Is Guild Wars 2 worth starting in 2022?

On January 2, 2022By Garmin Philip

The MMORPG Guild Wars 2 is planning a new expansion for 2022. When it comes to content updates, players can look forward to regular updates. But is it still worth starting Guild Wars 2 in 2022? Our author Alexander Leitsch will explain to you.

Where will Guild Wars 2 be in early 2022? The MMORPG is celebrating its 10th birthday this year. A lot has happened since the release and there have been real highs with the Hearth of Thorns and Path of Fire expansions, but also lows such as the mass layoffs in early 2019.

In 2022, however, things are looking really good for Guild Wars 2:

The size The End of Dragons expansion is slated for February. This leads into the Cantha area, which veterans might know from Guild Wars Factions. It brings new areas, new endgame content, elite specializations and the new fishing and shipping features.
Before that, new insights into the areas will be given in January, the release date will be revealed and the Lunar New Year will start. This is an annual Chinese New Year event that begins on January 25th.

But what does this news mean for newcomers?

Note: The article originally appeared in March 2020 and was last updated on January 2, 2022. In doing so, we intensified our focus on the expansion and current developments of GW2.

Is it worth getting started now? I think now is a very good time to get into Guild Wars 2. There is a huge world to discover, especially for newcomers, which has been constantly expanded over more than 9 years.

You have content, tasks and stories that will keep you busy for hundreds of hours. And right now you are getting story content that will be important for the upcoming expansion.

In the following, I’ll explain to you what a good introduction to Guild Wars 2 is, what you need to know about the game and what makes the MMORPG so special.

About the author: Alexander Leitsch already played the predecessor of Guild Wars 2 very intensively and has played more than 8,100 hours in GW2 since August 2012. He has played every story, seen every raid, over 34,000 success points and has meanwhile been a shoutcaster in PvP. On MeinMMO he is also responsible for many other MMORPGs.

Table of Contents

A huge world in which the endgame begins with the start

How is Guild Wars 2 organized? The MMORPG from the American developer ArenaNet is Free2Play, which only refers to the base game, the “Vanilla World”. For the two expansions Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire you have to buy Path of Fire once. The other extension is included for free.

Guild Wars 2 does without a classic Holy Trinity. Instead, each class can dodge, heal itself and usually have additional defensive skills in their luggage.

When creating characters, you can choose from:

5 peoples.
8 (with extension 9) classes, about which we reveal more here.
Various optical customization options.
Some character-related questions that will influence your personal story on the journey to max level 80.

In the open world there are no classic quests waiting for you, but you explore the environment. You will meet “hearts”, a replacement for Quest. A heart needs to be filled by doing chores. Most of the time, however, you have different options available to take care of the heart.

Events are also popping up all over the world. Some have a timer, others react to actions on the map. Individual world events are so big that they affect the entire area. This was particularly used in the Heart of Thorns expansion.

In addition, there are many experience points just for uncovering the map, discovering special places and looking at panoramas, which are mostly hidden behind jump puzzles.

What does the MMORPG offer? In Guild Wars 2, you can look forward to the following content:

Over 50 open PvE areas.
Well over 150 story missions.
Countless bosses and world events that players complete on a regular basis.
8 dungeons with 4-5 different paths each.
20 different fractals (5-player instance) with a total of 100 levels of difficulty.
7 raid wings.
Different PvP arenas, seasons and game modes.
Automated 5v5 tournaments and events like the Tournament of Legends.
World against world in which 3 servers fight for control of fortresses and towers.

What Makes Guild Wars 2 Special? What fascinates me most about the MMORPG is the combat system. It’s very dynamic and for me it’s one of the best you can find right now.

The choice of skills is not huge, but the restriction to 10 weapon skills (5 per weapon and a possible weapon change in combat) and 5 auxiliary skills force you to limit yourself to certain skills.

In addition, there is the mode with the so-called action camera, which you can activate if desired and with which you then have to target opponents precisely. That brings even more dynamism into play.

Another highlight are the mounts introduced by the Path of Fire expansion. Each animal has a special use:

Raptors can jump far.
Jumpers can jump high.
Jackals run particularly fast.
Grasping can slide in the air.

Guild Wars 2 currently offers you a total of 9 different mounts, which we present to you in more detail in the guide. Each has several skins that you can buy for real money or in-game currency and, recently, even a skin that you can earn.

A healthy player base

Are there still players in the starting areas? Yes, there are many incentives for veterans to return to the starting areas, including:

Rewards for completely revealing the map.
World bosses that also appear in many starting zones and with a fixed timer.
Achievements that can be made on the cards.
Collecting lesser materials, which are usually more valuable than the higher-level ones.
Dungeons with entrances in some starting areas.

Guild Wars 2 uses a dynamic scaling system. Level 80s get weaker in the lower tier areas, if not quite as weak as newly created characters. This way they stay slightly stronger, but still cannot defeat everything in one fell swoop.

What about other areas of the game? Especially for world bosses and world events, the appearance of which can be identified with a timer, there are always many players available.

For the fractals and also in the world against world there are always players to be found. It gets a bit more difficult for arena PvP and raids. The number of hardcore gamers has dropped noticeably, while casual gamers tend to stick with Guild Wars 2.

Lots of updates for PvE – little for the rest

How about updates in Guild Wars 2? In addition to the expansions, Guild Wars 2 mainly uses the so-called Living World for updates. New content is published that is free as long as you are “live” with it.

The rule is that you have to log in between two episodes to view content such as:

New story
new rewards at merchants
new features such as masteries or new mounts
and in the past also regularly new areas

unlock. After an extension, an episode usually appears every 2 to 4 months. After that, an episode costs gems that can be bought with in-game currency or real money (the equivalent of around 2.50 euros).

In addition, there are constant festivals, including Winter’s Day, Halloween, the so-called dragon pounding in May or the festival of the four winds in summer. These events provide special activities, skins and achievements that you can do for a few weeks.

What about other content? Aside from the “casual PvE”, Guild Wars 2 is currently looking a bit poor:

In PvP there were always balance adjustments and new mini-seasons were introduced in 2020 to bridge the gap, but there wasn’t really much new content.
In the WvW, on the other hand, the players have been waiting for a promised major overhaul for almost 4 years. However, it should finally come in 2022.
For fans of instantiated content, there was a new fractal in September 2020, but players have been waiting for raids for 1.5 years. This is where the End of Dragons attack missions will help out in the future.

Nevertheless, Guild Wars 2 offers a lot of content, especially for newbies. Due to the lack of monthly fees and the regular updates, GameStar called Guild Wars 2 the “perfect fling or second MMO”.

After all, you can check in for updates, enjoy the regular festivals and then switch back to another game without losing much.

The end of the MMORPG still seems a long way off

What’s the future like? As already mentioned at the beginning, the developers of Guild Wars 2 are planning a new expansion that should appear this year.

If you join now, you will be busy for weeks and months. I personally recommend you to explore the world slowly, not to “rush” to the endgame and team up with other players.

And be sure to check out world bosses (via timer on Guildnews) and world events (via timer on Guildwiki) on. For me it was my gateway drug in Guild Wars 2. Spanking huge bosses with dozens of strange players.

Why is it worth getting started now? If you start with Guild Wars 2 now, you could bring your character to level 80 by the time the expansion is released and unlock the various mounts. Then you could explore the new content directly with the veterans.

In addition, the base game is Free2Play, which keeps the entry hurdle quite low. So if you are looking for a new MMORPG, you should give GW2 a chance.

If you want to find out more about the game, we recommend this article on the topic:

What types of players is Guild Wars 2 aimed at?

Reference-mein-mmo.de

Garmin Philip