Guild Wars 2

In the mean time, I suggest that everyone pays attention to the action prompt. It will say “Open” if you are about to activate the chest and “Travel” if you are about to lose your chest and go to DR.

I just recently beat Liadri after 20 something attempts, and I have to say this boss is really well done, and I say this because she is difficult, but not impossible, and her attacks have a clear pattern, which are avoidable. Liadri is one of those bosses that you keep fighting till you get it down to a science, which I really enjoyed, so kudos to whoever designed her.

The only thing that bugged me about her was the short time limit. It really takes a GamerGuruMaster to beat her in the first few attempts.

I’m appaled by the arrogance of your line of thought OP. In fact it’s a trend I see all over this forum now that the results are in.

The fact of the matter is that the Abaddon fractal would have given no new insights at all, while the reactor is an open box with endless possibilities. It’s just that the majority of the bunch doesn’t seem to have the creativity to see this potential and was blinded by the ‘epicness’ of a god battle.

Pfffsh, I’m glad we’re having this now anyway, because if Evon had won, the excrement would have hit the fan once his unimpressive fractal smashed all the unrealistic expectations of the ‘hardcore’ voters. At least now people already assume the fractal will suck so it can only get better from here on out.

I voted for Ellen Kiel because:

- I like the character.
- I like her story so far.
- I want to see more of her story.

I did not vote for Ellen Kiel because:

- Cheaper waypoints.
- I hate Guild Wars 1 lore.
- Because she has breasts.

I did not vote for Evon Gnashblade because:

- If I wanted to see a brief glimpse of Guild Wars 1 content, I would play Guild Wars 1.
- I rarely buy Black Lion Keys.
- I do not like his story.

Gnash lost; now I drink your tears.

#TeamKiel

Haha! I was thinking the same thing. I’m pretty happy to see so many people still care about this game

Actually just opened a thread about this on the events page..

Regardless of who won, it’s been a LONG time since I remember seeing any MMO community so emotionally invested into some new content, in game, in forums, and on websites like reddit or twitter. I loved it, and a bit sad it’s over now.

Nah. I got my ascended gear and have over 150 laurels left. Granted I’m going to use them for rare mats for my legendary but still… it’s not really that bad. If you miss one day it’s no big deal.

No Walking.6349:

Inquest messed up and caused an explosion that teleports animals all over the place.

You’re more interested in this than in the fall of a god?
You would really rather run through another asuran dungeon, than watch THE FALL OF A GOD?

I can see why people are voting for Kiel….cause they’re morons….

Silly stupid god was stupid enough to give dirty smelly humans magic.
His buddies kicked him out of their super cool clubhouse.

Because of this idiocy I had to watch some blind fool jump into the Speed Force and become the goddess of No-one-really-Loves-you.

So yeah I voted for the reactor. It will be interesting to see a GW2 Black Mesa.

Go pray in your temple.

TehPwnerer.7215:

You need to start looking at it from the fractal standpoint. Want to vote for Kiel to see the Thumanova Reactor fractal? Why? I’ll save you the trouble: The Asura thought they were super smart, they tried to do something, and something blew up. Ok cool we got that out of the way?

Great, now please go vote for Evon so that we actually have a good permanent bonus from the victor. I don’t expect people who didn’t play GW1 to understand the important or sheer awesome that is the Fall of Abaddon. This is GODS FIGHTING EACH OTHER and not "We’re asura, we screwed up again asura shrugs as the curb your enthusiasm theme song starts playing

This is ridiculous. You’re expecting to participate in this epic battle where the gods fight one another and cast Abaddon down, which is somehow supposed to fit into a single 10 minute fractal adventure. You need to reign those expectations in.

The truth is you have no idea what either fractal will end up looking like. For all you know Abaddon’s fall could be an underwater fractal where you fight loads of Margonites, with nary a god in sight.

Meanwhile, the Thaumanova Reactor could be something quirky and fun, like the party playing the role of Skritt who steal components from and sabotage the reactor, ultimately causing the meltdown. We just don’t know. What we do know is that one of the designers working on the fractals seems to be excited about the Thaumanova Reactor concept:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

To shed some light on my bias, our team brainstormed up a bunch of fractals for you guys to pick from and then we settled on the best two. I got pretty excited about Thaumanova, given what we intend for it to entail so I’m Kiel supporter all the way.

That, to me, is a reason to vote in favor of Kiel. Meanwhile, you’re throwing all your hopes (and votes) behind some dream scenario that simply does not fit within the confines of a fractal dungeon. Fractals are short adventures, not epic god sagas. You’re voting on the fantasy in your mind instead of the reality we’d end up with.

