Guild Wars 2 - The Thread

[Arcanum]

Creative title, eh? Well who cares about the title of the thread since we're talking about Guild Wars, i.e. holy fuck I can barely contain my fangasm over this game.

Anyway, the game is now available for pre-purchase, which you can do so here (https://buy.guildwars2.com/) or at certain retailers. Pre-purchasing gives you some items once the game comes out, access to the game 3 days before it's officially out, and most importantly access to all of the beta events.

And really the true purpose of this thread is to find out who among all of you are as excited for this game as I am, and if you will be in the beta, and which server we shall play on (but even then, home servers are more for World versus World and Guilds, since players can visit other servers at a whim).

If, for some reason, you aren't hyped about this game then it's probably because you live under a rock. Have no fear, for the internet holds all you could ever want to know about this game. (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page) But sifting through a wiki can be boring, so there's more!

To start us off, the Yogscast (and I don't normally watch these guys, I just stumbled onto their coverage) has 32 videos about the game (http://www.youtube.com/show?p=b8vaKW_3m4g) including descriptions and demonstrations of the weapons skills of each profession.

Here's the NiuNbqPWpEo

But what's that? You want to read the skill descriptions at your leisure, as well as examine the Trait system? Well then help yourself to this character builder. (http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/)

This (http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=3232i0gj71lh2flm00uka0a0g0h0k0m0u1f09) is the elementalist build I threw together, and feel free to share your own builds.

Anyway, who's going to prepurchase and get into the beta events? What profession are you excited to play? Have you seen some of Pk06sCaB0l4? Discuss! Fangasm! Be pessimistic (because I'm sure there are a few of you :P)!

[Amake]

Guild Wars always seemed like a decent game except for the part where they expect you to play with other people. Any chance that's changed? (Yeah right.)

[Toast]

Well, I would have pre-purchased by now, but I keep getting an error message, so I'll try again later.

Definitely looking forward to the game. While I do want to try out all the classes, I'm most excited about playing guardian, ranger, and necromancer.

Although that is a good character builder, and the one I've used several times, I would like to mention that all skills and traits are subject to change between each beta.

Guild Wars always seemed like a decent game except for the part where they expect you to play with other people. Any chance that's changed? (Yeah right.)
Grouping has changed significantly. Compared to the original gw, you don't have to group for any content except for explorable mode dungeons.

Compared to other mmos, you won't be competing with other players over kills, material spawns, quests, etc. Dynamic events scale to the number of players available. There's no kill stealing, everyone gets rewarded based on their contribution. There's no ally-targeting skills, everything is based on positioning. There's no dedicated healers or tanks, so you are responsible for your own survival.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

I loved Factions and Nightfall and I've been loving everything I've seen of GW2, but like most pc games I just won't be able to rn it, meaning this is yet another amazing game that I'll never get to play.

[Doc ock rokc]

MESMESERS ARE SO BOSS. Literally how they made them is so freaking interesting.

[Aldurin]

Guild Wars 2

meh, I might look at the videos later but I don't see what the big deal is.

[CABAL49]

I never bought the expansions and my game suffered for it.

[Aldurin]

Just watched the vids and . . . wow. Just preordered it and I can't wait to kill people with . . . whatever the fuck I decide to use.

[Ryong]

Going Guardian, not sure on the specifics, though.

...As soon as they answer me how does region locking work. ( since I'm Brazilian and I don't think they have any Brazilian servers and I want to play on the NA ones and shit )

[Toast]

Going Guardian, not sure on the specifics, though.

...As soon as they answer me how does region locking work. ( since I'm Brazilian and I don't think they have any Brazilian servers and I want to play on the NA ones and shit )

So far as I know, if you buy direct from Anet, you're automatically sorted. Region only counts for login purposes. Once you're logged in, you can choose any server to play on.

meh, I might look at the videos later but I don't see what the big deal is.

Just watched the vids and . . . wow. Just preordered it and I can't wait to kill people with . . . whatever the fuck I decide to use.

That was fast.

I loved Factions and Nightfall and I've been loving everything I've seen of GW2, but like most pc games I just won't be able to rn it, meaning this is yet another amazing game that I'll never get to play.
The current system requirements posted here (http://guildwars2.com/en/the-game/game-faq/#four) (although of course subject to change) aren't all that high. I don't know what your system is like, just wanted to point out that there is an estimate of the system reqs available.

[synkr0nized]

MESMESERS ARE SO BOSS. Literally how they made them is so freaking interesting.

At first, they weren't in GW2. I did not understand how you could not only fail to include a totally terrific class but also one of the classes pretty unique to your fantasy MMO/CMO game. I still open GW just to play mesmer and raise the dead on my necro or spirits with my rit and use heals that are preventative instead of reactive. There's a lot to like.

[Oron]

Ever since GW2 was announced way back when, I've been skeptical about the shift to open worlds. I like the closed world system in GW. Seems like the new battle and PvP mechanic will make up for it, though. And I guess it will make things more convenient when friends want to join you while you're in the middle of something.

[Doc ock rokc]

At first, they weren't in GW2. I did not understand how you could not only fail to include a totally terrific class but also one of the classes pretty unique to your fantasy MMO/CMO game. I still open GW just to play mesmer and raise the dead on my necro or spirits with my rit and use heals that are preventative instead of reactive. There's a lot to like.

I think it was because of complaints. Mesmers in GW had two speeds, "Stiff wind can knock me over" and "Everything in front of me is fuckin' dead." It made them that lethal joke class in many peoples eyes.

[Locke cole]

I like how a good Mesmer can pack a set of spells to hex a single enemy into absolute unusability. They get blasted for casting spells (Backfire), for attacking (Empathy), for doing nothing (Wastrel's Demise), and, if you multiclass as a Necromancer, for having Hexes placed on them or removed (Soul Barbs)!

...Now I kinda want to make a PVE Mesmer. Never actually did that. Or a Warrior, for that matter.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

The current system requirements posted here (http://guildwars2.com/en/the-game/game-faq/#four) (although of course subject to change) aren't all that high. I don't know what your system is like, just wanted to point out that there is an estimate of the system reqs available.

Huh, that's actually not so bad. I was expecting dual core to be minimum requirement for this (most things seem to be). I'd still need about twice as much RAM and probably a better graphics card and a new hard drive because holy shit 25 gig install!!

I like how a good Mesmer can pack a set of spells to hex a single enemy into absolute unusability. They get blasted for casting spells (Backfire), for attacking (Empathy), for doing nothing (Wastrel's Demise), and, if you multiclass as a Necromancer, for having Hexes placed on them or removed (Soul Barbs)!

...Now I kinda want to make a PVE Mesmer. Never actually did that. Or a Warrior, for that matter.

Mesmers have always been able to xanatos gambit enemies into doing that, punishing you if you cast a spell, punishing you if you DON'T cast a spell. Kinda their thing. I wish I'd spent more time on my ranger mesmer in Factions now, mesmers were always pretty cool.

This time around though, it's all about the Elementalists. Why? Because you get 4 times as many attacks per weapon than anyone else! Which is awesome because you no longer have to specialise in 1 or 2 elements, you just switch on the fly to a different set while your attacks cool down and by the time you get done cycling through them all the ones you used first have cooled down again and you can repeat the cycle. Constant attacks, no waiting.

[Arcanum]

The only downfall is that the elementalist can't switch weapons mid-combat like all the other classes (except the engineer since he has kits). However, if you decide "to hell with utility skills" and equip Conjure Weapon skills in your utility slots, you can go from 20 offensive skills to 35, or even 40 if you throw on the Fiery Greatsword Elite. I don't think you would ever need that many different skills in a single fight (since utility skills and weapon can be swapped around outside of combat) but still it's nice to have the option :).

[Locke cole]

I like how switching elemental attunements is itself an attack.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

The only downfall is that the elementalist can't switch weapons mid-combat like all the other classes (except the engineer since he has kits). However, if you decide "to hell with utility skills" and equip Conjure Weapon skills in your utility slots, you can go from 20 offensive skills to 35, or even 40 if you throw on the Fiery Greatsword Elite. I don't think you would ever need that many different skills in a single fight (since utility skills and weapon can be swapped around outside of combat) but still it's nice to have the option :).

I like having lots of ways to kill stuff, that way I can be crazy prepared for any eventuallity.

I like how switching elemental attunements is itself an attack.

I'd forgotten about that. Man elementalists really just don't stop attacking ever, do they?

[Arcanum]

I like how switching elemental attunements is itself an attack.

Actually only switching to Fire or Air damages people around you. Switching to Water heals you and allies, and switching to Earth boosts your magical defense.

But yeah the elementalist is just a non-stop storm of elemental death.

[Oron]

Yeah, Elementalists will be one of the more utility-based characters based on how varied and versatile their builds can be.

We'll probably start seeing a handful of Ele and Eng farming builds within a week of the game's release.

[Aldurin]

With the preorder confirmation, it says "The game client will be available shortly; we will send you an e-mail with the download link." Does 'shortly' mean that I wait until the actual release or that they purposely delay the beta download for some reason?

EDIT: I wish this wasn't a joke. I would totally play this profession. (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/commando/)

[Oron]

You missed out. A-net temporarily put that profession in Guild Wars as a gag last year.

[Aldurin]

You missed out. A-net temporarily put that profession in Guild Wars as a gag last year.

:crying: But I want my lore-breaking air strikes!

[Oron]

I'm sure it will be a recurring joke each year, like any other seasonal events.

They did bother to actually put that page on their site, after all.

[Locke cole]

Wait, that class was in the game for a while?

What happened to primary Commandos when the gag ended?

Knowing Arenanet's MO for ending events, they probably all got killed by Dhuum or something, right?

[Oron]

It was a special side quest, like the Canthan New Year Arenas. The story was something like:

You find a lone commando who requests your aid... and accepting propels you into the future. You get a commando disguise and skill set, like with the Canthan New Year events. Then you proceed along, finish the quest (I forget what exactly you do) and you're sent back to your time at the end.

So essentially... They're soldiers from the future. That's how I remember it, at least.

[synkr0nized]

Mesmers in GW had two speeds, "Stiff wind can knock me over" and "Everything in front of me is fuckin' dead."


The former was too true in many ways for a while. The latter, too, mid-Factions, especially with Me/N. It's almost like they didn't know how well draining enemies worked (edit: not to imply you can't still destroy groups with Mesmers -- you certainly can!! Rather that, as memory serves, drain builds were seriously, retardedly crazy around then). But, then again, this is GW - the devs have always been kind of hit-or-miss with balance.

Anyway, if you're creative, the class really shines. More to the point, though, I still think it's a neat class that is pretty unique to GW. I have trouble thinking of any parallel in similar games. You're quite right, though, that players overall had some pretty strong opinions.


Ah well. I have one of every class and then a few duplicates, so I'd argue every class is fun in its own way (though to be fair some got played more than others).

I am sad that Ritualists aren't coming through.

[Oron]

Found it: the quest is called Annihilator (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Annihilator). It was the April Fool's quest last year.

Also turns out they were from the past, not the future. Oops.


Anyway, if you're creative, the class really shines. More to the point, though, I still think it's a neat class that is pretty unique to GW. I have trouble thinking of any parallel in similar games. You're quite right, though, that players overall had some pretty strong opinions.
I am sad that Ritualists aren't coming through.

The Mesmer class was a good feature of GW due to uniqueness. I think the biggest issue with them was certain skills (a chunk of the Elites) not being particularly valuable (like Shatter Storm - why would you want an Elite that disables itself for being used?). Every profession has that problem, though, and Anet will probably have dealt with that pretty well by the release of GW2. And it's not like they're adverse to completely changing skills in patches.

[Locke cole]

I wish I had a character for each class. I still haven't finished every campaign, if you can believe that. Maybe I'll traipse through Prophecies with a Mesmer once my Elementalist trudge through Nightfall is done.

...You know, I've found that Mesmer makes a good secondary class, with Inspiration, but I don't know what makes a great secondary for a Mesmer primary. I'm thinking Necromancer for use of Soul Barbs and Parasitic Bond and SS?

[Oron]

For PvE, Necro's usually a good secondary for Mesmer and Monk's the catch-all secondary. You could also use a Ranger secondary for the stances or a Rit secondary for healing or any of the item/weapon spells (Me/Rt's more popular for healing, though).

It really depends on the build, but if you're doing hex stuff, Necro's probably the way to go.

Also, save SS for a Necro primary to get those extra points in Curses. Try Visions of Regret and some skills like Wastrel's Demise for PvE - you'll rack up some good damage against mindless mobs.

The Necro secondary works well with Mesmer because there are some PvE-only skills that take advantage of enemies being hexed/suffering from a condition. And there's the other obvious good stuff like extra hexes and supplementary spells.

[synkr0nized]

Go Me/A and reap the benefits of fast-casting punishment recharged by Assassin's Promise. It's tons of fun.

Necro hexes do mesh well, though, and you can fast-cast nuke, to a degree, with Me/E.

When I do bother with putting any points into a secondary, though, it's typically /A.


E/Mo was really popular with people last I checked (granted been a few months) for ether renewal. There was a time when N/Mo had some cool healing power thanks to soul reaping. It's nice seeing folks put out some creative ways to bring heals without having primary monks. I had a blast healing as a ritualist, too. Heck, negating damage in the Factions elite areas with a rit was a lot of fun!!


Almost any caster can benefit from /Me due to the many options for energy return. This works great on the AI heroes, too, with their near-instant reaction times for interrupts that can gain them energy.



Sadly most of my characters don't have all the hardmode campaigns done, and not even one of them has anything above Kind of a Big Deal (and even then I think only one does?). I never sat on one character enough for that stuff, instead getting them all through every chapter and the expansion and capping things and doing dungeons. I did get some good progress on Lucky/Unlucky, drunkard, and the like, though!! I always vowed I'd make a legendary survivor, too, but never had the patience to be cautious enough in random exploration. I think my mesmer or ranger is damned close, though, in the level 2 survivor track on the way to 3.

