Guild Wars 2

So, I logged on after buying the game and resolved on the character to make. But then I see… over 20+ American servers to play from. Out of all my years playing I have never seen so many choices. Now I would normally pick the one most populated, but they’re all “Very High” in population so I am quite confused.

I’m sure there already some descriptions of the worlds that people have come to associate, like advanced, RP, etc.

So i was looking for a big world, that’s pretty friendly and especially good for starting people.

Very High means number of accounts.

For RP you want Tarnished Coast, it’s been the unofficial RP server since Beta.

For WvW, hmm. I don’t play that much, but I see that Blackgate and Fort Aspenwood have hard hitting presence there. Blackgate’s also quite organized about things like Tequatl kills. (All from partial knowledge, I claim no personal experience of anything but Tarnished Coast).

I can say that TC is very friendly despite a few trolls here and there. And you’ll find people pretty much anywhere you go in the world, with so many of them in popular spots you’ll be in overflow before you know it.

So I suppose Tarnished Coast and Black Gate I see. Also, how prominent is the RP server? I also have a tendency to play in RP servers, because it usually has a nicer crowd willing to help.

For a long time getting TC as your home meant camping out in the wee hours and waiting for a slim chance at an opening. I’m not sure what you mean by “prominent” in this context — we’re well known, yes, and in WvW we hover at a point where we win if in Tier 2 and lose if in Tier 1. We have tremendous zergs on most world events, we killed Tequatl many times during Boss Week.

There is RP all over, especially in DR Rurikton where you had better have a high capability for sorting out your conversation from all the other chatter in earshot, with assignations, crimes, mystery solving, scavenger hunts, theatrical productions, etc.

Map chat is generally lively in any frequented zone. There’s a server Mumble that hosts ungodly amounts of speakers, far more than I has any idea Mumble could encompass.

TC has been a boomtown since beta. Is that what you were asking?

I’m sorry i dont know what you mean by camping out in the wee hours and waiting for a slim chance :/ but I was just asking if everybody spoke in RP chat? Or is it mostly normal chat and then there are those who like to RP?

I know it’s an RP server, but does everybody constantly RP?

Ah. No, there’s tons of ooc stuff happening and many people that don’t even know how RP works. It’s just that you can find RP whenever you want it and the world remain well populated thanks to all the RPers who also happen to rock PvE and WvW. Map chat is always ooc, and the stuff near the DR bank is … not representative.

What I meant was that one can’t start an account on a full server. So people wanting to get on TC had to be up at 3 or 4 am spamming refresh on the login page hoping for that magical moment when they wouldn’t be blocked. I had one guild mate accidentally transfer away in … October? 2012 and it took her a solid week to get back to us. I think ANet’s fixed that, I’ve not seen any posts for a long time asking about how to get onto TC.

Are you in TC? If so, could I add you?

Unless you’re planning to play wvw (which is a really fun game mode and where many level 80’s find themselves), it doesn’t matter what server you choose. You can guest to 2 other servers within a 24 hour period. TC & Blackgate are very populated for sure, but wvw players have started turning away from these because of the long queues to get in.

I recommend to start a character, see how you like the server, and guest around to other servers. If you delete all of your characters, you can select a new world for free. If not, you can transfer by buying gems. Check out the guild recruitment forum, as your guild is the only thing other than wvw that is affected by your server choice.

Anyhow, welcome to the game. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Jade Quarry is also very RP.

TC, Blackgate allows you to roflstomp your WvW matchups in the rare moment you actually get it.

Personally, Crystal Desert is not bad. There’s enough people to run world bosses with and the occasional zerg, but few enough that I’ve never been placed into a queue for WvW, and few enough that I can flip camps solo and keeps 4-5man against the kind of worlds we’re matched against.

You can Command, you can follow, you can solo, you can raid, you can troll… all possibilities are open; if you’re good enough, you can create a legend of your own. Not quite possible in larger worlds.

