Guild Wars 2

I searched the forums to find a thread on New Player Experience, and thought I’d found exactly what I was looking for here. While I completely agree with your first paragraph that Anet shouldn’t forget about the leveling experience, I’ve had three separate RL friends try out GW2 in the last two weeks and gave the same feedback: ITS BORING starting out. So I have to give feedback that the current pacing of the new player experience needs moved back in the direction it originally started in.

I hadn’t made a new character and actually played it since the New Player Experience was released, so I gave it a shot, and was horrified to find that my new ranger started out with a longbow and only the autoattack skill. Half an hour later I was level 4 and still had a longbow, and now could autoattack and use two other skills and heal myself. This is beyond baby steps and has been giving my new player friends the impression that this game has terribly boring combat. Just point at an enemy and hit 1, then maybe 2. Over and over again.

When I try to explain weapon swapping and utility skills and elite skills, it’s a huge bummer to tell them they won’t unlock until level 10, 19, and 31, respectively. Forget about traits and combos.

It’s mind boggling to me that Anet thought new players were so grossly incompetent that they couldn’t handle having access to their full skill bar until they had potentially spent weeks travelling around Tyria. This presents a crippled view of the game’s combat system and requires a new player to stick around for the views and the story IN SPITE of the limited mechanics of the game.

If it had always been this way, I’d still advocate to speed up the pacing, but I remember swapping between attunements on my elementalist back when the game was released and then picking between various weapons and learning their skills too, that was impressive, not confusing, and it really makes me sad to see people checking out the game for the first time in four or five years and turning around and walking away again.

I’m a green Sylvari, felt true to the plant theme.

SkiTz.4590:

You honestly believe anets new endgame content, “most challenging content” should require basic exotics or the actual endgame gear (ascended)???

This content was not created for someone to simply hit 80 and bam, waltz right into the raid in their rares/exotics and complete it like it was nothing.

What was the endgame prior to raids? Fractals. What did high lvl fractals require? ascended.

Its only logical that anything tabbed by anet as “endgame” uses the endgame armor/weapons……

People were doing Fractals in Exotics forever. Just because the folks farming fractals today are in all ascended, doesn’t mean it is required. It is just the fastest way to complete a run.

Remember at launch when everyone laughed about how terrible conjured weaps were? Maybe we’re going full circle and will get our awesome Ride the Lightning functionality back.

Wipe skills and traits, transform the ones already unlocked into Hero Points to spend and let everyone choose their desired items again. Keep it simple so that there isn’t an issue of trying to figure out which skill challenges were previously completed and which weren’t and reduce the volume of forum complaining.

What do we want? SAB!
When do we want it? NOW!!

Looking for a unique twist to your evening in GW2? Come join us for tonight’s Booze Bolt event at 9 PM EST.

Three jumping puzzles with competitors racing to finish them, while everyone else places their bets on the racers. We’ll be in Teamspeak cheering everyone on and enjoying a few delicious beverages in the process.

Break the monotony of running champ trains and rescuing survivors in LA, and hang out with us today!

Need some moral support as you try to climb the Mad King’s Clocktower? We’re ready to cheer you on to a spooky victory!

Interested in that new Super Adventure Box, but it seems a bit daunting? I’ll be leading tour groups all month for those looking to explore and earn those pesky bauble related achievements.

Scott and Kiara, it was great to meet you guys last night and share in your excitement over the game. I’ll look forward to showing you guys around the Super Adventure Box (I am somewhat obsessed with it) this weekend!

In other great news, we now have Guild Bounty Hunts, Treks, and Rushes unlocked and up and running! Wednesday nights at 10 and 2EST are our scheduled Guild Mission times, but we also do them at good times throughout the week spontaneously. Come join in on the fun!

Our Guild Missions were smooth as silk tonight. Bounty Hunting, Guild Trekking and we queued up the unlock for Guild Rushes thanks to Bayhle’s generous purchase of that last chunk of influence needed.

We then set off to conquer the Fractals and had another group out beating back Scarlet’s invading forces. We also went through the Only Zuhl jumping puzzle in Timberline Falls.

Whew! What a night!

Tonight will be the third installment of our Sunday Story Night series, in which we explore all the dungeons in Guild Wars 2. Tonight we’ll be meeting up with Caithe to take out the Nightmare Court in Twilight Arbor.

This is a great chance to check out those story modes you’ve been putting off and enjoy some of the great story telling in the game!

Hi there kfmiller, we sent you an invite to the guild since it looks like we missed each other. We’ll be happy to help get you back into the swing of things!

With this being the free weekend event, if you are checking out the game and would like people to join up with you and show you the ropes, we’d love to be your tour guide to the world of Guild Wars 2!

Here is a wonderful guide our guild officer RedJustice put together to get you started.

