Because people are pimping out MMOs I'd just like to bring up the one that's currently devouring my free time: Dungeon fighter online.
Now I originally dismissed this game as another piece is trashy Nexon grift. Probably for the best as they eventually ran it into the ground.
Now Neople has taken over and relaunched it, their stated purpose is to catch up to the current Korean patch asap. Honestly they've been doing a good job of it.
So what is it? It's a 2d retroish looking brawler. Think River City Ransom or Dragons crown. There are roughly 30ish classes and each plays rather uniquely from each other. Even ones that are just separated by gender.
Example being there is both a female and male grappler. The female excels in hold moves and stuns while the name variant is more about throws.
The game has a stamina system, called "fatigue" that runs out as you move from room to room in dungeons. They counteract this by accelerating the leveling system quite a bit. A couple weeks of casual play can get you to cap.
There are end game dungeons, they will be adding raids eventually, and you can play as a dude who dual wields muskets and has a claymore mounted on a crossbow frame.
There is a cash shop, mostly cosmetic though some boosting stuff like pets that give stats. You can play everything without bothering. What is there is cheap, at least. I think I payed $5 to max out storage of three characters.
Oh right, you can have up to 20 alts. There is actually a system in place to reward you for leveling alts. You can get bonuses based on your "explorer" level and also call in your 50+ characters as assists.
Because you can totally setup all your moves to use control inputs and play it like a fighting game so of course you need assists. Not joking about this one, I play monk using a fight pad.
I dunno. Posting from a phone so that's about all I feel like ranting. Still, excellent game, give it a shot if you like brawlers.
Story is pretty lame though! It's there, quite a bit if it even, but they knew most people wouldn't care so it's nothing deep.
Great thread idea! We should get some info in on DCUO, LOTRO and DDO, all of which are big games tailored to western audiences. I havent kept up with current affairs though.
DCUO turned stale after max lev, LOTRO i loved for years but made some aweful mistakes about how to progress the game and story, so I gave up on it a few years ago. DDO lost its charm because of the repetitive content and clunky way it was presented.
Buuuut I played all 3 for many hours, so there was plenty to enjoy. Im just unsure whether I can summarize it properly without doing it injustice.
DDO's main appeal is the tailored instance experience. While there are small wilderness areas that you can run around and just kill shit, it really shines when you have a full party of adventurers with a mixed spread of attributes to handle the various puzzles in the instances. The instances are all narrated by a formless Dungeon Master (with guest appearances by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax!), and they are meant to be the main progression of the game. You basically go from dungeon to dungeon to dungeon, with 4 to 10 of the dungeons forming a continuous story arc.
It takes basically forever for a F2P person to get access to all the content (thousands of hours of grinding, along with constantly recreating characters), so your best bet is a temporary subscription. You can easily do most of the content with a group of 3 + Hirelings (which fill up a party slot), but it's best experienced with a full party of 6, with everyone playing a class that specializes in a different attribute. I loved playing a Rogue, because there are actual traps to disarm and locks to pick.
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DaimarA Million Feet Tall of AwesomeRegistered Userregular
Just to round out the OP, Dark Age of Camelot is still hanging on and Wildstar is in the middle of converting from pay to FTP.
Are there any current generation MMOs that do something similar to the Epic weapon questlines from the original Everquest? These were highly class specific quests that usually involved multiple raid encounters and very difficult grinds to complete. The reward was a best in slot item for your class that had a unique model.
FFXIV has something similar to this in the Relic weapon quests, but I guess that's a bit too general, since it has no class-specific lore involved with it. Or does it?
Anyways, I was just curious if any other games have even tried to do something like that. It's something that I really enjoyed about Everquest. I remember getting the Monk epic and it was a very unique quest line. Maybe I've just got my nostalgia goggles on, who knows.
WoW's next expansion gives a legendary weapon to the specs of every class, and that is basically a questline you do as you're leveling. Once you finish it, it has a unique model but there's also models that are a heavy variations of the original with multiple colorations of each model, so you can customize it a bit.
Hmm, XIV doesnt do it for the relic weapons, no. It's for the class armor and their final few skills iirc (or at least, pre-expansion it was).
Your 15/30 class skills, and most of the job skills (with the exception of the extra jobs) are given through job-specfic questlines (of which there are three for any given job, with the exception of the extra jobs, which only have two.)
