not sure why it gets a lot of hate, i paid like £23 and played it for almost a year, amazing value.
that said, it falls victum to the "I DONT WANNA GRIND" / "THERES NOTHING TO DO" squad, i just didnt care about the living world, if it all got burnt to the ground i didnt care, i do play to progress my personal character though, and at a certain point with daily laurels etc it got repetative and easy and became "just a matter of time" before i was walking around with purple gear.
I'm in the "Theres nothing to do" 'squad' but I don't hate this game, I think it's great. But only when I view it almost on the same terms as a single player RPG (with perhaps a touch of coop
)... I thought the levelling was the best I'd experienced in any MMO and whilst levelling there was plenty to see and do with much freedom to wander around as I saw fit. The story quests were pretty nice to, I'd agree with the criticisms over it feeling more like a story about Trahearne than yourself (atleast after the first 20-30 levels) but I still enjoyed it.
But for me to come at this game as an MMO I have to feel like there is a challenge and some vested interest in me plugging away at my character, to both improve the character further and conquer the challenges. Once the game was released it took me one week to get to 80 on my thief. It took me another week after that to be head to toe in the exact exotic gear I wanted, which was the best at the time (I know the ascended has been added since). Within another couple of weeks of that I had done all the dungeons in explorable mode, spent countless hours in WvW, won a few sPvP games and seen the four corners of the world. I then found myself stood outside a bank twiddling my thumbs... achievements have never been my thing, I didn't want any items for cosmetic purposes (I didn't find any of the medium sets appealing) so I had no reason to repeat dungeons more than a couple of times and finishing off the last few quests didn't seem like it was either a challenge or something that would improve my character.
So? I knocked it on the head, tried it a couple of times since to see what changes have been made and how WvW is, but there is still nothing there to hook me back in. They have announced I believe that proper raid content would be coming but that is most likely quite a ways off, so I'm not putting any hope in me being hooked in again years down the line either, I'll probably be playing Everquest Next.
There are criticisms I would throw in sure. I don't think the skill system or the talent system were indepth enough... I do think a tiered gear progression would have kept me playing longer and whilst I still think there is still merit to the abolishment of the holy trinity in MMOs I don't think their implementation was all that great. But I would still hold it as worthy purchase for someone; but I'd definitely give them reservations about any prolonged playing.
I don't know. Perhaps trying to find the next WoW, in terms of a game you're willing to sink years upon years of your gaming time to is a tall order and once you've done that with a game there is no doing it with another... but perhaps I'm just waiting for the right MMO.