Give us a shout

Last night saw the successful launch of Sunday Story Night. Our newest recurring event to explore all of the dungeons in Tyria for new and old members alike. Several groups set out to go through Ascalonian Catacombs and after successful completion I took another group through Arah Story Mode to wrap up personal stories and take in the awesome scenery.

Next week will be Caudecus’ Manor, join in on the fun! Sunday nights at 9PM EST.

Our Bounty Hunt last night went silky smooth, so commendations were easily had by all. Guild Treks are also in our build queue, so we should be doing those as soon as next week.

If you have just come back to the game or are finding it tough to play without some friends to explore with, come check us out!

Last night saw us participating in some of the most exciting WvW battles I’ve seen in awhile. We helped defend Stonemist Castle against a simultaneous attack by Blackgate and Dragonbrand. This fight lasted a good 10 or 15 minutes with nonstop pushes and pulls up and down staircases in the inner castle. We eventually routed both opposing forces and chased them out of the castle. So much fun!

We also had folks practicing their SPvP skills last night, and we all had a great time fighting each other.

We didn’t leave out our contingent of newer players, and made sure we had a Teamspeak channel setup for those exploring the world and leveling up.

I also forgot to mention that over the weekend we were selected to be one of 8 participating guilds in the first Summer Guild Games! This event was hosted on the Fort Aspenwood server and saw us facing off against some stellar opponents in various tests of skill! It was two amazing days of fun and games and we had a great time.

Thanks to Crafe from Fort Aspenwood for volunteering his time and being such an organized and gracious host.

Tonight is going to be awesome!

We’ve got a full slate starting off with Bounty Hunting a few dangerous criminals around Tyria, after which we will be heading to Lion’s Arch for some refreshing Ice Cream and Karma Boosts/Banners. After we’ve washed down our ice cream with jugs of delicious karma, we’ll be forming up to tackle some dungeons, then bring it back full circle with another Bounty Hunt for the folks on a little later.

I look forward to seeing everyone there!

Speaker, I’ll send you a message and invitation when I get online this evening. We’d love to have you join us.

Our bounty hunt last night was a ton of fun, we tracked down the swift running Prisoner 1411 in the Iron Marches, the flame throwing Shaman Arderus in Fireheart Rise and then did a bounty training for extra guild influence and took out Crusader Michiele in Sparkfly Fens.

We then had one group set out to learn Citadel of Flame for the first time, while I led a group through the Ruined City of Arah Story mode to complete their Personal Story.

There’s always something happening with MadCast!

I look forward to seeing you both in-game and hope we can provide the community interaction you are looking for.

After our rough time finding our targets on Wednesday for the bounty hunt, we decided to kick off another one last night. We had three groups in the field and defeated our targets with ease. It was good to see some new people getting familiar with the Guild Missions and I’m looking forward to the next one already!

There is also talk of a trip to Twilight Arbor, come join the discussion on the forums and we’ll see you tonight for some Dungeon Run adventures.

Our Guild Bounty Hunt on Wednesday was a sight to behold!

It started with the majority of our hunting party seeking out Crusader Michiele finding her within a few minutes and then bringing her to justice with skill and efficiency. Meanwhile, myself and four other brave souls ventured through the tide pools of Southsun Cove in search of Anders the “Wildman”. He had taken up refuge near the karka hive itself and surrounded himself with veteran karka’s. We relayed the located to the guild and as they journeyed towards us from the south we began to take on two veterans karka’s at the same time.

We were successful in revealing Ander’s and noticed we were starting to run short on time as we started the fight with him. Suddenly, another veteran karka spawned just as the timer dipped below the 60 second mark. With a live countdown and excitement reaching a fever pitch, we managed to max out DPS while staying on our feet and brought our foe to justice with a mere 2 seconds left on the timer.

It was so much fun that everyone immediately started a chorus demanding more bounties, so we started up a Guild Bounty Training. Come join us next Wednesday to get a piece of the action!

If only I was at home to capitalize…

Oh well, as someone headed for Bifrost, I’m excited for cheap dust!

I coordinate with my guild frequently both in WvW and when running dungeons. Once everyone knows what finishers they have access to and constantly see my combo fields on the ground, they know to help themselves to healing, regen, frost armor, might and swiftness. Also, we coordinate vulnerability stacks using projectiles when I drop a static field, it’s both fun and effective!

We’ve been thinking about setting up a couple of coaching sessions to get new members familiar with dodging and combo mechanics, so I might put up a video tutorial to go with it in the future.

Izaya, that does look kitten sexy. One of my favorite focus skins there too!

It seems a bit ridiculous that a recruitment thread gets buried into oblivion with no way to bring it into view. How is someone supposed to sift through the various guilds available? An important tool prior to this was to see which guilds had active threads. There absolutely needs to be a way for guild members and leaders to advertise their guild and separate the active guilds from the one time posters.

