Guild Wars 2

[TVB]

Like I said, End of Dragons caused me to stop playing GW2 for a very long time. It made me realize that Guild Wars is officially dead in the ground.

 

[Herr Flick]

GW2 is still a pretty good game if you can look past the hamfisted moments of woke in the story. It’s nearly charming with how atrocious it is at being subtle or self-aware. Plus, while there will always be a healthy population of LGBTards in video games where they can pretend to be women/heroic/other things they are not, there is also a playerbase of people that hate that sort of nonsense and simply won’t tolerate it. I speak from experience—I found and joined a guild of southerners whose recruiters straight up ask inquirers whether they’re commies before letting them in, and if they get offended by the question or say yes, they’re told the place won’t be a good fit. This has had the miraculous effect of transforming the guild’s public chat channels into places for discussing the game and organizing groups to play it rather than collective whoring for attention centered around gender/degenerate preferences/trannyspeak.

Also, due to the game’s nature, it isn’t necessary to follow the pozzed story or even play it in order, and if you prefer the pvp/wvw you can effectively avoid it completely. Personally, I never finished the End of Dragons story because I got bored, but I enjoy the other expansion perks like skiffs and elite specs and new maps to play on and fly my griffon in. Because of that, I don’t know what it is that frustrated a lot of the invested playerbase, and while I’m sure it’s reasonable for that opinion to have formed due to the company’s dismal track record, I can ignore it completely without having to give up the rest of the game. It’s really rather zen to have that freedom, and I am glad the game allows the option.

Speaking of maps, if you have some Teleport to Friend items, which I believe come with most expansion purchases, you can get into story-locked maps with any character by joining an open world squad in the LFG pane, and then using the token to get to somebody on the map you want. (Of course, you do have to own the expansion/season the map is attached to.)

A new expac just launched so it’s not a bad time to pop in and have a look. The content is decent and the story isn’t bad. If you like the flying mounts, you’ll enjoy the new maps very much because they were designed with them in mind.

 

[ShitLurker]

...not really. Ever since it has gotten too much into identity leftist politics (like most other things these days).

Afraid to ask, but how have the pozzed it?

 

[TVB]

Afraid to ask, but how have the pozzed it?

Adding woke propaganda

 

[Almighty Space Duck]

Charr retcons, then the Icebrood = Trump story happened,

Dare I ask? I ducked out of GW2 during the 2016 debates when Orange Man Bad ended up breaking my guild in two so I have missed a lot.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Dare I ask? I ducked out of GW2 during the 2016 debates when Orange Man Bad ended up breaking my guild in two so I have missed a lot.

Concerning the Charr; basically, the ANet team pretty much decided to alienate their own fanbase from the original game and try to make the Charr doing the Searing into a "morally ambiguous" decision. By that, I mean that it was "revealed" that mankind originally forced the Charr out of their homelands, and the Charr were basically justified in nuking humanity because of "muh colonizer" shit. And GW2 goes well out of its way to mock people who disliked this retcon; there's quests in-game that have the main antagonists be the descendants of humans that survived the Searing, that are mistrustful of the Charr for the shit they pulled years ago. Naturally, the humans are made out as if they're in the wrong for distrusting the Charr.

As for the Icebrood Sage... I'm just going to repost a part of another post of mine: https://kiwifarms.st/threads/world-of-warcraft.8930/page-211

Spoiler: Icebrood Saga

Icebrood was where Anet's shitty story practices really began to shine; the expansion focuses on dealing with a Charr civil war, with two in particular - a Charr commander known as Bangar Ruinbringer, and Ryland Brimstone, the child of Rytlock, leading something of a civil war against the High Legions. The two had different motives; Bangar was apparently looking to secure an Elder Dragon of their own, as he had apparently been growing suspicious/jealous of the PC's own Elder Dragon ally, Aurene. Meanwhile, Ryland... I legit can't figure out, the kid just seemed like an idiot.

