Guild Wars 2 - $10 (Heroic) $15 (Digital Deluxe) - 01/24/15-01/25/15 only

[OCNewbie]

Sale is for 01/24/15 & 01/25/15 only

http://slickdeals.net/f/7611728-guild-wars-2-digital-heroic-edition-pc-digital-download-10?v=1

Unfortunately I paid $20 for this like a few weeks ago. Have I even installed it yet? Of course not.

Direct link - http://buy.guildwars2.com/store/gw2/en_US/html/pbPage.buyguildwars2

$10 for Heroic Edition, $15 for Digital Deluxe

 

[BlueWeasel]

Is the DD edition worth the extra $5?

 

[aigomorla]

Is the DD edition worth the extra $5?

it helps if you want to roll a new character or try out all the characters / classes.

You get a + all attribute ring as a newbie starter, and a 2 week bank golem for EVERY new character you make. The bank golem is what makes the extra 5 dollars worth it IMO.

Its all character bounded tho.
But the bank is account wide, so every character access the same bank.

This saves you some time for having to go into town to either unload, or get new salvages, or what not.
The + stats ring is meh, but its better then nothing.


However my honest opinion of the game is its dying.
The dev's are focusing more on World Event stories, which aren't really exciting.
You also need to pay to access the older world stories.
The Dev's also have very little clue in what classes really are, as everything is DPS DPS DPS.... (zerker trait meta).

Healing class is non existent in the game, and if u try to run a healing stat spec, you will get seriously laughed at.

RNG in the game is stressful, and legendaries are only obtained though either dumping a lot of GOLD in the trade post and buying it, or winning the lottery in what we call the mystic toilet. Although its not as bad as per say Warcraft, the RNG really burns people out in getting precursors.

Overall, i have had many friends play and leave the game due to the RNG on precursors. I myself have semi retired from the game after obtaining all the precursors i wanted though many many hours of grinding gold. I gave up on RNGing though the mystic toilet because i realized i would spend as much if not more though the RNG the just paying for it at the trade post.

(well, it depends on what precursor you want... the cheaper ones are cheaper then the RNG table, but the super expensive ones like bifrost, and twilight/sunrise/eternity maybe cheaper now to RNG since inflation has hit the game like no tomorrow.)

Then the game took a table for worse with Time Gates and Level gates on everything.

The game also has another name.. its called Fashion Wars 2.... as Fashion is End game, and not the game itself.

 

[Craig234]

Unfortunately I paid $20 for this like a few weeks ago. Have I even installed it yet? Of course not.

Pre-ordered for $40 and not yet installed. Too bad there's no $5 upgrade to the 'heroic'.

 

[NoSoup4You]

The Digital Deluxe edition is definitely not worth the 50% increase in cost. It's a laughable "upgrade", though I did sort of enjoy using the Mistfire Wolf from time to time.

GW2 itself though is an awesome game for anyone that hasn't played it yet. The $10 is a bargain for a huge game world, awesome classes/skills, great controls for an mmo, fun jumping puzzles, great soundtrack, so many many more things that I'll never be able to mention them all. You buy the game once and own it for life, no subscription fees needed.

As for myself, I stopped playing about a year ago because there was nothing left to accomplish. I'd already maxed out all the classes long ago, and then they introduced the wardrobe system that sort of extinguished any interest I still had in getting skins for alternate characters. Weapon skins could now be equipped on all characters, so suddenly all my characters could have the Twilight skin so why bother with the other greatsword skins, no matter how cool the other skins were...etc.

For $10 though this game is a monster bargain. Skip the worthless digital deluxe edition.

 

[BlueWeasel]

How is the game for those who prefer to game solo? Funny question, I know, since the game is a hybrid-MMO.

 

[NoSoup4You]

The game can be solo'ed throughout. You'll never be forced to group up, though the game does allow you to form impromptu groups with anyone that happens to be nearby without having to invite anyone, so despite "playing solo" you'll often be playing with others that are nearby. There's no competition for kills, loot, or resource nodes so when other players show up it's never an "oh crap get away from me" experience like many other MMO's.

There's some group content and large, open-world content that requires large groups of players, none of that content is required to get the most out of the game however. And again, even that group content is mostly just players that are nearby one another, so "solo players" can partake without any penalties.

At end-game, GW2 has a dungeon group finder that can pair you up with random people if that's your thing. GW2 plays great whether you want to always play with friends or never play/communicate with another person.

