Guild Wars 2 (GW2) has a somewhat interesting background for myself since back in 2012 when it was clear that Diablo III had some major issues, a couple of folks that I knew were going to switch to playing it on release (there used to be threads like this on the old forum in June a few weeks after launch since GW2 was slated for an August release). That was like a major disconnect for me though (limited multiplayer ARPG to MMORPG); during that period, I literally had no interest in sinking time into any MMO.
Yes, I had purchased the physical collectors edition of TERA (I was drawn to the visuals and original concept versus the social components of the typical MMO though) but besides initial character creation and low level questing, I didn’t get far; I ended up putting most of my time into D3 (both launched in May 2012). I was also looking at pre-ordering the collectors edition of GW2 (which had a statue of Rytlock Brimstone) in April since I am a sucker for physical collectible items, but decided not to. This ended up being a good decision since the base game eventually went free-to-play (August 2015) plus the combat (at least for me) isn’t the strongest point (I use the action camera toggle so that control/camera view wise, it plays like TERA but the feel of the combat and a lot of animations are meh by comparison).
I’ve documented how that sentiment (my aversion to MMO’s) has changed with Devilian, ArcheAge (the fully open world exploration aspects), and TERA. GW2 would’ve also been in this mix if it hadn’t fallen into the “out of sight, out of mind” pile where it ended up buried under a bunch of other stuff to look at later. Plus I’ll be blunt; always been leery of anything NCSoft (so just knowing that ArenaNet was a wholly owned subsidiary had me running the other way). I did end up relenting though by purchasing both expansions (Heart of Thorns Standard and Path of Fire Ultimate).
Anyway, I’ve been yearning recently for exploration based game play and decided to spend some time in GW2 (my secondary alternative to TERA as opposed to going back to ArcheAge) where my objective is to level a necromancer (my goth gal below) to 80 mostly via exploration (which I know is part of the design). I’m also leveling a revenant and still deciding what to do with my elementalist.
I’ll probably do the 100% map completion for the XP/rewards so I have no idea how long it will take to hit max level on this character. I do think it is telling though that it is some of these older titles that are keeping me engaged when it comes to the exploration aspect.
