My last MMO adventure hit a brick wall with incredible speed, shattering my MMO resolve and shaking my online mojo.

Star Wars: The Old Republic looked really nice, but... moving on. I kept reading good pre-views almost everywhere. It seems many of those pre/reviewers have moved over to Guild Wars 2. Talking this game up as the next big thing.

• Do you from your impressions playing/following the game think GW2 will do well from Day 1?

Is this going to be a keeper, a game we'll play years from now or something we'll forget the month after it is launched. I have no idea. I haven't tried the game. If someone has tried it I'd really appreciate your thoughts. Maybe I should just skip this 'generation' of MMOs, hoping for something else entirely around the next corner.

MMOs seem especially tough to develop. They're created on the basis of character development over a long period of time, and they're required to stay interesting and engaging for considerably longer than most non-MMOs.

With ANet's track record with the original Guild Wars, they've shown that they can still support the game years from release. It's been about 6 years since it released, and they still bring out new quest lines every few months or so. I haven't played the second yet, but I'm highly optimistic that the second will be awesome.

@Maystack said:

With ANet's track record with the original Guild Wars, they've shown that they can still support the game years from release. It's been about 6 years since it released, and they still bring out new quest lines every few months or so. I haven't played the second yet, but I'm highly optimistic that the second will be awesome.

The Guild Wars: Beyond content (quests and "story" that bridge between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2) aren't that great. I hope Guild Wars 2 has enough interesting content to last at least 6 months.

@zyn: I think they're pretty amazing. Gives background to the old and new characters, makes most of the mobs more challenging, and fleshes out the lore a bit more.

Don't think it will be a WoW killer, since people playing WoW are just going to keep paying for that while playing the game anyway since it's free. But it definitely looks like the best MMO since vanilla WoW. Gonna preorder the Collector's Edition as soon as it's available.

And concerning the part about MMOs being hard to develop, Arenanet REALLY know what they're doing on that point. Every time you read a dev blog from them there's a huge amount of insight into what makes an MMO good.

@Maystack said:

@zyn: I think they're pretty amazing. Gives background to the old and new characters, makes most of the mobs more challenging, and fleshes out the lore a bit more.

If you're into the lore, that's great. But for someone who isn't, like me, it's not that great.

I´d tell you, but I would have to kill you.

@Rattle618 said:

I´d tell you, but I would have to kill you.

Can I have someone attempt to revive me after? General impressions of how you think it'll do based on your high quality insight might enlighten the world depending on how well you can dodge legalities.

@Maystack said:

With ANet's track record with the original Guild Wars, they've shown that they can still support the game years from release. It's been about 6 years since it released, and they still bring out new quest lines every few months or so.

Hell, they're just now removing Windows 98/ME/2000 support in June. As of right now it's still possible to play GW1 on a Windows 98 machine.

I have no fears about the longevity of support from ANet for GW2.

I just don't get this idea that a video game has to stay relevant 6 months later. No gameplay stays rewarding 200 hours later, except for Asteroids.

I'm gonna play Guild Wars 2 for 45 days and then quit. And then when they make a patch or an expansion, I'll probably play for a couple weeks and then quit until the next one.

I played SWTOR for 2 months and quit. Super fun time. That time is over. There's other things worth doing.

@Brodehouse: good point. A lot of people seem to only care about the 'best', comments can be summed up into: Why should I play Guild Wars 2 if it's not the best mmo there ever was? Is it going to stay the best mmo for the next 5 years? If not, it's not a wow-killer and not really worth playing.

Honestly, I'm not preordering, since I want to try out, before I buy it. I'm not gonna play it competitively and couldn't care less about stuff they offer on pre-purchase. I'd rather know whether I'd enjoy the game instead of thinking, that I would. As much as appealing Guild Wars 2 look, I cannot evaluate is it worth the money.

I''m going to wait and see how good it really is but it looks interesting. The personal story and choices with real consequences sounds awesome.

@duggshammer said:

@Brodehouse: good point. A lot of people seem to only care about the 'best', comments can be summed up into: Why should I play Guild Wars 2 if it's not the best mmo there ever was? Is it going to stay the best mmo for the next 5 years? If not, it's not a wow-killer and not really worth playing.

