Guild Wars 2

According to Anet there is no way for them to restore a deleted character. They can perform a roll back on your account – but that’s like doing System Restore on Windows – it resets everything to a previous state, so you’d lose everything you’d done since the character was deleted. And they’ll only do that once per account and only if you were hacked.

I imagine the reason they can’t is because it would require them to keep a copy of every single deleted character in case the creator wants it back. That would be a huge amount of data to copy and store for a relatively niche service (I think in the entire time the game’s been out I’ve seen 3 or 4 people ask for this).

Hopefully your friend saved all the valuable/one-off/hard to get items from the character before deleting them. So they could re-create them by making a new character with the same appearance, name, profession etc. and use tomes and/or a level 20 scroll to level them up quickly and then return the items they were using.

Unlike many of you I don’t have much experience with MMOs. Other than GW1 and GW2 my only previous MMO was Ultima Online, and I stopped playing that almost 15 years ago.

Just recently however I started playing one other and although it’s a good game and I’m really enjoying it the difference has made me really appreciate some features of GW2, things I had never really though about before or thought were now standard in MMOs.

(BTW I realise some/all of these may not be unique to GW2, but this is my list based on my experiences. Hopefully other people will add to and amend it.)

Guaranteed crafting success

• This one really surprised me. People often complain about crafting in GW2 being too expensive or time-consuming, but at least we never have to worry about putting in that time and money and getting nothing back. Imagine if you not only had to save up for materials to make an exotic or ascended item, but had to decide whether to pay 2 or 3 times more (at least) for guaranteed success or gamble with a lower chance and risk losing everything you put in. Imagine if there was no way to make it 100% sure at higher levels. Honestly I’ll take ascended time-gating over that any day.

Crafting material storage

• And the Deposit all materials option
• It makes inventory management so much easier. Even just the fact that there’s a whole class of items I don’t have to think about (with odd exceptions, if I want to sell a material rather than deposit it). But also the fact that it leaves my bank and inventory space free for items I actually want or I’m saving for a particular purpose rather than filling it with things I may need to use one day. Especially when I was new and didn’t really understand the crafting system, so I didn’t know what I should keep and what I could sell. I could save things until I knew without being unable to play because my inventory was full of materials.

Transmutation

• This other game is (IMO) beautiful and it has a lot of interesting armour sets, and possibilities for mix-and-match sets. Unfortunately none of that matters to me because I have to use the armour that gives the stats I need. There are limited possibilities for customisation through crafting, but nothing like I’ve gotten used to in GW2. I didn’t realise until it wasn’t an option how much I’ve come to like getting to choose my characters appearance.

No regular server down-time

• Saving the best two for last here. Admittedly I don’t know much about operating servers but this is the most impressive point on this list, IMO. I think I remember 3 or 4 occasions when GW1 was off-line for maintenance, and once in GW2. My new game is taken down for several hours once a week, more if there’s problems. I guess I just assumed whatever tech or server wizardry Anet uses was available to everyone else as well, but apparently not.
• And it does make a big difference. Here there may be mixed feelings on patch day, but at least everyone can look forward to trying the new content and having their hopes or fears confirmed or denied. There patch day is met with a sort of resignation that you’ll be doing something else that day because the game is unavailable, followed by the reactions to the actual content.

Hot fixes

• I know what you’re thinking. It’s some combination of “What? I can name at least 3 bugs from launch that have never been fixed!” and “What? I hate it when I’ve just updated the game, logged in and I get told I’m going to be kicked because there’s a launch-day patch!” But imagine if instead you were told they know there’s a bug, or several bugs, and they have managed to fix them, but you have to wait 5 days for the fix to be implemented because it’s Wednesday, maintenance happens on a Monday and they don’t consider these bugs serious enough to take the game offline for an additional 4 hours.

I’ve been working on the collection for the mini Holographic Zinn, which involves buying all the books from Zinn’s Print-o-matic. Today I got ‘Prince Rurik: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow’ and I was highly amused by this line:

“Adelbern’s son and heir, Rurik, was well liked by the people, in part due to his eagerness to be at the forefront of the battle against the charr.”

I know there’s a tradition to never speak ill of the dead, but that’s quite a turn around from the fury many of his fellow soldiers (aka players) expressed at Rurik’s “tactics”.

(I was also amused by the asura expressing concern over the human custom of using unstable and potentially dangerous Globs of Ecotoplasm as a form of currency. In retrospect it wasn’t the most sensible choice, but that’s just what we did in those days.)

From what you’ve described it sounds like the root of the problem is not the dailies but feeling the need to have multiple characters using the newest and/or best equipment, and the dailies are simply how you’re going about getting the materials for that.

Firstly I would have thought that only affects a minority of players as most people seem to choose 1, or maybe 2 characters for raiding and other ‘end game’ areas where you need the best equipment and if they have others they use them for other activities.

Secondly unless you’re expecting to change your stats a lot you can use other ascended equipment in place of Blood Rubies. Or if you’ve got the storage space (maybe a rarely used character’s inventory?) you could save the most commonly used stat combinations and switch them out when you need to.

Removing the dailies wouldn’t change any of that, it would just remove one of the ways you can get the currencies you need.

If you think about it Star Wars is irrelevant to this discussion.

It doesn’t matter what you or I or anyone else thinks of the movies, their fans or detractors, what you think of movie spoilers in general, or whether anyone should care about them.

Because basically what it all comes down to is that people are sending messages in game (whether it’s a whisper, mail, map chat, whatever) with the sole intention of upsetting the recipient.

It wouldn’t matter if it was about a movie, a sports event, baby photos, somebody’s cat, the weather…the point is the only purpose of the message is to ruin other people’s enjoyment of the game, which is griefing no matter how you go about it.

I think you’re looking at it wrong, especially when it comes to gold. I’m in a similar position to you, I’ve been playing since launch and I think I have about 2g right now. But obviously I’ve made more than that. I spent it, I’ll make more, then I’ll spend that too. That’s how it goes.

