Guild Wars 2

I’ve been a long time gamer on and off throughout my life but never have I been interested in an MMORPG until GW2. I’ve heard horror stories about MMORPGs and am equal parts excited to get started (is currently downloading) and nervous about being called a n00b and totally sucking. Are there any areas I should stay away from, any guilds I should know about? Any tips I should take into consideration? I know this is a very broad question but it would be greatly appreciated if I got any help at all!

Tell people you’re new if and when you play with them. You’ll either get kicked or be welcomed, but it’s better to get that out of the way before you start a dungeon (or anything).

Also, you typically only want to run dungeons at max level, even though you can join at lower levels.

And find yourself a nice, casual (or new player friendly) guild. I recommend a guild with less than 100 members and around 10-20 players on during peak hours.

Lastly:
Ask questions whenever you want. There is no such thing as a stupid question… but if there is, it will promptly get a stupid answer.

Thanks, Esplen. I’m a little encouraged to hear there are casual new player friendly guilds out there. Maybe I’ve seen that episode of South Park one too many times but I was fearing all MMORPGs were full of pushy competitive players who don’t accept anyone who wasn’t there since the beta testing days.

And one last thing, so you know any casual guilds for me to start out in? Probably not, as I assume you are practiced at this game, but doesn’t hurt to ask, right?

Hah, I haven’t actually looked at any guilds in a long time. I have a guild for me and IRL friends which is basically just… me… and I can check up on my friends to see if they logged in recently or not.

I’d say your world matters, but it’s about to not matter at all on the 9th unless you want to WvW (World vs World) with them, obviously. The reason why it would have mattered would have been for Guild Bank purposes, mainly.

I invited an online friend recently and they joined a guild called Aspiring Brotherhood [PACT]. I think it’s decent, but it’s too big for my tastes (once a guild reaches a certain playerbase, it feels less like a family and more like a community).

I prefer the more… “family”-sized guilds, where everyone knows each other and will connect both virtually and emotionally. Then again, I am basically a solo-player at this point, so that’s just my opinion (which doesn’t even have any in-game proof).

Welcome to the GW2 community, and the MMO community in general

Here in the forums you can check 2 sub-forums, Guild Recruitment and Looking For Guild, you can look for a guild that fit your interests, the server you are in and so on.
You can also check the guild I am, we are hosted in server Henge of Denravi, click in my signature for more info.

There are several casual guilds for sure, GW2 is very friendly towards casuals, sure there are guilds and players like in the “Make love not warcraft” episode, but there are plenty of nicer players here.

Thanks so much, both of you. You helped me a great deal. I think I have a basic idea what to do when the game is finished downloading.

Also, if you have friends on a specific server and can’t join them, you can get a free world transfer (infinite times) by deleting all your characters. You’ll still have things in your bank and will be able to access it from any world, so store anything that’s account bound in your bank before deleting.

Otherwise, just join any World (unless you care about WvW in which case research the rankings).

Since new accounts come with a Heroic Edition bonus, I will explain how that works, briefly.

You’ll get a box (I think) which will contain an armorset of your choice. Note that this armorset is purely aesthetic and the choices are locked by armor type (if you pick the Heavy version, you must wear Heavy armor to apply it). I highly suggest picking the one you think looks the best, as opposed to the one which you can use, as you can always make more characters.

If you like them all, you can purchase each of these skins for an additional $10 or ~136g (at current market value, which I don’t expect you to get anytime soon).

Keep in mind that these will unlock in your Wardrobe which means that, as long as you have Transmutation Charges, you can apply them to gear. These Charges can be obtained through PvP, Map Completion, opening Black Lion Chests (think Gacha Boxes), or the Gem Store (roughly 40c (CENTS, not copper) per Charge).

If you want skins that any character can use without using Transmutation Charges, Outfits are great because they can be applied to any character as many times as you want without any additional fee. They can’t mix and match, like armor, though.

Oh right, a few more things (guess this isn’t as short as I expected):
If you ever want to see what skills you can have/use, go to PvP. Note, this will not place you in PvP, but will put you in the Lobby Map where you have access to every skill and trait, bar a few (5 traits and 2 skills + Racial skills). You can then play around with everything.
You will need the weapons for your profession to be able to see what they can do, but there is a merchant that can sell them to you for relatively cheap.

Pick your Race and Profession (class) based on what interests you, not what’s good, overpowered, or needed. You might have a bit of trouble because Arenanet tends to do a good job making everything interesting. Note: Leveling up became a lot harder after April 15th because you no longer start gaining access to traits at level 10 (think Talent trees).

For your Character Creation choices (after you have finished customizing your character) the choices do not affect a lot. Other than your initial gear (or pet, for Rangers), the choices only affect the first part of the Personal Storyline. This means that after level 30 (maybe earlier, I forgot), your story will no longer revolve around those choices.

If you want to, feel free to add me ingame. I most likely won’t be on for another 6 hours or so, but I can respond faster and answer any questions you have.

I think there’s more I wanted to say but I’m about to go eat lunch.

If you’re trying to add me, you can do one of the following:
Press Y or type /invite followed by my name.
For my name type in “Esplen” or “Esplen.3940” both will add me.