Of course, for smaller worlds, you might not even have enough people for PvE events, and you pretty much have to solo camps for WvW since you wouldn’t quite have a zerg at all. And then you wouldn’t ever be able to get map completion because your world will never take Stonemist Castle.

Middle is best, imo.

Tarnished coast

I am on TC and I never object to being added. Pestered, that’s another thing But I’m happy to chat and help as needed.

Thanks everybody! I’ve decided to go Tarnished Coast!

Also, you guys keep bringing up WvW… what is it? I have a feelings it’s world vs world?

Hayashi.3416:

Jade Quarry is also very RP.

TC, Blackgate allows you to roflstomp your WvW matchups in the rare moment you actually get it.

Personally, Crystal Desert is not bad. There’s enough people to run world bosses with and the occasional zerg, but few enough that I’ve never been placed into a queue for WvW, and few enough that I can flip camps solo and keeps 4-5man against the kind of worlds we’re matched against.

You can Command, you can follow, you can solo, you can raid, you can troll… all possibilities are open; if you’re good enough, you can create a legend of your own. Not quite possible in larger worlds.

Of course, for smaller worlds, you might not even have enough people for PvE events, and you pretty much have to solo camps for WvW since you wouldn’t quite have a zerg at all. And then you wouldn’t ever be able to get map completion because your world will never take Stonemist Castle.

Middle is best, imo.

So what would you say is your favorite server? Middle isnt very specific… haha

https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/na/wvwsilver

Basically any of the servers in this list should give you a diversity of gameplay. Though I heard Fort Aspenwood also has queue problems because of a mysterious spike in world transfers just before the league.

I’m biased towards CD because I’m here, of course. But if you want to be accurate, you should probably guest all of these worlds and see what people are like in map chat/LA. Different people prefer different types of people, and the general mentality of players differs per world.

For instance, one of CD’s not so good mentalities is the tendency to completely give up when we’re ranked third in a week of WvW within the first day, and PvE the rest of the week away. It’s like they decide whether or not they want to try depending on the results of the first day’s battle.

Dragonbrand has an abnormally high completion rate of pre-events for dungeons, temples and the like, I often find myself guesting there to open dungeons for LFG. If you like doing group events it’s probably the best among the silver tier for that.

Northern Shiverpeaks ‘always’ trebs SMC from the northern keep when they have it, in EBG. This is especially visible given how very few other worlds do the same thing.

EBay has very large zergs, if you like that sort of gameplay. But somewhat fewer roamers.

IoJ has a lot of WvW roamers and not many zergs.

Wow that’s really descriptive, so basically when you guest servers, you can do everything you did on your own server is what I’m getting. But then what’s the drawback from guesting servers other than limited amounts of guesting time? I would try the different worlds around, but I don’t want to have to create characters get them out of the starting zone, walk to the bigger cities and sit for like 5 hours trying to get a feel of the people.

The only drawback to guesting is the fact that you cannot WvW. Guesting limits you to PvE. Might wanna check out this link for info about guesting.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guesting#Guesting

Another drawback is you can’t get at your guild bank or bonuses, that’s local to your home server. So if you join a guild on another server in order to hang out with them, you’ll have a tiny bit less in perqs.

Well I’ve decided to choose TC. Are there any good readings about the starter areas and etc that I should read? Tips and hints to do before I miss out on too much?

Read the sticky at the top of this forum for all the omg if only I knew that tips. Don’t get caught up in the Queensdale train, it’ll be there a long time. Explore, do the events, get to know the place.

Big help: Assign chat tabs to separate out types of chat. I give Map its own tab and only look at it when trying to coordinate with people.

Donari.5237:

Read the sticky at the top of this forum for all the omg if only I knew that tips. Don’t get caught up in the Queensdale train, it’ll be there a long time. Explore, do the events, get to know the place.

Big help: Assign chat tabs to separate out types of chat. I give Map its own tab and only look at it when trying to coordinate with people.

Is there a good resource to look for help on quests? I realize that the quest descriptions are very vague and I spend 20 minutes looking around for one object, I even bring my mouse over the object to see if it’ll show up on my map, but no.