I’m eagerly waiting for Mike to hit path of fire and season 4.

You only have a mount because they changed the game recently to give you the raptor early on, before that all the mounts were locked behind Path of Fire and Living World season 4.

I'm loving these GW2 videos.

I don't know if Mike heard and didn't mention it or if he hadn't heard at all. But LW was a 2 week cadence. As someone who worked on the QA team during that period of GW2 life, I have to say it was one of the most stressful yet rewarding jobs I had in game QA. There's no room for mistakes in that environment, but the players' support was tremendous. (Definitely helped that they bought all of us at the studio a PS4 day one.)

Without revealing any spoilers: meta-events are the mechanic that they found to make you come back to many maps. I include maps from every season into my daily rotation, since there are certain daily time gates, but there are so many maps and metas that you don't end up feeling like you don't have anything else to do until tomorrow. Excellent design choice.

I'm really enjoying these GW2 videos, it's been fun watching you play and enjoy it. I just recently started playing GW2, and while all my friends are still on WoW, I find myself enjoying GW2 more in a lot of cases. It's such a fun game, and watching you play through it is really enjoyable for me as I too play through it.

I've been wanting to try this game out for a while, I had the game years ago, but only played to like, lvl 30 then stopped. I then started playing SWTOR, and am now a FFXIV HC raider. But this series has convinced me to start playing GW2 again. :D Thanks Preach!

One thing to keep in mind: the cadence for some of the living world chapters was at one point as short as two weeks between releases and some of them coincided with what are now seasonal events/zones For example there was one LW you completed and the mob talked about the festival of the four winds which was active at the time it launched and commingled with the flavor of the chapter events (it's now a summer event). So you were missing out on some companion gameplay to the LW chapters.

If Mike is enjoying season 1, I can't wait to see how he feels about seasons 3 and 4. Also, funny that Mike calls Logan a foot sniffer. Take a look at Queen Jenna's shoes...

What won me over was Preach saying he hates Braham! JOIN THE CLUB!!! Serious note, it's very interesting to see that most new players have such a positive outlook on the LW S1 story, it's very much a mixed opinion from many of us older players. The good takeaway is Anet managed to stick the landing on bringing that content back and making sure it ramps up a bit more than the core story. I think you'll really enjoy LW S3 & 4( 4 imo is the best one ) can't wait to see you get into HoT xpac as well, the difficulty really ramps up once you're in that xpac. As a content creator, I can't wait for when you get into endgame content such as raids, strikes, WvW, those will be some of the most exciting streams!

The living story in gw2 happened before final fantasy - the episode 1

2nd Expansion Path of Fire is where you originally got raptor mount, as you progress through the story for the 2nd expansion you unlock more and more mount types and you also unlock masteries to unlock each mounts full power/abilities.

I want to see his reaction to the time it takes to get the skyscale lol.

I gotta say that while I definitely having fewer main characters worked really well for s1 going forward, I really loved having SO many characters in the core game. It made the world feel huge and lived-in for me, especially if you play different races/orders. As much of a let-down as the Zhaitan fight was, I did love how big and jumbled the pact felt, and replaying that after having played a race/order I hadn't previously made that really rewarding, because suddenly I knew these characters. Experiencing that as the base before going into LS1 and the more single story focused approach, it made Tyria feel really expansive and real to me. And to this day I find old characters I met ten years back on one obscure race specific quest, that you only meet if you picked THAT specific background and THAT specific quest direction, and I'm like hey! I know you! and I really love that

Watching you play GW2 really makes me want to get back into the game.

Taimi is by far my favorite character. I love her so much, and you probably will too in later parts of the story.

