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Not I. Ironically enough, I'm not really that into guilds.
Anyway, a month and a half on from launch of HoT, here are a bunch of my thoughts, likes and dislikes in no particular order. A long-winded post awaits. I just feeling getting all my thoughts off my chest, I don't care if nobody reads it.
Preface: I'm a no-lifer, I play a lot and am not a filthy casual. I played a lot in the first month. My perspective is obviously influenced by this.
1) Story
Briefly mentioned above, I don't mind the new story. The ending was abrupt, and the bugs were (and still are, more on this later) quite frustrating but trying to put them aside, overall I wouldn't say it was a negative of the expansion. It was a bit iffy in parts; the whole 'Oh the dragons have a weakness... yeah lets exploit' thing was a bit rushed (probably a fair summary of the entire expansion actually - rushed). It seemed a bit all over the place at times and the time spent in certain areas was very short (Rata Novus/Tarir for example). I LOVE that for a majority of the achievements, you don't have to repeat the story on the same damn character like you did for Living Story Season 2. Length wise; con it was quite short really content wise, only took a few hours and takes even less on subsequent playthroughs. If you're a one character person, this is probably quite disappointing. The upside is it is therefore repeatable for rewards without being too much of a timesink.
2) The new zones
Verdant Brink: VB is a good 'starting zone' for the new path they're taking with open world. I think it has a good balance of easy/challenging hero points, I really like the event/outpost structure and how it relates to the overall meta event of the zone. The day and night phase is cool and in my opinion is an improved version of Dry Top in that sense. I really like the night bosses too, I've led several Axemaster kills since the first week and it's still pretty fun. The zone just has a good flow. I guess this is to be expected when this is the zone that was open during the beta access weekends, you'd expect it to be more finely tuned.
Auric Basin: AB is probably the most visually appealing zone. I love Tarir, it looks amazing on high graphics. The ambient sounds of this zone are awesome too. Like the first zone I think there is a good balance in the hero points and the event structure is relevant. Actually I won't keep on mentioning this because I like the whole outpost structure (an extension of the Silverwastes structure) contributing to the flow of the map. The Octovine meta is pretty enjoyable now that it's on farm mode. I find it frustrating and a waste of time when something that is quite simple like this fails so I'm happy for it to be on farm mode. I feel it is pretty rewarding too; lots of chests, a nice amount of map currency, a free event at the end (the HP) and also the Tarnished Traitor if you have the mastery.
Tangled Depths: Hah, easily the most despised of the new zones by the general public. When I first started exploring it I hated it too. However, once you learn how to navigate it, I quite like it exploration-wise and obviously quite a lot of effort went into designing it. I like that it has something the other maps doesn't; a viable 'chest run' that yields a decent chance at getting rare reclaimed weapons and provides another alternative to getting the map currency. The chak are extremely annoying as far as mobs goes but that's not that out of place with the rest of the mobs introduced with HoT. Visually I think the different areas of the map are pretty cool too. I like that it has a fair chunk of events to do once tier 4 is reached so you're not just twiddling your thumbs for 1.5 hours until map cycle starts again. The flipside is that the outpost events are way, way too short, or the map cycle is way, way too long. Even with those extra events, there should not be so much downtime.
Chak Gerent meta: It needs its own section. If I had made this post a couple of weeks ago, it would have been filled with criticism. Now that the event has had a lot of the bugs associated it with it fixed, it has been improved greatly. Is it still too difficult for open world? Hard to say. I like that we have a meta event that is more difficult than your average guard staff 1 spamming. I like that you need people to be at their best, trying to optimise their damage, working together and following instructions. I'll point out I got it done on an organised pug map about 10 days ago, I was on SCAR lane and we killed the last gerent with about 20 seconds left. My biggest concern right now are the rewards. Besides the one-time only rewards of unlocking your Mistwarden set and finishing achievements, is the balance between incentives and difficulty good enough for replay value? Personally I've felt absolutely no reason to try it again since I completed it once. I would increase the rewards and mostly avoid nerfing the difficulty. The SCAR lane gerent probably needs minor tweaking, it takes noticeably more time than the other lanes to kill.
