Guild Wars 2

Here I am, with only a few hours of gameplay on Guild Wars 2. 58 elementalist, 2 other characters under 20, and an extraordinary feeling that I’ve found the game that will NEVER END for me. It’s wonderful and terrifying at the same time!

GW2 is great because it offers so many options. When I ask people what to do next, they say “whatever you want.” They want me to treat it like Skyrim. (If that’s a fair comparison). An mmo with the mentality of a sandbox game….I. Have. Found. HEAVEN.

My fear however, is that I will miss something…I know that’s inevitable. The game is so big, there will be something that I miss, some minute little detail. However, my real fear is missing something BIG. The level up notifications help with that, telling me everything I unlock at different levels. But even beyond that, there’s so much more. How can I find everything in Guild Wars 2 so that I can get the most out of the game? When things change with patches, how do I adapt and find new features? (Aside from patch notes of course, I mean a bit more in depth). How can I ensure that my experience with this game is the best one possible? Speak from personal experience everybody, I’d love to hear your stories. Thanks so much for taking the time to respond and help me out here. I’m loving the devs, I’m loving the game, and I’m loving the community. Only ran into maybe five sour people out of hundreds.

Having been there since Beta, following the forums was certainly the best way to keep track of the new stuff as well as lots of information that might not be in the Wiki, but the Wiki is a great place to get up to speed on mostly everything.

This game has many dimensions and lots real estate to cover in those dimensions so really I wouldn’t worry about seeing everything and just wander in the direction that interests you the most at the moment. Oddly enough I did get bored as I had ‘been there done that’ in all the dimensions that interested me and I have been on sabbatical since the last Living Story ended. That did however take over two years so don’t worry about running out of stuff to do.

I would say Exploration was a big driver of mine. You can track your progress with Achievements which is a great way to get an idea and mark your progress in every dimension of the game. My first driving force was the World Completion achievement which lands you the “Gift of Exploration”, a vital part (one of many) to crafting a Legendary Weapon, which was one of my major drivers, Bling. There is lots of Bling in this game and collecting it can be a lot of fun.

Getting World Completion will take you almost everywhere, one of those places being WvW which is such a big dimension, many people do only that. For the most part PvP is not my cup of tea, but WvW ended up being a lot of fun for me and a major part of my GW2 experience. I would recommend mastering PvE a bit first as humans are nothing like what you face wandering around Tyria. I would also recommend getting a Voip system installed as WvW is an order of magnitude better when you can hear your commander and team mates. You do NOT need to have a mic if your worried about that. You will want to find a good guild to run with that matches your personality.

I am certainly in the minority, but I also had lots of fun crafting. Most see it as a pointless waste of time, but it was certainly significant for me and you can make a lot of gold, not to mention it’s required if you want Ascended gear.

There are five races all with distinct story lines to follow, and for the moment eight professions to master with a ninth coming soon. When I started I developed three characters in parallel so they could each take two professions and craft each others gear. Just coordinating that was pretty involved and interesting for me.

I think GW2Wiki will be your friend, since it will likely cover everything you want to know, plus fill in any blanks and provide easy access to lore. Also, if you google Dulfy, that is a well maintained website for mmo gaming, but in particular GW2, for anything new and for looking at galleries of weapon/armour skins.

There’s no answer to “how do I find everything”, since that statement alone covers too many topics to mention.

The advice pretty much any happy vet player will give is tou play the game your way and at your own pace to enjoy it. I’m currently replaying the game through alts with most of the UI turned off and already it feels like a new game again…

Join a guild!!!! do it!!! do it now!!!!

And if u don’t find one that you think you will fit in with, you can always try our family c:

Firstly you’re going to get a lot of cynical responses to this. You’re right that it’s a huge game but it’s not infinite and some people who have been playing since launch and put a lot of time into it have run out of things they want to do.

Secondly don’t worry about missing things. One of the reasons you can do whatever you want in this game is that you can’t really miss anything. You certainly can in the short term – I feel like every time I go back through a zone I find an event I don’t remember seeing before – but it’s not the kind of game where if you don’t do something at the ‘right’ time you’ll be locked out of it.

