GW:EN Review - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Between the preview and the debut weekend, I've now logged about 20 hours in GW:EN, and I'm almost done with the storyline. However, I'm a long ways from finishing everything (quests, dungeons, etc)...assuming I even bother to do that. This expansion is a lot more open-ended than most of the campaigns, allowing you to bypass huge chunks of territory, if you opt to concentrate on just doing the primary quests. I guess that's a good thing, since in many of the areas, I found myself just wanting to get thru them ASAP.

The Good:
- The scenery in several areas is fantastic.

- The new shrine blessings with random bonuses after certain numbers of kills, and increasing rewards for visiting new shrines after racking up enough kills seems like an improvement over the previous campaigns.

- The new heroes are very cool. Though functionally equivalent, they are a lot more distinct and better looking than the ones from Nightfall. In the future, I'm definitely going to be bringing Jora instead of Koss, Pyre instead of Jin or Margrid and Livia instead of Olias.

- Seamless primary quests/missions. The missions in GW:EN are essentially primary quests. But they blend into the story much easier than missions in previous campaigns seemed to. In fact, if you're not paying attention, its sometimes easy to forget that you're now in a mission instead of just out exploring or doing a quest.

The Bad:
- Despite having significantly smaller overall map area, obtaining certain waypoints seems harder than in previous campaigns. Reaching some locations requires traversing multiple map zones as well as dungeon levels. This can end up taking a significant amount of time, with numerous difficult battles along the way, just to reach that next map location allowing you to finally take a break or leave the game.

- The 40 new armors don't seem all that spectacular. I think everyone was hoping for some really awesome-looking armors, but aside from a few specific class versions, most don't seem all that appealing. Perhaps this is due to a limitation of the GW graphics engine? Maybe the base class models are simply too hard to modify beyond certain basic parameters, limiting the bulk of changes to consist of what seems like little more than skin updates to previous armor models. Even worse, it requires farming rep points for 5 ranks of 1 race to even craft one version of this stuff. All the platinum I had been saving up for crafting GW:EN armors will probably end up getting spent back in previous campaigns instead.

- Some of the equipment in GW:EN does not seem all that impressive. There are a few cool new weapon/shield skins, but aside from those few, most don't look notably better than ones available in previous campaigns. Aside from the destroyer staff, I think the craftable destroyer equipment is butt-ugly.

- Thus far, the new skills don't seem all that helpful. At least they aren't class specific. Farming rep points to improve them can be a pain, but at least you can get to level 2 or 3 with out much work.

- Polymock. No idea why they implemented this. Was ANet trying to appease the Pokemon crowd? I've won a couple matches, but that was primarily due to rapid clicking of skills, rather than any real skill on my part. Personally, I don't see the appeal of this.

The Ugly:
- Way too many encounters have 1-shot kill potential. I am not a newbie - I've been playing ele's since the beta. I rarely died in previous campaigns, and when I did it was usually due to me doing something risky like developing solo builds. Adventuring in GW:EN as an ele, even when sending in allies first, the monster AI seems to be seeking me out above even the healers. Far too often, I have often been dropping from full health (~470) to a faceplant while trying to activate my 1st or 2nd spell. This happens even when using defensive ele builds running armor spells, wards and/or spells like blurred vision.

- Several of the dungeons are extremely aggravating. The traps combined with number and size of mobs virtually ensures character deaths will occur in abundance. Hero AI is too stupid to handle certain trap areas - they will flee into traps, or stand in dangerous areas while taking bombardment in a vain attempt to activate a skill.

- Considering the difficulty of the foes faced, the loot has been horrible. When I do get items to drop, they are often less than max dmg, and the very few blues/purples/golds I've found have had worthless mods . Also, the loot I've scored from dungeon chests has seemed rather poor as well. Out of 4 dungeon chests, I've gotten 1 good item (black onyx), and 3 craptastic ones. This tremendous lack of reward vs. risk is making this game vastly less fun to play than the previous campaigns. At this point, I have virtually no desire to push any of my other characters thru GW:EN.

