Guild Wars 2

Free players get a raptor for 10 hours of play from level 10, then walk unless they buy Path of Fire. "You have to spend $30 to get a mount? What half-decent MMO locks mounts behind a paywall?" one asked. Another put it as "Loved it until I lost my mount. These boots ain't made for walking..." Money comes up in 32% of negative reviews of 20 words or more, more than any other complaint, and mounts sitting behind the expansions alone draw 11%. It also shows up as a caveat in 15% of positive reviews.

The Living World chapters that carry the story between expansions are sold separately for gems, and on Steam the Elder Dragon Saga bundle that includes them can no longer be bought once you own any single expansion. "Be warned, the complete collection above is not the complete collection," one review warns, and another advises "DO NOT buy the DLC separately because you wouldn't be able to buy the bundle afterwards." A negative review calls the chapters "DLCs inside an expansion you already paid for". Character slots and bag and bank space add to the cost: "Why do I only get 5 character slots after spending $180," one player asks. A few players outside the US say ArenaNet's prices are not localized. In late June 2026 a handful of negative reviews called the summer sale's discount on the older expansions too small, some noting that it was smaller than the year before, just as Guild Wars 3's announcement was bringing in new players.

These complaints come from new and long-time players alike: 40% of the money-related negative reviews are from players under 20 hours and 26% from players past 200, close to the mix of negative reviews overall (45% and 25%).

"Nothing is explained, ever," one player wrote; another, "you are EXPECTED TO USE THE WIKI". Reviewers point to dozens of currencies, items whose purpose is unclear, crafting, what to do after level 80, mastery and hero point requirements, and boss mechanics in the story that appear without warning. Confusion, the wiki or the learning curve come up in 7% of reviews of 20 words or more and 8% of the negative ones. One positive review opens by warning that "the default settings are genuinely terrible" and walks newcomers through ground targeting and the action camera. Fans answer that the community and the wiki fill the gap, though they also tell new players to watch guides first.

Buying on Steam creates an account separate from ArenaNet's own. The setup comes up in 6% of reviews of 20 words or more, including several of the most upvoted negative reviews. Existing players can only use their old account through Steam with a launch option (-provider Portal, explained in dozens of reviews), expansions bought on Steam do not apply to an ArenaNet account, gem cards and codes can't be redeemed, and the Deluxe and Ultimate editions are missing. "DO NOT BUY DLCS ON STEAM FOR THIS GAME, YOU WILL GET SCREWED," one review reads; another says "you are a second-class account on Steam." A third says, "Don't use steam for this, it makes you pay more." Smaller irritants include the game's own launcher downloading tens of gigabytes again after Steam's install, and a January 2025 bug that briefly cut Steam accounts off from their expansions, after which one player reported compensation of 800 gems. A few players see advantages: some found buying through Steam smoother than ArenaNet's store, and others say Steam's regional prices are lower in their country.

Technical problems come up in 10% of negative reviews of 20 words or more. Players report story steps that still soft-lock years after release, disconnects that reset a story instance or forfeit a meta event's rewards ("Getting disconnected during a meta is the worse thing in this game."), server crashes in the middle of fractals and raids, and a launcher that stalls at 0 KB/s. Crowded fights are the other recurring point: the engine leans on a single CPU core, so world bosses and large World vs World fights drop frame rates even on high-end PCs. "How well GW2 runs on your PC depends on how good single core performance your CPU has," one player explains, along with settings advice that others repeat.

Loot floods small starting bags with containers, materials and junk, the bank is small, and extra bag slots are bought per character from the gem store. One player called it "Inventory Tetris"; a newcomer wrote, "Want backpack space? get ready to pay 5 dollars for a single upgrade." Inventory and storage come up in 9% of negative reviews of 20 words or more. Even a player who recommends the game lists "limited bag space, limited storage capacity, limited bank space" as the way the game nudges players toward spending.

Reviewers describe accounts blocked "for security purposes" after VPN use, travel or a gem purchase, a new player suspended within half an hour who "Never interacted with anyone. Did not use chat either.", and Steam-only accounts stuck in loops because the support site needs a login. Account blocks, bans and support trouble come up in 8% of negative reviews of 20 words or more. One review says of the support team, "All they do is post the same response on steps to recover your account." Some players describe quick help where "they will actually treat you like a human being", and one who otherwise praises the game wrote, "One of the worst Support systems ever."

Players in Southeast Asia and Oceania report 200 to 300 ms of ping, VPN use that risks account blocks, and a region choice that costs money to change after picking the wrong one ("unplayable, no SEA server."). Others ask for more languages: the game ships in four, and reviewers request Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese and Thai, with one Brazilian player calling the missing translation a "lack of respect for the Brazilian public".