If you had 500g to throw in the Forge you can get 500g again. If you want a legendary save up and buy the precursor this time.

But more importantly it’s a game, the point is to have fun playing it, not to get more stuff than other people. As long as you’ve enjoyed what you’ve been doing it doesn’t matter what the reward was.

I was exploring Queensdale one day on an alt when for no apparently reason I came across an army of snowmen roaming around.

I watched them for a while, then all of a sudden I get mail. It’s a snowman tonic and the message “You will join us!”

So I did.

I used the tonic and ran around after them for a while, freaking out other people who had no idea where all these snowmen had just come from. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending how you look at it) this wasn’t at a time when there were lots of new people or they might have been really freaked out.

It was good fun, and reminded me why I enjoy MMOs, you just wouldn’t get something like that in a single-player game.

Zedek.8932:

The only thing I hate is the fact I have to get a group for the personal story in Orr. Since I can not and do not wish to play with total strangers (extremely bad experiences that really ruined my faith in gamers) I have no idea what happened except for some bits and conclusions I can make out when starting HoT. Suddenly, there are new characters, suddenly a fleet has crashed etc..

Do not come up with “This is an MMORPG”, yes, but in the end I have yet to find bearable people that are more than the typical “lolwtfroflcopters” folks that go rage mode when you want to talk a bit ’bout politics or economy. So far, I will never know what is going on in those missions. I am in this state since 1.5 years. . .

Excelsior.

You don’t need a group for the story in Orr. They changed it about a year ago to be a solo instance like all the others.

Wait 6 months.

It’s like the HoM items. When the game first launched the majority of players seemed to be from GW1 (obviously) so the HoM items were everywhere, especially the ones requiring less points. Now I often get people asking where I got the crown or the gauntlets or a black moa (items I wear most often) and they sometimes seem impressed that I’ve got them.

It’s the same with other items that are widely available for a limited time only, like the baseball cap that was free at launch. Everyone who was there at the time can get them, but not everyone will, and some will lose it or never use it or stop playing and other people will join and sooner or later it becomes rare and unusual.

This annoyed me too.

I did the collection for the Elixir, cooked it and then decided since it was 11:30pm and I’d reached the end of a chapter (which is normally a logical point to stop) I’d go to bed. I was aware the elixir had given me a buff but I didn’t really think anything of it, I assumed it would work like the buffs from boosters and would still be there when I came back, or since I’d made the elixir I’d be able to get it back.

I wasn’t very happy when I logged in, found it had gone and I had to repeat everything I’d done the day before in order to get it back. I wasted half my playtime that evening repeating things I’d already done just to catch up to where I was when I logged out.

Then I was torn between exploring the rest of the Bitter Cold region while I had the buff, so I wouldn’t have to go and do it all a 3rd time just to get a mastery point and a couple of other bits, or carrying on the story which may or may not need it.

I think it would be a lot better if either the elixir was an actual item you can use when you’re ready for it, or if the buff only wore down when you were actually logged into the character.

I bought all 3 when they cost 800 gems each and I think it’s worth it. (It might also be worth noting that I bought them with real money because £8.50 each was a lot more affordable to me than 100g.)

I don’t like the animations (in fact if I could I’d remove the animation from the molten pick all together) but I love the convenience.

My main character moves between maps pretty much at random. She might be in the same one for a week or she might be there for 5 minutes and then move on. So if I want to gather materials on her my options are either to carry one of each type of tool and keep checking which one I need and swapping them or using Mithril/Ori tools for everything, and even then I have to carry spares.

With infinite tools I don’t have to worry about any of that, I can gather whatever I want, wherever I am and as many times as I want. It’s a small thing but it’s really nice not having to worry about that. I notice it every time I switch back to another character and have to deal with finite tools again.

But that’s just my opinion, I know other people think they’re a complete waste of money and practically a scam that only idiots fall for.

Behellagh.1468:

Design decision. Material horded isn’t material circulating in the economy.

This.

It might also be a practical issue. The servers have to save a record of everything we keep in the bank and that takes up memory. It might only be a little bit for each slot but across all the bank tabs across all the accounts it adds up. Especially if they did allow us infinate storage and therefore needed potentially infinate memory to keep track of it.

I disagree completely.

I’d much rather play a game where everyone has the opportunity to earn/buy the items they want than one where items are deliberately denied to some players who may want them so that some of those who have them can imagine that someone else might, at some point, care that they’ve got it.

Especially because this might actually encourage more people to think about what they want and to design they character to look good to them instead of designing their character to hopefully impress a complete stranger with the artificial scarcity of their items.

(Also because I actually get embarrassed sometimes if I’m using an item that’s no longer available. I got the mini karka back when it was first released and it’s one of my favourite minis, me and my friends have had a lot of fun making jokes about it butting our ankles trying to crush us. But now I avoid using it because I absolutely hate it when someone asks me how to get it and I have to tell them if they’re lucky it will be on the TP for about 2,000 gold and if they’re unlucky they’ll never even see one for sale. I feel like a horrible person saying that.)

I’m completely in favour of some things being hard to get. The mini clockheart (which requires doing all the TA Aetherpath achievements) or exotic skins with expensive mystic forge recipes are fine by me. Items which are only ‘impressive’ because they were only on offer for a short time (and usually very easy to get during that time) are not.

The Reward Track
If like me you don’t play WvW or PvP (last time I played it reward tracks didn’t exist) the track itself will be confusing. But it’s actually pretty straight-forward. Each track shows 7 small rewards and then the main one. But that first one is not the first thing you’ll get. Each of the 8 sections is divided into 5 sub-sections (you can see these by hovering the mouse over it).

For example the Gift of Battle track will give you 2 Disciple of Balthazar Loot Boxes, 5 Memories of Battle, 2 Acolyte of Balthazar Loot Boxes, a Tome of Knowledge and then the first ‘minor’ reward – 4 Obsidian Shards.

