Is Guild Wars 2 Still Worth Playing in 2024 | Guild Wars 2 Secrets of the Obscure Review

We are back, and so is Arena Net's Guild Wars 2 is back! with the new expansion Secrets of the Obscure here to add more content to the world of Guild Wars! Watch this video as I rant bout PvP and Story, as I break down what makes this game so special! Also yes yes i did update the thumbnail and title to be 2024 because my thoughts are largely the same and the video still applies all the same! Still good stuff!

[SQLdb]

Strongly agree about the poor marketing. This game is AMAZING they should market it a lot more.

[TwelveTables]

One thing you don't understand about the open world vs loading screens. GW2 servers have only been down for roughly 20 hrs over 12 years. Because of the map based system GW2 does not go offline to update the server. It can run 2 versions of the game at the same time. Opening maps and closing them as needed allowing for server size to rapidly adjust to the player base. This allows you to maintain a lagless connection even if the entire world is in a single area.

[attinger]

Legendary gear is supposed to be the endgame goal to work towards as far as gear is concerned. Legendary gear has the same stats as ascended gear but it’s still a desirable goal to work towards for several reasons including aesthetics, major conveniences like changeable stats, runes and sigils can be infinitely removed or put back in, and you don’t need transmutation charges to change the appearance.

[vdrandom]

32:05
Just a note on addons: they are not officially supported!
The fact that updates break them is pretty normal, since developers don't consider them when making updates.

[padarousou]

I luckily just happen to come by this game a couple weeks ago browsing steam. I havent enjoyed an mmo in years and with how casual friendly this game is, it really delivers the ideal mmo experience in a reasonable amount of time

[sharku]

Did you just call Celestial CRAP for open world survival?!?!? MY MAN! That is THE gear to not die in end game zones...only use literally ANYTHING else for group content that you want higher DPS or higher buff uptime....

[Insig]

lol celestial crap lolololol i get the misconception, but believe it or not, cele is actually super OP especially for stuff like open world, roam wvw, and it was so broken that anet had to remove cele stat stuff from pvp. if you add up the numbers, cele actually gives higher amount if stat compared to more specialized builds. a lot of classes can make good use of all the stats (like ele, guards etc) so cele is actually incredibly op. it also allows much better survivability because you get extra def, hp, and healing power as well. its when ppl switch to berserker gear or viper (for condi builds) that itll be harder to survive in open world.

[sneky]

As an advise on what you can do when you feel lost :
- Try and go to max mastery point (514 if I'm correct) : to go and get xp on matsery to train, and go and do achievments for the mastery points to unlock them . Its what I'm currently doing and so far, been quite great. I've been replaying the whole story to do the achievements and I find it quite fun
-Hunt for legendary gear : they are basically gear with same power lvl as ascended, but that can change stats when u want, and share on all your caracters. Also they usualy have some special cosmetic effect, so its always nice. They are very long term project though, and you clearly shouldn't rush it

[nielsjensen]

Completet he achievement Seasons of the Dreagons and after that you'll want all the Legendaries you can get.

[Buran]

Agree in most of it, except 3 things:
1) Celestial stats are amazing, strongest gear choice for most of builds o¡in OW PvE and in a good amount of WvW builds also.
2) Conquest is the main and best PvP mode, Stronghold the worst. Playing alonme and in a conformed team are entirely different experiences; you should try the later over voip if you really like the game mode.
3) You goal as a player should be A) having fun and B) get your character(s) in fully legendary gear. Since leg gear is shared in the legendary wardrobe across all your characters and build templates once you unlock a legendary item it becomes a superb piece of conveneince, since allows the player to reset the stats, the skins, the sigils/runes/infussions as many times as they want at 0 cost, requiring only to be out of combat. The QoL legendary gear provides is INMENSE, once you have a few you can't go back and getting full legendary becomes a main goal.

[Notsram]

I absolutely adore the world of Tyria. They've secretly been building a massive, amazing game for the last 10 years,
and most people don't know that it's there.

[AATproducer]

great video.... but Celestial gear is absolutly viable. The thankiest build in the game is currently a vindicator using celestial gear and you can facetank some bosses solo

[roukuo]

Great Video. i dont know if you have figured by now but gw2 is actually run by quite a small team. they did not have the ressources to make a raid for eod and soto. it often comes down to money when u ask "why isn't that great feature in game" in the gaming industry. BUT there actually will me a new raid in just 8 days within the free content update as part of the janthir wilds dlc.

