Guild Wars 2

Hello i was given this game upon release from my sponsor. I have still not gotten around to playing the game to much. I have a few friends that play it that i would love to get back in touch with.

I am no longer playing video games professionally therefore i have more times to play games based on what I want to play vs games that others want me to play… (WoW LoL SC).

I was wondering if this game is still alive and thriving or if i missed the fun and i should move on to something new. I was thinking about going warrior… I am not sure what race to go…

I love the artwork this is truly a beautiful game!

Things might feel a bit dead if you’re on an inactive server. I’m on Tarnished Coast, which is really active. There are people in even the more remote locations. I heard Black Gate is a pretty serious world, too.
As for the living story patches every two weeks, the more recent ones seem to have been a bit lacking, but the content in these have been permanent. They’ve been focusing on nice “quality of life” things like LFG tools and improved skill facts, including the more recent trait facts, which give you some nice numbers to look at when waving your mouse over a trait.

Hello i was given this game upon release from my sponsor. I have still not gotten around to playing the game to much. I have a few friends that play it that i would love to get back in touch with.

I am no longer playing video games professionally therefore i have more times to play games based on what I want to play vs games that others want me to play… (WoW LoL SC).

I was wondering if this game is still alive and thriving or if i missed the fun and i should move on to something new. I was thinking about going warrior… I am not sure what race to go…

I love the artwork this is truly a beautiful game!

Yes, the game is still alive. Just make sure you also join the heavier population servers.

You won’t notice many people in the lower zones but there are plenty of people in the living world maps, temple events and towns.

Warrior is a good choice since it’s still one of the top classes of the game. You could go for a Mesmer if you like complexity or a ranger if you want to be kitten upon by other players.

Hello and welcome, yes the game is still alive (there are a lot of populated zones), my advice would be to play with the race that you seem to like the most (dunno maybe based on culture, story, lore idk):

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Playable_races

You do not gain any benefit (apart from some cultural skills which aren’t OP) from choosing one race over the other, all races are equally powerful in all of the professions. Also you still have time to get into the Halloween event

Good luck in game!

Are the holiday events reserved only for level capped players?

crumpits.4217:

Are the holiday events reserved only for level capped players?

No, you get upleveled.

crumpits.4217:

Are the holiday events reserved only for level capped players?

Holiday events are not reserved, since the players are auto up-leveled to 80.

However, certain living story events/additions are for certain levels, such as the previous Living Story meta which included a lvl 80 dungeon.

The good thing though is that these events are moving towards being permanent, so you can do them once you reach the appropriate level.

No and they usually scale you up should you need to be 80 anyway

Vol.5241:

crumpits.4217:

Are the holiday events reserved only for level capped players?

Holiday events are not reserved, since the players are auto up-leveled to 80.

However, certain living story events/additions are for certain levels, such as the previous Living Story meta which included a lvl 80 dungeon.

The good thing though is that these events are moving towards being permanent, so you can do them once you reach the appropriate level.

Yeah. That is one thing i like about this game. The fact that if you want to try something but are not sure you want to invest to much time into creating the new character you can just send that character into PVP and see how you like it.

I think that it is a great design for the game.

crumpits.4217:

Vol.5241:

crumpits.4217:

Are the holiday events reserved only for level capped players?

Holiday events are not reserved, since the players are auto up-leveled to 80.

However, certain living story events/additions are for certain levels, such as the previous Living Story meta which included a lvl 80 dungeon.

The good thing though is that these events are moving towards being permanent, so you can do them once you reach the appropriate level.

Yeah. That is one thing i like about this game. The fact that if you want to try something but are not sure you want to invest to much time into creating the new character you can just send that character into PVP and see how you like it.

I think that it is a great design for the game.

Indeed.

It’s just a shame that the sPvP mode you can test stuff in has very little customisation compared to the rest of the gameworld.

The game is alive and new content comes out every two weeks. Try for yourself, it costs little of your time.

Don’t forget to tell him how grindy the holiday event is.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Don’t forget to tell him how grindy the holiday event is.

Why cant you tell me how grindy it is?

Hmm. Lets see….You need to complete 13 things to get to the second stage.

1. An easy dungeon type instance. These things can be done in any order, but things make more sense if you start with Tassi’s letter.

2. Completeing the ‘Containment’ gives you 4 finishers which you can use in PvP or WvW to complete ‘Stomping Good Time’.

3. Mad King’s Labyrinth. There you can close doors (50 needed), get ‘trick or treat’ bags to open (50 needed) and defeat the three bosses the Labyrinthine Horror, The Grand HighViscount of Candy Corn and The Skeletal Lich.

