From what I've played and heard, it's a bit of a "reset" after the highs of Endwalker, and the story takes a while to get started. It takes 20 quests to even reach the first new dungeon, which will take at least an hour+ of gameplay and cutscenes. I'm still looking forward to getting through it, but I understand the muted responses.
It's completely supported by the story that our character wants to take a little backseat in the story, so the main protagonist is another NPC. You either like her or not, that will guide most of your xpac feeling.
If players don't like meeting random settlements and learning random stuff about them then slowly build up the main plot, to the have a surprise turn, and explore quickly a new concept before suepr big bad appears and we got to wreck house, they didn't play the last X expansions tbh.
and the story takes a while to get started.
That's the problem the game has always had, though.
I played for a bit right as Endwalker came out. I went in blind, played consistently for two months, and by then, I had just finished the first third of Shadowbringers. In contrast, it took me a month-and-a-half to level my first WoW toon back during Wrath of the Lich King.
People may praise the story, but while there was a lot of great stuff, it just takes so loooooong to get there. They really do need to go through and prune the filler quests or boost experience gains.
Story is the only problem, classes and content are fine. It just feels like is a secondary irrelevant quest with a lot of filler, using checklist to define certain characters. If I knew beforehand, I would had skipped several if not most of the cutscenes. There is a 30s cutscene of your WoL waking up and walking out the inn. Filler is all over the place.
First time for the WoL not being the main character. But is not only that, you're useless most of the time. The only thing you do is watching another character learn over and over the exact same lessons we learned as a WoL countless times in other expansions. Shit gets pretty boring.
I took some time off work and powered through it for old times' sake.
I enjoyed it! It definitely dragged at points, and there were more than few questionable story decisions, but the combat content (especially in the latter half) was much stronger than previous expansions. The high-level dungeons are a lot of fun and will keep many players on their toes.
The new classes are...okay. viper seems overly confusing for what is a relatively easy class, and picto is mostly fine, if not a bit too easy.
I'm like a third or a little more of the way through so far. I like the new South / Mesoamerican themed areas which look great with the graphics update. The music is excellent as always
The pacing is exactly the same as the previous expansions, so no surprises there.
Part of me still hopes that they will go full voice acting at some point but they haven't actually said that.
Overall I'm finding it pretty good so far and meeting my expectations especially considering the guidance from the devs.
I'm happy for the people who enjoy it but I'm also very glad I got off this train. Sounds like it was at the right time, at least for me.
The graphics update looks good though and was sorely needed!
Guild wars 2 all the way. Also new expansion is coming .
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