Guild Wars 2

This just makes me really tempted, if I ever spot one, to go “Omigoshomigoshomigosh!” and trail after them like a star-struck fangirl. It’d probably be creepy, but pretty hilarious :P

Agreed, magic is still used by the charr – they don’t seem like the types to turn down a perfectly good weapon at their disposal (much like the Romans who have partly inspired their lore). I just don’t think they want to be reliant on magic. The way I would play it would be that if anyone accused him/her of messing with Flame Legion magics, he/she would just have to do something creepy and awesome to make the point that it’s powerful, so aren’t you glad I’m on your side? That seems very charr!

As said above, don’t worship greater powers, and don’t go around saying your magic makes you better than anyone else, and you’d be fine. Having said that, my friend does have a charr necro who was runt of his litter and is a bit of a pariah for his creepiness, so that can work in a warband too.

I was under the impression that they were only pinging people who were using their videos to make money, without permission. Seems fair. You can still share and blog if you’re not making money off it.

What’s stopping ArenaNet running the tournaments if they want an e-sport? They don’t want other people profitting off their game, which is reasonable.

You can get the any of the other races’ main cities through asura gates – there’ll be one from the Black Citadel to Lion’s Arch, and one from Lion’s Arch to everywhere else. If you go from Lion’s Arch to Divinity’s Reach, you can get to the human 1-15 zone, Queensdale, easily and for free. Then to get to Kessex you’ll just have to run south (if you get to Godslost Swamp, there’s an entrance from the south of the swamp to Kessex).

Once you’ve been somewhere you can waypoint back, but until then the capital cities are the only places you can easily warp to (using asura gates). Hope this helps and enjoy the game!

Yeah, you can move as many times as you want at the moment, but they will be ending that at some point after which transfers will cost gems.

I believe you lose any influence your guild had if you shift to another server. I’m not sure about guild upgrades you’ve already purchased – someone else may be able to answer that?

Your pushing your definition of fun onto the masses though. Some people do not mind or even enjoy farming. I don’t think anyone should be punished for farming a particular type of world mob and I think dungeons should offer a fair and consistant reward.

What can I say? I respect your opinion. People like different types of games. I guess GW2 just isn’t going to be a very enjoyable game for people who really enjoy that style. I don’t think it should necessarily have to please everyone – no other game does.

Other games – “this sucks it’s just grind, I don’t pay every month to farm the same instance over and over.”
GW2 – “this sucks, it’s like they don’t even want us to farm, wtf are we supposed to do then?”

I’m not sure I have an answer, I just find the complaint ironic… maybe because I’ve never been hardcore…

Why do you have to grind something? Why do you have to farm the same area for 2-3 hours to be doing well? I understand wanting to get what you need for fancy armour/weapons/etc as soon as possible, but I really think that GW2 is discourgaing this mentality that you should be able to mechanically grind your way to success. They want you to have fun, if they want anything.

I’ve seen so many people power-level and grind their way to achieving everything in an MMO, then leave complaining loudly that there’s nothing for them to do. GW2 has no subscription. You can take your time. This is in large part personal preference though – I understand that I’m a pretty casual player.

They are absolutely working on this. If anything people are complaining that they’re banning too many people, not too few :P

It’s only been a few weeks and GW2 has had a ridiculously large number of people descend on it at once. Give them some time.

Welcome. My advice? Do what’s fun! Whatever you enjoy. Whether you agree with the nay-sayers who reckon GW2 is broken or unfair will really depend on how you play, but if you just want to have fun there’s plenty of it to be had

I suppose that would be a handy little extra, but I don’t see that it’s necessary. Dyes are infinite use once you’ve unlocked them, so I have no problem just trying them out to find out what they change – especially since there is the ‘undo’ function to return everything to the way it was when you started, if your experimentation ruins your setup.

I thought that joining an order was a pretty integral character decision… assuming that you can’t be in more than one at once, which I’m pretty sure is the case, I think you’re stuck with the one you chose. It’s a character decision, so yes, you’d need a new character to choose differently, like any other personal story choice.

I am a role-player at heart, something which I am only recently coming to fully realise, and I love to extrapolate out from what we do have into what might be the case.

Eye of the North showed us that asura often have interesting relationships with their parents – in that they become individuals when they are old enough and seem to very much work on their own. There’s love there in the example we’re shown, but also a very asura desire to outshine one another, and for children to outdo their parents’ achievements. I’m not sure about asura child-raising, other than the schooling you see in Metrica Province.

Charr cubs are put in a fahrar, and raised in a group which will become their warband. Parents don’t have a very direct role in raising children. Their warband and legion are their family. I would imagine parents are aware of their cubs and might keep tabs on how they’re doing, though.

Norn are also pretty individualistic, but do have family bonds. If you have a famous ancestor, you can kind of springboard off their legacy to give yourself a boost for your own, haha. Norn romance is interesting – again in Eye of the North there’s a quest (I’d have to look up the details) which implies that to marry, a couple ought to be of similar status and fame. So if you admire a very impressive norn lady, you’ve got to be at least as impressive to get her attention!

