Hey all, I’m sure there’s a sentiment that some of the smaller communities reddit had will take time to repopulate and gather traffic in the Fediverse. I was curious if Games still served as a melting pot for game talk, and I wanted to chat a bit here to see if I can reignite some discussion about MMO content.
Exploring this new little bubble of internet has me wondering how people feel about how online games have developed over time. Early 2000’s MMOs definitely had a special feeling to them, with lots of interaction between players, more obtuse(and grindy) challenges to overcome, but definitely a feeling of reward for figuring these things out or brute forcing your way through.
I’m wondering if eventually the social dynamic of MMOs will be reexplored. Parts of the game like leveling are definitely designed to be less impactful in the scope of overall gameplay, and cooperating between players is mainly focused on teamwork in the final endgame instances. I remember playing MapleStory, games like FFXI, etc where party questing during the leveling processes were huge and added a unique feeling to the social atmosphere and accomplishment at earlier levels.
If you have any thoughts about games you think still hit cooperative notes well, what you miss or don’t miss about older design vs newer ones, or just have any anecdotes in general I’d love to hear it!
IMO OG WoW and even the tiny bit of WoW Classic I played…STILL featured the best social pick-up-COOP-questing. Hell even the pre classic private servers I played still had a sense of community. Granted the later years were less social, covid really did a number on roaming chatters; I think everyone became more world weary.
After reading so much hatred towards retail WoW I finally tried it [as a Vanilla fan] and er, yeah it was ok but socially it was a ghost town outside of that weird Airport hub in the sky [Shadowlands]. My heart broke a bit when I did chromie time in Azeroth, not only were the zones like Westfall fucked up, I saw absolutely no one during my time questing in westfall. Just…sad times.
Overall retail WoW was good on the tail end of Shadowlands, but the end game being just Mythic dungeon and Raids for a chance at maybe one bit of good gear is shit. I prefer more chill exploring, questing and a bit of collecting. Transmog farming was boring, and old quests were pointless as they weren’t level scaled. So I ended up quitting just before dragonflight. Still have good memories of Vanilla’s original 1-60 journey, but it’s not that game anymore.
I saw so much love for Guildwars 2 over the years, but my WoW brain bounced off it so hard about three times. Until last Christmas, on a whim I bought the complete package and I found my new MMO home.
Exploration, XP for everything, level scaling and world events which makes every zone somewhat relevant. Easy and no gear-treadmill (your shit will always be good, forever). The story is linear and makes sense, unlike WoWs scattered expansion packs and timelines, jesus.
Plus, my human male is voiced by Nolan North, so in my head he’s a teleported Nathan Drake from Uncharted now in a weird fantasy land lol. I’m not really bothered by side characters in these games, but i’ve grown attached to the cast too, the chemistry is pretty decent bless it’s heart.
GW2 does some good account bound stuff too like your mounts, currency and masteries (kinda like skills for X things) all apply to toons so no repeat grinds/unlocks per alt which is absolute BLISS!
I also made a random friend-for-life after asking in map chat for a hero point train in the Heart of Thorns map. Any game I make a genuine friend gets massive marks, it’s so hard to find good people in any game these days. GW2 is very nice in that regard, i’d recommend joining a guild, to which there are some nice ones in the NA region.
You can try GW2 for free, just give it a while for it to tick. It does some things differently and especially if you’re coming from a WoW, gear mindset…you’re gonna have to check it at the door. Loot is mostly materials and random shit like boosts. Your gold assets are tied up in those materials vs fat gold stacks from mobs.
I like logging on and map clearing when i’m in discord with my lads and we’re waiting to play something proper. You clear maps by opening up the fog of war, collecting waypoints [teleports all over said map], hitting points of interests, doing favor hearts [very basic ‘quests’] and hitting up vistas [quick, panoramic cutscenes of an area of interest]. It’s so chill to whack a podcast on and do these, and you benefit greatly from completing them, more so if you do the whole map too.
I could be here all day waxing lyrical about GW2, it is the best MMO for me these days. I’ve still not completed the story since December, i’m currently on the start of LWS4. Still got End of Dragons and then the new expansion too, good feels!
And the best bit? Even if I don’t return for months or years, all my gear will still be as good as I left it. No ‘power creep’ I believe the word is?
From the way you play the game, I do agree that GW2 is a good fit for you. I played it previously and did enjoy it. The biggest issue for me was the endgame, which did not feel very fleshed out. WoW is still great, but only if you primarily enjoy the main end game content like raids, mythic+ and pvp.