Guild Wars 2

[Scream Aim Fire]

I never put enough time in to finish more than the Whispers questline and never really did any of the expansions, but Tybalt made the middle of the "game" worth it, especially since I'd rolled a human for my first dude. All the energy of a b-tier buddy cop action comedy almost made up for Treehugger or whatever the fuck his name was at the end.

Yeah, Tybalt is great; kinda wish we got more of him in the game - would have been a better choice than Trahearne.

My god, this sounds insanely gay. I didn't sink me teeth too deep into GW2 but I do remember it exists every once in a while and reconsider giving it another go, this is the final nail to any consideration of the sort.

Yeah, the Icebrood Saga was where I originally dropped the game. There was only so much bullshit someone could eventually take before they quit, and that was mine.

I just wish I could remember the link on where I saw the interview where the devs confirmed it; I didn't save it, and I'm still kicking myself.

it's genuinely impressive sometimes. the koreatown expansion spends its entire story desperately trying to make us sympathize with the tech mogul who's holdings the reins to all the technology in the country, and we just don't understand because she's soooo smart. She's constantly butting head with the secretary of defense who reacts to most things pretty reasonable for most of the story. Then only way they can make him unlikable is by making him a heckin evil nazi chud at the last minute.

I sincerely don't know if those two are supposed to be a "gotcha" moment or if its supposed to be obvious who we're supposed to like/hate from the first moment.

This is a pretty good summery of the EoD plot; ANet just can't stop with the politics, can they?

Actually, this does make me want to ask: anyone else notice any other woke crap shoved into the base game/prior expansions? Because so far, we've got:

Icebrood Saga: Frost Legion and Bangar = Republicans and Trump. Genuinely surprised that they didn't make the Flame Legion into a Trump/Republican thing; given how evil they were previously - including the whole "hates women" thing - you think they would have obviously done that instead of making new Legion...

End of Dragons: Tech Mogul Empress vs. EVIL NAZI SecDef, as well as general political shit like making all men retarded.

There was also that quest chain that tried to retcon/justify the Charr committing the Searing from the first game; can't remember if that was part of the base game, or the expansions, though. There was also that Roe vs. Wade bit they shoved into the game.

So, can anyone else provide examples of ANet's wokeshit in the base game, or in Path of Fire/Heart of Thorns?

@ZMOT Thanks for the recommendation on ESO; I never really gave that much of a look towards the game previously, but if I can find a solid copy and get the time to try it out, then I'll give it a shot, see if we like it. Thanks!

 

[ZMOT]

So, can anyone else provide examples of ANet's wokeshit in the base game, or in Path of Fire/Heart of Thorns?

don't remember much wokeshit in the base game, but holy shit living story season 1 was fucking abysmal with their harley quinn OC

then allegedly felicia day wanted more money, which made anusnet nuke all of destiny's edge and gave us diversity's edge, consisting of
- an oppressed crippled asura genius apprentice, because a race of hyperintelligent diminutive goblins is suddenly high on physical integrity.
- a pair of lesbian humans bridging the class divide, with one being a working class victorian-era private detective (of course) and the other being a disgraced noble (of course).
- an outcast charr with animu eyes, punished for not going full wehrmacht and following every order (and even her pet is a special snowflake, like fucking literally).
- a mutt nord with mommy issues and the son of THE eir stegalkin who of course hooked up with the only nord with dark skin to ever exist (and of course a legendary hero), because high melanin content in a race that literally translates NORTH makes sense.

the worst part I don't even mind the backgrounds in itself, but holy shit smut looney tunes fanfiction has probably better execution and character development.

oh and they nerfed female outfits, because an exposed midriff and cleavage is oppression or something. imagine being so woke pissing off your troon paypiggies....

EDIT: never noticed before that diversity's edge doesn't include a sylvari. maybe anusnet wanted to avoid another trahearne/scarlet, or more likely they simply expected you to be playing their chosen race and didn't want to diminish that...

@ZMOT Thanks for the recommendation on ESO; I never really gave that much of a look towards the game previously, but if I can find a solid copy and get the time to try it out, then I'll give it a shot, see if we like it. Thanks!

