Guild Wars 2

OVERVIEW
Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG that focuses on exploration, dynamic events, and player freedom rather than traditional quest grinding. Instead of rushing through levels to reach endgame, the game encourages players to explore the world, participate in events, and progress at their own pace.
Overall Rating: 9/10
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WHAT GUILD WARS 2 DOES WELL
EXPLORATION
One of the strongest aspects of Guild Wars 2 is world exploration. Every map contains hidden locations, jumping puzzles, world bosses, events, and rewards that make exploring feel worthwhile.
Rating: 10/10
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COMBAT
Combat is fast-paced and rewards movement. Dodging attacks and positioning correctly are often more important than simply having better gear.
Rating: 9/10
Pros
Active combat system,
Responsive abilities,
Every profession feels unique,
Cons
Some professions have a steeper learning curve,
Large-scale battles can become visually crowded,
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LEVELING EXPERIENCE
Leveling is smooth and flexible. Players can gain experience through exploration, events, story missions, crafting, and map completion.
Rating: 9/10
Recommended Beginner Professions
NECROMANCER,
RANGER,
GUARDIAN,
These professions offer strong survivability and are easy to learn.
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ENDGAME CONTENT
Guild Wars 2 offers a wide range of activities once players reach level 80.
Available Activities
FRACTALS,
STRIKE MISSIONS,
RAIDS,
WORLD BOSSES,
META EVENTS,
WORLD VS WORLD,
STRUCTURED PvP,
Rating: 9/10
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THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE PLAYING
DO
Complete dynamic events,
Explore every map,
Unlock waypoints,
Follow your personal story,
Save gold for level 80,
DON’T
Rush to endgame,
Buy expensive leveling gear,
Ignore dodge rolls,
Hoard unnecessary items,
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GEAR PROGRESSION
LEVEL 1–80
Focus on:
POWER
PRECISION
VITALITY
Do not worry about perfect builds while leveling.
LEVEL 80
Progress toward:
EXOTIC GEAR → Entry-level endgame
ASCENDED GEAR → Long-term progression
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GOLD MANAGEMENT
Guild Wars 2 is generous with rewards, but smart gold management makes progression easier.
Recommended
Salvage unwanted gear,
Deposit materials regularly,
Sell valuable items on the Trading Post,
Save gold for endgame goals,
Avoid
Frequent gear purchases while leveling,
Spending gold on unnecessary upgrades,
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FINAL VERDICT
STRENGTHS
✔ Excellent exploration
✔ Engaging combat
✔ No mandatory gear treadmill
✔ Strong open-world content
✔ Beginner-friendly progression
✔ Respectful of player time
WEAKNESSES
✖ Some systems can feel overwhelming at first
✖ Endgame builds require research
✖ Large battles can become visually cluttered
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FINAL SCORE
GUILD WARS 2 — 9/10
A highly polished MMORPG that rewards exploration, encourages player freedom, and remains one of the best choices for both casual and dedicated MMO players. If you enjoy discovering new areas, participating in large-scale events, and progressing without excessive grinding, GUILD WARS 2 is easy to recommend.

