Guild Wars 2

I think part of the challenge is to make players feel like a heroic part of the story while also accounting for the fact that this is an MMO and thousands of people will do any event. I don’t want the game to pretend that I personally stop the bad guys and save the good guys, because when every individual player is treated like the big hero, it feels pretty cheap. That’s why characters like Trahearne, Kormir, even Devona and her band exist – all players can identify as one of the really important people supporting them, but not the famous one.

Living story stuff needs to account for there being thousands of us and that restricts its storytelling a little. ArenaNet try and put out events where it’s feasible for a lot of us to be called in or to be around to participate. Sure, I personally won’t be the central hero, but if I wanted that I’d be playing a single player RPG.

I’m coming to this late so apologies for those following the discussion, I will almost certainly repeat people I haven’t read – I figured I’d throw my opinions in anyway because collaboration ftw

I agree that Scarlet is a weak villain, and most of my friends agree. I don’t object to the steampunk direction itself (although it’s not my preference for GW2) but Scarlet came out of nowhere, doesn’t mesh well with what was already there, and is a bit too mindlessly maniacal. The lore/roleplay minded are a little different, but my friends and I were quickly asking, what do the Firstborn or the Pale Tree think of Scarlet? Has she always been this crazy? What was her Dream like? What do the asura who taught her think? Does anyone feel responsible for her behaviour? Answering some of these could possibly make her feel more part of the world and less a random bonus event, but honestly I don’t like her enough to want to see it badly. I would MUCH rather see some of the complex factional dynamics, tensions, traditions etc which we already have in Tyria flare up every now and then, or for that matter to see some mysteries addressed. I know I’m not alone on that front.

Some people complain that living story isn’t epic enough, but to be honest I’m a little tired of every event being a world-threatening attack – especially when it’s always an attack from a previously unknown source. One purpose of the living story might be to provide a rotation of distractions and sideshows to occupy players, and that’s fine, but I thought it was also meant to make Tyria feel like a world and not just a game. Recent updates feel all game. The less ‘epic’ events do more to flesh out the existing world and make it feel less static. You should be able to do that without disrupting the status quo in certain areas – for instance, have a plot revolving around an upset or sabotage of the truce negotiations at Ebonhawke. You don’t have to push that plot forward, just restore equilibrium at the end of it, but it would use what’s already (supposedly) happening in the world.

I do think (and this is a less popular opinion) that players in general would do well to view the living story content less as something they ‘have to’ get through for the sake of completion or loot, and more as essentially current events in the world. They happen whether you’re there or not, but if you miss it never mind, another thing will be happening. I think the fact that the rewards have tended toward souvenirs rather than powerful or valuable items is a good thing in this regard.

In short – I don’t speak for everyone here, but I would like to see the living world provide:

• a variety of temporary/seasonal content from across the game so that most people will find at least, say, one in three updates interesting and relevant to them [check!]
• development of the existing game/story world that makes it feel like a world in its own right, and not just a platform for gamers to increase scores in [not so check]

Also, living story arcs. Perhaps ones that move dragonward over a few months (you’ve said before that living story > expansions for that right?), but not necessarily. Something coherent that reflects broader movements in Tyria and means that if you miss a month, you are still part of the overall arc.

Yeah there aren’t many Ascalonians, especially considering Ebonhawke is pretty much all that’s left of Ascalon as a kingdom in current time. I imagine there are people born in Kryta who identify as Ascalonian in an ethnic sense, but they’d be citizens of the Kingdom of Kryta.

The late Theo Ashford (“of the Ascalonian Ashfords”) would probably have counted, but…well.

I have played through all the living story since launch on a laptop which is a couple of years old (and while bought with gaming in mind, it is by no means an expensive gaming laptop, I just wanted it to run stuff) – and I haven’t found anything ‘unplayable’ since Lost Shores. Yeah my graphics aren’t the best, nor is my FPS at an ideal rate all the time, but I have definitely still been able to participate in and enjoy world bosses and things like Scarlet’s invasions. I don’t know if you’re just not as lucky – that would suck – but I would have thought my computer was fairly average.

