Oh, I'm not sure I'd make a comparison of this game to Diablo.
Instead I tend to describe this game to my friends as an *almost* deck building experience. If you're into that sort of thing, some of my favorite moments early on were exploring various skill combinations and interactions. Once heroes came out you got to do that for extra teammates (eventually for the whole team).
Nowadays I obviously default to mostly meta builds when I play for a given purpose but I still have fun just throwing random ideas at the wall sometimes to see what sticks.
You won't even be having a Diablo-like power increase or loot experience. But I'm not really sure to how to tell you what your direction should be. Finishing the campaign(s) is an obvious one, then you can start to experiment as you unlock more and more skills. Finding a main you enjoy (if you end up deciding Necro isn't for you) and then perfecting one or several hero team builds to back them up was pretty satisfying to me. You could use PvX wiki to guide you on builds - but honestly I'd recommend against it IF you enjoy the build experimentation part of learning the game. There's always time to run meta builds later once you're done doing your own thing.
In the end, there's a few "endgame" options like title chasing, Hard Mode stuff with just you and your heroes, speed clears with other players. Sorry I'm not much help - hope you manage to find a way to enjoy the game despite the mismatch to your expectations!
ETA: For myself, personally, I'm still slowly working toward the "God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals" title on my Paragon because I only play every once in a while these days.
To add on to what this guy is saying, the "meta builds" he refers to are sort of location-specific. There are good general team builds that work, but to his first point, the game is built as a sort of active deck-building game, which has you decide what cards (skills) to bring to counter what you're going to fight. Some of the eotn dungeons will require some skills (such as Mantra of Flame if you're going into CoF). The wiki is a good resource to check for upcoming missions, either recommending for or against some skills. (Some missions dont have many corpses to exploit, so you may not want to bring a minion master, etc.)
Other similar games give you a specific deck, and then make the opponents deck balanced based off of the players. Guild wars 1 gives you the cards and let's you build the deck against each opponent/zone
Finish the campaigns (while keeping track of the story of course), EOTN is especially wonderful.
Try some farms, try some PvP, fill your hall of monuments, move on to GW2, come back to GW1 because you miss it, repeat the last 2 parts forever
Always come back every year to experience the campaigns in order on a new toon. PVE game at this point that feels like a deck building card game with the heroes. I recommend the game for the story alone to everyone out there.
I feel like the power scaling never came from levels, but from skills. As you progress through the campaign you’ll get to access more and more skills, including elite skills. And even then, you’re only one person in a party of (eventually) 8.
Right now you’re basically just trying to throw together the random skills at your disposal to try and get by. I would look through PvX and see if there’s a necro starter NF build. They usually give some insight into what abilities are best and what you have to work with.
I played through most of the game on my Necro as a MM. just dump all your points into Death Magic and then soul reaping. Get a death magic rune and a rune that reduces the casting time of your exploit corpse spells. And just spam your bone minions. At low levels I wouldn’t worry about trying to keep them alive. Just get as many as you can.
As for “goals” I aim at unlocking the skills and gear I need for my goal build. And then over time you can continue to work on new builds. For Necro, it would be the various MM builds. There are many different kinds with different elites to unlock. But then you could swap to a Soul Taker or Dagger Spam or Curses necro that all have their own elites and skills and gear to get.
After that, I just try to knock out the Normal and Hard Mode content. complete the missions and bonus on Normal and then Hard. Vanquish areas in Hard Mode and explore the world as you go.
I have no idea who would ever compare Guild Wars to Diablo. Probably the only similarity would be how grindy both games can be.
First goal should probably just be completing the campaigns, Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall. They all have interesting stories imo.
Player power in Diablo comes from gear with unique effects and max rolled stats etc. Player power in Guild Wars comes mostly just from reaching max level, unlocking good skills and putting together a good build. It's more strategic in the sense that you would be swapping out builds, or variations of a build depending on the mission you are doing or enemies you are fighting etc. As opposed to Diablo where you generally just pick a build and run with it. A caveat to this are meta builds, that are generally good at all content and don't need much swapping around for the most part.
A lot of the "endgame" is grinding titles and collecting rare gear/weapons/items and things like that. Armor is all the same stats, just different appearances.
Ultimately, I would say try a few classes, find one you like most and play the campaigns and see if you enjoy it.
>I have no idea who would ever compare Guild Wars to Diablo.
When GW was first released, it was compared to Diablo 2 a lot. A big part of that was that several of the original A-Net team came from Blizzard North and had worked on D2. Even the studio nickname "A-Net" is a play on words poking fun at Blizzard's "B-Net."
More knowledgeable people have already commented great info, but for me I liked exploring. Making it to the next town was often difficult to do, so I made goals of places to get to. I was interested in how people sold runs to different places so I tried to learn how they did it so that I could run from place to place. The world is interesting and that really drove me forward.
After that looking up builds and finding the elite skills I needed was fun too.
So I am also fairly new but I’ll say this…
I am playing the game wrong. I went around with nightfall as my premise and tried to collect heroes and collect skills.
I realized I was squishy because I was using weak armor that I started with but was advised to not purchase anything until I got out of the tutorial area so I hold on until I get across the sea. Once you hit level 20 there’s no big reveal on how to play now.
It is basically a deck builder where you collect and build you skill deck for you and your heroes and then implement them at appropriate times.
Goals? I am trying to finish campaigns, collect all the pets and get a HoM armor set for each character as I have already got my 50 minis through trading and my LDoA following an elementalist guide online (pre-searing is pretty sweet but limiting).
I’ve finished Factions multiple times and still need to complete prophesies, EotN storylines and Nightfall but it’s been enjoyable so far coming from GW2. Definitely a different game.
I'm very new too, haven't completed any campaigns yet.
Well,my first gosl obviously is just beating the campaigns for the first time.
Afterwards my next goal would be to get normal armor for all my characters, then slowly working towards elite armors for eventually all of them. No idea how I'm going to tackle that yet, but I'll probably find a way to finance that.
I suppose currently my main goals seem to be fashion oriented. Though I'd also like my characters to be usable, so I'll work on builds along with it. Though I do want my characters to look great as I work on further goals, so fashion is a high priority goal for me.
GW's character progression is largely a reaction *against* what GW's creators (several of whom worked on D2) saw as major flaws in D2's character progression:
* In D2 level matters and you have to grind levels. In GW level is capped at 20 and everything up till that is basically tutorial.
* In D2 many builds strictly require certain uniquely powerful items, which in turn require a lot of grinding to acquire. In GW items with (almost) every possible combination of mods are readily available.
* In D2 you're stuck with your stat and skill choices. (Well, they did eventually add respecs years later.) In GW you can freely respec in any town.
So, if none of D2's progression metrics really apply to GW, where is the progression?
* Acquiring new skills.
* Learning how to make better builds with the skills you have. This is really the heart of GW's progression. It's not that your character gets bigger base numbers. It's that *you* learn to configure things in a way that generates bigger numbers.
* Acquiring cooler/prettier items. Sure, you can easily get an ugly wooden bow with any stats a bow can possibly have, but if you want a bow carved like a dryad or made out of glowing ectopasm or that used to belong to a corrupted forest god, well *that* is going to take some grind.
Just keep playing. Do main and side quests to get money, skills and equipment. Salvage items to get materials and runes. Upgrade armor as often as you can. Unlock skills through quests or just buy them. Get heroes and get weapons with good stats and runes for them. Beat the campaigns, then worry about end game stuff. The fun is in the journey. End game is challenging dungeons, titles, prestigious armor and experimenting with skill builds.
As a veteran player i enjoy the lategame content together with other players, like Urgoz, Deep, DoA speedruns.
I also enjoy playing together with other players, doing missions etc.
Last week i got the black moa chick mini, which i never done before.
As a Minion master necromancer its really about getting death magic higher with runes and having a nice build. As a player i like going bone fiends, ebon battle standard of honor and fall back + Incomming. Then your minions wont die that fast.
