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As for XIV I think it has a great in-game culture of people who just kind of hang out in-game and treat it as another world/life. That's pretty cool imo. Reminds me of how I used to experience MMO's way back in the day. I just can't get past its mammoth story. The gameplay to story-time ratio is too off for me.
Tried some other MMOs due to Guild Wars (ESO, WoW, SWTOR, The Secret World, et al.), but none of them really stuck. TSW is the only other MMO I've enjoyed on some level.
Various reasons for this, but similar to the post above, GW2 just feels more satisfying to play than anything else I've tried. I'm [significantly] less fond of ArenaNet from a customer standpoint than when GW2 released in 2012, but the game itself remains hard to beat.
The second biggest reason is the combat. I like the action combat more than the stand there and wait on global cooldowns systems, I like only having one hotbar to worry about instead of needing to assign 30 buttons for my skills alone, I like not having hard enforced roles that force you to rely on tanks and healers for everything, since everyone can dodge and heal themselves.
Almost all of the content is still worthwhile to do today, on my endgame characters.
I can progress on my own; I don't need to wait around for a group to get ready.
Combat is far more active than to just stand in one spot and slug it out.
I find the underwater portion enjoyable (not many people do).
Mobility, including mounts and gliding, are more than just increased speed.
Each MMO has their own reasons to play over the others. These are just the ones I have for playing GW2.
There are no hard enforced roles.
You have confused "Ideal group setup" with "mandatory".
I play both GW2 and FF14. A good combo that sort of work really well together, since there really for me currently is not just ONE perfect MMO, i need 2.
FF14 for the instanced raids (and it gets new raid content certain interval every year, so constant fresh raid content with cool musics and themes) and also yes, the social rp-club etc scene and community is awesome, it can yes be sort of like massive "social platform" in a game form with friends.
GW2 for the WvW (open world pvp) and the open world PVE land game play is giga fun also in GW2, while FF14 is more just instanced raids and city hubs are lively but all open world areas are not much used and are empty, they just act as spots where you go talk to a person A before person B that after you go do a dungeon C. But in GW2 the open world IS big part of the game, could almost say it IS the game, and very fun while at it. :)
So i'm a 2 mmo player, because cannot be without one of them now. In a perfect world there would be ONE game where i would have both the things i want. But until then.. this is enjoyable for me. :)
No sub fee, no paid battle pass, fair daily system, no p2w:
I don't have to worry about getting my moneys worth of gameplay out of it over the course of a month. I want to play a game because I want to instead of feeling guilty for not playing it. You might not get as much stuff out of the wizards vault if you miss some days or don't complete the tasks associated with the vault, but there is no streak you are breaking or a specific reward you could only get if you looged in at day X.
Some might disagree on the P2W argument, but I don't feel pressured into spending money in this game - I only do it if I like something in the shop.
Combat system:
Everyone has preferences on this one and people might disagree, but not being locked in position while casting abilities and being able to avoid damage instead of taking it and heal up again is a huge deal for me personally. There are other games with good combat, but for me GW2 is among the games with a combat system that just feels right.
Open World that matters and feels alive:
This is probably the main reason. There are other MMORPGs with an amazing open world... that is just empty and nobodoy visiting. This is because the open world only matters while you have to do quests in there and it gets even worse if the zone is not part of the latest expansion anymore. The "MM" of MMORPG only comes across in city hubs and maybe in raids in these games and the open world is more of an annoyance you have to get through in order to get to the "real endgame" of standing in a city acting as a 3D lobby for instanced group content.
In GW2 you rarely ever encounter an empty zone and the open world - even the older zones - are all part of the endgame content.
In addition to that I consider myself being the "explorer" type of player. I always have the urge to look at every inch of the area, and GW2 is rewarding this with all the little secrets you may find. Even after years of playing and thinking you know the game.
Low commitment "Play together" features
Especially in recent years MMOs have moved towards being able to be played alone, especially for the questing and story part. This got to an extend, where you can't even really play the story together, unless you specifically have to enter group content. I am looking at you, FF14 and ESO. GW2 makes it pretty easy to play the story together. You don'teven need to have the same story progress.
But this is not only for the story, but also for the open world (and ties in with the open world point above): Many MMORPG players have learnt to avoid other players in the open world, because of mob stealing and ninja looting resources. They got used to mob tagging, meaning there is no reason to help other players fighting mobs in the open world. Playing in the open world with others around ften felt like being in a race with each other.
GW2, from day one, offered features and mechanics that make it easy to play together. Be it personal ressource nodes, no mob tagging, dynamic events in general - and especially group events, the revive feature, And all this with the need to form an actual group. Just be there and play together with strangers, Even if you log in solo and don't have any friends in the game yet.
This just formed a different way of communicating with each other and in my opinion might be a main reason why today the gw2 community is considered to be among the friendliest in the genre.
All the little conveniences and other good ideas:
When I am taking a break from GW2 and am playing another MMORPGs I often end up asking myself: "Why can't they do this like in GW2?" And most likely this is the main reason I come back.
Among these features is stuff like sending the crafting materials to the bank and do a lot of cleaning your inventory while in the field (ok, granted, this is needed because it get's filles with so much junk), being able to change your build and cometics on the fly as long as you are out of combat without needing to visit a specific place in a specific city. Pretty much the same for the mail system. Accountwide progress (achievements, mastery) instead of character specfic.
Sometimes it is stuff you don't even think about much while you are playing GW2 and only realize missing when you don't have it in another game.
Horizontal progression and "do what you want":
This again ties in to the open world argument again. Keeping level 80 as maximum and not having an itemlevel pretty much replacing it and winding up to infinity means more content stays relevant. And more content being relevant means I am pretty much free to do whatever I feel like. Sure, there is some daily stuff. But I can ignore it and just do whatever I want. And there is a ton of stuff to be done.
This freedom is great if you know how to deal with it, but I have to admit it is also the big struggle for people who are not used to it. But it is also true in the opposite way. I hate it when a game pushes you into specific content (especially if you don't like that content), because nothing else matters anymore. In GW2 it is actually hard to find an activity that doesn't give you progress to something - even though you might just not be aware of it.
Dare to be different, experiment and innovate:
Over time other games finally learn from the stuff GW2 does well and implement these things as well; and GW2 does the same to some extend when there is something in other games that works well. But looking back I have to give credit to the sheer amount of stuff GW2 tried to approach differently. Yes, not everything worked out to be a good idea (like the DRM), but this is always the risk of trying something new.
There is probably even more.
I remember when Mages tanked a boss. I had to tank a raid boss as Balance druid in bear form during vanilla when the tanks went down.
That's still Tank, Healer, DPS enforced roles. Just because there are outliers in some patches/situations, it doesn't somehow remove the enforced Trinity in those games.