Besides, GW2 is a game that is more in favour of server-wide, spontaneous large group events than instances; just the way it is. They like getting us all together and always have. As others have said here, they are always tweaking the system and event design to make it easier to run and more enjoyable, but I think the philosophy’s here to stay.

Others have said what I was going to say, which is that the living story brings people together in particular places which change every few weeks. Check the info on the right side of your screen or talk to heralds in the cities for an idea of where you might find people – they’ll be with the new stuff, whatever that is at a given time.

Kevs.7483:

And i dont really know what to do in WvW

It takes a little getting used to, but when in doubt, look for a group (try the blue commander icons on the map) and go help with whatever they’re doing. You can follow others until you know what’s going on, and safety in numbers. Besides which, there are regular enemies and events in WvW too.

This is just from my personal experience and I know different people have different stories, but generally:
– ranger is survivable because your pet can take aggro from you, good switching between ranges, great downed skills; some people find pets aren’t tough enough or get bored because they never have to dodge with the pet in the way.
– thief can go down very quickly if hit, but has a lot of ways to avoid that (including dodge traits), plus condition dmg and sneak attack damage spike options; stealth is much used in WvW and thieves are the masters there.

Engineer is ranged in focus and has a lot of flexibility – if you try one, play with the kits and see if there are any you like to give yourself extra skills and different options in combat.

For ranger, I will say that if you sink some points into beastmastery or even just level (and/or choose your pets wisely), you should be able to get use out of your pet without micro-managing. But if the style doesn’t suit you that’s fine too.

You could try thief, but I think thief works better jumping between ranged and striking in for melee (plus they’re super squishy). I don’t know necro well but it sounds like it’s definitely worth a try!

Crafting is a fantastic way to level – when used alongside play. I know you can just use crafting to push you up the levels but I personally wouldn’t recommend it. If you craft regularly as you play, it will provide a nice bit of extra experience and you can gather materials for it along the way, rather than just bulk buying your way up the levels.

It depends on what kind of player you are, though. If you’re new, you’ll need materials; if you’ve levelled through the game before, you’ll have a lot of it already and be able to level crafting faster. Cooking and jeweller in particular, I find, are really easy to level if you’ve already gathered a lot on previous characters.

You mean like you’re torn between which candidate you trust for the good of society as a whole, and which candidate you think will benefit you personally the most in the immediate future? Welcome to every real world election ever :P

But really, it’s up to you whether you vote on a roleplay basis (character) or a mechanics basis (which rewards you want). Pick which is more important to you and stick to that.

Yeah, I think we shouldn’t take ‘tactics’ too literally in this case. However, a willingness to take (measured) risks, ruthlessness in regard to competition, knowing when to offer said competition a way out (buy them out) and when to destroy them… these are all valid military and commercial qualities. Gnashblade set out not to just sell products, but to create a commercial empire which dominated all other merchants – it’s charr imperialism in a ‘soft’ form. And it looks like it has been extremely successful!

Despite what we generally see, not all charr are soldiers, even if they’re still organised in warbands for the most part. I am sure there is provision for leaving military service voluntarily and honourably. Plenty of charr live in Lion’s Arch outside of the charr political structure. For all we know, Gnashblade still has a warband out there!

I assume you’re just wanting these points for your own sense of completion?

Well, you’ll probably know that in Flame and Frost two new POIs were added (Cragstead in Wayfarer Foothills and the hatchery in Diessa Plateau). There are two new waypoints near guild puzzle locations – one in the north-west corner of Brisban Wildlands, one in the south-west of Plains of Ashford. From Dragon Bash, there’s also a new POI in Divinity’s Reach. Southsun (and Labyrinthine Cliffs) still does not count toward map completion.

If I’ve missed any of the new spots, maybe someone else can add?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Why Cantha? There needs to be a plot device to take us there. Many folks believe we’ll go to Cantha first just because it was the order of GW1, but honestly, Anet can take us to whatever direction they want.

Yeah, everyone is so keen for Cantha, but I’m really not seeing any reason why this game would take us there at all (certainly not any time soon). As Konig says there’s plenty to be getting on with on the continent we have, heaps of un-filled map and un-finished conflicts. There are the Elder Dragons – still kind of a problem! Plus, Cantha as we knew it was a human empire. This world is no longer human-dominated so it would be very strange to get Cantha back in anything like the form we knew it. I think it’s a fan desire, but I don’t see how or why they’d incorporate it into GW2.