Your progress towards the next reward is shown in a little pop-up menu above the map. The timer counts down to the next time awards are granted and the number next to it is how many points you earn.

You’ll earn more points for higher tier participation (Tier 6 is the maximum) and you raise your participation level by…well, participating. Killing enemies, claiming things, completing events, defending objectives etc.

Other rewards
Periodically you’ll also get WvW rank chests and Skirmish chests popping up above the map. The rank chests contain random loot, but most importantly they mean you’ve got another rank point to spend on the Ranks and Abilities tab. Skirmish chests are shown on the Match Overview page and contain some nice stuff, in particular this is how you get Skirmish Claim Tickets.

Basically anything you do to progress the Reward Track will also progress these two, so you don’t need to worry about them too much.

When you first enter

Look for a commander tag – if there is one go join them. Follow them, attack what they attack, build siege when they place it, claim control points when you get to them. Try to actually pay attention to what’s going on rather than blindly following because you’ll learn more that way, but the important thing is to stick with the group and do what they do.

If there isn’t a commander tag
Maybe switch maps (if there are others without a queue) to see if you can find one. But if not don’t give up. The best thing to do now is explore the map – even just roaming around aimlessly will help you learn your way around, which will come in useful later on.

But there’s also likely to be stuff you can achieve on your own – claiming camps is best but you can also claim sentry points and shrines (this is why I recommend the Desert borderlands, it has more of this stuff) and ruins.

Keep a look out for commander tags – one could turn up at any time. Or you might find a group of players running without a commander– they’re harder to spot (and sometimes don’t want randoms, they’ll let you know if that’s the case) but they can achieve just as much as a group with a commander – it’s just harder to attract new people without the tag.

If there’s more than 1 commander tag
Ask in map chat which one to join, or see which one/s have their squad open so you can just right click and join. It’s likely one is the ‘main’ squad and one or more is a specialist one – a guild doing their own thing or a 2nd group sneaking into objectives – they’re less likely to want extra people. But it may just be that there’s enough people for multiple squads and you can join whichever.

From then on

Keeps going. Keep running with squads, claiming objectives, or exploring solo and claiming what you can until you’ve achieved your objectives.

For the specific items I mentioned in the introduction:

• Gift of Battle – complete the reward track
• Can of Spicy Meat Chili – get a Skirmish Chest, choose the Canned Food Crate from the list of rewards and then choose Spicy Meat Chili from the options.
• Skirmish Claim Tickets – come from Skirmish chests. You get more at higher tiers, you need to get part way into the Mithril tier to get them all in 1 week, but if there isn’t time to do that don’t worry, just keep going until you’ve got enough. As I said it took me 3 evenings to get 100 by getting part way into the Gold tier.

Other tips

Carry supply whenever you can
But do not take it from Keeps or Towers. Camps are the best place to get it. It’s used to build siege and repair walls, so it’s useful to have and by carrying it (and being willing to spend it) you’re helping your team out.

Don’t attack walls or gates unless the commander says it’s ok
This will alert the enemy to the fact that you’re attacking (which using siege weapons doesn’t) which gives them time to come and stop you. Sometimes that’s ok because they’re busy elsewhere or there’s too few of them or whatever, sometimes it could ruin the whole attack.

Try to have fun
You may go in expecting to hate WvW, or at least thinking it’s not for you. But give it a go and you may find yourself enjoying it. I doubt I’m ever going to be a dedicated WvW player but I’ve had some great moments. The other day we were claiming a keep when a massive wave of enemies attacked us – I was downed twice but somehow got back up and out the way, we actually managed to defeat them and finished claiming the keep and it was a great feeling.

And if you really do hate it? Well, you don’t need to go back again (at least not until you want another unique reward.)

I don’t understand what any of this has to do with targeting a particular age group.

Except maybe the living story being released in small chunks, which I would have thought would be better for older players who are more likely to have more commitments taking up their time.

Also for what it’s worth I’m 29 and I have no interest in GvG or duels. Both of them just bring back memories of people in GW1 endlessly spamming chat with “any1 1v1?” and never seeming to realise that they were the only person in the guild who found that remotely interesting. (Why they could never get together into one guild and leave everyone else alone I don’t know.)

I’ve been playing since the first public beta and I’ve never heard anyone claim characters with Anet tags are bots before.

As someone else said they don’t need to have a character (bot or real person) standing in the map to see or record what’s being said in chat. They can pull up the chat log for any area (except possibly whispers?) any time they want. I’m not sure how long they keep it on file but they can definitely go a little way back in order to investigate claims of verbal abuse, gold selling etc.

When you see an Anet tag on a character that means it’s someone who works for the company who is representing their staff guild. Whenever I’ve seen it they’re getting bombarded with questions in say, map and by whisper so it’s not surprising they can sometimes be slow to respond. (Which actually would indicate they’re NOT a bot. Back when I played Ultima Online they did have bots to answer common questions and you could tell they weren’t real people because they’d produce a long response, properly formatted, almost instantly.)

What I find interesting is that they can turn the tag on and off at will (by switching guilds) so unless you know all their character names you can never be sure whether someone from Anet is around or not. They seem to only turn it on when they want to be recognised and are prepared for loads of questions. Or when they want to distract an entire enemy zerg in WvW.

The number of hours you’ve played doesn’t really matter. It depends on what you’ve been doing in that time, because precursors only drop from certain things.

Someone like the OP who apparently combines a lot of rares/exotics in the Mystic Forge has a much higher chance of getting a precursor than someone like me who maybe does it once or twice a year, when I have equipment I can’t sell or salvage.

Likewise someone who does all the world bosses every day will have a much higher chance than someone who spends most of their time doing story instances on low level characters. And someone who spends almost all their time afk or chatting in town has almost no chance.