Great thread idea! We should get some info in on DCUO, LOTRO and DDO, all of which are big games tailored to western audiences. I havent kept up with current affairs though.
DCUO turned stale after max lev, LOTRO i loved for years but made some aweful mistakes about how to progress the game and story, so I gave up on it a few years ago. DDO lost its charm because of the repetitive content and clunky way it was presented.
Buuuut I played all 3 for many hours, so there was plenty to enjoy. Im just unsure whether I can summarize it properly without doing it injustice.
I just started LOTRO back up. They have completely changed how the gear progresses. I don't know what you are talking about progress for game and story, but I know the original LI idea was terrible. Lets do a 12 man raid, get a weapon, and it has random properties that are terrible. Not good.
I'm not max level, but best I can tell now, you get a weapon, put the stats you want on it, and it levels with you just keeping getting stronger. Gear appears to be the same way. It is for a class with your major and minor stat on it. Than you have empty spaces to put the stats you want in it. The "raid" gear just appears to have one more empty slot to make it better.
I'm 21 levels away from max, but leveling goes fast, and there is more than enough content it seems to keep me busy. I have gotten a level out of just there fall festival content.
As for the state of the game, I paid the woping $200 for pre-release lifetime, so I don't know what costs you would get starting now. I get everything for free with my monthly allowance. It does look like you can get everything in game. One nice thing though, it looks like all the expansions are broken up into small chunks. It seems fair to pay for expansions IMHO. You can pay to win it looks like, and pay for conveniance. Nothing really looked like you need it.
The one thing i'm unsure on, is what VIP counts as. It looked like the store you could by quest packs (expansions), but vip was a monthly subscription? I'm unsure if they do the EQ2 thing were you can't put on the best gear or something.
They are collapsing servers into fewer of them, so unsure how many people still play.
I'm not sure if this is the place to ask but...how are SWTOR's F2P aspects? Can I just jump in, do the story and get out easily? I'm not looking to replace FF14 as my main MMO but it seems it's the closest thing to a modern KoTOR.
I'm not sure if this is the place to ask but...how are SWTOR's F2P aspects? Can I just jump in, do the story and get out easily? I'm not looking to replace FF14 as my main MMO but it seems it's the closest thing to a modern KoTOR.
As far as I know, the F2P restrictions don't really hamper the "single player" content in any meaningful way. You'll gain less experience and might have to do side quests to keep up, but that's about it.
The only real problem, if you want to call it that, is that F2P players are restricted to humans in character creation. Unlocking additional races costs about 5 bucks per (might be more), so you might end up spending a few bucks if you want to be a blue human or green human or cat-faced human.
I'm not sure if this is the place to ask but...how are SWTOR's F2P aspects? Can I just jump in, do the story and get out easily? I'm not looking to replace FF14 as my main MMO but it seems it's the closest thing to a modern KoTOR.
you are a subhuman peasant who is no better than dirt.
If you pay a little bit of money, then you get to be slightly better dirt.
if you subscribe then you become a human being.
its really one of the most malignant f2p schemes I've seen, and according to the SWTOR thread it hasn't really changed with its recent major update and revamp
I play SWTOR. The F2P stuff is fine, but a bare bones totally free account is pretty restricted. If you put some money into it you can make the subscription mostly redundant.
I mean, you can play every single class to level 50 and enjoy their storylines (the main reason anyone wants to play TOR) for zero dollars. That's a pretty good deal. Some things will be a pain in the arse if you play absolutely 100% free, for sure. But it's free! Zero dinero! If you spent, I don't know, 60 bucks (the price of a box) on cartel coins you could buy pretty much every qol upgrade that subscribers had. I know, because I just spent 5000 saved up cartel coins and made my preferred account essentially a subscribed account, and that won't ever expire.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
edited November 2015
SWTOR is far and away from being the worst F2P system I've seen in an MMO or any game, honestly. It's like Tube said, fine but bare bones and harder on pure F2P players.
There are lots of MMOs, an example that comes to mind being Cryptic's Neverwinter MMO, that do a lot more to make you feel like you need to spend more money to avoid tedious bullshit or unlock the new shininess that you want. And it does that more consistently, whereas with SWTOR you can reach a point with unlocks and the legacy system where all your characters have what they need up front and you don't need to worry about spending any more money if you don't want to. You can also spend a lot of in game currency to get most of the most important unlocks like rocket boots and the like without spending a dime.
