We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. Once a month or so I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

I think a lot of us were blown away when ArenaNet turned their April Fool’s Day gag– Super Adventure Box– and turned it into a full-fledged event complete with its own story, 8-bit world and system, novelty items, and rewards. For those of us who grew up in the 8-bit era, the whole thing is a bittersweet trip down nostalgia lane, and ArenaNet, frankly, did an awesome job integrating an 8-bit world into the Guild Wars 2 world we’re already familiar with it. It was a taste of the odd, a taste of the fun, and for most of us, it was refreshing to have a mini-game that gave us so many completely different options to explore. Yes, I will break all those pots and bounce around collecting shinies, thank you very much.

The potential problem with this awesome mini-game distraction, however, is the fact that at the end of the day, Super Adventure Box is still a game within a game. It’s a fun little adventure that distracts us from what we’d normally take part in during our time spent in the game. Distraction can be fun, but at some point, many of us kind of find ourselves stepping back and wondering, “okay, now what?” Can you ever have too many shinies and mini-games within a game?

We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. Once a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

Despite the fact that we’re in the middle of ArenaNet’s latest adventure in bringing us different styles of world events and corresponding updates every other month or so, there was one update that didn’t make February’s cut, and well… let’s just say it’s a bit of an elephant in the room for many dedicated GW2 players. Yep, I’m talking about the big, exciting, promised WvW update. I don’t think the update being pushed back was nearly as drastic a matter as many folks on the official forums made it out to be, but it still was a disappointment for many.

The trouble with disappointments in an MMORPG is that they’re never good for the game. With as varied of a playerbase ArenaNet is hoping to entice into sticking around, there is bound to be a little bit of disappointment, and that’s kind of the problem that many MMO developers are currently running into. Developers attempt to do too much. They try and create updates for every single feature of the game at the same time in order to please everyone at the same time. This simply isn’t possible without a ginormous staff and/or plenty of features planned years in advance. The bottom line is that when MMO developers take this “gotta please ‘em all!” mindset, someone’s probably going to end up disappointed at the end of the day.

We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. Once a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

One of the recent hot topics on the official GW2 forums has been the subject of grind in Guild Wars 2. What is grind, exactly? The easiest way to define grind in an MMO is to compare it with how we normally think about the saying “back to the ol’ grind.” It refers to work, right? Going to a boring 9 to 5 job day after day, repeating the same, uninspiring tasks. That’s a grind.

Now, in an MMORPG grind can refer to a few things. Usually weeks worth of daily quests are the perfect example. Want something cool? Better prepare to do something boring for a while to get it. Farming over and over for certain materials or extra cash also fits. Running dungeon run after dungeon run to the point where you’re kind of sick of the place is another good example.

We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. Once a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

With the addition of ascended gear, Guild Wars 2 definitely has more options when it comes to grabbing gear at max level. This fact can be good, since options are generally welcome among the MMO community, but ascended gear has seen quite a bit of negative feedback as well. So negative, in fact, that Chris Whiteside addressed the issue more than once during a recent GW2 Reddit AMA chat. ArenaNet admitted that the introduction of the new tier-set-of-sorts wasn’t communicated well, but the team was confident that the gear was a step in the right direction.

We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. Once a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

Ouch. So, despite ArenaNet’s best intentions, The Lost Shores didn’t go exactly as planned for most folks as far as the one-time world event was concerned. It’s a shame what happened, but it’s also reassuring to know that the development team plans on making some much-needed improvements to the way the game handles events like these. I also found it reassuring to know that ArenaNet really wanted our feedback on one-time events in general. Why? Personally, I tend to think that in today’s MMO world, there are simply better options.

We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. Once a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

So, The Lost Shores starts today! Some exciting stuff heading our way. I must say– I’m pleasantly impressed with ArenaNet’s content release schedule thus far. At any rate, The Lost Shores has some nifty stuff in store for us, including a one-time world event, which can sometimes be the most enjoyable events in an MMO and a new dungeon made out of mini-dungeons that seems like an awesome way to spend an evening with friends. The video for Fractals of the Mists is simple and quite interesting because it displays the fact that each fractal will be entirely different as far as theme and environment go.

We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. Once a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

We’re currently knee deep in the middle of our Halloween event, Shadow of the Mad King. The Mad King himself has well, a few things to say to us now in his little dungeon, and the rewards for the overall event are starting to show themselves in the green-tinted eerie light of day. There’s still one more act to go, and let’s hope it’s worth the wait, but for the moment– what’s your favorite part about the event? How does it stack up to other Halloween events you’ve experienced in other MMORPGS?

We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. Once a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

So, organized group content. Raiders sometimes receive a lot of flack because of how raid-centric and loot treadmill-like many MMORPGs have become. Want the shiniest gear? Better get your raid group together, clear three nights a week off your schedule, and get ready to stand in–er, avoid fires. Despite the negativity that some gamers feel towards raiding, however, there’s no denying the fact that a challenging raid or 5-man dungeon run with friends can be an extremely fun way to spend an evening. Challenging group content– when made well and completed with the right group– promotes teamwork, communication, leadership skills, and it makes us want to become better players.

We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. A couple times a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

Guild Wars 2 is filled with some very gorgeous maps and locations, and not just locations situated plain in sight, open to the air. Even hidden caves and light-filled crevices can be quite beautiful, which kind of adds to the whole exploration theme the game has going on. Another place of beauty is underwater. The oceans and inlets around Lion’s Arch are some of the most beautiful underwater spots in the game, full of tropical life, plants, and just about everything you’d expect in a real ocean. Props to the environment team! The ice-covered lakes out in the middle of the snowdrift-covered areas are also particularly enchanting, in my opinion.

We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. A couple times a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

Early on during headstart, I noticed quite a few players questioning their order choice (you know, that whole Vigil, Durmand Priory, or Order of Whispers choice). The decision comes fairly early in the personal story quest line, and interestingly enough, affects a large portion of the nature of the story quests that follow the decision.

Durmand Priory characters, for example, are given some quests that require the player to make use of gadgets while continuing the storyline. Vigil characters, naturally, are given quests that follow the whole “shoot first– ask questions later” philosophy. Order of Whispers characters follow a more sneaky route, but still get the job done. The three orders also gain access to different armor sets.