Verdict:
While there are some nifty additions here, overall I am rather disappointed in GW:EN. Poor rewards and uninteresting armor combined with significantly harder encounters and unappealing grind gives me very little incentive to play GW:EN. Instead, I'd rather spend my time in previous campaign areas that are much more enjoyable and less stressful to explore which provide significantly better rewards.

Agreed. You can find me in the other areas too.

Good: Charr and stone summit using secondaries makes for interesting encounters.

Bad: Re-used terrain in dungeons. I haven't even done them all and I've noticed the same layout from other dungeons just different enemies. Re-skinned armour I could care less about, but for the dungeons it's a big upset.

Good:
~Pretty Scenery
~Dungeans
~New Heros
~Consumables


Bad:
~Reskinned armor, mobs, and endgame weapons
~The rep grind (Yes, it's a grind. To say otherwise puts you in denial.)


Ugly:
~The enormous Gold-Sink Anet implemented by making all chests require a Lockpick.

Well, I had some fun with the expansion, but it's over.
I see all kinds of people wanting re-skins of armors..etc..etc..There are many more imba's/glitches that need to be dealt with first.

-time to start hitting the farming spots scouted while grudging thru.
it's worth the time of one character, but 10 more...ntykbai.

I concur - especially about polymock. I kinda got into the dwarven boxing and the norn tournament...those were kind of fun. But Polymock - put very lightly - SUCKS. It requires no real skill and no real thought or intelligence (wasn't it supposed to be "the thinking game" of the 3?). It simply requires you to either have better pieces or out-spam skills than a computer player. VERY bad implementation on that one IMO.

Overall though I love GW:EN. I think there is too much grinding if you want to get the skills to a respectable, usable level. There is - again agreeing here - far too little reward for the level of difficulty. And after the preview weekend you raised the cost of the hands I was saving up for. Now they're impossible to get for a casual gamer. )-:

I have several major disappointments but overall I am pleased. I am continuing to play but I hope Anet hears our cries for what should be changed.

I also agree that this expansion was fun to put ONE character through..but putting my 15 other chars thorugh (like I did all 3 other campaigns) I highly doubt I'll do. Doesn't seem worth it.

what im finding with gwen is that

-its fun to play - Dungeons, quests
-its amazing to be in --> beautiful scenery

but when it comes to the REWARDS - the thing that makes the above to points have some meaning;

-armors are blatently uninspired next to hero's. im sorry, but as long as the hero's have better armor than me, it leaves me the player feeling a little gutted.
-Long hard dungeons only to be rewarded with golds from previous campaigns. (come on, why did they think we'd love to find a gold divine staff in a 5 level dungeon)
-high end destroyer weaps are unspectacular (i mean look at at the DoA weaps for a comparison, they have a lot more i-want-it factor than destroyer weaps).


gwen being GW1's last outing, i was hoping it would go out with a bang, with the most awesome armors and the most awesome weapons. instead we get reskins and a "destroyer sword" that is smaller than my forearm.

Lvl 28 boss killed - the drop?? non max white air wand....

And im sure i'll get flamed for this -- but:

while some areas are totally fine -- with many of the dinosaur areas... i'm finding 60dp to be a norm. Groupings of lvl 28 baddies..... all locked chests..... it feels like hard mode to me -- with very little gold drops and almost all white non max weapon drops.

I grinded out my lvl 5 in asura over the long weekend - and 4 more lvls with other characters while working on primaries -- and with easily over 30-35 hours of solid gameplay..... 4 golds total (chests and drops counted)..... my fave was the non max hammer.

seems a bit off to me.

LOL the funny part is i went in to cap a skill really fast in NF and both me and my husband got a gold drop almost instantly...

*gets ready for flame*

In regards to pathetic loot, when I finally defeated Cyndr the Mountain Heart at the bottom of the Heart of the Shiverpeaks, the chest gave me a...

...wait for it...

...req 12 flame artifact w/ less than perfect mods.

Two other dungeon chests produced similar kinds of junk for me. I've only had 1 chest give me anything remotely valuable, and it was an onyx gemstone. Given that the only purpose for those is making ugly destroyer weapons, even that seems rather useless now.

