misterhorse8327: When WoWF was announced that it had horizontal progression, I had to research if they were actually doing it and not just marketing smut. My criteria were: no gear stat increases and level down scaling. The latter was answered immediately in their presentation, and the former was answered about a week or two ago.

Yeah, I'll stay in GW2 (and also GW3 when it comes out).

magnusgodrik9870: Gw2 is probably the best mmo I ever played. I like that was able to come back after 7years, read a quick guide and was able to easily insert myself to find people still in old maps for them but new to me was amazing. The legendary armory was the greatest thing to come back to.

boxonothing4087: map completion isn't such a big deal.

Without tools, count one hour per area tops.

AND YOU'RE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO DO MORE IN ONE GO THAN YOU CAN STOMACH.

Pace yourself, you don't have to brute force everything all the time.

Eloy_Knows_Ball: I gotta tell you, as a returning player (back in July) who didn't play since shortly after launch, the progression did not feel horizontal to me at all. It felt extremely vertical, just not when it comes to my base gear and weapons. Relics are extremely vertical, the core relics i had access to are garbage compared to the paywall locked, chore/checklist/map achievement locked ones from the expansions. And don't get me started on elite specs not being unlocked from the start and having to play as an absolute dumpster of a Core Spec and fight my way through HoT to unlock hero points... It was miserable. And its obvious why its miserable, because the answer lies in the cash shop at least for the hero point problem.

Compare this to if I return to WoW today, I get a level cap boost just like in gw2 when I buy the latest expansion, and then I immediately start doing relevant endgame content on the class and spec of my choice 5 minutes after logging in. I don't have to spend 3 weeks doing a homework checklist to unlock my "skyscale" or "griffon" and I don't have to play a super shitty gimped version of my class to unlock the spec I really wanted to be playing in the first place. And my build is complete/viable for the aformentioned relevant content right away without having to spend 3 days doing boring map completion to unlock a relic that makes my build viable.

As for 'world completion' making every zone relevant, yeah I've never heard anyone excited to do world completion, most people hate it (including you) and the most common advice is just power through it with blishud and netflix on a second monitor. Its not engaging content, its mind numbing busywork. Nobody is excited about it, and everyone is just relieved when its over. That's the biggest difference for me between GW2 and other MMOs, I never feel excited in GW2 when I finish a long collection or list of tedious chores the game treats as content, I'm always just relieved its over.

If my friends weren't playing this game, I probably would have stopped logging in a couple days after returning back in early july, but spending time with them is really important so I power through.

tldr: I don't feel spoiled by this game. Maybe if I was a day 1 player with all the tedium behind me already I might? The combat is super fun. Everything else feels bad. Don't get me started on the cash shop, its egregious.

the_hessian__: If you complete your GoE without Blish you are a better player than I. I don't want to imagine how long that would have taken. Maybe minus a day job...

Riaining7: Reinvesting into the game that was already made at the start, is the most genius thing ArenaNet did. Their gameplay loop is still best in class. I still occasionally decide to go into lower level zones like in Queensdale, just simply to clear out the Champion Bandit Leaders, and redeem my bounty notices. And sometimes get a Legendary Executioner to spawn, that isn't exactly easy to solo, even for a fully unlocked character in downscaling. I love bringing along lower level players to these little events, and it's a lot of fun for everyone. GW2 truly is the best game ever made, right next to Witcher 3.

Sw87sw87: I played 19/29/39/60 twinks in WoW for battlegrounds back in the old days up until Cataclysm. I loved never having to regear my battleground characters and could just login and play.

TwoFoxGibbon: So good, WoW Forever is stealing the concept.

manuelmusetti5026: I have to be honest, in the WoW forever reveal they never said 'horizontal progression', they said 'horizontally expanding world'.

Whatever that means, at least it means they didn't want to use the word 'progression', which could have been a clue...

manuelmusetti5026: About re-leveling in WoW, i think they said something about leveling in all areas and maybe on all classes can unlock something for your entire account?

reinerwahnsinn9972: Hallo Waldläufer Kammerad.

manuelmusetti5026: A last thing i would like to add is...ok it's WoW story until a certain point then it changes but...it's still fundamentally the same game, it's not WoW2.

Oct 28 2026

Buy GW2 Gold