I think the best way to go with SWTOR if you're starting out is dropping 30 bucks for the two-month sub-time deal. You'll get access to every piece of expansion content, have 1000 CC by the end of the sub-time, be Preferred when the time elapses rather then straight F2P and you can most likely earn enough in-game cash before said time is up to buy the (Account) unlocks that Preferred status doesn't open up from the game's Auction House.
Dr_KeenbeanDumb as a buttPlanet Express ShipRegistered Userregular
If you got the 2 month gametime card route be sure to add a mobile authenticator (it's a free app for your smartphone) as that will get you an additional 100 CC per month, so in this case you end your 2 month sub with 1200 CC.
you can pay for only one month of SWTOR if you like, by setting up automatic billing and then immediately disabling it (after being charged for 30 days)
the never-pay-any-dollars free model is pretty limited, but once you hit max level it's not too bad being 'preferred' (i.e. paid money at some point.) You can do all the instances/pvp you want, and you can do raids if you buy the weekly raid pass things that are always being sold for credits. The leveling/story stuff is basically totally unaffected by whether you're a subscriber or not.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The leveling/story stuff is basically totally unaffected by whether you're a subscriber or not.
Well for the core stuff, yes, but not only do you need to at least put down some sub-time to get the expansion content, they set up the current expansion to come out episodically and there's no way to get it unless you put in sub-time though you'll get the first nine chapters in one solid chunk when you do and any chapters that come out between the end of that and the latest chapter will be unlocked if you put down more sub-time. So you don't have to subscribe everytime a new chapter comes out.
I noticed that no one had posted about GW2 since the recent expansion, so I thought I'd give a quick update on that.
Guild Wars 2 has always had amazing open-world PvE, but with the new expansion they took it to a new level. Each of the four new zones is huge, with multiple layers and tons of events and hidden things to find. Gliding, mushroom jumping, and other new movement masteries are incredibly fun and allow movement in the vertical space without trivializing it the way flight does in some other games. And gliding isn't just for getting around, it's incorporated into boss fights in awesome ways: I spent last night fighting an enormous fire-breathing wyvern boss where you have to jump off the platform to avoid the fire, grab something to throw on him, catch an updraft to get back up to his platform, and then glide over him to throw it to break his shield before it's safe to land and fight again.
The new expansion also brought a great new storyline, with much better cut scenes than in the past. It also brought adventures, which are timed challenges where you can compete for bronze, silver, and gold and see how you rank overall and against your guild. They also revitalized fractals, which are progressive mini-dungeons that you can now do one at a time, choose-your-own-adventure style. Even better, Guild Halls are now a thing, and our guild has an entire zone we can call our own, where we're currently working toward building an arena designed by us. And 10-person raids are coming in a couple weeks. There's also countless new achievements and collections. The overwhelming sentiment of PvE players is "there's so much to DO!"
For people who prefer PvP or WvW (World vs. World vs. World siege warfare), they didn't add a whole lot. There's a new game mode for PvP (it's called Stronghold and it's MOBA-esque). There's a new map in WvW and they changed the way upgrading defenses work, adding new mechanics and opportunities for guilds to do neat things. They also added guild missions for both PvP and WvW (previously missions were PvE only). But overall, the expansion has been heavily PvE-focused, other than the new elite specializations for each class shaking up the meta a bit.
So the current status of GW2 is: PvE Awesome, sPvP good and WvW meh. Buying the expansion is required to get access to the new stuff, but if you've never played before the free version of the game lets you try all the old content. The F2P players seem to be enjoying themselves, and many go on to purchase the expansion. Overall, now's a pretty great time to give GW2 a shot if it's been on your to-do list.
Something that irked me when I was playing Guild Wars 2 was the rather obtuseness in getting into the dungeon PvE content. There wasn't any in-game indication of where they were or the requirements to get into them. Has anything changed since launch/the expansion to help people get into that sort of thing if that's their main course?
Open world PvE was fine, I mean hopping into one of those random events was great and it felt great when you had so many people just jump in.
Something that irked me when I was playing Guild Wars 2 was the rather obtuseness in getting into the dungeon PvE content. There wasn't any in-game indication of where they were or the requirements to get into them. Has anything changed since launch/the expansion to help people get into that sort of thing if that's their main course?