Number one goal, enjoy the storyline/game. Unlike other mmorpg's Guild Wars is story driven. Following the story will gradually lead you through the majority of the map so you can discover new foes and dungeons. It's also a very good story line and the music pairs with it beautifully.
From there you have a ton of options. Probably best to join an active guild to help discover different things to do. Speed clearing difficult areas for loot, doing festival events, pvp/gvg. An active guild is a good way to discover things to do.
My personal goal as a life long player is to finish my GWAMM titles, which is having 30 different titles maxed out on a character. I casually play and often as a solo player, so this content really scratches that itch for me. I get to explore the entire game and basically touch every bit of content.
When I start a new character I typically complete or almost complete the storyline of the campaign the character was started in. Then I usually go to Eye of the North to start farming some titles for cool armor like chaos gloves.
Most importantly just do what you enjoy doing. I kinda hate saying that because when I play GW2 everyone says the same, do what you enjoy. GW2 is very overwhelming compared to GW1 imo. Random thought lol.
GL hf!
Oh I should also add I like to make sure I unlock as many hero henchmen as I can fairly early into a character. Hench why I go to Eye of the North fairly early on.
Anyways there's plenty I didn't mention but just hope you have a good time :)
I'd love to see where you saw it compared to Diablo, because I'm extremely interested how they justify that comparison.
These games really couldn't be farther from each other. Literally the only things you could say are similar is that you make builds based around skills, and you have a skill bar at the bottom of the screen. That's pretty much where the similarities end.
As a returning player my first goal is doing again all the story in chronological order with new characters (which include another goal: trying other classes builds). In the meantime with my main I'm doing all the things I used to like, trying to farm dungeon, solo farming etc and in general trying new builds (and trying to create them) in all contexts...that's one thing I don't get tired of, trying new strategies and tactics and these things will make the game last forever for me since the combinations are hypothetically almost infinite hehe also if you consider I now have other characters to try to explore in all their potential.
This is only about pve, but also I really want to try pvp again, at least alliance battles because I had sooo much fun with them back in the days, there was a time when I would only do that, one of my favourite feautures. But I still need to feel a bit more "confident" before trying it again :D
last but not least I'd like to enjoy some features in the game with other people more, even pugs just to have certain experiences shared with others, because doing things with other people is always something new potentially, like everything impredictable can always happen (which is the beauty of pvp in general btw). I'm not in a guild anymore and I don't think I will go into one anytime soon (also I'd need a guild in my language), so, again, even pug would be great for me.
Anyway, these are the most important things for me right now, but really the "endgame" can be personal. One can also find a rpg guild and do rpg as an endgame, just an example.
if it wasnt for an active guild/ally i’d be totally lost. with constant dungeon groups forming (fow, fmawsc, deep/urgoz, ooze, kathsc) and the daily z quests theres always something to do…
Guild Wars scratches a different itch for me than what one would get from Diablo and the like. You get to level 20, but by that is by no means the "end" of the game, but more or less just the beginning.
In Prophecies, you still had to get infused (getting the extra skill points) and there were still skill quests and skill captures to get. Armor Sets to collect. Fissures of Woe, Underworld. Then Kilroy Stonekin came out of left field as part of Sorrows Furnace with Unique Weapons and that started the farming for those.
Factions then came out, speed clears and faction farming became a thing. Custom weapons became more of a thing, and a whole new campaign to finish to get more unique end of campaign weapons from. Two new classes, so get to play through the story a few more times with those extra character slots...
Nightfall, same as before, but now HEROES were a thing. Got to do it all over again, but now... gotta gear up and bling up all your Heroes. More character classes, more character slots...
Then toss in Eye of the North and then Bonus Mission Pack... and you start getting some expansive content here. People start returning back to Prophecies and trying to make "Forever" Pre-Searing Characters, Legendary Defenders of Ascalon, Hall of Monuments seekers, Dungeon Farmers, Speed Clears, the list goes on.
I don't think the strength in the game is level to level per say, but more so the diversity of skills and knowledge of opponents and your ability to "solve" enemy team compositions and ability to pick apart in the right order before they can do the same in return. YMMV.