So far 7/13 done.

The rest will come from the two dailies with the ‘Blood and Madness’ icon. These have been things like: Carve 5 pumpkins, Open 10 Trick or Treat bags, Eat 50 candy corn, Complete the Clocktower Jumping puzzle.

After that you have the candy corn elemental and can return to Tassi for the Reliquary completion.

It is still very much alive. I do a dragon world event nightly that attracts over 4 overflows regularly. This event require about ~110 people per server/overflow working together.

The graphics are what drew me to this MMO over others. As you try different races and go from a desert setting in the charr area to the wintery mountains of the norn, you really get drawn into the game. Then you find secret areas like some of the jump puzzles for the first time, and say to your self….man, they really put everything in this game. Go to Lions arch and take a swim and come face to face with a humpback whale and the whole ruined city of LA from Guild Wars 1. It really is impressive.

As far the holiday event being grindy. It depends on what you want from it. I just wanted to max my achievements and get the mini pet. That was not grindy at all. However if you want to go for a specific weapon skin, then yes you will be grinding for it….but that is true of any unique weapon skin in any game. The stats howver, are no different then any other high end exotic, so as promised you don’t have to grind for max level gear.

Is the endgame fun at all in this game?

There is no endgame essentially.

SweetCream.8051:

There is no endgame essentially.

Can you elaborate more than that or do you mean there is absolutely nothing to do once you hit your level cap?

crumpits.4217:

Is the endgame fun at all in this game?

Technically there is no endgame, even if you are level 80 you can revisit previous zones and you will be down-leveled to that zone’s level, it keeps the content somewhat challenging.

There are a lot of things to do, dragon/temple events (which require many people to complete), dungeons which if you run daily nets a good amount of gold, crafting, map exploration (the map is huge and it’s not even released fully yet, there are many inaccessible areas), WvW, PvP, search for cosmetic items (note: you do not need max gear to do most of the endgame content)…

Well I think you get the idea xD The game is improving and there’s fresh content every two weeks, I don’t think that you’ll get bored soon unless it’s not the type of gameplay you are looking for. If you ever have a question feel free to whisper in-game.

You can do everything at lv2 that you can do at 80 basically.
Once you hit 80 you have all your traits, access to highest gear, and a few areas become available(Orr,Frostgorge..), besides that you can do wvw, map exploration, living story, pvp, all at lvl2. There’s obvious benefits to being 80; access to every dungeon(most groups won’t take sub80 characters), higher survivability(gear score/trait points) in world pvp. but that doesn’t prevent you from experiencing those aspects of the game beforehand.

What you mean by end game is the question maybe?
You wanna farm for a legendary weapon? That’ll keep you busy ‘endgame’.
You wanna smash heads in some server vs server pvp? As I said you can do it at any level(though some frown upon lowbies in wvw) and there is a huge following of people who do this nightly.
You want to make your character look kitten/evil/happy/sexy….whatever!? Well most of the cooler looking armors take time to acquire(through dungeons) so acquiring all those necessary materials may take some time.

Only endgame stuff I can think of is Arah dungeon and fractals of the mist (you are upscaled in this, but most groups are 80). You can do a good 70% or so of the games content from the start. Rest is just the different zones and dungeons.

People can say that there is no “end-game”…
But I think that the entire game is end-game.
You hit level 80 within 2 weeks, get full exotics within 3; then that is when the entire game is open to you.

You have WvW, Dungeons, World Bosses, Guild Events and all other sorts of things.
I’ve noticed that people who aren’t in an active guild get bored of the stuff and quit and the people in active guilds stay for very long!

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Don’t forget to tell him how grindy the holiday event is.

The only “grindy” part is if you want to spend all you time in the Labyrinth grinding…..there is no reason too (unless you are just obsessed with the equipment….that are purely visually unique).

I went down there on a weekend and it took me about 3 hours to complete all the Boss events (the only ones you MUST be down there for). I then did a few of the easier daily’s and had the required 13 in a bit more than a week (not even really trying to complete it). The 2 short instanced story areas were all that really required much efffort at all.

If you are “grinding” for the holiday equipment, then I can’t help that you have misunderstood how ANet has changed obtaining those items from last year. They obviously now want those to be a longer term goal (you can certainly complain that the goal is WAY too long) and not anything you should be able to obtain quickly (unless you have a huge excess of gold…..something they WANT to remove from the economy anyway).