Really enjoying this series and watching Mike discovering more of the game. Can't wait for him to get into HoT and experience our favourite map, The tangled depths... ☠

They don’t do enough to explain how endgame guild wars truly works. It’s completely choose your own adventure to the MAX. You pick things you want to do thru the cheevo system and you go explore the world based on that. Yo need to get resources from all the living world zones so there is more reason to return than you realize. It’s really hard to break the “wow mindset” of hit level cap, get gear and raid. Guild wars 2 has that to a degree but once you sit back and actually see how the entire game are systems that all flow together and allow you to do whatever you want to progress then you’ve seen what a gem this game is. I always tell new players when they ask me what to do or where to go , I say…. Go outside the city. Pick a direction and GO! It’s the only game where you can just run somewhere and get into a completely new adventure every time you play. Sure you learn the Metas eventually but those just become something you attend. Even after you think you’ve played thru every zone and seen what each zone has, you’ve just touched the very tip of what the real adventure has in store. I challenge anyone who is stuck in the wow mindset to just jump sometime and start heading down a road. Tell yourself you wanna travel through 3 zones and I promise you you won’t ever get past the first zone once you start getting into trouble cause everything you do rewards you with end game resources you need or can sell to progress. There’s literally never anything you do that doesn’t give you end game resources. It all matters and scales with your level. So go out and enjoy the living world of GW2. Save that town, drink that take the village back from the pirates that then opens up a new set of adventures you never knew where there!

5:20 Living world Season 1 originally started releasing in january 2013, while Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn was released in august 2013, I'm fairly sure Arenanet wasn't looking at FF for that one :P

You should know that from Living World Season 2 onwards, there is a meta achievement called Seasons of the Dragons which is quite a lot easier than the other achievements associated with Living World that you've seen. All you need to do is go for a tour through the content in each Living World episode, which is really fun, especially from LWS3 onwards. The rewards are incredible, not only do you get a wealth of materials, currencies and gold, you also get: An ascended-quality weapon of your choice. A 32-slot bag! A precursor weapon that you can upgrade to a Gen 3 Legendary weapon or sell at the Trading Post. A Legendary amulet for all your characters whose stats can be swapped at will! Note that Legendary items are as powerful as Ascended items, except you unlock them for all your characters and their stats, runes and sigils can be swapped freely. They also come with fancy visual effects. Having a full set of Legendary items is the best quality of life feature you can get in any MMO. It gives you so much freedom. You can always skip the Seasons of the Dragons achievements that are very vertical until you've unlocked the mounts that make vertical travel easier, then come back and finish them.

Yeeeeees, Preach! I love that you're doing all the Living World, AND that you enjoy it!

I think it was during the living world episode one that there was an election for the new mayor of lions arch that you could vote for and the winner at that time was the one that promised a map wide discount on warp point cost xD

The reason you only have one mount is because mounts were added in the second expansion - Path of Fire. So that's where you'll get more mounts and not in Heart of Thorns - that expansion added gliders. That being said you should still do the story in order like you planned or else you're probably going to be a bit confused. You're definitely gonna like the fact that the story characters stay and their amount doesn't increase drastically. What you might not like is that Braham stays as well but if I recall correctly his character does develop past the wannabe gigachad eventually. I thought you'd be a bit happier about the raptor cause when I first rode it I thought it was soo much better than WoW mounts, not being just a speed boost but an actual mount with its own kinda movement and you could feel its weight. I guess now WoW's got dragonriding so the bar is higher though. That's another reason why you might not be as impressed with the good mounts when you get them as we were when Path of Fire dropped in 2017. Also the reason why elite specs require so many hero points is probably because they're expansion content and the expansions give much more hero points than the base game. That being said I'm not sure why they made it this way instead of making hero points equally available everywhere.

these are great content videos loving the variety of mmos now

Season 3 in particular is going to be a huge reason to revisit those maps. They offer ascended trinkets that are the only easy ways to get stat-selectable endgame ascended trinkets for PvE without going to raids

There are definitely reasons to return to the living world maps in GW2. Mostly for achievements and the gear/cosmetic rewards you get from those but also some maps have unique reasons to return such as treasure maps in The Silverwastes or the blizzard event and subsequent dragon hunt in Bjora Marches.

The Silverwastes actually has a pretty amazing meta event that you should definitely check out, Mike. Dry Top's sandstorm/qualm before the storm-cycle is also really fun to experience a few times, imho.