 

[Anomaly1964]

How can you go wrong for $15...?

I'm IN!

 

[aigomorla]

How is the game for those who prefer to game solo? Funny question, I know, since the game is a hybrid-MMO.

one of the achievements is world map discovery which is basically solo.
Jump puzzles accomplishment is also solo.
The main story mission is all solo, and are now level gated.
Before you could get a friend with a high level character ground stomp the story missions for you so you could in aspect level faster.

The game has a lot of solo aspects in it until you get to the world events, and dungeons.
There your either at the mercy of guilds or pugs though the match making system.

Overall, its a fun game if your starting, then it turns into a painful grind fest to get fashion later on.

I only sign on now once in a while to check out the gem store and not be considered inactive in my guild... but overall i am done with the game.

 

[Craig234]

I notice more people say they're 'done' with guild wars 2 than any other mmo, and it's the one that makes the biggest deal of 'free', 'no subscription'. Hm.

I guess unlike most MMO's that profit by retaining players, Guild Wars loses money the longer people play, so they aren't too incented to keep players.

 

[CPA]

Still debating picking this up. I'm not an MMO fan and tried WoW once for about two hours, then quit. I've tried a couple others as well and didn't really make it through more than 3-4 hours of content.

Out of the ones I played, I probably enjoyed Defiance the most. It seems that this game is similar to Defiance - solo play until a World even happens which you can get involved in if you want. Only problem with Defiance is that it got repetitive quick. Am I on the right path?

 

[Anomaly1964]

one of the achievements is world map discovery which is basically solo.
Jump puzzles accomplishment is also solo.
The main story mission is all solo, and are now level gated.
Before you could get a friend with a high level character ground stomp the story missions for you so you could in aspect level faster.

The game has a lot of solo aspects in it until you get to the world events, and dungeons.
There your either at the mercy of guilds or pugs though the match making system.

Overall, its a fun game if your starting, then it turns into a painful grind fest to get fashion later on.

I only sign on now once in a while to check out the gem store and not be considered inactive in my guild... but overall i am done with the game.

Sounds like SWTOR, which was great in the solo player, story missions...

 

[videogames101]

I bought this game and played upon release. As a huge fan of GW1, I was very excited and had been playing the beta weekends. I expected a lot would change form the incomplete beta weekends version of the PvP system to the release version. Well... Hit 80 in 3 days, wanted to really demolish the game. Unfortunately the fact is the game upon release was sorely incomplete. The endgame with nothing but finding the easiest way through a dungeon and then running it a million times grinding out tokens at the end game, absolutely nothing akin to WoW raids which were often actually difficult/fun/rewarding. The other problem the game had was the aforementioned completely underdeveloped sPvP system. Unlike GW1 which had an excellent organized 8v8 upon release and the badass hall of heroes mode, not to mention multiple 3rd party and 1st party tournaments, you couldn't even arrange a match in sPvP when the GW2 was released. Arenanet public servers or 100% random matchmaking only. This made it so you couldn't even host a 3rd party tournament, much less expect Arenanet to host one outside their own bullshit dev tournament in beta. The PvP scene that had been building itself up during beta died about a month after release. Check out the twitch numbers nowadays =/

The kicker is that they're adding Guild Halls and GvG back into the game with the expansion. I guess the idiots over at Arenanet finally figured out part of what made GW1 so good. Sorry, too little to late for me. I wouldn't waste my time for $10. Even though I loved actually playing the game, there was no endgame content. For all the canned world bosses and varying leveling areas, anyone interested in endgame PvE or serious PvP will not be satisfied. If you ask me they should have cut the number of leveling areas in half and focused on actually making useful PvP system that would have developed some kind of scene. It could have happened given the hype on the game's release. Now the game is dying in obscurity and they're trying to bolster falling player numbers with $10 sales...

Oh yeah aigomorla reminded me. If you like teamwork aka working together using different specializations to bring down a boss FORGET ABOUT IT. Arenanet decided what everyone really wants to do is DPS. The way they see it players are forced into healing or tanking in other games never have fun, because DPS is the only fun role So instead of playing a game where you depend on your friends/party to do their jobs and have an awesome time focusing on your own specific role, you're all just forced to into DPS and self-healing. It's like you are playing your own game with little to no interaction with your party (Excepting combo fields I guess?). I just feel like Anet got everything wrong with GW2, which is strange given how much they got right with GW1.

