Guild Wars 2

1. Personal/Guild Housing

2. Dungeons

3. Living World

I understand where you’re coming from Faowri.

However you can still do the story without completing the meta I think – you just need to have someone in your party who has completed it.

And as you point out the achievements don’t seem that grindy. If they continue to include 2 meta achievements in the daily it should be fairly easy to get over the course of the next 4 weeks.

There are daily achievements which contribute to the Blood and Madness meta. Today I think it’s eating 50 candy and carving 5 pumpkins? Just look in the daily achievements and you’ll spot them.

Yes Dulfy. I had to kill the candy corn boss twice to get the achievement. It didn’t register the first time I did it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I agree, please do understand though that part of the problem really has been a lack of time. We work at a break neck pace and as i have said we need to carve out more time to do that. So the speed at which i am posting now is extremely difficult for most and will be difficult for me to but what i am hoping is we can work to build a communication process that is great for all involved.

There have been many many times i have wanted to post and i would imagine this is the case for the devs to but finding the time to give it the attention it deserves and also getting the courage to do so has been difficult.

This is something i want us to get back to and in answer to the question of why did the communication cadence lower in the first place, it is simply down to how busy everyone has been. You can take it or leave it in terms of believing this but i am telling you it is the truth (-:

I am really excited about rebuilding the communications bridge and this conversation in general.

Chris

Far too many posts for me to tell if this has already been said but I think this is an important message to get across.

People get frustrated when they feel no-one’s listening to them and when devs don’t respond to threads this is how they feel. However perhaps we have unrealistic expectations of how much time devs have during the working day to devote to things like this.

It’s apparent that the only reason you’ve been able to respond as you have been is that you’ve found some free time to do so and I recall Josh talking about working 16 hour days on SAB (I’m sure because he wanted to do it not because you were there cracking the whip ).

I’ve also never considered that it might be a daunting experience posting a reply on the forums but thinking about it I can see how this would be the case.

I think it’s good that you’re looking into building more time into people’s days for them to respond on the forums and hopefully the community will be supportive thus making it a less scary experience.

Similarly we probably have unrealistic expectations of how long something takes to be changed.

For example take something like not being able to change the leader of a dungeon. To me this seems a simple task which just needs the leader to right click the name of who they want to change it to and select ‘make party leader’ from the drop down list. To my inexperienced mind this should take someone a few days to program? In reality I suspect that implementing this would actually be much more involved and take much longer.

Perhaps if people’s expectations were a little more realistic they wouldn’t get quite so frustrated. Would there be any value in having a blog/news post detailing the day in a life of a developer or a look at how a feature which has been introduced went from idea to implementation and how long this took?

I’m not suggesting it’s done as a this is why we can’t respond to you, or look at how long it takes us to do this, type post. More of an informative post of what goes on behind the scenes at ArenaNet – I’m sure people would be interested in this and perhaps it’ll have a secondary effect of changing some of our expectations.

Anyway keep up the good work and remember that when people get upset with you guys it’s usually because they’re passionate about the game.

Well I’ve got a lvl 25 ranger and have also found him pretty survivable.

I’m probably doing it all wrong but I use a brown bear pet and longbow/axe&torch. My armour is mostly blue/green lvl 20 gear and none of it has toughness or vitality. With signets of the wild, hunt and stone in utility. I’ve traited 10 points into beastmastery to get master’s bond. I generally use troll unguent for healing when I’m soloing and healing spring when in a group. The pet tanks whilst stand back and if anyone gets close I can knock them back or switch to axe/torch.

It might not be the most efficient build or suitable for later zones/dungeons but so far it’s served me well. You could always ask on the ranger forum for better advice.

I think it can depend on your class at lower levels. Some characters I’ve died very little on and some I died a lot more. Different zones, even with the same level range, can also be harder in my experience – I’m looking at you Inquest mobs in northern Metrica Province.