If you play this game, you need to know that the default settings are genuinely terrible. Change these right away to save your sanity:
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• Turn on "Show All Usable Object Names": By default, the game hides item names. Turning this on lets you see hidden or hard to see quest items, collection coins, and chests glowing with text from far away.
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• Change Ground Targeting to "Fast with Range Indicator", or "Instant": This cuts out the clunky double-clicking for ground spells and makes combat feel incredibly fluid.
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• Fusing your Inventory: Open your inventory, click the gear icon, and select "Hide Bags." This turns your inventory into one continuous, clean block instead of a disjointed mess of individual grids.
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You can also turn the game into a First or Third-Person Shooter:
Hit Escape -> Options -> Keybinds, and set a key for “Toggle Action Camera.” Combine this with disabling camera shake and enabling first-person zoom, and the game completely changes how it plays.
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Note on camera view: Third-person plays significantly better than first-person here. Unlike games like ESO, GW2 doesn’t actually show your weapon or hands on-screen when you use skills in first-person, which can feel a bit odd, like my deadeye sniper is sneezing out sniper shots. Stick to third-person action camera for the best combat experience.
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There are a ton more UI optimizations to make, but these developers really need to update their defaults. Strongly recommend the game, just fix the settings first!
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Some Bonus Gameplay Tips:
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• Hunt Yellow Mobs for 4x XP: Enemies / Neutral NPCs not killed for a long time give massive bonus XP. Turning on "Show ALL NPCs" reveals neutral yellow names; players often skip these, leaving them alive long enough to give 2k to 4k+ bonus XP chunks, zone depending. (Stack food, utility sharpening stones, and boosters to make this method incredible).
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• Use Combo Fields for Free Effects: If a skill says "Combo Field," drop it down, then use a "Combo Finisher" inside it—like a Daredevil flipping through a smoke field to gain instant stealth for an out-of-stealth knockdown hit.

Great MMO. Know what expansions you need to save yourself some money. Core free game is fast to level through, taking me roughly 3 days to hit max level. More casual players could easily still do it over the course of a week. Unfortunately there is a lot of prep work you need to do once you hit 80 before you can really start doing what you want, but once you get that out of the way the game really does open up unlike any other MMO with tons of options to do.

My opinion on expansions and their worth:

1. Heart of Thorns - Arguably the best maps and group content but otherwise only needed if the elite spec you want to play is locked behind it.

2. Path of Fire. - Required for the mounts and honestly unlocking them is really fun.

3. End of Dragons - If you skip Heart of Thorns then this is a must buy for the glider. You dont get the masteries but you don't need them. Jade bot is a nice extra. If you're tight on money choose this or Heart of Thorns depending on which elite specs you want access to.

4. Secrets of the Obscure - Potentially needed if the build you want to play requires the extra weapon unlocks. Great because it gives you access to a faster way to get the most important mount in the Skyscale. If you're okay with it taking way longer to get Skyscale and you don't need the extra weapon then skip.

5. Janthir Wilds - The spear is a fantastic weapon on most specs. Also gives you access to player housing if that is important to you. Otherwise very skip-able.

My experience so far in Guild Wars 2.
Guild Wars can be overwhelming once you hit level 80 but if you pick a couple of goals to work towards its actually quite refreshing. There is no gear treadmill in Guild Wars which effectively allows players the freedom of doing whatever activity they actually enjoy doing without pressure to "gear up". I felt a FOMO a total of ZERO times so far in the X hours I've played. There is no RUSH to end game like other certain games in the same genre. The end game is pick your poison.
One of the biggest draws to the game for me is the open world in particular - meta events. These events attract a large amount of players all committed towards a common goal, usually a boss. The open world content is top shelf to say the least which attributes to the game feeling very much "alive". That's just one of the many elements of Guild Wars 2 that players can participate in, there are also fractals ( mini dungeons ), Raids, Strikes, PVP, World V World, World Bosses, Mount collection, Achievment hunting and legendary gear crafting to name a few. I probably missed some stuff.
Some things to note:
- This is not a theme park MMORPG, meaning all the old expansions and zones are still active and have players running around doing all sorts of things. Old content = still relevant.
- If you don't like the story then getting through the MSQ can be a drag. With unskippable dialogue it can be an absolute ball drag at times.
- You can play for free but also remember as F2P you are gated out of a tremendous amount of content which they have strategically placed behind, imo, fair pay walls. Keep a look out for sales.
- Is Guild Wars Pay to Win?
No, but it is pay for convenience, as you can buy gold directly from the cash shop.
- The GW2 wiki is your friend.
- There is no subscription fee.
- Get yourself a good mount as one of your first priorities ( I got Skyscale ). It is a necesary quality of life improvement that will impact your whole playing experience. I'm constantly saying to myself " Thank *&^% I've got Skyscale."
Thanks for reading,

