Hey!

So I recently bought a new monster-computer, and was sort of interested in jumping in to Guild Wars 2 since I enjoy the MMO style of play, and the game received rather excellent reviews. However, since I'm rather hindered by college and exams and stuff I figure I won't have that much time to group with others, so I was mostly wondering how the game stands as a single player? I was even thinking of jumping back into WoW at first (would require me to buy both Cataclysm and Panda), but since GW2 have no subscription it appeals more to me.

So would you recommend I pick it up? Or can you think of another similar gameplay experience that might be better suited for almost entirely playing alone?

EDIT 5 HOURS LATER:

Well, thank you all for the replies in here! Game is downloading now, and my ID is Cincaid.4609 if anyone cares. :)

Guess I'll jump on Yak's Bend and see how the latency is, and if it's terrible I'll switch to some EU server instead. Been looking at the professions while staring at the download-screen, and so far Thief seems to be my choice. See you in-game, hopefully!

I play the game alone a lot and it's still pretty fun. There's a lot to explore in the game. I say just get it.

I've had guild wars since a few weeks post launch and I have a few things to say.. 1) I never ever ever ever play it alone, I find it terribly boring by myself and if my RL buddy who i game with didn't play it, theres no way In hell I would. 2) I played WOW for 7 years, So i'm experiecned with MMORPGS, Wow Was a game that i played by myself, and cwas still able get enjoyment out of.. I do not feel that same about guild wars. Now before you get all FANBOYRANT on me, I have not played WOW for roughly a year, and have no interest in going back, just stating my experience. 3) The core story of guild wars is decent by yourself, but once you've completed your main quest (which will take you a while) if you're alone, you'll have literally nothing left to do. WVW is currently pretty fun, but impossible to do alone, and structured PVP is decent, but having a friend to brag to all the time is my favorite part of it. Overall, its a pretty solid game experience, but its one that I PERSONALLY couldn't enjoy by myself.. In fact, most of the time that we'll go to play guild wars together.. we'll end up changing our minds and playing some WARZ or DAYZ, or even more recenrly, some San Andreas Multiplayer, getting ready for GTA5.. Thats just IMO

Alsom, And i'm just sayin' SWTOR goes FTP today. Consdier it, it has a more deep and engrossing single player experience

@audioBusting: Sounds good! But...

@kadash299: ...so besides the main quest and exploring, you'd say there's not much to do as a solo player? I have little to no interest in PvP, but I guess dungeons (if they exist) can't be soloed in any way?

The game is rather cheap from my local store, but it would suck if the content for playing alone wasn't that impressive. Remember, I have no idea of the size of the world or anything like that, maybe solo exploring / questing will last a month or two at least?

A month, maybe, my riend completed every heart (quest) and got to max in about 3 weeks, once you're there.. its PVP or like a small handfull of dungeons right now i believe.. I got my copy for $30, and its the only reason i am satisfied with my purchase

The game is designed in a way that you rarely ever have to group with anyone. The game is a blast to play, both solo or in a group. It's still an MMO; you're still going to be interacting with other players, but not in the same way as other games. When multiple players participate in an activity, all players who participated will gain XP, even if they're not in a group together. That's basically the way the whole game works. There are still some activities that require a group, but most of the game can be played solo, and it's still a rich experience that way. The thing about GW2 that I like is that it has something for everybody. I don't really think of it as an MMO, but as an all around great game. So I say go for it. You're bound to find something you like.

@Cincaid: You're in luck! Four-day free-to-play is coming up (already up?). Have someone send you an invitation, and you will be able to play until the end of Sunday (I think). I still have invites available, if you would like one. A-net has stated that invitation keys are limited, so better work fast before they run out. Nothing beats trying out the game yourself before making the financial commitment.

Your circumstances are a lot like mine (exams etc) and I think it's fine to play solo in short bursts. If you're going to play more than 5 hours a day 7 days a week, maybe it won't hold up so well. The good solo content is pretty much exploration and story quests (Dungeons, Wuvwuv and sPvP are a bit harder to pull off without co-ordination).

If you can get it cheap then there's really no reason to not get it. No subscription fees!

edit: ^^that too, I can send you an invite too if you want to try.

If you're not skittish about talking to other people then join the mumble. I usually play by myself but I talk to everyone in the guild on mumble.

The game doesn't fault you for playing alone, and there's tons of exploration to be done and bad dudes to be smited in the world. Thanks to the dynamic events that are set up, you can play with others in the same zone without having to worry about grouping up with them as well. You might not be able to do actual instanced dungeons by yourself, but none of them are required, and you can definitely explore some of the mini-dungeons and awesome jumping puzzles hidden around the world. There's nothing in game that really requires you to be on every day during specific times (apart from the dragon events...of which there are only 3), and there's nothing like the WoW daily quests to force you to stay online.

That said, the game does get a ton more fun with a group. If you can spare some time on weekends, joining a guild on your server would be good to find people who can help you out and show you some of the cooler places. If you join the Yak's Bend server, you can definitely spend some time with duders in the BOMB guild as we do crazy fun stuff and just hang out.

You could play alone but it's double the fun to have someone to play with.

@kadash299 said:

Alsom, And i'm just sayin' SWTOR goes FTP today. Consdier it, it has a more deep and engrossing single player experience

But the gameplay in TOR sucks and the world is boring, it doesn't feel like an MMO.

I played the majority of the game by myself and I found it a lot of fun and very addictive still. If you have others to play with, it's definitely more enjoyable, but even by yourself, it's still fantastic.