Meanwhile, the few gold items I have found while exploring have been less than max damage or featured high reqs. It feels like I'm playing hard mode in the other campaigns, but only getting the loot value of mid-prophecies.

Pretty much exactly my review except that I probably will play the dungeons over and over (which needs to be done with humans imo that's how you counter the difficulty), and finish all the quests and get the titles up at least to get something from each faction. The rewards are stupid though, and the armors a laugh. The environments are way better than everything else in GW however.

Good: Tons of things to do, great scenery,heroes are good. I like the locked chests so I can continue working on my wisdom and treasure tites. Hall of Monuments is good granted it might be work in progress but it gives people a chance to show off their accomplishments which is a good thing. The new races are great. The Norn and the Asura are a breath of fresh air here and they give you lots of good laughs as you progress through the game.

Bad: I really dont have much bad with GW:EN. The armors could have been more creative but some of the new armors look nice.

Ugly: Nothing really ugly here other thean the fact if you don't like gaining titles then I think GW:EN would be a disappointment for you. Its all about putting time into the game. Just remember though, we have over a year to wait for GW2 so Anet must keep us busy until that time.

Overall: A very nice expansion with some nice twists to it. Very different from the other campaigns which is a good thing. The Dungeons are a nice touch as they are much more challenging then any of the prior missions we have done in previous campaigns. I'm happy with the expansion and look forward to taking most of my professions through the game.

When I first saw the Locked Chests in GWEN, I thought it was a neat idea... until I used about 15 lockpicks and got 4 craptacular golds for it (stupid/high req or NON MAX even!). I am not Uber rich, I would like the picks I can afford to at least give me something I can ID for my title.

GWEN has been a disappointment for me. I understand making player work for new rewards, but this grind is REDICULOUS. I have 10 charecters! Leveling half of them up past level 5 in Lightbringer was a stupid amount of effort in and of itself. I will continue playing as long as I have a GF who does, but apart from that, I think I will retire the GW series after this.

I agree with Gentrinity - Asuran areas are not balanced vurses Norn or Charr areas. Mobs of level 28 dervishes have a way of adding death penalty and stoping your Hunt Rampage. The more balanced mobs are nice, but the high levels just for the sake of high levels is dumb.

For a while, I thought that I was the only one that thought that Guild Wars: Eye of the North, while an interesting game, is not without its disappointments. By "disppointments", I don't mean typical complaints like "Where's the Auction House?", "How come there's no hair stylist?", "We need more storage!", etc.

For me, the bright parts were the really stunning scenery in some of the areas, the really colorful and interesting characters (like your heroes, but also many NPCs), and I think the story and cutscenes aren't all that bad. I think that most people will agree with any of these statements.

Conversely, the disappointment list seems to match a lot of others:

* I don't get Polymock at all. I got the impression that ANet spent a lot of time developing this mini-game--even to the point where dungeons can have "secret Polymock pieces" as a reward. I'm somewhat disappointed that a game that basically tests who can out-spam the skills of your opponent somehow equates to a "thinking man's game". Why do people insist that it's like Pokemon? In my opinion, it doesn't look anything like either. It is not a turn-based RPG where you level-up pieces, nor is it like a CCG where you actually build a "deck" and use some kind of tactic.

* I don't understand why the Asuran lands are like an order of difficulty higher than all the other "starting" areas. Keep in mind that you can choose where to go first, and it's possible to go do their path first if you wanted. The dinosaurs hit so hard and that T-Rex boss does one-hit kills on my heroes, and they are running great builds. It almost felt like I was playing in some Elite Mission at times, and now I'll have to run cookie-cutter builds to counter that kind of obscene damage.

* The amount of time commitment has gone up a lot now for any quest or dungeon. Even worse, as many have stated, beating even some of the hardest dungeons can reward you with a gold item that is literally junk. The worst is getting an end-dungeon gold and Show Me The Money or Measure For Measure is in the inscription slot... I don't know why, but ANet needs to remove these two mods from rare items because that's a huge insult.

* Hall of Monuments is a huge letdown. I have a decent hall with my primary character, but I can't imagine trying to do all the work to get any or all of my remaining characters into the hall trying to build it up. Also, I was shocked when some of the really difficult titles only gave extremely mediocre statues.

