Guild Wars 2 Review, 10.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

When I first saw Guild Wars 2 at the Penny Arcade Expo in 2010, I was astonished that ArenaNet was seriously trying to make this game–A game that felt so much like World of Warcraft that I was clearing the demo with muscle memory. At the same time, however, the game itself was fantastic, even in a pre-alpha state. Fast forward a year, as Angry Joe and I had the pleasure of taking on a monstrosity of a dragon now known in the aforementioned MMORPG as Tequatl the Sunless before the huddled masses on the first day even set foot on the floor. It was truly an experience to behold, as while my Asuran Engineer rattled around with a rifle larger than he was, he also had access to a flamethrower. I spent the next 10 minutes waddling around the swamp, setting things on fire with an almost manic glee.

During the next year, my Guild Wars 2 excitement waned with the release of The Old Republic and my absolutely unhealthy addiction to League of Legends. Closer to launch, I didn’t really know what to expect as to keep myself interested. That’s not to say that I didn’t keep tabs on the title, noting that the MMO centered around its PvP aspect with an interesting take on gameplay, skill gain, and exploration.

When I logged in on the 25^th of August, I knew that there was a little more to it than that.

250 years have passed since the defeat of the Great Destroyer at the hands of the Deldrimor Dwarves, the Norn, the Asurans, and the Humans in the original Guild Wars title.  While many thought that the defeat of the arch nemesis of the Dwarven God would seal peace for the moment, it only began as a cascade for the real threat: The Elder Dragons. In fact, the Great Destroyer had partially succeeded in his plan in waking his master, the elder dragon known as Primordius. While the great beast only stirred, it still caused the Asurans to be driven from their subterranean home, and caused the Dwarves to sacrifice their mortality to become creatures of stone, dedicated to eternally fighting the minions of the dragon in the depths of Tyria.

Over the next few centuries, many unsettling events occurred. The Charr, still on the warpath, take the human settlement of Ascalon City, only to forgo it as the Foefire, a clash of magic from both Human and Charr, wiped out the bipedal beasts and resurrected the fallen humans to forever protect the land. Instead of prodding further into eastern human lands, the Charr establish a city of their own, and eventually rebelled against the gods that granted them power. The humans, after centuries of fleeing from threats like the Charr and the Centaurs, will make their last stand in the northeastern plains of Kryta if worse comes to worse. The Sylvari, a race of plant-like beings, began to appear near the Tarnished Coast, close to the Rata Sum, the new capital city of the Asurans, seemingly out of nowhere.

YOU STEPPED IN THE WRONG NEIGHBORHOOD, MOTHAFUCKA!

But this all pales in comparison to the awakening of the Elder dragons. Primordius, the dragon of the flames, awakened and drove the under-dwelling races out. In the icy realm of Frostgorge Sound, Jormag, the dragon of ice, awakened, driving the Norn, the bear-like Kodan, and the Quaggan of the north, out of the mountainous range. Zhaitan, the dragon of undeath, awakened under the sunken human continent of Orr, driving the land mass back to the surface and enthralled the dead Orrian humans to life to wage war against the races along the southern coast. Kralkatorrik, the dragon of the crystals, awoke and left its mark upon Ascalon, its golden breath corrupting everything that was organic, and left a portion of the once human homeland in a darkened crystalline biome. Five years after Kralkatorrik’s awakening, your character begins his or her story in the land of Tyria.

Your character can be one of the five major races (Human, Charr, Sylvari, Asuran, or Norn) and one of eight classes (Guardian, Warrior, Ranger, Thief, Engineer, Necromancer, Elementalist, Mesmer). After a fair amount of body customization options for your character, you are given a few multiple choice options to pave the beginning of the road of your character’s story, like a unique piece of equipment, your starting disposition towards others, and the settings and events for your first two major quest lines.

The Engineer: Come for the superpowered turrets, stay for the flamethrower!

The story itself is interesting as the initial premise of each race starts out strong and when you start to feel that the plot itself is starting to lose steam, you are thrust into a decision of how the quest should play out. A player would have to put in hundreds of hours to see every branch of every quest for every race, if not more. However, the quests themselves are somewhat of a problem, as the first two major storylines, one of your race’s troubles, and one that you will choose early on, end very abruptly with some of them leaving some very large loose ends hanging without resolution and characters that were incredibly helpful never appear again. Because, you know, elder dragons the size of cities aren’t THAT much of a big deal.

One of the biggest features of Guild Wars 2 pre-release was its combat system, and while I was always skeptical of its predecessor’s take on combat abilities, the heir to the throne does incredibly well incorporating ten hotkeys into combat. Five skills are governed by the weapon you have equipped, which you will learn skills for as you gain experience from enemies, three for your main hand weapon which include swords, maces, axes, two for the offhand items like magical foci and daggers, and the full five total for two handed weapons like greatswords, spears and rifles.

Elementalist forged weapons can be used by all classes and are some seriously badass tools of mayhem.

Each class can only wield certain weapons, but each weapon fits well with the classes that I had the chance to play extensively. Most classes, but not all, can learn to swap weapons on the fly, allowing for the convenience to deal with changing situations in the middle of combat or to extend damage. A good example would be a Warrior switching from his wide-slashing greatsword to a pair of axes to deal more damage to a tight cluster of foes while the greatsword’s skills are on cooldown. The other five skill slots that are given to you progressively over your leveling career are your utility slots. These abilities are earned through skill points gained either by leveling up or through map exploration and focus on granting utility, crowd control, indirect forms of damage, or damage over time effects, with one hotkey slot dedicated to self-healing.

This self-healing slot is a vital point to make about ye olde role trinity of MMORPG’s in the past and how they apply to Guild Wars 2. While the roles of Tank, DPS, and healer technically exist, Guild Wars 2 blurs the lines when it comes to group situations both in dungeons and when dealing with world events. There are very few classes that can actually heal other classes, and those skills either have incredibly high cooldowns, low healing, or regeneration over time effects. While you are able to quickly regenerate while at low health, these moments can be separated far and in between actual battles.