No, this isn’t a troll post. I am genuinely excited for Season 2 (especially with the implied opening up of Maguuma). But one of the things I’m most excited about is being able to choose when and if I play it. I can’t wait to get home from work the day a new release comes out and ask myself if I want to play it now, or want to do something else and come back to it later.

For about a year (since Season 1 started) a large part of my free time has been dictated by the Living Story. If I’m at home and on the computer there’s no question, I’m doing the Living Story, unless I’ve managed to finish it for that release and have a few days of freedom.

Odds are I will almost always choose to at least start it right away, because it’s a new thing and I’m like that. But even knowing that the fact that it’s my choice makes it seem better.

It’s similar to the reason I like not paying a subscription. I play more than enough to justify the cost of one, but I love that without it it’s my choice (and it’s my choice whether I buy gems or not). If I was paying then even if I might want to play I’d also feel like I had to because I’d paid for it already.

It’s confusing at first, but I think overall it’s actually simpler now. A lot of people were confused by the old system, I haven’t seen nearly as many topics asking how to transmute things or how to tell what you’ll get since they brought in the wardrobe.

Basically now any time you use an item (equip it, salvage it, put it in the mystic forge etc.) you unlock the skin in your wardrobe. From that point on it stays there, no matter what happens to the original item. (This is the first benefit, you can no longer lose skins by transmuting over them or deleting the item.)

Then when you want to apply it to another item you just equip the one you want to apply it to, go into the wardrobe tab, choose the skin you want and click ‘apply’.

The stats and everything else except the skin always come from the item you are applying the skin to (this is actually how it always worked, it wasn’t really combining two items so much as putting a different skin on one).

I’m not sure what you mean about the dyes changing to the new item colours. You can’t dye weapons so the colours are always determined by the skin and whenever I’ve transmuted armor the dyes are carried over from the old skin. But sometimes the same dyes can look very different on different items, because they’re different materials and the dye channels affect different parts.

Queen Kiearha.9873:

Mega servers means no way to know which or when
a temple is starting. It also means good luck farming nodes.
Mega server = crap

You didn’t read anything but the title did you?

The other day I was sorting out some odds and ends my main character carries around and I got thinking about the Hero’s Band.

This is the item you received for pre-ordering the game, a ring which adds +2 to all stats. It’s great for the first few levels but is obsolete pretty much as soon as you can get any 2 other rings. Which seems a shame to me. I don’t want to get rid of it but it just ends up sitting in a bag unused.

So I was thinking it would be nice to have a way to upgrade it to ascended stats so those who want to can keep using it. Maybe a Mystic Forge recipe.

Three important points:

• It should not be any more powerful than any existing ascended item. I’m not sure if there are ascended celestial rings but if so it should copy the stats from one of them.
• It should also be just as hard to acquire. Obviously players who pre-ordered have the ring already (if they haven’t destroyed it) but the other components to upgrade it could be things like T6 materials, skill points or laurels so it’s just as hard/expensive/time consuming as buying an ascended ring.
• These two together should mean that it doesn’t give pre-order players any advantage, it just means we can keep using the item.

I would suggest a multi-step process where it can be gradually upgraded, but since it was only available through pre-order and I assume most people who pre-ordered have level 80 characters now that would be a bit pointless. Although you do continue to get them on any new characters who are created. I suppose it depends on if Anet are willing and able to go through all the hassle of creating it and players would be willing to keep upgrading it instead of doing it all in one go.

What do you think?

I’ve been looking for an answer to this since I first saw the announcement. I’m really hoping ‘exclusive’ simply means ‘first available from’ and the mini will be either tradeable or available in other ways later.

I actually think making it tradeable would be the best solution because I highly doubt there’s a lot of cross-over between mini pet collectors and hardcore PvPers who are likely to qualify for a tournament. If it’s tradeable people who win one can sell their otherwise useless mini to people who actually want it and use the gold to buy something they really want.

But however it’s done I really hope we’re not going to be going through the whole Mr Sparkles mess again.

Joining a guild that’s willing to help and explain things to you would be a good move, either a dedicated newbie guild or simply one who are willing to take the time to explain.

But also if you find yourself doing an activity alongside other people and you’re not sure about anything ask them in /map or /say to explain it. Most people are pretty friendly and willing to help, we were all new and totally confused once.

IncXeart.7302:

i watched a lot of tutorials, and even read the discussions in the forums just to have a clue, and yet i am still confused (i just discovered that i can only start crafting when i find a master craftsman, which i did, except it was in another town (of some sort) and when i got out of there, i do not remember where it was lol

i recently found out that there is a main town in the game, which costs gold (?) to go to, and in the main town, you can find everything – so many things that i just got more confused.

I’m going to answer these two points together because the answers are related.

Towns & Transportation
There are 6 cities in the game, one for each race and one shared:
Rata Sum – asura
The Grove – sylvari
Divinity’s Reach – human
Hoelbrak – norn
The Black Citadel – charr
Lion’s Arch – shared

When you created your character and finished the first instance you’ll have appeared near the entrance to your race’s city. You also go there repeatedly during the early part of your Personal Story (instanced quests marked with green stars).

You can travel between them for free by looking for a pink swirly portal (called an asura gate). The ones in the racial cities all take you to Lion’s Arch and from there you can use any of the other gates to go to any of the other cities. (And you can get back the same way.)

Exceptions

• Divinity’s Reach has 2 gates – the one near the middle of the city goes to Lion’s Arch, the one in the south west goes to Ebonhawke which is also a city but is in a level 40 zone.
• Rata Sum has a lot of gates (because the asura invented them). The one at the northern most point of the triangle goes to Lion’s Arch. The rest go to other parts of the city or out to the asuran starting zone.

A useful trick
You can also get to Lion’s Arch for free from anywhere in the world by opening the WvW menu (tower icon at the top of the screen, or press and selecting to go to the Edge of the Mists. Look around for a cracked asura gate, that will take you to Lion’s Arch.