Spoiler: offtopic ESO info

it has a free week every few months, but the last just happened during quakecon (because zenimax and id), but you can usually find a key for cheap on keysites (cdkeys has it for 5 bucks).
tamriel unlimited is just the name of the big revamp patch, both should work. morrowind or summerset etc. is base game + chapter (the big "expansion" which releases every year), but they all become part of the subscription after a year anyway. upgrade is for owning the base game already. grab the zenimax version, not steam (which doesn't sell keys afaik, just to be sure).

something to keep in mind is that early game is still basically release 2014, where you have to level like in every run-of-the-mill MMO, the big tamriel unlimited changes mostly affect level cap and other stuff under the hood like level scaling (everyone is scaled up to max level, like guild wars: nightfall did). combat can take some getting used to, but anyone who can endure GW2's floaty jank should be able handle it - and there are viable builds if you want to play differently and not bother with weaving auto-attacks and skills.
it's also almost 10 years old, so especially at first you'll get hit with a prologue quests of like seven expansions, if not more (they changed some of it recently, but that was mostly upping min level so new players don't see everything at once).
faction doesn't really matter for PVE, you can group and play together anywhere. if you want to do PVP like gw2's wubwub you need to be in the same. only caveat is that without an account upgrade (which way back was a preorder bonus originally) certain races are locked to certain factions. however the upgrade - if you want to buy it - comes with a race and namechange token, so it can be changed later. faction too, but not class (otoh rolling a new char takes less than an afternoon with some preparation, once you hit level 50 everything is based on your account. items too so you literally just move everything over and keep playing, no need to re-grind shit, and if you want another copy you can just remake an item for a cost).

story, if you care about that can be played in any order, but there's some internal chronology where you meet certain characters again later. nothing major, usually just some extra dialog options like "what happened after X?" or documents, which is nice fluff. dlc stories are usually self-contained too, although that has changed over the years a few times (morrowind/clockwork city/summerset are basically one big story, afterwards the dungeons, chapters and other dlc of that year were all part of a "year of X" storyline, like elsweyr being all about how and why dragons returned and dealing with it, which got abandoned this year and we're back to multi-year stories).
I'd suggest to start with the original ones so it makes more sense, but like I said that's content from 2014 which is basic MMO flair and can look and feel a bit dull, things changed and improved a bit since then. for example elsweyr has you slapping around dragons with dozens other people in the first 5 minutes if you want to.

money-wise most shit in the store is cosmetic, there is some minor stuff making life more convenient, and due to yuropoor law you can grind some of the currency to get lootbox stuff without gambling. subscription is basically more space and access to all DLC content, sans the current chapter (which comes with new sets, new raid and usually a new feature like a class), while also giving you store currency. in fact it's more cost effective to sub and get the monthly stipend than buying the smallest currency package.

also expect a lot of boomers, which makes playing pretty chill. there are some tryhard spastics of course, it's a statistical inevitability, but due to how progression and tiers work they're usually contained and thus easy to avoid. also no big public ERP smut like ff14's limsa or moonguard (that I know of), thanks to housing they probably practice it there.

 

[Fag Albert]

- an oppressed crippled asura genius apprentice, because a race of hyperintelligent diminutive goblins is suddenly high on physical integrity.

I hate this little nigger so much it's unreal. I already hate the 'smart' race in any MMO because they give the writers carte blanche to be lazy and have said race just smart their way out of a problem. If we weren't babysitting her we're sitting around while she pulls a solution out of her ass. Then halfway through an expansion when they make a big deal about her fucking canceraids getting worse and then that shit is never mentioned again.

 

[ZMOT]

I hate this little nigger so much it's unreal. I already hate the 'smart' race in any MMO because they give the writers carte blanche to be lazy and have said race just smart their way out of a problem. If we weren't babysitting her we're sitting around while she pulls a solution out of her ass. Then halfway through an expansion when they make a big deal about her fucking canceraids getting worse and then that shit is never mentioned again.

or as some say "a character is only as smart as it's writer". and tbh if you're smart why would you write for videogames in a woke as fuck company?
that's what I mean with the backstory, a shunned, somewhat intelligent character (not MARY SUE SMARTER THAN ANYONE) due to a physical handicap provides an interesting struggle and arc to overcome, thus would work fine. but in the hands of a shitty writer it turns into a walking deus ex machina because MUH SMART MUH GENIUS since they can't even do the bare minimum of logic, setup and payoff.

scotty or geordie from star trek are smart characters that work, even if they just drop technobabble most of the time

 

[TVB]

And for a company that is nowhere as big as the likes of Sega, Capcom, Ubisoft, Squeenix, Embracer, Tencent, Sony, Microsoft and even Nintendo, but then again, I'm not surprised that NCSoft is just as bad as any of them, and that's a new low.

