Don't use steam for this, it makes you pay more. Just go through the website if you want to play.

Before i write this review i do want to point out, while steam tells i have about 700 hours of in game hours my actual in game hours are close to 8000 hours this is because i did transit to the steam launcher since it has been released and steam won't show the hours you have prior to using steam.

As a long term player i thought i just wanted to share my honest thoughts about gw2, both the positive parts about the game and the negative parts of the game for the people who considering to buy gw2.



1. No subscription fee. Gw2 does not have any subscription based model, there is a free trail where you can play the base game, as it original came out back in 2012 with some limitations. Then after you can buy the expansions, which will really open up the game! That being said, the game really starts to kick off from the very 1st expansion!

2. No p2w. While the game has no sub fee, it also doesn't have any p2w in the game. The game does however has a cosmetic shop, where you can buy cosmetics and quality of life items which can be bought both with money and with in game gold!

3. Horizontal progression. Gw2 has horizontal progression, with some vertical progression elements involved. The way how this game works, the level cap is level 80, which is pretty quickly to achieve. This level cap has remained the same from launch. Now the vertical progression elements i am talking about are the so called mastery's. With mastery's you unlock features like gliding, raptor jumping, autoloot etc. With this you 'level' past 80.

4. Best open world in any mmorpg. Gw2 has a very good open world system, and i think even the most unique to gw2. The open world is filled random events, world bosses and meta events, jumping puzzles etc! meta events are map wide events where a large group works together to the final boss in the map, requiring you to split up and complete certain objectives!

5. Best mount system in any mmorpg. Currently there are 9 different type of mounts in gw2. While this doesn't sound like a lot, every mount is unique and it will come with its unique ability's useful for all sorts of stuff in the game and each will come with a stamina bar so it doesn't feel very flat. 1 example is the griffon, this mount allows you to glide trough the air and go really fast like a jet! Dragonriding in wow is inspired from this specific mount and of the skyscale!

6. No gear grind (although optional options for gear grind!). In gw2 once you hit max level usually you have almost full exotic gear. With a full set of exotic gear you can pretty much so any content in the game! Although you have ascended (this has 5% better stats and is the best stat in the game) and there is also legendary gear, that allows you to swap stats on the fly, you can equip it on every character on your account at the same time and you can swap skins for free (you can unlock transmutation shards in the game to swap skins)

7. Build craft. Gw2 its build craft is quite unique, you start off with choosing 1 of the 9 professions, however later on you can spec into 3 different elite specialisations, which essentially make you have 36 different classes in the game (if you count core profession as well). Each elite specialisation comes with a new weapon, however this weapon also comes with different skills. Your tree is build out of 3 parts, with the 3th one the elite specialisation.

8. Instanced pve. Gw2 has raids, strikes, fractals and dungeons as instanced content. Raids are 10 man and usually 3 - 4 bosses per raid wing and each raid wing has its own unique story involved. So far we have 7 raid wings in the game, with an 8th raid wing coming in the new expansion which is huge, because we had no new raid wing for 5 years! Strikes are 10 man fights with just 1 boss in a room, repurposed from the story bosses (like trails in ffxiv). Currently strikes have 2 - 3 difficulty settings, normal, challange mode and (our latest strike) legendary mode. For wing 8 it will get the same treatment, with 3 difficulty settings. The legendary mode of the latest strike was pretty much on pair with mythic raids / savage raids of wow and ffxiv the race to world 1st took 9 days to complete! We also have dungeons and fractals, fractals are pretty much scaling dungeons with 4 tier, with each tier having a higher difficulty.

9. pvp & wvw (open world PvP). Gw2 has 2 different types of pvp. We have wvw (World vs World) and Pvp. Lets start with wvw first, wvw is pretty much server vs server vs server. This has its separate instance to the open world pve so that pve players don't have to deal with pvp. wvw is pretty unique, it has a lot of map wide objectives involved (like castles you can capture, keeps, towers etc) its really good if you are into that type of content! The pvp in this game is also pretty good i would even say 1 of if not the best pvp in any mmorpg, you can enter from level 2!

10. Alt friendly. Gw2 is a very alt friendly mmo and its not hard at all to level any character to levelcap (or you use leveltomes unlocked in the game!)

11. The community. Gw2 has a very good and friendly community! You will find some toxic players sometimes like any mmorpg, but overall the community is good!

12. Fasion. Gw2 has a very good fashion system! (skins and mounts have 4 color channels!)

13. housing (comming soon in the new expansion!). Housing is not yet in the game, i thought i wanted to add it to the review because we have seen video's on it, and as both a ffxiv and gw2 player i think this housing system might be the best implementation of housing in any mmorpg!



Let's start off on the instanced content. While there are a wide variety of fights that you can do, because of the horizontal progression, there are also negative parts. As of the current expansion, which did last for 1 year we had 2 strike missions in a full year, and 1 fractal (so 1 dungeon essentially). Compared to some other mmorpg's this is really not a lot. For our next expansion though we get 1 raid wing, which has 3 bosses in it so that is a improvement. Another negative or positive depending on your playstyle while gw2 does have fractals, with a tier system, it doesn't come with any sort of leaderboard. Some players might look for that type of gameplay (like mythic+ in wow). Another downside is because of the lack of gear progression, players can feel like there is nothing left to do after achieving full legendary gear. This is both a positive and negative though, but i thought for some players this might be a big negative. That being said, it will take quite a while to achieve that! Another downside is for players who are long term players, there might not be enough content to keep us engaged with the game. Now as for our current expansion, arenanet tried to address this by going for yearly, smaller scale expansions with quarterly updates, i think it did only partly succeed. The quarterly updates just weren't long enough (in my opinion). That being said though, the next expansion, from what we have seen off it so far it looks miles ahead of our current one, so i do have faith this one is going to be better, but if its enough content (for me) that remains to be seen. For a new player that does take a while though before you get to that point, if ever depending on how much you play.

SEA Server when
⣐⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⣿⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣠⣤⣶⣦⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⣿⣅⡠⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⢹⣿⣇⡀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣤⣤⣤⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⠇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀
⢸⣿⣿⣷⡀⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣦⣀⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣶
⠘⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣤⡀⠀⠀⠀⣀⣀⣤⣾
⠀⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠇
⠀⠀⠉⠙⠉⠉⠁⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⣿⣿⣿⠟⠋⠁