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| My toon, my burning chestplate, my guild keep - what more can a man want? |
What's different about dungeons or 'endgame' on here is that it feels "just right". And WoW hasn't done for a while, which is why I've been clean for over a year now. Yes, I'm comparing to WoW again, so move along if you don't like it.
WoW allows you to obtain high tier items through means, which are either too easy, too difficult or incredibly boring - and nothing in between. Let's start with the boring: More and more daily quests. The same stuff, all the time, every time. The latest content update? More daily quests, no new 5man dungeons are planned.
Sure, GW2 also features daily quests, which you don't want to avoid if you want the powerful rewards, but they don't work the way you see them on WoW. Instead, you get a list of daily tasks to accomplish, you pick your five favourite ones for the day and just do them as you play. Craft a certain number of items, dodge some attacks, kill five veterans or take part in two group events, that kinda stuff. These quests don't restrict you in what you want to do or where you want to go, they give you multiple options and you aren't forced to hang around in one specific area for hours.
As for the too easy/too hard/just right bit - if you don't mind going for a slighly less powerful version of WoW's raid gear, all you have to do is fire up the raid finder, plow your way through simplified versions of the game's top tier dungeons and fifteen minutes later you're probably looking at two or three new pieces of epic gear. Which, by design, is alright. People want their stuff, they want instant gratification, "this is a game and it shouldn't feel like work", blah blah. There is just no feeling of accomplishment. The first time I zerged down Deathwing back when they first implemented the raid finder, I had no fucking clue what to do, how any of the bosses work, I just ran along with the pack and got a whole lot of loot, without ever feeling that I had earned any of it.
Of course there are the "proper" raids and the incredibly tough hard modes to provide a bit of an alternative, but come on now: Why? What for? Sure, they're still gonna be great if you're part of a big, talented guild and you just enjoy the challenge. But the days where you could obtain unique, extra powerful raid gear that average Joe can't have, are long gone. You get the exact same stuff you could loot through raid finder, with a bit of a different paintjob and stats, which are about 5% better than they are on the raid finder version. If that.
Personally, I'd go for these items, even if the "inreased" stats made no real difference. For the feelgood-factor, to stand out at least a little bit, you get the idea. Having been part of a guild, which is neither big, nor good (no offense, guys) enough for that kinda content, I didn't have the option.
And what other options were there? Heroic dungeons? What's the point? You'd get equally powerful gear by AFKing in Alterac Valley or racking up five or so weekly victories in the arena. The whole risk vs reward thing simply didn't feel right. And there was another problem: Who tanks, who heals, who calls the targets? Our little guild didn't have a designated healer or tank. People would do these jobs as they were needed, but we were all geared, gemmed and enchanted for DPS and, depending on the player, there was a sometimes a certain lack of experience with dungeon tasks that went beyond attacking things.
Of course this is a very individual problem. I'm sure if you're part of a large enough guild and have a spot in a competent raid-force, then WoW is probably the happiest place on the internet. But I wasn't so lucky and in my situation, getting all the good stuff was either impossible or so pathetically easy, that it posed no challenge or sense of accomplishment whatsoever.
Guild-wise, I'm in a very similar situation on GW2. We're juuust about enough people to tackle dungeons. And once again we're ranging from 'hardcore' ("I can probably get 2% more DPS if I change this sigil.") to slightly more casual ("I don't care if it sucks, it looks fun!"). The difference is that on here we can access *all* the content without getting excluded from anything or being forced into certain setups and specs. And it never feels like they're just throwing the loot at us for nothing or like all the really good stuff is impossible and way too difficult to obtain. It's just right.
Since there are no dedicated tanks and healers, everyone gets to play what they want and for as long as somebody coordinates the whole thing and people play as a team, everything becomes possible.
Would dungeons get easier if one of us specced into support and threw powerful heals? Sure. Would things go a bit faster if somebody managed to bind bosses and face-tank them while everyone else just deals damage without the need to kite? Probably. But the game doesn't force these decisions upon us. In fact, while gear, stats and skills should never be neglected, they're simply no longer the sole deciding factor. We had more than one situation where somebody with relatively crappy gear would kite a boss around the room and eventually down him solo while the rest of the group was dead and a wipe seemed inevitable. Dodging, movement, timing - when pve combat consists of more than clicking a bunch of hotkeys and watching the animations, personal skill can make a huge difference. I'm not saying skill doesn't matter in WoW PvE, but on there it's more about rotation, stacking clickies and abusing the line of sight. The game doesn't care much for your reflexes or whether you could pull off a dodge move on time.
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| If you're really good, you can even solo a dungeon. Be warned: Overgearing and overleveling is not possible! |
Every instanced content is geared towards groups of five, there are no raids and there are no ultra legendary XXL mega bosses, which the game won't allow me to fight unless I join a massive raid guild. I don't have to settle for second best. If I want a certain weapon or a set of armor, I can plan a dungeon trip with the guild and we'll go and do that shit! In fact, that's exactly what we're doing pretty much every night. Guild members say which piece of gear they're after and where it can be obtained and we go there and get it done. The explorable ('hard') mode dungeons aren't exactly faceroll-easy and farming a whole armor set takes quite a few runs, but each dungeon offers multiple paths and bosses. Fight one possible final boss the first run, another on the second and so on. Of course it still gets grindy and repetitive after a while, but sadly, such is the nature of MMO endgame content.
And since one can't just live on dungeons and dragons alone, I've taken another look at pvp (or wvw, to be precise) and I think I'm in love:
My first (second and third) impression of WvW was that it's all about spamming ranged AoEs on enemy zergs, hoping to score a few kills in the process. And to some extent, this is really true - damage some far away player with a ranged attack and you'll be awarded a kill and some loot when he dies, even if you're not actually the one to kill him.
So my first impulse was, naturally, to do exactly that. Grab a ranged weapon, hit a few guys, hope for them to die before I do, rinse, repeat. Safe, repetitive, boring.
But what's the alternative? Jump right into the middle of a bunch of guys and start hacking away? Well... why the fuck not? There is nothing quite so satisfying as jumping right into the middle of a dozen French guys and going to work on them with a massive chainsaw! Took a while to find a spec, which would allow me to do such a thing (and live!), but now that it works... well, look at the video and tell me this isn't fun!
I'm doomed. I'm hacking and sawing people to bits during the day and I fight my way through dungeons with the guild at night. I haven't touched Mass Effect for anything but the weekend event, Black Ops 2 is collecting dust and Diablo 3... uh, did they add pvp yet? Monster density settings? I don't have the time to check on that, I gotta play Guild Wars 2.
-Cat
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