This documentary looks back at the history of ArenaNet and the making of Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. It uses new interview footage as well as old footage from gaming conventions and live streams.
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This documentary looks back at the history of ArenaNet and the making of Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. It uses new interview footage as well as old footage from gaming conventions and live streams.
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One of the best co-operative MMOs. No pay to win. And in all the years I have played GW2 I can only remember downtime twice. The first time was a fire at the co-location. And the second time was almost an hour due to a bad update and they had a roll back.
Bah, GW1 had so much potential to have an absolutely huge competitive PvP scene. Sadly a combination of being a few years before e-sports really started peaking, and ArenaNet dropping support for in person tournaments in favour of automated monthlies, and then GW2 really leaned even further away from any sort of competitive PvP or what made GW1 good. Really sad, because it had League of Legends quality of PvP, but years before League was even a thing.
During the time I played from 2012-2017 all I wanted was more content, all the time. More to grind and more challenging instanced content. Living Story REALLY didn't hit for me.
From 2019-2025 I've been playing Wow because Blizzard has been able to keep the content pumping. Plus they do a better job with guilds and weekly raids as a social club.
The latest Wow season's been boring to me. So I binged Fellowship and then have been returning to Guild Wars 2. It's fine, but tbh once Midnight releases I'm going back to Wow.
Commenting on myself: The core of it is misalignment between studio output and my expectations.
The part where they talk about how long/expensive Kralk took to dev makes me cringe considering there's no associated meta-event or raid. That and the bit about Marjorie+Kasmeer, which after 10y I wouldn't care if they both got hit by a bus if it meant I could get a Fractal around their funeral.
So many squandered resources on Living World, building mediocre single-player content in a MMO.
The core concept of GW1 was peak. The whole main class/secondary class system left a lot of room for creative builds. It felt in a lot of ways like a 1-2 color deck in MTG. When you feel like you can come up with an original build then do well with it, that's a good sign of game health.
GW2 was a step backwards in that regard. They complained about how hard GW1 was to balanced, so they compensated by restricting skill layouts to weapons. Even though they scaled back PvP creativity, they took dramatic leaps forward in PvE.
PvE doesn't keep me coming back to a game though. I'm not a fan of the grind. I miss maxing out gear relatively early in GW1 so my duels with others come down to skill and not how much more free time one of us have.
The OP has provided the following Submission Statement for their post:
If you believe this Submission Statement is appropriate for the post, please upvote this comment; otherwise, downvote it.
One of the best co-operative MMOs. No pay to win. And in all the years I have played GW2 I can only remember downtime twice. The first time was a fire at the co-location. And the second time was almost an hour due to a bad update and they had a roll back.
Yeah the one guy says 32 hours of downtime total over 20 years for GW1. Very impressive, that's like an average month for World of Warcraft.
I didn't play GW1 because I was deep into WoW at the time, but I had fun with GW2 and I'm looking forward to trying it again soon.
Bah, GW1 had so much potential to have an absolutely huge competitive PvP scene. Sadly a combination of being a few years before e-sports really started peaking, and ArenaNet dropping support for in person tournaments in favour of automated monthlies, and then GW2 really leaned even further away from any sort of competitive PvP or what made GW1 good. Really sad, because it had League of Legends quality of PvP, but years before League was even a thing.
During the time I played from 2012-2017 all I wanted was more content, all the time. More to grind and more challenging instanced content. Living Story REALLY didn't hit for me.
From 2019-2025 I've been playing Wow because Blizzard has been able to keep the content pumping. Plus they do a better job with guilds and weekly raids as a social club.
The latest Wow season's been boring to me. So I binged Fellowship and then have been returning to Guild Wars 2. It's fine, but tbh once Midnight releases I'm going back to Wow.
Commenting on myself: The core of it is misalignment between studio output and my expectations.
The part where they talk about how long/expensive Kralk took to dev makes me cringe considering there's no associated meta-event or raid. That and the bit about Marjorie+Kasmeer, which after 10y I wouldn't care if they both got hit by a bus if it meant I could get a Fractal around their funeral.
So many squandered resources on Living World, building mediocre single-player content in a MMO.
The core concept of GW1 was peak. The whole main class/secondary class system left a lot of room for creative builds. It felt in a lot of ways like a 1-2 color deck in MTG. When you feel like you can come up with an original build then do well with it, that's a good sign of game health.
GW2 was a step backwards in that regard. They complained about how hard GW1 was to balanced, so they compensated by restricting skill layouts to weapons. Even though they scaled back PvP creativity, they took dramatic leaps forward in PvE.
PvE doesn't keep me coming back to a game though. I'm not a fan of the grind. I miss maxing out gear relatively early in GW1 so my duels with others come down to skill and not how much more free time one of us have.