@Cincaid: I don't think there are region limitations in the game, yet. In terms of latency, it probably depends more on your private Internet connection than anything else. All I can say is that I play from China and latency is usually not an issue outside of instances (dungeons and personal story). Repeated loading into instances seem to cause lag for me, although, it is likely something on my end. I do occasionally experience weird zone specific lag (unplayable conditions in one zone of the game but perfectly fine ping in another). Not sure what's up with that.

@Cincaid said:

@halcyonTwilight Thanks for the feedback! I'm in EU, can I still join that server? Or will the latency ruin things for me in that case?

I play on Yak's Bend and I'm in EU, latency have never been a problem to me. The only thing I haven't really touched is sPvP so I don't know how much latency affect that.

I generally play the game by myself or with a friend and I've never really had any problems. Assuming you take your time to explore the areas and actually talk to the NPC's, you should find that it's a pretty deep RPG. It's a really beautiful world and there's a lot of lore to discover, it easily beats out TOR or basically any other MMO, but most people just rush right through it and don't bother to take any of it in. I'd definitely recommend taking your time to talk to everyone, not just the characters giving you story missions.

Like others have said, the grouping structure makes it so you never really need to communicate with people, you'll meet others in the areas and can work together on the fly without the need to form a party and being in the guild means there should always be someone who can help if you're really struggling with something. I'm in the UK and have never had any problem playing on Yak's.

Once you reach the end few zones, it does become a bit harder to explore by yourself, due to the difficulty and amount of enemies, but it's still quite possible to solo your way through if you're careful and since they provide the best loot, there's always a lot of players running groups around there anyway.

Well, thank you all for the replies in here! Game is downloading now, and my ID is Cincaid.4609 if anyone cares. :)

Guess I'll jump on Yak's Bend and see how the latency is, and if it's terrible I'll switch to some EU server instead. Been looking at the professions while staring at the download-screen, and so far Thief seems to be my choice. See you in-game, hopefully!

Since I'm on a different server than the GB guilds & part of a small guild with a couple friends, most of my time spent in GW2 has been with random people or the few times with guild ppl when we are in the same area. The game runs pretty well & not insanely tough just playing it solo, there will be tough spots where later on where you might need a few more levels and/or better gear to take on (skill challenges) but overall you should be able to see most of the great looking world without a huge group with you. GLHB!

If you decide to stay on Yak's Bend you should visit the guild thread and join us. Just fill out the survey or something; I think. I don't know how they're doing things now.

@insane_shadowblade85 said:

If you decide to stay on Yak's Bend you should visit the guild thread and join us. Just fill out the survey or something; I think. I don't know how they're doing things now.

Will definitely do that!

@gike987 said:

@Cincaid said:

@halcyonTwilight Thanks for the feedback! I'm in EU, can I still join that server? Or will the latency ruin things for me in that case?

I play on Yak's Bend and I'm in EU, latency have never been a problem to me. The only thing I haven't really touched is sPvP so I don't know how much latency affect that.

sPvP is done by data center and not by server, so it won't matter anyway.

I can't really recommend it for anyone but people that want to play with friends.

I tried every character class for a while and just got tired of hitting the same buttons every fight, just like every other MMO in the world. Except this one is worse in that you can have every skill in the game by lvl 5. And, if you don't like those few configurations of skills, you get to try another class or quit.

@breaking3po: I think you missed the fact there's another 5 skills on the right side of the screen that are fully customisable. You can't fill your entire skill bar until level 40 and you'll be well past the max level by the time you've unlocked all of your utility skills. If you don't like your weapon skills, you use a different weapon and I don't think you could have even unlocked all of those by level 5. You also don't unlock your first trait until level 11, which can dramatically change how your skills work.

I can understand why some dislike the lack of customisation with weapon skills, but the original GW (along with pretty much every other MMO) descended into "build wars", where if you weren't using a very specific set of skills, you were virtually useless anyway. Here they've tried to make it so that every player is at least somewhat effective, with the customisation and variety in play style developing from the traits and utility skills.

To add to Winter. I'd rather have 10-19 useful skills (Weapon swap, profession abilities adds 9 more) than the 40 skills I had in WoW and other MMOs where I was lucky to use 5 in most situations.

I will warn you, when you play the game my favorite way to play it, it can get pretty difficult alone depending on the area. Some areas have low populations this far out from launch. It makes doing some of the longer dynamic quests that culminate in a champion fight really hard. but for the most part the game plays great by yourself and usually theres another player around to help if you truly need it.

To add to what Jester said, yes there are areas where population has become lower since the launch rush has moved on, but people in guild generally aren't opposed to helping others out when they ask. I know when I'm on I have no qualms with hopping over to a low level zone to help someone, especially when I'm probably just futzing around in Lion's Arch anyway.

@Subjugation said:

To add to what Jester said, yes there are areas where population has become lower since the launch rush has moved on, but people in guild generally aren't opposed to helping others out when they ask. I know when I'm on I have no qualms with hopping over to a low level zone to help someone, especially when I'm probably just futzing around in Lion's Arch anyway.

The good thing about helping others is that you get scaled to their level and get level appropriate rewards for yourself, so it's usually worth your time, especially if you need a break from farming cursed shore or something.

@WinterSnowblind: Yeah. They've done a much better job this time, for sure. It still just didn't hook me. There are a TON of great ideas in the game. It's just my personal preference.