There’s really something magical about actually stumbling across a jumping puzzle that you didn’t know was there. You just don’t expect that sort of thing to happen in an MMO.
Is there any MMO that rivals Guild Wars 2 in terms of exploration? Honest question.
-Tom
I don’t know of any MMO that rewards exploration within its systems as much as GW2. To compare in terms of immersion, I find it difficult, because of qualitative differences in what I have found fun and interesting in various eras of my gaming life.
edit: I loved exploring in Vanilla WoW and even more so in Vanguard. Early UO was pretty much ONLY exploration. In GW2, I’m driven or channeled by the game mechanics to explore so I’m looped back into the main game progression system, rather than stepping out for its own sake.
Agreed, GW2 does a great job of making exploration fun and rewarding. I always loved finding some random cave and having it open up into a jumping puzzle. As for the MMO that still holds the top place in my heart for just running around and exploring, that’s always going to be Everquest. I played a Rogue and had pretty much free reign over getting around. There are just so many unique zones to see, I haven’t played an mmo yet that matches it.
Gedd
6564
I didn’t spend a lot of time with it and am by no means an expert, but I seem to recall having some cool moments in Wildstar just exploring things. I remember stumbling across a cave entrance that you had to eat a mushroom to get through (a la Alice in Wonderland) and inside was something. Nothing pointed me there, I just found it while jumping around a waterfall. One of the paths is geared more towards explorers as well.
It still pales compared to Guild Wars 2. I had so many cool experiences just running around the environment trying to find things and places that were off the beaten path.
On that note, I like the little map-assist arrow in the top-right corner that points you to the nearest unexplored area or vista or waypoint. It’s a little hand-holdy, but if I’m already mostly done with a zone, I like being able to find those last few areas I might have otherwise missed. I was in a zone I’d explored a dozen times, and I found a completely new cave that led to a settlement I had never seen before.
Also, what’s with these daily log-in rewards?? Week 1, you get an item to gain a level. Week 2, two levels, and so on until Week 4 where you get four levels to add to your character (before the whole thing resets again). It’s like they WANT me to get to 80!
And/or to play alts, because part of the awesomeness of Guild Wars 2 is how distinct the classes are without having to resort to the usual tank/healer/DPS paradigm.
-Tom
True enough. I don’t have a character at 80 yet, so I’m focusing my efforts on my main to level him up. I can see other people bypassing their main (who they’re obviously playing already), and using experience scrolls to level up alts. Either way, it’s an embarrassment of riches.
I’m warming to my hunter, especially now that I’ve found a large, two-handed sword and can go all rarrrgh! on creatures. Also, I have replaced my dog plant with a fairly large spider after I climbed to the top of some beanstalk thingy. Like Tom said, awesome to find these climbing puzzles and discover a completely new area you didn’t realise was there.
I’m finding warrior to be really fun to play so far (level 42). It helps that they’re way OP compared to my main, a thief…I have very little trouble with groups or veteran mobs. I’m so used to spending half of my time waiting for a revive or running back from the nearest rez point that I really didn’t know there was another way to play this game.
A look at Masteries and the jungle.
“What we’ve really done is try to make a system that works a little bit more like what we’ve seen in console games like Metroid or Zelda where the progression systems feel a little more natural, feel a little more integrated with the environment and content and allow you to interact with the world around you,” explains Cartwright of the feature’s inspirations. “We feel like there’s a little bit more satisfaction to that style of progression rather than a nice curve that’s slowly going up as you’re levelling and creatures are getting more difficult.”
“With combat, it’ll be more like a reveal like you might see in a game like Zelda where there’s a feeling like wow, I got this tool and now I remember when I was trying to fight this creature before I couldn’t get past this one ability; this tool clearly tells me this is the key to that lock and now I’m going to open it,” adds Mastery design lead Crystin Cox. “That feeling is one of the things we’re really going: now I have more power, not because a number went up but because I can actually do this thing.”
Season two spoiler warning (for the link, not this post):
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/journey-into-the-heart-of-maguuma-in-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns/
Adventures sound pretty cool, and I really want to hear more about this challenging group content stuff. I’m a little disappointed that they seem to have given up on new dungeons and fractals, but I’m on board if they can make enough interesting repeatable endgame content that isn’t inside of an instance.
Thanks for the link! That all sounds pretty incredible. Agreed about the de-emphasized dungeons, and I wish they would come up with solo dungeons. That would be a lot of fun to explore.
I really didn’t need something else to throw money at, but it certainly sounds like this is going to be the case.
New shit has come to light.
So you need masteries to get to some of the new stuff and also do some Arkham City style gliding around the jungle. There is a mastery track for the expansion and a mastery track for the original game but I’m still not sure what the masteries for the base game are going to do. They keep saying things like “master abilities to defeat champions”, but I don’t think they’re actually giving us new skills and stuff, right? So is it just “now you do 5% more damage to jungle champions?”
Maybe we’ll learn more tomorrow. They are livestreaming a preview of the jungle and masteries (with actual gameplay, woo) tomorrow at 3PM EST on twitch.
Edit: Also, they actually mentioned fractals. They didn’t promise anything new, but it’s nice to know they remember fractals are a thing.
Double edit: The livestream tomorrow will be just about the jungle, not masteries.
I don’t think it’s going to be a flat damage increase. They keep talking about it being Zelda-type progression, so I absolutely think it’s going to be new abilities: either an ability that lets you deflect fire damage for N seconds, or the ability to throw a bomb in someone’s mouth, or an ability to shoot someone in the eye and leave them momentarily vulnerable. Something like that. They specifically said that they don’t want character advancement to be “Now you do X% more damage.”
So a few of us met up in game and knocked out the first two chapters of Living World Season 2 last weekend. I’d like to arrange to do the same with at least chapter 3 and perhaps even 4 this weekend. I think you do need to be level 80, but as far as I know you don’t actually have to do the chapters in order, so even if you weren’t with us last time anyone is welcome.
I’m thinking around 9-ish CST tomorrow and/or Saturday night. I can’t be 100% positive of my availability tomorrow night but I’ll probably be free by then and I’ll post if not.
Jab
6579
Could I get an invite to the Qt3 guild if there are any spots open?
So how does everyone handle gear/loot while leveling to 80? It seems the drop rate for high quality gear is really low while doing the PvE stuff. My necro is 63 right now and I think I can count on one hand the number of rare items I’ve seen from drops I could actually use. I mostly hit up the Black Lion and buy all my gear for cheap that’s always much better than what I find out in the world.
