Guild Wars 2 Impressions
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First, Massively offers a more critical look than most, while still conceding that it's a good game:
So I'm going to start things off by picking on one of the title's most-hyped features: dynamic events. I have a lot of issues with dynamic events, not least of which is the fact that the very name is inaccurate. Guild Wars 2's dynamic events are often anything but dynamic. One of the most prominent events I've run across is the Wychmire Swamp meta-event in Caledon Forest, which (spoiler alert) leads players on a trek through a swamp that culminates in a battle with a gargantuan Wurm. If you read my beta impressions of the Sylvari, you'll remember that I actually loved this event, and that hasn't changed, but it's a good way to showcase the fact that there's nothing dynamic about it at all. The entire event could have been done as an escort quest granted by a static questgiver, and in essence, it is. In order to start the event, you have to speak at an NPC in the nearby village whom you escort for the first part of the event.
Literally the only difference between that dynamic event and an escort quest is the fact that it occurs only at (semi-)random intervals and that other players can join in once another player has started it. These are both improvements on the much-reviled escort quest format, don't get me wrong, but the event is still hardly dynamic. There are a few events in the game that have more dynamic qualities, such as those that involve NPCs taking over a town that becomes useless to players until the monsters are driven off, but even that is stretching the definition of "dynamic." You can let those centaurs occupy the town for as long as you'd like, but nothing's ever going to come of it. The NPCs will continue to respawn and wage a valiant-but-futile war against the centaurs until a player comes along to give them a hand, and the centaurs will continue to stand around rather than tear the city down once and for all. For all the pretense of immediate threat, nothing is really at stake.
I know that what I'm asking for is a little far-fetched; it would take untold amounts of work to provide dynamic events of epic scale that truly impact the world in a permanent way. That said, I don't know why there was so much hype around a system that ultimately amounts to static quests that occur at random times.
While Destructoid is more positive:
For the first time in an MMO, I wanted to explore everything. The design team is absolutely brilliant, somehow packing in areas that make sense geographically, but also adding in a ton of easter eggs and secret areas or quests that aren't even marked on the world map.
Skill point challenges, area discovery, and vista views will keep you busy for quite some time. Vistas are the main highlight here, as they're essentially elegant platforming puzzles that will test you to your limits. Like classic 3D platforming games of all, pure skill is rewarded here, as some of the city vista challenges are absolutely bonkers.
You'll earn XP for just about every single thing in the game except structured PvP -- that includes XP for World versus World, reviving random players you come across during your travels, exploration, crafting, gathering, questing, and so on. Yep, that's right: you can even earn a significant amount of levels through crafting!
GW2's fun factor isn't bullet proof, however, as you can experience the same "wear and tear" of RPG questing that you can find in just about any RPG. During one of my multiple eight-hour sessions, I started to get a tad bored of doing quests. The solution? I just jumped into World vs. World, PvP, or started exploring the world at my own pace without combat -- whether it was above or below ground.
