intro

	I just got a mail inside Guild Wars 2 that my character had its first birthday. Thus I've been playing it for a year so I figured I'd summarize what I've been up to in the game. What I enjoyed and what I disliked. It's exceedingly likely I will go back and update this article as time goes by, but for now it's long enough.

story

	The story of gw2 oscillates between uninteresting and sort of cringe with occasional glimpses of genius. I really enjoyed the core game story, it felt by far the most thought through of any of the expansions. But it ended in the bar-none absolutely worst end-boss fight I've ever encountered. You mount a turret and spam a key, then you win. Good grief.

I was sort of engaged up until Path of fire (which is likely my favorite expansion) and then completely lost interest somewhere during the following living world season. But I do prefer the environment of End of Dragons (ie Cantha). The piecemeal nature of Shadows of the obscure meant I had no bloody clue what was going on because you got an hour of story interspersed with three months of waiting for the next bit. Terrible.

map metas

	The major thing about gw2 is that the questing is entirely public. You go to an area, a public quest is active and everyone in the area works together to complete it. This scales all the way up to huge map zone wide chains of events that often culminate in fantastic boss battles against enormous foes. This is referred to as map metas and is by far my favorite aspect of gw2.

You jump between slaying dragons larger than small towns to stopping oil spills to defending ancient cities from vines attacking it. And it's all great. I've even managed to find a guild called Bitterfly bayou [PUKA] lead by Technocat and Red who specialize in doing meta trains each day. Great stuff.

These metas also keep every single part of the game alive since older metas are just as relevant today as they were when they were launched when it comes to rewards and specific items required for different crafting recipes.

festivals

	Most MMOs have something along the lines of festivals. Time limited events that occur during certain holidays, either in the real world or just in-game. GW2's version is excellent and you get a wide variety ranging from Lunar new year to the bizarre Retro arcade styled Super Adventure Box. I haven't had much time to explore them this year since I was focused on legendaries but whenever one popped I would do the quickest events that yielded the most liquid gold from selling on the trading post. All to fuel my addiction to legendaries.

This year I'll take the time to fully explore them and I'm really looking forward to it. It's a nice little 20 minute (up to hours of grinding, if you so desire) detour from your regular schedule every day. They never last long enough to get repetitive and always offer something new each year. It's good stuff.

legendaries

	The vast majority of my time has been devoted to a single goal. Getting full sets of legendary equipment. Legendaries are an interesting concept in gw2. Gear comes in several tiers of quality; common, uncommon, master, rare, exotic, ascended and finally legendary.

Each step increases the stats they yield with the exception being that ascended and legendaries are equal. But legendary equipment comes with one major benefit, you can swap stats on them at any point thus negating the need to keep multiple sets of equipment.

The best part of gw2 is that once you hit max level, which you do in the core game before any of the expansions even begin, you can immediately buy a full set of exotic gear relatively cheaply on the trading post. Exotics are only 5% less effective than ascended and legendaries. So with zero grinding you're in the top 95% of gear power.

Almost immediately upon picking the game up again I decided that I would skip ascended entirely since they require a fair share of grinding and will ultimately be replaced by legendaries since there really isn't any other end goal in gw2. All progression is horizontal so unless you play exclusively for the social factor, the mechanics themselves or for achievement hunting then there's nothing else to have as a "goal", so to say.

Anyone who's ever completed a legendary will tell you what an amazing slog it is. It will completely ruin your character financially. You'll pretty much have to dedicate your entire play time to getting the items required to craft it and it'll still take weeks or even months for every piece. Yet once completing one the satisfaction is immense.

You know that this gear is timeless. All of your characters get an instance of it. It looks fantastic and it's incredibly handy to be able to swap stats at will to perfect your build. You can also remove sigils and runes from the items without having to use expensive salvage kits or upgrade extractors.

But. It's still only 5% better than exotic gear that can be bought in minutes after hitting max level. It really isn't worth it except for the challenge itself. And it's the challenge I want.

I live for spreadsheets when it comes to games. Or rather, I do for online games. I only really play three kinds of games; adventure (the point and click variety), strategy (oxygen not included) and games that just don't end (Guild Wars 2, Fallout 76, etc). I take the most enjoyment in mapping out the most efficient course in achieving a particular goal, in this case getting Legendary gear.

I'm still writing my "Games are bonsai trees" article. But to sum it up I treat games, particularly online ones, as something I nurture for a short amount of time every day and watch them grow. It's satisfying to see how they've grown as weeks, months or even years go by. Immediate gratification, as is so common these days, is the opposite of what I'm after.

If what I'm doing doesn't require vast amounts of actual time to achieve, then it'll likely not interest me. Now, I'm not talking about grinding for hours every day. I don't have time for that. I'm talking about overcoming immense challenges as efficiently as possible. If I cannot optimize a route then I'll likely never venture down it to begin with. Effective use of limited gametime, pretty much.

The news that Guild Wars 3 was being worked on just leaked due to an NCSoft shareholder meeting. Doesn't that mean all of my "work" for getting legendaries will be for nothing? When GW3 is released I'll "lose" the progress? Yes. And that's ok. Getting the legendaries isn't the goal, the path to getting them is the goal. If the bonsai tree doesn't die then I just won't value it. The loss makes it real, as is true for most aspects of life.

my legendaries

	When my birthday came around I have successfully aquired;
Full set of WvW legendary light armor.
Full set of Obsidian legendary heavy armor.
Sunrise, legendary greatsword.
Bifrost, legendary staff.
Warbringer, legendary WvW backpack.
Conflux, legendary WvW ring (x2).
Prismatic champion's regalia, legendary necklace.
Vision, legendary accessory.
Aurora, legendary accessory.

