“It’s an absurd showpiece, backed by lore-appropriate rock music”
Becoming a GUILD WARS 2 tour guide
Atop a crag amid the mountains beside Grothmar Valley, the band begins to play. “We are Metal Legion,” croaks frontman Varus Chainrazor, “and we’re here to put the ‘band’ back in ‘warband’”. Beside me, Fraser is losing his mind.
I never expected my friends to give Guild Wars 2 an earnest try. As a longtime player, I would jokingly suggest it as our weekly co-op gaming group bounced between various games. When our interest in any one waned, I’d mention the good times we could be having in Tyria.
Eventually, it worked. In late-2021, a handful of current and former PC Gamer staffers downloaded the game. As the veteran, it was now my responsibility to keep them playing.
My tactic was to take it slow: To gradually portion out the game’s best and most surprising encounters. As of writing—just before the the End of Dragons expansion—Guild Wars 2 has 52 maps. And because, in its nine years of operation, it has never raised the level cap, most of them are populated to at least some degree.
BOSS RUSH
And so, as the new arrivals level their characters, I suggest a field trip to the swamps of Queensdale. Here, they meet one of Guild Wars 2’ s world bosses—giant monsters that spawn as a dynamic event out in the open world. The shadow behemoth isn’t a difficult fight, but it does look impressive as a swarm of players converge to take down a dark beast.
I waited a few weeks before the next big reveal: The Shatterer. Also an open world boss, and a relatively easy fight, the Shatterer still stands out because it’s the first of Guild Wars 2’ s dragon bosses—an imposing spectacle that feels satisfying to kill.
Hitting the level cap unlocks a new style of open world activity: Meta-events, where hundreds of players work across an entire map. They take part in a Charr civil war, where players slowly earn control of a map in a lengthy, brutal struggle. And then, when they finally think they know what the game is all about, I take them to a concert.
Grothmar Valley is the site of a big Charr party. In one of its four meta-events, players must help the rock band Metal Legion. As players successfully complete each task, the crowd’s excitement builds.
It ends in a dragon fight. Pyrotorrick—a pyrotechnic metal construct modelled after the Elder Dragon Kralkatorrik—malfunctions. It’s an absurd and spectacular showpiece, backed by loreappropriate rock music. MMO discussion is usually dominated by talk of grind; of reward structures and progressions systems. But introducing new people to an MMO that you’re familiar with is a great reminder of the simple joys that these massive worlds can contain.
HITTING THE LEVEL CAP UNLOCKS A NEW STYLE OF OPEN WORLD ACTIVITY