GoZero was right saying that toughness and vitality are your friends. Have you traited into one of their lines. That’ll help you survive at lower levels and you can trait into other lines later on.

You do lose a lot of health from attacks in this game and going from full to near dead in a few seconds is very common. If you’re fighting a group it can be handy to take one mob down to low health then leave them and concentrate on the others. Then if you’re downed you can switch back to the mob who’s nearly dead anyway, kill them quickly and rally.

Remember your level will be downscaled to the area you’re in as well so you may effectively be lvl 16 when facing that lvl 16 mob and that lvl 6 player may have been a lvl 80 player downscaled to lvl 6. You’ll still be more powerful than a non-downscaled player but if it’s from lvl 20 to lvl 16 you won’t feel that benefit as much as lvl 80 to lvl 16 for example.

Don’t despair. I’m sure you’ll soon find things easier, especially when you hit lvl 30 and you get your first elite skill which can be a great help in difficult situations.

Here’s a link from the GW2 wiki on what creatures are plants.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plant

Not sure if they will all count towards to the slayer achievement but worth checking. Nightmare hounds would probably be the easiest to go after I guess if they work.

Well despite being in a guild I’ve played pretty much solo in PvE all the way up to lvl 80 (including the personal storyline) and have had no problems. The fact that you don’t need to form a group to tackle PvE content which requires more than one player makes it very easy to play solo if you wish.

I can’t comment on WvW as I’ve no real experience and as you’ve already mentioned some content such as dungeons will necessitate a group.

In summary yes it’s very plausible to play GW2 as a lone wolf.

On a separate note anyone who thinks someone is less capable of playing a game due to their gender is, in my personal opinion, pretty foolish.

Hi Sckolar

If you want to get into roleplay then I’d try and join one of the offical rp servers which, as Danikat has already mentioned, are Tarnished Coast for US servers and Piken Square for EU servers.

You might also want to look at and join this site – www.guildwars2roleplayers.com

You’ll be able to find guilds that roleplay and can either join one of them or look out for them in game and strike up a conversation with one of their members. There’s no official rp tag as such but if they’re a member of one of the guilds on the site they shouldn’t mind a quick rp chat.

The other option is just to wander around and look for people roleplaying. You’ll probably find it easiest to run into people roleplaying in the major cities specifically Lion’s Arch and Divinities Reach (at least on Piken Square) though you may bump into some race specific guilds in the other cities.

A good place to start would be to wander round the taverns as roleplayers can’t resist a good chat over a mug of ale. It’s a fairly public place so it’s easier to accept a stranger into the conversation rather than plonking yourself down in the middle of a couple’s romantic picnic which may result in you being shown the pointy end of a sword.

Joining a roleplaying guild though really is the best way to find and get into roleplay so I’d really try for this if I were you.

You have to get 500,000 xp without dying. Getting downed doesn’t reset it but dying does.

Also changing zone resets it so you’ll have to get the 500,000 xp all in one zone but this isn’t that hard in the high level zones.

Well you can store other items in your bank but you can’t just send them straight there like you can with crafting materials and mini-pets. You’ll have to visit the bank in a city or use a crafting station to access your bank tab before you can deposit them.

Note that there are 2 bank tabs on the left side of the bank window. The top bag one accesses your general bank slots and the bottom 3 × 3 grid of small squares accesses your collection of materials and mini-pets. Also your bank is account wide so all your characters use the same bank.

You can buy more 30 space general bank tabs with gems for 600 gems each up to a maximum of 8 tabs.

Hi Soulmyr and welcome to the game

I would start with the hearts and dynamic events in the starter zone you’re in. They’ll ease you into game and get you used to the combat system. It also helps with unlocking all the different weapon skills. Hopefully some of the mobs will drop the weapons you need but if you desperately want to try a particular weapon then you can always buy one or even ask in map chat and see if anyone is willing to give you one.

The personal story is a good way of leveling up but they can sometimes be a bit challenging if you’re not used to how your character works.

