Guild Wars 2

Hey all, as the title implies, new player here. I’ve just played 2 hours or so today, and I’ve been having fun. I wanted to share my experience with others if only for the sake of chatting about it and even getting some clarification in some stuff I’m still not sure about in the game. My only background in MMOs is WoW, so this game obviously impresses me by how different it is, for better or for worse, and I have little else to compare it to.

I chose for my first character a Human Mesmer. I had watched some videos of the skills online, and hey, it looked fun. Illusions, trickery, magic, it all sounded cool (and I found that it IS cool as I played). I chose to be a noble who lost his sister to centaurs; that had me going for a while – an MMO where I choose my background and some sort of personal quest? Unheard of, maybe except in The Old Republic, but let’s stay on topic.

My first impression upon entering the game was, overall, pretty good. An artistic cinematic showed me about humans, their status in the world, and my character. Short and to the point. And then I jumped right into the thick of it: a town is assaulted by centaurs, and I had to do something about it. Here’s a short list of stuff I noticed there:

- The interface: clean and simple. Wait, where’s my mana? Is there no mana? Just cool-downs? Cool.
- My main auto-attack changes with each hit, and the third one creates a copy-me. Awesome! Am I really level 1?
- I have the ability to cause Confusion to my opponents, but I’ve no idea what this does. I tried looking for it in-game in the Help menu, but it’s nowhere to be found. I’ll have to check a wiki or something. It’s the one thing that I saw no tutorial or tool tip about, and what with it being my classes’ specialization, I thought it was weird to be missing.

I killed some centaurs, told some people to hide a the inn (at no apparent reward, but it was nice to have the option) and talked to a Quest NPC. It was very odd to have my character talk back-and-forth with the NPC, both of them being voice acted rather well. I can only think of another MMO that does this – Old Republic, but I may be slightly behind the times.

Moving on I got to my first event, where apparently anyone there can join at any time. Did I really just fight a huge boss that summons adds at level 1? And anyone can jump in to assist without being in my group? This was just a small taste of the “flowing” nature of GW2, allowing and encouraging player collaboration by making it accessible and rewarding.

We beat the boss and reached the “real world” of GW2, where an NPC showed me a map of the area (very detailed!), quest locations, some lore, and more. That was nice. So then I went to find my first quest – and realized that being close enough to the quest giver was sometimes enough to get the quest! Heck, I could just join other players who were already doing a quest – in this case, helping a farm. It sounded silly at first, having fought a “god-like” monster minutes ago, but then I realized that which chores to do was my own decision, and one of them involved fighting giant worms.

I was merrily filling the “quest bar” for the farm quest when all of a sudden an event started, barely meters from me! The mother of all farm worms decided to pay us a visit, and another epic battle was on. I almost died a couple of times, but thankfully my heal ability saved me.

This is a good point to ask: does every class have a self-heal ability? Is there no healer role? I’m used to the standard tank-healer-dps trinity of MMOs, you see. And if there’s no healer, great – nobody likes being back-up too much, right?

I want to conclude this already long post by describing how odd it felt to travel through the starter area and explore, smoothly moving from one quest to another. It’s like the days of going to town, talking to all the NPCs with “!” signs over their heads are gone. I just get close to the area of a quest and it’s on! And then I can jump to other events in the area, or teleport with the waypoints.

It’s all very disorienting, in a good way. Because if it felt like WoW, what’s the point? The same MMO with different art style? Nah. I just found where the armor/weapons vendors are, and how crafting works. So far it’s been a fun experience.

See you all in game

To jump in before the bored level cappers have their whine, it is a great experience. It is one of very few games I have played that makes me feel part of the world, but at the same time doesn’t force me to take part when I don’t want to.

The combat is fun, but you are correct in that there are no roles as such. All professions can be a healer, tank, or DPS in various forms and are able to self manage when in trouble, based on your skill selection.

The UI is slick and clean, and unobtrusive, but the learning curve is higher than most others (except FFXI, that game wins for the challenge of just getting started :P), so it can take time before you understand what it is that it is telling you is going on.

I am really glad to read this kind of thing though, as it covers my first experiences in the game perfectly too. I am not an MMo hardcore grinder, and GW2 appeals to that, as I can drop in and out whenever I please, to do what I want, when I want, and even though I started playing on release, I still haven’t gotten above level 31 on a character, as im too busy trying everything out and exploring. There is so much to do and see, providing you don’t skip past it all just to get to 80, stand in Lion’s Arch, and complain about ban waves.

Enjoy the game for what it is and while you can. Guild Wars 2 currently is NOT a game to get married to. It’s not long term at all.