BrunoBRS.5178:

i quit factions halfway through because i couldn’t stand kaineng and the kittening afflicted anymore (went back to it later).

Kaineng was gloriously horrible… in lore it was a crowded, confusing, haphazard labyrinth full of bureaucrats who would send you across the city to ten different people to get anything done at all. In the game we experienced it as… exactly that. Frustrating as it could be, I had to admire the design :P

Well, the achievement is account-wide, if that helps – it counts anywhere you’ve been to on any character, but opening up a place on one character won’t help if you’ve already done it on another. The achievement refers to areas (the named regions, whose names pop up when you push into that area with a character) so they won’t always be marked with POIs etc.

Krytan zones are Queensdale, Kessex Hills, Gendarran Fields, Harathi Hinterlands, and Bloodtide Coast. If you already knew all of that, I don’t think I can help you any more, sorry!

Yeah we’re getting rather sidetracked here…

Ah, Aneirin, a philosopher – that somewhat explains it. You are entitled to your arguments and your conclusions, but I don’t think the logic is based on anything absolute here. You are positing a specific definition of evil, which is fine (there is no absolute definition that we would agree on), but you can’t claim to prove that something is evil because it fits the definition of evil you’ve just posited. In short, this argument isn’t going to go anywhere, I think!

Let’s not harass Aneirin because we don’t agree with him/her, ok? It’s an unanswerable question.

Your traits may have changed because a recent update changed a bunch of what was available, and it may be registering different traits to what you originally chose. At the very least, check that. Viking’s right though, a lot of things big and small have been changed, not so much that’s really dramatic, but enough that it might make a difference for you.

I’d recommend logging in again and reading over what you’ve go spec’d already, tweak anything obvious, and then play a bit. If playing your character doesn’t feel right, or the same, or effective enough, it might be worth going back and trying your class’s weapon sets again to see if anything works better for you now than it did then. Depending on what kind of player you are, though, you may not need to worry about it that much!

I’d say that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are definitely socially (or I would say culturally) defined! But anyway, I agree that the EDs’ cycles are very similar to the Reapers, and I agree that they’re not what I’d consider ‘evil’, but I don’t think that a motive of preservation is likely. If it was the case, I’d guess it had a lot more to do with the nature of magic and its effect on the world (it would have to be stuff we don’t currently know about) than with the emergence of races as in the Reaper case. The fact that the dragons absorb or ‘eat’ magic is significant (I’m just not completely sure of why, yet).

Narrative-wise, it’s significant because it’s why extremely powerful past races could fail but our cycle could destroy the dragons (more technology, less magic-dependent than the last cycle) – but in-world, I’m not sure!

I got the impression that whoever was working behind the scenes here was basically offering certain factions an opportunity to profit. Particularly with the Molten Alliance, it seemed to be a case of convincing two factions to start something for their own benefit, which might serve our mystery instigator in the long-run (whether through general destabilisation of the major races, or something more specific, I don’t know). I know less about the Aetherblade situation, but the trick seems to be to push groups into taking somewhat rash actions that are consistent with their own goals, but are maybe more ambitious or extreme than they would have been without that push.

So my money’s on more of a silver-tongued strategy, manipulating from the shadows. This is living story, after all; politics is half of it, everywhere!

To my mind, this is the point of the living story. The personal story is all heroics – large-scale, saving the world stuff! Uniting the people! Slaying dragons! Classic. But Tyria can’t be like that all the time. When we move on to another dragon, sure, bring on the heroic scale – but the living story is the everyday life of Tyria. From that angle, there’s still an awful lot going on all the time.

I think it’s perfectly appropriate for the living story content to be more everyday, and to follow the power struggles and grievances of important NPCs. Fantasy stories in novels etc work because you can assume that the events of this story are exceptional, a major turning point in the world’s history. It becomes less believable if those kinds of world-changing battles and evil overlords happen every week!

