How did you enjoy this game?

It hit me as I was doing the ZB today, I recently reached 45/50 in my HoM and so I decided I was not going for any more achievements and so would goof off until GW2 comes out. So there I am sitting in Oalfstead in party search "fantasicly amazing ranger/pet combo lfg ZB HM" (call me what you want ) after I bought everything to set my ranger as the enraged spear chucker because the build sounded fun (and is!). It occurred to me I have not played like this since I first started in 2007. I was running around on 1/2, 1/3 is more like it, of brainpower taking on Raven's Point for some rewards. I had a genuine fun time spending 30min clearing a HM dungeon with a PUG group.

Is this how games (specifically GW) are supposed to be played?

I have spent over 1,000+ hours farming. Farming farming. Farming for gold. Farming for fame. Farming for titles. This is always mindless grind (unless I have music on) and it was the way I played most of my time. I would farm SS/LB points in Remains of Salaja for my warrior. I was farming dungeons with my assassin for umpteen hours. Farming feathers in Jahai Bluffs with my Ritualist. Attempting vatteirs with an ele, in addition to getting survivor for my assassin through it. Farming bison tokens to sell to players. I remember running Vabbi tours for some extra cash and running Ruins of Morah on my 130hp derv. Farming Exuro Flatts for elite elementalist tomes. And that one time I had a gift of the traveler business because I had to HAVE ALL of the El tonics (before 6year) because I thought it was cool. Bottom line, I farmed A LOT.


Was it worth it?

Although all my farming financed my 45/50 I truly had fun goofing off in this game as opposed to being rich. I very much enjoyed doing AB (when it was alive) being a 105hp assassin; hearing everyone say "is that a 55 sin?" I liked maintaining holy wrath with defy pain in AB and watched how no one could beat me. I loved making, testing, and successfully doing a snowman sinway. And now I love playing half-brained with a R/P spear chucker.

Guild wars gave me both sides of the coin; the classic mmo grind and the very intuitive skill system. I really like the skill system, so versatile and it just makes me want to play the game forever!


However I am excited to play GW2 with old friends




Tell me your story

Didn't play to farm. Spent all of my time GvGing, HBing or playing tombs (stopped playing HA as much when title was introduced). The rewards in GvG and HB were always the fun of the competition, not a stupid title or gold.

When I play, I usually end up just doing normal, balanced team builds with a few of my buddies, and we still have a pretty good time.
I think speed clears have taken the fun out of the game for a lot of people, since they just keep using the same build the same way in the same place over and over again. Plus, speed clears by nature are a fast paced gameplay, whereas playing with some buds is nice and relaxed, and we just take our time, talk a bit, and just have fun.

I enjoy pushing for times in elite areas ie DoA/UW

How did I enjoy this game?

Going at my own pace. I admired the scenery, take on any challenge and learn from my failures, absorb the plot twists and/or cutscenes and understand the current situation and listen to everyone's comments about how to go about harder missions, such as Abaddon's Mouth, Gate of Madness & Raisu Palace.

Now, I've reached the point where I know how to go about everything, help anyone with anything for the sake of feeling good about it and push my limits to be able to handle anything, but knowing full well I'll never be perfect and accept failure, even till now.

i used to throw any skills together and hop into an AB. Half the time it was just fun being able to beat people using cookie cutter builds. also i would have to say my backbreaker monk using smiter's boon postnerf was my favorite.

otherwise just having fun abusing the glitched skills before they were fixed. i monked the whole day when cultist's fervor affected all spells by accident and could handle all 12 kurzicks without letting anyone die.

but now that everyone i played with doesn't log on anymore i just go at my own pace doing titles.

before grinding for GWAMM and 50pts,
well just doing elite areas with guildies/alliance just for the heck of it and the social part of using vent and then moving on to gvg after my 3rd year i think.

good guild wars times.

Yeah good old social times on vent eh South Paw? (MMAD) <_<

yeh brohan!!
i thought u dont come on these forums anymore and playing Street Fighta lol.

Since day 1 played it for fun, no ambition at all. Got a lot of stuff at this point, good char builds for PvE and farming, 30 points HoM and no more goodies so no more fun. More than laid back, just plain lazy. But that is what is wonderful about GW. It can satisfy a wide range of players.

