It has been about 2.5 years since I last touched Guild Wars 2 (GW2). At that time, I had been puttering around, completing daily quests to net the equivalent of $0.20/day, and basically stewing in my own cognitive dissonance. What broke me out of the cycle was the then-pending release of Secrets of the Obscure expansion. Even though GW2 is one of the few MMOs out there that doesn’t obsolete content once expansions come out, just knowing that everyone else would be doing all the cool stuff while you’re stuck gathering Flax or whatever sucks. On the other hand, I didn’t necessary want to pay $30 for more GW2, so I took that as a sign to uninstall and do something else.

And so I did. Another expansion came out called Janthir Wilds, and I let that one pass me by too. It even featured the ability to have a decorative house, introduced a spear weapon for every class, and so on. Neat. Have fun with that.

There is even yet another expansion coming out in October called Visions of Eternity. I think there are even new Elite specs this time around. Haven’t really looked into too far.

So why am I writing about GW2, and in fact have reinstalled the game? They finally introduced LFD.

It’s technically a beta feature, but it’s called Quickplay, and it’s the same automated group finder feature from WoW circa 16 years ago. Press button, get an instant 5-man squad and teleport right next to them. Right now, it is pointing towards even-easier versions of T1 Fractals, but presumably it will be expanded in the future to actual dungeons, perhaps Strikes, maybe raids? Moreover, ArenaNet has erected an extremely generous set of Achievements surrounding spam-queueing T1 Fractals for the next several weeks, resulting in extra bag slots, a Legendary glove (!!), and other such goodies.

As dumb as it sounds, yeah, reading about Quickplay (and the rewards, obviously) is what pushed me over the edge into downloading GW2 again.

…sorta. Honestly, I had also reached a point where I realized that I was logging into No Man’s Sky just because I couldn’t think of a better game to play for those “don’t want to commit to 1+ hour game sessions” moments. If I’m not committing to something, why not not commit to something that could possibly be relevant in the future? Then again, Guild Wars 3 is going to be a thing at some point, rendering everything moot. Also, heat death of the universe.

Anyway, bottom line, I’ve been playing GW2 a lot the past few days.