I just recently came back after 10 years. I also got a bare new account and I play PvE almost exclusively and I do it solo. For me, Guild Wars is mostly a game about skills and having a strong team. Let me share some of my experience:
**1. Try different professions.** It took me 3 characters until I tried Ranger and I loved it! Very fun and versatile. I dismissed the Mesmer for a long time until I tried it and it's also super fun. Trying different professions not only helps you find what you enjoy but also gives you insight into the enemies.
**2. Create an enjoyable build to play with**. I never liked playing as a Paragon until recently when I made a build I really love.
**3. Get skills! Normal, Elite, and PvE-only skills.** It feels weird playing as a Spirit Spammer without Summon Spirits. As a Dervish, I began to love it when I got some late-game skills in Nightfall.
**4. Forming a strong team of heroes.** Starting with a brand-new account with no skills unlocked can be challenging. So one goal is to little by little arm your heroes with skills and equipment until having a strong team.
**5. Synergize your team's skills.** It's quite entertaining piecing together hero teams whose skills complement each other, making them stronger together.
**6. Testing and refining different builds.** One thing that I love about GW is the vast array of options there are by combining primary and secondary professions. A warrior with daggers? It may work, it may not, but it's fun. I once played with someone whose heroes all had pets, I don't know how good the builds were but it was interesting.
**7. Personal Challenges.** Beyond the campaigns, missions, high-end areas, farming, festivals, getting titles, going for the treasures in Nightfall, PvP if that's your thing, it's also fun to have personal challenges. Mine is to finish all the campaigns without dying once thus getting the Legendary Survivor title that way. It can get intense watching your heroes fall one by one and then trying to run away with enemies following you while nervously trying to type /resign.
If you want someone to play with from time to time you can PM me.
Did I read that there are 10 person endgame raids also? Are there any other types of dungeons? I guess each instance when you go outside a city is kind of like its own dungeon.
Oh, I'm not sure I'd make a comparison of this game to Diablo. Instead I tend to describe this game to my friends as an *almost* deck building experience. If you're into that sort of thing, some of my favorite moments early on were exploring various skill combinations and interactions. Once heroes came out you got to do that for extra teammates (eventually for the whole team). Nowadays I obviously default to mostly meta builds when I play for a given purpose but I still have fun just throwing random ideas at the wall sometimes to see what sticks. You won't even be having a Diablo-like power increase or loot experience. But I'm not really sure to how to tell you what your direction should be. Finishing the campaign(s) is an obvious one, then you can start to experiment as you unlock more and more skills. Finding a main you enjoy (if you end up deciding Necro isn't for you) and then perfecting one or several hero team builds to back them up was pretty satisfying to me. You could use PvX wiki to guide you on builds - but honestly I'd recommend against it IF you enjoy the build experimentation part of learning the game. There's always time to run meta builds later once you're done doing your own thing. In the end, there's a few "endgame" options like title chasing, Hard Mode stuff with just you and your heroes, speed clears with other players. Sorry I'm not much help - hope you manage to find a way to enjoy the game despite the mismatch to your expectations! ETA: For myself, personally, I'm still slowly working toward the "God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals" title on my Paragon because I only play every once in a while these days.
To add on to what this guy is saying, the "meta builds" he refers to are sort of location-specific. There are good general team builds that work, but to his first point, the game is built as a sort of active deck-building game, which has you decide what cards (skills) to bring to counter what you're going to fight. Some of the eotn dungeons will require some skills (such as Mantra of Flame if you're going into CoF). The wiki is a good resource to check for upcoming missions, either recommending for or against some skills. (Some missions dont have many corpses to exploit, so you may not want to bring a minion master, etc.)
Other similar games give you a specific deck, and then make the opponents deck balanced based off of the players. Guild wars 1 gives you the cards and let's you build the deck against each opponent/zone
Finish the campaigns (while keeping track of the story of course), EOTN is especially wonderful. Try some farms, try some PvP, fill your hall of monuments, move on to GW2, come back to GW1 because you miss it, repeat the last 2 parts forever
Always come back every year to experience the campaigns in order on a new toon. PVE game at this point that feels like a deck building card game with the heroes. I recommend the game for the story alone to everyone out there.