I need to get more practice in, I just switched to evasive arcana, and have been using a scepter for the first time regularly, but haven’t been able to layer in enough time to get earth5 into the combo yet. I believe the combo field lasts for 6 seconds.

For S/D: f2 > f4 > f3 > arcane wave > sae > e4. That’s as far as I usually get. I have a sigil of battle to grant 3 stacks on swap, so this combo grants 15 stacks. I’m working on getting the evasive arcana roll in there and get it about 33% of the time right now. Still an awesome sequence either way.

I can second the recommendation for +boon duration runes. I used 2x Superior Monk, 2x Superior Water, 2x Major Water for a long time with an aura sharing D/D build and they were great.

I also like Runes of Strength, which I’m using in my current build. I have Berserker Armor/Weapons, Valkyrie Trinkets, and I focus on stacking might and keeping it up at all times. These give me +5% damage when I have might, and makes might last 20% longer. For weapons, if I’m going to be in a zone for awhile I have a staff with a Sigil of Bloodlust to stack up an extra 250 power then I switch. If I’m running a dungeon and not worried about stacking buffs I have a staff, scepter, and dagger all with a Sigil of Battle (might on swap). I bring along a Dagger with Sigil of Accuracy (5% Crit Chance) for my offhand.

It has been great with using 0/10/0/30/30 using Evasive Arcana and Cleansing Water as my big traits.

Upon returning from Frostgorge Sound one fine evening, I found that I was having almost as much trouble shaking the frost out of my fingers as brushing the stink of Jormag’s breath out of my clothes. And trust me, you don’t want Jormag’s brand of funk hanging around on your guild backpack, it’s a huge turnoff.

Well, luckily for me, I bumped into my friend Mr. Fireball. He immediately knew what I needed and ran for the Lion’s Arch bank. I stood there puzzled by what he was up to, until I saw he was coming down the steps of the bank holding a nothing other than a firepit! He placed it carefully on the ground and then invited everyone loitering around to help gather firewood for it. Before I knew it, not only were my toes warm, but I was surrounded by guild banners, and all my friends were knocking back jugs of karma like it was a three day weekend.

They were even polite enough to not mention how smelly I was!

I had a great time last night dusting off my Norn Guardian and exploring Metrica Province with everyone. We had guild banners out for everyone and made our way through the zone and finished things off with a trip through Goemm’s Lab (jumping puzzle). It was a great night with great people.

We’re following it up with more map exploration tonight for everyone looking to kick off their holiday weekend with some fun. We’ll be heading into Wayfarer Foothills or the Plains of Ashford around 8:30 EST tonight, let us know if you’d like to join the party!

I led the charge through the depths of Citadel of Flame last night, teaching some folks who had recently reached level 80 how to battle the threat of the Flame Legion. We lined our pockets with their ill gotten gains and had a blast through three consecutive runs through Path 1.

gfox, I’m bummed that that is the case, as I’d love to give you a hand in getting back into the game and finding a great guild to call home. If you need a hand getting back into the swing of things, feel free to shoot some questions my way. I’m more than happy to help you out!

Last night was a fantastic evening. We had between 2 and 3 groups up and running around the Jade Quarry Borderlands for most of the evening and had a great time helping out our fellow Sanctum of Rall invaders.

Once we had had our fill of keep battling, we divided up into two groups and ventured into the Molten Weapons Facility. It was great getting to know some of the newer members and getting them integrated with our tried and true veterans. I found that killing the Firestorm first in the final fight makes things much easier and we just spent the second half of the fight bunny hopping over the Berserker’s shockwaves.

Join us on Tuesday for more dungeoneering fun!

For anyone interested in a preview of what you’re in for when playing with the MadCast crew, here is a video from one of our Guild Bounty Hunt events

We do two Bounty Hunt missions every Wednesday, and would love to have you join us on our next expedition.

I’m excited that we captured footage from two different perspectives during our first Bounty Hunt last night. We ventured into Kessex Hills to capture the public nuisance Poobadoo. I can’t wait to see what our media team can do with multiple perspectives on the fight!

I just wanted to give a shout out to the hard work our member’s put into the community. This is what keeps me motivated to make sure every member is having an awesome time every night.

Thanks to RedJustice for taking the time to write up an amazing guide for new players.

It covers everything you need to know from what everything means on the mini map, to managing your inventory, to how to use the Asura Gates to get to Lion’s Arch.

Last night was Dungeon Run night, which worked out perfectly for us to go explore the new Molten Weapons Facility. It was a great time and everyone is enjoying their new Fused Gauntlets. No one was lucky enough to get the jetpack or minipet, but hopefully we’ll have better luck on that soon.

