Well at least the personal story part. I’m sure there’s still a ton to do outside of that. Considering the personal story only required getting 5 out of 23 total masteries and the fact that I didn’t need to explore any of the Dragon’s Stand zone means I have more to do there. But I also know that if I stop the progressing the story to dig in now, there’s a good chance I won’t pick it back up. Long term, I’m going to take my current character, Vale Faelight the Sylvain Guardian, through all of the story first before venturing out to other aspects of the game or other characters.

I was surprised how short the story was for Heart of Thorns. Only 16 chapters and it probably took me around 10 hours in total to complete. I would hazard a guess that the core story felt longer because chapters were broken up by level requirements. Heart of Thorns, on the other hand, only required masteries to move the story along which did offer a nice break to explore and participate in events. The lack of Renowned Hearts threw me off at first but after a little while I preferred the dynamic events.

As I mentioned when I first got here, Heart of Thorns open world felt more difficult than the core Tyria. It did force me to pay a little more attention now that things weren’t face-roll easy. By the end of the story, I didn’t find myself staring at the downed screen quite as often.

As for the story itself, I preferred Heart of Thorns to the core story. The whole build up a large army and lead it storyline didn’t do much for me. Heart of Thorns’ storyline of a rag tag bunch behind enemy lines going to save their friends and defeat a big dragon was definitely more my style.

Playing a Sylvari lead to way more little interactions than I thought it would. Surprised that was the case, when everyone’s the hero I would have thought the story would be the same for everyone. Every once in a while I was questioned by Pact soldiers whether I could still lead because of the influence of Mordremoth. Some of the story missions had Mordremoth talking to me. On the final mission, I chose Caithe and Cnmach to come with me and someone made a comment about everyone going in to the final fight being Sylvari. What can I say? I love a good redemption arc.

It was so nice to get out of the same zones I’d seen a dozen times over and see some new environments. Gliding is a fun way to traverse the map but I enjoyed those first moments in (zone name) without the glider where one misstep would send you over the edge of a cliff.

For now, it’s on to Living World Season 3 but I have a feeling I will return to the jungle eventually.

Last week, for the first time, I got a character through the Living World Season 2 content which triggers the first quest of Heart of Thorns . I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 off and on now for over a decade. It’s taken me quite a while to get here!

I’ve had numerous challenges getting started in Guild Wars 2 over the years. I was obsessed with Guild Wars in high school; Guild Wars 2 always felt like a game I should love. But each time I would start up a new character and run through the starting areas yet again, I encounter the same problems that cause me to bounce each time.

I didn’t gel with weapon swapping. It was all fun and games until I hit level 10 and this feature unlocked, Not being able to see the cool downs on abilities on the swapped weapon drove me crazy! It felt like I was guessing most of the time when to swap between weapons. Plus, I didn’t understand the combat system all that much which led to confusion about which weapons synergism together.

Not using both weapons in the attack animation when dual weilding the same type of weapon annoyed me. It bothers me to no end that the basic attack for dual weilded weapons only uses one hand. It’s not so much that the skills use separate hands for animations, but I always thought if I had two swords/daggers/axes/ whatever equipped my character should swing both of them for a basic attack. A petty reason to be sure, but it still bothers me.

Combat stats are slighty confusing. I understand that GW2’s whole thing is breaking the holy trinity and stuff but did it have to go and change all the standard stat names too? Easily solved by reading the descriptions of course. Not arguing there.

Over time, “Do I really want to run through Metrica Province again?” became a problem. After a few dozen attempts of leveling up past 20 all the starting areas are worn out. Every time I came back, I rolled a new character, ran the same handful of starter zones, got bored, and logged off months or years. Doomed to repeat the cycle once more.

With all that said, you would think I would have move on. I have no problem with dropping games normally – usually to my friends’ dismay. But there’s something about Guild Wars 2 that I want to like. Reflecting on it, part of it is definately nostalgia for the Guild Wars IP. I have such fond memories of playing that particular game with friends and participating in the end game stuff. One of the only MMO’s that I’ve really been deeply involved in. Some of the other features that I want to like are the horizontal progression, the miriad of things to collect, and the world is Just. So. Pretty!!

Over the winter, I took my annual tour through Tyria yet again. But something was different this time or maybe I was different. I created a Guardian, which I had always avoided doing because I I already had one of those. I made a Sylvari because I had spent the least amount of time in their starting area. I took my time to read the additional dialogue, the Renowned Heart text, the *ahem* tool tips for the combat stats and skills. Amazing right, when I actually sat there and read the descriptions of things they were not confusing at all. A revaluation, I know. I also went out and looked up some newbie guides just to make sure I had a basic grasp on everything.

On top of that, I found that weapon swapping didn’t really bother me any more. Once I started to understand the combat a bit better, I found that weapon swapping had it’s own rhythm to it. Now, I could still be doing it wrong, but my skills seem to be up on my secondary weapon by the time I run out of skills on my primary or very shortly after.

I was playing regularly for a month or two. I got through the core story for the second time ever. I went through the Living World Season 1 and got half way through Season 2. I was enamored enough that I bought the rest of the Living World I was missing along with End of Dragons and Secrets of the Obscure. Then I promply fell off the whole gaming train in general.

Flash forward to this week. As chance would have it, I accidentally clicked on the Guild Wars 2 launcher on my desktop instead of whatever game I was looking forat the time. I saw there was a new expansion coming out and got the inkling to play again. I had a blast last week finishing up the rest of the Season 2 story. Now I’m finally ready to start Heart of Thorns. I’m excited to see a part of the game I’ve never seen before, check out the whole gliding mechanic, see those vertical maps, and continue the story that has been set up for this expansion!