 

[Herr Flick]

I futzed around with ESO, but so much of it is DLC that you either have to buy piecemeal or sub to unlock it all temporarily. Open world is decent though, and a new expansion dropped recently with an interesting premise. I’ve been meaning to check it out.

It’s true that the GW2 story isn’t very good, but the following is something very cool that I enjoy and have yet to find in any other MMO. WoW’s dragonriding was an uninteresting ripoff, in part because WoW’s maps are neither as large nor as detailed and designed for verticality as GW2’s have been since the start.

 

[ZMOT]

I futzed around with ESO, but so much of it is DLC that you either have to buy piecemeal or sub to unlock it all temporarily. Open world is decent though, and a new expansion dropped recently with an interesting premise. I’ve been meaning to check it out.

It’s true that the GW2 story isn’t very good, but the following is something very cool that I enjoy and have yet to find in any other MMO. WoW’s dragonriding was an uninteresting ripoff, in part because WoW’s maps are neither as large nor as detailed and designed for verticality as GW2’s have been since the start.

DLC is basically "more of the same". that sounds bad, but for someone who enjoys the game that's exactly what people want, running around in a new zone doing new quests and see a new story with their character from 2014 most even have the same setup of 6 world bosses, 6 delves, 2 public dungeons, 1 raid and a new "event" feature like anchors. which also means at the same time it's not that necessary to have immediate or perpetual access (especially for the smaller zone DLCs or dungeon DLCs), even more so when you grabbed all the loot and achievements from there and then can just refabricate the item if you need it. lot of ESO's perks are under the surface when you have played for a while. you can also buy them to have access to them without eso+ (that's what I did with my stipend, or the chapter directly so I can do the raid), this way you can have the sub run out and keep playing like usual.

the gameplay features are either a class or stuff like jewelcrafting or archeology, which once unlocked you can still use afterwards (although they might have changed that with jewelcrafting and not being able to use the crafting bench, not sure), and there are at least 2 eso+ trials per year where you can just port in, learn that shit, then forget about it
the trials even run long enough to do the story if you want to. only real "issue" is the crafting bag. there are ways around it and you can't loot everything you come across, but for most people it's more convenient not having to deal with bank mules etc.

I'd say try elsweyr if you want a nice and tidy package for story, however two of the main characters are from the original main story. same for greymoor. blackwood is pretty much self-contained from what I remember, the only recurring character is from an imperial city dungeon (which is free). but they're still mostly it's own thing. high isle makes more sense after the main story too since it deals with the three alliances. orsinium is probably the most "stand alone", but there are a few recurring characters in sidequests from the base game. same for morrowind, which also spans more dlcs and goes up till summerset (otoh more naryu)
haven't played necrom much yet, afaik there aren't really any main recurring characters (since pretty much all of them have been featured already), maybe divayth fyr since he's a dunmer.

no flying mounts in ESO, so no fancy vistas to fly through (flying mounts have all been ripped off vanguard anyway /sneed)

and animated movie never ever

 

[TVB]

Yes, GW2's storyline is utter dogshit accompanied with shit stolen from other MMORPGs.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

I was wanting to ask you guys; what do you think GW2's story would have been like if the woke didn't infect the game? Like, following the events of Guild Wars 1, if the devs didn't rewrite so much shit to cater to wokeshit, how do you think the story would have gone instead?

Also, on the community side of things; has anyone had to deal with any of the roleplaying groups as of yet? Because I know for a fact that GW2 has a LOT of RP'ers in it; anyone got any horror stories?