The game has no official gamepad support, so controller players rely on Steam Input layouts and the action camera. Steam Deck owners report that it works once configured, but for at least one player it was a deal breaker, and one negative review consists only of the words "no controller support".

A player who loves the base game and every other expansion wrote that "trying to find your way in New Kaineng CIty is just the worst experience ever". Of the 11 reviews that criticize how the Cantha maps are built, 7 are negative; six name New Kaineng City, and a seventh blames "the incredibly frustrating level design of the city maps". Another reviewer calls New Kaineng "a city that is impossible to navigate on a mount that can't jump," and others describe it as "incomplete and severely rushed" or "a fake city, though, with too much concrete going nowhere." Two reviews say the maps assume mounts from earlier expansions: "You need flying mounts from another DLC," one wrote, and the other says "50% of locations suck if you don't have a fully upgraded skyscale". Others call the zones "heavily pathed", with long empty stretches and a taxi service to cross them, or "uninspired".

A Steam purchase that never reached the game is the subject of 9 reviews, 7 of them negative; some report it happening and some warn others. Five tie it to accounts: the Steam version of Guild Wars 2 runs on its own account, so a purchase there does not reach an existing ArenaNet account. "Do NOT buy this if you are using your original GW2 account as you will not have access to the DLC unless you make a brand new account through the Steam Launcher!" one warned in the week the game came to Steam. A player who bought it in a February 2026 sale was told by support "that anything bought on Steam won't transfer over," and another says "this product will not work for you even if your account is linked." Four more simply found the expansion missing in game, one of them after two days of access. A positive review advises buying on ArenaNet's site because "Steam seems to not provide the Key codes to add the expansions to your account". Another positive review blames the buyers: "Most of the negative comments are due to people being unable to read," it says, since they bought on Steam expecting the expansion on a separate ArenaNet account.

Bugs, crashes or server trouble come up in 6 reviews, 5 of them negative, and several hit the story instances. In the first month on Steam, one player lost a 20 to 30 minute first mission three times when the "server crashes at the end of the last cutscene", then updated the review to say it seemed fixed and that the expansion "is Very very nice". Two years later another player wrote that the "4 YEAR+ OLD DLC STILL CRASHES ON THE FIRST QUEST". Others describe "having to restart a couple of quests to get the quest area to actually advance with the quest" (the final fight included), an hour lost to a story bug, "desynced NPCs, massive lag", and server trouble "at Kaineng City during meta".

One player was "forced to be an Uber delivery guy on a damn raptor", another describes "one quest that is literally wait 10 minutes looking at a black screen to get a passport", and a third objects to having to "farm 500 of this material that drops 3 at a time from a specific event". In all, 6 reviews, 5 of them negative, describe tedious quest design. Others name enemies with "unlimited knockdowns" and forced movement debuffs, story bosses that are "Invulnerable heavy", and, in a positive review, "massive amounts of grinding" to unlock the turtle.

Five negative reviews describe Guild Wars 2 account bans that have nothing to do with the expansion's content, all written between August 2025 and July 2026. One came a week after the player bought a second-hand PC, one was for real-money trading when the player says they only moved gold between their own accounts, and one player believes it was over character names. Three say support would not explain or reconsider: "you can be banned at any time and they won't even tell you why."

Two reviews say a Steam account lacks things players on ArenaNet's own client have. One lost access to the Hall of Monuments rewards tied to Guild Wars 1. The other missed most of the earlier Living World story as a Steam player and wondered whether End of Dragons' plot would land better with it.

30 of the 126 reviews criticize the story, 5 of them from players who still recommend the expansion, while 9 like it. The critics most often call it boring, and some call it childish or aimless: "Written as if a 5 yo kid discovered ai to write the story from scratch," one wrote. Another "didn't think it was possible for an MMO to have a story campaign hit worse than WoW's Shadowlands," and a third says "Quality of the writing is definitely lower than the other stories/DLCs." Three find the Kryptis demons unconvincing; one says "the demons plot felt really like a Disney movie. And in a bad way."

"The first couple of chapters of this DLC were really great," one player wrote, then "Every next chapter was worse than the previous one." Four reviews describe a decline like this after a promising start. A recommender says the "latter half drops hard for me," and another found it "gripping for about 2/3s of the way" before it "ends abruptly."

Those who like the story mention its emotion and its lore. "Quest lines deal with real emotion and the talking makes sense," one wrote, and another felt it was "fresh each time a new area opened up." One reviewer liked that even the demons "deserve our pity," and a lore fan was glad the Wizard's Tower story was finally told.