I really loved the game when it first came out and played every day till late in the night.
After factions it toned down a little and when nightfall came out I only used to play on weekends.
Not because the game was less fun, but real life became more important than gaming (my girlfriend likes to read an I like to game and all was good, now we have two kids and both have a fulltime job so we treasure every moment we have together)
When the HoM came out it was great and we loved doing stuff to fill it.
Although when we( my guildleader and me: our full guild (: ) got to 10 titles we were quite sure we would never get to 50/50 and above that gwamm.
Taking it one little step at a time we finally did it! but instead of joy we were both a little sad because now there was nothing left for us to complete.
Now I only log in to see if there is any new update on the beyond chapters or to chip away at getting my last 4 armor sets of other professions.
Nothing to do but hell those were some great 5+ years of gaming!
/retirement mode untill GW2

I enjoyed my first year or two playing the most by far. Just like anyone will say most likely. Met one of my best online friends my first day playing. Since we both started the same day, we joined the same guild together. We're still friends to this day. Definitely the most enjoyable part of guild wars for me.

I feel exactly the same way. FAR too much of my playtime has been dedicated to farming and equipping my characters as well as grinding for HoM (I'm on 42 but really cba to get 45). The most fun I've had recently is screwing about with 7 hero builds.

The thing i loved most was VQing, after a busy day it was realy relaxing, plus i got to see every area in GW. I also love talking to NPCs and finding out more about the lore. Iam 50/50 HoM and GWAMM now but i still log in now and then when updates are released or to hang around with guildies.

i been playing for 6 yrs now and best thing that happened (for me)was the addition of 3 hero's, then 7,i never really liked playing with human players/pugs most times u get someone who just aggros everything or is just plain rude, I have my own tactics in battle and hero's listen very well and don't complain,and if they die they don't play the blame game,so now I don't have wait on no one i just grab my hero's and get after it,no one to slow me down, I save the chatting for in town.

I NEVER farmed and NEVER had any problems with money or anything, also almost finished my 50/50

I've only been playing for about 10 months after a friend introduced me to the game, for something my sons and I could play together. I have had a wonderful time playing through the campaigns and getting my warrior char up to GWAMM - nearly there now. It's been a very relaxed and sociable time with my boys and old medical school buddies.

I've loved the balance in GW and the need to have the right build and the right team, rather than the endless levelling you see in other MMOs. We spent a lot of happy hours trying out different builds, or starting with a cookie cutter build and then improving it. Didn't do any PUG playing because as a warrior no-one wanted my char, but with my little guild of family and friends, and the heroes, I never needed to.

Even the grind has been enjoyable because we'd do it together and try to find clever ways to do things as efficiently as possible. @Agar - I agree about vanquishing - I set up a VQ playlist on iTunes and would have some cool tunes playing while clearing the zones, very relaxing after work when the kids had gone to bed etc

All in all this has been the best fun I've ever had with a computer, and got me back into gaming after a decade away. We're all looking forward to GW2 now, but hopefully not just yet as there are still some things I want to finish off in GW1 first - like getting to 50/50 (am on 46 now) and playing through all the elite areas.

I appreciated getting rewards from GvG and hero battles in the past... but today the game is terrible, everyone is just about farming anything and they aren't doing anything to change... too bad

My favorite things about the game have changed as nerfs, buffs, and major updates have affected my activities.

I've attempted or have on my "to do list" just about everything in the game, except GvG and I never created a SF sin because I wanted this to be the one game where I never did up, up, down,down,left,right,left,right,a,b, select, start.

When I started in May 2005 I like pre-searing a lot and then I saw the game after the searing. The depressing change in scenery, the large bump in difficulty, and the fact that no one I knew played made me take a year and a half hiatus.

I came back to it during Wintersday 2006 and started playing with my wife. We had a fun time and got other friends and family members into the game.

I remember it taking us a couple of months to finally get to LA, and that in itself was a major freaking achievement.

We then got factions and watched as we hit level 20 in a few hours. We got my folks into it and they started in Factions. (my father still plays his first ranger and never any other).

I was thrilled when I finally got my first elites, Barrage and BHA at Boreas Seabed.

My funniest moment was doing Ice Caves of Sorrow with a group of newbies and watching as someone typed "BONUS!" and everyone but me ran straight into the group of Mursaat...lucky for them I had rebirth.

Then I discovered RA/TA and started having a blast. Anyone who played RA in summer 2007 remember Shroud of Silence sins, and other builds of ungodly cheapness (got my glad 1 rank).

Then EotN hit and I consider this "the Dark Times". My wife quit altogether and everything was ursan, and later SF.

The only thing that kept me going was switching to paragon and fighting through the missions with him.

I almost quit then they started the Zaishen quests, which was a godsend and gave me stuff to do other than buying dungeon runs at Doomlore.

They brought back FA and JQ big time, and I've gone from R3 allegiance to R10 with only a small investment in time.


Now that I'm over 30 in my HOM, and all is left is titles and prestige stuff (oh I still need to beat Duncan, haven't made time for that); I'm enjoying the game. I finished VQ'ing Tyria last night, and I am just amazed how many beautiful scenes and interesting objects we miss as we grind through everything. Now that I have time to poke around, I'm seeing a lot of things for the first time.

Believe it or not I had never seen a sand elemental until I decided to VQ the Crystal Desert.
Most people just buy the tour, do the missions, and leave for good.

I loved WiK, I hate WoC so far (Minister Cho's....qualifies as trolling in my book). If I hadn't VQ'd the whole continent before now I would be so royally pissed.

I'm mostly hoping that the GW2 team is taking notes on what has worked and what has failed.

Overpowered skills, making optional end-game content a right and not a privilege, and heavy handed nerfs and buffs were the worst moments.

Incentives and reasons to try and do new things, evolving content, changing celebrations a little each year. Those are some great things.

I didn't have to 'farm' to get 50/50.

I just took it easy. Playing normally and buying the stuff from the Traders, you can get the Obisidan armor in one month without having to farm anything. Just questing and adventuring.

Never once in my life had more than 300K in storage. And most of the time less than 100K.

well compared to my guildies im still fairly new at like 1400 hours played. a few hundred was spent in pvp and i really enjoy messing around with builds on that. sure ive never made any of the 'meta' game builds but i have occasionally come across skills that could deal with various scenarios well.

with pve ive just worked thru all the storylines at my own pace, working on finishing off hm atm. done all the vanquishes which i really quite, particularly the couple that forced me to change the builds of my heros and test out new combinations. im also enjoying doing some dungeons

and with farming .... i actually ENJOY it. yes enjoy it, not just because it gets me money. sure thats the bonus at the end cos it can buy me some useful things, only 15 titles short of 50/50. until before this year i actually never farmed but i started off with my assassin learning to vaettir farm, then i taught my monk and my dervish. this now means i can change it up a bit. then i did a few feather farms, taught my dervish VoS in fowsc, now ive just got my monk ready to do UA, and ive created a necro to do MoP. I also still have to finish tyria carto and all the skill hunters.

still thoroughly enjoying the game =3

17 hour HoH double fame weekend, some dude falls asleep on vent in the middle of a match.
Several hours later he wakes up and says ' guys i fell asleep'.

First time guild vs guild, I'm running E/Mo Ether renewal smiter. Run in, put up renewal, balth aura, and zealots, and spam divine boon.
Guildie then explains I'm supposed to use draw conditions on the warrior. Rofl.

First winning halls. Random ass pug (this is summer prophecies was released). We go in. I'm on a monk with arcane echo+healing hands and inspired hex. Our ghostly is capping altar, someone sticks lingering curse on it (back then it was insane). I inspired hax it off, stick it on their ghostly, and he goes down. First HoH win was the best imo.

Edge bomb variants. Man this was some crazy build-brewing. We came up with all kinds of ridiculous stuff. My 2 favorites were the Edge-bomb disguised as minion factory, and edge bomb disguised as IWAY. Basically you pretend your that build and then drop edge and blow them up out of nowhere. funnest shit ever

Oh and pve? yea pve gets boring i dont want to talk about it. Monsters are brainless neways, they dont think or feel or anything, how do you get gratification killing monsters?

These days, I trade most of the time, because I have loads of junk to sell.

I also chest-run in Factions for demonic shields, and other rare items. I mostly do this while watching a movie or something because even chest-running can get boring.

After 4 GWAMMs (Ele, Nec, War, Mes), I'm honestly too tired of GW. In the past, I was addicted to making optimal team bars for many areas of GW, but this too doesn't interest me anymore. Plus, I haven't seen any new out-of-the-box team builds in a while now.

Only in a blue-moon do I go for dungeons HM (like Frostmaw, Vloxen, SoO etc). I do with heroes or take friends if they are online. I rarely pug unless I feel mischievous (not to be confused with troll) which can sometimes be an interesting experience.

This was my once every 3 months check. It's like fate <3.

