I love Guild Wars 2, but my love is not without its fair share of annoyance. So while my previous articles have been about bumping up the MMO, I am using this space to discuss a couple of my gripes with Arenanet.

1. The Game Isn’t Dynamic

I have a problem with MMOs calling their systems dynamic, because the catch-phrase that has caught on is that anything not-static must be dynamic. Warhammer Online tried this with public quests, when in reality they were simply multi-stage regular quests with timers attached to them. Tabula Rasa tried this with base assaults, and Rift claimed that its rifts we’re also dynamic.

Anything that can be put up on a schedule is not dynamic, and Guild Wars 2 is about as predictable as it gets without going back to the standard MMO quest model. The events are dynamic in the sense that they are not available 100% of the time, but apart from the zones run on a recurring treadmill, one with alternate paths that all lead to the same destination, before looping around at the beginning and starting all over.

But this doesn’t detract from the overall enjoyment of Guild Wars 2, it is just a poorly worded phrase, like how Tim Horton’s “cappuccino” comes in a bag and is powdered.

2. The Trading Post Needs Work

The trading post is massive, a technological marvel that Arenanet should be immensely proud of. That said, when this behemoth goes down, boy does it go down hard, bringing down some other features with it. And the Trading Post isn’t just down for an hour or two, when it crashes it has remained offline for days on end.

But the trading post has a massive load on its back, so let’s go further than connectivity issues. It took a while to understand why there were thousands of high priced orders for certain cooking ingredients but no buyers, before I realized that the trading post lists account-bound goods. And while you can’t sell account-based goods on the store, you can still place orders to purchase them, I expect from Santa Claus.

In its current state, the trading post is rather bloated and not very user friendly.

3. Discovery Crafting Became Obnoxious

I mentioned in my reviews of Guild Wars 2 that discovery crafting is likely the best part of crafting, at least as far as cooking goes. It gives a reason to travel and complete the map, as certain materials can only be obtained by vendors unlocked by finishing heart events. And even your crafted goods can be further used as their own crafting resources.

But previously, the discovery window only displayed items from your inventory. So my method of crafting became to store goods that were above my level and could not be used. In an update, Arenanet made crafting easier by allowing the bank and collection box to be pulled from. At the same time, this cluttered up the discovery page with all of the items you can’t use, removing any sort of filtering system (apart from deleting the items).

Again, I’m not trying to point out fatal flaws with Guild Wars, since frankly I don’t believe there are any.

4. Cooking Produces A Lot Of The Same

I love discovery crafting, and not just because my psychiatrist says I have the symptoms of a hoarder with none of his means of acquiring items. But to wrap up this list of mostly crafting based whine, while you can create everything from white chocolate cake to peppered steak, strawberry pie and at least a couple hundred things in between, the food itself generally doesn’t offer anything other than nourishment and bonus experience.

Perhaps if different foods offered a greater variety in boosts, cooked items would be in greater demand. Of course I could be completely wrong and foods far higher level than myself may offer the diversity I so wish for.