One day you’ll be level 80, after running horribly design dungeons over and over you’ll have some of the exotic gear you always wanted. Then you will realize nobody is playing the dungeons where you can get the rest because the community is all gerbil wheeling at Fractals. You’ll probably do some exploring to get completion and realize how boring that can be. You’ll start another character and mess around w/ it. You will reach the impasse again but much faster.

What will happen next is you will start seeing the words “kitten” show up a lot when you posting messages on the forum, then you will take a break.

i have two characters at 80, one of them also has 100% map explored and i still feel like it’s the first week i play… not that i don’t understand the game or there are things i have to uncover, it’s just a feeling i have when i play, i like events, i like fighting giant bosses from day 1 in my career as adventurer, i like to open chests after such epic fights, i like to rampage dragons with hundreds of players and very talkative npc. i like running dungeons with friends, i like to unlock achievements and titles and also participating in the monthly new content.
and i like the most that every profession you play is unique and self reliable, you can explore alone or with friends and you don’t need to wait to find healers or tanker or damage dealer… you alone are already the 3 of them in some degree and still you are almost different from other people with same profession…
i hope you’ll enjoy this game for a long time. wish you luck!

edit for spelling

I’m glad you’re enjoying it so far. I have 4 level 80 characters and I still love the game! I concur with you that the intiation into the game was great! I love the multiple options for starting areas and personal stories. You chose to find your sister was it? Well along your personal story you get more options beyond that the branch out into other quests/stories such as joining factions.

I too started with a human and just like you the giant worm was my first event. When I started there were a lot more players in the lower level areas and I think this increased my enjoyment of the game. I do “daily” stuff on a lower level character in queensdale (human starting area where you’re at) and I still see a lot of new players around the area, so hopefully you’ll get to enjoy helping others and being helped, grouping, and the like.

Mesmer was my 2nd character and I love them! They are very unique and quite powerful once you know how to play them well. They have a good number of viable options for how you build your character (what style armor to wear later on, what skills and traits to use, etc).

I won’t tell you how to play, that’s up to you to figure out. But I will say this: hit “H” to bring up your hero and in the skills / weapon skills tab you’ll see what weapons you can use. Try unlocking all skills on all of those weapon types, and learn your playstyle based on that. Don’t just stick with the scepter you started with. Different weapons means different playstyles as well, but you have to learn what’s best for you of course.

Enjoy GW2!

Remember that hearts are just there to point the way to events, though they give a nice little XP and money hit. Don’t forget to check the mail icon if you haven’t, you’ll have letters with rewards in them every time you complete a heart.

Gather everything, and if you find yourself a little underlevel, try to complete each area (waypoints, points of interest, vistas, hearts).

If you take the time to do everything, you should be at the right level to move on to the next. (If somehow you are not, you can visit every other main city by taking your town’s portal to LA and then going through the portals there to other cities!)

And good luck! Welcome to Tyria!

Nice to see people who have fun with the game. I am still having fun and discovering new things after many months and over a thousand played hours. I started a new character on New Year’s Eve and had a real blast with the start of his personal storyline (Norn who drank too much).

I also played another character of mine, Asura Mesmer, in her Whispers storyline and now feel much more sympathy towards the Hylek. This is something that has actually happened with every character studieng a race. They become live individuals instead of a mass of mobs to eliminate. I have a feeling the OP will enjoy that part too.

Have fun with it! Do what you feel is fun and try the other things a little as well. Levels come on their own just by playing, but you are never too high level to go do something that you didn’t have time for at the beginning or to go back to places you enjoyed earlier.

Glad to see others enjoying the game!

BTW: many of the people with the ‘heart’ symbol over their head may get an added purple ‘karma’ symbol when the heart is filled in – saying that they are ‘karma vendors’ where you trade ‘karma’ for cool stuff.

All the NPC’s and animals have ‘level’ labels over their heads so if you accidentally venture into an area where the numbers there are WAY different then your current level you may wish to backup! (before getting squished!)

There may not be a lot of ‘hand holding’ (which I like) but most of the game is fairly easy enough to figure out given enough time.

Among the icons on the top left corner of your screen is a ‘hero’ icon where you’ll find a tab filled with daily goals and achievements that when done get you extra bonuses.

If reading these forums are any indication the game does have its ‘issues’ but over all its a fun and well thought out and designed game – enjoy!

I think that a lot of the ‘issues’ will get smoothed over over the course of the next year. This is a big new thing for ANet, and they’re still trying to figure it out. They did not anticipate the level of success they got and they’ve been scrambling to catch up and figure out where to go from here, and who to cater to.