There was the Halloween clocktower: extremely difficult, with a timed element which was new at the time, and some problems.
There was the Wintersday puzzle: similar in that it way timed and required quick jumping, but fixed some of the crowding issues.
There was the Aetherblade one: long, not so much difficult in its individual jumps, but difficult to finish. A challenge for those who like jumping puzzles, which will be there for us to re-try later.
Now there’s the Bazaar: a whole zone of jumping puzzles, ranging from simple to complicated (either in skill requirement or just in puzzle thinking; sometimes once you figure out how to get there, it’s not so hard to actually do).

All of these were simply different to the puzzles that are already in the game, and as you say they’re optional. The Aetherblade dungeon sounded too hard for me, someone who doesn’t play many dungeons, so I didn’t do it – but those who love dungeons seem to have enjoyed having something harder. This update is for those who enjoy jumping puzzles and gives them a challenge. I wouldn’t say that the puzzles have been getting harder and harder, they’ve just mixed things up a bit, tried new things.

TL;DR: sorry you’re finding the Bazaar frustrating, but all content is enjoyable for some people and not for others, and with updates every two weeks I think we should all accept that not every update will suit us and that’s fine – there’ll be something new soon enough!

Very interesting indeed. If this is ever figured out in-game, someone is going to want to study those sky crystals and compare them to Dragonbrand crystals. What an incredible opportunity for that research!

So, the predecessors of the Zephyrites were the Brotherhood of the Dragon and humans took over as her representatives presumably after it became evident that the dwarves would disappear from Tyria (or possibly before, since Glint knew some of the future!). They’re now flying without guidance and the whole serene airship thing seems to be of their own making, rather than Glint’s plan (just their way of preserving their order). Still, I wonder if they will serve a purpose in some plan of Glint’s? If they practice magic derived from her, it could be significant in future. Or, it could just be a fun lore tie-in for this month’s jumping playground.

If you’re interested in that stuff, there are things you can and should do: read the novels, talk to NPCs everywhere, look for interactable objects with information on plaques or in books. The game doesn’t give clear info-dumps (apart from things like the history of Destiny’s Edge’s final battle that’s given in the personal story via the playing kids, which I thought was nicely done) – but information is out there, and not just on the wiki. It’s also optional; if you want it it’s there, but if you’re not interested, it’s not pushed upon anyone.

Maybe ships from Lion’s Arch go a certain way, and then the Zephyrites pick up those who come for their bazaar?

Except there are actually Lion’s Arch ships visible on the horizons of the Labyrinthine Cliffs zone, so we can’t use that excuse.

It’s also possible that the Zephyrites had much closer contact with Glint than anyone else, and were informed of the plan to take down Kralkatorrik with Destiny’s Edge before Glint’s death. By the time of Edge of Destiny, the human Zephyrites would long ago have taken over from the dwarves who were apparently Glint’s first chosen people (so to speak) – Glint might have kept them informed, especially knowing the likelihood of her own death in that battle.

I will laugh if it turns out that Glint is still the mastermind behind our heroics and us being in the right situations at the right time, heh.

As Behellagh said, GW2 encourages you to learn by exploring! You will start in your race’s starter zone and I’d advise 100% completing that map to start with – it’ll show your completion on the map, you need all hearts, waypoints, skill points, vistas and points of interest (not events, which change). If you do that you’ll get good exp along with a bonus of exp and gear at the end.

The Bazaar of the Four Winds stuff is living story – the current event going on for the next couple of weeks. There’ll always be something there on your sidebar, but it’s more like world events, not a quest for you. The closest thing to questing in other MMOs is your personal story (the green note on the side) which is in instances.

If you want directional guidance, the hearts in your starter zone will each have an intended level if you mouse over them, and you can follow that trail, doing whatever comes across your path as you do. Don’t hesitate to get sidetracked if an event or mysterious cave or something gets your attention. Lots of the stuff in the world is hidden for you to discover, rather than marked.

