It's ok. I'm enjoying it to an extent, you can definitely progress without much lump time but on that same note I often feel like I'm not actually doing anything, especially with a quest system the pretty much abandons all attempts at story or situation. It's not really 'grabbing' me; it's extremely easy for me to log and I already think the levelling is tiresome at 35ish; though I do need to get round to trying a dungeon and PVP at least.
Zones are pretty but indistinct at the same time; every place I've levelled so far just kind of runs together as "the snowy mountains" or "the grassy plains/hills". Combat is spammy (partly my fault, I'm having trouble adjusting to having an auto-attack again lol) and essentially requires weapon switching (friend of mine loves it, I think it's an abysmal idea).
"Area" [only] questing and events are a step backwards imo, maybe I was spoiled by SWTOR's emphasis on presentation but without even a pretense of story/motivation to any of it, it feels like a straight up grindfest with the ability to 'grind' exploration or 'grind' crafting thrown in; the game it feels most similar to for me is Eden Eternal.
Ultimately I just don't feel particularly thrilled by the actual playing of the core (imo) game, the combat. I'll stick with it until I get a better feel for PVP and Dungeons to see if they do anything for me though; as I do definitely notice a lot of my abilities (Guardian here) seem worthless in non-party scenarios so I might feel more engaged then.
You can turn off autoattack. I have to do that in many cases.
For those that are very "meh" on the questing/dynamic event aspects: Have you hung around to actually work through some of the event chains? early enough in Kessex--the bandit fort, the centaurs vs Seraph throughout central and western Kessex? The thing that really works, is you have to "stick around." Listen to the NPCs, complete one, and then follow where it takes you to the next event. It really does offer some wide-ranged "world changing" if you follow them through
Of course, they do repeat and the problem is, that people will farm them for various reasons, never allowing the centaur to win certain posts, to see the new events that spawn requiring groups to run through all the outposts to reclaim them. The blank slate of a place like Kessex is centaurs controlling all of the various outposts throughout the northwest and central region--you actually have ot retake them one at a time, wait for seraph to rally, assault the bridge as centaurs try to repair it, then assault the main centaur camp, anger the bosses that spawn, then take them out. It's rare that people see this now, as it's a populated areas (especially with the XP farmers exploiting the bridge event). I do agree that it's a real criticism of the system, but essentially unavoidable. Still tons better than go collect beets! (yes, you
can also do this in GW2, but you can complete that NPC's various needs in many other ways, like killing centaurs through the events) and return them to NPC
My main criticism with the combat, and I think it's a big one, is that difficulty and strategy from "1 meter to the next" is horribly unscaled. meaning, mobs tend to be painfully difficult in comparison to most of the bosses. Mob fights are about crowd control, support, and careful dodging. These are the majority of fights, of course, and really utilize the various class's skills and methods of play. Boss's, on the other hand--particularly int he explorables, are essentially zerg rushes. beat down on boss, until it croaks. These explorable spawning bosses have various functions--separate stages, habits, whatever, but I have yet to see one of these through 60 levels that can't be beaten by simple mob violence. As pontifex and others have said, the player mobs get so huge swarming the bosses, that you rarely have any idea where you are, if you are mele range, and what exactly you are doing in terms of contribution.
Now, dungeons are a different story. same issue--mobs tend to be much, much harder than bosses, but you are limited to a 5-man team, so it does require much more thinking to survive and complete these instances. 5 of us tackled CM (the second dungeon, with a rather short, and relatively "easy" (lol) story mode) explorable mode--the 2nd time you go through this dungeon, the map opens into an entirely new area, with very different bosses, very different mobs, and vastly increased difficulty. AC (the first dungeon), was simply too punishing to enjoy, and I think most simply don't like doing it more than once. CM explorable, offers more variety and strategy, the bosses are still sort of trap and hammer them down, but they have individual traits (based on their class) that teams can exploit depending on their make up.
The beauty of all of this is that not only are they ways to complete dungeons and their bosses dynamic depending on your team--which will never rely on "the tank" pulling angry mob into corner while two brainless DPS whittle them down, repeat, repeat, etc--but the dungeons are dynamic--they change, and it's not a simple change.
We had 2 level 80s and 3 level 55+ in that group (this was level 45 dungeon) and if you think it was "easy" for the level 80s....jsut ask them how often they died.
with explorable mode, we got 30 tokens in one run to be used on advanced gear, with another potential set of level 70 "endgame" gear. 30 tokens gets you a piece of gear that can be used at level 45, while you will need 150 minimum of these same tokens to get you the level 70 stuff. And these tokens are good for this dungeon, and the vendor that sells loot based on the dungeon. There are currently 8 such vendors with their own unique armor and weapon sets, requiring dungeon tokens
So basically--those that complain there is no endgame PvE or endgame content in GW2 right now, have simply
chosen to stop playing.
There is, in my experience, more than what is currently available in ToR, especially considering that PvP in GW2 puts what you have in ToR to utter shame.
) but it feels a lot like many other MMO's. The amazing visuals + epic storylines (granted a lot of the VA could use quite a bit more emotion) are enough to make it an enjoyable experience for me.
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