All characters I play beyond logging in to do a daily task also have ascended weapons where necessary. I'm currently working on the legendary medium armor set through a combination of pieces from WvW and obsidian. After that it's all weapons from then on.

The final three legendary pieces are legendaries that still cost a lot to craft but the components are primarily received from completing story elements of the game, completely exploring maps, getting items from public quests, defeating map meta world bosses, etc.

As I was doing them they felt like a complete slog since they take A LOT of time to complete, and they require active engagement as opposed to getting WvW legendaries where you just play the game and sort of end up with the stuff you need to craft legendaries. Once I had finished them I immediately missed them. They were an extraordinarily well executed ploy to get you to explore and experience the game's content.

I think the reason I didn't immediately take to the process was because I was doing them in parallel with other legendaries and got overwhelmed. I truly hope they add more legendaries like this since it's the perfect way to get people to go back and explore every corner of the older content, thus keeping those parts of the game relevant.

PvP

	GW2 does feature a small scale PvP arena style system. It's great in the sense that you get automatically scaled to max level, can pick the weapons and gear you use so everyone is on an equal playing field. The arenas are ok but sort of spun out of control with PvPvE elements added that just don't belong.

I don't spend much time in it since it feels like a gimped version of WvW and the players vary between casuals who do fuck all or people who define their entire being and life by PvP which results in rather toxic behavior when things don't go their way.

That said, it's the best implementation of PvP I've ever seen in an MMO. How other games can call themselves competitive when they allow gear power discrepancies between players is mindboggling.

World vs World

	Now this is my bread and butter. I played GW2 when it was first launched over a decade ago and it was immediately the game mode that lured me in. The same was true this time around. In WvW your server (soon to be factions balanced by player ability) faces off versus two other servers in an all out deathmatch. You capture towers, flip supply camps to generate resources for your keeps, build siege weapons to knock down walls and in general murder your way forward along with massive amounts of players.

When the game launched the sheer amount of players on each map was very impressive, less so these days where other games have caught up but it's still far, far more than any other current MMO. The tech really haven't improved much. The dated gw2 engine results in absurd lag when full raids of players clash and it can get so bad that your input lag measures in seconds. But it's so much. So much fun.

You can set your weekly astral vault challenges to be either pve, pvp or wvw. I've naturally set mine to wvw and thus just play it as usual, doing nothing special.. and getting massively rewarded for it. I get to play my favorite game mode, get rewards every five minutes (that you stay active by achieving wvw objectives), get to set a reward track that you progress down for specific rewards, get specific competitive tickets you can trade for items used to craft legendary gear. And now the aforementioned astral acclaim system yielding even more rewards.

Anyone willing to pay the gold price can attain a commander icon and the ability to form squads of up to 50 players. This has led to natural leaders assuming the roles of leading other players in battle and each server has their own set of standout characters. For Gandara, the server I play on, we've got Sim who I've followed since I began playing again. I credit most of my WvW legendary equipment to his squads. At night Cormac takes over, I seldom play then but I have encountered him a few times. Uhuru the necro that picks up the slack in-between. Besides these you also get familiar with regular players and their names stick with you. For me it'd be Lord Attikus who is a god of war (the highest title you can achieve in WvW), capu who tends to play along with sim and Xyox, who I've named Gandara's bard.

WvW is perfect. I just wish they'd optimize the engine.

Astral vault

	Something that was added in the latest expansion is the Astral Vault. It's a sort of shop for a currency you get from completing daily, weekly and some special challenges. The rewards range from raw gold to crafting items to cosmetics. It replaced an older system with daily login rewards and it's for the better.

The old system was abused by people getting multiple accounts, sometimes dozens or even hundreds. Logging in to the get the rewards on each of them then disrupting the trading post with the rewards. This system actively requires you to actually play the game to get the rewards, easily done by a regular player, impossible for something with 100 alt accounts.

One of the major things I marveled at was the introduction of "legendary starter kits" which is basically a box of stuff that is ordinarily very expensive to buy that helps you on your way to crafting a legendary weapon. It's how I got Bifrost, the legendary staff.

achievements

	I judge online games by their achievement systems. If the developers' idea of an achievement is "do the same thing 9999 times" then it's a total wash and I ignore it entirely. If it's gathering rare items, finding obscure spots on the map, delving into lost lore books hidden away or, to put it plainly, is designed to let the player have fun.. then I'm all in.

GW2 has both sides of that coin. Some of the achievements, particularly the WvW ones, are terrible. Do the same thing hundreds or even thousands of times. Boring. But you do sort of just get them by playing the game and not even paying attention to the achievements.

But it also has fantastic, expansive sets of achievements that include doing EVERYTHING in a zone, no matter how obscure. This enabled me to experience new parts of the game that I didn't even know existed. It's not as good as Warcraft's achievements, but it's darn close.

summary

	Guild Wars 2 is likely my favorite MMO ever. It respects my time. I don't have to grind for new gear with every expac. The PvP keeps everyone on an even playing field. WvW is unique, there's nothing like it in other MMOs. The legendaries and achievements will keep you busy for years if you enjoy them, or you can skip them entirely if you don't. But GW2 doesn't feel like home like World of Warcraft did.

I stopped playing wow since it's the very definition of not respecting players' time. But I know every single part of Azeroth and each time I resubbed it felt like coming home as I trudged through the barrens or nagrand. The GW2 world is massive, but I just don't really care about it, likely since I bounced from the story.

All of this said the mechanics and gameplay is just superior in GW2. This will be my bonsai tree, until it withers and dies. Which I do hope it will.. eventually.