I enjoyed this game by socializing. I played this game with just one guy from release up to about the 4th-5th year. Then I found my guild of bros and still talk to them even though Guild Wars is long gone <3. This is also why the thing I am most looking forward too is non-instanced areas. I want more interaction with people, games are no fun alone.

I've only farmed a few times, the rest is PuGing or running with friends because for me this game isn't the same unless you are actually playing with other people. Pvp got me into the game but nowadays I do both pve and pvp simply for the HoM and I never thought I'd actually enjoy pve as much as I do. I've been playing 10% of the game for years and only recently starting last year did I even play pve beyond getting an assassin through all the campaigns.

I think this happened because when I first started gw it wasn't like any game I'd played before and I got slaughtered quite a few times during some missions and just said screw it made a pvp char and that was that. I LOVE gvg it is even still by far the best pvp format I've ever seen in ANY game.

Hi Nice posts.
Well so much I could say about Guildwars …hmmm. First off I love the game I have had tons of fun and made a lot of good online friends. The best part for myself is having fun within the community. I enjoyed pugs even if it failed, I always had a good laugh and made new friends. The mission/quests are not going anywhere so in the end if you had a laugh it was a success . My motto in GW has always been "it’s a game have fun" . I have my 50/50 HoM and now I just help out my allies/guild members/random players and play JQ for a laugh, to provide Z keys to my friends . I have pretty much done everything there is to do in GW PVE/PVP. Some of my likes and highlights

-Following the storyline and the lore of GW. I would run a weekly ally event with guildwars lore questions for prizies for a laugh.
-Taking the time to helping other players learn the game
-Just messing around and having fun with team builds for laughs
-Minor role-playing for giggles in AB. It seemed to get a lot of laughs from both faction alliance teams good fun haaa
-Running a FFF alliance of 900+ mbrs and taken HZH with good friends was fun but like a full time job lol
- Playing all the events my fav {Canthan New Year} Last 3 years I have sponsored a district for the whole event with some help from my NZ/Aussie friends in the late hours Silly chef’s haaaa

So many things you could say about GW and the laughs it can generate but mostly I enjoyed the game by making friends, helping out other players and just playing the game for fun.
Cheers Axe

I'm a goal-oriented person, so I set my sights on something (like a cartographer title or elite armor) and then work towards it. The overall theme, if you will, is to improve my main warrior character.

As for how I enjoy the game, these days it's working on my norn title (because the norn are awesome), farming for Nick the traveller items, and hanging out at the Blade Radio parties. My wife has started getting into vanquishing, so I try to go along with her as often as I can.

Started off several years ago as a wide eyed noob playing through Proph. I thought that Pre was the whole game...until I went to Post. Ended up playing through the whole campaign on my ranger.

Went out and bought NF, Fact, and Eotn pretty much at the same time. Played through those campaigns and started making new toons as well. Realized that any class can be fun to play.

Started doing more high end stuff, DoA, Fow, Dungeon running. Got into farming and realized it was pretty easy to earn money in this game.

HoM update came out and with little further effort got 50/50 and finished off GWAMM on my ranger.

Lately I have just been finishing some account based titles and trying out some PvP. Still enjoy some PvE but starting to feel like GW2 needs to be released to keep my attention. Mostly still playing to chat with friends and pass the time.

It's been a good 4 years and I wish I would have started sooner. Just couldn't pull myself away from D2 back in the day. :P

Games are meant to be enjoyed.
If you are not enjoying yourself, you are doing something wrong.

^ All you need to know about MMOs (and games in general)

Game is great in design, but it is really the friends that keep the game alive... been playing since the first pre-order beta and had the requirements for 50/50 long before HoM rewards release... what keeps me playing is the friends i have and the interesting people i meet on a daily basis... because anyone that has been playing as long as i have knows this game is pretty dry compaired to the rain of support it used to get.

