Guild Wars 2 Diary #33: Fixing MMO Fatigue

We’ve all been there and in every MMO, there comes a point where you no longer feel the momentum of the story, you no longer fancy running random events with strangers and you just stand back and say “well, what’s this game got left for me?” After over 8 months of playing Guild Wars 2 on a weekly basis, I’ve come to this point. How do you stop from feeling Guild Wars 2 fatigue? What do you do when you’re feeling bored? In this week’s diary, we find the answer, and take a look at some of the natural beauty within Tyria.

Boredom

It’s a question that haunts only MMO games and the most hardcore of the core. How do you continue with a game that seems to have lost its pacing? If it was a movie or a book, you’d probably toss it by the wayside and be done with it, and most people would have the same attitude towards a video game. “If you don’t like it,” they’d say, “just switch of the game and come back when and if you fancy it.”

For those of us who have become embroiled in the world of Tyria, leaving Guild Wars 2 isn’t an option. Alas, exploring blindly is no longer an option either, and as we touched on last week, the grinding can sometimes be more than a little frustrating.

This isn’t an issue that everybody will have. Those playing with friends or those who are part of an active guild probably don’t need to worry about suddenly finding themselves in need of growing five or six levels to continue with a “single player” experience that they’re probably not that interested in in the first place. Those who love the traditional MMO elements – the constant battle, the procurement of specific rare pieces of equipment – will likely find much of Guild Wars 2 indefinitely entertaining. There are probably even people who avoid the PvE entirely, instead taking to the mists in an attempt to defend the honour of their world (more on this next week).

For those of us that feel like they can’t possibly move on without going over the same things again and again, Guild Wars 2 starts to offer something that feels an awful lot like boredom.

Fixing MMO Fatigue

So what do you do when you’ve seen the biggest sites? When you’ve explored the biggest cities? What can you look forward to when you’ve already toppled the biggest foes?

It’d be wrong to say that I’ve seen it all. In fact, my map completion is pitifully low. Why? Because although I haven’t literally seen it all, I’ve done almost everything the game has to offer. I’ve taken for granted the beautiful landscapes and the thrill of the battle system has worn off after constant play. If you feel the same way, you may just be suffering from MMO fatigue. This is especially frustrating if you love the game itself, but aren’t too happy with having to work through your immediate goals.

Thankfully, there are ways to fix this. Guild Wars 2, with its fairly customizable achievements system, makes this easy, but these ideas are pretty much a blanket set of suggestions for any game in which you feel you have had enough.

Firstly: Try something new. I know it sounds like an obvious suggestion, and when somebody said it to me earlier today I could have banged my head off a wall. Don’t they understand that I’ve already done everything? Isn’t that what I’d just finished telling them?

But they were 100% right. I’d got stuck in my ways. I would do the same achievements in the same locations, fight the same monsters (or similar) the world over. And although I’d sometimes work in a forested area or in a snowy area, the main goals were the same. I’d never really created armour or weaponry, I’d never really foraged – they were vague things on which I could focus for the first time. The act itself was never really very interesting, but the view it gave me on the world was different.

This can be beautifully supported by the achievement system. Try something different, no matter how vague and dull it might sound. You may be surprised.

Secondly, try and make some friends. If you don’t know anybody who plays Guild Wars 2, join the official forums or a fan forum and damn well find somebody who will play with you. Guild Wars 2 has thousands of players. There must be somebody who would enrich your experience, with whom you can experience parts of Tyria that had once been locked off to you. Playing with strangers sucks, anybody would agree. So find some strangers and get to know them. The boredom will disappear, if only for a short time.

Finally, set your own challenges. ANet might be releasing new content occasionally, but it’s aimed at a pretty specific subset of players. If they’re not making it interesting enough for you, set your own challenges. This was made popular with the Nulzlocke method of playing Pokemon, in which you must nickname each Pokemon and release them if they’re knocked out (as if they’d died). It’s immensely challenging but rewarding as well, and there’s no reason you can’t do the same thing. Start a new character, only use a specific weapon, avoid leveling your skills – whatever. Just try to stick to it.

Natural Beauty

Guild Wars 2 is a beautiful game, and whilst exploring the world this morning, I really got a sense for how much effort has gone in there. Take a look at this week’s video for some beautiful shots that show off both the long distance beauty and close-up detail. It’s a bit more cinematic than our other diary videos, but at the same time it’s hard not to enjoy some really well rendered locations, and a bit of well-composed music.

Tyria is a feast for the senses. Sometimes it helps to remind yourself of that, especially when you start to feel you’ve seen everything you’re going to see. It always helps to look again.

Conclusion

MMO fatigue can be annoying, especially when you’re so invested in the world. There will always come a point where you hesitate, asking yourself what you’re doing that couldn’t be done elsewhere. There are also ways around it, and sometimes the things that you blame the game for are actually your fault, that you want not only to play it in a very specific way, but for the developer to tailor the whole game to that very specific way of playing.

For many, that would be enough for them to quit or even to take to the official forums to lodge several bad language-laden complaints. It doesn’t have to be that way though.

• See previous episodes here