Re: References to GW2
I agree with you completely about GW2. The game is boring, boring, boring.
I was in on the beta tests and, at first, I thought the boredom was caused by the fact that I had to keep creating a character for the tests. Sadly, that wasn't it. As soon as it was launched, I dived right in and found myself glad to walk away from it about a month later.
The combat is ridiculous. It's all about having large numbers against the foes: no tactics, no finesse, nothing. Because of the severe level capping, you can never level up and kill a monster with fewer players. Some of the powers of the foes are just ridiculous; the bandit boss in the cave near Divinity's reach can kill anyone in 2 hits, no matter what elite skills that player might have. Not to mention that idiotic troll...
Pardon the pun, but the lack of heaing is a killer. I had a feeling this would happen when they said that there would be no dedicated healing class, but I had hoped that I would be proved wrong. The reason I had had this feeling is that I used to play Runequest - old-fashioned pencil and paper role-playing, that - and it spread the healing around. What happened is that no-one felt responsible for healing anyone else, and the self-healing was not often no sufficient to prevent characters from being killed. That is exactly what happens in GW2. The healing, I have heard it say, is just supposed to help out if a character doesn't manage to dodge a hit, but this is ridiculous because dodging has a long cooldown period. You will get hit. You will not have sufficient healing. No-one will heal you. Engineers, if any are about, might have a healing turret out, but this will be insufficient. You will die if other players don't take out the foe or if there are insufficient players to take out the foe.
The GW2 team likes to brag about its events that take the place of quests, but this sort of thing already happened in GW1. For those of you who played it, remember the farmer in pre-searing Ascalon, the one with the pigs that would escape? Sometimes you could get money for rounding up some of them, and sometimes you couldn't. Some foes roamed and were only sometimes a danger depending upon where they were. I'm thinking about the level 19 corsair that sometimes lurked a little too close to the entrance of of the not-too high level areas in Nightfall.
The crafting system is nice, but the materials are just too hard to find in any number. This is just part of the reason that the economy is all messed up. Cost burdens on characters are too high and gold and other items are too hard to get. The GW2 team does this to prevent farming, but, in reality, all it does is play into the hands of the gold farmers. They just set their bots up and let them run; if it takes a few more hours, so be it. Ordinary, innocent players, though, with perhaps only the time to play a few hours a day lose out big time. This just drives people into the arms of the goldsellers if it doesn't drive them away from the game itself.
The personal story that the GW2 team crows about is nothing at all. It is a bit of over-hyped hack writing and it quickly collapses into the same story. As well, the 'talking head' cinematics are boring. I loved the cinematics in GW1, especially the one where you first see the Eye of the North. They really were full of emotion; you felt you were an important part of the story. In GW2, you are just a pawn and you know it.
Then there are those stupid jumping games. I hate jumping games which is why I don't buy platform jumpers. One minute, you are a noble or whatever and the next you are Mario. It does nothing for the role playing aspect of the game which is already lacking.
Oh yes, not to forget the complete lack of guild-versus-guild PVP action. I wasn't into that in GW1, but many people are and they can't understand why it isn't there. WvW is just another numbers game. Worse, the WvW servers are clogged with PvE players who don't want to be there but find they must in order to completely explore the map.
Oh yes, the graphics are beautiful and I have never seen towns as well done as they are in GW2, but it isn't enough, not enough by far.
You are right about the mods on the GW2 forums, too. They stop all discussion. Any criticism, no matter how mild or constructive, is stomped on, but the fanbois are free to call anyone who doesn't bow down before GW2's altar a 'hater'. That's another thing that drove me away from the game.
Oh, and I don't play WoW either and never have.