Good = New content, interesting races, semi-interesting storyline

Bad = Really short, the loot drop at the wurm in the Shiverpeaks is pretty much pathetic

Ugly = Overly short, feels like they ran out of time/ideas so they just stuck point grinds into the heart of it, very little challenge, umm the loot drops really, really stink, not worth $40.

The Good:

- Wonderful, beautiful areas, particularly the Tarnished Coast.
- Energy Blast. Wonderful skill on my elementalist, especially in AB.
- Occasional amazing loot drops. I made a quick 50K on a sword that dropped.

The Bad:

- Most areas are either ridiculously easy or ridiculously hard.
- Despite occasional great loot drops, for the most part it's mediocre stuff.
- Seems like there could have been more areas.

The Ugly:

- Armor re-skins.
- Title gain is very slow.

Good-Story line,Heros,Some of the new armor
Bad-Gridning, Hencies Heros AI,Hall of Monuments (not acct based)
Ugly-The crap drops for the amount of effort put in,Grinding for Armor/weapons/consumables.

So far the only thing I personally can see that needs a serious look is the quality of drops. I'm not one myself for really keeping track of this sort of thing and only open up chests if I find a key. But this is a major part of the game for a lot of people and should be fixed. Seems to be far too many complaint threads on this topic for it to be just random bad luck, especially if the only way to open chests is with those overpriced lockpicks.

I like polymock and haven't had the 1-shot kill problem, but otherwise pretty much agree with the OP at this point. I wouldn't describe myself as disappointed, especially considering Anet's record of acting on community suggestions, but I am waiting hopefully for a few changes.

Well, I for one liked Polymock, Dwarven Boxing and the Norn Arena.

The Ugly... Need I say it? The hideous reskinned armors.

Good:

- Music
- Graphics
- Some of the challenges and dungeons are quite difficult, and trying different builds to defeat encounters is fun.
- The new heroes are cooler than the old ones, and more heroes make it easier to more permanently set up different heroes with different runes/attributes.
- Norn fighting tournament was surprisingly fun


Bad:

- The Hall of Monuments is garbage. I am not allowed to display the weapons that I like and that have served me well for a long time, only "endgame GW:EN weapons" (which I don't own and don't like the look of). I also apparently need to get rank 9 (!!) in gladiator before I can display that title - never going to happen, and some of the other titles are similarly ridiculous.

- There are absolutely no items that I want in this game. The endgame armor and endgame weapons are wholly undesireable.

- Faction grind. This would be more of an issue if I wanted any of the endgame items.

- The reward choices for completing the game, all suck. They don't look that special, and you can just craft items with those stats if you need something for your heroes. The Factions items which had +30hp +otherbonus were more desireable.

- Nothing new for PvP. I was hoping for a new instance. I've had a lot of mindless fun playing casually in Fort Aspenwood and AB, but they're a little stale. Something new on the PvP front would have been cool. PvP is player-generated content and can keep players amused for a long time, I'm disappointed we didn't see another PvP instance.

- The loot drops have been absolute garbage. I bought about 30 lockpicks, and I haven't had a single cool looking item drop. I stopped buying them.

- Not many new skills. No new elites.

I feel I got my money's worth, because it was only $40, and despite its downfalls, I have had many hours of entertainment, and will still have many more. I'll still be playing casually, but unlike the other campaigns, I don't feel especially motivated to run all my characters through this one, it feels like there is just a big bag of nothing waiting at the end of the game. Overall I feel disappointed, as I was expecting more out of this expansion.

Good - It's a good hype machine for GW2, interesting new heroes, pretty scenery in some places
Bad - Armor/weapons/loot all disappointing
Ugly - All the grind is not an incentive to replay on other characters

I took my necro to rata sum and begin grinding for asura points cause I want the armor, I like that reskin as apposed to the other reskins. Then I thought to myself, what the hell am I doing. The asura area as mentioned is not on equal grounds as the others, and as such a dread to have to grind in them. So I just logged off.