Be glad you're playing through GW2 at a time when living world season 1 is actually in the game.. before it got put back in, many many years after it originally released, you would go from base game straight to season 2 with all these characters that yours already knows. I was sat there like "who the heck are these guys, am I supposed to know them?" Made it really hard to feel connected to any of them.

I've played a ton of WoW and FFXIV but very little Guild Wars 2...and as a guy with really no more free time I almost definitely never plan to! These videos have been so great in letting me know about the game, I feel we have a lot in common in that I want to know everything about every MMO so I really appreciate you diving in and delivering the info in this format.

I love this music at the start. Brings back so many good old days preach memories. I miss legacies so much.

my favourite MMO content creator playing one of my all time favourite games has to be the best thing happening on the internet right now, love you preach (and team!) please keep rocking it!

I started playing WoW Like many in 2005 (EU). Got addicted to it years straight, first break I took was after WOTLK, after that I still played every expansion but I don't stay for long, I grow tired of it fast. Guild Wars 2 I bought in 2013 after the break from WoW, but I never really gave the game a chance, I was too different from WoW at the time for me to enjoy it, so I bought it but shelved it till... last year. I decided to give the game another chance and I'm so glad I did. I have like 2000 hours now in the game in the span of a year. I'm currently on break from it but I do intend to return from time to time. I'm really enjoying seeing you explore the game as I did. I also feel that the initial experience of the game although kinda fun and different it shows its age, its only after you get Elite Specs that the game picks up for me. The base game was a bit boring but where the game shined for me was starting in Heart of Thorns due to the increase in difficulty and the amazing map Metas! But story wise it has to be Path of Fire + Season 4. Season 4 is SOOOO good! I think it will forever be the Wrath of the Lich King of GW2. The latest expansion was fun but it kinda felt a bit too empty in some zones for me to enjoy compared the metas of Heart of Thorns for example. All in all GW2 is really worth it for any RPG fan and I'm so glad I gave it another chance. :)

Mike should have a discussion with Mukluk about Braham :)

Mounts came with Path of Fire. You have a bit of playing to do before you get there, but when you do, they come thick and fast.

Living World Season 4 is the best experience i've ever had in a MMORPG ever. A lot of fun achievements, top tier missions and story progression/moments. I still need to buy Icebrood Saga and End of Dragons. Overall the best mmorpg i ever played, good on you wallet, respects your time, and is consistent, no huge changes that makes you learn 10 new systems to upgrade something. The definition of good foundation.

World completion is definitely a reason to revisit location and see the changes, you need world completion for crafting certain legendries and for other rewards and achievements

Achievements act as a guide to the content. There are so many things going on in the open world that you might miss many on a first playthrough. If you try to complete the achievements for a map, though, it's very likely you will see all there is to see.

I love that he hates Braham already

On the achievement panel: it's basically the endgame questlog and there's ascended gear that's earnable in there. Anet isn't super clear about bringing it to your attention, but for new players definitely look into it once you reach cap.

Your character description of Braham and Logan were spot on and had my laughing out loud.

