you some tardy gameplay which is pretty damn cool you've got revenants coming in with ancestor magic that they use to do whatever they do in fairness to a net they are a bit more of a unique feeling one but then there's the mesmer which is fully an illusionist and i think super unique in its vibe in its direction so i love what arenanet are doing there and then the elementalist which is more interesting than most mages because yeah it is your element-based mage but it just has this little bit of almost avatar feeling to it where you sacrifice the ability to swap weapons mid-combat to be able to swap between the four elements each of course uh you know with their own focus now beyond this there's then advanced classes but hey i think that is a little bit too much for me to think about right now okay so i've chosen my race i've chosen my class next it's time to customize my character immediately this customization gripped me it really did there's loads of options just in general right so loads of options great color tweaking as well being the silvery you're just more fundamentally like unique so it's it's just cool all the things you can do to yourself very and then you can even select default dies for gear that you pick up neat not only do you define your character's personality you also select a backstory and that backstory directly impacts your character's personal story how it actually starts out they all obviously converge at a point but it's just a great way to get well me defining my character right and i think that's important for making you care about your character a little bit more so fresh from watching the green knight i went with the green knight backstory as always character name is impossible so i drew for my deep deep knowledge of irish language and no i actually just bashed one together from a name generator to my shame but such is my pattern with mmo character naming okay elementalist is my pick my character is made my backstory is built it is time to enter tyria we open to a cinematic narrated by my character 25 years ago the pale tree flowered and the first sylvari were born from the dream into the world my dream is of an armor-clad green knight and the forces of undeath and with that i'm playing guild wars 2. my character has woken up but still is in the dream and i meet this character keith more a shade of kate for she she's outside the dream and it becomes rapidly apparent that my character is fresh new the sylvari are different to any race i've seen they don't spend years as a child no instead they basically soak in the dream and then they emerge keith tells me that this dream is under attack so with that i'm off movement is the immediate strange thing in guild wars 2. it's weighty and you have a lot of mid-air precision obviously because they really go in for their jumping puzzles at this stage i'm just jarred to be honest with you i really am jarred coming from world of warcraft with its extremely precise super binary feeling movement but i get acclimatized i get acclimatized it's fine i kill some dudes i run through the first area and credit to arenanet they do have me kill a big nightmare dragon and that has some spectacle which i appreciate it just shows the sorts of things that i think they'll be doing in the future i do all of this with my single auto casting ability like it's simple but it's satisfying enough so dream defended i wake up now truly born into the world and struck with a wild hunt which is a sylvari's call to action a dragon is stirring one bringing a wave of undeath and the dream has called me to defeat it so off we set fated for great things it's now that i really get how guild wars 2 also handles its dialogue which is different to most mmos it's efficient i'll give them that so the characters just appear in this ui and as much as it does junk you way from controlling the game it's pretty clear it's stylistic and i think it works and because it's all fully voiced i think overall it's a solid way of presenting the story and you know what it's a story that feels pretty easy to slip into at this stage i'm not going to be sitting around saying that it's you know that i think this game is going to be a final fantasy to your story no way but i think it's going to be pretty good at what it does we'll see how that progresses so at this stage i'm feeling pretty darn good but this wild hunt it's going to have to wait i am level 2. i've literally just been born and a lot of my map is unexplored i have no personal story to do because that unlocks every 10 levels and this means i'm leveling how am i doing that while i'm doing that by guild wars 2's bread and butter clearing the map now i'm told there's a forest to protect and with a bit of a pat on the back off i go to explore and this is where the game starts to click i think this is really where they just have all of their design working super well in synergy with each other another thing you can't deny the soundtrack it's by the guy who did the elder scrolls so it feels like that and i think that mixture of elder scrolls feeling music he also did guild wars 1 soundtrack by the way but with the mix of that music and then zones that i think just nailed that classic mmo starting zone vibe i'm just immersed and around me what do i see i see pois i see hearts vistas waypoints hero points which are little challenges you do to well get a hero point that you can basically they're basically talent points so as the fog of war expands every little chunk of the map that i walk into and explore i see even more of these points there's even little scout icons and when i go to those an npc explains to me basically what's going on i get a i get a voiced intro to the area and that's the thing this game wants you to be an adventurer and i love that i love how it does it rather than weave a massive storyline through all of this you're just milling about helping people you soak in the state of the world and its people by going about and seeing what you come across you'll get the story you'll understand what's going on in these zones but it's just it's not in any way that mmos usually do this at all there's no thrilling conclusion here really but what you do