I recently dusted off my old Guild Wars 2 account after YouTube recommend some videos of it.
I was a huge fan of Guild Wars 1, I especially loved its skill system. You had hundreds of skills available but you could only equip 8 at a time. This forced you to think carefully and craft builds, which was half the fun. There were some skills that were only available once you defeated some hard elite enemies, which was also a fun challenge.
When GW2 released I bought the game on the first week, but the skill system was very underwhelming for me. A huge part of why I loved GW1 was not there in the sequel, so I quickly stopped playing.
Around 10 years later I logged in again and created a new character. I’m aware that there were tons of changes made to the game but the very early game stayed pretty much the same (as far as I remember). However, the way I experienced it was very different.
It no longer bothered me that you only have a fraction of the skills available. I’m 10 years older than I was when I first played it and I have much less time. This means that I appreciate not having to spend days to craft a character, I can just go out and enjoy the game.
The story is also pretty good, I’ve heard that GW2 is one of the few MMOs where the early game is also as much fun as the late game, and it seems to be true. I don’t feel like I have to rush to max level to have fun.
Have you ever had a similar experience?
Me with Morrowind. I first played it back when Oblivion launched, but the general clunkiness and jank were very hard to swallow. I did spend some time around it, and learned about mods thanks to it, too!, but never got too far in any questline.
Skip to a few years later (2014 or so) and I gave the game another go. The more mature me actually paid attention to stuff on screen, realized how the main story was all about this prophecy being fulfilled through several coincidences, understood the rivalry between the noble houses. Exploration was much more “magical” to me, there were so many things around and the game didn’t “beg” for you to find it (no map markers ), but it was easy to feel pulled towards “something over there”. Getting kinda lost, being where you weren’t supposed to be yet.
That second experience made me realize why so many people still despise the direction Bethesda took with the series. I don’t blame Todd, he went for the safe route, and Oblivion and Skyrim both took right steps in making the experience fun, but Morrowind truly is something that teenage me wasn’t “ready” to fully understand.