Guild Wars 2

I think MMO players have been programmed not to play a game but to chase the achievement/prestige aspects of the game instead. In fact, it’s gotten to the point in some MMO’s where the story is largely irrelevant, world evolution is mostly ignored, and the perception of unbalanced classes/builds is the primary factor for players returning to or abandoning the game altogether.

It’s not about experiencing a developer’s vision and, in some small way, growing as a person by being introduced to new concepts and fresh perspectives. Now it’s all about dominating the game to the utmost; power-leveling, max-gearing, speed runs and the perfect raid composition.

I don’t blame the developers for giving players what they want, it’s a hard sell with their investors to provide a gaming experience that encourages players to use their imaginations versus the more tangible and obvious reward systems. Also, not everyone has the time or energy to do more than while away an hour or so and relax from a long day. Sometimes something that comes easy is just the thing they’re looking for.

That’s why I love RP servers. These are players that “get it.” They play an MMO not for the gear grind but because of the massive, open world full of wonderful details, out of the way places, interesting enemies and background lore that makes it all come together. There’s always new content, always things to do and places to see because you’re not chasing a new piece of equipment but a different perspective.

That’s why I love these Guild Wars games. I’m an explorer junkie and these games are my fix. There are thousands of things only a few people actually see because they’re off the beaten trail. Does anyone else know about the Dwarven Graves in Frostgorge Sound and what that magic charm is all about? Have you released the specter hiding in the Necromancer’s book in the Godslost Swamp? Not everything has an achievement attached to them, nor does the game hold your hand and point out all the interesting tidbits you’ll miss on the way to 80.

Sometimes, you need to make your own rewards rather than accept the meaningless ones that are handed to you.

No, at least not for quite a while yet.

I see this game releasing two expansions, Cantha and Elona, to put the level cap at a comfortable 100 for the life of this MMO. If they want to add more skills/build options there are other ways to do it than constantly increasing the level cap.

Besides, it’s easier to balance the game at a lower level and entry-level players can reach end game content more quickly without suffering through the inevitable deadzones of content that has been out leveled by the majority of players from launch.

Go with a full set of Balthazar armor. Later on you might want to swap the mantle for Dwayna and the headpiece for a Grenth/Infiltration one if you want the maximum pure power on your basic armor. Balthazar runes add even more power and come with the set, but you can swap them out for superior runes that address deficiencies in precision/condition if your build calls for it.

The good news is that Balthazar is a popular zerg run for many high-pop servers, so you should be able to get your set within a day or two.

Had the same experience from a dungeon run a few days back. Offered a suggestion on a boss fight to help make it a little easier when the party wiped due to aoe, was told it was my fault for not rezing downed and defeated players who refused to spread out or use aoe heals.

Rest of the dungeon run was clean until the end; when the cinematic loaded up after beating the last boss was kicked and denied the chest and the achievement. When I asked afterward why I was kicked, was told “you kicked yourself a long time ago” and likely was put on ignore.

Had the insight to check through the party log to friend him before it all disappeared afterward… haven’t reported (not sure on Anet’s policy whether party kicks like that constitute a breach of TOS), but at least it’s a reminder of the kind of players you can PUG with.

On an unrelated note… if there’s an awesome, active and mature guild on Tarnished Coast I’d love an invite!

… and all I got was 3 ugly sweaters. XD

With respect, the game has been working perfectly fine on my end for more than a month. This “known issue” was not a problem my particular system was having. But after the patch implemented on 11/13 I have been unable to play this game. It’s fairly obvious that something contained within that patch is the problem. Asking a customer to pay $100+ for a new OS on the off chance it resolves the issue is not a solution. Please look into this with greater detail.

Edit

On the advice of a few other members on the forums, I deleted the local.DAT file from the GW2 install directory. It completely fixed my problem and I’ve been able to log in and play the game. Thankyou guys!

Continued from above, with the attached arenanet.log

Game was running fine until I was asked to log out so that a new build could be used 11/13. Since then, every time I click “play” from the login splash screen I’m greeted by a black screen with a flickering blue bar running a long the top (as if the game had tried to load as a windowed fullscreen application). The Guild Wars 2 title on the top left corner of the bar appears slightly garbled, possible screen resolution error? After about 30s of flickering the screen goes completely black save for the cursor, which acts as normal. After an additional 30s the flickering returns. This cycle repeats indefinitely until the process is ended by using the taskmanager. After killing the program other programs unrelated to GW2 begin to display lag, stuttering and graphic artifacts—as if there are not enough system resources remaining to run them properly. A reboot fixes the problem. Other games and graphic intensive applications run without problem, they only become unstable if accessed after starting up and shutting down GW2.

After the game refused to start up, I updated my sound and graphics card drivers to see if that would solve the problem. Nothing changed. Just recently, I disabled the gamma correction setting in Nvidia’s global panel as a previous post had suggested it to be a work around. Still no success, symptoms remain the same.

Having all the same issues, though the game was working just fine for me as early as yesterday. Was random questing around 2pm pacific and received a message that there was a new build available. I had a few other things to do that day, so I logged out and didn’t get back until about 4 hours ago. Now, all I get after clicking “play” from the login is a black screen that has a flickering blue bar running along the top (as if the game is in windows fullscreen setting). The hand shaped cursor works, but there is no sound. After a few minutes the screen goes completely black and the cursor disappears, a few moments later the flickering returns. Opening up the taskmanager indicates that the program has stopped responding.

After I close the program from the task manager I encounter lag, visual artifacts and random crashes when I run OTHER programs, as if GW2 has claimed system resources and cannot release them. After a reboot my computer is restored to “normal”, there are no artifacts, lag or crashes even when I use other graphic intensive programs or games.

Can we get an update on this issue? Or at the very least some directions as to how to provide logs to help resolve the problem?

The world event will be going live in 2 days, I’d hate to miss out on this “one time only” experience because the new patch broke the game for me a few days in advance.

Same problem here. Whatever they’ve done in the last day has given me a black flickering screen when the game tries to initialize after clicking “play”. The only way to get control of my computer back is to end process from the taskmanager. One other thing I’ve noticed is that after killing the process the game is still tying up a considerable amount of system resources and refuses to release them.

I tested by rebooting, terminating all processes not critical to the OS and loading up only GW2.. same crash, same hog of resources post crash. Running XP (32)