I recently dusted off my old Guild Wars 2 account after YouTube recommend some videos of it.
I was a huge fan of Guild Wars 1, I especially loved its skill system. You had hundreds of skills available but you could only equip 8 at a time. This forced you to think carefully and craft builds, which was half the fun. There were some skills that were only available once you defeated some hard elite enemies, which was also a fun challenge.
When GW2 released I bought the game on the first week, but the skill system was very underwhelming for me. A huge part of why I loved GW1 was not there in the sequel, so I quickly stopped playing.
Around 10 years later I logged in again and created a new character. I'm aware that there were tons of changes made to the game but the very early game stayed pretty much the same (as far as I remember). However, the way I experienced it was very different.
It no longer bothered me that you only have a fraction of the skills available. I'm 10 years older than I was when I first played it and I have much less time. This means that I appreciate not having to spend days to craft a character, I can just go out and enjoy the game.
The story is also pretty good, I've heard that GW2 is one of the few MMOs where the early game is also as much fun as the late game, and it seems to be true. I don't feel like I have to rush to max level to have fun.
Have you ever had a similar experience?
For me it was probably CSGO. I started playing at like 15-16 and while I really enjoyed it, I also found it really frustrating. Some of my highest highs and lowest lows were in the game lol. I would get really mad at the game and my teammates.
I stopped playing around 2018 and picked it back up a couple weeks ago with all the CS2 news going around and now I don't really rage or anything. It's just fun and when I lose I don't really care. I think I just matured and playing it casually without caring about my rank has definitely helped.