get here is his immersion strong immersion not in a role-playing sense i'm not going around rping as my silvari but i'll tell you what i am feeling i'm feeling that i'm here that i'm exploring the map that i'm soaking it in and that i'm content you know that vibe you get into that feeling when a game is just so playable that you can just go around for hours that's the feeling i immediately get and so i went across the first silvery zone i fill renown heart bars i do the odd jumping puzzle to reach a vista and i even run into some events and these events are cool right now it's more simple but what's nice is that if an event is near a heart you actually progress both the event and the heart at the same time for a big chunk of xp and that's the thing there's no quest ui no walls of tax to read in guild wars 2 you do and even combat is designed that way it's not stop start okay so here is my low level dagger wielding elementalist my one is an auto casting fire cone my two well that's a cast while moving frontal breath my three a forward rush and sure while you do have to tab target what i do get though is that my attacks have got to connect with enemies there's placement going on i can play around enemy attacks to not get hit i can dodge essentially the combat feels simple but it feels actiony it's it's low cognitive load it's well set up for just clearing the world of course it can't get really in-depth later on but even early i enjoy how i can just like i can swap to water mid-fight and for water you know i have a few abilities i actually get a heal whenever i use them and and of course if i'm playing in a group setting yeah well with water i can heal my friends it's just neat it's from keith that character that i met earlier and that means that it's time for my personal story i am transported into a story instance and with that we talk of my dream right as this happens bursalac the green knight attacks and yeah burst like the green knight i mean come on this is obviously a retelling of arthurian myth but it is a little bit different and it's its own little story so i'll save it for in-game hardly revolutionary stuff i will though say it's a nice way to just dip my toes in the water i'm just doing silvery things as a silvery obviously though it wasn't all that was in my dream what of the dragon well the avatar of the tree says that yes this uh wild hunt this sacred burden this calling it is on me and keith and with that the first lag of my personal story is over i've done this nice little bit of plot and it's time to go get some more levels because the rest of it unlocks level 20. so i have some work to do at this stage things have changed a bit because i am level 15. i've added in the control and damage oriented air and the protection and dot focused earth plus a staff which of course brings with it a wholly new set of abilities for each element it's got a pretty neat one where i just call down a whole bunch of meteors and it does loads of damage it's actually a lot when you think about it all but it is perfectly manageable and that in combat swapping well it does incur a bit of a cooldown it's just really cool like the fantasy is strong and i'm sure the metabills exist yes but right now i am just loving the flexibility and the experimentation even things like using a dagger in one hand or maybe a focus or a wand or something in the other hand it's neat because when dual wielding your primary weapon gives you your first three weapon abilities and your secondary weapon you're second to once again yes i know metas will probably strip a lot of this choice away but right now it's really fun however i know that it's a big vast open world i know that i'm going to have to walk around a lot so this is when i decided a trick guild wars 2 has awesome mounts they are the complete opposite of no clip with a 3d model which is what we're used to in mmos these mounts have weight they have turning circles they have unique mechanics controls things to manage flying a griffon involves flying a griffin okay getting ahead of myself though so here's the trick guild wars 2 comes with a level boost you can use that to make a level 80 character you can then do the opening quest of path of fire on that character and if you do that you unlock the raptor mount account wide so i do that now the con here is that you'll be tempted to ruin jumping puzzles for yourself but the pro is that these mounts are just bloody fun they mesh perfectly i think with the overall game flow just perfectly and my raptor is simple it goes forward fast it does a forward lunge as well and when i dismount it does a little tail whip for damage later on the ui when i look at it it seems later on i'm going to be able to upgrade this raptor to make it more powerful with masteries but that is far beyond me right now so time to return to my main character and get exploring returning to my main i clear caledon forest and with that done it's actually time because i'm level 20 for the next stage of my personal quest a new silvery has appeared right but he's got no idea of our tree he barely has a memory in this group called the nightmare court call him a harbinger well i'll learn i'll learn why soon but i do wander off to do some cooking which gets me some xp but i hop back to the story only for it to bug out so feeling a bit miffed i take a break and i make for gandaran fields which again is just this nice open classic feeling mmo zone clearing it just feels really great but eventually the the call of the story well it is hard i i return i polish off that story defeating the nightmare court learning that this mysterious sylvari is in fact from another tree which is a shocking revelation for the cast because we just thought we are the sylvari we only appeared as of this tree 25 years ago but this changes everything and we send this guy off to maguma for answers now i know the maguma is where the next expansion takes place so clearly this is set up for heart of thorns back to the world then the world that i feel so free in especially with guild wars 2's waypoint system because at this stage i've unlocked a few zones right i'm going about the place and i really appreciate waypoints and the