Reflecting on Guild Wars 2: An On / Off Decade in Tyria

Time does fly, doesn’t it? Guild Wars 2 will be celebrating its 10th anniversary in short order, and it’s not a period that I’ve been around for in its entirety. I bought the game at launch, the mere college student that I was, getting a standard edition because I was broke and the exchange rate was – and still is – horrendous. Now that I’ve finally gotten back to the game again at this time, it seemed right to do some navel gazing.

WHAT IS GUILD WARS 2?

Guild Wars 2 is the not-as-critically acclaimed MMORPG from ArenaNet. At time of writing, the core game is free to play with certain restrictions (though not for game time). You can pay to upgrade it, with the current four expansions likewise being paid content. For the so-called Living World updates, most are at additional cost. Should you choose to opt in to any of that, there’s no monthly subscription fee to upkeep beyond the initial purchase.

BACK IN MY DAY

The whole “no subscription” thing was the primary reason that drew me to Guild Wars 2 to begin with. That, and the promise of dragons. Also the Charr Engineer. I just really liked the big, gruff cat packing a whole bunch toolkits and turrets even though the initial complexity and “meta” did push me to play “simpler classes”, or something “more useful”.

I played on an EU server at first because I wanted to be part of a fan community guild, before eventually moving to NA. I remember Mumble and Teamspeak for voice communication, during the earliest days of World versus World where you needed to do map completion in the Borderlands and Eternal Battlegrounds. If your server wasn’t doing too hot or you simply weren’t playing during an active timezone, well, wait till you rotated to the other colours and hope to get one or two areas off your list.

I don’t remember how I eventually came across the guild I ran with for a time, but there was a few of us who hung out a lot despite me being in APAC and them in NA. It was a blur of a whole bunch of dungeons, the initial release of Living World Season 1 (that’s finally coming back), the annual festivities, and fractals during my early mornings and their late nights. Everything was terribly low res and laggy, god knows how I managed to persevere. It’s a shame I don’t have anything from that time anymore; they may not have looked good, sure, just that it would have been nice to have a memento.

When Heart of Thorns released, there was a whole horde of us grouping up to tackle the shiny new content. The Revenant was a new profession, Rytlock looked incredibly badass and I was dying every 2 seconds to Mordrem. Around the time the first raid wing, Spirit Vale, was introduced, I was nervous but excited to try it out! Unfortunately, my old laptop could no longer run the game well, so after crashing multiple times in a row on engage, I began my forced hiatus from the game, promising to return when I upgraded my computer.

That time finally arrived with End of Dragons.

SOME THINGS JUST STAY THE SAME

Since there’s no level cap increase, about 80% of what I left off at remained relevant. This, and the buy to play model, have been my biggest reasons to actually return to the game. The motions are familiar, kept fresh with new toys and cosmetics. Prior to my proper return, I basically blitzed through Living World Season 3 to Icebrood Saga for the Return (aha) achievements, and got my Skyscale as soon as I could besides all the excellent goodies I could obtain.

I threw myself headlong into World Versus World and have been there since, obtaining my Warclaw and getting my World Rank up. The mode has barely shifted any in the past decade. As I write this, the Alliances system is once again having another beta session, lord knows how long it’s been in the works. Still, I find it hard to be bitter what most can consider a “stale” game mode. The fun I have with my guild members keeps it exciting, as we continuously (hopefully) pursue fights, all the while with nobody outside the guild – or even some within – ever, ever, stacking tight on the pin. God bless.

Traversal is easier thanks to the mounts, as terrible as I am at being a driver. Me being a Charr main means my struggles with cramped spaces and hot garbage camera are not things I miss for sure, falling back to my Asura so as to not make myself horrendously motion sick. Outside of event chasing, I still have trouble finding medium coats that look good on Charr that don’t clip the tail, because sometimes I do want the longcoats. As we all know, the end game in MMORPGs is the fashion.

Overall, my game loop has been: do some dailies > join the WVW raiding crew > grind out some more > sleep. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, as long as I enjoy the process. I have a whole bunch of legendary projects I’m looking forward to getting done eventually.

WHAT NOW?

In the past few months, I’ve grinded my way past a variety of time-gates to get 4 pieces of legendary armour, a legendary trinket, a shiny new legendary weapon, crafted a precursor for another, all for the sake of account-wide convenience. Even with my mostly limited time playing, I really don’t mind all this grunt work because I like my character, and I feel like I am making progress. Unless something drastic happens, my hard work isn’t likely going to be diminished in the next decade.

I know the game is hardly perfect. There’s bound to be something I missed, or something in the future, which could very well affect how I feel about the game. In this present, though, I think I’m content with calling Tyria home, and I’m glad to be back. Now excuse me, I’m going to go fishing while I wait for raids to begin.

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