[Keinish]

The game did not get old, it matured. Biggest plus of horizontal progression is that you can take a break from it and come back whenever and you will have to do little or nothing at all to catch up. There are people that will like this and others prefer a constant grind since it focuses where to go in a game. It really is up to you. In this games the achievements work like sort of your quest log. You can also focus on the story. Or you can do whatever you want since the game gives you xp and/gold/crafting materials for whatever activity you chose to do. This did not used to be the case for people playing PvP or World vs World, but that was rebalanced some time ago.
You mentioned having technical issues launching the game and that seems weird to me, I can only present my experience and what I have heard from other players, but in general the game is super stable. Like in ten years I have only had to reinstall the game once due to technical issues. Oh, the game has no downtime. When an update hits you have some hours before needing to leave the game to update it. One of the advantages of the game maps being instances. The other advantage is that it uses megaservers, so all players from your region will be directed to an active map. Most of the time you will see people running around wherever you go unless you go into instanced story bits.
One of the faults of the game developers is that they kept reinventing the wheel. So there is content that you might like and will not get more of it into the game. Dungeons and raids for example, underwater combat, stuff like that. What is there is a good basis that could be improved, but it will not come to pass under that name or system. If you are lucky, every now and then you will have a week with a spotlight on that activity you like. But that's it.

I find Guildwars 2 to be a great companion game. You can play other stuff and fall back to GW2 whenever you are in between other things. It being a buy to play game helps a lot in that sense. But it's good enough to be your main game too.
Those who play the game wil find that it is definitely not for everybody, but it welcomes everybody that wants to give it a try.

I don't agree with everything you say in the video, but I find your opinion fair.

[Tillionz]

So I would say, as some one who played this game in college with so much free time, to now being some one with a full time job and an active social life with tons of hobbies and career goals, Soto and the wizards vault has given me more than enough content to do with feeling like I still don't have enough time. Also the story of Soto is probably some of the best writing gw2 has had in a long time. I just hope they don't rush too hard on the quality of the content and keep up the quantity cause this expansion feels great so far, we shall see what the quarterly releases give us.

[ryanvergara]

There are MMOs...and then there's Guild Wars 2.

[JustCynical]

what i took from the video is... the dude likes the game, but has no clue abt it lol

[yourboijt]

Is Guild Wars 2 Still Worth Playing in 2024?
...yes.

[uniquename]

I just want to add that in EU fractal groups with randoms happens all the time and our lfg-finder is full of groups with all sorts of requests and if you can't find yours, make your own and people will join. For some reason in NA people wait for others to make groups, but when noone do, nothing happens and the lfg there is empty. Until that one guy add one and boom in sec it is full of people who was sitting there waiting.
It is very strange and was always like that but only in NA, but what i want to say with it, fractals are done every day with randoms, just make sure to read the group text, come with a build that add a recent amount of dps and you can check this all by your self in the raidlobby at the dps golem to make sure you do more dps then the support and you are good t go =)

[KuroSy]

What I like about gw2 is that it's a good game wheter you have plenty of time to grind or few free time to dedicate to it. Every kind of player can find their personal goal even tho it could be hard to understand what it is. Imo the goal should be having fun so it depends on what you personally have fun with.

If it's fashion then you have plenty of monthly objectives considering events and black lion chests and shop constantly add pieces to the already vast in game achievement system (you just have to dig in your achi interface to find out cool stuff).

If it's about trying out builds then legendary gear is a great objective (which also adds up to fashion).
With soto they added the Vault which imo gives nice daily, weekly and seasonal objectives with skins, gear and gold and is a super useful goal for both fashion and gearing up objectives said above!

I see you like the competitive side and playing with friends and I think you did yourself an injustice not digging more into wvw. Despite being a meme in the wvw community, devs are really moving towards to a new system based on guilds fight. In few words, you will be able to be in the same match of your designated guild and this will make it super easy to play with friends! While this feature has been promised for years, it's now in an advanced state and 2024 will be a decisive year. You and your friends can still farm some gold from pvp, pay 500 gems (or zero, if it's your first time transfering) and move to a low populated server and have plenty of fun together in wvw while waiting for guild alliance system.
GvG is extremely fun and all the builds are really focused on doing their specific role, with dps dealers running on the same squishy stats played in pve.
Open field roaming is more bunker-y but the real great thing is that your group can theorycraft their own playstyle and composition and come up with your own strategy.