Good:
- beautiful areas
- dungeons
- interesting pve skills
- shrine blessings with random bonuses
- consumables
- chaos, destroyer, dragon & glacial glowes (why not more body parts ?)
- 1on1 vs npcs
- skill quests

Bad:
- addon too short, there is many parts of the tyrian map unused
- the story doesn't answer many questions
- reskins, no awesome-looking armors
- no new weapon mods, everyone is running around with 15^50 for years
- polymock viewangle
- no new elite skills, boss monster feel "old", less interesting
- now new elite areas, fow, uw, urgoz (big party, big fun) is great but old now

Ugly:
- norn, deldrimor, asura and ebon vanguard reputation points not account based (would reduce grind)
- terrible dropps, ~80% of the chests is purple, very few golds, too many non max dmg loot from high lvl mobs
- many skills way too conditional to be useful, gw class synergies too weak (you can take 6 of the same class and be more efficient than a mixed team)

The Good
-Everything

The Bad
-It costs money (FU Arenanet!)

The Ugly
-The internet forums flooded with complaint threads like it's never good enough for some people. Sweet jesus!

The Good:
Graphics what's still selling this game and no monthly subscription.

Mobs are now decently difficult with more mixed groups and skill variance. Feels like a huge mesmer presence is around, which I approve.

The Bad:
The grinding for purchaseable items even though I hear it's not that great. Rank 3 is obtainable from doing the primary quests and killing whatever is en route. The 25-250 collector items needed for whatever new armor piece seems extreme. Loot scaling. Good thing I'm not interested in them atm.

Hall of Monuments. It's basically useless for me. Might as well call it the Hall of Unfulfillment.
-My main character has no maxed title, he's lucky to have the campaign completion thing. Across all characters I have 2 max titles atm, both protector of Cantha. Why make grinding necessary?
-My main character has a mixed 1.5k armor set so that's a waste of a spot too. 15k armor is still expensive for me and only 1 character has a set the rest are in 1.5k armor and it's usually mixed pieces. So in order to not look like carbon copies of everyone else I'm not worthy of a monument. That and not being rich and dressed badly.
-Unable to put whatever weapon you want in. Especially if what I heard is only destroyer weapons can be put in. It'd be nice if we can actually decide what's high-end. High end should mean max damage and not color or skin of the weapon.

Quality of drops. Feels like it's below level 20 territory drops. Rate of drops and lockpick retention havealways been awful for me. Now it seems like more people are experiencing it.

The Ugly:
The future of GW if farming/grinding and more gold sinks are what's being added. Graphics and no subscription won't mean a thing if gameplay sucks.
I have a problem with all the randomly typed letter names and all the stupid pop culture like references. It doesn't make sense to everyone and knowing what it means makes it worse. It doesn't help with all the stupid player made names either. Feels like a I'm playing a parody of something. It gets tiring and unavoidable.

The Good: Great scenery, new heroes, smarter mobs.

The Bad: Armor reskins, poor loot, reputation points not account based.

The Ugly: Locked chests that drop purples. Being "Treasure Hunter" i hate it.

Quote:

Good
1. Hero's and there 3 sets of cool looking armor, (JESUS WHY ANET!)
2. Beautiful lands
3. Monsters are now dual prof.

Bad
1. Way too short
2. No real end game content, we were promised content for our lvl 20's
3. $40 for 1/2 of what we have gotten before
4. Stand alone pieces, some are nice, i like the grind for em, but its not enough.

Ugly
1. Reskinned Armor, awwwfulll, crap, see my hero armor content, why couldnt we get cool armor?
2. No real content, short game leads to a year and a half before GW2 comes out. omg
3. Reskinned Weapons, is that a green brute sword ? ftl
4. Reskinned Monsters, yet another worm boss. ftl

The Good:
Dungeons good fun and diverse enough to offer interest of all play levels
Quests were a lot of fun and riddled with humour and surprises
Multiclass enemies
Kilroy's Punchout
Voice acting was a big step up from previous games
Livia's outfit
Better henchmen bars

The bad:
A tad on the bit short side
Character based Hall of Monuments
Hard mode not ready at release
Grind based access to elite armour

The ugly:
Overpowered PVE skils introducing even more imbalance into pve
Utter destruction of the skill>time principle