Pro's and Con's of GWEN, in my opinion.

Pros
Dungeons - Who couldn't agree that these are awesome? Good loot, plenty of chests, easy title earning and experience, aswell as a quest with extra bonuses of money, experience and rep points.

Titles - Yeah, I know -everyone seems to be complaining about these. Why? They are so easy to get. All you need to do is go through a map and you earn 2000+ points, not like in NF at all - stop complaining just because you need to put a bit more effort into armor that you don't even need.

New weapon skins - These look awesome, good job on them A-Net. I especially like the daggers.

Minigames - Stuff like the Norn Tournament, Kilroy's quests etc etc make the game a lot more interesting, people who say "i hav noffin 2 do i am 1337 i alrdy finshd teh gamez" obviously haven't thought it through

Landscapes and maps - These are beautiful, and gigantic. I can spend hours going through a map killing and earning title points without any trouble.

Quests - They are a lot more compelling and interesting than any of the previous games.

The Gwen easter eggs - Bringing Gwen to Underworld and learning all about it was good fun, a nice added extra.

Neutral

HoM - Personally, I don't really have complaints about it, it does just what it's meant to do and people are fussing too much over it. Although, it would be more handy if it was account based instead of character based.

Armor - They're all basically re-skins, pretty boring. But then again, fancy looking armor isn't necessary.

Cons

Chests - I spend 15k on lockpicks and get 30 purples or something, that isn't all that good. =\

Vekk - His voice doesn't suit a rastafarian midgit.

Chromatic Drakes - For level 20's these things sure know how to kill me. Maybe you should dumb them down a little, Anet.


That's all I got, overall I think this new expansion is great, there are a couple of things that need a little tweaking, but they're fairly ignorable.

Good job :]

I don't know what your taking about vekk. His voice actor is Brain from the Pinky and the Brain.

The chests have been awful. Then again, NM chests everywhere have been really, really bad. For the quality of these chest drops, there should no doubt be 600g keys.

The dungeons are surprisingly fun, and in typical GW fashion, the level design is amazing. Arenanet have some of the best level artists ever.

Agreed on the dungeons, those are quite possibly some of the most fun I've had in any online game. Christ, why didn't they make those earlier on?

Also, was I the only one who expected vekk to have the voice of Jar-Jar Binks?

"Me-sa casting meteor shower!"

I disagree with your cons. I've been getting some decent things out of chests. Vekk's voice alone makes me like him over Zhed and Souske (although while in a zone, Souske says some pretty funny things). Brain is the man! I mean mouse! I haven't faced any Chromatic Drakes (where are these things people keep complaining about?), so I can't comment on them, yet.

I agree with just about everything else you've said. I'd probably put HoM into the cons category, but only because it was hyped so much to fail so miserably. Doesn't affect me beyond that disappointment.

I don't know about the drakes either, I've never had a problem with them, the problem is the build your team is running.

I found the dungeons to be pretty interesting. The Sepulchre of Dragrimmar was annoying because there was a point where I was constantly being hit by those ice-shooting thingamajigs for like 3 minutes as I worked my way north. After that it wasn't so bad, since they were more scattered. Playing a healer in Normal Mode in other chapters is a bore for me, but in EOTN, I find it somewhat compelling.

The titles aren't so bad to get, but the bonuses at 25 kills don't lie when they say random. If you're near a fair-sized mob when you get the Time Attack bonus, say hello to super-rank, especially if you maintained a double rank bonus (2x200=400 per foe, and 400x10=4,000 rank!). However, many of the others are pretty pathetic, like the +100 health for 60 seconds. I'd prefer some sort of way to either predict and/or alter what bonus is received so one can predict which direction to go slaying (i.e. not towards a boundary if you got a big bonus coming up).

The brawling minigame is odd. Sure it has novelty value, but the rewards aren't really that great. The tournament is harder for some support classes (particularly paragons and ritualists); it was fun up until I fought the bear who smashed all of my spirits in one hit each. Actually, that scenario applies to most solo quests, although a few are actually pretty neat.

The graphics are nice, but what is up with the slowdown at the EOTN? It's neither big nor graphically intense. What gives?

The armor is fairly interesting. So far it looks like Dervii (plural of dervish? :P ) get a variable attribute tattoo headpiece, and male paragons get PANTS. I don't quite think it's worth 50k + materials, but others may feel differently. Especially those with male paragons.

I have never gotten a decent item from a chest. Ever. In over a year. I didn't expect things to change, so I can't say I was disappointed by this.

Ogden Stonehealer looks a bit blocky in the legs to me. And why, if "Jora gets her bear back", does she not have Bear Form when she becomes a hero? I mean, aside from balancing the game, since they could have just said she didn't get the bear form back. I thought Vekk would be a Jar-Jar thing, too, and boy was I glad when I was shown otherwise.

I fought the Chromatic Drakes in the Battledepths. They weren't that hard, and I fought 8 at once. I dunno, maybe I got lucky? The only time I died at ALL in the preview was against that punk Remnant of Antiquities, and he was at 10% when I bit it (then again, I don't take master quests; why would I, for the 250 rep reward?).

Despite owning Prophecies, I never actually made a serious character from it. Gwen is totally arbitrary from my perspective; I just don't care. So, whatever, at least she's faster to get on a new character than Norgu.

Despite all the similarities, the addition of all this PvE-only stuff, weird new pseudo-missions, reputation titles, minigames, dungeons, and hard mobs of foes everywhere, it just feels like a totally different game. Maybe not a bad thing in the end.