Ah well. It became difficult to keep up with working on those things when my guild/alliance fell apart. Moreso when I started playing other MMOs, notably WoW. I don't juggle multiple too well.

[Oron]

I'm the same for titles. Only my War even has Kind of a Big Deal, and I just don't care enough to finish Survivor or any of the other titles I need to finish in order to get the Rainbow Phoenix. I never can stick to grinding in an MMO.

Making new and creative builds is probably one of the best parts of playing Guild Wars. I had a field day with that Dervish update.

[Locke cole]

Necromancer secondary can be pretty good.

I actually went through Factions with a Rt/N Minion Master, using Spawning Power to improve the power of my undead minions. Sacrificing quantity (being able to add runes for Death Magic to improve my maximum horde) for quality (more health and slightly more power).

Well, that's not entirely true. Truth be told, I did most of the game with a Spirit Spamming build, using Signet of Spirits like every other Ritualist to traipse through Echovald with a Signet of Capture. It's just not as fun to get going with a horde when you're mainly rolling with NPC aides and you have to initiate the battle. It's much easier to start a horde if you hang back from a team of humans. However, when I was in teams with more than one Ritualist, and we needed me to do something else, I gleefully swapped builds, abusing the fact that Explosive Growth triggers twice when you Summon Bone Minions and such like that. I also took a boat to Elona to pick up Shambling Horror. Fun times were had all around.

Someday, I really need to try a straight up minion master. I can't remember, does GW2 have minion summoning for its Necromancers?

[Oron]

Fun Build: Rt/N

Explosive Growth
Animate Bone Minions
Jagged Bones
Death Nova
Taste of Death

Cast spells in that order. AoE damage for animating two minions, AoE damage and poison when they die, and AoE damage when the new Shambling Horrors take their places. Bombs everywhere.

It's easier with two, because you can just have one use Aura of the Lich/Explosive Growth to instantly create a full set of Bone Horrors.

And yeah, Necromancers can summon minions in GW2. Each spell apparently has a built-in secondary spell that you can use once you animate the minion. It destroys the minion to create the effect. It seems like it'll be: Summon Blood Fiend > spell replaced by Taste of Death > Taste of Death > back to Summon Blood Fiend. It sounds cool, but it also sounds like you can't summon multiple minions of the same type.

[Toast]

And yeah, Necromancers can summon minions in GW2. Each spell apparently has a built-in secondary spell that you can use once you animate the minion. It destroys the minion to create the effect. It seems like it'll be: Summon Blood Fiend > spell replaced by Taste of Death > Taste of Death > back to Summon Blood Fiend. It sounds cool, but it also sounds like you can't summon multiple minions of the same type.

This is mostly correct. Not all of the secondary minion skills destroy the minion. The bone fiend, shadow fiend, and flesh golem (I believe) are kept around. In addition to that, the gw2 minions don't require corpses to summon, nor do they degen health constantly.

Looks to be pretty awesome.

[Oron]

Huh. Sounds interesting. Not requiring corpses seems a little weird, but no health degen sounds nice.

Guess I'll have to go look up the new minions.

[Locke cole]

I had a similar idea for my build, but I only ventured far enough into Elona to get Sambling Horror. I'd use Jagged Bones if I knew where to find it fast.

So, instead of Jagged Bones, I had Shambling Horror, with Flesh Golem as my Elite.

[Oron]

Oooh, yeah... Jagged Bones is toward the end of Nightfall. There might be a guy in Eye of the North who has it, if I remember correctly.

Flesh Golem's just as good for a minion master, unless you've managed to get Aura of the Lich. Of course, you can always look up each skill on the wiki to find out who has it and where you can find it.


Anyway, does anyone know about how everything transfers to GW2? Specifically, do names transfer, or will I have to just make a bunch of characters and name them so the names don't get taken (I lack the creativity to create a new set of names)?

[Locke cole]

I don't think names can get taken in Guild Wars.

Presumably, the "make a first and last name" thing helps with that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'd be seeing way more <~Cloud Strife645~>s running around if names could be "taken".

I personally just went with names that sounded sufficiently "fantasy"y. Like Aryu Greywing, and Kuro Bloodfeather.

However, for some ungodly reason, my Ritualist wound up with a pun name. Fear the arcane might of Espi Rito.

edit: Holy shit. Aura of the Lich is ridiculous. I need to introduce that to my Ritualist. It just looks right. I'm reminded of the time when I first learned of Unyielding Aura. Trudged through what I think may be the most unforgiving stretch of land in Prophecies just to get access to the boss that had it, I found it so good.

[Oron]

Yeah, throughout the updates over the last couple of years, Aura of the Lich and Unyielding Aura are two of the Elites that went from almost useless to exceptional.

And I'm not too worried about any names I have being used before me, but I have lost a couple joke names for PvP characters in GW. So it never hurts to know, I guess.

[Arcanum]

I don't think names can get taken in Guild Wars.

Presumably, the "make a first and last name" thing helps with that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'd be seeing way more <~Cloud Strife645~>s running around if names could be "taken".

I personally just went with names that sounded sufficiently "fantasy"y. Like Aryu Greywing, and Kuro Bloodfeather.

However, for some ungodly reason, my Ritualist wound up with a pun name. Fear the arcane might of Espi Rito.

Yeah only one name per character in Guild Wars. But the "required two names with a space inbetween" gave people enough creativity so that they didn't have to resort to excessive numbers and XxXxXs.


Anyway, does anyone know about how everything transfers to GW2? Specifically, do names transfer, or will I have to just make a bunch of characters and name them so the names don't get taken (I lack the creativity to create a new set of names)?

When I pre-purchased it asked for the e-mail tied to my Guild Wars account. I'm assuming they use that to associate Hall of Monument rewards with your new account.

As for names, after every beta weekend the characters people made, including the names they made, are wiped. However any characters/names made/taken during the 3-day headstart event will stay. Character names from Guild Wars are not reserved for use in Guild Wars 2.

[Oron]

Exactly how do they plan to allocate rewards for the Hall of Monuments? With new and non-returning professions, they can't pass them on by simply matching character professions.

[Arcanum]

This is how. (http://hom.guildwars2.com/en/#page=welcome)

[Oron]

Oh, you can pick and choose for each title. That's nice.

I completely missed that FAQ link when I looked at the calculator a while ago.

[Arcanum]

With the preorder confirmation, it says "The game client will be available shortly; we will send you an e-mail with the download link." Does 'shortly' mean that I wait until the actual release or that they purposely delay the beta download for some reason?

Oh hey totally missed this. The next beta event is planned for "Late April" so I'm assuming they will send out the clients shortly before that happens.

[synkr0nized]

edit: Holy shit. Aura of the Lich is ridiculous. I need to introduce that to my Ritualist. It just looks right. I'm reminded of the time when I first learned of Unyielding Aura. Trudged through what I think may be the most unforgiving stretch of land in Prophecies just to get access to the boss that had it, I found it so good.

When they buffed it, it became pretty rad. It was fairly terrible before.

In any case, you really should just roll a necromancer and do it correctly.

[Locke cole]

Man, I just wanted to roll with Explosive Growth / Boon of Creation Bone Minions. But yeah, I can try a straight minion master with a primary necromancer.

Then again... exploiting every corpse at the same time would trigger a veritable lightning storm and a massive HP/Energy boost at the same time.

[Oron]

It could, but how often will it occur that there are eight dead enemies and enough left alive to make that lightning storm worth it? The amount of damage from level 12 (around there) bone horrors probably won't keep up with a true minion master's level 18 bone horrors and they won't last as long, even with the extra damage and healing from their animation.

It's a fun build to mess around with, but a necro primary or a spirit rit will be more generally useful. Have you seen Signet of Spirits? It's pretty cool in PvE now.

[Locke cole]

Yes, I used Sith Signet plenty during my run through Factions.

[Arcanum]

So it seems you can set any skill on your skill bar to auto-cast. That's good to hear, since I was worried only the 1 key melee chains were auto-cast and I'd be stuck mashing 1 on spell casters.

[Arcanum]

Good news!First Beta Weekend Event will be from April 27-29. We will let you know once the client is ready for download.

We'll have a blog post with details about what and when you can play later today or tomorrow.

:dance::dance::dance::dance::dance::dance::dance:

[Aldurin]

Whelp, there goes my friday next week.

[Marc v4.0]

Woo!

[Arcanum]

Since the GW2 facebook page is nearing 500,000 followers/likes/whatever they're releasing a new piece of concept art every 10k likes http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7045/7092056785_e8e7920f63_b.jpg

Link to the photo in case anyone wants to look at different sizes (http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/7092056785/sizes/l/in/photostream/) or the gigantic as fuck original size. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/7092056785/sizes/o/in/photostream/)

In other Guild Wars news, a few weeks ago I booted up the game again to try my hand at the "Guild Wars Beyond" quest stuff. So far I'm still in the War of Kryta stuff, and recently got stuck on the Temple of the Intolerable quest (the one where you re-visit D'Alessio Seaboard and kill a mursaat dude) because my heroes are retarded and don't move out of AoE effects until their health is half-gone, and when they do finally move they manage to aggro more patrols, and I'll be assed if I micromanage them all.

So with that in mine, have any of you done the War in Kryta stuff and want to lend me a hand?

[Oron]

I have done the War in Kryta stuff and I was actually thinking about getting on today/the weekend. I'll help you, if the game lets you tag along on a character who isn't that far in the quest line yet (GW's kind of picky for certain quest lines).

The Temple of Intolerance quest is the most difficult one for War in Kryta in my opinion, so I feel your pain there.

Edit: No, wait. I'm thinking of the one that takes you to Riverside.
The D'Alessio Seaboard is a little better.

[Arcanum]

Yeah fuck the Riverside Province mission. Had to use a Grail of Might to counteract the death penalty that my party had gradually accrued. I'll definitely be playing some time over the next couple of days, so feel free to add Arcanum Darkfire to your friend list.

In the meantime, have some beta info everyone. (http://www.arena.net/blog/the-beta-weekend-event-is-coming) Good news: No NDA, so we can talk about it all we want in this thread without feeling like we're breaking rules.

[Marc v4.0]

Beta Invite emails just went out. Quit overloading the servers so I can get my client pre-loaded!

[Ryong]

whereisminewhereisminewhereisminewhereismine

[Arcanum]

Sending such a large volume of mail takes some time, so don't fret if you don't get yours immediately. When you do receive it, keep in mind that the site is getting an enormous amount of traffic, so you may get a 502 error briefly. Just hang in there and give it a few minutes, then try again.



Just hang in there and give it a few minutes, then try again.

How the entire internet reads that instruction: Spam the F5 key until it works.

[Oron]

I'm probably better off just waiting until tomorrow or Thursday to download it, then.

[Marc v4.0]

Well, I got through the error but when I get to the client DL page it isn't available. :(


Wait, no, there it is!

[Arcanum]

I'm getting about 700 KB/s on the download/patch/whatever, and I usually download things at anywhere from 1MB/s to 3MB/s, just to give you folks an idea of what the download speed is like. Also I think I read somewhere a while back that the previous beta clients were about 12GB or something. Feel free to do the math on how long it will take you to download it.

[Arcanum]

The server list has been released! As well as information about changing worlds (i.e. servers). (http://www.arena.net/blog/choosing-and-transferring-worlds-in-guild-wars-2) But anyway, since the guesting feature won't be available in the beta, I suggest we all go on the same server if we want to play together.



Anvil Rock
Borlis Pass
Yak’s Bend
Henge of Denravi
Maguuma
Sorrow’s Furnace
Kaineng
Jade Quarry
Fort Aspenwood
Ehmry Bay
Ferguson’s Crossing
Darkhaven
Vasburg
Eredon Terrace
Crystal Desert
Tarnished Coast
Steamspur Mountains
Blazeridge Mountains
Isle of Janthir
Sea of Sorrows
Deldrimor
Scavenger’s Causeway
Moladune
Eternal Grove



Any preferences? I'm gonna suggest Yak's Bend just because Dolyaks are awesome.

Also, in the article linked above, they mention that all players get 2k gems for free (gems are the "pay real money to get them" currency). So that's neat. I was wondering how they would test the cash shop since everything would be getting wiped after the beta ended, giving everyone no incentive to dump cash into it.

Edit- Just going to add that the servers I quoted are the NA ones. The EU servers are available at the link at the top of this post.

[Aldurin]

I'm cool with any server as long as I have experienced friends to learn from (read: leech knowledge from in a hostile manner).

[Oron]

I'm playing on Sorrow's Furnace to meet up with (at least one of) my guild members, so... yeah.

[Arcanum]

So some steam friends that I play SMNC with regularly are going to be on Kaineng, so that's where I'll be as well.

[Ryong]

I guess I'll be on Kaineng, then!

[Aldurin]

Kaineng it is!

[Arcanum]

All of the server names are locations or names from the original Guild Wars.

Also, we might end up in Sorrows Furnace. I'll post again once I know 100% for sure.

e- Ok well technically there are http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/d/d1/Elf.jpg but only during Wintersday

[Aldurin]

Well no wonder their Elvish is shit, they have no elves to properly teach it to them.

[synkr0nized]

Any preferences?

Given those names, any answer that is not "Sorrow's Furnace" is incorrect.

[Oron]

Welp.

Seems that Anet still thinks I'm using my old SBC email that doesn't exist anymore, even though I specified a hotmail account to register GW2 with (they even sent the beta announcement to the hotmail address). Wonder how that worked out.

Sorting this out before tomorrow ought to be fun.