It seemed like a solid set-up, with the story making it clear that both sides have some legit grievances; however, it all very quickly went to complete hell shortly afterwards. Bangar was made out to be an insane and violent racist and fascist who would happily destroy everything for power, turning massive amounts of Charr into minions for the Elder Dragon Jormag, (who was very explicitly made out to be non-binary for some reason, which the characters went well out of their way to respect because apparently pronouns take priority over destroying the fucking planet); these mutated Charr became known as the Frost Legion. Meanwhile, longtime fan-favorite reasonable authority figure Smodur the Unflinching went from a calm, experienced commander to an insane psychopath who tried to cause a second Searing, apparently to "gain an edge" against the Frost Legion; he was swiftly killed and replaced by some "strong, independent wamen" Charr that I legit can't remember the name of right now.

From there, the plot just went further downhill; the story made every male character out to be a braindead idiot, every female character into the same "strong and brave" stereotype, the villains began sabotaging their own plans for whatever reason - i.e., Jormag putting the idiotic Ryland in charge of the Frost Legion, while more-or-less handicapping and sidelining the tactically-intelligent Bangar, letting him get captured in the process - and some outright idiotic story changes that leave a few too many plot holes, like the entire Flame Legion collectively pulling a heel-face turn and joining up with the High Legions, with said Flame Legion leader constantly praising and deferring to the aforementioned "strong and brave wamen", and one of our allies - I think it was Braham? Been a while since I checked, exactly - becoming another Elder Dragon's (Primordius) minion in an attempt to fight Ryland on equal ground.

In the end, the story ended about as well as you'd expect; Ryland and the Frost Legion all dies after Ryland continues being an idiot, both Jormag and Primordius getting destroyed - despite an earlier plotline making it very, very clear that any more Elder Dragons dying would destroy the entire planet, though our little dragon buddy Aurene is apparently able to absorb it without problems, so I guess it's no longer an issue? - Bangar is imprisoned and either dies or is executed, and the entire cast starts celebrating that all of the more "violent racist and fascist Charr are all dead". Also, the death of Jormag was what killed the Frost Legion, as the death of the Elder Dragon was supposed to kill whoever was mutated by them... but for whatever reason, the allied character that became Primorius's minion didn't for whatever reason. Oh, and the devs themselves went out of their way to cater more to the glowies, and made it very clear that the Frost Legion was supposed to be a stand-in for the American right.

Also, on a more minor note, Icebrood more-or-less canonized the Human PC as the canon one; massive chunks of the expansion were very obviously written from the assumption that you were a human character, leaving the potential plotpoints of Asura, Norn, and ESPECIALLY Charr players in the dirt. As a Charr player myself, I was not pleased.

TL: DR The Icebrood and Bangar are supposed to represent the American Right and Donald Trump, respectively, and the devs most certainly want you to kill them all off.

 

[Almighty Space Duck]

@Scream Aim Fire Thanks, that fucking sucks. I played a lot of GW1 back in the day (Factions launch right through to GW2) so that Searing retcon is pretty fucking horrifying. Glad I got out when I did.
To add- while far from perfect the Prophecies story was my favourite of the three main campaigns. Man, that retcon really sucks.

 

[TVB]

@Scream Aim Fire Thanks, that fucking sucks. I played a lot of GW1 back in the day (Factions launch right through to GW2) so that Searing retcon is pretty fucking horrifying. Glad I got out when I did.
To add- while far from perfect the Prophecies story was my favourite of the three main campaigns. Man, that retcon really sucks.

GW1 will have a special place in my heart. Just fun mid-to-late 2000s nostalgia with my crappy Vista laptops. Prophecies was so great.

 

[Almighty Space Duck]

GW1 will have a special place in my heart. Just fun mid-to-late 2000s nostalgia with my crappy Vista laptops. Prophecies was so great.

Same, it is a game steeped in nostalgia for me.

Over the years the group I played with steadily expanded through us joining various guilds and meeting more people, all centred around a Vent server that me and another guy picked the tab up for. This ended up with us founding our own guild and somehow stayed pretty much drama free as a group the entire time. We didn’t carry the guild over to GW2 due to a lot of people growing up, getting jobs etc etc. I know the guild still exists since I log into GW1 from time to time just to open my presents and it heartens me that there’s always a few names with a last logged in timer that is in days/weeks as well as an occasional message in the guild MotD.

I’ll never forget the night I got my first obby armour set. We had done a forge run so somebody else could craft theirs and out of nowhere I was given the rest of the materials I needed to craft mine, this was pre nightfall when ecto still had high value so I was floored. It was a very chill game, a lot of the time we would just chill at out of the way outposts like Fisherman’s Haven or turn the UI off and play hide and seek in the guild hall.

