gandara is a lovely place this time of year
[Gw2-64_2022-06-12_14-47-24.png (1920×1080) (discordapp.com)](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/788174413488193558/985541058047901746/Gw2-64_2022-06-12_14-47-24.png)
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Tbh I think Gw2 has the best zone design out of all the big mmos. It completely dumps on ffxiv 9 times out of 10 and rivals wow, confidently pulling ahead most times. Graphics being a bit dated by now, even the base games zones look really good, especially as far as vistas go. Ruins of Orr is truly an awe inspiring sight.
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Don’t make me reinstall it.
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I remember the very first time i went to orr following the retaking of claw Island and i honesty just felt so uncomfortable and intimidated. A nation sunk by a madmans whim just past the blankets of fog, pact airships dogfighting with Zhaitans corpse dragons above at all times. The further into Orr you got the more oppressive its atmosphere was. Many people slag off gw2 because the combat takes more than tab targeting but its world atmosphere and visuals no other mmo can touch imo.
Honestly i just sometimes go into wayfarers or lornars pass just to sit and vibe to the atmospherics and music
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Peeve: Neighbours seeing me, mid panic-attack, running up and down the street calling for my escaped dog without even attempting to ask if I am okay or if I need help. Bit of common decency would have been nice!
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Did you catch the dog?
Thankfully, the little S-head cornered himself in a garden and tried to play innocent when I caught up.
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Glad it got resolved. I remember when I was like 11 or 12 my dog slipped out of his harness and ran after some other dog behind the corner. Thankfully the other dog walker went to meet me half way with him still following them. Don’t think I’ve ever been more terrified in my life.
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The problem is that Archie is an escape artist so -any- flaw in the defences he’ll take advantage of… Doesn’t help when the postman keeps leaving our gate wide open even after being asked to close it.
Scares me like mad because two dogs have been run over by speeding drivers in the last year alone.
Oh you’re in a suburb on top of all? Yeah I can see how that would be stressful.
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I have given up trying to work today bc cat has the zoomies™ and I feel extremely knackered from lack of sleep ontop =.=
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GW2 absolutely wrecks the competition in a few aspects:
- Environmental design. Even in the recent expansions, environments still look absolutely gorgeous. There’s some really surreal locations that just look fantastic.
- Monster design. Some of the creatures look absolutely incredible, with every single Elder Dragon actually looking like an intimidating and terrifying eldritch monstrosity. Unfortunately, End of Dragons spent its monster design budget on making the jade mechs look cool. The primary enemies look a little lacklustre, to put it politely.
- Mounts. The variety of mounts is absolutely great, their mechanics are all superbly designed and even when you unlock the hard-to-get ones like the Griffon and Skyscale, almost all of them still have an important use depending on the map you’re on.
Even the combat is pretty fantastic, though it can’t really be compared to World of Warcraft’s. They’re too different.
Unfortunately, the narrative is Shadowlands levels of not-good (and I’d argue it has been that bad since the game’s release). The dialogue is especially poor and feels like someone teleported a swarm of American high school students into a fantasy world. The playable race design is pretty awful too, with a few exceptions.
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I haven’t bought it yet but the new elite specs look quite fun. Not too fond of Not-China as the setting, though I’ll give them creativity points for trying to integrate typical feudal looking aesthetic with a modern day metropolis look.
Unfortunately has to be payed for with real money if didn’t play when the living world was current content. That’s a peevin’. For that matter, the whole living world system is a peeve. Imagine having to pay separately for patch content.
True, would be the same as comparing eso combat to others. Sure gw2 too uses tab to switch targets, but beyond that it is vastly different. I’ve been indulging in more pvp this time around and I think I finally got it.
I would compare it more to pre-shadowlands wow actually. It’s very pulpy, don’t think too much kind of story, but the shortcomings did not stand out to me as much as everything in shadowlands did. At least as far as base game and Path of Fire go. Didn’t delve deep into Heart of Thorns yet.
If we’re talking only about the visual design, I’m kind of half and half. I love charr and I think sylvari look cool, definitely unique as far as a stand in for elves goes. The not-gnomes are okay. Humans are humans. And then there’s big humans. That’s kind of a lame, allied race moment.
as someone who did and still does play the original guild wars i appreciate how much they changed some areas while still keeping some things…similar. like going to amnoon for the first time when i remembered it as a small sand spit with some wrecked boats for buildings.
i will agree and disagree here. at some points of the story absolutely but it did have its highs too. but ill never not be dissapointed how quickly they plugged joko and what they did to the icebrood saga… race design i think their all okay and relatively unique. or as unique as you can make humans and human variants anyway. sylvari however
also a peeve, the fact we only now got living world season 1 to experience again after nearly 10 years. i missed season 2 and the first episode of season 3 so had to pay for them.