 

[Kotol]

I was wanting to ask you guys; what do you think GW2's story would have been like if the woke didn't infect the game? Like, following the events of Guild Wars 1, if the devs didn't rewrite so much shit to cater to wokeshit, how do you think the story would have gone instead?

Also, on the community side of things; has anyone had to deal with any of the roleplaying groups as of yet? Because I know for a fact that GW2 has a LOT of RP'ers in it; anyone got any horror stories?

I have half-heartedly tried to find any RPers, but I found nothing yet. I think I only came across roleplayers once in Queensdale in that hunter's lodge/tavern thingy. Nowadays, in my experience, roleplayers just stick to less-frequented areas and communicate in group chat or in whisper chat. The people RPing in general chat are mostly the type of people that want to be offended, I feel.

 

[TVB]

The people RPing in general chat are mostly the type of people that want to be offended, I feel.

Yes they are. They are a community of completely sad spergs that have gotten worse for almost a decade and a half

 

[Kotol]

Yes they are. They are a community of completely sad spergs that have gotten worse for almost a decade and a half

Huh, well I am a eurotard so I guess I was able to avoid the mental cancer so far.

 

[TVB]

Huh, well I am a eurotard so I guess I was able to avoid the mental cancer so far.

I mean, the community is worldwide, but yea, you're not missing much

 

[whogoesthere]

I came back after a long time, did the EoD living story. What a fucking nightmare. I know its fucking woked up to the extreme, but the worst part is how it never ends. SO MUCH DIALOGUE. No skip button anymore either, have to listen to these women go on and on about how great they are, whilst the lone man becomes Adolf. I could almost forgive NCsoft taking the ESG money from Blackrock, if I could at least skip it.

No one mentioned how much standing around there is, just listening to shitty VA work. You can see people on the forum defending this as well, talking about how standing around for 15 minutes at a time, listening to quirky faggotry of the highest order. Imagine Big Bang Theorys quirky shit humor, the woke scalding feminist, but stretched out for what feels like eternity.

I havent played WoW in well over a decade at this point. Is this what all MMOs end up as? sucking off Blackrock so its ends up a boring mess. I would prefer mindless grinding over this, it just never seems to stop.

 

[TVB]

You can see people on the forum defending this as well

Yes, it doesn't come to a surprise that the GW fanbase are a bunch of consoomer slobs that will defend anything with the GW name in bright, bold, shiny, capital letters. They use GW2 as their own religion and get pissy over any form of criticism over it. It's typical fanboy behavior.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

I was wanting to ask you guys; what do you think GW2's story would have been like if the woke didn't infect the game? Like, following the events of Guild Wars 1, if the devs didn't rewrite so much shit to cater to wokeshit, how do you think the story would have gone instead?

What it came out the gate as - shit. The Dragons are boring antagonists who want to destroy everything, and there's no real political intrigue between the races and factions because "big, evil thing destroy everything" doesn't leave much room to establish a 'norm' which you then disrupt.

GW1 was hardly a masterpiece of writing, but it was a cool setting that emphasized political systems, big-picture ideas, the relationship between the various cultures and the Gods, and creating really awesome environmental concepts even if the tech was limited at the time to properly realize them. EOTN wasn't a bad expansion, but by shifting the focus away from humans and political intrigue to shoving more fantasy races in and "the antagonist is just a force of nature that wants to destroy everything," it poisoned the well. Ironically, though, it did more work to make the Norn and Asura (and even Charr) feel culturally distinct than does the sequel, which for all intents and purposes has all of the player races behave exactly the same in almost all circumstances with zero meaningful bristling between them, because outside of the main quests the only narrative you're going to get is world events that boil down to "shoot the big thing"! and the main quest is trash.

What woke killed was the opportunity for a Heavensward moment. For those unawares, Heavensward is the first FF14 expansion. It has decent, enjoyable-if-predictable JRPG writing that is a huge step above the narrative of the base game, which is a mess. Instead of GW2 having a rushed, awkward, bland, and forgettable base-game narrative that then branched into a more interesting and elaborate narrative in the expansions, it branched out from being garbage into being corporate garbage.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Yes, it doesn't come to a surprise that the GW fanbase are a bunch of consoomer slobs that will defend anything with the GW name in bright, bold, shiny, capital letters. They use GW2 as their own religion and get pissy over any form of criticism over it. It's typical fanboy behavior.