way they work is simple if you've been to one that's great you could travel back at any time instantly instant travel most spells castable while moving mounts that are fast and fun no quest npcs to pick things up from events that spawn in and out just all nice and dynamically no ui to click not much in the way of buttons for accepting any of this why am i listing this stuff well look it's simple it's because what i've really at this stage understood is that guild wars 2 erases every barrier between you and the content that you're doing it raises every barrier it can so i'm like okay batter up you've raised all the barriers so i clear again darren fields before returning to the personal story zeitan and the undead they're the main threat of base guild wars 2. so to handle this i quest along with three orders one an order of spies one seekers of knowledge one warriors as we track down masdak a lich a lich who is responsible for the first sylvari to ever die yeah we're moving up from local problems to grand threats and the reason why this works is that aforementioned feeling of freedom that i've been experiencing because i am just this wondering adventurer i go across these zones i find people in need i help them out so they really have the gameplay you know they're not telling me that i'm adventurer the gameplay is making me feel like i'm an adventurer and that means that when my personal story starts to increase my importance in this world it's like i'm moving up it feels like i'm moving up in the world it's this really nice merger of the personal story and the map clearing gameplay and i really do prefer this to just having a personal story that is absurdly long at least for how this game is designed back to the story though so i'm going to save you the plot suffice to say i actually really liked it quite a bit not that i was doing anything special it was just some pretty decent plot really but what's nice is that i was consistently offered choice as i went through this quest line clearly arenanet are trying to get me to work out what order i like because eventually i do join one but what it means is that through a few stages of this quest line i get to choose between the three orders you know the the plan of the knowledge people the plan of the spies the plan of the fighters now for me i'm really drawn to the spy so my missions are just more trixie a good example is there's one mission where i've got to get the sword that was wielded by that firstborn sylvari um but the sword is currently being wielded by the squire who betrayed him so i go to this tourney that the squire is is playing in and yeah i could just fight him but instead we're going around doing funny business trying to sabotage things and it's just more fun later on then there's a village this village is going to be invaded by the undead so instead we perform with the human guards a false treat we then lure the centaur in to take the place easily so that the undead then come in and then oh our two enemies fight each other and it's not the most complex plotting in the universe but it just feels like the writers are able to have more fun with the spies so i like him by story's end i decide to fully become a member of the order of whispers well there you have it that is the first leg of my guild wars 2 journey i thought it was a just a pretty nice place to end things really it's like oh okay i've done the intro experience i've done some of the zones i've joined up with an order you know it's like a nice sort of part of my character's journey so i don't think it's going to be that long overall till i'm level 80 which means yeah there's no surprises i'm going to keep on playing guild wars 2. i've actually played a bit more since making this video or at least the rest of it so things that i've done um actually world boss which i didn't get to include because i want to do a few more of them before i talk about it properly but it was pretty cool um i dabbled in some world versus world which again i need to do a bit more of before i really get to grips with it i've done the next stage of my personal quest um it had a character tibult that i think the guild wars 2 fans really like and i really like them as well so i'm keen to see how the story advances i also did the lunar event it had a dragon ball mode it had a race and a few other things and it was neat i'm still worried about like what's going to interest me at max level but at the very least end of dragons looks pretty neat and it does seem to have some end game-ish stuff with the new strikes that are coming out but for now i've just got to say i'm enjoying the journey is there something to be said for hopping into a game enjoying it for 20 30 40 hours and just being like okay i don't have to grind you for seven million hours at endgame i'm happy with what i've got it's that time i think fair enough right now considering too that the game is uh free like the base game is free bass guild wars 2 which is all the content i've covered like today i mean that's pretty hard to pass up so i'd say the guild wars 2 is a unique feeling mmo that is totally worth the download the most you'll lose is a small amount of time and i really like the ideas that they've developed this game with i still need to see how they pan out fully but in this context of leveling they all work out pretty damn well so that's guild wars 2. if you like to support the team that makes uh makes content for you and also we're gonna get some cool stuff in return ba-bam here is the february pin from our uh from our patreon um of course along with this is also the class card it's also the art now we're sort of telling a story between all of what we're doing uh thomas is actually writing some prose uh which is fun because thomas of course is you know leading writing for the pill beyond the game we're developing so if you want to support the team and get some cool stuff delivered to your door head out that patreon link other than that hey stick around there'll be an update to guild wars 2 at some point in the future as well as other mmos because let's be real february's insane anyway have a wonderful day everybody and i will see you next time [Music] foreign