Open world PvE was fine, I mean hopping into one of those random events was great and it felt great when you had so many people just jump in.
Now, you get a message that tells you when you qualify for a dungeon, with in-game lore to go with the story. The message also automatically zooms you to the map to show you where the dungeon is in the world, like the scout feature.
I need to get back to GW2 but having to scrounge up 50 bucks for an expansion just because it comes with the base game that I already got as a gift a couple of years ago is pretty annoying.
I need to get back to GW2 but having to scrounge up 50 bucks for an expansion just because it comes with the base game that I already got as a gift a couple of years ago is pretty annoying.
while I haven't played GW 2, isn't one of its great things that you don't have to pay a subscription? That makes paying 50 less painful in my head. If you consider you would pay 12 a month for some MMO's, is you get 5 months of fun out of it, it kind of paid for itself.
I need to get back to GW2 but having to scrounge up 50 bucks for an expansion just because it comes with the base game that I already got as a gift a couple of years ago is pretty annoying.
while I haven't played GW 2, isn't one of its great things that you don't have to pay a subscription? That makes paying 50 less painful in my head. If you consider you would pay 12 a month for some MMO's, is you get 5 months of fun out of it, it kind of paid for itself.
Yeah but it's still a pain. I don't mind paying for an expansion. It's not having an option to buy it by itself at an expansion-worthy price.
I need to get back to GW2 but having to scrounge up 50 bucks for an expansion just because it comes with the base game that I already got as a gift a couple of years ago is pretty annoying.
while I haven't played GW 2, isn't one of its great things that you don't have to pay a subscription? That makes paying 50 less painful in my head. If you consider you would pay 12 a month for some MMO's, is you get 5 months of fun out of it, it kind of paid for itself.
Yeah but it's still a pain. I don't mind paying for an expansion. It's not having an option to buy it by itself at an expansion-worthy price.
Mmo expacs for subscription games are usually only 10-20$ cheaper? Im not following how this price is too high for what youre getting?
I need to get back to GW2 but having to scrounge up 50 bucks for an expansion just because it comes with the base game that I already got as a gift a couple of years ago is pretty annoying.
while I haven't played GW 2, isn't one of its great things that you don't have to pay a subscription? That makes paying 50 less painful in my head. If you consider you would pay 12 a month for some MMO's, is you get 5 months of fun out of it, it kind of paid for itself.
Yeah but it's still a pain. I don't mind paying for an expansion. It's not having an option to buy it by itself at an expansion-worthy price.
Having bought the expansion at full price, I think it's well worth it. It is absolutely $50 worth of content. Much like how the original Guild Wars released entire campaigns as stand-alone games that cost full price, so too does Heart of Thorns constitute basically an entire new game to glue onto your old game. In fact, I think that'll become even more true after Raids and the new Living Story get released.
Also, for those looking into Guild Wars -- the base game, which includes EVERYTHING we had up until the release of Heart of Thorns, is free to play, in what I think is one of THE most generous F2P deals out there (you don't have map chat, but you get basically everything else). If you buy Heart of Thorns, the entire base game is included with your purchase, so honestly if you're buying now, you're getting a hell of a deal.
As Kylindra mentioned, there are some pretty big flaws, but in my opinion most of those flaws don't really show up unless you're a hardcore player. The guild interface, for instance, is kind of a buggy pain, but it's a buggy pain that bothers my guild leaders, not me (I love you, NICE). I've had some major bugs in starting the process for crafting my Legendary... which, by the way, you can craft the precursors for Legendary weapons now, no more having to ply the trading post or just hope for the drop, though ultimately the cost of crafting is about the same as buying it off the trading post, just spread out over time... anyway, I've had bugs there, but your average person starting out isn't going for that, and by the time you ARE going for that, I'm hoping they'll have fixed said bugs.
Point is: it's worth $50. I am having the same problems in stopping myself from playing as I did with Skyrim, only worse because I'm an extrovert who loves social interaction with my guild. Help.
GW2's greatness is reflected by other MMO's coming around to elements that GW2 implemented, like instanced resource nodes and no mob tagging.
What do you mean by no mob tagging?
If someone smacks a mob it doesn't claim it or anything. It's just everyone who hits something gets full rewards for it.
That post confused me a bit, because to me "tagging" has always meant "poke something to get credit".