As for exp tips, don’t farm the same mobs; the longer something has been alive in the world the bigger its exp bonus when it’s killed, so kill stuff where no one seems to have been for a while. Gather from nodes: it’ll be useful in future plus gathering gives exp. Finding waypoints and POIs and stuff also gives exp, hence map completion is a good goal. Good luck!

cpg more or less covered it, but to elaborate on a few things:
– the gem store is like a cash shop, it mostly contains cosmetics and convenience items. It has skins for weapons/armour which can be applied to gear, but nothing with stats you would want. Totally optional.
– PvP I’m not too sure about, although they did add the ability to pay (cash) for custom arenas recently, so people may have smaller battles going in their own things.
– Fractals of the Mists is a level 80 ‘infinite dungeon’ – each time you go through three fractals (like mini-dungeons or missions) and a boss, then you go up a rank. Next time you do three more, but it gets harder (and the rewards get better).
– As cpg said, there is a legendary weapon for each weapon type, they’re not bound to professions. As an engineer I would guess you’d be most interested in The Predator (for looks), but you can check them all out on the Trading Post (complete with previewing).

I strongly suspect it is not possible. Sorry.

To be fair, though, everyone has parts of the game they can do better or less well, and ArenaNet has put out updates covering a huge variety of content. This is a jumping-heavy update, the previous one focused on a lot more dungeon skill than I have, the one before that required a certain amount of time. In any given month it might not be your thing, but there’ll be something else later. I wouldn’t complain when a part of the game I’m less fond of comes up, because other people will enjoy it and maybe I just sit it out.

This coming from a player from New Zealand who has never had more than average trouble with jumping puzzles and is thoroughly enjoying a light-hearted, less combat-focused update. But it’s not for everyone, and that’s fine.

Vergil Huragok.3967:

Should go to the back of the ship, you’ll find an interesting dialogue :P

Agreed, I plan to go back and listen in full later today, but there is a Zephyrite woman talking to a group of Zephyrite children on the airship about their history and such, and Glint is mentioned by name! I’ll have to check the full context, but I’d be willing to be their song is about her.

I thought it was lovely for ArenaNet to hide relatively subtle lore hints for us

The centaurs are humanity’s racial enemies only in the sense that Ascalonian ghosts are the charr racial enemies – they’re not an internal enemy faction, which is what the others are. The White Mantle connection (I’m going to avoid any more spoilers than that) is very interesting and what links humanity’s internal problems, to my mind. It is much more veiled – and I’m expecting a later storyline to highlight and reveal more about any such connections down the line. I certainly have my suspicions about a certain Minister Caudecus, haha…

Many of us players have a special place in our hearts for human history due to GW1, so it would make sense to make a story of it for a later date, as politics develop!

I don’t know, Tybalt is obviously the prime example, but a lot of the Order of Whispers stuff is pretty light-hearted, if only because they tend to get a lot of combat-light, character-heavy missions. To be clear, I have no problem with this! But most of the ‘secret messages’ and coded conversations you have from that order are a bit silly, in part because the player character keeps seeming to forget it’s meant to be secret (I mean everyone knows, right?).

While I suppose there is a tenuous possibility, I think it’s just luck. Sadly the way that probabilities work means that sometimes, someone gets especially bad luck, and someone else gets good luck. See this blog post for what I’m getting at, haha.

1) No profession or character is just a healer or just a tank – everyone has their own heal skill and has to watch out for their own health and their own aggro. You can build a character who’s more tanky or does more heal/support, but you’ll never be as specialised as in some other games where specialised roles are basic to the game. If you play solo for a bit, you’ll get a feel for it! The more you level up, the more skills, traits and combinations open up to you.

2) The first dungeon story mode is at level 30 – you will eventually get a mail telling you about it and showing you where to go, but it’s in the charr starter area.

3) Any class you will learn in time, but from discussing it with other people I think warrior, ranger or guardian are the most forgiving classes to start out with. Still, pick what you think is cool!

4) Lion’s Arch is the main hub. You can access it by asura gate from any of the racial cities, and get to any of those cities through Lion’s Arch. The starter areas also often have a lot of people there (for dailies and world events) so map chat there can be helpful.

5) If you get lost, there are always waypoints – go to your map and just pick one around where you want to get back to. It costs, but at low levels it doesn’t cost much. I recommend sticking to your starter area for a while and 100% clearing that. It will get you exp, plenty of time to get used to and expand your skills, a taste of the different kinds of gameplay, and some nice loot at the end. Once you know your way around the starter zone, you can venture forth for other things!