~6:30 yeah, Braham feels like a little kid, but it actually makes him kind of a "good" character. Not in the way as "he´s a very enjoyable one", but rather as a character, that actually develops. He´s maybe not the brightest one, and it takes a lot of time for him to actually develop, but that slow pace allows his development to actually be noticed. Doesn´t change the fact that he is probably one of the least loved characters by the community... 7:30 yeah, that´s a rather weird bug, which nobody exactly knows why it even happens, glad you found one of the possible fixes. WHat you expierienced when the story started picking up is the reason why veterans will ALWAYS advise to play the story in order without skipping anything. because everything in the story IS IMPORTANT! EVERYTHING! 9:11 the reason for it changing in the story-instances is, that Season 1 initially released as time-limited content that took place in the real game world. So in those instances, you are technically expieriencing a "flashback" into the content on how it WAS at its release, before it "expired" and was removed from the game. That´s why you see the old Lion's Arch in your personal story and in Season 1, you´re technically expieriencing the past. They changed this in the later Living World seasons, because the players HATED it back then. 12:42 The achievement-panel is probably your best "handbook" to find new stuff to do. Because basically EVERYTHING (or at least, almost everything) is at least to some extent represented in the achievement-panel. If you should EVER run out of stuff to do: check your achievement-panel, pick one that either sounds fun, or has a reward attached to it you want, and just do the achievements. It gets overlookd waaay too much by newer players. 15:09 you learned a very important lesson at that point, which is: playing your character well is the most crucial thing in gw2. Top Tier gear will not automatically lead to success, player-skill matters BY FAR the most. Ofc stuff like having the (important!) correct gear for your (important!) sensible build does have an impact, but if you´re just ignoring mechanics and smash your head against enemies, facetanking every hit, you´re gonna run against a wall. Character improvement hits a limit very fast if you rely on gear, instead YOU (as the player) need to improve/evolve. That´s by far the most impactful factor on playing basically anything in gw2. 18:05 don´t worry about the mount. You literally don´t need it at all before ANYTHING that came before the Path of Fire Expansion (because at that time, mounts didnt even EXIST in the game yet). So the maps are designed to be explored without mounts, it´s just a nice addition ANet did recently. You will eventually interact with the mounts way more once you get into PoF. Also: small advice, as you soon approach HoT: prepare mentally for having your underpants eaten by pocket raptors (DAMN I HATE THOSE, I WANNA KNOW WHOSE IDEA THAT WAS SO I CAN PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE!!!) lul

Ohh boy, this is only the beginning Preach!

Glad you did s1. Keep goin trough the chapters, sure it will have some ups and downs, but the experiece of it if far diferent from other mmos iv played. Worth the time

Love your GW2 videos! You got a new fan :D

Really moving forward preach. Love the new look sorry what happened to your old studio.

Poor Braham. Never gets any love. 😁 Alas Sam Riegal, clutch tragic hero of Thar Amphala. If you know, you know. 😊

It's refreshing and fun watching these honest reactions to GW2 from a new player's perspective.

Depending on how much you play or plan on playing there is definitely a reason to go back to the old zones past the core game. There's usually a currency associated with each zone and a vendor that has lots of important stuff to buy. Home instance nodes for daily gathering, ascended jewelry with the ability to choose the stat lines you want, minis, and crafting recipes. There's also achievement hunting, farming the meta events for mastery xp, a chance to get exotics to either sell on the ah or unlock the appearance, and the later zone metas can have ascended gear drops.

It would be cool see a bigger version of living world in ff14, but i also can understand the time resources it takes to go into that. I guess best way we get with beast tribes how rank ups usally effect there small areas, or doman/ishgardian restoration.

6:21 ;) wait and see LOL Nice vid as always, thank you Preach^^

Oh boy, can't wait to see you play season 4. :)

I mean at one point the concept of a living world did play its parts especially in a huge way in Cataclysm when we saw Azeroth get fucked up by Deathwing. We saw this again in Mists when Siege of Orgrimmar came out along with Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Though I do see Ion's point in this, it is a bit hard to forget these things made Azeroth once a living world at some points. I take it with Dragonflight the reawakening of the other Primalists there might be another shift in the world where they will be waking up. Whether or not this is a concept of their living world it may as well count as one because the amount of resources they pull and the effort to create these things.

Love this series, keep it up!

With Heart of Thorns (HoT) you will get gliding, which is essential on Raids (and some Strikes), then LWS 3 (6 episodes) with the first raids as far as I remember. Check the Masteries: Red is from the Core Maps (you want autoloot), green is HoT, Magenta/lilac is PoF, you only can do the masteries and development on those Maps (including the belonging LWS) and you want to have fully skilled gliding! HoT is really 3 D. 3rd Path of Fire (PoF) within the starting Story you got the Raptor and from that moment you can skill it, the other mounts follow then and you often need to unlock another mount you need a skillled mount from the map before. It was a pleasent journey. Then LWS 4 more mounts and Raids. Your Vindicator elite Spec is from the last expansion End of Dragons (EoD), you can use any heropoint on any specialization, you get more heropoints for the specializations than you really need, so no need to respec. It is fun to watch your journey here in Tyriah, but continue the Story the way it was meant to be. 🍀

still to this day my favourite open world meta chains are in HoT, sometimes I just log in to do a full day/night cycle in Verdant Brink just for fun

With regards to Lion’s Arch, I wasn’t there when Battle for Lion’s Arch happened, but I WAS there for the broken version of the city, as well as the small rebuilding period. I remember when I first walked in to New Lion’s Arch, and that cutscene played. It was so incredible.

