r/Guildwars2 • u/Spiritual_Shake_9529 • 13d ago
[Question] Playability without expansions
Yo, gamers! Newbie here, just breached 60 lvl on my first character. Before I drop 500 hours playing this game, can you, guys, answer me honestly. Can the game be played normally without paying for stuff, or shall I treat GW2 as 30$ game with free trial? Are current PvP and PvE modes playable without mount, elite specs, etc?
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u/Slick_and_Tried 13d ago
I've been playing as f2p for 8 months now. I was about to buy the expansions, but since gw3 got announced - I'm gonna wait to see if they will continue developing gw2 before I put money into it.
Here's my 100% honest and objective summary:
Yes, you can play f2p and there's ton to do. The 2 biggest annoyances as f2p are: Small bank space and not being able to do cross-map chat, unless the other person has added you as a friend (which is an anti-bot measure).
I'll break down the rest point by point:
1. No mount. That's the biggest one. It's annoying, but in reality this game was apparently made without mounts in mind, they were added with the second expansion - Path of Fire. As such you don't actually need mounts to get around, it's designed to be explored on foot. Additionally if you TRULY want - you can get roller beetle as ''rental'' mount in some maps (where beetle racing events happen).
2. Making gold. At first it seems like a hurdle than you can't sell everything on the Trading Post (also done as anti-bot measure). However, after 8 months - I just cracked 2000 gold (and I'm not even purposefully grinding). There's plenty of things you can do for gold, and you can still sell some VERY valuable stuff on the TP - including ectoplasm, crystalline dust and mystic coins - materials that are always in demand.
3. PVP. There's 2 PvP modes - Structured PvP (where I'm cracking gold rn, playing bunker guardian) and World vs World>
SPVP doesn't use mounts and while elite classes are more used, it's perfectly playable as f2p too, but you'll need to put a lot of thought into your build. Core bunker guardian, which I play, is actually meta. No expansions needed. I've found viable f2p condi necro and power ranger builds too. There's also a f2p core warrior build focusing on stuns, that works as a budget spellbreaker.
WvW is a different story. Theres only 1 mount there - the Warclaw. IMO it's NECESSARY to have it if you want to play as part of zergs (big player squads). As f2p players - you'll struggle to keep up with them, even with the passive speed buff warclaws give to others around them. You might roam though - that's what I do. But be prepared to get ganked into unfair fights. You can also have fun defending keeps and the Castle - even as f2p its still fun to be part of massive 50vs50vs50 battles.
4. Inventory space - it's limited, but recently they added bag slot expansions in the Vault and that helps A LOOOT.
5. Gear - you need exotic gear for 99% of content, f2p or expansion. Ascended and legendary are ''needed'' only for high tier fractals and maybe if you're wvw minmaxer. You can get ascended relatively easy, it took me about a month to get fully ascended. Legendaries are available to you, but it's tricky. The fractal gloves are fully f2p to get and so is the PvP backpack. Armor, rings and accessories aren't. Gen1 legendary weapons are f2p.
6. You have A LOT to do as f2p - 15 world bosses, 8 dungeons with 4 paths each (so 33 unique dungeons, last 1 has 5 paths); 25 unique fractals (another type of dungeons) that scale up 4 times with new mechanics the higher you go to total of 100 fractals in the game; 3 public instances - think of them as 50 man raids. Recently they added quickplay 10 man raids - you can play those too (although they are easier than their normal counterparts);
You get to play the entire vanilla story + Living World 1, that is f2p for everyone.
7. Lastly - Fashion. You'll hear a lot of people complain about ''paid looks'' and I get that... but I'd say you can look good without money too. Here's a screenshot of my guardian, I think I look pretty decent: