I just uninstalled the game after playing four classes, leveling up to 20 on several of them, and trying out both WvW and structured PvP.
The PvE game is mostly fun. I give them good marks on it. Sadly it is simply evolutionary instead of revolutionary.
I like that they tried to bring back the exploration aspect. Of course by pushing everyone to do that and attaching rewards to EVERYTHING, exploring doesn't feel good. No matter how dark of a corner you find to go down, you'll find more players there which kinda takes away from the whole 'explore' aspect if EVERYONE else is going to see the same stuff you did.
The events all seem kinda lame. You end up seeing the same ones over and over, they take a long time but don't grant that much XP. The world doesn't really change much either.
Perhaps at higher levels I'll find those epic ones they discuss, where you push into an enemy land and take it over, etc. Well, or maybe not.
Being forced to down-level with older content also is lame. If I want to complete low level events faster (merely to experience them) it takes FOREVER because often I'm down-leveled BELOW the level of the mobs. Insane.
The cash shop prices are also insane. Over $1 for a 1 HOUR boost to XP? Uhm, no. $1 should get me 8 hours or more.
You get an INSANE amount of XP through crafting and discovery. Simply stunning. Sadly because they still don't have a working trading post it means grinding mobs to find the items you need to craft up. I guess I could fall back to trading over chat channel rofl.
Now let's get to World vs World.
I was on a high pop server (as 95% of them are) and no matter which WvW battleground I selected, I was just put into a Queue because it was full. Sigh.
So I transferred to a low pop server (since there was no medium ones). At least they are not charging me to do this.
So I get into WvW... and we are outnumbered like 100 to 1. No real way to take things back either. (Heck, do guilds even work? Last I heard those were also epic fail).
So I try my hand at structured PvP. Played several matches. Eh, pretty lame. Especially the one map where they force you to battle underwater with the sharks. I get it that an ArenaNET designer thought it would be awesome to put in underwater combat, but almost everyone hates it and so they just force you to do it instead.
The UI when scaled up just blows up the images so they look all pixelated, another fail.
They still don't have forums online either.
They handle communication to their players via Reddit. Look, I like Reddit just as much as the next guy, but how hard is it to throw up a site like Camelot Herald had back in the day? Geez!
Plus loads of other things wrong with the game. I really could go on at all the fail in this game.
So, all in all, I'm gonna write off Guild Wars 2. Likely forever since new games are always coming out.
It WILL be a success for Arena NET. Eventually they'll figure out how to handle server load (or enough people will quit).
They'll make plenty of money from the cash shop to stay in business and eventually recoup the costs of developing the game.
But it's no mass-market WoW killer. Not anywhere even close.
Want one, final, HUGE EPIC FAIL?
On uninstalling they send you to an 'exit survey' web page so you can help them make the game better.
Couldn't care less, you dont pay sub, most of the stuff is getting fixed, it hasn't been more than a week out, remember world of... well it was a bugfest, AQ40? it was a bug area (not just in the storyline).
Dark Heart PTR Development Notes
Dark Heart PTR Development Notes
The War Within - Alpha Press Preview
MMO-Champion
Recent Blue Posts
Recent Forum Posts
[Long] reasons for uninstalling the game