There was a time in the dark days of MMO Youth where Tagging meant hitting the Mob first, because only that person [or that party] would ever be rewarded for that Mob. GW2 did away with that but also goes out of its way to make sure when another player shows up it is never a bad thing for you.
Then there was also the dark time where the "tag" was determined by who did the most damage to a mob, so a high level player could just nuke the mob you were fighting with and deny you your precious loot.
I must say that in FFXIV and in LOTRO I never experienced many problems with tagging, despite both of them using the old ("classic") system. A high respawn rate really helps, I guess.
Then there was also the dark time where the "tag" was determined by who did the most damage to a mob, so a high level player could just nuke the mob you were fighting with and deny you your precious loot.
I must say that in FFXIV and in LOTRO I never experienced many problems with tagging, despite both of them using the old ("classic") system. A high respawn rate really helps, I guess.
In FFXIV this is also because on the mob that people really want credit for (FATEs and Hunts) they use a credit system as well so even if you don't get the tag you can get full credit if you participate enough.
This also works on regular monsters, the tag just guarantees you full credit, if you come across mob that is tagged and do a lot of damage to it before it dies (or threat or healing) you can still get full credit.
The exception to this is on Hunt mobs where the Tag doesn't grant full credit, only participation will get you that.
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Now I originally dismissed this game as another piece is trashy Nexon grift. Probably for the best as they eventually ran it into the ground.
Now Neople has taken over and relaunched it, their stated purpose is to catch up to the current Korean patch asap. Honestly they've been doing a good job of it.
So what is it? It's a 2d retroish looking brawler. Think River City Ransom or Dragons crown. There are roughly 30ish classes and each plays rather uniquely from each other. Even ones that are just separated by gender.
Example being there is both a female and male grappler. The female excels in hold moves and stuns while the name variant is more about throws.
The game has a stamina system, called "fatigue" that runs out as you move from room to room in dungeons. They counteract this by accelerating the leveling system quite a bit. A couple weeks of casual play can get you to cap.
There are end game dungeons, they will be adding raids eventually, and you can play as a dude who dual wields muskets and has a claymore mounted on a crossbow frame.
There is a cash shop, mostly cosmetic though some boosting stuff like pets that give stats. You can play everything without bothering. What is there is cheap, at least. I think I payed $5 to max out storage of three characters.
Oh right, you can have up to 20 alts. There is actually a system in place to reward you for leveling alts. You can get bonuses based on your "explorer" level and also call in your 50+ characters as assists.
Because you can totally setup all your moves to use control inputs and play it like a fighting game so of course you need assists. Not joking about this one, I play monk using a fight pad.
I dunno. Posting from a phone so that's about all I feel like ranting. Still, excellent game, give it a shot if you like brawlers.
Story is pretty lame though! It's there, quite a bit if it even, but they knew most people wouldn't care so it's nothing deep.
DCUO turned stale after max lev, LOTRO i loved for years but made some aweful mistakes about how to progress the game and story, so I gave up on it a few years ago. DDO lost its charm because of the repetitive content and clunky way it was presented.
Buuuut I played all 3 for many hours, so there was plenty to enjoy. Im just unsure whether I can summarize it properly without doing it injustice.
It takes basically forever for a F2P person to get access to all the content (thousands of hours of grinding, along with constantly recreating characters), so your best bet is a temporary subscription. You can easily do most of the content with a group of 3 + Hirelings (which fill up a party slot), but it's best experienced with a full party of 6, with everyone playing a class that specializes in a different attribute. I loved playing a Rogue, because there are actual traps to disarm and locks to pick.
FFXIV has something similar to this in the Relic weapon quests, but I guess that's a bit too general, since it has no class-specific lore involved with it. Or does it?
Anyways, I was just curious if any other games have even tried to do something like that. It's something that I really enjoyed about Everquest. I remember getting the Monk epic and it was a very unique quest line. Maybe I've just got my nostalgia goggles on, who knows.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
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Your 15/30 class skills, and most of the job skills (with the exception of the extra jobs) are given through job-specfic questlines (of which there are three for any given job, with the exception of the extra jobs, which only have two.)
I just started LOTRO back up. They have completely changed how the gear progresses. I don't know what you are talking about progress for game and story, but I know the original LI idea was terrible. Lets do a 12 man raid, get a weapon, and it has random properties that are terrible. Not good.