It’s not just that we have trust issues – although this is gaming on the internet, a certain amount of paranoia and pessimism about people is only reasonable. It’s also that because this can’t be verified, people shouldn’t enter it (good practise in general to not give money to strangers who promise you things) and it could be construed as a breach of terms even if you are legit.

Doing it within a guild is a bit different, because there’s a relationship there. People trust each other with guild business already, and if there are betrayals, it’s unfortunately accepted as a risk of the sharing that a guild entails. To the game at large… it’s just too iffy without any system in place to verify it.

Also, there are charr in the Priory. If those charr scholars wanted to investigate possible ways to end the Foefire, they could. At the same time, if the Legions put pressure on the Priory to do something which they didn’t want to do, there would be internal strife as people had to choose between their order (and their own personal research interests, which they presumably feel strongly about) and their legion/warband. I know charr are meant to always choose the warband, but that kind of tension is the last thing the High Legions need now.

The charr are pretty direct and hands-on, but they’re not just brutes. The Priory is useful to them as an independent group, and they are capable of asking for research rather than immediately resorting to siege and coercion.

Crossplay.2067:

I think it’s more like, “hiding in plain site.” Sure you see them around a lot but you don’t know what they’re up to when you don’t see them.

This. For all we know it’s a cunning ruse. The Order of Whispers make certain aspects of their operations known so that other people think they know what the Order of Whispers does. They maintain the impression that they’re secret, but make their secrets not that difficult to uncover. Meanwhile, others don’t look nearly so hard for any other Whispers operations which are actually secret, because they think they’ve already figured it all out.

Really though, the Order in Tyria today is not what it was in Elona when we first met them. They manipulate from the shadows, but they also want to have a public, political presence. Plus there’s the unfortunate truth that the orders can’t work too differently from each other, for reasons of story continuity, so Whispers secrecy is played for laughs more often than it’s emphasised for story.

I don’t know, but they’ve shown a tendency to add visible back pieces in their update content or for special event rewards, so I wouldn’t worry.
I would guess that it’s largely because the back slot is classed with the accessories; we don’t get visible amulets, either. The pieces with a model are exceptions.

Regarding race, play whichever you think looks cool, or whichever you like the ‘flavour’ of more since it determines your first few levels of story – the rugged and shamanic norn or the mad scientist asura? In the long run, race won’t effect your character’s ability, although you might want to check out what armour looks like on each race (asura and charr, having quite different body shapes, tend to look different to others).

That said, I rather like the idea of asura encased in plate, haha. But norn heavies look very appropriate too, so either choice works!

Of the two heavy-armoured professions, I’d say that warrior is much more versatile but guardian is pretty indestructible. Pick whichever sounds like your style and have fun!

I do roleplay, and it doesn’t ‘ruin things’ for me. I saw that and thought “haha, look, a bug, this NPC doesn’t register that I’m not norn.” Then I left.

All in all there are a lot of good places in the game where you get slightly different interactions based on details of your character. Given how many there are, the small number that don’t work aren’t a huge problem.

In addition to all the points above, the OP assumes that the charr want to conquer the rest of the world (or at least kill all the humans!), and are being restrained somehow. The thing is, they’re smart enough and experienced enough by now to know that running an empire is a lot of work – and it seems like the charr actually hold a very large area of land. Unlike, say, the norn, the charr have a centralised government and chain of command, so all that land and all the people in it have to administered.

You only have to look at the history of the Roman Empire, from which charr civilisation draws in certain elements, to see the perils of expanding beyond what one can effectively manage. I’ve said before that Smodur is in an analogous political situation to the Emperor Augustus; like Augustus, it might make sense for him to cease his people’s expansion and solidify what they currently hold instead.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Regarding the asura golems, and inventions on a whole: one thing people seem to forget is that designs tend to die with the inventor. The asura are very narcissistic, egotistical, and most of all: paranoid.

This is true. One of the great benefits of science (in our world) is that it’s cumulative: everyone’s work builds on the work of the scientists before them, so that we can develop more than anyone could in one lifetime. One person’s half-finished work can be continued for as many generations as it takes to yield results. If all scientists were severe egotists (as most asura geniuses are), and no one was willing to share information or credit in case they got ripped off, this cumulative effect is hindered if not negated altogether.

