Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

GW2 presents a pretty picture at first, but the game eventually devolves into a mindless tedium that drains your will to play it. This might not be so fatal if there was at least some point to the drudgery, but there isn't. You go from zone to zone completing the same formulaic quests and "public events" - for what exactly? Prettier gear, apparently.

Besides the uninspired gameplay, the game is unfortunately infested with bots, a problem Arenanet tackles by hindering legitimate play, if it bothers with bots at all. Day after day, the same bots appear in the same places. Players dutifully report them and Arenanet makes token efforts to remove them, but either through ineptitude or some other reason, the bots continue unabated.

The big initial draw to me was the persistent World vs World, but this turned out to be a major letdown. Matchups tended to be very lopsided affairs, or one shard had a very active late-night contingent that painted the map its color as soon as everyone went to sleep. Bots, bugs, and class imbalances only added insult to injury. Since the fun is minimal, you're again confronted with the question: what am I doing this for again?

When the realization you're simply a hamster on a wheel finally hits, just hope you've got your money's worth out of the game.