I think the few living world concepts FFXIV has are Ildyshire, Doma, and Foundation. Very minor, but watching it change throughout patches or progress was nice touch.

About the living world season 1 achievements. If you do them all you can access old lion's arch, which is awesome. I get if you don't want to do the other achievements in the game because the reward is cosmetic. But that group of achievements has a very nice reward in the end.

I think I generally agree with everything you're saying except for one point. You mention that you prefer when they hold your hand and just mark the things you need to kill. I actually prefer when they don't do this, like in the open world you might get a quest like "Infiltrate the bandit hideout and sabotage their plans" and you have to look around and identify their hideout in a relatively small area using reasoning and exploration, instead of following the glowing line on the ground or auto-running through the story like games with bad world's and designs. Same for instances, where you said you prefer straight linear paths, I actually think that the instance that are more open and you can approach them in different ways are cool. I think we as gamers have been conditioned to look at minimaps and just click all our buttons on the guys with the X over their head so much that we are missing out on the cool experience of identifying enemies, looking at the worldbuilding and enjoying the unique aspects of the game, otherwise you might as well just replace all the enemies with a generic model and call it a day.

The Raptor mount at level 20 is new. You're not supposed to have mounts until the 2nd expansion, Path of Fire, where you can get all the variety of mounts.

Gw2 is a truly hidden gem and i love it when ppl discover how insanely good it is. Great combat good graphics one of the best community and respect from company to playerbase not a cash grabbing mmo.

For the rest of the mounts, you need to start Path of Fire and unlock them, usually through specific tasks and once you have them unlocked, they are unlocked for your ENTIRE account, no need to unlock them ever again. And the best part? If you create a new character you'll be able to use them right from the get go.

I got back into gw2 after seeing Mike's first video on the game couple days ago. Game is definatelly on a top 5 mmos list for me.

I think the thing about living world too is the horizontal vs vertical progression, in WoW often you won’t go back because there is nothing of worth there, but it is reduced in GW2 as you will still go back to the main cities, and specially Lions arch

Preach! I am happy you enjoy best MMO R P G game with us!

LW S2 is a bit rocky but Heart of Thorns is goated, can't wait to see you play it!

Achievement system 14:00 is something that brings a lot of people back however… Quite a few of the achievements and collections aren’t for the sake of AP but actual items. The LWS 1 collections eventually unlock an item called Memory of Old Lion’s Arch and it is a key to the old city and you unlock the instance so you can go to the original map (-mounts of course). Mounts didn’t come out until expansion 3 so you were spoiled early.

Gw2 does something interesting with their open world zones. From heart of thorns onward, each will have huge story relevant events that progress across (for the most part) the entire map. These events are the reason why players keep coming back to the zones. Some are better than others, but they all have their bright sides.

So fun watching you explore tyria

I am so very happy Mike is no in Gw2 to fall in love with it and give it the critical eye. Never thought Id see the day :)

Someone needs to tell Preach that the achievement system in GW2 IS the progression. Mounts weren’t added until PoF we walked everywhere. Remember having to walk through HoT?

Asmongold made me try FFXIV and it changed me in many ways. Now preach nudged me over the edge to try gw2. Its amazing so far. Im 10 hrs in. The world is so vast. I had no idea the game was so big

The mounts are a feature of the second expansion and that's where they unlock. Giving people the first mount before then was a great kindness.

If you love Dark Souls, then you need to play Heart of Thorns without a mount. It'll be unique experience.

For the mounts, you have to get to the Path of Fire expansion for the main ones and complete the side quests for the premium mounts. I really think you'll love it.