The fanbase for this game is god-awful, I agree; seriously, I'm fairly certain that anyone that actually enjoys all of the shit that ANet has done to the game is mentally handicapped. Probably not a coincidence that most of the fans I've seen of the game tend to be furries; anyone remember Geary? I still see that loon around from time to time; he still tries to be "relevant", or whatever.

@Rich Evans Ayypologist: As someone who's played FFXIV all the way up through Endwalker, I can agree. Heavensward is where the game's story really kicked off and took a mediocre story and turned it into a great one. GW2 had some potential to be like that; had the devs gone back to the political intrigue plotline of the original game, or at least focused on creating a more interesting and elaborate story and narrative to follow, I honestly think that the game could have been great. At this point, though, I don't think GW2 is salvageable in the slightest; it would honestly be best just to let it die.

It's sad, too, because there's some great potential here; focus on making the races actually deep and interesting - hell, I'd pay for a good Charr story - instead of focusing on shoing all of this wokeshit into the game, and I imagine that you'd be able to get a lot more people in. Of course, the current fanbase wouldn't be pleased; the retards can't stand anything that isn't catering to their views.

I came back after a long time, did the EoD living story. What a fucking nightmare. I know its fucking woked up to the extreme, but the worst part is how it never ends. SO MUCH DIALOGUE. No skip button anymore either, have to listen to these women go on and on about how great they are, whilst the lone man becomes Adolf. I could almost forgive NCsoft taking the ESG money from Blackrock, if I could at least skip it.

No one mentioned how much standing around there is, just listening to shitty VA work. You can see people on the forum defending this as well, talking about how standing around for 15 minutes at a time, listening to quirky faggotry of the highest order. Imagine Big Bang Theorys quirky shit humor, the woke scalding feminist, but stretched out for what feels like eternity.

I havent played WoW in well over a decade at this point. Is this what all MMOs end up as? sucking off Blackrock so its ends up a boring mess. I would prefer mindless grinding over this, it just never seems to stop.

Yeah, EoD was honestly painful and forgettable; the woke writing that the devs shoved in really killed whatever kind of potentially interesting narrative that GW2 had, and now the whole setting is just putrid bile.

 

[TVB]

The fanbase for this game is god-awful, I agree; seriously, I'm fairly certain that anyone that actually enjoys all of the shit that ANet has done to the game is mentally handicapped. Probably not a coincidence that most of the fans I've seen of the game tend to be furries; anyone remember Geary? I still see that loon around from time to time; he still tries to be "relevant", or whatever.

Geary was to GW the same way Moviebob is to Mario or Chris Chan is to Sonic and/or Pokemon. He was a really insecure furfag who throws a banhammer at anyone who criticizes ANet properties in any passion.

 

[Fag Albert]

The fanbase for this game is god-awful, I agree; seriously, I'm fairly certain that anyone that actually enjoys all of the shit that ANet has done to the game is mentally handicapped. Probably not a coincidence that most of the fans I've seen of the game tend to be furries; anyone remember Geary? I still see that loon around from time to time; he still tries to be "relevant", or whatever.

Seeing how nutty some of these people are makes me so glad some of the old school guys like Doom Box got their shit together and kept it together.

 

[ZMOT]

Yes, it doesn't come to a surprise that the GW fanbase are a bunch of consoomer slobs that will defend anything with the GW name in bright, bold, shiny, capital letters. They use GW2 as their own religion and get pissy over any form of criticism over it. It's typical fanboy behavior.

to be fair you are not allowed to officially criticize the troon mmo, that goes all the way back to launch where the turbosped in charge of dungeons (rob hrouda or something, might remember it wrong) got pissy people picked the shortest route and cheesed fights to make farming more efficient - and boy you can't have that when people are supposed to buy those precious gems to flush them down the mystic toilet. so he overnerfed the route so hard it was almost impossible doing it legit, let alone for the casuals the game was aimed at.

he was also a shitty designer as anyone knows who ever ran dungeons, but again pointing that out or asking for improvements got you banned while the fanboi simps clapped like seals.