Guild Wars 2: 5 random thoughts

It’s still a bit early for any sort of review of Guild Wars 2, but so far it’s an extremely good game.

Some random thoughts:

1. The game needs a better tutorial

As I mentioned, yesterday, the game pretty much throws you into the deep end of the pool. A lot of your former MMO experience doesn’t translate well to GW2. While GW2 does have a help system that’s probably a little better than most MMOs, it still leaves it up to you to figure things out on your own.

For instance, if you want to party up with friends of different races and play in their homeland – which most players are going to want to do – there’s almost no help on how to do this. If you played Guild Wars or the betas, you probably know to use the asura gates, but if you didn’t you’ll be asking people in local chat or your guild.

2. Crafting and gathering are fun

Usually crafting and gathering in MMOs is dull, but in GW2 they’re fun to do. There are probably two reasons for this:

You get some nice experience rewards for discovering new crafting recipes, which you do through experimentation. That’s a novel approach to crafting that sorta makes it a like a little mini game. Fool around with enough recipes and you’ll get some very sweet experience plus some gear to boot. Discovering a new recipe can be worth twice as much as doing a dynamic event.

Gathering is fun, because you sometimes get gear upgrades and dyes in addition to the mats you’re gathering.

3. PvP matches are fun, but aren’t worth experience

I’m not sure why, but PvP matches aren’t worth experience. There’s a different type of PvP experience rewarded. Get enough PvP experience and you can get chests with a variety of rewards. The matches are fun, but obviously they’re not going to help you level.

4. Guild Wars 2 has the best underwater combat ever

Most MMOs avoid water and water combat, all together. The underwater combat in GW2 is better than anything any other MMO has and might just be the best in all of gaming. Yes, it’s that good.

5. The cash store is going to make them a ton of real life cash

From cool clothes to character slots to keys for rare chests, it’s all in the cash store. If you’re patient, you can a lot of this stuff in the game. Ahhh, but that’s just it. Who’s patient?

I got my first Black Lion key, which opens Black Lion chests, at level 17. I already had 3 Black Lion chests. I didn’t wait until I got my first key to open those chests; I bought a pack of 5 keys off from the cash store. I’m sure I’m not the only one.