15 reviews object to story steps that stop until the player closes enough rifts or fills an event bar on the map, 2 of them from players who recommend the expansion anyway. One mocks "the fill up the event bar to progress every step of the story" design. Another says the story "is literally just fly around and do map events thats 90% of the story missions," and a third that the "Second half of the story missions is nothing but" map events. A long launch-week review says "the rift hunting they shoehorned in to stall for playtime got old real quick" and contrasts it with End of Dragons, where "you could just do any kind of events or kill mobs. So the players had agency". It asks: "please don't forcefeed me that stuff during story progression, wasting my time".

"It's just constantly closing rifts and the rifts are just the same thing over and over," one player wrote of the rifts themselves. At launch, another said you "either get onto train for rifts or either get lost or arrive few seconds after rift is closed," and asked for map-wide markers. Four reviews say objectives are hard to find. One lists a task "with nothing marked on map," events all in one color and a need to "search GW2 wiki" to finish objectives; another found navigation "so confusing and convoluted without the skyscale mount." A recommender who enjoyed the story still says "the do rifts/events to move on is annoying."

"Feels like a living world season that's renamed and painted as a DLC," one player wrote, and two others make the same Living World comparison. In all, 11 negative reviews say the expansion is thin. An early review found "a major lack of content in terms of events and things to grind or work towards." Another player explored the whole first map by accident in under two hours, and four reviews point to reused assets, one describing the first map as "basically all the previous DLCs in small form."

Four recommenders think the price makes up for it. "It is a smaller expansion for half the price," one wrote, and another said "It's $40, I've already gotten over 40 hours out of it, it's a win in my books." Three reviews, two of them positive, suggest waiting for a sale.

Buying through Steam caused problems for 11 reviewers, 4 of whom still vote the expansion up. Seven could not get the expansion into the game: it would not download or install, the portal said "I do not have Access to the maps," or the Steam purchase did not attach to an existing ArenaNet account. "If you have an arena net account this will not work and if you buy this - steam will not give you a refund," one warns, and another says "dont buy this via steam go to arena net directly". One buyer did not receive the bonus headgear and weapon skin, one notes the deluxe and ultimate editions cost more on Steam, and one says the Hall of Monuments, which links Guild Wars 1 and 2, is "utterly broken for steam accounts."

10 reviews complain about long dialogue scenes, 9 of them negative reviews. Three say the scenes can't be skipped: "You can't skip dialogs," one wrote, another described being "forced to listen the NPC discuss a plan for 2 minutes without skip option," and a third said that had they known about the "unskippable and such a horribly awful dialogue, I would have skipped the entire expansion." Others dwell on the length. One says "you rot away in an instance just being yapped at for around 10 minutes," and another estimates that "90% of what they say you don't even need to be around for." One player renamed the expansion "Secrets of ignoring the story by alt tabbing during dialogue cutscene."

Six reviews report technical trouble. A story quest that "does not register closing rifts" left one player stuck for months while support suggested waiting or skipping the chapter. Others describe a champion whose spawn pulls players "off the ledge of the platform every 5 seconds," a "Bugged walking simulator story," lag in chapter 18 ("half the fps i usually get at other intense metas"), poor performance in the Wizard's Tower, and a disconnect that forced one player to replay "an hour of cringe and boring content from 0." One recommender wrote that they "haven't had any bugs with it."

Five negative reviews object to how weapon mastery unlocks: through the story chapters, or by buying items in WvW. Two of them come from PvP players. A warrior who plays only PvP "had no clue when I purchased this" and considered a refund, and another player bought it for the meta PvP weapons and called it "trash with trash intent". Others say the unlock path "is just nasty" and call it "The most tedious p2w weapon unlock I had ever seen." One player later learned "you can go straight to the 14 chapter and get it in like 20 minutes."

Five negative reviews, all written from August 2025 on, describe permanent Guild Wars 2 account bans that have nothing to do with the expansion's content: one on a second-hand PC, one for moving gold and items between the player's own accounts, one over character names, and two with no stated reason. They say support sent template answers or would not look into it: "Support refused to review the logs and just closed the ticket."

Four reviews expected the purchase to give them the Skyscale everywhere and found a version limited to the new maps. "It says you get the mount, you only get a non permanent version in the new bioms," one wrote, calling it false advertising, and another says it "does not unlock the Skyscale for general use" despite ArenaNet "heavily implying" otherwise. A third left a thumbs-up that reads "i do not have my sky mount and i paid for Secrets of Obscure."

Two reviews single out the story bosses. "Chapter bosses feel like a hate-letter to players with melee builds," one wrote, adding that the final fight was a letdown. Another says "The first boss fight of the story was 20 deaths, zero preparation for the mechanics."

The amount and pace of talking in the story draws objections from 19 reviews, 17 of them negative, and 11 say outright that it cannot be skipped. Players describe NPCs who "talk like they have molasses in their mouths", conversations where "3-5 other NPCs interject", and a story that "loves to waste your time acting like it's a terrible audiobook you cannot skip." One sarcastic review reads, in full, "really good if you like council meetings".

