Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone, was hoping that some proper veterans would be able to give me some advice/guidance. Quick synopsis of my play, I preordered the game many moons ago and powered a Guardian to 80 in a month. I was in the Jesse Cox guild and had some good fun in WvW, but never tried dungeons or really anything else. Started leveling some alts then left for a while. I have come back to it a handful of times across the years, the most recent time was whenever the announcements for Heart of Thorns classes were dropping. So I’m back to get my MMO scratch once again.

As far as progression goes, my Guardian is 80 with a full set of Berserker exotics and I can remember spending quite a lot of time in the Silverwastes, though I’m only sitting on 90 gold. Otherwise, I have another toon at 66 and the rest are between 20 and 30. I’m not really sure what progression I’ve made on specialities like Ascended gear and other unique items, just that I have a char acting as extra bank storage who is stuffed with various boosts, dragonite ore and shards, and other random things. And that’s pretty much where I’m at, just trying to get back into the swing of things.

So a few questions that I had:

1. Is HoT worth the full purchase price? Ideally I can wait a bit to see if I’m going to stick to the game for a while, but since Living World Season 3 just dropped, and I don’t really want to have something to pay for later down the line when it’s free now, I’m thinking I need to make a choice a bit sooner. I already missed LW 1 & 2.

2. Is there anything in the cash shop that is really worth investing in? At this point all I’d really like are some character slots and maybe a few bank tabs.

3. Is the population still holding strong, particularly for WvW and doing events? A lot of my decision will be based on finding a good, semi-casual guild that I can fit into, since that tends to hold me to a game a lot more, but I also want to know if there’s enough pop to support it.

4. What are some good goals for me to start aiming for, aside from leveling alts and farming Silverwastes? This game has always been about setting goals, and I was never very good at that before, so I’d appreciate help on this one a lot.

And any other helpful tips and advice would also be appreciated. Really want GW2 to stick this time around, since no other MMO seems to exist that’s held my attention other than SWTOR, which has gone a bit to the dogs now. Plus, I beat a lot of the story and that’s about the only reason I was playing SWTOR.

Please and thanks for assistance!

Watcher.7120:

Hey everyone, was hoping that some proper veterans would be able to give me some advice/guidance. Quick synopsis of my play, I preordered the game many moons ago and powered a Guardian to 80 in a month. I was in the Jesse Cox guild and had some good fun in WvW, but never tried dungeons or really anything else. Started leveling some alts then left for a while. I have come back to it a handful of times across the years, the most recent time was whenever the announcements for Heart of Thorns classes were dropping. So I’m back to get my MMO scratch once again.

As far as progression goes, my Guardian is 80 with a full set of Berserker exotics and I can remember spending quite a lot of time in the Silverwastes, though I’m only sitting on 90 gold. Otherwise, I have another toon at 66 and the rest are between 20 and 30. I’m not really sure what progression I’ve made on specialities like Ascended gear and other unique items, just that I have a char acting as extra bank storage who is stuffed with various boosts, dragonite ore and shards, and other random things. And that’s pretty much where I’m at, just trying to get back into the swing of things.

So a few questions that I had:

1. Is HoT worth the full purchase price? Ideally I can wait a bit to see if I’m going to stick to the game for a while, but since Living World Season 3 just dropped, and I don’t really want to have something to pay for later down the line when it’s free now, I’m thinking I need to make a choice a bit sooner. I already missed LW 1 & 2.

2. Is there anything in the cash shop that is really worth investing in? At this point all I’d really like are some character slots and maybe a few bank tabs.

3. Is the population still holding strong, particularly for WvW and doing events? A lot of my decision will be based on finding a good, semi-casual guild that I can fit into, since that tends to hold me to a game a lot more, but I also want to know if there’s enough pop to support it.

4. What are some good goals for me to start aiming for, aside from leveling alts and farming Silverwastes? This game has always been about setting goals, and I was never very good at that before, so I’d appreciate help on this one a lot.