Edit: It didn't auto-change my password when I did the Forgot Password thing, at least.

Edit-2: Phew. Got it to work. Music on the client login is pretty cool.

[Arcanum]

Alright, gonna be on Sorrow's Furnace for sure now.

[Marc v4.0]

Alright, gonna be on Sorrow's Furnace for sure now.

Sounds like a plan

[Arcanum]

So a friend linked me to this. (http://titanpad.com/ep/pad/view/4SyT2aGiZB/latest) The info on that pad comes from a rather large thread on guildwars2guru's forums.

Apparently a lot of guilds are going to be on Sorrow's Furnace, meaning the server might get a bit crowded. As in "it's going to be a race to see who can register to that server before it fills up" crowded.

I'm currently discussing server options with the aforementioned friend, so I'll be back in a jiffy.

Okay we've settled on Maguuma. See you folks there!

[Arcanum]

Hmm so that link in my last post is broken now (at least for me) so I'll put this (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/32389-world-choice-guilds-and-communities/) here (which is one of the sources of information for the titan pad list).

And just gonna say again that I'll be hanging out in Maguuma, and not Sorrow's Furnace like I previously suggested, because I am a lying McLiar face.

[Ryong]

Alright, stop with the wishy-washy already!

[Oron]

Speaking of wishy-washy, it seems that now my guild mates are meeting in Crystal Desert. Eh, whatever. If they start getting really uncoordinated and we can't stay together, I'll probably see about guest hopping into Maguuma with you guys.

Eyes peeled.

[Arcanum]

So I booted up my client just to make sure they didn't sneak in any extra patches, and I had to download a few extra MBs of stuff. So if you plan on jumping right in make sure you've got everything :)

e- Also, to redeem your free 2k gems once the beta is live:

To redeem your gems, just follow these steps

Log in to Guild Wars 2 once the Beta Weekend Event has begun
(April 27-29, 2012).|
Open the Gem Store through the commerce icon on the upper left corner of your screen, or by pressing the “O” key on the keyboard.|
Select the link labeled “Get More Gems” in the Gem Store.|
Select the Beta Special option.|
Enter your valid credit card information – don’t worry, you won’t be charged!|
Confirm the transaction. A hold of $/£1 may be placed on your card, but you will not be charged.|
Spend your gems on any items in the Gem Store, or trade them for gold through the in-game currency exchange.|
Each account that participates in the Beta Weekend Event is eligible to receive 2,000 free gems that they can use on whatever they like in our in-game Gem Store during the weekend.|

[Toast]

I've been playing for a couple hours and I'm having a lot of fun. Mostly been playing guardian, but did try out some necromancer and a little ranger. The biggest problem has been lag. Even though I specifically chose a medium pop server, lag has killed me more than once. Especially when I'm going toe to toe with a big baddy and can't dodge because I'm dead before he even starts to wind up for his attack.

Not that I'm a master at dodging yet, but there have been a couple times where I haven't even gotten the opportunity to try.

[Ryong]

My main cause of death is lagcentaurs.

[Aldurin]

I'm mainly frustrated that the quest line is impossible to do since there's an 80% chance of losing connection in the middle of a mission and having to do all over again.

[Ryong]

As I told Arcanum before it all started, I think they didn't estimate the amount of people playing very well.

Aldurin, you ran past me and I messaged you and you ignored me.

Also, Arcanum gains the award for least helpful person ever.

[Marc v4.0]

Derping about as Marcus Verda, on and off when I can

[Arcanum]

My account is ArcanumMBD, feel free to add me to your friend list and shoot me a message.

Also, server is going down in a minute or two, and will be down for a half our while they fix some things.

[Oron]

Well, I had class for the first hour of the beta and then had dinner a little later, but I got on a warrior and had some fun.

Halfway from level 11 to 12, got all his weapon skills, two utility skills, another healing skill, and a trait.

Now I just have to try doing some actual quests from the main quest line.

[Arcanum]

Psssh main quests are for chumps. As soon as I was out of the human starting area, I brought my elementalist over to the Norn area, teamed up with some friends, and we then proceeded to hop from Heart Event to Group Event to Skill Challenge.

Also I saw an A-Net dev post on the official forums that they're gonna be changing around the WvW servers to make it more balanced, since a lot of matchups had a single server dominating the other two. That might be what's happening now, but I dunno. So long as the lag is fixed I'll be happy.

[Oron]

Psssh main quests are for chumps. As soon as I was out of the human starting area, I brought my elementalist over to the Norn area, teamed up with some friends, and we then proceeded to hop from Heart Event to Group Event to Skill Challenge.

That's all I did today. I just explored as much as possible in Queensdale and Kessex while doing every heart, skill, and event quest I found.

So tomorrow I want to take a peek at the quests to see what you actually do. And I want to try WvW.

Also dear lord the great sword just tears everything up. Might + Hundred Blades will pretty much kill anything.

[Ryong]

My Guardian impressions:

Greatsword is awesome, does nice damage and has a lot of crowd control, but has no defense whatsoever.
Hammer hits absurdly hard and has some aoe, but focuses on single-target damage.
Sword is extremely fast and gives you dodging abilities that require timing.
Mace is tanky. That is all.
Haven't used the other things much. Shield seems to be the best off-hand for Guardian, btw.

Overall, the utility skills are really nice...Healing skills, however, seem to be lacking.

General: Man, this game is already great. My only complaint - besides the lag and the overpopulation - is that the starting piece of equipment is quickly replaced, unless you just want to look nice and ignore the potential bonuses from a better piece.

Edit:

On Mesmers:

Mesmers are weird.

It doesn't help that I played a Charr Mesmer, which is kind of... Conflicting.

Also, for the huge boss fights? Everyone should stay out of melee, it just doesn't work.

[Arcanum]

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541800134238656389/E152F3FCB0CD127FCD8B06229949AE82546516CD/

The finale event was kinda lame. Just killing champion black moas in the Norn starter area. I'll share some more pics tomorrow, as well as a video I took of WvW shenanigans.

[Toast]

Ha, that's great. I was trying out too many characters to get anyone above lvl 12, but I had a blast playing. Here's a slideshow (http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Einhander/Guild%20Wars%202/?albumview=slideshow) of the screenshots I took this weekend.

[Arcanum]

Pictures!

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541800134224753151/872C0AA74ECE5ED9D48B52B90D895F7B7B12B1FD/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541800134219333680/B4D2E4036B8C9FD082CFFAEA5260A643555E9807/ http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541800134219337442/6991BC9268F4F461D39555460F732A61CD016640/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541800134267883708/A410E33AFC7C3CD76BB70EAFB1DF52DAC78940B3/

[Arcanum]

Finally got around to compressing and uploading the video I took of WvW shenanigans.

First, sorry for the shitty quality, I had fraps recording at half resolution to save hard drive space. And then since I didn't want to upload a 4GB file to youtube (I don't even know if you can, does youtube have a file size limit?) I compressed it down to a manageable 600MB with windows movie maker.

Second, I was on mumble at the time, and it turns out fraps recorded what was being said, with the exception of anything I said (since me talking would be input and not sound output).

Third, a little background info before the video since I only thought to turn on fraps and record halfway into the fight (feel free to skip my rambling if you want to just watch the video).

This was happening shortly before the beta finale, so there weren't many people on the WvW server. Still, there were some blues (about 20 or so) trying to make a last minute territory grab, and we defended a tower before falling back to a keep (we tried to take the nearby supply camp to cut off their new tower, but they were right on our heels).

So there were 20+ blues against maybe 6 of us (too lazy to count, they had us pretty heavily outnumbered though). Two of us get on the canons, while our guardian runs out to use his move that pulls multiple enemies to his position (which pretty much guarantees a canon shot will hit multiple enemies). Meanwhile the rest of us set up arrow carts. We end up with three carts on the wall, and in addition to the cannons we start chewing up the blues with ease. They get smart and decided to sit outside of canon and cart range until their friends respawn and run back.

Instead of doing nothing, we decide to leap frog our arrow carts. I run out and drop the forward arrow cart that's within range of our canons, and rain down more hell. So they fall back to the supply camp. We decide to put up another siege weapon within range of the forward arrow cart, so we can safely lay siege to their supply camp, just for kicks. And the video starts at around this point with me running back to grab supply. Enjoy

1Pk9Yt-u-2k

[Oron]

So, that stress test happened today. There was still overflow in busy areas but World vs World was much less laggy. Everything else seemed to be about the same.

[Arcanum]

Yeah Maguuma ended up against the server that the Reddit folk were on, so with their superior numbers they just jacked everything in WvW. The friends I was playing with promptly agreed to "fuck this shit" and we then proceeded to do some PvE shenanigas with our level 30-ish characters.

[Ryong]

I tried running the game and ran into artefacts.

I am currently waiting for my new GPU.

[Aldurin]

Another beta event from June 8 to June 10. Anyone got big plans for this?

[Ryong]

Well, I'll finally be able to participate in something that won't shit out my GPU, so, yes.

I am unsure if I'll play my guardian some more and try to reach 30 or if I'll try rolling a human ( since we don't have sylvari yet ) hunter.

[Arcanum]

Gonna get my Elementalist to level 35 so some friends and I can try the Ascalonian catacombs on explorable. And then I'm gonna make a mesmer. Also more WvW and I'll probably try out structured PvP this time.

[Oron]

I want to try the Guardian out. Maybe see how easy it is to level somebody from the start in WvW...vW.

[Toast]

I left my guardian at lvl 18-19 during the stress test, so I''ll probably get him up to 20. After that I want to spend most of my time on the elementalist and necromancer, as I didn't get much past lvl 4 with either of them last time.

[Aldurin]

My Necro is still barely above level 10 or something, I think. I don't know if I'll try to power-level him up to WvW material or try another class.

[Arcanum]

What's new in the upcoming beta weekend. (http://www.arena.net/blog/the-big-beta-weekend-preview)

Highlights:

A new level 25-35 area.
Skill challenges and dynamic events in WvW
UI changes
Utility and elite skills now have Tiers, and you must unlock a certain number of skills from one tier before gaining access to the next.
Some sort of item recycling thingamajig.
Bunch of other stuff.

[Oron]

Good, you can travel to other party members' overflow servers. Being separated by overflow was annoying.

[Ryong]

So far so good with the game.

I also found out that SWOOP is the best thing ever.

[Toast]

Hate the skill/ trait tiers. Didn't particularly care for the revised trait system in the first place, and I like it even less now that it has become a standard talent tree.

Playing necromancer a bit more. I was originally going to have a few minions in my build, but now that I've played around with them some, I almost prefer going without them. I like the scepter/focus weapon set a lot more than I thought I would. Axe/dagger is also a pretty good set.

[Arcanum]

So the event finale was probably more disappointing than the first BWE event, if only because A-net screwed the pooch so hard. The event itself didn't start on the main server until 10 minutes before the servers shut down (meanwhile I heard the overflow servers were already playing the event). And despite the delay, the servers still shut down on time.

And to top it all off, the event actually seemed pretty damn cool. Players were trying to stop corruption from spreading in the Plains of Ashford by destroying these crystals that popped up on a waypoint (and blocking access to it). The kicker was, if a player died he or she became corrupted, making them fight for the NPCs against other players. I played as a corrupted human for about 3 minutes before the server crashed, and it changed my entire skill bar which was pretty great.

But still, A-Net fucked up big.

[Ryong]

Hate the skill/ trait tiers. Didn't particularly care for the revised trait system in the first place, and I like it even less now that it has become a standard talent tree.

Emphasis mine. I'm not a fan of the new system, but I wouldn't call it a standard talent tree, just because some skills need you to have a few of the other skills before it to unlock and because there are a few traits which only show up later on.

Also: I'd post screenshots, but I'm too lazy to get them outta my Steam profile.

Also also: On actual game content: I got my Guardian to 31, tried the ascalonian catacombs, got my ass kicked repeatedly, played a Human Ranger, didn't like the reliance on the pet, played a Norn Warrior, loved the starting plot and everything about the class itself.

And I've yet to find some decent-looking chest armor, pants and helm. At least they fixed kilts, though.

[Toast]

Emphasis mine. I'm not a fan of the new system, but I wouldn't call it a standard talent tree, just because some skills need you to have a few of the other skills before it to unlock and because there are a few traits which only show up later on.

In some ways it is, though. Each trait point gives you a miniscule bonus, every five points you get a minor talent. Every ten points you get a choice of a major talent.

In its current state, the new tiered nature of traits encourages you to go 30 points in a line, but for a number of the lines, the grandmaster traits are basically lackluster, and the choice of the two is not difficult at all in most cases.

In general, a large number of traits are lackluster. Prior to the tiering of traits, I found it difficult to find a third trait that was going to be worth it in several lines. Tiering the traits just means that instead of building for versatility, you have to build for specialization. Or you have to take crap traits to get decent traits. Unless they continue to update and balance traits with each other, in which case there's no need for tiering.

That being said, I did find a fairly decent build that wasn't specialized for the few pvp matches I played. screenshot (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Einhander/Guild%20Wars%202/gw105.jpg) and an approximation using the old skill tool. (http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=3a70009bme9g9kml10ffaka6g737e7ki8j3) It worked pretty well.

And I've yet to find some decent-looking chest armor, pants and helm. At least they fixed kilts, though.
For me it's been hit or miss. I liked my guardian's armor (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Einhander/Guild%20Wars%202/gw030.jpg) sets, even if they both looked very similar. I found a really cool looking hat for my ranger, but it was unfortunately tied to this weird upturned collar (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Einhander/Guild%20Wars%202/gw007.jpg) that looked incredibly ugly. I would have loved the hat by itself, though. My norn elementalist looked like a harem girl (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Einhander/Guild%20Wars%202/gw096.jpg) most of the time, but at least that particular outfit was an improvement from the starter set.