I will remember all my life the living world 1. I experienced it when it was released and seeing Lion Arch's so changed, the dungeon to beat Scarlet in the middle of Lion Arch's as the culmination of a crazy chain of events that changed that place, all the destruction when a couple of weeks ago everyone was thinking "what are they going to do?". It was one of my favorite moments in an MMO. I never felt so attached on an MMO event until then, I didn't felt it like a to do list or having to complete new content because that's what you have to do in an mmo and it's what you do out of inertia. I felt very involved and surprised.

Some achievements are needed for masteries, others can give ascended gear, a few have side stories/follow-up involving some major characters. So not all are cosmetic.

I wish I could play heart of thorns and path of fire again for the first time. Preach hasn't even touched some of the best parts of the games yet and I'm eagerly looking forward to him getting to experience the fun. This series of gw2 made me subscribe and like every video.

I am essentially playing the game at the same pace/style preach is so it's cool to contrast my experience with his

A number of the mounts are unlocked by achievements. Skyscale (the dragon) especially is a bit of a task to unlock. But it is very worth it, for all the mounts really.

Mounts were added in path of fire. They are designed to serve different purposes on certain maps. So you will start to unlock them there.

"I wouldn't invite that guy to open a tin of beans that was already open" fuckin killed me

Sorry if I remember wrong, but wherent Living world originally free if you logged on during the "chapter"? Not shure how to explain it, but I think I got a cuple of those for free.

I can't wait for Mike to experience the pocket raptors 😈😈😈

So your KZfaq Has caught Up to your Stream huh? IT was great watching until now and i'll definitly be there when you continue to HOT I know you didnt do that many Meta Events but keep in Mind that theyre a big Part of the narrative for the Expansion and many of the coming living world Maps 😊

Also want to say that the achievements don't just give cosmetics. Some of them reward you with ascended gear. Both the flying mounts are locked behind achievements. I was able to get my first few ascended gears from it (essentially the highest stat value equipment, account bound so switchable on your charactesrs)

The LIVING WORLD I Wanted From WoW! "but will i go back to those zones to explore? HMMMMMMM no" lol righto

Reason to get back to the living world (New seasons will show it better than the first 2 of course) is the metas that happen there (Most of the time, maybe half the time) so the maps are being still visited years after the plot takes you there for the first time. Can't wait to see preach reaction to the LW's :>

Loving the guild wars 2 content!

Is this the evolution of our Preach!? Finally xD

Oh boy. When you get to the expansions or LW4 you're going to say: "Where were you GW2". This game is a gem

One big detail about the change of Lion's Arch is that for the original season 1 of living world, after the battle of Lion's Arch... The city was in ruin and kept that way for month then some was done on reconstruction, and then again we had the new Lion Arch. All of that to say, I still prefer the old one, and during a time it was the saddest place to be.

Mike hope you read this. Mounts weren't brought to gw2 until the 2nd expac heart of fire. You got a long way to go before unlocking mounts. Raptor is the basic amount given to tide you over in the meantime

YEEEES!!! MORE GW2 CONTENT!!! I LOVE IT! CAN'T GET ENOUGH!

You say, you wouldn’t go back to Thunderbluff if it was a living world. But in GW2 you’ve noticed that ALL the old maps are still extremely active. ANet doesn’t let old zones die like WoW. It’s a beautiful thing

As far as mounts - we didn't get them until our 2nd expansion 5 years after launch xD

Mounts were introduced in Path of Fire content. You will work through unlocking them when you go through Path of Fire content and story. Others like Griffon, Skyscale are unlocked as part of collection with later living world seasons. Turtle is unlocked in End of Dragons collections Heart of Thorns is going to be painful without better mounts ;-)

hope he plays all the way to IBS.. the rock concert meta in grothmar...best meta imo..just pure havoc

Gw2 is completely different from release. No mounts, no glider. But the massive battles that took place fighting Scarlett, clockwork, and the nightmare tower. The game has grown the mounts are in the 2nd expansion and season 4 and requires tine, gold and scavenger hunts. Lots to do Enjoy.

Introducing the Skyscale...enough said. Should say something about pocket raptors also....in any case Praise Joko!