Uh people don't understand why others play MMO's in reality. WoW is shit. Why do I play it? Because there are these 9 other dudes who need me to show up to help them do stuff. Nobody is playing WoW for 6 years running because the game is good, cause it isn't. They do it because their friends play and they want to have fun hanging out with them and or have a sentimental attachment to the character they play.

You can take the most devout WoW nerd on the planet and if you convince his 20 some odd buddies to quit WoW and play something else instead I promise you he will follow them.

You are getting nothing out of me, I ain't a snitch.

If I can still enjoy GW1 after all these years then I'm confident GW2, especially with all of its progression of the "standard MMO" formula I could never really get into, will in fact be a keeper.

@zyn said:

I hope Guild Wars 2 has enough interesting content to last at least 6 months.

Me too, PvP should last a while, but the longevity of the PvE content is a concern. Disregarding obnoxious title grinds.

@Karkarov said:

@duggshammer said:

@Brodehouse: good point. A lot of people seem to only care about the 'best', comments can be summed up into: Why should I play Guild Wars 2 if it's not the best mmo there ever was? Is it going to stay the best mmo for the next 5 years? If not, it's not a wow-killer and not really worth playing.

Uh people don't understand why others play MMO's in reality. WoW is shit. Why do I play it? Because there are these 9 other dudes who need me to show up to help them do stuff. Nobody is playing WoW for 6 years running because the game is good, cause it isn't. They do it because their friends play and they want to have fun hanging out with them and or have a sentimental attachment to the character they play.

You can take the most devout WoW nerd on the planet and if you convince his 20 some odd buddies to quit WoW and play something else instead I promise you he will follow them.

I don't see how that's a counter-example to my opinion. You're saying that people only play mmo's for the social aspect whether the game sucks or not? That's a whole different topic, but it's also not true. I started playing WoW when all my friends irl were done playing the game. I played it to experience the game itself, not because other people were on that I wanted to 'hang out' with. You do have a point, if you're going to play a game for 6 years, there's got to be a social aspect to it. But, in my comment, I'm talking about people that are willing to venture out into new games and try them out, but are saying they don't even want to play it if it's not the 'best' and has years worth of stuff to do. Some people seem to treat mmo's much differently than other games, they have to play the game for at least a couple years if they are going to start it; like it has to be a huge commitment in their lives.

I like bowling.

I had really bad framerate and crashing issues when I played the weekend beta. That really bummed me out, and I didn't get to enjoy the game.

@Brodehouse: You misunderstand. Like 4-5 of those 9 guys still like WoW mostly because of the reasons I said couple with other things. Like one dude has a crap pc that can't run most new mmo's, another dude absolutely hates Star Wars and any game without pvp, etc etc. But the truth is without the other 9 dudes none of us individually would still be playing. Also I do play other games, even mmo's, and will probably be trying out both Secret World (yeah I know funcom) and Guild Wars 2. I probably just wont play them for more than a month or two. Currently I still have a SWtOR sub since the day it released and frankly play it far more than WoW. I don't do end game stuff but playing out each class story is a fun way to kill a couple hours sometimes.

PS: Bowling is a social sport, it sucks alone. Much like a grindy mmo like WoW that has no real story you can take seriously.

@duggshammer: Fair enough, so I will rephrase. There is no such thing as the "best" mmo. I dare say most of them are the exact same game. Example: Korean MMO's. Almost all of them play the same, control the same, have the same classes, alot of them even have similar design and character look, you get the idea. What makes the difference between a mmo you play for a month or two just to have fun and experiment and a mmo you play for 1+ years is the people you play with. Not the game itself. Trust me.

@Nonused said:

I like bowling.

I do too, man. I do too.

@Jack268: Well, it'll be a WoW-killer insofar as it'll remind people that the MMORPG genre doesn't have to be stuck in a rigid, formulaic, dated design. It won't decapitate the MMORPG giant, but it'll certainly cause a little internal bleeding.

@Jack268: Well, it'll be a WoW-killer insofar as it'll remind people that the MMORPG genre doesn't have to be stuck in a rigid, formulaic, dated design. It won't decapitate the MMORPG giant, but it'll certainly cause a little internal bleeding.

@Dark_Lord_Spam: I kinda feel like starting a pro-bowling thread, we are clearly underrepresented on Giant Bomb