I like the new minis (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Einhander/Guild%20Wars%202/gw093.jpg).

[Arcanum]

Re: Skills and traits

I very much dislike the new system. For skills it's not too bad, although it only encourages experimentation for the first, and maybe second, tier of skills. The system is also pretty terrible for elite skills, because for my elementalist to get the Tornado skill it costs 50 total skill points, which is absurd.

As for traits, I can understand why they did it, because certain traits were way more powerful than others (such as the fire ele trait that gives you might every time you cast a fire spell, allowing any fire-attuned ele to output way more damage than other classes at a low level). Yet overall I agree with you Toasty, and I hope the traits get reworked.

Re: Armor appearance.

Pretty much all regular merchants sell armor with the same appearance. Only in the final hours of the beta did I realize this (I didn't really care before) when I found a Karma merchant selling an armor piece with a drastically different appearance. I then hopped from Karma Merchant to Karma Merchant in Kessex Hills and Gendarren Fields until I completed a new appearance. I then used transmutation stones (if you complete an area 100% then you get 3 transmutation stones for free, in addition to gear appropriate to the level of the area, and a large sum of silver) to transfer the high stats of my mundane armor onto the newly acquired pieces.

I went from http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706134177601/0775F09B5FF9017B8CFC14A6EFB4C880C3E181B1/ to http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706159914053/89F2F79AF472A5C20CC9DA3B0F69743850ED3D0F/

I hope they add more variety to regular merchants at launch, but at least I now know it's possible to change your armor appearance somewhat thanks to Karma Vendors. Also, I didn't have time to check out the Charr or Norn area merchants to see if the Karma armor they had was different, but considering how tribal/bandit/centaur-like my armor looks, and how weapon appearances change depending on the area they are dropped, I think it's safe to say they have different armor as well.

Also, my guild ended up researching the guild armorer upgrade, and it's kind of lame. It costs one gold to get a transmutation item (either heavy, medium, or light) that gives you a mundane chest piece with your guild's logo on it.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706134182643/8035C21234EC4F09217D9AB335BF17138E6941B4/

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706134175136/CB08344BC66B7FA40756ED0AC5D7D129D9473B55/

Re: Dungeons

I tried Ascalon Catacombs again with a random group (story mode) and it was much easier this weekend. Partly because they added a repair anvil to the dungeon, instead of forbidding you from being able to repair in the dungeon at all. It also helped that I was level 40, and the rest of the team was level 33-36 (with only one level 29). Also I had 20 points into my water trait line, so I was effectively the healer/tank (since I could self-heal more efficiently since my team never liked to stand in my healing AoEs). That also helped a lot when we came across the Lovers (Ralena and Vassar) because I managed to lure away Vassar, and I kept him distracted by myself while the rest of the team focused on Ralena.

However we then tried Explorable mode and it was the same clusterfuck as the last BWE. We managed to get past the first miniboss (a Champion Spider Queen) by standing on a pillar so she could only use her weak range attack to hit us (and since she could still hit us she never went invulnerable). However the next miniboss, Lieutenant Kohler (an Ascalon ghost) was ridiculous. He had a pull move that would cast instantly, without warning, and once you were pulled you would get stunned for 2 seconds, and after he pulls you in he does a whirlwind that killed us all before the stun wore off. We gave up after 10 full wipes.

Fortunately, near the end of the weekend an A-Net dev showed up in the PvP lobby. He was a dungeon designer and basically said the dungeon(s) still need a lot of balance work put into them. I brought up Kohler and even the dev said the guy was overpowered. So at least they will be changing it up.

Anyway that's about it from me for now. Have some screenshots.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706134186793/096045437CCBF01A84AEAFCB9D7EA48502098BA0/

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706129086727/935ABE57BB958D80F9FAEEFA4CDA6870BABEEE93/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706134184508/53DA55543411AD54D51B332B1AD8ECCF3E429A7F/

While waiting for the event finale to start a couple of us dropped some Boxes O' Fun, resulting in the following shenanigans:

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706161160888/132E1A39DC79D0C789BA875352182C598795B080/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706161166193/3DCACCCC3BB60E0CB3D3F9A9A1FDAA848273575A/

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706161177960/C5967A007DF9C0C3B887532FE28DDEEF3BCE6DE2/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706161190200/E3E2EAF60A515F04347A93F2312EFAE4FE5FBFC5/

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706161188810/61BB0F061BA28214AAC8B1283CAAFE1D1E73F4D6/

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/541803706161187413/8D629711114200CB2CF0C5DC182CD30795999C61/

[Arcanum]

t-CB0hheQRg

08/28/12

:D :D :D :D :D :D

[Ryong]

My body is ready.

[Ryong]

So, how's this Beta weekend for everyone? Mine is weird.

[Locke cole]

Beta weekend?

Also, does anyone know what the minimum requirements are? I really want to play the game when it's released, but I don't know if my Macbook-partitioned-with-Windows 7 can run it.

[Arcanum]

The final beta weekend before launch is this weekend. And I've been exploring the Sylvari starter area since they're finally giving us a sneak peek at the Sylvari and Asura.

Also, the Sylvari, and their starter area, are amazing. It's absolutely gorgeous. Also, their character customization options are the greatest. They freaking glow at night. And you can change the color of the glow (or lower the intensity so it doesn't show at all if you don't want it).

I haven't touched the Asura yet.

Also no problem.

[Ryong]

Just to explain how warriors work:

http://i.imgur.com/9pgTl.jpg

[Locke cole]

So, you expected a pitiful gun, but in actuality, it's like a cannon of pure badass?

I can dig it.

[Magni]

So the game officially releases for pre-purchase players in about 2 hours.

In case you all forgot or something.

[synkr0nized]

PM me if you want to be super fantasy friends.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

I appreciate the little things they've done with gw2. Like the black company trading system. Sure you can buy gems with real money or you can dump any excess money in-game to convert to gems. Or gems for game money. The conversion worth fluctuates so it'll be interesting to see how that goes. Also the crafting mats having their own gallery bank thing to let the bank be used for important stuff.

Lotta little things like that really show a-net isnt in the business of pay-to-win-a-week microtransaction store nonsense.

[Locke cole]

Where can I check whether or not my computer is capable of running the thing?

[Arcanum]

Where can I check whether or not my computer is capable of running the thing?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/services/faq/


Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better
Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3 OR AMD Athlon 64 X2, or better
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI X1800, Intel HD 3000, or better (256 MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
25 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

[Locke cole]

Damn. My Windows partition doesn't have enough space availible. Probably would have to uninstall TF2 to try it.

[Ryong]

So, after a while:

On Maguuma, playing my human guardian, going with a burn everything build. Currently level 12. Crafting skills are armorsmithing (27) and I'll get cooking later.

[Locke cole]

I think I've officially run out of time to finally continue my attempts to complete Nightfall.

[Arcanum]

Just hit level 28, and joined the Durmand Priory in my personal story. It was actually a tricky choice on which order to choose, 'cause in the missions leading up to the choice you choose between plans proposed by members of two of the orders, and every mission I chose a different order because that proposed plan seemed like the best option at the time.

Still, The Vigil seems very "hulk smash" with their ideas and tactics, which is silly most of the time. And while I love the ideas behind the Order of Whispers (subterfuge, guiding the nations to cooperation, gathering information) I find they are too passive. So I chose the Priory, which means I'll be raiding tombs and hopefully wielding interesting artifacts and weapons.

Also I'm a crafting addict. Tailor just hit 90, and jeweler is around 45, but I have a whole bunch of gems and copper sitting in my storage just waiting to be crafted. I have a deal set up with a friend who chose Artificer and Cooking where I give him all my cooking and artificer related materials, and he gives me all of his jeweler and tailor materials.

[Azisien]

Okay folks, can anyone sell me on this game? I like the no subscription thing and playing with lots of friends, BUT

I really don't like MMOs, or never for long. They are always addiction first, quality second. And every MMO comes out claiming to be different or the next step. Is Guild Wars 2 a new step in the genre? Does it play pretty much like every MMO ever (tied to latency, lazily hitting 1,2,3,4 on your keyboard to chain abilities until X thing is dead)?

I am genuinely curious because the whole dynamic world and huge-ass PvP battles and invasions seems pretty neat. I was considering getting headstart access free from work but I want to finish up Sleeping Dogs.

[Locke cole]

Well, the first game really couldn't focus on addiction, because its patrons pay for it once. Addicted or no, Anet doesn't get any more of their money after the initial purchase, unless they go for extra character slots, or one of the added campaigns (the added campaigns being standalone themselves).

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Watch various aspects of the game, azi. All it really boils down to. Open world or not it is a mmo first and foremost, much moreso than the first guild wars. With that said, they have pretty much thrown away the holy trinity. Everyone pulls their weight across every aspect of the fight.

Crafting isnt a pjnishing grind. Gathering mats isnt a chore. World vs world is a blast and brings tangible benefits to your server. The game is very streamlined and up front with what it is. I dont feel cheated out of my money at all. I feel i get more than my money's worth already because i know they arent designing the game solely for end game raiding and other bullshit. In short: j dont feel like i payed for a whole game and only have half. What it brings to the table isnt exactly spanking new, but it is a goddamn polished product.

But yeah, in the end it is your money. Watch videos, read our posts. Weigh your boredom of mmo's against the research.

[Arcanum]

Okay folks, can anyone sell me on this game? I like the no subscription thing and playing with lots of friends, BUT

I really don't like MMOs, or never for long. They are always addiction first, quality second. And every MMO comes out claiming to be different or the next step. Is Guild Wars 2 a new step in the genre? Does it play pretty much like every MMO ever (tied to latency, lazily hitting 1,2,3,4 on your keyboard to chain abilities until X thing is dead)?

I am genuinely curious because the whole dynamic world and huge-ass PvP battles and invasions seems pretty neat. I was considering getting headstart access free from work but I want to finish up Sleeping Dogs.

Oh you poor soul, you really know nothing about GW2, do you?

Well first off, about addiction vs quality, like Locke said you only pay once for the game, so keeping you addicted doesn't really do much for A-net. I'm not saying there isn't addiction, because I sure as hell am addicted to it, but it's addiction through quality. There are a lot of great things, like massive boss fights in almost every zone, even the starter areas. And even smaller things, like being able to deposit all the crafting materials in your inventory to your bank from anywhere at any time (there's also a bank tab dedicated to all of your crafting mats, so they don't take up regular storage space).

Also, the game is in no way pay-to-win because the gem store only offers cosmetic items, and certain PvE only items that are entirely optional (a salvage kit guaranteeing the retrieval of upgrades, a stone that instantly revives you, a kit that repairs your armor that you can use anywhere instead of finding a repair npc, an item that puts the stats of one weapon onto the skin of another). And even at that, there are chests (like TF2 crates) that drop randomly but you can get keys from completing an area (doing all heart-quests, finding all waypoints, points of interest, vistas) or from doing your personal story. Same thing with transmutation stones. So you don't ever have to buy anything from the store.

As for latency, yes it has some effect, but the Beta Weekends were pretty solid. I say beta weekends because the launch has had some lag hiccups, but hey it's an MMO launch and there have been surprisingly few issues. I expect it to stabilize within a week and lag should be pretty much a non issue. I say a week because this is just the headstart weekend, and more people will be jumping on from Tuesday until the end of the week once the game hits retail, so there might be additional hiccups.

Lazily going through your skills is also not a thing, because if you just stand there cycling through your skills, you are going to die (unless you're with a group and you are extremely lucky/skilled at not drawing aggro). I've been playing with friends here, soloing there, and all the time I'm dodging, laying down AoEs (you actually choose where to lay them down. After activating the skill your mouse changes into an AoE ring and you click to cast the spell/skill at a location) and using my crowd control abilities. Also, as a staff-wielding elementalist, I'm constantly cycling through my elements to either lay down more damage, drop some healing effects, inflict certain conditions, or using more CC.

Not to say all fights are like that. There are some, usually when you're reaching the level cap for an area**Different areas within a zone/map have different level caps that you get scaled down to when you enter them so you can play with lower level friends without destroying everything in one hit. But still, a level 30 scaled down to level 16 will be stronger than a level 16, since you're just scaled down and not capped at X.** and fighting random mobs between events or heart-quests, where you just do the same combo of 1, 2, 3, 2, dead. Also, just a reminder, you don't have a basic auto attack in the regular sense, but the first skill on your bar acts as that auto attack (and melee weapons have a chain attack, where the first attack does X, second attack does Y, third does Z, usually involving conditions or buffs in addition to the damage). And on that note people using melee will have to be even more aware and active, since they're at the most risk of taking damage, especially against bosses.

Another selling point would be the relative lack of a grind. The Exp requires to your next level sort-of plateaus once you hit level 20. It still goes up with every level, but you will, earn every level after that in about the same amount of time.

e- Also, in addition to what Skweeb said, if you want I can do a livestream some time so you can see the game in action raw, and not filtered through some youtuber's commentary. (Although the yogscast and totalbiscuit do have some good GW2 videos from the betas, there are a bunch of things they said that I would disagree with)

[synkr0nized]

So

They upped the level cap to 80 from GW's 20. I guess that's cool, and it allows them to make a set number for the traits system (numbers-wise, similar to the talent system in WoW, though that's changing tomorrow). Eventually you'll learn all your skills anyway, just like the first game, so no worries there. And level doesn't matter in PvP, as they'll just toss you them all and treat you as an 80. Nice.

The grind for levels is a little awkward in some ways. I find myself wandering around in areas and not having the level to do my next story mission. HOWEVER, they've done an immensely immersive thing, in my opinion, and done away with NPCs with quest exclamation marks over their heads. Instead, you weave through zones, exploring the map, finding new areas, and uncovering new tasks that need to be done to gain the praise of notable NPCs and groups. This is terrific, as essentially you are in fact doing side quests as you did in Guild Wars, but it's completely fluid with you walking around. And any progress you make in one area is preserved when you go back if you choose not to finish it.