And any other helpful tips and advice would also be appreciated. Really want GW2 to stick this time around, since no other MMO seems to exist that’s held my attention other than SWTOR, which has gone a bit to the dogs now. Plus, I beat a lot of the story and that’s about the only reason I was playing SWTOR.

Please and thanks for assistance!

Q1 No you dont need hot to get ls3 ep1, just login with any account and it will unlock it and save it for when you later down the line get hot.

Q2 no nothing in the cash shop is needed its convenience like those extra char slots bank tab you speak off. But also infinite gathring tools take 5-6 years to pay for themselfs gold vise, salvageomatics to have 1 slot instead of 3-5 taken by salvage kits, + now you also got the shared slots will get one with hot that the free level 80 boost is tucked into. ( so salvageomatics is even more worth it convenience wise Imo. )

Q3 Mega servers if you land on the poplulated shards make it easy to find people for pve and thats across all servers in Na or Eu, the server you chose only matters for wvw so after you find a guild for wvw check were they are and if your free move with buying hot can get you into that server would be a tip.

Q4 I cant really help you with I do what ever I feel like doing becouse its fun to me

1) I think HoT is well worth the money, but there’s no need to buy it right away. You don’t actually need to have the expansion to unlock LW3 – just log in during each chapters ‘release’ period (Chapter 1 is now, Chapter 2 will be in a few months) and it will be added to your account. You can’t play it without HoT but it means it’ll be there waiting for you if/when you do buy the expansion. Plus even with a level 80 character you’ll have plenty to do in the main game.

2) I don’t think there’s anything that you can’t play without, but some things are nice to have. Bank tabs and character slots are pretty good choices but I recommend waiting a few weeks. The end of August is the game’s anniversary and they usually have a sale around then so there’s a chance both of those will be discounted at some point soon. (Keep checking in-game or in the General Discussion section of the forum because the way they usually do these things is to add new items every few days, and some of them are only on sale for short periods.)

(Be aware that the price to convert gold to gems is based on the number of trades being made in each direction so it goes up dramatically when there’s a sale in the gem store. If you’re hoping to buy stuff with gold you might want to start stockpiling gems now.)

I also find the shared inventory slots useful, but they’re very expensive.

3) The population on EU servers is fine. A while ago they introduced this idea called ‘megaservers’ which means that (outside of World vs World) all maps are shared with extra copies being created as needed.

As a result it’s rare to find yourself in an empty map and usually easy to find full organised maps for events that need it like Silverwastes or world bosses. At peak times there’s often multiple organised maps.

(Oh, if you didn’t know we have a Looking For Group tool now, which makes things like getting people together for big event chains easier.)

4) If I was you I’d start by making a new character and simply playing through the game to familiarise myself with it again as a lot of things will have changed. Also finding a new guild to join.

Other than that it really depends on what you’re interested in. Getting good at something like WvW can be a goal in it’s own right, or there’s the Living Story and HoT story, map completion, getting full ascended gear (not required but it’s expensive or very rare drops so it’s a good long-term goal if you like that sort of thing), levelling your alts, doing all the dungeons….there’s a lot to do in the game so it’s really up to you what parts interest you.

1) I think HoT is worth it now, more if you can get it on sale. Amazon for instance is selling the box edition of the game $10 off, so $40.

As @Linken points out, simply login to the game to “bank” LS3 Ep1 to your account so it costs nothing if you ever buy HoT.

As for getting HoT for free, that’s what ANet said about expansions, that the core game and all previous expansions will be included for free. But we don’t know when the next expansion is coming. All that they’ve indicated is it would be quicker than the 3 years the first one took.

2) Cash shop is all cosmetic, convenience and account upgrades (character slots and such).

3) PvE uses Megaservers to keep zones populated. WvW has teamed up a number of servers. You can see which servers are still on their own and who is teamed up with who here. – http://mos.millenium.org/na

4) Goals … crafting ascended armor and weapons for your main. Go after various collections/achievements, do fractals, explore for map completion, tryout a new profession. Lots of things you can do without having HoT.

But if you want to go someplace totally new. Have access to the “elite” professions and the new heavy class. Learn to glide. Possibly even looking into raids. Then HoT may be something you would be interested in.