Waypoints
You can also travel instantly to any waypoint (blue and grey diamond symbols) you’ve unlocked. Some of these are in cities, others are in explorable areas. They all cost money (copper at low levels, silver at high levels) to use. They’re very useful if you need to get somewhere quickly, but if you can use a gate instead it’s a good idea to do so.

Crafting & Services
All of the cities have the same services, including a full set of master craftsmen and crafting stations. Some of these are also found out in explorable maps.

So you don’t need to go to a specific city to craft, you can do it in any of them. Some people stick to their racial capital, some have a personal favourite. (For example I always go to The Grove because I think it has a good layout and it looks pretty.)

IncXeart.7302:

while i was in town, i was invited to a Guild. i do not know why they did … probably because they knew i was a new guy based from me running into walls or jumping off ledges or something lol … so i clicked Yes, and i thought i was gonna start having fun, but nope… nobody talked to me lol … i do not know why they invited me. to pad their numbers perhaps? oh well…

To speak to a guild (and get access to other guild functions like bonuses and the guild bank) you need to represent them. Open the guild menu by pressing G, select your guild and press Represent. You’ll then be able to use the /guild chat channel to talk to them.

They probably assumed you knew that, a lot of long-time players forget little things like that because it just becomes automatic.

IncXeart.7302:

anyway, amidst the confusion, i took my borderlands/diablo mentality and got into more combat to level up, but as i’ve said, i found myself in maps higher level than me, so getting out is not even possible without dying (i aggro something, and that something kills me). i got so frustrated not being able to get out of the map last night, i just logged out lol

Step 1: Get back to a map that’s the right level for you

• Press B to open the WvW menu
• Select ‘Edge of the Mists’ and press Yes
• When you load in look for a cracked asura gate, that will take you to Lion’s Arch
• When you arrive look for gate with guards the same race as your character (or ask in /map for directions)
• Go through it and you’ll be back in your race’s home city
• Then you can head back out to the starting area (the direction depends on what race you are, but again ask if you’re not sure).

Step 2: Follow the compass
In the top right corner of your screen is a little arrow and some text. This is the content guide, it will direct you to activities which are appropriate for your level and which will help you level up.

Below that is a list of all the activities currently available in your immediate area. You can do any of these in any order. The two main ones are Renowned Hearts (also called Heart Quests) and Dynamic Events.

Renowned Hearts
These have a yellow heart icon and white text. They become available as soon as you get close to them but you can also speak to the NPC for more information on what you’re doing, why and some background on the area you’re in.

They usually consist of a list of fairly basic tasks – killing particular enemies, clearing up the area, speaking to NPCs etc. and you can do them in any order. Each time you do something that counts towards completing the hear the bar will fill a little bit. When it’s completely full you’ll get a pop-up in the bottom right corner with a thank-you message and some money and the NPC becomes a karma merchant who will sell you potentially useful gear.

Dynamic Events
These have orange symbols on the map and orange text on the right side of the screen. The actual activities are very much like quests from other games – protect this, kill that, collect 10 rats etc. but with the important difference that they will start, continue and finish whether you (or anyone else) is participating or not.

Which means you can and should jump in any time you see one going on. Even if it’s part way through, or you don’t want to stick around until it’s finished you will be rewarded for your participation when it ends (announced with a big gold, silver or bronze medal). It’s also worth sticking around after one of them ends because sometimes after a bit of dialogue between NPCs another event will start up.

Step 3: Don’t follow the compass
It’s a helpful tool but you don’t need to let it dictate your play completely. If you see anything that interests you – an event further away, a portal to a new zone, a big group of players, even a cool bit of scenery – go and explore it! See what you can find, there’s a lot of hidden detail in this game, everything from big puzzles and dungeons to NPCs in odd places with amusing dialogue.

The absolute worst thing that could possibly happen as a result of doing something ‘wrong’ is that you die. And if that happens you just have to pay a bit of money to resurrect at a waypoint and carry on. That’s it.

So don’t worry too much about doing things right, or getting lost, or whatever. One of the strengths of this game is that it’s extremely hard to screw up so badly you can’t fix it in a few minutes.

The OP is correct that money spent on gold sinks disappears into thin air (or rather is deleted from the game). But what you have to remember is that money appeared out of thin air too.

MMO’s don’t have a complete economy. When you kill an ogre and loot some money from the corpse that money didn’t come from anywhere, it didn’t exist before that enemy died and the loot table program ‘decided’ to put it there.

Without an equal and opposite system to remove some of that money from the game you’d just have a system where more and more money was coming into the economy and not going anywhere, which leads to massive inflation.

That’s what happened in the early days of Ultima Online when MMOs were a new concept and the developers didn’t appreciate the need for things like gold sinks. Even basic items cost a small fortune and things that were actually valuable, like a placed house, could run into millions of gold. You had to spend hours farming to buy anything and new players basically had no chance to get off the ground because they were so far behind.

We’re already seeing some issues with inflation (like the rising cost of popular pre-cursors), I would absolutely not want to see this game with no gold sinks to counteract that.

RoseofGilead.8907:

My first guardian’s name is Out Of Good Names. You can guess why I called her that.

The day the wardrobe came out I made loads of characters to unlock all the starter skins. Which of course meant coming up with lots of random names quickly.

When I got frustrated and tried ‘Alreadyinuse’ I found it highly amusing (and unsurprising) that it was already in use.

Who overhyped it?

If Anet did not even tell players it was there they cannot, by definition, have hyped it, let alone over hyped it.

Therefore any hype must have come from players.

I don’t think I have any particularly interesting character names. My favourite at the moment is Ilex Hedera, and I’m thinking of naming my next one Mys Teri after my GW1 prema-pre. Making them a mesmer this time instead of E/Mo.

I’m also tempted to call one Post Morgan after a running joke at work. No one else in-game will know the story, but it makes me laugh.

My favourite out of other peoples is a charr called Destroyer of Sofas. There’s been more that I’ve liked but that’s the one that stuck with me.