On top of that, additional quests pop up in the form of events, such as escorting some NPCs, holding off an attack, or defeating a champion.

So, as a result, what happens is you start your character's personal story and end up fluidly and smoothly, at least as far as an RPG/MMO is concerned, aiding NPCs and exploring and leveling and growing together as a whole package.

I have had some annoying slowdown once past 10 in the various starting areas, so at times I am repeating events and pop-ups to hop up a level or two and move to another area, but thankfully you can gate-travel to another starting area and tackle a whole new set of exploration and quests. And content scales appropriately -- if you head into a low-level area, you may be scaled down to account for that; item rewards should scale to you.

Crafting is neat, but it is still clunky, in my opinion, in that you definitely need to try material combinations to discover new recipes/patterns. That said, I love that whenever you queue up multiple items it goes into, like, warp speed. That's terrific.

I miss monks and ritualists.


The skill system makes sense once you get used to it. I had to really break myself of the GW mentality of "ok, I pick all 8 of my skills and set my attributes for whatever I am doing" and re-align to the idea of selecting my weapon(s) for the first half and then customizing for the others. I really hope I don't fuck up my trait selection for the skills I end up using, but thankfully that can all be redone whenever. I am also having to drop the WoW mentality of "these are the primary skills on priority for the spec you are playing" and more assess the situation. While I haven't had the pleasure of playing in an organized group setting, I have certainly seen how you can support others, burn down a foe, gather aggro and defend, and even provide healing regardless of class (Ele has some great support options in the water spells). The system felt a bit foreign at first, I must admit, but at least for now I feel like it's a dynamic, "realistic" way to get every class involved in combat and moving in and out of battles quickly and easily. It seems like MMOs are often trying to run away from the "trinity", and perhaps this gets at that a bit.



edit: Oh yeah, if Anet is at all how they were with GW, they certainly will make use of microtransactions to generate profit/funding for the game that subscriptions would otherwise handle, but none of it will have an effect on your characters' strengths, potency, or the like in-game. So unless Perfect World buys Anet no one should worry about Pay To Win.

[Arcanum]

So I'm 100% convinced the Tengu will be a playable race some time in the future. South of Kessex, west of Lions Arch, and east of the Sylvari starter area, there are massive, ancient stone walls. The area beyond those stone walls looks to be the size of the other cities. Also, there are gates with Tengu guarding them, and when you talk to them they basically tell you that's their city, and that soon they must decide on who to fight and who they will ally with.

Also if Anet never makes Quaggan playable I will be very sad.

[synkr0nized]

hahah
Me, too.

I have been wondering about the Tengu ever since I saw an NPC one. That's neat. I need to explore a little more, then.


Also I am totally idling in a city right now, and I am standing at a part of the ground where it differs in height. Instead of putting my character all at one height and/or clipping a foot through the ground, the game engine actually puts one foot up on the higher part like you would naturally. The little things in this game are nice.

[Ryong]

I read about the height thing a few days ago and it used a pretty awesome way to detect stairs and stuff so you don't clip through the steps.

I agree about tengus and quaggans becoming playable races.

My only annoyance so far is that I'm not a fan of most of the heavy armor. Would really like to have some scale or plate instead of just all chain mail, all the time.

[Arcanum]

Ryong, go to Lion's Arch, at the south of the map, dead center, there are about 6 or 7 merchants all in a line. Those are the dungeon armor vendors. Go to each one, click on the exotic tab, then right-click on every heavy piece of armor and choose "preview." Then be blown away by the awesome armor selections.

Also, make sure you talk to karma vendors, and preview the armor some of them sell to see if you like the look.

There's also cultural armor in the home cities that you can check out.

But still, yeah, the first 30-40 levels you are stuck with some shitty looking armor most of the time.

[Toast]

My only annoyance so far is that I'm not a fan of most of the heavy armor. Would really like to have some scale or plate instead of just all chain mail, all the time.

From what I can tell that type of stuff comes later. I'm only lvl 15, and though I haven't come across a whole set yet, I do have a nice pair of Scale Gauntlets (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Einhander/Guild%20Wars%202/gw147.jpg).

But still, yeah, the first 30-40 levels you are stuck with some shitty looking armor most of the time.

I kind of disagree, although it is a matter of personal taste. I really like the look of most of the armor that I've seen so far (the human/norn female light starter armor notwithstanding (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Einhander/Guild%20Wars%202/gw133.jpg)), but I can't stand most of the dungeon armors. They're too busy and aren't all that appealing to me.

Even though I'm not wearing this set anymore, I think this (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/Einhander/Guild%20Wars%202/gw134.jpg) is pretty awesome for heavy armor.

[Arcanum]

Well my experience with early level armor is solely with light armor, and there is a set of light pants that look like my male character is wearing a skirt. Some of the low level light armor can look alright, but most of it is pretty awful.

[Ryong]

Norn heavy armor includes kilts. Some Seraph-issue heavy armor also includes kilts.

And Toast, I got stuck with the shittiest looking chain shirt ever, hence my annoyance. I have to take a screenshot of my character now since he's basically wearing all scale.

Edit: So yeah this is what my character looks like now. (http://imgur.com/Vgldy) I haven't found a new decent shield, too.

Edit Edit: Any of you in Maguuma have weaponsmithing? I need some new weapons, lvl 25~30.

[Arcanum]

Did some dungeoning. The level 40 dungeon is super duper easy compared to Ascalonian Catacombs. However, explorable mode is still ridiculously hard. The group I'm playing with is convinced that explorable mode was meant to be played by level 80s. Sure you're scaled down to whatever level, but being just level 35 or 45 is not enough. We managed, through a lot of effort, to beat the Howler King path (Hodgins' plan) in Ascalon Catacombs, but the Colossus path was impossible at one point (basically, fuck defense objectives).

Also, Caudecus' Manor in explorable mode (the missing butler path) seemed easy at first, but then took a massive difficulty dive in the later half. The armor repair costs just weren't worth the rather small payoff.

Gonna give Twilight Arbor a try tomorrow.

In other news, I fought The Shatterer yesterday. Those of you who saw the early GW2 previews will know about this crystal dragon minion. I was 7 levels below him at the time, but that didn't stop me from throwing fireballs at his face. It was a pretty awesome fight.

[synkr0nized]

Totally awesome that you're doing dungeons already. I am close to the level cap for the Ascalon Catacombs one on a couple characters.
I mean, I get that many people are leveled that high overall, what with the whole weekend to play, but I have been playing each class a bit to get a feel. I should really stop trying to simultaneously level multiple characters, but I also don't want to leave my real-world friends behind.

I'm going to lose so much time this week, though. I am going to Hawaii for about ten days, which means I'll probably be 10-20+ levels behind everyone when I return.

[Ryong]

Did AC completely today. Back in beta we couldn't kill the last 3 bosses - lovers kept kicking our asses and we never fought the necromancer or the king - so that was nice.

Need to get started on making my level 35 equipment since I'll be using most of it 'til 45 ( 'cause +condition damage ) so I have to go murder a fuckton of spiders. 40 small venom sacs will take a while to grab AND I need to find someone to make a lvl 35 torch...

[synkr0nized]

In some ways, the Personal Story feels like a sideline item. The jumps in levels between sections emphasize more exploration and questing. While currently I'm totally fine with that, it has weakened the story for me due to waiting to weave together elements that should flow together sequentially as a whole.
edit: I mean, in the first one the exploration and discovery in zones was mostly a means to get you to the next storyline. Unless you were really interest in exploration titles and vanquishing, it was very typical to only uncover what was needed for the story/plot portion you were currently working on, going from mission to mission via the necessary outposts and instanced exploration areas in between. Here I have no feeling that the world I am exploring and the things I am doing in the missions have any connection aside from sharing a few key locations.

This may be a side effect of having to stretch the personal story and major NPC stories across 80 levels instead of merely 20 levels (as leveling was in many ways just the tutorial portion of Guild Wars, despite the much slower XP gains in Prophecies).


I love running into an event in an area and seeing tons of other players show up to help kill the big bad guy or protect the NPCs. I used this word already but "fluid" really does describe many aspects of PvE gameplay.

[synkr0nized]

I'd also like to go on record to state that what they do with "cutscenes" in story missions is really, really lazy. The artwork is nice, sure, but fffff just two characters standing around in front of art is dumb as shit.

[Ryong]

I took ages to level so I'm level 39 with 47 hours while Arcanum got to 80 in 83. OHWELL.

But yeah, one more level left 'til my build starts working right and everything is always on fire forever.

[synkr0nized]

This is very important.


What server(s) are you all / a majority using?
I have a couple friends on two servers at the moment and am in a guild that is on one**, and I want to sort out my account's "home" server while they still allow us to alter it without paying money.


** I am not tied to this guild, but one of my closest friends is the one who got me in it. As guild perks seem to not work when I am on a different server (chose another server during the headstart to play with some other friends), such as the guild bank and the like, I am leaning towards moving in their direction. But I don't know them, so I'd love to hear where NPF settled.

Is it Sorrow's Furnace?

[Ryong]

Me and Arcanum are on Maguuma. That's all I know.

Edit: Also, got to 49. Been leveling like crazy, but not anywhere close to certain people who are already at 80.

[Arcanum]

The more I play this game, the more I'm impressed. Just, like, the little details here and there that make the world even more awesome. But also there's quite a few flaws. Some story missions are bugged, a lot of events in the later areas are bugged, and certain zones have bugged hearts or skill points. Still, despite those flaws (they are scattered out enough that they aren't that big of a deal) I'm constantly being impressed, which is a great thing. I wish I could go more into details but 1) spoilers (don't want to ruin some things for you folks) 2) I've been binging on GW2 for a while now and some things are just a blur (2 hours of sleep doesn't help).

One thing I will say is that the dungeons keep getting more amazing. Ascalon Catacombs was meh, Caudecus Manor was pretty great, as was Twilight Arbor. But oh man, Sorrow's Embrace and the Flame Citadel. Not only the plot, but also some of the encounters and especially the boss fights are amazing. The final boss fights especially. It's not just "hit this thing until it dies" and that's all I'll say on the matter ;).

Also, once you start going to Orr (the 70+ zones in the far south) there are no more heart quests. It's just all event chains, and it really feels like a constant war being waged, and it's pretty great. It also helps that the environment design is superb.

[Ryong]

I must say I wasn't much of a fan of Harathi Hinterlands and some of Bloodtide Coast - goddamn labyrinthine design for a couple of vistas in the latter - but then I went to blazeridge mountains and goddamnit that was nice.

[Arcanum]

Mount Maelstrom and the Frostgorge (I think that's the name, the level 70-80 are in the north) are my favorite areas in the game. In the former you get to fight a Megadestroyer inside a freaking volcano. The latter is just absolutely beautiful, and you get to explore some Kodan ships, which is great.

In other news, caught up with my personal story. I'm now on the last mission, but I'm waiting until I 1) do all the previous dungeons (the last mission is the last dungeon) and 2) they fix the endgame loot drop (some people have been getting level 30 blue items instead of the stuff you're supposed to get). Still, the missions in Orr, at least the path(s) I chose, are amazing. Some are a little mundane, but others are just mindblowingly amazing. That's all I'll say on the matter, so as to avoid spoilers.

In somewhat less spoilery talk, what order did you all chose to side with? Personally I went with Durmand Priory, and I am so glad that I did. Every order pairs you with a companion/mentor npc for a while, and the Priory companion, Sieran, is my favorite character in the entire game. She is one of the main reasons I got emotionally attached to the story. I'm curious to know if any of you felt something similar with the companion characters of the other two orders.

[Ryong]

I went with the Vigil, who pairs you up with Forgal, a badass grandpa norn. Some parts of the story could've been handled better.

[Toast]

I just joined the Order of Whispers, but I haven't done any missions for them yet, so I don't know who I'll be paired with.

[Marc v4.0]

Me and Arcanum are on Maguuma. That's all I know.

Edit: Also, got to 49. Been leveling like crazy, but not anywhere close to certain people who are already at 80.

I'm derping around Maguuma as well

[Wizardcat]

Picked the Order of Whispers, got Lightbringer Tybalt Leftpaw as my partner. He's got pretty much the same horns as I do, which is kinda odd. Somewhat goofy engineer. Don't mind him, but he's pretty terrible in combat.

I'm over on Fissure of Woe with one or two people from the RP section.

[Ryong]

So I hit 80 and am now going to save up infinity money for armor that doesn't look terribad.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

I have made it a long-term goal to have every single priory's historical weapon after reaching 80. Tablets encased in crystalglass stuff? Shit's so cash. Saw the Priory NPC's wieldin various such themed weapons and I had to have 'em.http://i49.tinypic.com/332ukpy.png

[Bells]

I heard so many positive things about this game that i'm actually considering dropping the cash for it later this year, since there is no monthly fee and it seems pretty boss and unique of a game.

So, can you guys give me the quick rundown of your experience playing it? And is the NPF folk here playing together or in a guild or something?

Just Give me the "For Nooblets" sumary!

[Flarecobra]

So toying with the idea of picking this up. Do you think it's worth it to get into it now, or wait a bit?

[Ryong]

The economy already seems to have settled and so far the game's been great, so I'd say there's no reason to wait. I know Guardians have a few traits that aren't working, but other than that everything seems to be fine. Oh WvWvW may have a bugged place, or so I heard.

[Flarecobra]

How much is the the program, typically?

[Magni]

You can purchase it for $60. Or get an upgraded version for $80 or the collector's edition for $150.