If you're going to play Guild Wars 2, I would recommend logging in via an ArenaNet account instead of the Steam login. Change the game properties under Launch to "-provider Portal" without the quotes and using an uppercase P. You get (according to the web) full access to exclusive bundles, sales, and payment options (e.g., gem cards from retailers like Amazon). Cheaper for devs (no 30% Steam cut). Cheaper in-game purchases for you, I believe. Also, support will go through to the official team rather than being mixed in with Steam who have no control over what happens inside of the game. Now about the game itself, I feel that the game is very premium for what you are getting. Mixed tab target/action combat, not as strict as World of Warcraft. The base game is free with no subscription but if you hit level 10 and want to keep your mount you will have to spend 30 USD for the first 2 expansions (they are bundled as a package). What you are getting for that price is about 140 hours of content including the base game (if you are grinding and rushing through the story, skipping dialogue). I have calculated this by using the web. Thanks for reading, enjoy your stay.

Having logged over 3000 hours on my main (non-steam) account thus far I would have to say that Guild Wars has been a boon and a curse over the past 10+ years. Here is the recap:
First off I was delighted when it got released on Steam as well - a second wind for the game and a new playerbase able to visit tyria (& experience the wonderful soundtrack - kudos to the composers!)
Investment 1: From a money perspective -> well-spent. No subscription. Buy the base game+add-ons and you get hundreds of hours of content. Want to take a break? No problem, return in a few months and you will see many improvements (without paying a dime during the time you were gone - devs are doing a good job in that regard)
The map design has overall always been very nice and I really appreciate the paint-brush aesthetics utilized in all parts of the game. The concepts and artwork in general is beautiful (look it up online)
As with many MMORPGS, it distracts you just fine from the everyday stressors of life. Maybe too much at times. Or it stresses you in other ways. If I am tired of chores in real life, Guild Wars presents me with new chores and new to do lists... makes you finish collections, achievements of all kinds & play the story chapters more often than you want to (depending on the expansion, even playing it once could be considered one too many). At least the underlying lore was always interesting.
The end-game. Well... instead of buying new clothes in real life, you hunt for skins in the game. 'Fashion Wars'. Also, instead of going to the convenience store you play 'Convenience Wars' and pay hundreds of gold for things just to have them easily available on all the other characters as well (even if you hardly play them, you start to 'need it, just in case..'). So you keep grinding... for things you wanted yesterday, or things you might want to want at some point... which brings me to:
Investment 2: From a time-perspective -> your results may vary. I know of guys who study the (trading) market and have excel sheets - this is where I draw the line. I already have an office job.
9/10 escape reality wars, 9/10 fashion wars, 8/10 sunk cost fallacy wars, 5/10 story wars, 10/10 soundtrack wars
Averaging at 8.2 - so. yeah. recommended

Okay look, I've played WoW for 20 years. To be fair, I did play GW2 back when it released and was on Arena Net servers only for a few months and was underwhelmed. I was bored just doing M+ in WoW and Legion Remix might be fun, but the content gating was not super interesting to me right now. I decided to pick GW2 back up because of the Autumn Sale and boy let me tell you I am glad I did.

Getting back into the world was easy enough but a bit overwhelming due to the vastness of the game. If you enjoy MMO's, this feels so much larger, lived in and man it's gorgeous! The maps, associated content, masteries, special events are fantastic. Hours of content in each zone, great stories, great side quests, so many world events its insane, you can customize almost everything in the game- I was so surprised and awestruck!

I've now spent more time (and money in the Trading Post haha) in GW2 over the past 2-ish weeks (91 hours at the time I'm writing this) than I have in WoW in the last 3 months. If you're a fan of MMO's you will not be let down. I'm so happy that the World is so large and content rich. Big bonus - older content you do still is relevant to player power and economy, and mounts can be recolored WHAT!

NOTE: I write this from a PvE experience only. I have not had an opportunity to play the PVP content at all so I cannot remark on the state of that play type.

_If you're on the fence - the base game is F2P - try it.. then get immersed and prepare to have one of the better MMO experiences ever!