Mungrul.9358

A friend has an owl pet called Hooters and a raven called Quoth.

Kitten, I thought I was the only one with a raven called Quoth. Except at least one other person used it in GW1 as well.

I’ve seen a lot of pigs and boars called various things to do with bacon. Also a drake called Ona Plane.

yurtshone.7325:

So glad that Anet are dishing out bans for most of the stupid names listed here.

I’m pretty sure they don’t ban you for having a stupid name. They suspend your account and force you to change offensive names, but they’re certainly not forcing everyone to stick to lore appropriate names (thankfully) and “stupid” is a matter of opinion.

I actually like the hunting lodge in Queensdale. It’s surprisingly big inside and I like the idea that I can be in there and people are passing by all the time and they’ll never know. I’m not sure how many people even take the time to explore inside buildings.

Also the Grove generally, and especially the bamboo grove at the bottom, it was the first hidden area I found in the game. Although lately everytime I go there people are role-playing so I feel like I’m intruding if I come and sit in the middle of it.

Agreed with everyone else, adding new tiers (even with just a small increase in stats) would be a bad thing for the game over all.

I don’t know how long you’ve been away but they do update the game regularly, including making balance changes (the last big one was the 9th September Feature Pack).

So I’d guess the issue here isn’t that they are incapable of making changes but that they haven’t made the ones you personally want to see.

Maybe try posting in the Necromancer forum, see what other players think about your suggestions. If it’s popular it probably will get the developers attention.

All of the things you listed are reasons why I, and many other people, prefer this game to other MMOs.

Especially easy levelling meaning everyone can get access to all the content. Why would you want to play a game where you will most likely never get access to most of the game? What’s that point in the developers making it if only a very small number of people will get to play it?

I understand the idea of having progression, having to complete some parts of the game to access others, but I don’t understand making it with the intention that most people will never be able to do that.

Especially if the only reason is it takes so long they’ll probably get bored and move on to something else before they get there. Whether it takes 5 minutes or 5 years if most people get bored and quit before seeing everything on offer that’s bad game design.

Heavy armour (ideally shoulders) with black or dyable feathers on them for my Raven themed norn revenant. (I know there’s the Deathly Avian shoulders, but that’s more a skull with a few feathers stuck to it.)

Male light and medium armour that shows some skin. Nothing skimpy, but bare arms, lower legs or parts of the chest and back would be nice. At the moment it’s difficult to have more than part of 1 arm showing and with norn tattoos, sylvari bioluminescence and charr fur patterns to show off that’s frustrating.

And generally more variety all around. Such as more medium armour with short tops and plain trousers for light armour. I get that the ‘skirt’ on a lot of the trousers connects with the top to form a long tunic, but it would be nice to have some options without that effect.

It didn’t bother me, but then I didn’t see it as a complete reconciliation, more like a first step.

If I understood correctly their animosity started with Braham feeling like Eir had abandoned him, that she had a child and then just lost interest and went to do something more exciting. Especially because all he ever heard about her was that she had fought all these amazing monsters. He had never tried to make up with her because he assumed she didn’t want him around at all.

And I’d guess Eir approached this situation in much the same way as when Destiny’s Edge fell apart – she realised she’d make a mistake and assumed her son could never forgive her so she continued to avoid him instead of facing that. (Remember it was a big revelation for her during the dungeon stories that anyone would be willing to give her a second chance.)

So until now they had never had a chance to make up, or even to work out what exactly their problem was.

Then they end up fighting beside each other and they find that they actually have something in common, and that they’re both impressed with each other. On top of which (I may be reading too much into it) it seems like Braham is reconsidering what Eir did from an adults perspective, understanding that she didn’t really have a choice.

If and when we see them together again I don’t think they’re going to suddenly be best friends. I think it’s going to continue to be slow and awkward but hopefully their relationship will continue to develop.

(And I’d expect at least some of that to happen off screen because it would be unrealistic for them to want to have a conversation about their relationship as mother and son in front of a random group of people, or even a friend. It’s something that should be done between the two of them.)

I was really happy to see this.

Many years ago I created a character for a very unique RP forum, one where your character could be literally anything (including a pikachu with a space station, a giant goliath bird-eating spider, a sentient glob of goo and the god of insanity).

My character, for reasons I won’t go into now, was a genetically engineered hybrid of my normal RPG character (a DnD half-elf), a cat and a bat.

As you can probably imagine she got shelved when circumstances lead me to move away from player-run RP to computer RPGs because I thought I’d never be able to make a character like that.

And that was true. Until today.

Below is the only picture I can find of the original character, and my brand new GW2 re-creation, using my main who is one of the latest incarnations of the one who originally inspired this girl.

These two bosses were specifically added for people who want the challenge of organising a group to defeat them.

There are in fact significant numbers of people who do fight these bosses on a regular basis, and succeed. And they love doing it. At the moment they don’t have anything else in the game that offers that level of challenge, whereas more casual players who want to play solo or in smaller groups have a huge number of options.

I haven’t been able to beat either, and I’ve rarely made a serious attempt (I think once for the wurm and twice for tequatl) because I’m not interested in devoting that much time to fighting one boss.

But that doesn’t bother me at all because I don’t need to be able to beat them. All I’m missing out on is some achievements and possibly some unique skins (I’m not sure if they’re tradeable or not because I haven’t looked).

So as far as I’m concerned there is no reason to ruin other peoples fun when there is already more than enough for small groups to do.

Also I don’t understand how a queue system would help organisation. Wouldn’t that just means you’re forced into a group with whoever queued up at the same time you did, instead of being able to form and organise your own group?

I think it’s quite sweet that he kept the ring all that time, considering Althea died in the Searing and that was almost 3 years earlier. Although I suppose after the Shiverpeaks he wasn’t in a position to decide which items he would keep with him.

I think you’ve misunderstood how different races work in this game and/or how game design generally works.