You can purchase directly from the Guild Wars 2 website. First two options are digital downloads. So if you don't care about having the box you can be playing once it's downloaded and registered.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Or purchase the standard edition and upgrade to deluxe edition in-game with gems converted from in-game money.

Slow, but entirely feasible!

[Flarecobra]

Yeah, I think I'm going to hold off for now.

[synkr0nized]

http://home.comcast.net/~synkr0nized/screenshots/gw091.jpg

So we're meant to be able to join friends even if we're not on the same server, either via Overflow or just joining temporarily. I keep reading about it, but I've moved to Crystal Desert with a group of four or five friends and a guild and have not tried it myself. Hopefully this means regardless of not being on the server(s) several of you mentioned we can still party.

Now that the game has been out for a bit, any of you who are not done with it after the initial hype and screwing around that are actually playing should let me know (I may be taking the lack of bumps to this thread too literally). We can go explore jumping puzzles and fight branded together, etc.! synk.6907

[synkr0nized]

If I am the only one who's going to post about this game, I will take up that white mantle!


There are a lot of very cute NPC interactions and fun little things -- I hesitate to call them easter eggs -- that are easy to skip over if you're the type who just charges ahead to the next quest or event. Perhaps I should head back to some of them and post about them here for fun.

Examples include children playing games and referencing events in the game, a certain pipe organ, some humming and singing, etc.
This is in addition to all of the neat jumping puzzles scattered throughout the zones.


The details in the game are terrific. For example: even if you're underwater the mail bird comes flying by all the same, complete with a trail of bubbles in the water.

[Flarecobra]

Question, is the game (Digitally) giftable? A couple friends of mine were looking into it, and from what I can tell, it isn't... am I doing it wrong?

[Bells]

i'll bet on a End-year sale and try to get it a tad cheaper... every one makes this game sound really worth it's cash.

[Ryong]

I'd totally be here chatting about my flamethrower-using, double grenade-chucking charr engineer is fucking great or how I need some 5g to finish my guardian's level 80 exotic armor set, but no, I'm too busy getting swarmed with everything now that classes are back.

I am annoyed, however, that since my classes started Guardian traits still haven't gotten their tooltips fixed nor do a lot of them even work.

[synkr0nized]

Question, is the game (Digitally) giftable? A couple friends of mine were looking into it, and from what I can tell, it isn't... am I doing it wrong?

It's my understanding, from what I remember doing at my own purchase and looking at the emails I have, that the email used to make the digital purchase will get sent a valid serial and order number. You do not have to use this email when creating the GW2 account [unless it is the email used for a GW1 account you wish to tie to the GW2 account].

So, if person A wants to "gift" it to person B, person A would make the purchase on buy.guildwars.com, get the email with the serial, and forward the serial to person B. Person B can then go to register.guildwars2.com and use that serial at the first step of account creation; step 2 will allow them to enter their own email and information.

Person B's email should then be the one that is used for account authentication and validation.



If this causes you worry, you can always just order a retail copy from anywhere.

[synkr0nized]

Hmm, I guess my tailoring has advanced to the "ridiculous shoulders" tier.

http://home.comcast.net/~synkr0nized/screenshots/loltier01.png


Oh, no, wait...


http://home.comcast.net/~synkr0nized/screenshots/loltier02.png

[Marc v4.0]

Well, you can at least show off your sweet tats

[Ryong]

I haven't been playing because I usually play MMOs with some specific friends and none of them bought GW2 so.

[synkr0nized]

Well, you can at least show off your sweet tats

Interestingly [maybe?], they are actually a part of the armor.
Now, if she was norn, perhaps!



Also this armor set is even more ridiculous in "cutscenes" in personal story missions, especially when your character's facing left.




In any case, I am so very glad they kept mesmer. Keeps me hopeful that I may see ritualist in the future.
But it's tough playing one character. I am such an alt-o-holic.


@Ryong: I know how that goes. I had a few friends make noise about this at headstart, convince me to go ahead and buy it instead of waiting, and then stop playing like two weeks ago... I mean I will enjoy it regardless, but I was looking forward to shenanigans.



I have only run dungeons a couple times, but I have been having fun filling people in on the lore they didn't get by both a) not reading the books and b) skipping, like, all dialogue. I am such a lore nerd, even when it's shitty lore (note: some of GW 1 / 2 is pretty dumb, but there're still plenty of positives to the stories). Mesmer has been great in the dungeon groups, too, though, so it's also really fun. I have to work a bit more on my thief skills in dungeons.

[shiney]

synk!

I play this game~ I'm on server Devona's Rest. I heart it muchly.

I'm a level 65 Rogue and I only just learned I can have two crafting professions. .__. I also have a level 20 Norn Necro who has gained his last 13 levels through the power of jewelcrafting (level 312 at this point hoho).

God this game is fun, I don't even care. Rai plays a Guardian and we run around causing hell. We three manned a champion yesterday through the power of kiting and constantly reviving whichever one of the three got downed.

What server are you on? It is my understanding that, at least in the early stages, we can server transfer for free? We have made exactly zero friends on our current server, it'd be neat to join up with people we somewhat know.

Also, nobody ever wants to do dungeons on my server. I've never set foot in a single one.

We just did a section of the personal quest where we met up with Avatar of the Pale Tree and participate in a premonition of going to Orr and got to learn about a lot of the lore that otherwise has been skipped apart from the occasional book that is always placed in some idiotic locale that has nothing to do with anything.

[Magni]

I'm on Yak's Bend with a small group of friends, several of which also played RaiRO. People do dungeons a lot on Yak's. We haven't gotten to the point of doing them in explorable yet. I think I've only done three of the dungeons. Usually I'm more concerned with murdering dragons.

[Arcanum]

Just going to take this moment to shamelessly advertise the guild my friends and I started. We're over on Maguuma and we regularly do WvW and clear dungeons. In fact we've recently gotten into doing "full dungeon clear" events where we blaze through every explorable path for a dungeon in one sitting. We also have a website (http://loveengine.enjin.com/home) (although not many members use it) and a mumble server (pretty much has people in it at all times). One of my friends got lucky and won the grand prize for a contest the enjin site had, so the website and mumble server are free :D (for a year, I think).

So you should all hop over to Maguuma and join The Lusty Order of the Very Erotic [LOVE], and bring your friends too! Because we need more active members.

Also, one of our members bought Commander status, so in WvW we will have the power of the zerg.

[shiney]

If I had enough gems to transfer 3 accounts I'd hop servers, buuuut I don't have either the gems or the cash. Oh well.

[shiney]

Pretty easy to farm karma doing those repeating events at the ranch in Queensdale. Does the karma reward go up higher if you do top end events or is it usually ~200 per?

[Magni]

In Cursed Shore you usually get ~350. There are a few events that kind of roll into each other in a nice fairly repeatable circle. Good for loot, too. I believe the highest rewarded events are in WvW.

And if gems are an issue you can convert gold into gems. No real money needed. Just time!

[shiney]

Yeah, just....that's a lot of gold. :B

[shiney]

Apparently world transfers may still be free until populations settle? I'm not 100% sold on my current world but I'd like to know I'm ending up somewhere with real people who play regularly before making any kind of real decision. Anyone willing to accept a traveler in the event I switch around?

[Magni]

I'm sure everyone here on the forums would be more than willing to take you in. We've usually got at least 5 people on. We're considering recruiting but at the moment it's a small group of 10 or so, some of us are distracted by Borderlands 2.

If you hop on to Yak's Bend feel free to join up with us. Not sure if the denizens of RaiRO will scare you off, but they were all minor players. Hardly ever in the heated drama fests that took place.

[synkr0nized]

Apparently world transfers may still be free until populations settle? I'm not 100% sold on my current world but I'd like to know I'm ending up somewhere with real people who play regularly before making any kind of real decision. Anyone willing to accept a traveler in the event I switch around?

They are still free, but they are limited to once a day to cut down on folks hopping for WvWvW.

I am still on Crystal Desert. Apparently this server has one of the largest amalgamation of LGBT and LGBT-friendly players in the community. This has no real effect on the game, but it seems to come up in LA chat often. In any case, map chat is typically friendly more than anything, and I play regularly. One of my friends is usually on a decent amount in a week, but the other two that rocked out during launch have kind of disappeared.

I would welcome having a couple more people to play with, so let me know.

If you decide to head to where others are, that's cool -- I may end up following then**. The guild I am in currently has kind of faded out. They used to have 20-40 people on at times, but now it's normally 1-5. The leadership, who are the only ones who can start guild projects, also seem to be absent all the time.

** It will depend on if I can get my good friend to come with me and/or if joining cross-server ever becomes trustworthy.

Speaking of that, in the mean time, we should friend one another and at least try out that feature.





Halloween seems kind of fun so far, but the introduction of lockboxes pushing of black lion chests for skins has me worried that GW2 is secretly being run by Perfect World.

[Arcanum]

So I just found out that you can play a dungeon with people from different servers. You just get into the same party, all go outside the dungeon on your own server, and then someone goes in and it prompts everyone to join (or at the very least you walk up to the door and it prompts you to join the party session).

So despite being on different servers we can play some dungeons together. I'm "Arcanum Torvin" so feel free to add me.

Also, loving Act 2 of the Halloween update. Some fun mini games, a new area filled with halloween events, and a jumping puzzle that is devilishly hard (and super addicting).

[synkr0nized]

The Clock Tower is amazing.


Also there's a beta FOV option you can use by adding -testVerticalFov to the end of a GW2 shortcut. This should appease many widescreen gamers, though I have experienced no headache or issues with the default FOV. Comparing screenshots side-by-side (same characters, same spots/angles), it almost looks like it's just a zoom-out difference, but I know that's not actually what's going on. The extra visibility may be nice.

[synkr0nized]

oh man

The crying about the Clock Tower jumping puzzle is even sweeter when you've completed it many times.


I really should stop reading the forum of an MMO. So much whining all the time, regardless of game.

[Arcanum]

oh man

The crying about the Clock Tower jumping puzzle is even sweeter when you've completed it many times.


I really should stop reading the forum of an MMO. So much whining all the time, regardless of game.

I've gotten a full stack of ToT bags from doing the tower over and over again (a lot of those were because I was helping guildmates). It's so much fun. It's even more fun summoning two elementals to obstruct people's view and make them rage even harder.

[synkr0nized]

So many people complain about norn and charr characters blocking their view.

So of course I logged onto an asura and did the puzzle in like a mere handful of attempts.



But, in fairness I guess, I love exploring terrain and jumping around. I am the type of person that makes developers input invisible walls to prevent exploration.



e: If this isn't edited and is in fact an honest video, hahahaahahahahahahaha:
1eCzRcwXJE8

[Locke cole]

*sigh* I wish I had enough space/power on my computer for this game.

[Revising Ocelot]

I did the puzzle after about an hour two nights ago on my 76 Charr. Before anyone else that had been grouped with me in the same instance. The howls of dismay were delicious.

[Arcanum]

'Cause I know there was some talk about this a while back:

Due to community concerns about the effect of free transfers on world versus world, starting on November 1 we are going to change how often players are allowed to transfer worlds. After the update, players will be able to transfer worlds once every 7 days instead of once every 24 hours. We are also actively working on getting the guesting functionality in place. Thank you for your understanding.

Also I remembered that the adding someone to your friend list is one-sided in this game, so if anyone added me just pm or mail me in-game or let me know your character name over NPF. I'd love to run some dungeons with you guys since we don't have to be on the same server to do so.

[synkr0nized]

Just look at your "Followers" tab in the friends pane. Folks who have friended you but that you have not added will appear here. edit: Like I should be there. We are both online, but I cannot see where you are or any details about your character. That means I am only "following" you rather than enjoying a two-way friendship. How could you. You monster.


Also



BY ODGEN'S HAMMER, WHAT SAVINGS!!

[synkr0nized]

Also also
I kind of really want the witch's outfit, but fffff it only can be used by one character at a time.

[Arcanum]

I spent 7 gold for the gems to get the Witch costume (well, wizard, since it's on my male character, but they still call it witch), and it was the best gold I've ever spent.

Also,

Just look at your "Followers" tab in the friends pane. Folks who have friended you but that you have not added will appear here. edit: Like I should be there. We are both online, but I cannot see where you are or any details about your character. That means I am only "following" you rather than enjoying a two-way friendship. How could you. You monster.


Did not know that. (yeah I hardly ever use the friend menu).

[synkr0nized]

They just popped a patch that will keep the haunted doors open for the remainder of the event due to their bugginess since the Mad King came through the fountain in LA Sunday afternoon.

So if you were having trouble getting into the Mad King's realm and exploring or doing the events inside there, etc. on your character or an alt, you should have no trouble now!



edit:
Also, as someone who's been moderating/admin'ing web communities for several years now, I really am disappointed in how things are moderated over there on their forum. Aside from Gaile and the devs that post, the customer service folks behind the generic "moderator" account and some of the other accounts really don't seem to be native English speakers, which doesn't help.

To be fair, though, MMO players fill a super wide range of personality types, and MMO forums are often rife with whining and horribly-formed arguments.



ALSO
Who wants to do dungeons or some shit this weekend? Let's make a playdate maybe.

[synkr0nized]

NPF Guild

- we can be in multiple guilds, so no one has to leave theirs
- we can chat across servers
- we could organize dungeon groups
- we could share leveling gear
- help each other with crafting

Names? Tags? Emblems?
Anyone else want to make this happen?

[Ryong]

I'm basically getting kicked from Arcanum's guild ( not that I chatted with people there much ) because I went inactive for a couple of weeks but I'm back again so...I'm down with it.

[Arcanum]

Well, the friends I started the guild with are taking it much more seriously than I ever thought they would (possibly because we won a free website for a year) so they kicked a lot of people who haven't been online in forever down to "probation" rank. Hell even I was kicked down from officer for a bit because I took a two week break from guild wars and having a somewhat inactive officer was "bad for the guild image."