Stop think YOUR reason and YOUR opinion is the right one. I know Tyria and Gw Lore from all parts, I’ve played Gw1, I’m playing Gw2, I’ve read all-3 books. I’ve also read all lore wiki (Both games).

YOUR opinion is not the right one.

Yes, I’m voting on kiel ONLY because of fractal. I already know EXACTLY what happened in abaddon fall. I don’t need a cinematic of it. But Thaumanova is a DRAGON corruption center of research. And something had being very bad and wrong.

I’ll vote for something I don’t know yet, to discover more things about the lore of Guild Wars. I don’t need a useless cinematic of a thing we already have on wiki and in the books present in Gw2 game.

I have to be honest and say that part of the reason I insist on voting for Kiel (not that I wasn’t anyway) is because of the condescending attitude of some GW1 veterans and their insistence that we should all be interested in the same things that they are.

emikochan.8504:

Esplen.3940:

emikochan.8504:

but my NA friends play on the EU server with me fine… T_T I don’t see why we can’t guest to NA servers when na players can home on eu servers without issue.

That’s because their characters are saved on the EU data center. It doesn’t matter where the players are it matters where the character data is.

the data is still travelling from the servers in eu to na, can someone that understands networking explain why this is insurmountable?

The issue is not ‘insurmountable’. It could be done, more or less “easily” in fact.
However, the issue is whether it is desirable, and it’s not desirable.
The reason is, the length of the route the data would need to travel would increase a great deal, and this would translate into lag.

Players in EU or Players in NA but on EU Server
EU Players <—> EU Server <—> NA Players

Players in EU or Players in NA but each player on different server
EU Players <—> EU Server <—> NA Server <—> NA Players

You can see the route is longer when you allow players on different servers to play with one another = more lag.

I can’t help but think that many people posting about how shallow GW2 is and how amazing GW1 was, are either:

A. Playing one of the classes of GW2 that are easy (and are likely made to be so)
and/or
B. Played GW1 with either crappy builds, or are just plain wearing nostalgia goggles.

I played GW1 from release. I was in the various beta weekends, and I got a lot out of that game. But really, it was never that difficult. Many classes had -very- little variability in their builds even when you took into account their secondary. Warriors, Rangers, Necromancers, Monks etc… were all very easy to play. And the dungeons were too (heck, many may remember how many people built their character around making auto attack do everything… and how stupidly effective it was. If my warrior didnt have something that upped my swing speed, I was hurting myself a lot). The only difficulty that ever came of the dungeons in GW1 was getting a healer, and not accidentally pulling to many mobs. Not a thing more. This didn’t really change much when hard modes became a thing, aside from making it so you couldn’t just roll your face around the keyboard: had to hyper focus and, at least in my experience, use less, but hyper effective, skills.

Now, speaking on the classes of GW2: I will freely admit some of them are fairly simple in use. Notably, Warrior, Guardian, and to some extent Necromancer and Ranger. But the others, especially Elementalist and Engineer, really shine in the hands of a competent player in comparison to bad one. This is true for PvP and PvE both.

It’s also rather hypocritical to say you’re forced into one build in GW2 while in the same breath praising GW1: where over powered super builds were the name of the game from DAY ONE. Calling GW2 shallow based on hyper focused trait, sigil, and rune usage is the exact same as calling GW1 shallow based on the various fotm builds that plagued GW1 throughout it’s entire life (and really only got worse with time).

To be fair, yes, GW1 did of course have more variability in it’s builds, but it also had severely more skill overlap between classes and even -in- classes to the point where looking at the skills of GW1 is rather misleading when compared to GW2. Go ahead and take a look, see how many skills are pointless. How many pretty much do the exact same as another skill. How many were rather passive in use (ignite arrows for instance).

Does the game need more traits? Yes. More utilities? Of course. No game should ever stop improving and giving options (and the devs said this will be a focus of the game from now on). But to call the game shallow based on making it shallow, while also comparing it to another game that was just as shallow, if not more so, is hypocritical and foolish. I played a Warrior through most of my time in GW1. I cleared the games PvE content, and the most I ever needed in my build aside from a chain of weapon skills that I always mindlessly used in succession, was a tactics skill that was needed for one specific use, depending on the dungeon. Warrior in GW2, despite being no doubt the simplest of classes, is far more involved than my GW1 Warrior was. Same could be said comparing my old Ranger to my new ranger, or even my old assassin to my new thief.