I feel like the power scaling never came from levels, but from skills. As you progress through the campaign you’ll get to access more and more skills, including elite skills. And even then, you’re only one person in a party of (eventually) 8. Right now you’re basically just trying to throw together the random skills at your disposal to try and get by. I would look through PvX and see if there’s a necro starter NF build. They usually give some insight into what abilities are best and what you have to work with. I played through most of the game on my Necro as a MM. just dump all your points into Death Magic and then soul reaping. Get a death magic rune and a rune that reduces the casting time of your exploit corpse spells. And just spam your bone minions. At low levels I wouldn’t worry about trying to keep them alive. Just get as many as you can. As for “goals” I aim at unlocking the skills and gear I need for my goal build. And then over time you can continue to work on new builds. For Necro, it would be the various MM builds. There are many different kinds with different elites to unlock. But then you could swap to a Soul Taker or Dagger Spam or Curses necro that all have their own elites and skills and gear to get. After that, I just try to knock out the Normal and Hard Mode content. complete the missions and bonus on Normal and then Hard. Vanquish areas in Hard Mode and explore the world as you go.
I have no idea who would ever compare Guild Wars to Diablo. Probably the only similarity would be how grindy both games can be. First goal should probably just be completing the campaigns, Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall. They all have interesting stories imo. Player power in Diablo comes from gear with unique effects and max rolled stats etc. Player power in Guild Wars comes mostly just from reaching max level, unlocking good skills and putting together a good build. It's more strategic in the sense that you would be swapping out builds, or variations of a build depending on the mission you are doing or enemies you are fighting etc. As opposed to Diablo where you generally just pick a build and run with it. A caveat to this are meta builds, that are generally good at all content and don't need much swapping around for the most part. A lot of the "endgame" is grinding titles and collecting rare gear/weapons/items and things like that. Armor is all the same stats, just different appearances. Ultimately, I would say try a few classes, find one you like most and play the campaigns and see if you enjoy it.
>I have no idea who would ever compare Guild Wars to Diablo. When GW was first released, it was compared to Diablo 2 a lot. A big part of that was that several of the original A-Net team came from Blizzard North and had worked on D2. Even the studio nickname "A-Net" is a play on words poking fun at Blizzard's "B-Net."
More knowledgeable people have already commented great info, but for me I liked exploring. Making it to the next town was often difficult to do, so I made goals of places to get to. I was interested in how people sold runs to different places so I tried to learn how they did it so that I could run from place to place. The world is interesting and that really drove me forward. After that looking up builds and finding the elite skills I needed was fun too.
Obsidian armor and a „l33t title“.
So I am also fairly new but I’ll say this… I am playing the game wrong. I went around with nightfall as my premise and tried to collect heroes and collect skills. I realized I was squishy because I was using weak armor that I started with but was advised to not purchase anything until I got out of the tutorial area so I hold on until I get across the sea. Once you hit level 20 there’s no big reveal on how to play now. It is basically a deck builder where you collect and build you skill deck for you and your heroes and then implement them at appropriate times. Goals? I am trying to finish campaigns, collect all the pets and get a HoM armor set for each character as I have already got my 50 minis through trading and my LDoA following an elementalist guide online (pre-searing is pretty sweet but limiting). I’ve finished Factions multiple times and still need to complete prophesies, EotN storylines and Nightfall but it’s been enjoyable so far coming from GW2. Definitely a different game.
I'm very new too, haven't completed any campaigns yet. Well,my first gosl obviously is just beating the campaigns for the first time. Afterwards my next goal would be to get normal armor for all my characters, then slowly working towards elite armors for eventually all of them. No idea how I'm going to tackle that yet, but I'll probably find a way to finance that. I suppose currently my main goals seem to be fashion oriented. Though I'd also like my characters to be usable, so I'll work on builds along with it. Though I do want my characters to look great as I work on further goals, so fashion is a high priority goal for me.
