I have been attempting to play Guild Wars 2 for a very long time, and I have to be honest… there are a lot of things that I never really grasped. I feel like as far as games go, this is one that does a fairly poor job of on-boarding the player. I feel like there are some direct hooks that some players go for, especially if you have always leaned towards playing a damage dealer but always struggled getting groups. As someone who has always played tanks I have struggled because while “being tanky” and “holding aggro” are things that exist, this is a game that has completely eschewed the holy trinity. This is great if you were not a support player, but for those of us who have spent their entire “MMO career” playing some support role… the experience can feel somewhat hollow.
There are a lot of folks out there that do copious amounts of reading about a game as they start to play it. That is not really my thing. A game needs to hook me before I am willing to do much research, and then once it finally has its hooks in me… the floodgates open and I start diving for knowledge at an almost obsessive level. Since Guild Wars 2 never really hooked me until my most recent revelations, I never spent much time if any really digging for information. The game does not give it to you freely through the course of the game, and now largely realize I have been playing “wrong” for a decade. This morning I thought I would share some of the revelations that I wish I knew earlier.
Achievements ARE Quests
One of the things that I found initially alienating is that Guild Wars 2 at face value seems like it is a game without much in the way of quests. There is of course the main story but those are sprinkled few and far between as you move from zone to zone and are not really going to give you much direction. Inside each zone there are a number of “hearts” that ask you do do a specific thing for a specific faction, and filling one of these gives you some rewards and access to new vendors. However there really was not anything that felt like long progression. I have to admit I mostly ignored the Achievements section on all of my previous attempts because I am not really one to do things just to get a trophy. I am sure if someone were to look at the various games with achievements I would cause completionists a panic attack, because I am habitually one or two things away from wrapping them up.
What I did not understand at all however is that Achievements are somewhat poorly named here and instead of a bunch of useless “make points get bigger” things, they are a treasure trove of targeted things that you can work towards. Need an Ascended Weapon? Well there are achievements for that. Want to get pieces of gear that you can choose your own stats for? We have achievements for those as well. Essentially this area of the UI is chock full of long term grinds, that end up rewarding very useful things. Not to mention every 500 achievement points you unlock a chest with some gear as well as some weapon skins.
Elite Specs are not tied to Weapons
One of the key focuses of an expansion is that it grants classes entirely new elite specializations. The problem is I assumed these were associated with a given weapon. For example as a Warrior with Heart of Thorns I got access to Berserker… but the first step of that unlocked access to Torches which were not a weapon that interested me in the least. With Path of Fire Warriors got access to Spellbreaker which again unlocked the weapon Daggers… of which I am vehemently allergic to using daggers. I had it hung up in my head that the weapon that you unlocked with a specialization is the weapon you were supposed to be using with it. Granted there is some synergy with the types of things that a given weapon does, but it is not a direct correlation.
Instead I had to get myself into the mental headspace of just realizing that an elite specialization above all else gives me access to another “talent tree”. The main function of unlocking them is to give you additional tools to work with when crafting builds. There are plenty of ways to build using these new specs that do not include the weapon that they grant you. Additionally there are ways to use the new weapons that get unlocked… without using the elite specialization tree. The two are tied together but are not necessarily intrinsically linked. Instead I had to start thinking of them as being two separate actions, one which gives me access to a brand new weapon, and another that gives me access to a brand new talent tree.
You Can Self Join Commander Groups
So one of the cool things about Guild Wars 2, is that it allows players to self designate themselves as “leaders”. It is a costly process to acquire the ability to throw up a commander tag, and as a result when someone is running around the battlefield with one, players tend to just take advisement without questioning it. All of this time I have been following around commanders, never knowing that for the most part… you can right click on the tag of any commander on the mini map and choose to self join their party. Granted this requires the commander to have set the party to public, but still if someone is leading and event it is almost certain that they will have the group open. I feel like an idiot for not knowing this one sooner, but I literally found it out the other night. This has completely changed my interactions with how I do things in the game.
Living Worlds are Expansions
Guild Wars 2 technically has three expansions to the game that were sold as boxed products. However starting with season 3, one could effectively call every Living World season an expansion to the game. I did not realize this. I thought it was largely just story content that wove around existing zones, but instead I am finding out now that I have gotten into season three… that it is taking me to brand new zones. Each of these zones are completely filled with things to do and interesting events to complete. By not having unlocked these earlier, I am effectively limiting my access to a whole slew of new areas in the game. Effectively that means that Guild Wars 2 has had the equivalent of six expansions at this point and with that a whole ton of content to participate in.
Show All Usable Object Names
[UPDATE] – I am adding this one after doing the initial publish because it just popped into my head. One of the frustrating things about harvesting materials in Guild Wars 2 is that the nodes sort of blend into the background. In many maps the harvestable trees are the same exact model as the general “basepop” trees. One thing that you can do that makes it a bit easier to see where the interactables are is toggling on “Show All Usable Object Names” in general options. This will make anything you can click on, have a name tag that differentiates it from background objects. This is super helpful for harvesting but also helpful when you have one of those “find the clickable things” style interactions.
If you also are playing Guild Wars 2, what are some of the things that you wish you had known sooner? For me the biggest is that I wish I had known sooner how to enjoy this game. I spent so much time fighting against it because it did not fit into the predetermined mold I was expecting from it. Now that I opened up to it, I am enjoying myself immensely. If you have any other revelations and tips, please drop me a line below because I am sure there are even more things that I have been oblivious to.
