I appreciate your fervor for GW2, but to me it felt like a game that was trying too hard too fast. It felt like a movie sequel that tries to one-up its predecessor instead of continuing with the ideas that worked in the first one.
When i say korean, i mean its pacing is very fast, and its visuals are too, plus it has the cutesy furball race that every single asian mmo seems to have thesedays. The fact that i could not remove that sacchrin sweet glow from the game was bothersome to me. I removed it in WoW, and i wanted to remove it in that game. The graphics of GW2 are pretty minimal, but i will admit they have a lot going on in their cities.
I wanted to like GW2, and the cinematography they achieve in their trailers is wonderful, because it plays like a faster paced WoW. I do appreciate the fact that they even out PvP with equalizing levels and what not, but other than that i was not blown off my rocker in the first hour or two.
And yes, the pacing of the game is like faster than a meth addicts heartbeat...there is no denying that. The fact that you can portal everywhere in the game only lends itself to that notion...sure you have to walk there first, but after that you can teleport everywhere...which for me breaks immersion.
I like slower paced games...I do not understand why developers think those would be unpopular nowadays...In my opinion it is a problem with the writing, and development of an MMO...
Say, if you were on a Ship traveling somewhere, and something were to happen along the way, perhaps the ship was attacked, and you had to defend it, then that would make traveling go by faster, and more interesting would it not? To me, stuff like this is what i am looking for in an MMO--i may never get my grandiose hopes realized, but I am hopeful.
All that said, the atmosphere, and pacing of TSW was more to my liking, and it did not feel like something i had played over and over and over.
To each their own i will say.
Edit: Also, i would say that you do not have to pay attention in GW2, or many recent MMO's because it is so fast paced, and they show you on the map exactly where to go and what to do, so what am i paying attention for exactly? The writing was not great, and like i said, they were trying to do too much too fast. And you say there was no hand-holding? Just because stuff is thrown at you very fast and done in a fashion that thinks you have already played WoW, so you must understand what is going on, does not mean there is no handholding...the game i played was very simplistic... The questing (which i thought was going to be a lot different from WoW's questing) was pretty basic--though i will say i enjoyed that there was variety to the quests.
My dream MMO is one where you start out with a sharp pointy stick as a weapon and go from there...I hate starting out a game with this amazing shiny sword that is supposed to be garbage...where do you go from there? Couldn't it at least look rusty and beat up a bit?
1) No, you don't appreciate my fervor. Although I'm not particularly fervorous.
You can say you don't like the combat or you that you don't find the story compelling.
I'm fine with that. Different tastes. I enjoy GW2 a lot. My GF is less excited with ti, but part of that is because she doesn't like to learn new game. She didn't like GW that much either and now she played for almost 10K hours while I played 9500 or so despite having started playing 1 year before her.
But you then started saying it doesn't make sense. Most people would end there and let it vague. You actually pointed something, which is better, but then I explained why it makes sense.
People can dislike something without that something being bad or being bad for everyone else.
2) It is a thing with sequels, isn't it?
If the game is similar to the first than it is nothing more than the 2.0. If it different it "why did they ruin it? It doesn't feel the same anymore".
3) It is fun you equate korean with fast paces. Whenever I read korean MMO I equate it to slow boring grinding, but I know what you mean, the combat is frantic and fast - I love that aspect. The levelling on the other hand isn't particularly fast, but it doesn't really matter much since levelling is just a secondary aspect.
4) I don't understand how you can say GW2 graphics are minimal. It is one of the best looking and detailed MMORPGs out there, even if you don't like the art style - the detail, the shadows, the reflections, the lights, all feels very detailed and convincing.
Might not be using all the bleeding edge technologies, but that alone doesn't a game good or even visually compelling.
I guess GW and GW2 bleeding edge technologies were saved for their patching system that only requires a restart and after30 seconds you are playing again and no servers maintenance (32 hours in 7 years for GW).
5) About the fast travelling system - I keep hearing complains about that. But in reality you board a ship in WoW and you are in the other continent. And when you want to travel, you hop on a griff or other flying mount and look in the screen for 15 minutes. Or a mage casts a portal to summon you or you use some magical stone.
There is no threat at all and in fact it simply allows you to skip respawns. Is that immersive, slaying a ton of bandits every time you walk that road? How many bandits are there in that area? Do they have some clone tanks spewing trolls and ogres?
It is a problem with MMOs - they don't track time properly.
Might as well be instant and it is much more convenient when you want to play with friends/guildies instead of "I'm actually on the other side of the continent - see you in 1 hour".
For me it seems that a portion of the player base equates fast or instant as bad - the same "you have to work for it!". The problem is that sometimes that work is in fact just boring crap to make you spend time - a larger part of the population just wants a good MMO game and not a World to live a second life, so it can have different rules.
6) There is no hand holding. They give you a weapon, toss you in the field and you are on your own.
They have since first beta been introducing more tips and hints to help players, but there are all kind of details, like being able to send stuff from your bags directly to the storage, that people need to figure out on their own.
And then you are downed and have 4 new abilities - where is the help and hand holding?
The map only show you general points of interest (it isn't that immersion breaking to believe the character and other NPCs know where towns, farms, and other things are) - if you only follow them, you will miss a large portion of the content. In fact the scouts and Heart quests were introduced because during their testing they found people were getting lost and not know what to do.
If you only follow the heart quests and move from heart quest to heart quest you will find it not very enjoyable. Once you decide to just go wherever you want, the game is completely different -next time you play, I recommend you to just choose some point in the other side of map and decide to go there - you will take hours to arrive there since you'll be so side tracked.
7) You need to pay attention to what the NPCs say - some will trigger events if you interact with them or just follow them around. See some of the videos I linked and more of that guy videos, especially the Dynamic Events ones, there are tons of quests and details that are hidden and you'll never find if you pay no attention.
8) One thing I dislike is how enemies just a few levels above you can just one shot you, that restricts some of the freedom. Unfortunately, TSW is not any different in that aspect, since if you move to a region before acquiring higher level gears you will also be killed fairly easy.
9) In the end it is a fantasy MMORPG - it never claimed to be something else.
By the way, Frodo started with Mithril armor, a magic elven sword and the One ring - not to shabby for a level 1 halfling.
For me, a hero could save the world from a dragon by sticking a pen on him. I mean, if success depends on having a legendary item, who is the hero? The person or the item? Any joe schmuck could hold the sword adn save the world.
Guess we are different types of players, although what prevents me of playing TSW and many other games is that I refuse to pay a monthly subscription, especially one that also has a cash shop.
I have no problem with cash shops, as long as they don't sell items require to progress or give a statistical advantage, but a sub+cash shop?