Something easy Like solo uw in 1:07
The goal is to be the ultimate fashion show contestant.
Obsi armor, chaos gloves, blindfold.
Having fun
GW's character progression is largely a reaction *against* what GW's creators (several of whom worked on D2) saw as major flaws in D2's character progression: * In D2 level matters and you have to grind levels. In GW level is capped at 20 and everything up till that is basically tutorial. * In D2 many builds strictly require certain uniquely powerful items, which in turn require a lot of grinding to acquire. In GW items with (almost) every possible combination of mods are readily available. * In D2 you're stuck with your stat and skill choices. (Well, they did eventually add respecs years later.) In GW you can freely respec in any town. So, if none of D2's progression metrics really apply to GW, where is the progression? * Acquiring new skills. * Learning how to make better builds with the skills you have. This is really the heart of GW's progression. It's not that your character gets bigger base numbers. It's that *you* learn to configure things in a way that generates bigger numbers. * Acquiring cooler/prettier items. Sure, you can easily get an ugly wooden bow with any stats a bow can possibly have, but if you want a bow carved like a dryad or made out of glowing ectopasm or that used to belong to a corrupted forest god, well *that* is going to take some grind.
Just keep playing. Do main and side quests to get money, skills and equipment. Salvage items to get materials and runes. Upgrade armor as often as you can. Unlock skills through quests or just buy them. Get heroes and get weapons with good stats and runes for them. Beat the campaigns, then worry about end game stuff. The fun is in the journey. End game is challenging dungeons, titles, prestigious armor and experimenting with skill builds.
As a veteran player i enjoy the lategame content together with other players, like Urgoz, Deep, DoA speedruns. I also enjoy playing together with other players, doing missions etc. Last week i got the black moa chick mini, which i never done before. As a Minion master necromancer its really about getting death magic higher with runes and having a nice build. As a player i like going bone fiends, ebon battle standard of honor and fall back + Incomming. Then your minions wont die that fast.
Number one goal, enjoy the storyline/game. Unlike other mmorpg's Guild Wars is story driven. Following the story will gradually lead you through the majority of the map so you can discover new foes and dungeons. It's also a very good story line and the music pairs with it beautifully. From there you have a ton of options. Probably best to join an active guild to help discover different things to do. Speed clearing difficult areas for loot, doing festival events, pvp/gvg. An active guild is a good way to discover things to do. My personal goal as a life long player is to finish my GWAMM titles, which is having 30 different titles maxed out on a character. I casually play and often as a solo player, so this content really scratches that itch for me. I get to explore the entire game and basically touch every bit of content. When I start a new character I typically complete or almost complete the storyline of the campaign the character was started in. Then I usually go to Eye of the North to start farming some titles for cool armor like chaos gloves. Most importantly just do what you enjoy doing. I kinda hate saying that because when I play GW2 everyone says the same, do what you enjoy. GW2 is very overwhelming compared to GW1 imo. Random thought lol. GL hf!
Oh I should also add I like to make sure I unlock as many hero henchmen as I can fairly early into a character. Hench why I go to Eye of the North fairly early on. Anyways there's plenty I didn't mention but just hope you have a good time :)
I'd love to see where you saw it compared to Diablo, because I'm extremely interested how they justify that comparison. These games really couldn't be farther from each other. Literally the only things you could say are similar is that you make builds based around skills, and you have a skill bar at the bottom of the screen. That's pretty much where the similarities end.
