Guild Wars 2®

I'm an old MMORPG player from way back; Vanilla EQ, DAoC, WoW, SW:G (RIP, my beloved). We ate good as *hell* during the 2001-2007 era of the genre. GW2 absolutely scratches that itch for me. I also love that the game is the game and you don't need any kind of monthly subscription to enjoy every aspect of it, aside from the QOL improvements gained from expansion purchases. You can buy as much or as little of this game as you want and I just love that approach. Sure, there's microtransactions; I detest having to spend an actual dollar each time I want to transmogrify an item. But there are ways to earn the things I tend to take for granted and that's a pretty good trade-off. Buying expansions gets expensive after awhile, but I respect ANET for not double-dipping on it's consumers by abusing a monthly subscription model. Throwing them a few bucks when I want to overhaul my toon's fashion isn't the worst thing I could do with my money.

just started but im in love with mmo and missed this one cause i didnt have a pc growing up prolly can tell from my typing now 23 and love what im seeing so far planning to buy expansion

best free mmo as a wow player

Still the best MMORPG for me. Can only recommend it. Play it your way.

I played GW2 (launcher version) for about a year. Recently, after a long break, I decided to pick it up on Steam. This game just won't run on my PC, a modern gaming laptop (2025, specs below). Specifically, the game will randomly trigger the "black screen of death" during gameplay: a black screen where only the cursor remains. Resetting the GPU doesn't fix it. The only way out is a forced shutdown. I spent a great deal of time troubleshooting, several hours. I've tried all the immediately Googleable solutions, the solutions provided by the developer, and a few old tricks I've picked up over the years. Nothing helps. I would love to play this game again, but it's just not possible.

My actual playtime at time of writing is [b]1252.66 hours[/b]. I have used the standalone client for the last 13.6 years, but only recently started using the Steam app to launch the standalone client. I use the `-portal Provider` launch option to use the standalone client with my existing account. I have never purchased any Guild Wars 2 (GW2) content via Steam. [u]This is an important note for newbies: you can't mix and match game clients[/u]. If your account started on the Steam client, any purchased content is only available through Steam. If your account started on the standalone client (even when launching via the Steam app using the launch options like I do) any purchased content is only available via the standalone client. Now with that said, I love this game a lot. I've played off and on since the original launch. I paid the full box price before it became a free-to-play game. I love the combat, the music, the art direction, the story and the characters are also pretty good. What I love most of all is that this game respects my time. Not a single other MMORPG has done that in the last 25 years. There is no gear treadmill in GW2. You pick your pace and you pick your objectives. You could take a multi-year break (of which I have taken many) and GW2 will be right where you left it, waiting for you. There's no rush. There's no FOMO! You can join several guilds, whether they are PVE or PVP-focused, and find people to complete open-world and instanced events with. There's always someone around willing to jump in and lend a hand. Which gets to the other really big selling point for me: the community. The majority, say 95% of players, are very generous and understanding of newcomers. Of course, there's always the 5% that are going to be sweaty try-hards. It's night and day when compared to games like World of Warcraft, which was pretty toxic back in the day. Anyway, you should give this game a shot. You might bounce off, but don't feel bad about that. There's a lot to do, and there's no rush! GLHF :)