The glory days of when everyone was new and had no idea what they were doing are long gone, but I still enjoy the lore and storyline missions and quests leading up to GW2.

i kinda quit GW some time ago, but when i played, the most enjoyable thing i had was that a few people who didnt leave GW just yet, could help me sometimes with stuff

i think i explained about my handicaps, (being slow in short) so i could use the help

then i was done with nearly all tyria (proph and eotn) titles, so i was happy to leave the game, then the only friend who really plays these days, wanted to help me with DoA (without me asking), so why not, and we did it a few days ago, so i'm playing other games again

maybe i will try more explore in tyria, and very maybe UW will be done once
so the only thing i really enjoyed were the few friends i had in my GW times who could help and join me

so yea, bit of a story eh, just going further with life, but sometimes i return when i wanna do something again (yay for no fees)

Grinding is really sad, IMO. Real life is enough of a grind, why would anybody want to work for fun? If you like work so much, why not just get a second job and earn real money that earns you things in the real world? A lot of people claim to "enjoy" grinding, but what it comes down to is, you don't see ANYBODY claim to "enjoy" grinding in a game without actual rewards for doing so. You could easily crank up an RTS and grind against level 1 CPU's all day, but nobody does that. You don't get anything for doing that.

If you spend 1,000 hours grinding on Guild Wars, you could have made between 8 and 9 thousand dollars working instead- for minimum wage. Do you really consider the rewards from your grinding worth 8 thousand dollars?

I don't farm or grind. I like to create builds and just play the game casually doing what I feel like doing, though I do like to try out some hard stuff every once in a while.

During Prophecies, I didn't enjoy this game much. I'd give it a 5 when playing alone and 6 when playing with players. GW doesn't become fun until I'm max level and have all attribute points so I can start creating builds. With limited skills and few max lvl areas, Prophecies wasn't the most fun for me. The only reason I kept playing was because I joined an awesome guild where we played together like a close group of online family.

After i got Factions, the game took off for me. I'd say it went up to 7 alone and 8 when co-oping for me. With more skills and more max lvl areas, I started to really enjoy the game. The only bad thing was that shortly after Factions came out, our guild started to die and it was harder to play with players. I spent more time making due with boring henchies who aren't as fun to play with as real players.

When heroes were introduced for NF, I got so excited. Now, playing alone while waiting for my friends to come online won't be so boring! Unfortunately... NF only allwed 3 heroes. The game went up to about 7.5 solo. Playing with 3 heroes was still almost as boring as playing with just henchies. On the plus side, having 3 heroes really made playing with friends more fun. We were able to do elite areas like UW and FoW we could never do back then since we couldn't get a full group. We also had a blast doing missions together and filling additional spots with heroes. When co-oping, the game became like 9.5. Heroes made this game awesome for co-oping.

EotN didn't change anything. Actually, it did change. By this time, the game got old and many of my friends stopped playing. I spent much more time waiting for my friends to come online than actually playing. By this time, playing alone with h/h was so boring that I stopped playing.

I came back around the time 7 heroes were introduced. Now, playing alone is about 9. Unfortunately, majority of my friends don't play GW any more so I spend majority of my time playing alone or with PUG. However, I'm still enjoying this game. I tried WoW during my downtime in GW but honestly, WoW can't touch GW. Especially since 4.0, WoW's spec got too simplified. There's not much room for creativity in WoW any more and it got old playing the same rotation for hours and hours and hours and hours...

I came back to GW and even after 6 years, I'm still creating new builds and having a blast.

It was the only game of it's kind, less than true now. Up until Eye of The North, the grind was limited.

Obsidian is one of the cheaper ones needed, especially compared to the cost of drunkard titles, sweets, wisdom, etc. Hats off to you if you really did make enough slowly to churn the costly ones out.

I did the drunkard one after the update.
I always refused to make that title beause I beleived that it was really annoying and it should be changed. So I just kept saving the stuff in storage over 4 years.

By the time they finally made the change, I had more than enough to get it.

If they never made the change, I would not have it, and I would still be missing it.

I've found that those who do really well in PvE, are the people who are immune to grindage. The people who can farm the same spots 50x in a row, the same way, the same toon, etc.

The people who are insanely rich, those that farmed UW for years, and farmed armbraces, and so on.

So help me, I pray that GW2 is about character progression over killing rats for a year straight.

You don't have to farm to be insanly rich... the last time i farmed with a 55 monk was before nightmares were added to underworld years ago.. farming is for peasants.... power trading is where its at...

Always took a slow pace, exploring every area, talking to the NPCs, doing sidequests or just enjoying the scenery. And I did have an awesome time doing it. Savouring the experience. I've always been mainly a PvE player. Never really been intrested (save from occasional JQ or RA games) or particularly good at PvP. To me, PvE=the game.

EotN I played through quite hastily, though. Don't know what changed, maybe I was just getting slightly bored at the game after all the years. Now, I have 23/50 in my HoM. I have done some Vaettirfarming to buy Armors to fill the HoM with, but that's about all the farming I've ever done.