Even if you levelled up entirely though WvW or PvP (using Tomes of Knowledge) you could go back to the starter maps at level 80 and do everything you could have been doing while levelling up.

My way is : doing all the achievements
By this way you will find many tricks , fun challenge, and lore !
Gl & HF

Elarionus.3246:

GW2 is great because it offers so many options. When I ask people what to do next, they say “whatever you want.” They want me to treat it like Skyrim. (If that’s a fair comparison). An mmo with the mentality of a sandbox game….I. Have. Found. HEAVEN.

Well, please don’t treat it like skyrim.

first, because you can’t. GW2 is not a sandbox and, sadly, whatever you do in game as 0 lasting impact.

second, because this is not a single player game. This is an mmo, and you should try and play with other people and you should try and learn how to use your character, because your performance affects other people’s gaming experience. It’s easy to not suck at this game, though, so you will see that i am not asking too much of you…. welcome and have fun!

OP, good for you actually it is a massive game if you play the right way and clear all the map with friends, cam be indeed a epic adventure, them crafting, them WB… (youll be over it in 2 monts and them say… this game is just small), believe me is pretty fun, until you get to… griding… and dungeon griding, and asccended armor farming….

I’ve been playing nearly 3 years… and found an area today I never knew existed. This game is incredible.

It’s not infinite, it’s not anything like skyrim, and try to not get disappointed when you reach max level.

Elarionus.3246:

Here I am, with only a few hours of gameplay on Guild Wars 2. 58 elementalist, 2 other characters under 20, and an extraordinary feeling that I’ve found the game that will NEVER END for me. It’s wonderful and terrifying at the same time!

GW2 is great because it offers so many options. When I ask people what to do next, they say “whatever you want.” They want me to treat it like Skyrim. (If that’s a fair comparison). An mmo with the mentality of a sandbox game….I. Have. Found. HEAVEN.

My fear however, is that I will miss something…I know that’s inevitable. The game is so big, there will be something that I miss, some minute little detail. However, my real fear is missing something BIG. The level up notifications help with that, telling me everything I unlock at different levels. But even beyond that, there’s so much more. How can I find everything in Guild Wars 2 so that I can get the most out of the game? When things change with patches, how do I adapt and find new features? (Aside from patch notes of course, I mean a bit more in depth). How can I ensure that my experience with this game is the best one possible? Speak from personal experience everybody, I’d love to hear your stories. Thanks so much for taking the time to respond and help me out here. I’m loving the devs, I’m loving the game, and I’m loving the community. Only ran into maybe five sour people out of hundreds.

Welcome to Tyria. Take your time and explore every nook and cranny. Find a good guild that matches your personality and enjoy the game. If you need help, you can contact me
. Enjoy and explore.

Well, not straying into he said, she said jokes….

It’s big at first, but gets smaller later.

And resist the urge to glut on content. Advanced crafting tends to be very material intensive, so getting caught up in it too early is a fast way to get frustrated. I didn’t start any serious crafting until just year… utilizing almost 2 years worth of stored mats to jump start some ascended crafting for Story related stuff. I don’t recommend Mawdry to anyone who values their sanity. Princess was fun though… that challenge wasn’t nearly as evil as the farm fest they pulled in season 2.

But 2 things to keep in mind about world design that a lot of players aren’t aware of. The game is primary driven by Dynamic events that occur at regular intervals. Some are single (like the Apple orchard), some are chains (like rescue camp outside Thaumanova reactor), to Meta events linking a number events or chains in push-pull, to the grand assault meta events in Orr; chaining several large events, spanning nearly half the map area, and culminating with a battle against a Legendary champion. When enough people are around to scale up, Arah assault is one of the most mob intensive fights in the game.

The second is that the Heart quests (which are confusing for new players) are designed to draw a player into an area, and give them busy work until the dynamic events spawns. They are notably missing from the higher level areas, as players generally can’t afford to linger with all the mobs roaming around.

Try the jumping puzzles, that is if you can actually find them.
Theres at least one in every zone.
The Viziers Tower is a good one.

Besides the wiki, i think dulfy.net deserves a mention.
Whenever new patches go live with new achievements etc., this will be the place to look at, if you need any help.