A Brief Love Letter to GUILD WARS to Celebrate Its 10th Anniversary
Guild Wars 2 recently had its 10th birthday! The MMORPG celebrated with the addition of Twitch Drops and a launch on Steam. Sadly, I wasn’t playing the game until 2013 or 2014 and so I don’t have a 10-year old character, but I still love this game and wanted to take a moment to share some of the reasons why I love Guild Wars 2 in honor of this milestone. If you play the game, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments and if you haven’t played it yet, I recommend you check it out.
Low Barrier of Entry
It is not hard to get into Guild Wars 2. For the last few years there’s been a free version of the game which has the core story and has pretty low limitations. This is perfect for giving it a try and seeing if you enjoy it. You can hop in, make a character, get a taste for the mechanics and story, and then decide. If you decide to get more into the game, you can purchase the expansions which will give you a ton of additional story content, additional mechanics like mounts, additional character slots, and much more. You can grab all 3 expansions for $49.99 and there’s no subscription fee unlike other MMOs and so you don’t have to worry about a constant drain on your bank account. This is what initially drew me to the game honestly. An MMO without a subscription plan? Sounds great!
In keeping with the low barrier of entry, Guild Wars 2 is not pay-to-win. Yes, there are in-game purchases you can make. For the most part, these are for cosmetic items like skins for your weapons, armor, and mounts. There are some things you can purchase with Gems (the in-game currency purchased with real money) that help make the game nicer like unbreakable gathering tools for crafting materials or gathering nodes for your home instance, but these are just quality of life items and are not needed to do well. I do want to note that Gold can be converted into Gems and vice versa so if you’re good at grinding Gold you can get access to all these items. It’s also true that you can buy Gems, convert them to Gold, and then buy powerful items, but it is not a necessity.
If that’s not enough, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t require a gaming computer to play either. The game was designed to run on machines 10 years ago after all. Yes, some expansions have built on this and require a bit more oomph, but it still doesn’t require much to play the game on the lowest settings. I can play it on a laptop with an integrated graphics card.
Fantastic Growing Story
Guild Wars 2 has an incredible story. The base game is great and is complete. However, the story then expands through the Living World chapters, Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire, Icebrood Saga, and most recently End of Dragons. Each expansion has a solid start and end that build upon each other in fantastic ways. Also, if you played the original Guild Wars, there’s always a ton of little things thrown in for you to catch and enjoy. Throughout the game’s stories, you’ll have to face several dragons, confront a god, and even come back from the dead.
Easy to Play Casually
I am a casual gamer. I have a lot of plates to juggle and don’t always have time to login daily or sometimes even weekly into a game. There have been times I’ve taken months-long breaks for one reason or another. However, it’s quick and easy for me to jump into Guild Wars 2. Many other MMOs have a million skills that you can easily spread across 4+ large quickbars and I hate returning to those games because it takes me 30+ minutes just to remind myself what my character can do. In Guild Wars 2, you get 1 quickbar with 10 skills. There are a few additional things to remember based on the class you’re playing, but it’s significantly fewer items than many more traditional games in the genre. I can be off the game for a few months and after about 10 minutes refreshing myself on my skills, I’m back in the action.
It Looks Gorgeous
Guild Wars 2 is a fantastic looking game. No, it doesn’t look like a current AAA game, but it holds up very well after 10 years. In the last year, the team at ArenaNet implemented support for DX11 which definitely helps it out a lot in the modern era. However, if you have a powerful machine and can run it on High, the game just looks incredible and sometimes it’s fun to just walk around and look at the world. The game has Vista points for map completion that do a 360-degree view of a location and sometimes it’s great to just watch that brief video.
So Much More
There’s so much I haven’t touched on. I love the mount system. Gliders are fantastic. Masteries are a great post-game system of character growth. The community is so helpful and fantastic overall. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. Of course, if you’re not a fan of PvE, there is PvP and even World vs World but I have very little experience in those areas so I didn’t feel comfortable talking about them. But that’s another great aspect. You can pick and choose what content to participate in. I don’t have to play PvP or WvW. I can stick with PvE and story. Give the game a try if you haven’t already and if you have, let’s continue to enjoy Tyria together.