Guild Wars 2

It’s kind of strange if you are such an MMO vet that you seem to say you have never really bonded with others before. Let me elaborate before you get on a soapbox :-)

My story is somewhat completely different in that I too played MUDs and such, EQ having been my first graphical MMO and since then EQ2, Vanguard, WoW, AoC, LotRO, Rift, SWTOR, … (long list)

I’ve tried and played most of them for a while, some whiles lasting longer than others, but some of those people I got to know in EQ, I joined in another MMO – e.g. EQ2, others were playing WoW which I played too, I met new folks giving both games some of my time, then went to another game which seemed interesting to me and convinced some of both EQ2 and WoW to join me, or I joined them in yet another MMO they discovered or were interested in, and I always tried to keep in touch or kept tabs on those I liked to hang about with.

Some people you end up parting ways with, others you meet along the road you travel.

Somewhere in between, along came Ventrilo, which in the early days was a novelty, now is basically simply a part of gaming and your bonds with those people you knew from games and typing in chat, got even closer- them to me and me to them.

I have a bunch of folks I would consider friends, some of which I’ve met in real life, some I still haven’t even though I’ve “known” them for over 10 years.
Call it virtual friends or just companions, I still interact with them and have fun.

These days with facebook and whatnot, keeping in touch is easier than ever. You don’t need to register your real name if you don’t want, don’t have to put up photo’s you don’t want, just create an account with your charactername, put up screenshots of your character and try to keep your name the same or similar in each MMO you play.

Yes, the instant gratification in modern day MMO’s makes for less hanging about in the same zone for hours on end, no need camping a spawn or a spot, hence getting to know folks is less likely.

But it still happens.

If your play times are the same as some others and you level in the same zone/area, you run into one another doing quests/events, help one another out on the odd occasion, all it takes is a few seconds to thank/say hello and get on from there with socializing.

You might end up saying hi/bye each day in the beginning, at some point you’ll ask them for help or they will ask you, and who knows, they might already have a group of people they hang about with which you can get along with.

If all else fails, at some point you will be spending time in Lion’s Arch – spend a bit longer there and check the general chat – some conversation might be going on that tickles your fancy, you can join in or if you’re shy to speak in public chat, even send a tell, have a to-and-fro out of the blue.

Go along on pick up groups, if people are asking 1 person to join for a dungeon run, see how it goes. Even if only 1 group out of 100 seems to contain nice people, ask them if they would be around the next day and see if they are up to do some group things again.

Socializing isn’t just others, you too need to initiate too if you’re intending to find people you agree with.

And as far as age goes, it doesn’t matter – I’m currently in a guild with people in their 50’s, 40’s (myself in that range), 30’s and even some 20’s and adolescents (children of the aforementioned 50’s/40’s and 30’s). Sure drama happens, it’s inevitable with social contacts, you can’t all see eye to eye 100 percent of the time, but that too is part of human interaction and enjoyable in it’s own way – it’s memorable.

Anyways, it might indeed be you, because as I said, my experience is completely different in my 14 years of on-line play of MMO’s.
Maybe you need to stress less about it and go with the flow a bit more.
If not, figure out what your requirements are and look about for guilds that seem to match your requirements by reading their forums and application rules and introductions.

Just try and give it some effort if you’re really looking to make friends to hang about with and don’t give up too easily – we all have walls we present to strangers, a persona you present if you will – it’s everyone else’s job to try and get through them to see the real you behind it.

I would like to see some more underwater skills other than just the venoms or signets. Apart from roll for initative, there’s no real useful skill.

The “quickness” skill I still do not understand, why not restore endurance rather than remove it completely and not regen?

Why do we lose our runspeed when hit (if you return fire, granted you’re in combat, but a mob just hitting you when you run past and keep running – why does that put me in combat and slow me down if my signet for 25pct movement speed is up?).

They were supposed to have fixed it yes, but they failed. It’s still not fixed.

see title. The bonus that it gives is mismatched from the tooltips displayed when hovering over. Intentional or error?
Gives +50 healing rather than +50 power.

I fixed my audio bug with the droning noise where all other sound is stopped by lowering the audio quality from high to mid level. Fortunately I only use a headset so the quality reduction didn’t really affect me.

I’ll add myself to the bunch of folks having crashed and unable to log in after…
I was there for the 3 days, at the start and for 2 out of those 3 days, at the finish.

Day 3 was the worst of all regarding issues.
We chased the Ancient Karka to the tree/chopped it down, defeated his defenders, I got lagged out of the game at this point and disconnected, was able to rejoin and even join the same “instance” as my group was.
So we finished the defenders, had to chase him to the wall, exploded rocks onto it, then had to launch rocks at it, again had to defeat all his defenders near the bridge.

Then the lag started again, this time harder than before, I once again got disconnected, couldn’t log in anymore due to login servers unavailable, then all of a sudden due to my network settings supposedly not allowing me to play (had to check my firewall – haha).

My local time was by then 11.15pm and after 15 minutes of trying to do all kinds of stuff to get back in the game, I gave up as the next day was a working day and no amount of patience was going to help getting calmed down after the disappointment that Anet didn’t fix this issue they already had in Lion’s Arch on Phase 1 this weekend.

I can only hope that they indeed hand out some nice things to those players that were unlucky to be booted during the final stages of the event, but I am not getting my hopes up.
There is no way to prove I was there, I did not take screenshots of my login problems after the second disconnect and I doubt they will look into each and every account that claims they were there and then got locked out due to Anet’s issues.

I also hope that for any next event that is ‘unique’ they will have sorted out their server’s performance issues, their login server issues so there won’t be any unlucky customers due to things not being their fault.