Players have gliders they can open in mid-air, allowing them to sail to distant areas. The maps’ size and scale requires you make use of the game’s new mechanics. In Verdant Brink, for example, one must spend the day rescuing and preparing various crash sites around the map before nightfall, which transforms the map into a frenzied defense against the vegetative Modrem, ending in a battle against a giant boss in the canopy above.
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Each area has a meta-event narrative, an objective for the players to accomplish, which all events feed into. I found myself wandering, getting lost on the way to my destination only to find something I’d never considered.
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They’re wonderful to explore, with hills and tunnels everywhere and multiple levels. The maps themselves are wonderful-the overgrown, looming cliffs of Verdant Brink, the golden city dominating the Auric Basin, and the hovering, hole-laden rocks crackling with magical energy of the Tangled Depths ley-line energy. Players in an area can all still get credit for the event, encouraging them to group up and coordinate, even if they don’t enter an actual party. The added difficulty is welcome, adding to a sense of overwhelming odds and facilitating the game’s amazing teamwork mechanics. He had just cleared them in a vortex of darkness and death when a bus-sized saurian charged bellowing across the cliff and bowled him over, welcoming me to the new jungle.Ĭombat experiences in the Magus Falls region are considerably more intense than in the original game areas-wyverns set fire to the entire landscape and leave patches of death that down you in seconds, hordes of overgrown plant-creatures hurl waves of poison upon you, and monstrous insects spew deadly acid as they swarm about you. The valley below swarmed with dinosaurs as my Charr necromancer descended carefully, hefting his newly-acquired greatsword, before being swarmed by tiny raptors, taking chunks of his health as he cleaved through them. The Verdant Brink, the first of the four maps, greets you with a cliff-side beckoning you to approach, overlooking a massive tangle of monstrous vines coiled around the burning remains of an airship. You resume your role as the commander, venturing into the wilderness to recover your friends and find a means to defeat Modremoth before he spreads out of the jungle and into the rest of the world. This goes disastrously-the once-proud fleet that defeated the undead Zhaitan now lies in ruins, scattered across the jungle, with its heroes lost.
#Guild wars 2 free to play vs bought original game series#
The story picks up right after the end of the Living Story, the ongoing series of updates and events of the past three years, with the attack on the second Elder Dragon threatening the world, the plant-dragon Modremoth. It expands well upon the game’s already solid design and provides an engaging and varied experience, if a bit short at the moment.
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Heart of Thorns, the first real expansion for the game, builds on that, with four new multi-level maps, a post-level progression, and new mechanics and specializations for classes. I got back into the game recently after a long hiatus, and was largely impressed with the Silverwastes and Dry Top content. Updates abounded over the last three years, with two seasons of world events that left scars on the world map, and opened up two new, intricate areas for exploration, complete with over-arching meta-events.
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Jumping puzzles, chains of events players could all participate in, and a series of Easter eggs and vistas to explore left us with an amazing experience. The great, chilly mountains and perpetual autumns of Ascalon drew me in, exploring and waging war with a variety of monsters and factions. Guild Wars 2 facilitated a sense of wonder and exploration that drew me in when I first bought it three years ago.