In the long term, the Inquest are going to be able to advance further and faster than any other krewe because any individual scientist’s work belongs to the Inquest as a whole, and can be passed down to future Inquest scientists. Their work is cumulative. It is, unfortunately, a smart way to go about it! If only they didn’t use their powers for evil.

Yep, the personal story will occasionally send you mail just like heart merchants do when you finish a heart.

It’s all about approach I guess. If all you look at the cities for is map completion or selling your stuff, they’re not particularly efficient. If you like an environment with a heart and soul, the cities are pretty cool. It’s not for everybody, but personally I’ve started exploring the cities more thoroughly and climbing my way into nooks and crannies, talking to named NPCs. There’s actually a lot to find! A lot of little environmental Easter eggs and funny dialogue.

I would definitely like more reasons to go to the other cities – lately I have been re-exploring them more thoroughly instead of just for mapping, and I’ve found a lot of little curiosities. Maybe a scavenger hunt type thing (like the Mad King stories at Halloween) but around one of the cities? Anyway, I explore for exploration’s sake already heh.

The problem with wanting a ‘new hub’ is that a hub only works if it’s the one obvious central place. Lion’s Arch is it, in lore and game terms. It’s a port. You can’t encourage people to go elsewhere and just replicate the same effect. Anyway, how many people explore Lion’s Arch beyond Trader’s Forum? I’ve never seen anyone else in the little house you can walk into in Western Ward.

I would like to see racial festivals, though. Decorations in the home city and a unique mini-game would be all it needed, not necessarily a world-wide event. It’d be a fantastic flavour thing.

If it all gets too much for you, gate over to Rata Sum and find the Super Adventure Box (it takes up to a party of five but you can try it fine by yourself, level and stats do not matter at all)!

Flame and Frost content is centred around the Black Citadel, Diessa Plateau and Wayfarer Foothills. This is all more or less a sideshow, rather than something you must play through, so check it out or don’t as is your preference. Most of the other major changes to the game are improvements or tweaks to what was already there in November I think, so you should be able to learn by experimentation – which was always the GW2 way anyway :P

Perhaps a good approach would be to make a new character just to get back into the game and re-play through the introductory stuff? You can always go back to your 80s when you feel like you’re up to speed. And yes, a guild is a good idea (but look around the guild forums and/or be sure to note your server).

Mercury’s answer is spot on. The only thing I’d add is that, naturally, playing a character to 80 gives you more chance to get the hang of them and learn how to use them more effectively (in more forgiving environments!). You can think of it like the campaign mode to practise before PvP. Nonetheless, sPv kitten pecifically designed so that you can jump in any time at equal strength!

Unfortunately the soulbound is there for a reason – karma is a currency accumulated on a specific character, so anything bought with karma is also limited to a specific character. IMO that made a lot more sense when karma was much more difficult to get and I didn’t have a hundred jugs of karma in my bank waiting for a character to use them… but if you think of karma as earned through how you play the game, it makes sense that only a character who’s done enough to earn it can purchase and use a karma-based item.

As stated, you can transmute the appearance but not the stats.

Guild Wars 1 worked very differently to most MMOs (by most definitions it wasn’t strictly an MMO). No, there wasn’t a huge amount of endgame – it wasn’t the kind of game where you aimed for endgame. The level cap was 20 and you’d hit it halfway through the first campaign if you did all the side quests along the way.

There is an expectation that MMOs work on the model of levelling (boring) → gear up (tedious/challenging depending on the game) → endgame (infinite striving) at max level. Neither GW1 nor GW2 work on that assumption. The idea is that you enjoy playing the game, wherever you’re up to, not that you rush through Part A just to get to Part B. Personally, I love that (GW2 is certainly more casual-friendly than most MMOs). Not everyone does, which is fine.

I think the fact that GW2 is a lot more like a ‘typical’ MMO than its predecessor means that people come to it with different expectations.

Sorry you found it that way (I don’t). Best of luck with your next game.

+1 for the ability to search for dyes with the filter on the trading post. This would be extremely useful for the vain among us who love to preview a lot :P