Anyway, it’s nice to see happy new players, and overall, this is a solid game. Be patient for endgame content (we will see much more over the coming expansions, paid and free), and note that they spent most of their resources focusing on a broad leveling experience for launch instead. This isn’t what they plan forever for the game, but they wanted to put as much effort into the foundation as possible.

In this game the tank and healer is rolled up in one. This in that towards the end you gain access to traits that heal or place regens on your professions defining actions. Problem is that you need to get to level 60 or there about to actually see them, so until then the only really viable build is DPS. This makes some of the squishier professions, mesmer and elementalist in particular, a grind to play for some 40 levels.

Also, the game do not have any sense of classic crowd control. The closest it has is a system of interrupts that behave more like fighting games combo breaker. But most of those are aimed at single opponents, not groups of mobs.

Meaning that as a squishy profession you can’t simply put a swirl over the mobs heads to keep them out of the fight for 10+ seconds. They will at best be that way for a second or two and then come right back swinging.

Glad to hear you are having a great experience.

When I was playing in the beta, I was having a decent time, but wasn’t feeling hooked quite yet. I remember stepping away from the computer for a bit to take a break, thinking “this monastery looks like a safe place to relax”. When I came back, suddenly I’m surrounded by creatures from the Underworld and in a battle for my life. Yes, I had accidentally stumbled right into the middle of the biggest event chain in Queensdale. So I played through each of the small events and went deep into the swamp….and was absolutely blown away when all of a sudden, this giant shadowy beast emerges from the center of the swamp and starts dropping AoE everywhere. It was probably one of the most epic battles I had in the early stages of the game, and I remember rescuing several people from certain death as well. But that event is what finally sold me on the concept of this game and convinced me that this was going to be my new favorite time sink. The notion of a world that literally changes around me and because of me was something that absolutely blew my mind, a feeling I’d never felt in other MMOs before.

700 hours later, still love this game. I just think they have some work to do to improve the core game experience before they go adding a bunch of extra new shinies.

2 hours? play some more first!

MrDmajor.7084:

Enjoy the game for what it is and while you can. Guild Wars 2 currently is NOT a game to get married to. It’s not long term at all.

One day you’ll be level 80, after running horribly design dungeons over and over you’ll have some of the exotic gear you always wanted. Then you will realize nobody is playing the dungeons where you can get the rest because the community is all gerbil wheeling at Fractals. You’ll probably do some exploring to get completion and realize how boring that can be. You’ll start another character and mess around w/ it. You will reach the impasse again but much faster.

What will happen next is you will start seeing the words “kitten” show up a lot when you posting messages on the forum, then you will take a break.

depends on the player. I’m currently really enjoying my end game.

I’m pretty sure 2hours in an MMO is not enough time to draw a conclusion.
But im glad your having fun.

Bastion.2457:

Good stuff

A-ha, a kindred MMO spirit, how nice

MrDmajor.7084:

Depressing stuff

If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re trying to scare people away! Every MMO has its complaints, even WoW (or should I say “especially”?). I’ll do my best to enjoy life in the game anyway – I’m not a hardcore gamer, so I’ll enjoy the ride.

Amadan.9451:

i hope you’ll enjoy this game for a long time. wish you luck!

Why, thank you

Xavori.3768:

Genuinely curious here…

Why’d you copy my name?

o_O

Are you really THE Xavori? The one I read so much about on Ultima Online? That’s why I got the username, because I thought the character was so cool. It’s stuff from the past now, but I’ve still clung to it. Sorry if it bothers you – I had no idea somebody else would have it here.

Xenth.2408:

Enjoy GW2!

I’ll give it my bestest. Thanks

Sylv.5324:

And good luck! Welcome to Tyria!

Thank you kindly

Garambola.2461:

Have fun with it! Do what you feel is fun and try the other things a little as well. Levels come on their own just by playing, but you are never too high level to go do something that you didn’t have time for at the beginning or to go back to places you enjoyed earlier.

I’ll definitely try. Thank you

MaRko.3165:

If reading these forums are any indication the game does have its ‘issues’ but over all its a fun and well thought out and designed game – enjoy!

I’m used to games having “issues” – I played WoW, remember?

Thanks for the welcome.

critickitten.1498:

Glad to hear you are having a great experience.

Is that… uncommon? I hope not

ElixireL.5190:

2 hours? play some more first!

Easy there! I’m a busy fellow, gotta work and handle my own grown-up stuff :P

I’ll play when I get the time, naturally

Genesis.5169:

I’m pretty sure 2hours in an MMO is not enough time to draw a conclusion.
But im glad your having fun.

Now now, I ain’t jumping to no conclusions – this is a “first impression’s” thread, remember?

That was a lot of replies on one day. I’m exhausted! I’ll see if I can keep replying to most people if there are more.

Thank you all for your replies. Truly