 

[Raduque]

I picked this up. $15, can't resist. Unfortunately, I'm having difficulties registering due to the fact that I have a GW1 account, cant remember the password, and my serial was destroyed a few years back as it was a physical copy and the case insert was damaged.

Edit: GW page says the sale was for yesterday and today (1-24 and 1-24)

 

[OCNewbie]

Edit: GW page says the sale was for yesterday and today (1-24 and 1-24)

Thank you. I edited the OP.

 

[NoSoup4You]

The game isn't dead, there are 45,000 players online right now and I believe that number is just NA, so with EU and China that number gets a lot larger. Granted, I don't play anymore but the game doesn't show many signs of slowing down anytime soon with their Expansion just announced.

For $10 you'll get a hugely popular PvE game, a fairly popular World PvP game, and a mostly forgotten competitive PvP game. For $10, and considering you buy it once and own it forever... seems crazy not to jump in if any of those three things are even remotely interesting to you.

 

[Ichigo]

This game is decent solo. It's kind of ass if you want to party with a friend if you choose to roll a different race. You are actually disincentivized from joining each other's personal story quests because you simply won't get any exp/gold/other rewards. So the only thing you can do is run through one person's personal quest while they start outleveling you by 4-5 levels, then go back to the other person's personal quest for them to catch up. It's pretty stupid.

And the way personal quests (which are essentially the "main" quests) are gated by level means you have to grind via random quests, exploration, or whatever before you can progress. It's actually a good thing there's so many ways to level and a huge world to explore but if you want any kind of structure to go through the game at all, especially with a friend, this isn't the game for you.

 

[CPA]

This game is decent solo. It's kind of ass if you want to party with a friend if you choose to roll a different race. You are actually disincentivized from joining each other's personal story quests because you simply won't get any exp/gold/other rewards. So the only thing you can do is run through one person's personal quest while they start outleveling you by 4-5 levels, then go back to the other person's personal quest for them to catch up. It's pretty stupid.

And the way personal quests (which are essentially the "main" quests) are gated by level means you have to grind via random quests, exploration, or whatever before you can progress. It's actually a good thing there's so many ways to level and a huge world to explore but if you want any kind of structure to go through the game at all, especially with a friend, this isn't the game for you.

I've read that there is a setting to "turn off" the personal story. If true, that she resolve the issue you described above.

 

[aigomorla]

The game isn't dead, there are 45,000 players online right now and I believe that number is just NA, so with EU and China that number gets a lot larger. Granted, I don't play anymore but the game doesn't show many signs of slowing down anytime soon with their Expansion just announced.

For $10 you'll get a hugely popular PvE game, a fairly popular World PvP game, and a mostly forgotten competitive PvP game. For $10, and considering you buy it once and own it forever... seems crazy not to jump in if any of those three things are even remotely interesting to you.

nah soup its a dying game... lol..

they closed down a lot of servers and introduced the MEGA servers for worlds now due to how unpopulated it became.

So now all zones will have some people in them.
However it makes going to the daily meta events a bit more difficult as they get fulled and you get thrown into a another MEGA server which may or may not be fully populated to complete it.. ie. Tequatal.

The only time servers actually matter is when you WvW or MystWar.
They might as well call it colors instead of calling it server vs server.


This is why the game which said they will never come out with an expansion is getting a expansion + new class + new legendaries.
Because of its dwindling population.

 

[Danimal1209]

Bought the game on release.

I HATE the downlevel aspect of this game. One thing I like to do in MMOs is go back to previous stages and pwn some mobs that I had trouble with before to get a sense of how much stronger my character is. You cannot do that with this downlevel crap. I hate it.

 

[zinfamous]

Bought the game on release.

I HATE the downlevel aspect of this game. One thing I like to do in MMOs is go back to previous stages and pwn some mobs that I had trouble with before to get a sense of how much stronger my character is. You cannot do that with this downlevel crap. I hate it.

you sure can in the open world. your high level gear at that point should destroy those mobs. If starter map mobs are killing you at level 80, then i don't know what to say. The dungeons are different, as they are meant for group content and reward grinding.


...I haven't really played GW2 in 6 or so months now. seems crazy. the glove-of-the-week and charr backback release schedule finally convinced me that the devs really have no desire to release any new content for this game...already 2 years in at that point. Rather disappointing--though yes, all of those events were free. But real content that you purchase, like a base game, is shitloads better than a gem store panda backpack. At some point, GW2 became the furry safehouse.