All races are the same in terms of stats, weapons and other equipment they can use and apart from a small number of racial skills the skills they can use too. So that’s the easy part to carry over. Reducing it would actually be more work because Anet would have to work out what they can keep and what can be removed without destroying balance (and simply the ability to play the character in all situations) and then modify everything from the trait and skill windows to the combat UI to accommodate it. That’s a lot of work.

And on top of that you’re suggesting that each of these new races should have it’s own, unique storyline, separate from the one everyone else is going through? That would be a huge amount of work. Seriously, writing narratives, building the models and constructing the instances and doing all the animation and voice acting is the vast majority of game design in an RPG. We were told during Season 1 and 2 that they were able to do 1-2 releases per month because the studio was split into 4 teams and each worked on 1 release. So 1 Living Story release took 1/4 of the people at Anet 4 months to build, and that was before they were adding a new map each time.

Unless you can think of a way to produce these “really rich storylines” chapter by chapter which requires fewer people and less time that typical game design you’re basically suggesting they double the amount of work necessary for every release.

And the end result is a severely limited new race with a story that will never relate to what everyone else gets to do?

I think this idea would have completely the opposite of your intended effect – it doubles the time and effort (and therefore money) required to produce new releases for very little benefit for players. For many people no benefit because a race that can’t even use all the existing builds is useless, for people who mainly care about the storyline or the novelty of a new race it might be an interesting choice for one alt, but I can’t imagine it ever justifying the effort required.

kamedin.4698:

Personally, I would never recommend the F2P model of the game to anyone, I would just recommend the Core game but sadly you can’t get that anymore so I just don’t recommend the game anymore.

Maybe when people make their accounts Anet need to have a pop up that says "You have made a F2P account. Please go to and read the following article to find out the restrictions that have been placed on your account. Thank you. -link to account types-

I would, and have, recommended the free version to people. But on the understanding that it’s basically a demo version of a paid game rather than a true free to play game. You get enough access to try the game and decide if it’s something you would like to buy but I can’t imagine it was ever intended that someone would play on a free account indefinitely.

Which also helps to reassure them that they’re not setting themselves up for the typical situation where simply trying to play a “free” game ends up costing far more than simply buying one would have.

A lot has changed, especially if you left before April 2014. This page is a good place to get a quick summary: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Release
But I’ve also included a list of what I think are the most important changes, in no particular order.

Traits have been re-worked several times and how traits and skill unlock has changed. There are also level-up rewards now which contain a mix of information about the game and actual items.

There’s the wardrobe system which changes how transmutation works. Skins are unlocked when you equip, bind, salvage or destroy an item and then they’re saved forever – even if you don’t have the item any more you’ll still have the skins unlocked and can use them whenever you want. Transmutation stones have been replaced with charges which are used to pay for applying a skin to an item.

WvW and PvP both have a new reward system and new interfaces. Both periodically get special ‘league’ events too with exclusive rewards.

PvE maps are now shared between servers, so no more overflows. The game will prioritise putting you with other people from your server but you can meet people from any server in PvE. Oh, but North American and European servers are still separate.

The Living Story is permanently available now (from Season 2 onwards). Old chapters have to be unlocked for 200 gems each, or there’s a bundle with all of them for a slightly cheaper price. If you just want to see the story you can group up with someone who has them unlocked but you won’t get any rewards doing it that way.

There are 2 new maps (Dry Top and Silverwastes, both west of Brisban Wildlands) which are freely available to everyone. There’s also 4 maps exclusive to people who have the expansion, plus guild halls and raids which use their own maps.

Oh yeah, we have raids now. Or a raid. I’ve not tried it yet but it seems like a harder dungeon which requires a bigger group.

About the only thing which hasn’t changed is the level cap (still 80) and the top tier of equipment (still ascended, with most things balanced around exotic). There are masteries now which add extra abilities but they’re all very situational (e.g. most of the Heart of Thorns ones focus on allowing you to move around the jungle maps more easily), they don’t provide increased stats or anything like that.

You might find it helpful to start a new character. Keep the ones you’ve got (and log into them just to see what they’ve got that might be useful) but I often find making a new character helps me familiarise myself with a game I’ve not played in a while.

I think I have whispers more often than any other method.

I also didn’t notice any difference after F2P came in, but maybe they were mainly targeting the US servers.

Malediktus.9250:

Stormcrow.7513:

I didn’t play for a week, login and get an asc wep chest from a champ bag.
Just log off for a month and get that dusk!!!!

Doesnt work. I stopped 2 months for Wildstar. Threw in 3000 gold worth of greatswords and everything that came out of it in again. No precursor.

Got 6150 hours /age on this account and never had a precursor drop outside of mystic forge

If you had 3000 gold what did you want a precursor for? You could have bought a legendary with that.

I don’t understand why this has become such a contentious topic. The debate over RNG rewards has been done to death time and again on this forum and the consensus always seems to be that it’s not a good system.

This is no different. As far as I’ve seen no one is asking to get this mini for free, or even to not have to farm for it. All we’re asking for is a definite end point.

It could be 250 candy cobs. It could be 250 candy cobs + 1000 of each of the other Halloween materials. It could be tradeable and sold for over 1000g. But it’s still a huge difference to the system we have now because you will eventually hit the goal. At the moment someone could farm bags all day, every day for a few years and still not get the mini because that’s how random drops work.

I think this is one of those problems that comes down to personal taste.

Sylvari are my favourite race and I’ve made a lot of them, both male and female. I think the range of options for skin and hair colours especially makes them more interesting than the other races who are limited to shades of cream/grey/brown.

I don’t understand what you mean by problems with the body textures. They are very different from humans but that makes sense because they’re plants, they’re supposed to look like they’re basically trees in human form, completely with bark instead of skin. But again that’s one of the things I like because it makes them more individual and interesting to me.