Dragons Stand: So this zone is literally just big event... and I love it. I love that precisely one zone is like this. The flow of the zone is nice, I like the three lanes concept where they all meet up at the end for the final battle which visually is awesome and the mechanics aren't too bad either. The meta event is very linear which is a nice change from the previous maps. The buff to Noxious pods a couple of weeks ago (they no longer seem to despawn either) removed my last major grief for this zone. My only complaint would be that you don't get enough machetes from the meta event to open even half the pods you can access and that you have to buy the rest with the previous maps currencies... because we totally don't already need 1000s of that stuff. Anyway, in summary, a fun event to do every couple of days.
In general: Most of what I said above was positive. One last positive is that I really do love gliding, it's a simple yet fun addition to the game. I do have some gripes though.
1. Fixed times for all the meta events. Admittedly, I am kind of torn on this. I suppose you could argue that Dragon's Stand isn't on a strict schedule because you don't have to start the event when the map opens, you can start it a bit later and still succeed before the time is up. I am not a fan of all the maps being on a fixed schedule though. It's nice to have some maps like that, e.g Dry Top and Verdant Brink maybe, but I would prefer if AB was more like Silverwastes.
2. Map currency collecting. More on this later, but long story short, I hate how this comes in (rather small) lumps based on meta progression rather than a constant flow through say... all those events we complete. You can spend several hours on a map and end up with like 200 map currency... if you're lucky. I would prefer to get less currency more regularly at the very least. This is a huge problem in Tangled Depths where the meta progresses to T4 so damn quick (30 - 45 minutes) so that there is literally 1h - 1h30m where you don't get any map currency from progressing the meta.
3. Map mechanics. The flipside of me enjoying structured event cycles in the form of outposts is it removes the spontaneity of the old open world maps. On any given Tyria map, there are a ridiculous amount of random, dynamic events. That's the thing; the events are no longer dynamic. I think this becomes more of a problem the more time you spend on the maps, it gets a bit boring and repetitive with nothing new or different to look forward to.
4. A fear for the future: empty maps. Unlikely 90% of the maps pre-expansion, if the maps are empty it doesn't really matter. You can still do nearly everything on those maps you want to do all by yourself. I guess because there's no map currencies that are essentially tied to map population. If people get sick of these maps, which I think they will, it's not going to be a lot of fun for the rest of us.
3) Adventures
Overall, I think these were a great addition to the game. Some of them are a lot of fun and had me hooked as I desperately tried to get gold. I use past tense because once you have maxed masteries, there is very little reason to repeat them. I think they need to reward more map currencies since they're a daily thing to give them more replay value. Another major issue is that they can often be locked for a long time which is frustrating when you're really into it and trying to get that gold. The biggest issue for me though is that with oceanic ping, some of them are completely and utterly pointless to try and get gold in. Shooting gallery is near impossible regardless of ping, but ones like The Floor if Lava and The Fungus Amongst Us (the worst culprit) are just garbage if you have 200+ ping.
4) Masteries
Overall, like adventures, I liked the addition of these to the game. Unlike a lot of other players, I didn't mind some content being gated behind them. I figure that was kind of the point. It's not like leveling masteries is hard even if you are a casual. I think some of the masteries themselves were a bit disappointing. From the Tyria masteries, 'Noblesse Oblige' in the Pact Mastery is pretty lame (quicker reviving time, I've barely noticed a difference tbqh). From the Magumma masteries, the gliding ones are pretty good and have nice progression, although I think the stealth gliding provides a pretty minuscule bonus, not enough to want a whole tier by itself. The most disappointing masteries are the zone/race champions who are pretty tough fights solo and basically just reward 10 map currency, the same as a hero point. Meh. Oh and exalted gathering has done pretty much nothing for me so far.
5) Elite specs & Collections
One of the best aspects of the expansion. My favourite ones so far are: Dragonhunter (pewpewpew trapception), Daredevil (just love the staff animations/skills), Berserker (Lets make Warrior have lots of quickness!). I haven't tried Druid/Tempest/Scrapper yet. The others are okay but I'm not as interested in them. I'm leaving Herald out because it's pretty much just as new as the rest of the Revenant class which I'll share thoughts on another day. Onto the collections, I really like these. They're fun, they remind me of the Silverwastes' bioluminescence collections and most of all they're actually rewarding; a new skin in the form of an ascended weapon with selectable stats. I wish there was a meta-achievement to collect them all.
I'm getting super tired now but there's still a few more things I wanted to ramble about. So consider this part 1. Part 2 rambling subtitles:
Collections
Nevermore/Legendary Journey
The (Currency) Grind
Bugs, bugs and more bugs
Future of Gw2, in particular, the open world
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