So, I saw in my email that they actually are releasing new content--a new class at least, but I I don't see details about the campaign, how much territory and story that is (story...lol). I'm thinking I want to check it out, but dunno. This type of thing should have been out 2 years ago. Not sure what you will get out of a new class that will, invariably, be another flavor of DPS.

but hey--$10 is effing awesome if you haven't played the game yet. It's a blast on first play through. My concern for new players at this time would be current inflation, though.

 

[zinfamous]

This is why the game which said they will never come out with an expansion is getting a expansion + new class + new legendaries.
Because of its dwindling population.

pretty sure they never said that this game "will never have an expansion." certainly not at release, anyway.

It was a new Guild Wars game and world, and pretty much every GW vet expected the same type of release model as GW1, which never materialized. If that had been explicit from the outset, it probably would not have been as popular as it was in the early days. Hell, a complete map on release was only ~30% of the World map...so pretty much what players had seen before. The same release schedule was staring every GW veteran in the face for quite some time

That being said, a lot of GW1 fans left early, anyway, because the game is so damn different from that one in nearly every way. Instead of an elaborate skill-based system with well-defined classes, what we got was a semi twitch-based DPS exercise where the primary end game content revolved around acquiring a fucking bow that shoots rainbow unicorns to match your rainbow tiger backpack.

 

[NoSoup4You]

I read some speculation that the new specializations will simply remove one trait line and replace it with another one. It will also remove a certain type of skills and replace them with a new type. So for instance Guardians may lose the Virtues trait line and all the Consecrations skills, but they'll get a new trait line and a new set of skills to replace them. Oh, and they get to equip a different weapon.

This, while not terrible, is really not that interesting. So although I sort of want to see what they come up for each class with I'm sure it will just be a bunch of crappy skills designed for sPvP as usual which won't translate well to PvE.

I just no longer give Arenanet the benefit of the doubt anymore, for a long time I did but at this point I don't trust them to get this expansion right. I quit because there was nothing worth playing for anymore, Legendaries were the shiz for the game's first year of release but after that they simply became a "me too" item. With no incentive to go after anything, what was the point of the game? There was no longer any carrot dangling on the stick... nothing to work towards.

Granted, I don't play anymore so maybe I'm wrong and there's something outstanding they've introduced but I highly doubt it.

 

[zinfamous]

I read some speculation that the new specializations will simply remove one trait line and replace it with another one. It will also remove a certain type of skills and replace them with a new type. So for instance Guardians may lose the Virtues trait line and all the Consecrations skills, but they'll get a new trait line and a new set of skills to replace them. Oh, and they get to equip a different weapon.

This, while not terrible, is really not that interesting. So although I sort of want to see what they come up for each class with I'm sure it will just be a bunch of crappy skills designed for sPvP as usual which won't translate well to PvE.

I just no longer give Arenanet the benefit of the doubt anymore, for a long time I did but at this point I don't trust them to get this expansion right. I quit because there was nothing worth playing for anymore, Legendaries were the shiz for the game's first year of release but after that they simply became a "me too" item. With no incentive to go after anything, what was the point of the game? There was no longer any carrot dangling on the stick... nothing to work towards.

Granted, I don't play anymore so maybe I'm wrong and there's something outstanding they've introduced but I highly doubt it.

I log back in every couple of weeks and try to see what is going on. The living story crap that is still running, it seems every update is a new piece of "exclusive" armor skin for a set. And it's usually effects added to some already-existing dungeon skin, if I recall correctly.

so, yeah...the new content is always some new skin. That's all they have really added to the game in nearly 3 years. Pretty terrible, considering all that was GW1 :\ well, to be fair, Fractals were a big add, but that just gets old. so very fast. I don't consider any of the living story stuff to be content, because it's temporary--but I still admire the fact that none of that costs anything extra.

Still, I really do/did like GW2 when it was fresh to me and starting out. I still think it's a great MMO to compare to the rest and offers a great amount of content, even into endgame, until it gets too samey for you. I think I put nearly 2k...or more D: hours into it, so I clearly don't hate the game. It's an incredible value, and I don't regret paying full price pre-release (I don't regret paying an extra 20 bucks for deluxe--though deluxe is completely worthless. the equippables are junk that you will outlevel in a few hours, the goblin bank just takes up space.)

I just became bitter that it departed so completely from skill-based builds, and ended up revolving around dress-up at the end. So much potential, yet all of that sunk into plush backpacks.