I really don’t understand what you mean about female sylvari making constant “uhffing” sounds and absolutely disagree that this is their only appeal. I can’t say I ever noticed that but it sounds like something that would annoy me and put me off using them.

If you want to try and persuade Anet to change them I think you need to give more detail on what exactly you don’t like and how you would suggest they fix it. At the moment all I can do is compare your opinion that the base textures are ‘wrong’ to my opinion that they look fantastic and the variety of patterns and colours makes them more interesting than other races and conclude that it’s just different tastes.

As far as I’m aware Anet are not mind readers so I can’t see that they would be able to instantly understand your problem without it being explained, and since they designed the sylvari originally I think it’s safe to assume they are also happy with how they look. Which IMO makes a lot more sense for explaining why they haven’t “fixed” them than assuming they understand why you’re unhappy without being told, agree it’s a problem but are too “arrogant” and “ungrateful” to do anything about it.

Ultimately if their only appeal for you is one of the sounds the females make (made) and you can’t make one that looks good to you then it sounds to me like you just don’t like sylvari.

Which is fine, there’s no reason you have to play one, since race doesn’t make any difference to your character. If you want the achievements from the story you could make one, ignore what they look like (if necessary make them a heavy armour class and keep the gloves and helm on so they’re fully covered) and then delete them when you’re done.

Firstly the area in your screen shot isn’t the Crown Pavillion (although it is in that section of the city). It’s the Royal Terrace which is accessed by using a pass that’s sold on the gem store occasionally.

The Crown Pavillion is a separate map at the bottom of the big pit in the middle of that area of the city (under the giant eagle). It was only accessible during last August as part of the Living Story but is going to be accessible again from the 20th May onwards.

HoT took so long to come out because they weren’t originally planning to make an expansion at all.

When the game launched they actually intended to do mainly one-off events like The Lost Shores. But that was a disaster so they never did it again, and instead settled on first month long and then 2 week long story segments.

That was better but a lot of people still weren’t happy with it, so they switched to making each release instanced and permanent so they could be played any time you wanted.

It was only after players kept on and on and on about wanting an expansion that they finally gave in and made one. And then had to delay the story to fix it because apparently players didn’t want the challenging end-game content they’d asked for.

Now they have a better idea of what kind of a release system works for the game there’s no reason for them to run the whole experimental process again and therefore no need to wait the exact same amount of time before the next expansion comes out.

Same with the Legendary Weapons. They weren’t delayed because Anet had pre-planned a fixed schedule and they had to delay the weapons to meet it. They were scrapped completely because making the collections proved to be too much work, then they were brought back without the collections because so many people complained.

Basically you cannot use the pattern of previous releases to predict what’s going to happen in future because Anet doesn’t work like that. Otherwise we’d have had an expansion 6 months after release, another one a year later, then a mini one and the announcement they were completely stopping work on the game to develop GW3, because that’s the ‘pattern’ they established with GW1.

I could never get the hang of Reddit’s layout. If someone links me to a topic I can read most of it…I think. But I’d never consider going there voluntarily because it just looks a mess to me.

I’ll just take your word for it that it’s better for this sort of thing and hope someone posts a transcript here afterwards.

Can you tell me a game that does regularly add enough content that after 3 years players still have new things to do, and doesn’t charge for it?

Also as far as taking a break goes that’s not a bad thing. I’ve often seen people say that one of the benefits of GW2 not having a sub is that players can come and go as they want without worrying about wasting money or having that barrier to re-entry when they come back. That’s definitely a selling point for me. I’ve not taken any long breaks but there will be weeks and months when I don’t play much, either because I’m too busy with other things or just because I’d rather play another game.

I’m unconvinced that any game could constantly occupy someone for years on end without them getting bored so I don’t see any harm in taking breaks. Especially now when we can be reasonably sure there won’t be much/any new content before HoT comes out.

I think this topic is a great example of why you should never get a legendary (or any other item) because of what you imagine other people will think of it, and of you for owning it.

If you’re getting a legendary for the prestige or the allure of having a rare, hard to obtain item then you are going to be disappointed. It doesn’t matter how you get it, how much (or little) effort or money you put in or how many other people have the same one, you are going to be disappointed. Because very, very few people will care and even fewer will let you know that they care.

In case anyone’s wondering no I’m not just being bitter. I’m very, very close to finishing my first legendary: The Dreamer and really excited about it. I was well aware before I even started that at best everyone else would be indifferent and that some people actually hate this particular legendary. I don’t care, I’m making it for me, not for them and I’m going to enjoy using it even if every single other person in the game gets one before me.

(Also I hate to add more disappointment for the OP but if mini llamas were ever prestigious that ended the moment Team Llama (yes, really) “won” ours in the Tournament of Legends 2 for a glorious default victory over a team who didn’t turn up. We were absolutely slaughtered in our second match, I don’t think we got even 1 point, but that’s hardly surprising considering I think our most experienced member had almost maxed Deer rank. But hey, what do rankings mean when we have a mini to show we’re elite top-ranked PvPers, equal only to people who won one in a Twitch give-away.)

This is true at any time, but especially now when so many people are trying to do them for the new achievements.

I realise some people do it to grief other players, but some genuinely think they’re being helpful. You’re not.

You’re just making it harder and more stressful because a lot of jumps are very easy to overshoot, especially if you’ve got a speed boost. If you don’t know you’re about to get one then it’s impossible to plan for it and it becomes much more likely that you’re going to mess up.

If you think a speed boost would be helpful then by all means offer it to other players, but don’t run around casting it on random people just as they’re about to jump and then act like it’s some great mystery when they overshoot it, die and blame you.

Edit: In case anyone’s wondering no it hasn’t happened to me, I’ve been waiting for other players to move off just in case and waiting for the boosts they do dump on me to wear off before I attempt a jump. I’m just posting this because I’ve seen it happen to 2 other people today and had one guy tell me to hurry up and jump before the unwanted boost wore off, which is when I suddenly realised he actually thought he was doing us a favour by killing us off.