There’s a random spattering of things I recall.

Grizzly, I enjoyed both the novels. I wouldn’t say they’re targeted at younger readers – they’re simple, but in a straightforward, wise-cracking, adventure story kind of way. Nothing too complex or too amazingly written, but you can read them in a short time and get a taster of a lot of bits of lore and character stuff. Plus, there are references to the events of the novels laced throughout the game, which are fun to find once you know what you’re looking at!

So, not high literature, but amusing enough.

Yeah, be aware of who you’re speaking to. If it’s friends or a dungeon group you’re reasonably comfortable with, say what you like in the knowledge that you wouldn’t expect them to report you. In map chat, don’t. If you are reported, you are likely to get a ban. Be considerate for the randoms who might be listening in

Short answer, no.

Re. ranger, my boyfriend is having the opposite problem – playing his ranger feels less dynamic and interesting because enemies in PvE just go straight for his pet, and he never has to dodge!

I had good fun as a guardian in beta, my bf loves engineer and chucking grenades around, I enjoy the challenge of staying alive with my dual dagger ele… it really is personal preference.

Tom Gore – Hah! I thought that was just me

To be honest, the easiest way to get through personal story when it’s knocking you about is to bring a friend. Find a random, join a guild, whatever, but another person makes a whole lot of difference! Now, I know you shouldn’t have to bring someone else along, and I think the comments above show that you don’t strictly have to. But it’s the easy solution if getting the dodge/heal/run/weapon switch/etc dance is proving too difficult right now.

The best advice I can give to someone coming to GW2 from another MMO is, “WARNING: This game may not work like your other MMO.”

I can’t tell someone that GW2 is better, because it kind of depends on what you like. I can tell them why I think it’s better. But I do think that most MMOs are similar enough that the same skills and strategies carry over pretty simply, so some people (myself included) get a shock to the system have to learn something actually new.

In GW2 players join guilds, not characters. If you make a guild for just you, all your characters will automatically be in it, but it will still list one member. Players can join more than one guild and choose to represent one of them at any time

In pretty much every multi-racial fantasy setting I’ve come across, the virtue that humans have is diversity. We may not be as good at one thing – not as magically adept as elves, or in this case as technologically advanced as asura and charr – but we can turn our hands to many different things. Humans think outside the box, we combine virtues and perspectives, and come up with things that no other race can. We’re flexible. We’re jacks of all trades, masters of none.

This same idea is reflected in what Lutinz says about the Muse of Lyssa. Humanity embodies the virtues of six very different gods, all in one people. Despite adversity, we adapt and survive. Oh, we mustn’t forget that other pervasive human virtue – we’re very, very stubborn!

Here’s my take on it: the Ventari Tablet presents an ideal that Dreamer sylvari think they should live up to. The Courtiers outright reject it on the grounds that it holds the sylvari race back, limiting what they can be. There’s definitely a logic to it, in a kind of rebellious teenager way: why should some dead centaur dictate how we should live?

But that doesn’t mean Dreamers embody this ideal perfectly. Many of them will fail to live up to it from time to time, find themselves prejudiced or angry. Many of them fall to the Nightmare because something bad happens which they just can’t let go with “all things have a right to grow.” Think about Caithe – she’s lost Faolain, lost Destiny’s Edge, lost so many things in her life. She can be expected to have doubts and resentment, which makes her vulnerable to the Nightmare.

But! – Nightmare is insidious. You don’t necessarily just choose to be evil. The Court get their way if the Dream is corrupted. If someone like Caithe is basically going the Star Wars path – "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering – she can be feeding the Nightmare without ever giving up the Dream. She’s slipping. I assumed they portrayed Caithe as rather too harsh (and had our characters pull her up on it) deliberately, to highlight this problem. To fight the Nightmare, you end up feeding the Nightmare.

As a social science student myself, I think you’re taking the word ‘application’ with too narrow a definition. When studying culture, is it the practical application that’s important? No – in fact how people use such research is often pretty awful, because they take it to be more conclusive and final that it should ever be. However, I’d say an ethnography, for instance, is only a curiosity if it is never used. Whether it sparks a new theory about human society, is used in a comparison to challenge an assumption, or is held up as an example of why a particular ‘race’ or culture is dangerous and should be stamped out – these ‘applications’ of research will define its value and importance at LEAST as much as the work itself.

Or maybe I’m just defending the Priory because, like them, I’m an academic and I can’t leave a problem alone :P

I think you can pick up a lot of lore from just exploring and talking to NPCs – go off the beaten track. However maybe I just think that because I know the lore well and recognise things when I see them!

The novels have a lot of good stuff (and are easy to read, fairly typical tie-in novels). If you want history try The Movement of the World (but this is probably most interesting if you’re a GW1 player, since it fills in the gaps). The wiki in general is a great resource on specific topics!

