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Thanks for all your work on this LP. I never got out of the starting areas in guild wars but always loved the art and music. Finishing reading this recently got me back into GW2 and I'm still tempted to give GW1 another shot some day.
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Aug 11, 2014 19:41
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bagrada posted:Thanks for all your work on this LP. I never got out of the starting areas in guild wars but always loved the art and music. Finishing reading this recently got me back into GW2 and I'm still tempted to give GW1 another shot some day. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a lot of fun in both games!
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Aug 11, 2014 19:50
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Thanks for this Apehawk. Excellent LP.
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Aug 17, 2014 15:31
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I don't know if the archives are fixed yet or not so I'm bumping until it does.
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Oct 16, 2014 23:20
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Should post when you begin the Guild Wars 2 LP 
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Oct 16, 2014 23:51
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In my mind still the most perfect MMO ever made, it's a shame GW2 didn't live up to its legacy. I think last time I logged in to GW1 to see how much of my life it had eaten up over all three campaigns, multiple characters, multiple playthroughs, taking breaks from it and coming back, the total playtime was close to a solid month or more, an absolutely awesome addiction.
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Oct 17, 2014 00:23
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This LP is a great record of the game, I hope it will be archived properly.
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Oct 17, 2014 00:25
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PurpleXVI posted:In my mind still the most perfect MMO ever made, it's a shame GW2 didn't live up to its legacy. In what way? Maybe its just a difference of opinion, but I think GW2 follows the first game exceptionally. If Ape does a similarly fantastic job LPing it as he did this one, I'm eagerly looking forward to it.
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Oct 17, 2014 04:50
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Geshtal posted:In what way? Maybe its just a difference of opinion, but I think GW2 follows the first game exceptionally. If Ape does a similarly fantastic job LPing it as he did this one, I'm eagerly looking forward to it. Well, it's obviously subjective, but I was extremely a non-fan of the "open world" approach with respawning enemies, skills being DIRECTLY tied to weapons and having less freedom to manage my skill bar. The more action-y gameplay also did nothing for me. I tried it in the later stages of the beta and after an hour or so of playing it just failed to move me at all. I was also not a fan of literally having to grind up my weapon skills alongside everything else to unlock skills. Like, it feels like rather than moving ahead with GW1's unique traits, instanced locations, freedom of customization(dual-classing was lost, for instance), extremely narrow level/gear range and such, I feel like they instead took a page from other, bigger MMO's. And since I pretty much loathe every other MMO, that was a step back to me. Obviously if someone LIKES those things, then it'd be a step up for them. Also ArenaNet seems to be very delusional about how competent storytellers they are, the storytelling in the first GW and its expansions was mediocre-to-fanfic-level-dire(GW1 lived entirely on the strength of its art direction and gameplay, to me. The dialogue and plot's only worth was for riffing when I played with friends), and GW2 seems to involve them failing to acknowledge any of this and plowing ahead with the same style of incredibly bad writing. It's plausible that post-beta they really revamped a lot of this and maybe lined up their entire writing staff against a wall and had them shot, but I doubt it.
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Oct 17, 2014 05:04
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PurpleXVI posted:Well, it's obviously subjective, but I was extremely a non-fan of the "open world" approach with respawning enemies, skills being DIRECTLY tied to weapons and having less freedom to manage my skill bar. The more action-y gameplay also did nothing for me. I tried it in the later stages of the beta and after an hour or so of playing it just failed to move me at all. I was also not a fan of literally having to grind up my weapon skills alongside everything else to unlock skills. While I can share some irritation with the sometimes ridiculously quick respawn times on enemies, its an easy trade-off for what they did right with the open world. Instances were great for GW1 because it side-stepped the griefing issues so many other MMOs have. But it really is a remarkable achievement in GW2 that they not only switched to open world (like other MMOs) but in such a way that there is no competition between players and it is a good thing when other players wander over (most certainly NOT like other MMOs). The loss of dual-classing is irrelevant since any class can do any function at least moderately well. And with the aforementioned improved open world, it helps further encourage player cooperation, either in formal or informal groups. The only downside I've seen is some of the world bosses don't scale well to large groups (i.e., +25) making them a little too easy, but some of that has slowly been addressed. I'll even argue in favor of the weapons skills (slow as it may be to unlock some, particularly on a new character) because it seems to allow you to do far more with fewer skills. And that is very much a good thing compared to GW1's literal hundreds of skills; which if you were not a power-gamer and plugged into the current meta, then you'd never keep up on the "best" skills or changes. Not sure what you mean about narrow gear range, unless it was a beta thing. There is one, but it's always easy to find level appropriate gear and recent updates have decupled it from skins anyways. Plus the stat difference in gear levels is insignificant compared to character level (which is up or down adjusted by zone anyways) and player skill. And even if I were 100% wrong on all of these, it'd still be worth it for WvW alone. Totally with you on the writing though. And whoever thought the concept of extremely limited Living Story availability, let alone the writing "quality", did not earn their paycheck at all. It's... slowly improving. Somewhat. And if season one content is ever re-visitable for missed rewards that would be a step in the right direction.