I could go on for hours about GW1 but I’m sure you get that.

The only other game that came close with that kind of guild/small community thing was FFXIV in the early days of ARR when housing was first added.

 

[TVB]

Yea, GW1 was so comfy. I replayed it not to long ago and I remember feeling nostalgic over the fisherman. Yea, there GW1 community used to be very polite people until GW2 came out and it became pozzed for the worst due to GW2's community also being pozzed.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

GW1 also pioneered a ton of ideas that other companies would go on to develop and run with. It's just such a shame that its overall gameplay system was something that studios moved away from in the wake of ever-greater homogenization and simplification, because for me the sublime perfection of GW1 was just how well so many of the skills and the whole system of energy played out in PvP.

GW2's PvP was just such dogshit that it held zero appeal for me, and despite the sequel's greater emphasis on storytelling, the world felt endlessly less detailed and less interesting than GW1's. It became this toothless, generic, boring fantasy world with boring antagonists and boring heroes and boring factions. Yet I remember Faction's Kaineng maps were this amazing critique of the hyper-bureaucratic chinese state nestled in an absolutely awesome setting that really set the game apart from anything else out there.

I remember GW2 was supposed to be returning to Cantha, but I really don't want to see how they massacred it - they already did Elona dirty, completely wiping clean the African-Mediterranean-Persian influences to replace it with... generic fantasy desert.

 

[TVB]

GW2's PvP was just such dogshit that it held zero appeal for me, and despite the sequel's greater emphasis on storytelling, the world felt endlessly less detailed and less interesting than GW1's. It became this toothless, generic, boring fantasy world with boring antagonists and boring heroes and boring factions. Yet I remember Faction's Kaineng maps were this amazing critique of the hyper-bureaucratic chinese state nestled in an absolutely awesome setting that really set the game apart from anything else out there.

I honest to god think GW2's storyline would've worked for an actual GW movie than an actual GW game. But then again, GW2 had implimented too much leftist ideology shit since 2016 which also included the bullshit retcons, oh and also End of Dragons. My god I hate GW2 so much

 

[Almighty Space Duck]

GW1 also pioneered a ton of ideas that other companies would go on to develop and run with. It's just such a shame that its overall gameplay system was something that studios moved away from in the wake of ever-greater homogenization and simplification, because for me the sublime perfection of GW1 was just how well so many of the skills and the whole system of energy played out in PvP.

Ahh the PvP. I remember there being some program where you could make team builds for PvP and export the string so players could easily load them. We used to spend hours coming up with dumb comps and trying them out in Heroes Ascent and Guild vs Guild for shits and giggles.

We were always so proud to see our guilds name come up in those global announcements when we would be on a roll in HA.

Synchronised /jump to find out when we needed to press a skill for a spike. Such good times.

Edit-
The shittalking in Alliance Battle too. Not that you’d get away with any of that nowadays. You’d always gg after GvG and HA but never AB.

 

[ZMOT]

Also, due to the game’s nature, it isn’t necessary to follow the pozzed story or even play it in order, and if you prefer the pvp/wvw you can effectively avoid it completely. Personally, I never finished the End of Dragons story because I got bored, but I enjoy the other expansion perks like skiffs and elite specs and new maps to play on and fly my griffon in.

problem is story and setting is the framework for a game, if I just wanted to run and grind through fancy fantasy maps I can pick any run-of-the-mill korea/chink grinder which will probably look better, run better, and be less annoying whenever I have to interact with NPCs and it's "community".

Slight necro, but I gotta ask; is it worth getting back into GW2 these days? I've still got my old account, and a friend of mine was considering getting the game and its expansions, but with all of the faggot shit that's been shoved in, we really aren't too sure.

depends what you want from it. it's the same I'd say to people asking about WoW classic, figure out why you wanna play it, then go from there. you probably can have fun with it, just like hooking up again with your highschool sweetheart 10 years later and then finding her golden shower gangbang onlyfans, so just be ready it will shit all over your fond memories...

 

[Herr Flick]

problem is story and setting is the framework for a game, if I just wanted to run and grind through fancy fantasy maps I can pick any run-of-the-mill korea/chink grinder which will probably look better, run better, and be less annoying whenever I have to interact with NPCs and it's "community".

