Guild Wars 2 Never Seems To Capture Me For Long And I Want Your Suggestions For My Next Attempt

If you've followed MMOBomb for any length of time or seen me on a podcast here (or anywhere else), you likely already know that when it comes to MMORPGs, I'm way more of a "theme park" guy than a "sandbox" fella. It's not that I don't see the appeal of open world sandboxes, I certainly do. However, I'm just more of a story, dungeons, and raids MMO player than a "make my own adventure" fan. When I want to go and create my own story, I'll play certain more "survival" than "MMO" games with my kids.

Unless a theme park MMO is just simply terrible or crowded with crappy F2P MMORPG monetization, I can usually find something I like about a game. Many games in this category turn into my "backup" MMOs. These are the games that I'll play between patches in FFXIV (my main MMO). At any given moment, there may be 4-5 MMOs installed on my PC at any given time.

However, there's one MMORPG in particular that I have played quite a few times and it just never seems to stick with me for longer than a day or two. Normally, I'd just chalk this up to the game "not being for me" and move on. This one game, though, seems almost made for me specifically, but it never gets its claws into me and I have no idea why. However, it also never manages to get uninstalled when doing my normal PC cleanup sweeps.

ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 has an awful lot going for it. First, the base game is F2P. It provides PLENTY of hours of leveling, world exploring, and more for anyone that has never tried the game before. I've actually played since day one and currently have multiple level 80-boosted characters thanks to expansions. However, most of those boosted buddies have just been sitting in The Silverwastes, an area where you can test out your boosted character to see if you like it and re-roll if you don't.

Jason Winter and I have carried a running joke now for years based upon the number of boosted characters I have sitting there.

So what do I like about it?

The world is wonderful and beautiful. I love the look and feel, and I rather enjoy the kind of "watercolor" theme the entire game has, especially during discussion scenes with NPCs. The classes on offer are great and messing with builds is incredibly fun. Live events, while maybe not great when it comes to repetition, do make the world's zones feel "lived in" your first time through them. A wide list of discovery points, achievements, jumping puzzles that lead to beautiful vista overlooks, and a robust combat system are all great features. We can skip PvP as that isn't content I really play in any MMO, so I don't hold how good or bad it may be against Guild Wars 2.

So far, so good.

I think the first thing I ever found that I didn't like about Guild Wars 2 was probably dungeons. This is an important piece of MMO content for me. Now, it's important to know that Guild Wars 2 doesn't assign classes with particular "roles," per se. You don't have a dedicated tank class, for example. That's not to say that you can't build a class that's more tank-y than other builds for that same class, it just means that each class usually has effective healing or tanking options combined with their damage options. Certain builds may do better at certain pieces of content than others, but you don't queue up for things as a "healer" in the MMO.

Initially, I thought this design may be kind of nice. No roles meant you wouldn't ever have to wait for a specific role when queuing up for content. When I did run my first "dungeon" way back when, though, it was just chaos. It felt like we weren't much of a party. We were more just a few people that happened to be clearing out the same area at the same time. It was a slight turn off, but it was also an early "dungeon," so I kept playing despite not having the best experience there.

In the years that followed, ArenaNet has changed quite a few things. More dungeons, Fractals, and other PvE instanced content has been added and raids have recently returned. Those raids do require (sometimes) you to be a bit more "role" specialized, but not always.

These are all great changes, but I still just don't play for long. I get that the "true" end game is fashion and that aspect isn't for me, but if I boot it up now, I have SO much story content to finish and a whole world of PvE content waiting on me that I KNOW I'll probably enjoy quite a bit.

I enjoy the time spent playing, but the next day when I think about booting Guild Wars 2 up, I usually end up going to play something else...usually The Elder Scrolls Online to run some dungeons.

Have I just not found a class and build that resonates with me for all of these years, or has my initial impression of dungeons all those years ago just tainted what I "think" the instance content offers...even though I know a TON has changed since then?

So I ask you this as one MMO fan to another. If you are a Guild Wars 2 junkie and you were talking to someone that loved PvE content and had never once touched Guild Wars 2, what class would you say I would have the most fun with, and which expansion (or base game) story should I play first if you wanted me to have the best possible impression of the game?

It's time to try again, and this time I'd love some suggestions. If you need to know what classes I "prefer" to make your suggestion, I tend to go towards ranged magic users, but I also play tanks and healers in other games, so I'm not one that's FULLY locked in on one class type.