What makes you think they are all Ascalonian? Zamon looks like he probably has Elonan blood in him. Sure, he doesn’t look like he grew up in Kamadan, but the wiki says that the last contact with Elona was 50 years ago (and it was one or two hundred since Cantha closed its borders, I’m not certain on the timing). Kryta is a melting pot of Ascalonian, Krytan, Canthan and Elonan peoples. Unless Elonans had been kept in a ghetto without any mixing whatsoever, I would be surprised if Zamon looked pure Elonan. I think the fact that ethnicity is far from clear at a glance is deliberate, as is the mixture of names from all the human cultures.

I got the leggings piece for this (or a version with the same skin) in Snowden Drifts, level 15-25 area in the Shiverpeaks. It was from a karma vendor (sorry, I cannot remember which off the top of my head) and I’m hoping the rest of the set will be available for karma in this map, but I haven’t explored further yet. Sorry I can’t offer more info!

Last I heard guesting on other servers was going to become available when the free transfers end, but there’s not date for that yet (whenever ArenaNet decide server populations have settled down).

Each race’s starting area has a capital city which has an asura gate to Lion’s Arch (the purple blob on the map mentioned above). Lion’s Arch has gates to every other race’s city, so you can all pick one starter area and go play over there! You’ll need to go to your own area to progress personal story, but you don’t have to do that really.

Playing lots of PvE my characters have tended to get their first gold piece (100 silvers) around level 30.

Don’t buy gold from people who advertise it. If you want a shortcut through real money, buy gems through the Black Lion Company (cash shop) and trades them for gold. GW2 gives you a nice, legit way to do that.

As others have said, it may just not be the game for you. To address your points as best I can, though:

1) Classes – ten skills not enough? Well, remember you have weapon switching. It’s most fun if you use it dynamically, remember you have fifteen skills in actuality and you can use all of them in a fight. Not enough? Elementalists have 25 skills on the go! Find combinations you like.

2) Loot – to me the joy of loot comes more in appearance than stats. That’s not for everyone. This point really comes down to preference.

3) Level scaling – the idea is that things should become more difficult. Going to a lower area shouldn’t make things easier, it should still require your full attention and some careful planning. This makes other races’ starter areas more interesting to visit, and gives you more content you can actually play through. I find this to be a plus, but again, personal preference.

4) WvW – I haven’t done much of this but I really think groups are key. You can join more than one guild, so maybe see if there’s a WvW-focused guild on your server you can join part-time? Stick with the pack.

5) sPvP – Yeah, if you don’t like this style of PvP, there’s nothing to be done except to recommend you don’t bother with it. GW2 tries to offer something for everyone, but not everyone will like everything!

I hope you can find things to enjoy, but if not, there’s no reason to play GW2 if it’s not fun for you. The game will certainly develop, but a lot of what you don’t like is that way by design. Those things aren’t likely to change much, or it would stop being GW2.

I can’t offer any tricks, but as a coping mechanism I tend to carefully make my way through until I make some stupid mistake and fall… and after one or two of those I go away and come back another day. Trying over and over is not good for my mental health >.<

From your description, I’d suggest a warrior. Mine runs around with a rifle to pick things off that range, and when they get close enough she switches to axe and mace and bashes their face in So far warrior seems like the kind of class you can play lazily and do fine with, or get more complicated with IF you feel like it.

I also found guardian to be good fun (greatsword ftw), and my boyfriend’s ranger is pretty low maintenance. If you’re looking to pick a character to stay with, I’d recommend playing through to level 20 or so with anything you’re considering and just continue if you enjoy it!

Sorry you’ve got some less polite responses Boonah, they’re less common here but, well, this is the internet :P

If neither of the PvP options appeals to you, I think running the dungeons is a popular alternative. The explorable modes can vary each time you try them, to keep things interesting. Otherwise, roll up a new character and try a new profession, or go back and play through other races’ early area and see how down-levelling works for you. Clearing map areas gives you a goal for exploring.

I am not up to those levels of the game so I can’t directly help you

However if you just want somewhere to play and don’t want to feel like you’re grinding mindlessly, you could try going back to lower level zones around other races’ cities. You’ll get down-levelled but you’ll still get exp for events and exploration, and there should be plenty of people around. It might be a side track rather than progression, but it would give you something productive to do for a bit!

Failing which – find a guild, bring some people with you. More people usually helps.

Guesting on other servers is going to become available when free transfers end, as I understand it. The easiest thing is for your friends to transfer to another, less busy server where you can join them – they wouldn’t really lose out on anything I don’t think (don’t quote me on that). I can understand if they don’t want to do that, but it’s the simplest solution I can see.

It really depends what you’re going for. Lore-appropriate is easy with humans – most anything goes. Do you want something that suits a personal story? (Street rat nickname or noble full name, for example). Do you want a surname that relates to your favoured element? Or just a nice female name?

If the latter, I second the suggestion to look at baby names. It’s actually really useful. And don’t be afraid to modify one you find, if you like