Regarding the Living World structure, a single chapter and all of the content that it contains costs 200 Gems, which equates to roughly 60 gold using the gold-to-gems converter. I’ll agree that it sucks but unfortunately, capitalism is a thing and this game doesn’t have a subscription fee to keep it running. It’s got to nickel and dime somewhere to pay the bills, I guess.
Regarding the story and its low points I just have to mention…
GW2 Spoilers for the base game, Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire, LWS 1-through-4 and the Icebrood Saga
* Trahearne taking credit for basically everything until he dies at the end of Heart of Thorns. * Scarlet Briar. A hyper-competent villain who gets away with everything that she does for over a year, while having an extremely obnoxious Harley Quinn sort of personality. * Braham's constant back-and-forth between being a complete jerk and anti-hero who despises you and a supposedly loveable himbo who is meant to be one of your best friends. * Taimi the kid genius who constantly outsmarts and runs circles around her entire society, which is supposed to be dedicated to intelligence and enlightenment. * Since it's so pervasive, I have to mention it again: I'm sick of the dialogue being written as though the majority of the characters were born in the twenty-first century. * Palawa Joko, a lich who is supposed to be intelligent and menacing, instead gets written as a genre-savvy joker who doesn't take anything seriously until he's dead. * Aurene's miraculous resurrection at the start of a chapter of LWS4, having died at the very end of the previous chapter. Absolutely cheap.And as for the character design, I just find the Human and Norn faces to be more plastic and fake-looking than any from any other game. It’s especially jarring when they’re animated to speak and their faces just wobble about like malfunctioning animatronics.
The big winners seem to be Engineer and Thief, when it comes to elite specs. As for the setting itself, it’s a little jarring due to the American high school dialogue but at least it looks pretty lovely. The Asian theme is also toned down a little in one of the zones, the Echovald Wilds.
In the original Guild Wars, the Wilds were inhabited by the Kurzicks who were heavily inspired by gothic Germany and built cathedrals out of giant petrified trees. The Kurzicks themselves are nowhere to be seen for some bizarre reason, but at least their stunning architecture remains behind. So that might provide a breath of fresh air.
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Sylvari are great. I myself mained one back when I RP’d in GW2, in 2013–2014.
I’m not sure I’d call them a stand in for elves, though. They are the Obligatory Nature Race, but they don’t have much in common with elves thematically besides living in a forest. They are the youngest race in the world without much history to them, energetic and curious and social. If anything, humans seem to be a better stand in for elves, with their graceful monumental architecture and being the oldest civilization that once ruled most of the world but has since fallen into decline.
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Very true, but I’m gonna complain about it all the same, mainly because the game is heavily monetized as is, the cash shop is quite extensive.
Yeah, fair enough. That sounds pretty weak. I still think it’s on the level of pre-shadowlands wow. That said, the dialogue and characters are quite weak, I’ll agree.
Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, true. That said I have to give props to all other animation work. I appreciate small touches like the start up for running and such.
Sounds interesting. That’s something to look forward to for me at least whenever I actually get the expac.
Well my comparison was surface level and a bit facetious, so you’re right.
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coincidentally voiced by tara platt same as harley
no bizzare reason it gets said. canthas old ministry of purity went on an ethnic cleansing. kurzicks were forced from their homes and either integrated with canthan society, like the luxons, or were put to the flame
Absolutely. I sometimes start GW2 just to run around in the world despite no longer playing it otherwise.
FFXIV actually has the worst looking environments of all post-2000 MMOs I’ve played. Except for some Endwalker zones.
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Playing Sylvari from vanilla to the end of Heart of Thorns feels like a very neat and complete story and the intended way to experience the story given the extra beats you only get as a Sylvari. It’s in a way the inverse of the Forsaken but with a satisfying conclusion.
I’ve seen this pop up quite often and I feel like I must have missed a few hours of content because to me Trahearne was a pretty intriguing figure along the rest of the OG sylvari. Palling around the world with him and the recurring urge for the Sylvari to prove their worth with their weird hunts was neat. The way he’s involved in HoT, especially with how it wraps up in the post expansion weapon acquisition, was a very enjoyable tale.
Mega Spoilers
Maybe it was because I was suffering under the frankly embarrassing story quality of WoW but that moment stuck with me quite a bit.