I'm not max level, but best I can tell now, you get a weapon, put the stats you want on it, and it levels with you just keeping getting stronger. Gear appears to be the same way. It is for a class with your major and minor stat on it. Than you have empty spaces to put the stats you want in it. The "raid" gear just appears to have one more empty slot to make it better.
I'm 21 levels away from max, but leveling goes fast, and there is more than enough content it seems to keep me busy. I have gotten a level out of just there fall festival content.
As for the state of the game, I paid the woping $200 for pre-release lifetime, so I don't know what costs you would get starting now. I get everything for free with my monthly allowance. It does look like you can get everything in game. One nice thing though, it looks like all the expansions are broken up into small chunks. It seems fair to pay for expansions IMHO. You can pay to win it looks like, and pay for conveniance. Nothing really looked like you need it.
The one thing i'm unsure on, is what VIP counts as. It looked like the store you could by quest packs (expansions), but vip was a monthly subscription? I'm unsure if they do the EQ2 thing were you can't put on the best gear or something.
They are collapsing servers into fewer of them, so unsure how many people still play.
As far as I know, the F2P restrictions don't really hamper the "single player" content in any meaningful way. You'll gain less experience and might have to do side quests to keep up, but that's about it.
The only real problem, if you want to call it that, is that F2P players are restricted to humans in character creation. Unlocking additional races costs about 5 bucks per (might be more), so you might end up spending a few bucks if you want to be a blue human or green human or cat-faced human.
Here's their chart on what you get at different levels of account status: http://www.swtor.com/free/features
you are a subhuman peasant who is no better than dirt.
If you pay a little bit of money, then you get to be slightly better dirt.
if you subscribe then you become a human being.
its really one of the most malignant f2p schemes I've seen, and according to the SWTOR thread it hasn't really changed with its recent major update and revamp
This is a place to inform people and not a personal soapbox for MMO rants.
Its not a MMO rant if its in fact true. Which in the case of SWTOR, everything I said is verifiable truth and fact. Not opinion.
I mean, you can play every single class to level 50 and enjoy their storylines (the main reason anyone wants to play TOR) for zero dollars. That's a pretty good deal. Some things will be a pain in the arse if you play absolutely 100% free, for sure. But it's free! Zero dinero! If you spent, I don't know, 60 bucks (the price of a box) on cartel coins you could buy pretty much every qol upgrade that subscribers had. I know, because I just spent 5000 saved up cartel coins and made my preferred account essentially a subscribed account, and that won't ever expire.
There are lots of MMOs, an example that comes to mind being Cryptic's Neverwinter MMO, that do a lot more to make you feel like you need to spend more money to avoid tedious bullshit or unlock the new shininess that you want. And it does that more consistently, whereas with SWTOR you can reach a point with unlocks and the legacy system where all your characters have what they need up front and you don't need to worry about spending any more money if you don't want to. You can also spend a lot of in game currency to get most of the most important unlocks like rocket boots and the like without spending a dime.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
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the never-pay-any-dollars free model is pretty limited, but once you hit max level it's not too bad being 'preferred' (i.e. paid money at some point.) You can do all the instances/pvp you want, and you can do raids if you buy the weekly raid pass things that are always being sold for credits. The leveling/story stuff is basically totally unaffected by whether you're a subscriber or not.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Well for the core stuff, yes, but not only do you need to at least put down some sub-time to get the expansion content, they set up the current expansion to come out episodically and there's no way to get it unless you put in sub-time though you'll get the first nine chapters in one solid chunk when you do and any chapters that come out between the end of that and the latest chapter will be unlocked if you put down more sub-time. So you don't have to subscribe everytime a new chapter comes out.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Guild Wars 2 has always had amazing open-world PvE, but with the new expansion they took it to a new level. Each of the four new zones is huge, with multiple layers and tons of events and hidden things to find. Gliding, mushroom jumping, and other new movement masteries are incredibly fun and allow movement in the vertical space without trivializing it the way flight does in some other games. And gliding isn't just for getting around, it's incorporated into boss fights in awesome ways: I spent last night fighting an enormous fire-breathing wyvern boss where you have to jump off the platform to avoid the fire, grab something to throw on him, catch an updraft to get back up to his platform, and then glide over him to throw it to break his shield before it's safe to land and fight again.