Give GW1 another play if you feel the need. If you have friends, invite them along. Get rid of your PvE only abilities, and try your hand at the games PvE. I imagine it’s going to come out a lot easier than you remember.

Did I miss something? Is Gnashblade offering tin foil hats now?

MMOs are like buffet restaurants where every single restaurant has its own specialized food type. Each MMO has its own list unique strenghts and weaknesses. But since this thread is about what makes GW2 a great MMO ill only mention the strenghts

- I like the basic idea of the combat system (even if the execution is lacking in some cases).
- Maps are quite diverse for MMO standards. A single map often has multiple types of landscapes and a nice mix of world events, jumping puzzles traditional quests in the form of hearts and dynamic events.
- The community is a quite laid back and mature.
- On my server the zones are quite populated so it feels like an actual MMO instead of a game where you sit in major cities and pick instances from menus (like in wow).
- Frequent updates
- A lot of “little things” like the music, the random NPC conversations, specific skins, the pollish and little details.

It feels like a virtual world, and it feels like it’s living and evolving. This makes it a great place to wander around in and goof off for an hour or two. It’s also filled with “things to do” – one can follow stories, achievements, etc., whatever takes one’s fancy. There is such an abundance of ambient detail in the game, it always amazes me whenever I play it. Not to mention, it’s absolutely gorgeous, and utterly charming in the way that a “light”, family-friendly fantasy game should be.

The TP system is superb. It allows you to either wander the land at will, immersed, or jump out of immersion immediately and get to a place to do something specific that you want to do.

The combat system is amazing: it’s forgiving enough so that a beginner can get along ok with blind button-mashing, but it’s deep enough so there’s a high skill ceiling if you want it (you can do things better and more efficiently if you want to).

The build system is deep and addictive. Even within professions, there’s a huge variety of possible builds, all viable. Even the min-max best builds aren’t that far ahead of any themed build you could fancy.

The class balance is amazing, possibly the best I’ve ever experienced in any MMO. In PvP, one never feels that another class has any unfair advantages, and one wins and loses in a fair way. If one loses, it’s because one isn’t playing one’s best, or the other player is better, not because the other class has an IWIN button.

On the social side, the game rewards co-operation like no other game. The normal human instinct to help out is rewarded in this game, unlike any other MMO, where it’s punished. This often leads to conversations, which can lead to friendships, etc.

Don’t you hate it when you’re in your house but someone just decides to take your stone so you run over to kill them but there are tons if people waiting and they kill you and this happens every 10 minutes or so

Dgenerate.1948:

Tolmos.8395:

Dgenerate.1948:

So… Has the game gotten any better? It was pretty bad when I left. Way too casual and unrewarding. How’s the playerbase? I haven’t played since about 2-3 months out of release.

If by “casual and unrewarding” you mean “Not like WoW, lacking in raids and not based on vertical gear progression”, then the answer is that the game is still GW2 and has not become WoW yet. Sorry.

As for the playerbase- larger servers are pretty packed. I haven’t seem what the smaller ones look like but Tarnished Coast has a lot of zones that still push me into overflow.

Working towards better gear is a solid incentive for a player to keep wanting to play a game. It’s a big part of what made WoW, WoW. Not trying to make this a GW VS WoW discussion, but wanted to point that out.

To me GW2 was trying to sell an experience, which although beautiful, does not create enough interest for extremely competitive-minded players like me. Honestly when I played GW2, I got the same feeling I got when I play single player RPGs. I don’t know how to explain it, but I guess I liked the feeling of working towards being recognized for my efforts.

You can still do that. Become well known for being more skilled, as opposed to the usual MMO view of being well known for being better geared. For once, you have an opportunity to shine not because of how much free time you have, but because of how good of a player you, personally, are.

There are many players on individual class forums who post videos semi-regularly, or who are well known on their server for doing amazing feats. And they accomplish those feats without the help of bigger numbers, making them actually someone worth being recognized.

Of all the MMOs out there, this is, to me, the best game to try to achieve recognition on.

Vertical Progression Vs Horizontal Progression.

If you don’t like it play WoW.

Stat treadmills are designed to keep you paying a monthly subscription (“Ah, I finally got my full suit so I am tied with everyone else and can participate at an even level of … what?! A new tier is out now and my gear is already obsolete? Back to farming I guess”.)

Guild Wars does not have a subscription and thus does not need to keep you tethered 24/7. They put in cosmetic items in order to generate something for you to work towards at your leisure.