I began playing Guild Wars 2 a couple months before release. I participated in a couple of the beta events and played for a solid couple months after it was released. I loved the game, couldn't get enough of it and I played almost every chance I could get. The honeymoon wore off a couple months after release and by late October and I was back into WoW and ignoring my Guild Wars 2 launch icon like it had the plague. Nothing could get be back in game because I had felt like I experienced most of the game and now that I was level 80 I didn't really have much to do. It wasn't until a couple days ago when I got the idea to revisit Tyria and see what was new and if anything that has happened since my departure could bring me back.

My first act of business after logging back into the game was getting my bearings. My entire guild had up and quit the game so I found a new group of adventures on the Blackgate server and immediately began conversing about the changes. Apparently some events have come and gone, Christmas was a blast, and this thing called the Fractals kept coming up. It was nice to see NCSoft have spent the time since release pushing out content. I decided to play my level 80 Ranger and was amazed at just how much I remembered from my last time playing. The world is still the same but I found a new appreciation for the game. It was as if the time away made me grow fonder for the lack of exclamation points over people's head and the cinematic events that you could just stumble into. It seemed I picked a great time to come back to Guild Wars 2.

Since returning, I've had a pretty good time getting re-acquainted with the world. The game still has a lot of room for improvements (namely a looking for group feature) but the world seems to be going strong. If this game were a subscription based game, there is no way it would be as successful as it is today. The buy to play mentality the developers stuck with works great and being able to just log back in whenever I please is a great feeling. I don't have to worry about my lack of playing costing me $15 a month. I already paid for the game, there's no sub, no problem.

In the coming days I plan on playing my new character (a Norn Engineer if you're interested) and experiencing the personal story of another race/profession to see how things are different. Guild Wars 2 is a special game and I'm really glad I decided to give it another shot.