Anyway, yes NPF guild should totally happen, especially since (like dungeoning) you don't have to be on the same server to be in the same guild.

[Revising Ocelot]

Hell even I was kicked down from officer for a bit because I took a two week break from guild wars and having a somewhat inactive officer was "bad for the guild image."

You've got to attend at least 4 raids a week, bring full consumables and you're not allowed loot until you pass trial. Quit being a slacker or we'll have to kick you.

[synkr0nized]

lol
I never brought shit to our raids.

I'm also glad I never played in a "hardcore" guild, 'cause fuck that nonsense.


Also back when I was super active in XoO in Guild Wars I was an officer of my division. But then eventually I got into arguments with the other leadership since I never was willing to schedule game time ahead of time. Real life always before game. That didn't jive so well.

And then the guild more or less fell apart anyway.



Anyway think of some cool names, lest you all be chained down by whatever travesty I come up with myself.
Like my goofing around guild I made for myself in GW1 was "Orrian Lifeguards [oops]".

[Ryong]

Nuklear Power Unlimited?

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

[NOPE] Not Our Problem, Eir.

Top of my head here. Whatever works best for NOPE but NOPE has my vote!

[synkr0nized]

Well we could always just use "Nuklear Power Forums Unlimited [NPFU]" to go along with the Steam Group.

I'm not really sold on "NOPE" and would like to have NPF/NPFU in the tag, but that's just my opinion.

Anyway, guild creation only costs 1 silver, so if I go through with something and folks don't like it**, it won't be the end of the world. In any case, I figure perhaps by this weekend I'll try to get as many NPF folks an invite to whatever name we end up using; it would be nice chat with you all in game instead of a few PMs, and then you don't have to friend me if you don't want me stalking you [shiney is totally lucky he's not on my server].

** not that I have to be the one who does it if someone has already or would prefer to lead a casual/chat guild.

[synkr0nized]

ok

Went with Nuklear Power Forums Unlimited [NPFU].

If you hate it, fine, it can be changed.

I only have a couple of you on my friends list and don't see any contact information in this thread, so only a couple of invites were sent out. Friend me or message me or whatever so I can invite you, or the couple of you who got one please toss invites to other NPF folks.

I don't expect this will be a guild for building up upgrades, so no worries about "you must represent, rarrgh". I just want to see us use it to keep in touch in-game, especially for cross-server shenanigans and NPF chat.

[Ryong]

I added you to my contacts list.

At least I think I did.

Doubt there's another Synk.

( I'm Niev btw )

So hey I got an elementalist to 20 and got annoyed because I died very easily and had to change to water to have decent healing and then I'd need to change back to have decent anything else and so on.

So now I'm playing a necromancer and it's tons of fun.

[synkr0nized]

I actually like that, when playing elementalist, I am swapping around all four elemental lines quite often. It's neat.


So, new content coming this Friday.
There is also new gear. It may be better than the current max gear. If so, that's very not-Guild Wars in style. I'm not so happy about that.


Edit:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

Whelp. So much for GW2 being a true sequel.

[Arcanum]

As much as I hate the idea of them bumping up the quality of end-game loot, the stat differences seem minimal thus making them completely unnecessary for regular play. The only thing you'll need Ascended gear for, in my opinion, is the new dungeon thanks to the new Agony condition, and even then it sounds like you only need the Agony resistance if you want to get as far as possible in the endless dungeon.

Also the reason Elementalist is better than every other class is because swapping through attunements almost non stop is way more fun than almost anything any other profession can do.

edit- What does bother me is that the article mentioned an "item progression initiative" which probably means there will be gear even better than Ascended stuff. I'm hoping if/when that happens they don't just boost the stats again, and instead give the gear a different type of slot (instead of "upgrade component" or "infusion") that will serve a different utility.

edit2- . Players will be able to acquire Ascended Rings in the Fractals of the Mists dungeon, and Ascended items worn on the back can be acquired through special Mystic Forge recipes.

So I guess there will only be rings and back pieces at first. I'm really hoping these back pieces are capes, but it will probably just be a stupid backpack (seriously, those guild backpacks were the worst idea A-net ever had. They need to bring back the guild capes).

[Ryong]

My problem at playing elementalist is that if you want to have a decent heal you have to go water attunement and do nothing but heal, but if you were in another element, you'd have killed whatever you were fighting already - outside of champions and such - so, yeah.

I mean I was used to playing my guardian with his stupidly good heals.

[Arcanum]

Well the way I play elementalist is to use Glyph of Restoration so I heal every time I attack to give myself some decent sustainability, and then switch to water to use a healing spell when I need actual healing (I use staff, so I have two healing AoEs at my disposal). I never activate my healing glyph unless I'm on the verge of death and unable to swap to water. Then I might use one or two of my other water attacks before switching away to earth or lightning to put on some bleed or do more damage, and then switch to the remaining attunement to drop another high cooldown spell before switching back to fire, which I use as my main damage dealer.

Basically, water is meant for healing and crowd control, so you don't want to spend too much time in that attunement. Swap in, drop your heal, swap out so the attunement will be off cooldown when you need another heal.

Also the ele has a lot of ways to make combos by him/herself. A nice way to get lots of healing is to put Arcane Wave in your utilities, and when you put down Healing Spring (#3 staff water skill) you activate Arcane Wave, and the blast finisher gives you AoE healing.

Most of the game I was specced a mix of Power and Healing and was pretty survivable with good killing power. At level 80 I'm rocking Power and Condition Damage armor, all Sapphire Jewelery (healing/power/toughness), and my traits are at 30 Fire, 10 Water, 20 Arcane.

[synkr0nized]

An aside, for the above conversation:
Also guardian is terrible to judge by sometimes. I can more or less stand still in fights as a guardian; actually a lot of the time I dodge just to toss out heals to other people [as I traited for that]. It was amusing logging over to my warrior last night and remembering "Oh, right, I don't regain health just for breathing".

I kite a lot on ele and mesmer in solo play, though the former has tons of control abilities and the latter has tons of ways to distract. Each are fun, but they definitely involve more movement than guardian. My ele is similarly traited [so far, she's only ~31] to make use of AoE heals as a staff user; swapping to water gives a regen, then I can toss down one, two, or both AoE healing circles and swap back to an offensive element or apply a snare. The arcane line is great just for the low-level trait that makes every attunement swap toss out a boon.


As much as I hate the idea of them bumping up the quality of end-game loot, the stat differences seem minimal thus making them completely unnecessary for regular play. The only thing you'll need Ascended gear for, in my opinion, is the new dungeon thanks to the new Agony condition, and even then it sounds like you only need the Agony resistance if you want to get as far as possible in the endless dungeon.

While I haven't done the math myself, it seems to have been shown fairly accurately in others' posts that the stat increase is pretty decent compared to an exotic with an upgrade attached. If the pattern for the ring posted in the teaser image holds true, there'll be significant boosts in body armor pieces and weapons.

However, we don't yet know all of the details of the infusion slots. It is entirely possible that the infusions won't have some of the neat procs and percent-chance effects, etc. of sigils and runes.

Regardless, only "needing" a higher tier of gear for a new dungeon doesn't prevent that tier of gear from being better for other parts of the game. You didn't need Tier 11 or 12 or 13 gear to do vanilla content, Outlands raids, or Northrend areas in WoW, but it sure made it waaaay easier. You don't need the current season's PvP set to play, but it certainly makes you more survivable than the previous one's. If you look at the numbers, the gear differences between a tier in WoW aren't super big [aside from patch changes like the introduction of Mastery]. This is exemplified better with the introduction of LFR level, normal level, and heroic level differences within the same tier. These changes are definitely very minimal, much like ascended vs. exotic appears it may be, but they are still noticeable and, especially when a whole set is gained, powerful together.

I will note that I don't think this will destroy GW2, but I don't think it's a good call. It worries me that only after a couple of months they are adding a new tier of equipment, albeit one that sounds like it will be released in multiple stages, and going against the Guild Wars philosophy on gear. I feel it's quite valid to assume they will add additional tiers at their discretion in the future now. For me, one of the biggest draws to GW was that I could be just as effective in basic max armor and blue weapons I mod'd as I could in full prestige/elite armors and rare gold skins. They even made this more true by shifting armor and weapon bonuses into insignias and pulling them out of the item itself.

We stopped Spectral Agony with infusion in the first game. That bonus could be applied to any armor you wished. But now we have to mitigate Agony with a unique set of armor. I can't help but nod when I read others linking this idea to Radiance in LotRO or spell resist armors in WoW. There are definitely similarities.

Overall, it's less that the ascended gear looks like some kind of redonkulous upgrade and more that it's a sign that this is what we can expect from GW2 as it grows and expands. If a few months is all it takes for them to add a new level of gear and stats in the base game, then why shouldn't we expect new tiers of gear with the next chapter/expansion? Or a level cap increase?

As far as it being a fun game or whatever, that won't really change. More character customization is always good, and I am excited to see if these ascended gear skins are cool [whenever we get to see visible pieces of gear]. But it's not really Guild Wars, especially if this is just the start.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

I read into this a little more and the 'infusion' gear is equivalent of current endgame gear. The stats from gems and such are baked in. The infusion slots are pretty much solely for that dungeon. So it isnt so much a kick to the teeth for people who dont have the gear. Just means the people who dont want to go in the dungeon wont fall miles behind the folk who do get the gear.

Like, they said an end game sword will be pretty much identical to an infusion sword. Nobody is losin out. Just a different option available to players who want a different challenge after getting bored of current dungeons so far.

Apologies if i've said what is already said. Typing between lab project steps.

I've grown bored of gaurdian, for the most part. The playstyle is fairly static. Mostly runnig engineer'cause it has pretty good durability and depending on the toolkits picked it can be just as dynamic as elementalist, if not moreso. Toss some condition grenades, drop a supply crate for turrets, whip out the flamethrower to lay down some burnin, throw some napalm, mines, swap to the pistols for more conditions, so on so on. J like being a jack of all trades. Might not excel in any field but am adaptable to any role.

[Arcanum]

I read into this a little more and the 'infusion' gear is equivalent of current endgame gear. The stats from gems and such are baked in. The infusion slots are pretty much solely for that dungeon. So it isnt so much a kick to the teeth for people who dont have the gear. Just means the people who dont want to go in the dungeon wont fall miles behind the folk who do get the gear.

http://i.imgur.com/yNjQn.png

The stats are better, albeit marginally. Plus we don't even know what kind of boosts Infusions will give, other than Agony resistance. Also the article said rare Ascended gear will have Agony resistance built into them (I'm hoping this would replace a stat in the "built in upgrade slot" bonuses, but who knows).


Also, synk, I agree that it's disheartening that A-Net is adding a new level of gear so soon. I really hope this doesn't become a constant thing, but that is a very, very faint hope.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

I still dont see what the stink is. More content is being made t a steady pace instead of letting vanilla content get srale boring and releasing new stuff when momentum is gone. If this turns out to be a flop i doubt anet would keep eating a dead horse.

E: i honestly prefer smaller more experimental content updates as opposed to large sweeping hugemongous updates. Smaller, relatively speaking, updates are quicker to get feedback on to see what sticks and what doesnt. At least with
his new dungeon i have something more to look forward to whenever i decide to get a character to 80.

At least they're trying new stuff. Helluva lot more than other games can claim.

[Ryong]

Everyone's annoyed about new gear tier, not the update itself.

[Arcanum]

What Ryong said. I'm super excited about the new area and the one-time event that will be happening this weekend (I'm hoping we'll get some info about Bubbles, the deep-sea dragon nobody knows anything about, since the Karka sound like some deep-sea shenanigans). Hell, I even like the idea of infusions, of having an alternative to the standard upgrade gems/runes. But adding a gear tier is something A-Net never did in the original GW, and was part of the charm. If ascended gear had the same stats as an exotic (even with the built in upgrade component) then it wouldn't be that big of a deal since Infusions are most likely just for the new dungeon (I hope. It will be even more disappointing if Infusions offer extra stat bonuses on top of Agony resist).

On the topic of content though, I'm hoping they keep up the "event every month" thing. We had Halloween, now we have Lost Shore, and next month will be Wintersday. If they have more content planned for January, then we'll have the Canthan New Year in February, another chance for new content in March, and then an Easter event in April. Lots of potential for non-stop monthly events, and it would be pretty damn awesome if they managed to pull that off.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

If ascended gear had the same stats as an exotic (even with the built in upgrade component) then it wouldn't be that big of a deal

The stat differences between ascended and exotic is so negligible it isnt even worth wasting the time and energy getting huffy over, really. We're talking 1 to 3 points difference. At level 80 the diminishing returns on stats makes the gear practically identical for all intents and purposes.

What is known about infusions is there are offense oriented, defensive, and omni. Offense goes to offense, defense to defense and omni swings either way.

[synkr0nized]

The stat differences between ascended and exotic is so negligible it isnt even worth wasting the time and energy getting huffy over, really. We're talking 1 to 3 points difference. At level 80 the diminishing returns on stats makes the gear practically identical for all intents and purposes.

We've only been shown a ring. Considering accessories usually have smaller stats numbers than main armor pieces, it's reasonable to assume there will be more of a difference comparing a chest piece to a chest piece, and there definitely will be a gap between weapons of both tiers.

Additionally, the difference is similar to the jump from rare to exotics that exists already. So, yeah, not so negligible.

But to reiterate myself, that alone isn't the end of the world, despite my dislike of it. The notion that they are going back on their claims, as seen in various quotes from the dev team about not doing what they are in fact doing with this tier introduction, is frustrating. To have the GW1 idea about gear be your foundation and then to brush it aside with this ascended gear idea is troubling. What starts as a seemingly-small stat boost can easily get out of hand, especially if this is just the first tier update.