If that’s what is important to you, sure. I personally play GW2 for other reasons, like the mount system that’s spawned its own communities of racers and stunt fliers. I do like a game with story, but MMOs as a genre are pretty universally disappointing in this regard.

That said, the setting stands well on its own. It’s large and interesting enough to encourage you to physically explore it, and there’s many bits of worldbuilding story in event chains that build out the lore of a given place and the things that have happened (or are happening) there. You can level a character to 80 without ever stepping foot in the story but still learn a lot about the world, how it works, and its major events/inhabitants, just from how the maps present through their stories as you explore them.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

depends what you want from it. it's the same I'd say to people asking about WoW classic, figure out why you wanna play it, then go from there. you probably can have fun with it, just like hooking up again with your highschool sweetheart 10 years later and then finding her golden shower gangbang onlyfans, so just be ready it will shit all over your fond memories...

If that’s what is important to you, sure. I personally play GW2 for other reasons, like the mount system that’s spawned its own communities of racers and stunt fliers. I do like a game with story, but MMOs as a genre are pretty universally disappointing in this regard.

That said, the setting stands well on its own. It’s large and interesting enough to encourage you to physically explore it, and there’s many bits of worldbuilding story in event chains that build out the lore of a given place and the things that have happened (or are happening) there. You can level a character to 80 without ever stepping foot in the story but still learn a lot about the world, how it works, and its major events/inhabitants, just from how the maps present through their stories as you explore them.

I admit, some of the main reasons why I was wanting to jump back on was a combination of nostalgia and maybe looking for some decent entertainment value; I already ran through the story previously, but I never really did do much in the way of exploration back then, so part of me was wondering if it would be worth it just for that. There's also that new expansion coming out; dunno how to feel about it, given how hard Icebrood and EoD shit the bed, but it's something.

The other main reason was for my friend; he was interested in picking the game up, since the base game was free and he was at least showing some interest in the expansions for the extra content - I don't think he's really that big on the story, mind - and I figured it would be a fun time sink for both of us, with me making a new character to run through the game with him. I would have to go through the story again, though...

 

[Mooger Meng]

The other main reason was for my friend; he was interested in picking the game up, since the base game was free and he was at least showing some interest in the expansions for the extra content - I don't think he's really that big on the story, mind - and I figured it would be a fun time sink for both of us, with me making a new character to run through the game with him. I would have to go through the story again, though...

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.

 

[ShitLurker]

TL: DR The Icebrood and Bangar are supposed to represent the American Right and Donald Trump, respectively, and the devs most certainly want you to kill them all off.

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.

 

[Fag Albert]

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.

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.

 

[ZMOT]

I admit, some of the main reasons why I was wanting to jump back on was a combination of nostalgia and maybe looking for some decent entertainment value; I already ran through the story previously, but I never really did do much in the way of exploration back then, so part of me was wondering if it would be worth it just for that. There's also that new expansion coming out; dunno how to feel about it, given how hard Icebrood and EoD shit the bed, but it's something.

The other main reason was for my friend; he was interested in picking the game up, since the base game was free and he was at least showing some interest in the expansions for the extra content - I don't think he's really that big on the story, mind - and I figured it would be a fun time sink for both of us, with me making a new character to run through the game with him. I would have to go through the story again, though...

call me a shill, but tbh if you both just have the MMO itch and want something to play together for cheap, might as well grab ESO. it's free but base + morrowind is like 6 bucks and then buy2play (only real inconvenience is you can't go full klepto with crafting shit and have half the bank space without sub), but even without that can't do anything wrong for that price.
imho after the revamp the first year it's also more of a successor to GW1 than GW2 ever was (someone will probably disagree), but gearcap and deterministic loot on top of that (only RNG is in which order you get pieces) means you're not suffering the same skinner box shit other MMOs do to keep people paying and chasing ever growing numbers, which was always GW1's strong point. you can take a break and still be somewhat competitive later, and there's still years old content in the game that gives people trouble.

bonus is hardly any woke shit (and when actually done in a way it makes at least sense and fits the world), no gay fairy artstyle like GW2 and story (if you care about that) actually holds up for most of the game. I mean not many games these days put books about racist torture sessions or quests featuring getting raped by gods (heavily implied) into their game...