As for crafting I got all my weapons from mobs or buying them of the trading post but as Morrigan says it is a good source of xp though you’ll need either materials, or money to buy them, to craft anyway so you might want to wait a bit until you’ve collected some. Remember to buy some gathering tools from a merchant. You’ll need them to harvest materials and harvesting also grants xp so it’s worthwhile and easy to do.

If you want to make things easier then you could fully explore your home city then use the asura gate to travel to Lion’s Arch, explore that and then the other race’s cities. At a low level this’ll give you quite a bit of xp and you’ll end up several levels higher and it’ll be easier and safer to explore the starting zones then.

You also might want to think about investing in some more bags so you don’t run out of space but remember you can send all crafting materials directly to your bank from wherever you are and can also put items on the trading post from wherever you are too if you’re really stuck for space.

Personally way I started was to do the heart quests and any dynamic events I ran in to in the starting area. When I had enough money I bought some gathering tools and then some extra bags and a salvage kit. Once I’d unlocked all my weapon skills and was happy I had some idea what I was doing I started doing my personal story too. Once I had a reasonable amount of materials I dabbled with some crafting. And after this I just did whatever I felt like doing at that time.

Have fun

I too would suggest trying a guardian.

I’m like you and used to prefer the healer role in other MMOs but that role doesn’t really exist in GW2. It’s up to each individual player to try and keep themselves alive, through avoiding damage and using their self-heals, rather than assume that someone will do it for them.

Guardians can heal a bit, help reduce and block incoming damage, and buff their allies. They’re also quite hard to kill which can be helpful when soloing. A staff guardian can stay a bit back from the action but still be effective with healing, buffing and some dps too as Nay said. My main is a guardian.

I’ve also played an elementalist a bit too. Elementalists work best when you’re switching attunements throughout a fight and if you stick to just one, like water to heal, you’ll be reducing your effectiveness. They’re also quite squishy and I certainly died more on my elementalist than my guardian.

I wouldn’t worry about people dying during an event – it’s common place. In fact people will enter the downed state first and helping to revive them before they actually do die is important and you’ll help a lot by just doing this. You can revive them once dead but it takes so much longer.

It would be nice if you could repeat personal story encounters you’ve already completed.

I enjoyed many of the encounters and it would be nice to go back and relive them.

Also there were encounters that I found very challenging and I often completed though a war of attrition. The ability to attempt these again and see if I could learn how to get through them without dying so much would be fun.

Being able to repeat an encounter would also help when people are asking for advice as they’ve got stuck trying it for themselves. Often I know that I’ve managed to complete it but it was a while ago and I’ve forgotten the tactics I used.

I wouldn’t envisage any rewards from doing the encounters again. It would merely be for the fun of doing them.

I would imagine you’d open up the hero panel, go to my story, and select the appropriate step in you story from the list. As well as the current description of what happened there’d be a button to click which said something like “Relive this encounter”. You’d then be taken to the instance in which the encounter took place and returned to where you were afterwards.

Tarnished Coast is the unofficial US rp server and Piken Square is the unofficial European rp server.

There is a forum for GW2 roleplayers here http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com

This might help you to find a guild or meet up with other roleplayers on these servers.

I have the same problem. If I search it only shows the first page of results. Can’t seem to find a way to view any additional results.

Have you checked you’re logged in when searching.

You can still view the forums whilst not logged in but need to log in to search them. I spent a while wondering why search wasn’t working for me before I realised this.

Not saying this is the only reason search doesn’t work but perhaps explains why sometimes it’s working for you and sometimes it isn’t

I found this tough too initially and had the same problem of being one-shotted by the harpy.

After reading Jeffrey’s comments though I used a glyph of lesser elementals and a staff. I could easily AoE down the little mobs then switch to earth and summoned an earth elemental before switching to water and healing both the elemental and Shodd. They died when the harpy had a little health left but I was able to finish him off on my own.

By the time the next mob appeared I was able to summon my elemental again and just did the same.