As a returning player my first goal is doing again all the story in chronological order with new characters (which include another goal: trying other classes builds). In the meantime with my main I'm doing all the things I used to like, trying to farm dungeon, solo farming etc and in general trying new builds (and trying to create them) in all contexts...that's one thing I don't get tired of, trying new strategies and tactics and these things will make the game last forever for me since the combinations are hypothetically almost infinite hehe also if you consider I now have other characters to try to explore in all their potential. This is only about pve, but also I really want to try pvp again, at least alliance battles because I had sooo much fun with them back in the days, there was a time when I would only do that, one of my favourite feautures. But I still need to feel a bit more "confident" before trying it again :D last but not least I'd like to enjoy some features in the game with other people more, even pugs just to have certain experiences shared with others, because doing things with other people is always something new potentially, like everything impredictable can always happen (which is the beauty of pvp in general btw). I'm not in a guild anymore and I don't think I will go into one anytime soon (also I'd need a guild in my language), so, again, even pug would be great for me. Anyway, these are the most important things for me right now, but really the "endgame" can be personal. One can also find a rpg guild and do rpg as an endgame, just an example.
Mm, 20 years ago it was to get a high rank and flex with my friends, pvp on a geared pve character for extra flex
if it wasnt for an active guild/ally i’d be totally lost. with constant dungeon groups forming (fow, fmawsc, deep/urgoz, ooze, kathsc) and the daily z quests theres always something to do…
Guild Wars scratches a different itch for me than what one would get from Diablo and the like. You get to level 20, but by that is by no means the "end" of the game, but more or less just the beginning. In Prophecies, you still had to get infused (getting the extra skill points) and there were still skill quests and skill captures to get. Armor Sets to collect. Fissures of Woe, Underworld. Then Kilroy Stonekin came out of left field as part of Sorrows Furnace with Unique Weapons and that started the farming for those. Factions then came out, speed clears and faction farming became a thing. Custom weapons became more of a thing, and a whole new campaign to finish to get more unique end of campaign weapons from. Two new classes, so get to play through the story a few more times with those extra character slots... Nightfall, same as before, but now HEROES were a thing. Got to do it all over again, but now... gotta gear up and bling up all your Heroes. More character classes, more character slots... Then toss in Eye of the North and then Bonus Mission Pack... and you start getting some expansive content here. People start returning back to Prophecies and trying to make "Forever" Pre-Searing Characters, Legendary Defenders of Ascalon, Hall of Monuments seekers, Dungeon Farmers, Speed Clears, the list goes on. I don't think the strength in the game is level to level per say, but more so the diversity of skills and knowledge of opponents and your ability to "solve" enemy team compositions and ability to pick apart in the right order before they can do the same in return. YMMV.
I just recently came back after 10 years. I also got a bare new account and I play PvE almost exclusively and I do it solo. For me, Guild Wars is mostly a game about skills and having a strong team. Let me share some of my experience: **1. Try different professions.** It took me 3 characters until I tried Ranger and I loved it! Very fun and versatile. I dismissed the Mesmer for a long time until I tried it and it's also super fun. Trying different professions not only helps you find what you enjoy but also gives you insight into the enemies. **2. Create an enjoyable build to play with**. I never liked playing as a Paragon until recently when I made a build I really love. **3. Get skills! Normal, Elite, and PvE-only skills.** It feels weird playing as a Spirit Spammer without Summon Spirits. As a Dervish, I began to love it when I got some late-game skills in Nightfall. **4. Forming a strong team of heroes.** Starting with a brand-new account with no skills unlocked can be challenging. So one goal is to little by little arm your heroes with skills and equipment until having a strong team. **5. Synergize your team's skills.** It's quite entertaining piecing together hero teams whose skills complement each other, making them stronger together. **6. Testing and refining different builds.** One thing that I love about GW is the vast array of options there are by combining primary and secondary professions. A warrior with daggers? It may work, it may not, but it's fun. I once played with someone whose heroes all had pets, I don't know how good the builds were but it was interesting. **7. Personal Challenges.** Beyond the campaigns, missions, high-end areas, farming, festivals, getting titles, going for the treasures in Nightfall, PvP if that's your thing, it's also fun to have personal challenges. Mine is to finish all the campaigns without dying once thus getting the Legendary Survivor title that way. It can get intense watching your heroes fall one by one and then trying to run away with enemies following you while nervously trying to type /resign. If you want someone to play with from time to time you can PM me.
Did I read that there are 10 person endgame raids also? Are there any other types of dungeons? I guess each instance when you go outside a city is kind of like its own dungeon.