The new expansion also brought a great new storyline, with much better cut scenes than in the past. It also brought adventures, which are timed challenges where you can compete for bronze, silver, and gold and see how you rank overall and against your guild. They also revitalized fractals, which are progressive mini-dungeons that you can now do one at a time, choose-your-own-adventure style. Even better, Guild Halls are now a thing, and our guild has an entire zone we can call our own, where we're currently working toward building an arena designed by us. And 10-person raids are coming in a couple weeks. There's also countless new achievements and collections. The overwhelming sentiment of PvE players is "there's so much to DO!"
For people who prefer PvP or WvW (World vs. World vs. World siege warfare), they didn't add a whole lot. There's a new game mode for PvP (it's called Stronghold and it's MOBA-esque). There's a new map in WvW and they changed the way upgrading defenses work, adding new mechanics and opportunities for guilds to do neat things. They also added guild missions for both PvP and WvW (previously missions were PvE only). But overall, the expansion has been heavily PvE-focused, other than the new elite specializations for each class shaking up the meta a bit.
So the current status of GW2 is: PvE Awesome, sPvP good and WvW meh. Buying the expansion is required to get access to the new stuff, but if you've never played before the free version of the game lets you try all the old content. The F2P players seem to be enjoying themselves, and many go on to purchase the expansion. Overall, now's a pretty great time to give GW2 a shot if it's been on your to-do list.
Open world PvE was fine, I mean hopping into one of those random events was great and it felt great when you had so many people just jump in.
[edit] Just checked a stream and it does! Might start playing again.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
while I haven't played GW 2, isn't one of its great things that you don't have to pay a subscription? That makes paying 50 less painful in my head. If you consider you would pay 12 a month for some MMO's, is you get 5 months of fun out of it, it kind of paid for itself.
Yeah but it's still a pain. I don't mind paying for an expansion. It's not having an option to buy it by itself at an expansion-worthy price.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Mmo expacs for subscription games are usually only 10-20$ cheaper? Im not following how this price is too high for what youre getting?
Having bought the expansion at full price, I think it's well worth it. It is absolutely $50 worth of content. Much like how the original Guild Wars released entire campaigns as stand-alone games that cost full price, so too does Heart of Thorns constitute basically an entire new game to glue onto your old game. In fact, I think that'll become even more true after Raids and the new Living Story get released.
Also, for those looking into Guild Wars -- the base game, which includes EVERYTHING we had up until the release of Heart of Thorns, is free to play, in what I think is one of THE most generous F2P deals out there (you don't have map chat, but you get basically everything else). If you buy Heart of Thorns, the entire base game is included with your purchase, so honestly if you're buying now, you're getting a hell of a deal.
As Kylindra mentioned, there are some pretty big flaws, but in my opinion most of those flaws don't really show up unless you're a hardcore player. The guild interface, for instance, is kind of a buggy pain, but it's a buggy pain that bothers my guild leaders, not me (I love you, NICE). I've had some major bugs in starting the process for crafting my Legendary... which, by the way, you can craft the precursors for Legendary weapons now, no more having to ply the trading post or just hope for the drop, though ultimately the cost of crafting is about the same as buying it off the trading post, just spread out over time... anyway, I've had bugs there, but your average person starting out isn't going for that, and by the time you ARE going for that, I'm hoping they'll have fixed said bugs.
Point is: it's worth $50. I am having the same problems in stopping myself from playing as I did with Skyrim, only worse because I'm an extrovert who loves social interaction with my guild. Help.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
What do you mean by no mob tagging?
If someone smacks a mob it doesn't claim it or anything. It's just everyone who hits something gets full rewards for it.
That post confused me a bit, because to me "tagging" has always meant "poke something to get credit".
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There was a time in the dark days of MMO Youth where Tagging meant hitting the Mob first, because only that person [or that party] would ever be rewarded for that Mob. GW2 did away with that but also goes out of its way to make sure when another player shows up it is never a bad thing for you.
I must say that in FFXIV and in LOTRO I never experienced many problems with tagging, despite both of them using the old ("classic") system. A high respawn rate really helps, I guess.
In FFXIV this is also because on the mob that people really want credit for (FATEs and Hunts) they use a credit system as well so even if you don't get the tag you can get full credit if you participate enough.
This also works on regular monsters, the tag just guarantees you full credit, if you come across mob that is tagged and do a lot of damage to it before it dies (or threat or healing) you can still get full credit.
The exception to this is on Hunt mobs where the Tag doesn't grant full credit, only participation will get you that.
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