Channel: Bellular Gaming

Views: 240,289

Keywords: bellular, bellular mmos, bellular gaming, guild wars 2, gw2, guild wars 2 in 2022, guild wards 2 end of dragons, worth playing guild wars 2, guild wars 2 review, guild wars 2 expansion, arenanet, guild wars 2 intro, guild wars 2 should I play

Id: MDpYq7tZpY0

Length: 29min 27sec (1767 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 03 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/XephyrGW2]

"Clearly Malyck being from another tree is set up for Heart of Thorns"

Oh sweet summer child..

[u/Subversiontwo]

No offense to any of our longer standing content creators, but watching that overview, whose likes we have seen countless times now, you can really see that Bellular is a professional. He has done his research and due dilligence but also convey the information in sleek ways. It's a really good video and it illustrates the game so well.

[u/Oakenfell]

For what it's worth for all of the people being negative in this thread, Bellular's video got me to take another look at GW2 for the first time since Heart of Thorns. I'm primarily a FFXIV and WoW player but I have played GW2 in the past and I had no clue whatsoever about the mount system from Path of Fire solving one of my big issues with GW2: moving from point A to B spamming movement skills for a slight burst of speed. In the past, I just assumed that it was like any other MMO and be an avenue for Arenanet to sell you cosmetics but from the outside, it looks like each mount family is fleshed out and has a niche role to play for movement and exploration.

Furthermore, I had no idea that End of Dragons was releasing this month due to the total lack of advertisement/hype in the broader gaming landscape. If it wasn't for this video, I would not have spent the last couple hours revisiting Woodenpotatos' YT channel to check out the new Elite specs nor would I be seriously eyeing that preorder purchase. I feel like I'll give Path of Fire an honest go this weekend.

[u/Im_Batmmaann]

This is his 2nd channel, main channel has over 600k subs and he is mainly a WoW player/content creator, glad to see he enjoyed gw2

[u/Noxxi_Greenrose]

I personally like all that feedback him playing GW2 gets, where people shit on the game and ironically it's commented by people who quit years ago or legit just bought the game, leveled to 20 and quit, but forms a whole opinion on how shit and boring the game is because they stopped at lvl 20. Like lmao.

GW2 isn't the most hyper game, but also not one who tightly holds your hand what to do, unlike many other MMOs which constantly shoves a carrot in front of you and then tells you what you MUST do to feel like you play the game.

Obviously this game isn't for everyone, who wants hyper gameplay with omega challenging content to no end won't really find a place here that much. This game to me is literally this quiet little friend who always has their doors open, but never tells me to come visit or when to leave, they are just there and is happy when I come visit and play the game, and doesn't complain or guilt trips me when I want to leave, nor makes me feel like I'm wasting my time and money if I don't happen to grind.

I also love how people shit on the game by saying "oh just wait until he finds out the only end game is grinding gold for legendaries endlessly teehee" but completely ignores that every other MMO actually forces you to grind some high-end shit that becomes obsolete two weeks after earning it, absolutely throwing out all your efforts you did previous, because a random green gear will be 50 times better than your über hyper epic item you spent the past half a year farming.

The hypocrisy in some of these comments that bash GW2 with no reason is just absurd sometimes. But again, the irony is that these nearly always come from people who quit the game after launch or legit never reached max lvl in their lives.

[u/er0gami2]

Good and fair video. Hope he continues.

[u/[deleted]]

Any time someone posts a video of someone checking out GW2 from the WoW community, it boggles my mind how many vitriolic piss ants crawl out of the woodwork here. assumptions for many things about how they're going to play the game, what value *they* get out of it. Some of you genuinely need help realizing that when people like Bellular and Staysafe and any other WoW content creator give the game a chance, they aren't abandoning what they know for GW2. He's giving the game a nod because he realizes that it's under-represented and nothing more.

[u/Emerald_al_Aswad]

Superb video. Very cool presented and explained!

[u/rym1469]

"Hooked on". Reddit and hyperboles lol.