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Oct 17, 2014 06:57
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I have come around to Guild Wars 2. I don't believe it is truly better then when GW1 came out, but it is still fairly fun. It just is not nearly as tactical as GW1 was. Everywhere from the how they handled equipment to the skill selection. It feels more like you are controlling a MOBA character. Still it can be fun to just wander the world and do all the random event quest lines. Some of them tell so fairly neat little side story's that no other MMO does. The art is also still very pretty.
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Oct 17, 2014 08:11
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Geshtal posted:Totally with you on the writing though. And whoever thought the concept of extremely limited Living Story availability, let alone the writing "quality", did not earn their paycheck at all. It's... slowly improving. Somewhat. And if season one content is ever re-visitable for missed rewards that would be a step in the right direction.
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Oct 17, 2014 09:51
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Incoherence posted:For a game with so much of it, GW2's voice acting is dire. Also it bothered me that halfway through the Personal Story it's suddenly hijacked by a random jerk who 4 of the 5 races have never met before who everyone suddenly agrees is the True Hero. And then they rip off one of the worst raids in WoW history. Can't be as bad as the end of Nightfall's campaign where Commander Does gently caress All But loving Up shows up and ganks the suddenly-available divine portfolio before the party can put it up for auction to all interested parties and/or split it among themselves. Geshtal: I'm not so concerned with "griefing," really, but the thing is that I'm really not all that down for playing with random pubbies in most games. I simply don't trust them to be fun, entertaining or competent. GW1 pleased me pretty well on that, where I'd never be stuck with anyone unless I intentionally joined up with them, meaning I could always decide if I wanted to play alone(which the heroes and henchmen made DELIGHTFULLY feasible), with friends or, on rare occasions, with random people I'd hit it off with in the public areas. And yeah, it's arguable that in that case, I'm not really looking for an MMO in the common sense, but more a traditional game with well-integrated multiplayer lobbies and that's entirely possible. It also made all of the YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE OUT SAVING THE WORLD-trash a bit more plausible when I wasn't seeing 500 CHOSEN ONES running alongside me solving the exact same quests. Outside of the TOP-TIER ULTRA HARDCORE challenges like the Underworld or the like, I also never felt particularly pressured into "having to keep up with meta" either in PvP or PvE, though. It always felt like as long as you actually read what the skills did and thought a bit about synergy, it was pretty possible to stay competitive with even the goofiest builds, and the class crossovers made for some FUN options, too, like a primary-Ranger focusing on melee, using Ranger stances to dodge and Expertise to almost-negate energy costs. I might not have used the "best" options, probably, but the wide range of choice meant that I was always using options that were fun to me.
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Oct 17, 2014 10:36
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PurpleXVI posted:Geshtal: I'm not so concerned with "griefing," really, but the thing is that I'm really not all that down for playing with random pubbies in most games. I simply don't trust them to be fun, entertaining or competent. GW1 pleased me pretty well on that, where I'd never be stuck with anyone unless I intentionally joined up with them, meaning I could always decide if I wanted to play alone(which the heroes and henchmen made DELIGHTFULLY feasible), with friends or, on rare occasions, with random people I'd hit it off with in the public areas. And yeah, it's arguable that in that case, I'm not really looking for an MMO in the common sense, but more a traditional game with well-integrated multiplayer lobbies and that's entirely possible. Well put. And I certainly can't argue with that. Ultimately one's enjoyment is going to come down to what is actually fun to play, and that's obviously the most subjective criteria possible. One side point that I'd mention that you reminded me of, was trying to party form in GW1. Maybe I had poor luck (or was a much worse player than I gauged myself to be), but that always seemed like such a chore. Every zone was a commitment. It just became easier to play the game virtually solo; seeing other players only in hubs where they were irrelevant and quite ignorable. You're absolutely right that it is a departure in GW2's basic philosophy to nudge players together casually. PUGs become harmless at worst and fun more often than not when there is virtually nothing they can do to impede you (in normal play) either via incompetence or deliberate trolling. (And believe me, with more MMO experience than is generally socially acceptable to admit, I was as surprised as anyone to actually enjoy gaming with random players.)
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Oct 17, 2014 18:53
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If you view the games as dress-up simulators (as you should!) Guild Wars 2 is the best MMO out there, hands down.
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Oct 20, 2014 12:55
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