MadCast Gaming [MCG] on Sanctum of Rall- Gaming Together for the Better

www.madcastgaming.com

Community Preview Video

One of the best ways to improve your Guild Wars experience is finding a group of people that share your love of the game. We at MadCast pride ourselves on being a welcoming and friendly community, full of tight knit connections both in game and out. We’re constantly seeking mature, respectable, active individuals to add to our membership. We stand by a code of conduct (no racism, no sexism, full text here )that we hold our members to which ensures everyone enjoys their gaming time. We have our own Teamspeak server populated with folks having a great time every night, spread across a variety of games. Our home is on Sanctum of Rall, but we have friends and members from many servers who have found their home with us.

About us:
In 2007, MadCast was founded on two basic principles. It would be a gaming community that would be bigger than one single game, and that it would be a place that exemplifies what it means to be a community.

We choose games to support based on the interests of our community. MadCast puts time and effort into making your gaming experience all it can be. The community selects admins that display great leadership qualities, we host our own servers for officially supported games, and have niches for everyone from the casual to the competitive. Admins host events on a nightly basis and there’s always something to do and someone to play with.

Events:

Sunday: Support the Sanctum WvW night 9PM EST
Tuesday: MadCast Dungeon Runs 10PM EST
Wednesday: Tyria’s Most Wanted Guild Bounty Night 10PM EST and 1 AM EST
Saturday: Guild Party (Rotating Schedule of Events) 9PM EST

How to Join the Guild:
Simply message myself or one of the guild officers (Sleepcoma.9487, Cakeisalie.1976, or mrfireball.9061) or come say hello on our forums and we’ll get you involved.

Closing:
Thanks for taking the time to visit our thread. Regardless of your decision, we hope that you can check us out on our website or Teamspeak server. Guests are always welcome to join us both in regular games as well as most events. Happy hunting folks!

I’d support an arena you could go to to duel someone, but not a system that allows you to duel anywhere you want. I already don’t like the huge groups waiting for dragon spawn timers, the last thing I want is impromptu fight club encouraging people to wait around these areas even more.

Both Bounty Missions were a rousing success! With the free access weekend coming up, this is a great time to stop by and check us out. We’ve also been exploring the Super Adventure Box nightly and gathering up all those shiny Baubles.

Feel free to drop by our forums or Teamspeak and say hello!

Tonight we’ll be running our first Guild Bounty Hunt missions at 10pm and 1 am EST. Looking forward to tackling a few of Tyria’s Most Wanted with everyone!

After having every upgrade in place on our previous server, we’ve been rebuilding the upgrade tree on SoR. I’m excited to announce we have completed researching Economy IV, allowing us to now produce the guildwide karma boost.

In celebration, we’re having a Karma Party event next Thursday where we’ll be having contests and giveaways for karma boosters, handing out free ice cream, dropping banners and then taking everyone either through CM Story mode or exploring Queensdale. We’d love to see you there!

Find out more in the event announcement!

Matipzieu KyA.9613:

Best regards,

Matipzieu SilverSmash
GM of KyA since 2002

Well said indeed! Here’s hoping the team reads your views and discusses them, because you nailed it sir!

To give you an idea of what a typical night looks like: Last night we considered attending this week’s episode of the Great Tyrian Adventure as we have the past three weeks. However, since several of our members were too low for the zone it was being held in we all met up and headed over to the Plains of Ashford to help out a new guildmate and work on the new daily achievement system. Several hours later we reformed into two groups and headed into Fractals of the Mists. Upon completing our Fractal runs we met up again in Blazeridge Steppes and hung out doing events and earning influence while discussing plans for our next WvW and Dungeon events.

Good times were had by all.

It’s patch day! After spending a month working on the daily quests and finishing up the monthly with new and old guildmates, I’m excited to see all the new items on the laurel vendor. Our ranks are growing and now is a great time to join!

Vorch.2985:

Lastly, how would a guild of 2-4 people expect to tackle this large group content without the help of others around them? Especially for those that take place in multiple locations simultaneously?

Well, it would be a great recruiting tool to be able to pull people who are participating in the mission into your guild. I think was a pretty dumb decision by ANet, but it can’t be a simple mistake. Perhaps we don’t know everything and there will be multiple missions released at once spread across the different trees (after all they just mentioned the Bounty Mission here). If that’s the case I’m less concerned, but it seems silly of them to put the first mission they release in the WvW tree.

As the admin of a guild that is rebuilding upgrades after a server switch, this rustles my jimmies. I’d like to be able to earn influence by doing guild missions. It saddens me, because people interested in doing guild missions and earning Guild Merits are now encouraged to join the larger guilds with full upgrades built. What bugs me is that I have those upgrades, they are just on our former server. I’m in quite a pickle now, I guess it’s time to convert gold to influence…yay.

Way to suck the joy right out of a good idea. I’m not going to tell all my member that we’re going to plan a guild mission event night and it will consist of us roaming around looking for OTHER guild’s missions to complete. That’s ridiculous.

This is a pretty terrible announcement for small guilds.