Review: Guild Wars 2

If you’re a PC gamer you will be well aware of the huge MMO game that has just been released, going by the name GuildWars 2 from developers ArenaNet. I came late to the Guild Wars franchise, I got my first copy of the game after it had been out for about 2 years, and played it on and off for a while.  I was playing World Of Warcraft but I slowly gave up WoW to play more and more Guild Wars, which for me was a good thing. After a few years more of playing GW more ArenaNet posts began to circulate with news saying that there would be a Guild Wars 2, which was greeted with opened arms and so GW2 became my new obsession.  One of the most exciting things about Guild Wars 2? You’re able to jump! (a little joke for all those GW players…).

The best place to start with an MMO is character creation. So, let’s get inside and find out what’s what. Character creation in GW2 is very different from other MMOs I have played. So let’s pick a race, and here we have 5 to select from. First we have the Asura, these Gnome like people are Magical Engineers, they forge many different devices from arcane power; these fast became my favourite race. Next are the Sylvari, they are very much the druids of Tyria.  They are nature based and really work well with their whole back story in Tyria. Then we have the Humans, which in most MMOs are the standard race, and we see that again in GW2. Following the Humans are the Norm, this huge race stand like giants over the other races and remind me very much of the Vikings of old.  They are very much in tune with animal spirits, another great race. To finish off the races are the Charr, a feline race that are all about the victory in anything they do.  Next in the Character Creation is the Professions.  This is kind of like your class that you will be playing, and there are 8 to choose from. I’m not going into pointless detail about all 8 so I’m just going to list them here: Mesmer, Guardian, Necromancer, Ranger, Elementalist, Warrior, Thief, and Engineer. Each of these Professions bring their own powers and abilities to the game.  Let’s say you are playing the Engineer for instance, you will be building turrets to help you dispatch the bad guys along with flame-throwers and many other cool powers.  Oh and your main weapon will be guns which is one of those things that stood out when I first picked that profession. Following that we then move on to making a few more decisions about your character’s history. Who was his or her mentor, how do they deal with particular situations, that sort of thing. This really is a great idea, it brings your character to life and gives them a history, their own story, decided by you.   As you finish off the character creation you give life to your character with a name and then the intro rolls, this includes some of the decisions you have just decided upon and shows what you have picked. It really works! I’m hoping that other developers take a look at this and maybe adopt it somehow into their games.

As we all know crafting is a big thing in MMOs and many people rate their MMO on how well the crafting system is put together, and yet again ArenaNet have done a great job here.  If you have come here after playing Guild Wars then some of this will look familiar to you, but there are some really nice things I would like to point out. The crafting occupations are very much like most MMOs, you have things like Leather Working, Amour Smithing and a few more. Now, when you come to wanting to use these crafts, you’re going to have to get materials and to help you do this you will need salvage kits. These let you take apart the armour and weapons you have picked up along the way.  Now I know this was in the first Guild Wars, but I think a lot of other MMOs could learn from this.  You can also mine ore and harvest plant life, but you will need tools to do this as well. So, once you have used your salvage tools to see what you can recover from your full inventory, you can then (and here is the part I think is great) deposit all of the reagents into your reagent bank, so when you are at a crafting station you can find all those reagents there, so it saves you filling up your personal bank and your inventory. Crafting itself is very simple and to the point.  Let’s say for instance, you want to make a pair of boots.  You first have to make the parts needed for those boots, and then put them all together to make said pair of boots. So not really much difference there.