Regardless, fighting a bunch of sea monsters in an ever-changing dungeon to get high-end loot may be cool, provided the dungeon mobs and mechanics aren't terrible.

[Arcanum]

What is known about infusions is there are offense oriented, defensive, and omni. Offense goes to offense, defense to defense and omni swings either way.

Yes, I know this, but "Offense" could be anything from +X Power to +X Whatever Vs Thing That Lives In Fractals of the Mists to %Chance to Make A Magic Hammer Uppercut an Enemy. Likewise defense could be +Agony Resist, +Stats, or +Damage reduction VS Thing That Lives In Fractals of the Mists.

I'm hoping infusions are not bonuses to Power or Toughness or other stats, because adding those bonuses on top of the built in bonuses makes it an even bigger betrayal of one of their fundamental design pillars.

e- Regardless, fighting a bunch of sea monsters in an ever-changing dungeon to get high-end loot may be cool, provided the dungeon mobs and mechanics aren't terrible.

On that note, I'm excited to see what the "every other level" encounters are. The ones that are "similar to The Shatter or Claw of Jormag."

[synkr0nized]

It made me think of Survival mode in Samurai Warriors, wherein you are advancing up levels in an infinite castle. Sure, eventually the floors are more or less the same, but it's somewhat randomly generated. And on certain numbered floors there are chances for special events.


I hope I can make time to be around for the Friday event. I want to be there when Lion's Arch gets all invaded and shit.
e: Maybe these Karka will rebuild the fountain for us as part of their oppression of the people.

[Ryong]

The stat differences between ascended and exotic is so negligible it isnt even worth wasting the time and energy getting huffy over, really. We're talking 1 to 3 points difference. At level 80 the diminishing returns on stats makes the gear practically identical for all intents and purposes.

What is known about infusions is there are offense oriented, defensive, and omni. Offense goes to offense, defense to defense and omni swings either way.

I saw some people freaking out about how that one ring has a lot more magic find and how 7% is an absurd amount of a magic find bonus...

Which is a lot less than most food made with Cooking gives you.

[Revising Ocelot]

Ascended doesn't bother me. Neither do exotics. I only have two or three rares at level 80, no point fussing over the unattainable. :smug:

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Hrm. I can now see a potential issue with Fractals dungeon.

Pro: any level can go in, as it works like wvw's sidekicking system. Lower level folk will really have to step up their game to survive and contribute.

Con: every successful fractal run adds a tally to the players, forcing a higher difficulty on the players for subsequent runs. Fractals polls the players and scales difficulty to the player that has the highest fractals 'score.' So..if one runs through a buncha times and wants to run with a guildy or friend who hasnt gone they're effectively challenge boned.

The gear doesnt irk me at all. Not very pleased about this ham-handed approach.

[Arcanum]

Hrm. I can now see a potential issue with Fractals dungeon.

Pro: any level can go in, as it works like wvw's sidekicking system. Lower level folk will really have to step up their game to survive and contribute.

Con: every successful fractal run adds a tally to the players, forcing a higher difficulty on the players for subsequent runs. Fractals polls the players and scales difficulty to the player that has the highest fractals 'score.' So..if one runs through a buncha times and wants to run with a guildy or friend who hasnt gone they're effectively challenge boned.

The gear doesnt irk me at all. Not very pleased about this ham-handed approach.

I was talking to a friend about this same problem, and he linked me to this article (http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/11/15/a-spoiler-free-jaunt-through-guild-wars-2s-lost-shores/)

Specifically:

Each time you beat three fractals, your difficulty scale will increase by one. If you're going in at a later time, you will be prompted to enter at the highest common difficulty. (So if you have unlocked level five but someone else in your group has only level two difficulty, you'll be unable to enter at anything above level two.) However, you always have the option of selecting a lower difficulty.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Oh. Miffed and irkitude gone in one swell foop!

[synkr0nized]

Yeah, ANet is pretty rad about not barring cooperation among players.

Also damn I am too poor to craft my exotics. dat ecto
And wow it'll take something like 23 daily runs of a dungeon's explorable paths to get an armor set. Yarr. I hadn't looked at these things before! haha

[Arcanum]

At least you're looking at that after they made the changes. Before it was 35 tokens for a first run, and 20 tokens after that. You don't even want to know how many CoF runs I did to get my headpiece, shoulders, gloves, and boots (gonna be getting Arah chest eventually maybe, and possibly CoE legs).

[Ryong]

The good news is that ecto is now easier to get so...

Edit: So, yeah, ecto now drops far more easily than before, but the price has gone up to 22s ( was 19s50c before ).

Stupid economy.

[Bells]

you guys really make me hope for a holiday price drop for this game...........

[Revising Ocelot]

My cunning plan for a bank alt hit a rock when I found I couldn't mail to my own characters.

So, this means I need to waste gold on buying gems to expand my bank/bag slots. What's the best way to approach this asides from running around Orr doing events?

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Events, hoarding vendor trash to sell in bulk, farm copper and other low level mats that always sell, or farm ecto to sell on market then convert gold to gems when the conversion rate is favorable to you.

That or buy gems / gem card.

[Yumil]

I always checked the markets on cloth/metal and the items that you can salvage for them(not just the scraps/metal trash but the armor as the scraps/metal trash were much more used by other marketeers, armor was almost never touched) and worked out whether buying/salvaging would be profitable.

Almost all the time they were. I quit playing for now, but a quick look at orichalcum and mithril on gw2spidy shows that they'd probably still be profitable buying white heavy armor 76-78(I never bought the 80 stuff as again people marketeering) and salvaging them with basic kits should still net a good profit. Cloth looks to be down to where I couldn't do anything with it, but if silk scraps get above like 16c it usually becomes worth it as the silk drops themselves normally get close to covering the costs at that point and gossamer brings it up into the profitable area(if buying armor in the 40-60c range).

Was time consuming, but I was doubling what I put in back at the start of the game on a daily basis. I stopped once I upgraded my account to the digital collectors, unlocked all bank tabs, unlocked 5 character slots, and unlocked all bag slots on one character. I still have 100g on my account to. Heck, leveled my first character to 80 on just crafting via the profit from this(well got him to 30 legit then did that).

Fun game overall. I'll come back after I have my fill of halo probably. Halo, LoL, work, and gf take most of my time now.

[Revising Ocelot]

Sounds like an idea, I'll check the prices once all these NPCs for the Lost Shores chains are unbugged. I've never really bothered to salvage anything.

That whole first event was a mess, what with having to put up with 10 second latency to fire off an autoattack at the Giant Enemy Crabs. If one went after you, you'd be dead before you knew it was actually going after you. At least WoW had the decency to crash the server on you if something got that bad.

Oh, and every time I changed maps I got bombarded by letters from that NPC next to the Forge in LA. Fun!

[synkr0nized]

So
I came home to be around for the kick-off event. About an hour before that, I went afk and sat in my recliner to watch TV.

I dozed off and missed the event by like 10 minutes. haha.

Oh well! Time to kill some crabs and put a Red Lobster in LA.


or to seriously consider trying to have the patience to flip on the trading post

[Revising Ocelot]

I dozed off and missed the event by like 10 minutes. haha.


You got the better deal, the event was... a damp squib.

[synkr0nized]

My cunning plan for a bank alt hit a rock when I found I couldn't mail to my own characters.

It's too bad I am on Crystal Desert, as that's where the guild bank "resides" as far as the game is concerned. Otherwise any of us could be trading to ourselves that way. I mean, I can, but that doesn't matter.


edit for above: Oh yeah? I have read that the first phase has a lot of bugs -- something I am beginning to feel is typical of this game; I don't remember having even half as many issues in-game in early Guild Wars, and I sure had a lot less I disliked about the game [though it's worth noting I still dig the game a lot, so that should say something about what they've "done right" by me] -- and parts aren't even completable yet?

[Arcanum]

So my account was banned for selling gold and/or items for real world money, which is complete and total horse shit. And this happened while I was in the middle of going through the Fractals dungeon with some friends. So now I get to miss out on the one-time events this weekend while A-Net takes forever to resolve my support ticket.

Fractals is absolutely amazing though.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

It's worth signing in to check your account status and looking at the sign-in history for anything out of the ordinary from time to time.

Also, if you have a smart phone hook up the google authenticator for GW2. Two seconds of 'inconvenience' is worth the extra layer of security in the long run.

[Arcanum]

It's worth signing in to check your account status and looking at the sign-in history for anything out of the ordinary from time to time.

That was the first thing I did (and I check every one or two weeks). And there was never anything out of the ordinary. And I never noticed anything out of place on any of my characters, so it's highly unlikely someone was using my account without me being aware of it.

My guess is that someone reported me for gold selling (either out of malice or dickishness) and A-Net couldn't be assed to actually look at who is being reported.

e- got my account back, surprisingly fast too.

[shiney]

My login is Saylen.5784 for anyone who wants to friend/etc. I am in the NPF guild thing too.

[synkr0nized]

Assuming I can add, I need to run Crucible of Eternity's three paths about eight times (i.e. do all three once a day for eight days) for the armor set.

I never see anyone running this / LFG in LA, though to be fair I'm often not paying attention to map chat or sticking around for too long in the city.

Is this one fairly reasonable to PUG, or do I need to seriously get my shit into some kind of PvE/dungeon guild?

[Arcanum]

I would love to tell you, but CoE is the only dungeon I haven't done anything with (my usual dungeon friends decided to run the story mode when I was offline, and I've never had a chance to do explorable with them.)

Still, if you need someone to fill out your party, just message me on steam ('cause I'm not on GW2 all that often) because I want one or two of the CoE pieces.

[synkr0nized]

Also I am considering buying another character slot and letting NPF drive a character I play in a SS "LP" of sorts. This is probably an awful idea, and I suspect only two or three people -- who already are playing the game -- would read it. Confirm/deny/mustard?

[shiney]

I've never done a single dungeon and would like to do some dungeons but my availability is limited to weekends. I am up for CoE or anything though honestly. Would like to do story mode for all the dungeons eventually...

The LP sounds fun. I would require you to do the most evil stuff possible at all times. I wish there were an evil path but it's all "fight the dragons" this and "help people" that.

[Bells]

Actually following current trends i would suggest you pick those 2-3 people, make a tiny guild and make a LP stream out of it, or even a "best momments" LP compilation

[synkr0nized]

I've never done a single dungeon and would like to do some dungeons but my availability is limited to weekends. I am up for CoE or anything though honestly. Would like to do story mode for all the dungeons eventually...

Yeah, me too. I have only done three of them. I have four 80s but have held off on the last personal story mission because of this. The last mission is actually the story path for the Arah dungeon, but I don't want to run it until I have completed the other story paths. I mean, I read the books and am pretty sure I know what's going to go down in all of them, but it would be nice to have seen it before getting the capstone of their tale shown to me.

I hate scheduling game time, but perhaps that's what we need to do so that we can have a mostly-full party for some dungeon running. I haven't been ultra-keen on PuG'ing (which is silly, I used to take ANYONE in GW1 into my party for missions and dungeons and was really laid back in WoW groups) and have kind of shied away from it so far. And the large guild that I mentioned before? Yeah, I'm lucky if two or three other people are on, and none of them represent the guild anymore. Why did I go to Crystal Desert, again?

Oh well. At least we have been beating Maguuma and Ebay in wubwub consistently.


Anyway, let's dungeon!!

[shiney]

I'll hit you up on Sunday or something since I have a lot of homework this week. We'll see if we can't wrangle two more. Nikki and I bring an 80 guardian (not specced spectacularly well, certainly not very tanky but with good staying power) and an 80 glass cannon thief.

[Arcanum]

Two more? Shiney did you forget about me already? I thought we had something special :(.

[Revising Ocelot]

I could help ruin your dungeon run considering I've only done one dungeon ever (the catacombsy place, story) and didn't get past the 2nd boss or so. 80 Warrior, can't remember what spec but definitely not the 5 sigil-lolfest of levelling.

Haven't played this for a while since hitting 80. I did a lot of WuvWuv while levelling, so now my 80 stats are probably worse than when I was scaled up to 80, so I'm not inclined to do much of that now. Mostly it was just sitting at the back shooting a rifle anyway, because running into melee range = splaaaaaat. And fuck running around Orr.

I mean, I COULD do the rest of the world and get 100% completion there, and get... what... two tokens for legendaries that I'll never ever use because fuck legendaries.

I think I preferred WoW to GW2.

[synkr0nized]

I think I preferred WoW to GW2.

That's not shameful. Despite both being an MMO, there are different enough approaches being taken to things that it's not really, in my opinion, a matter of weighing which is better so much as which aligns more with what you enjoy.

Additionally, I consistently tell people interested in learning about GW2 [read: everyone who has the misfortune of crossing my path] that I have just about as many complaints and butthurt about this game as I do likes and enjoyment.

So far it's still good enough to keep me from moving on and shelving it. That and I think I am like a bleeding-heart GW1 fanatic wishing to keep the dream alive.


And Sunday sounds like a good idea. That could be a nice day to relax and kill some AI in their digital faces. I've no idea how well my warrior or thief would do in dungeons, but I've tried not to make them glass cannon. My guardian and mesmer are great in groups, though.

[shiney]

Oh I'm 100% glass cannon. Pure precision/power/con damage. Every rune, every sigil, and my traits are specced explicitly to this end. It makes me die if I'm not careful, but I 'splode baddies if I am.

I enjoyed WoW a lot too but I like the fast action of this game. They are completely different MMOs.

[synkr0nized]

In this thread, a staff member basically admits their bot-detection is shit and/or automated scripts act on reports. (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/For-Great-Justice-over-and-over)