Six reviews put a length on the opening chapter, from half an hour to an hour. "Talking to the bears sitting at the table took literally 40 min of my time," one wrote, and a player who put a podcast on at the start found it at the 47-minute mark when the first fight arrived. One player says you cannot do anything else in the meantime because you have to follow the NPCs as they talk, and another points out that alts have to sit through it all again. Three reviews ask for a way to skip, one of them positive ("You guys seriously need to add the ability to skip dialogue in the over world."), and later reviewers say the problem was already well known: "especially since the community had already been complaining about it for a while." Only 2 of the 19 complaints were written in 2024; the rest came in 2025 and 2026.

"It's a chore simulator," wrote one of eight negative reviews that say too much of the expansion repeats itself, adding "I'm a GOD SLAYER! I killed Balthazar, vaporized dragons yet here I am GUTTING FISH FOR BEAR PEOPLE?????" Others point to "excessive reuse of the same content/assets for different things", story progress tied to renown hearts ("Timegating the story behind filling out hearts"), "the same boring mini-boss five times in a row" in the first chapter, and a meta whose bosses are "two crabs you poke at and then run in a circle and repeat". One player describes getting into Bava Nisos by repeating hard-to-solo tasks ten times while going back and forth between them.

Technical problems come up in six reviews, four of them about the new maps. In the first weeks after launch one reviewer found a map "feels somewhat buggy when doing the massive meta event there," another described the second map as full of bugs, and a later player still hit "some annoying bugs here and there with achievements and enemies." One reviewer says the game worked until they bought the expansion and now disconnects shortly after login ("Now I can't log in."), and another says only that it keeps crashing. On performance, one reviewer finds the new maps run better than those of Secrets of the Obscure.

Five reviews are about the Guild Wars 2 account more than the expansion. Three describe Steam purchases or features that did not reach the game: a pre-purchase that "did not register in my game", expansions missing in game, and the Hall of Monuments link to Guild Wars 1 being "utterly broken for steam accounts". Two report permanent bans they say were unjustified and complain that support would not look again: "Support refused to review the logs and just closed the ticket."

Three reviews notice missing voice acting. One counts "like 3 VAs" missing. Another calls voice acting "STILL missing for quite a few pivotal characters in the 2nd half of the story" and finds it hard to forgive even if the strike put it out of ArenaNet's hands.

19 reviews object to how the story makes players stop and work before it continues, more than raise any other problem. 14 name collection hunts or fetch steps, and others name mastery walls, heart currency or filler. Five of the 19 recommend the expansion anyway. "The story is just running around searching for unmarked quest objects," one player wrote. Another says "having collection achievements gating story content is just insane." A third lists collections, heart currency and mastery grind and concludes "Combine those two things and you lose motivation very quickly."

Reviewers add specifics: items picked up one at a time with combat disabled, collections that "won't give you more than vague hints on how you progress," and mastery requirements nobody announces. One player put it this way: "Sinking a million xp into a mastery track only to find out the next story beat needs a different one to progress feels bad." Recommenders object too: "still hated the forced collection for main story tho," and another says the collection steps "affect the pacing negatively if you just wanna do the story and explore later." One reviewer says unlocking the flying mount also means searching unmarked nests for an egg. The complaint started in launch week and still appeared in reviews the following summer. One positive review waves it off and tells struggling players to follow a guide.

6 reviews, all written within a week of launch, report bugs or crashes. One says "CONSTANT, and I mean CONSTANT crashes," with an endless loading screen in PvP and repeated crashes in WvW. Another warns "seriously, don't buy untill the bugs are fixed." Others report story missions full of bugs, a hero point that could not be completed, and "a severe bug occurred, making it impossible to continue the game." One positive review written two days after launch says "the annoying bugs are getting fixed," and no later review reports a new bug in the expansion's content.

Three reviews could not get into the expansion at all: one could not install or download it, one could not log in, and one warns "This will not link to your account so the purchase will have to be refunded."

Three negative reviews say a balance change took away what they bought the expansion for: the flying skimmer, a Fire Evoker build ("The build is incredibly clunky to play now, and is genuinely no longer fun."), and the new specs in general.

Two reviews say the large boss fights bury their attacks in visual effects. One describes "Disco light show boss fights you can't even tell what is happening on your screen," and the other says the final map boss tries to "blind the players with all the particle effects we can muster."

Two reviews describe permanent Guild Wars 2 account bans that have nothing to do with the expansion's content: one on a second-hand PC, one for moving gold between the player's own accounts. Both say support would not look into it ("Support refused to review the logs and just closed the ticket.").