Guild Wars 2

I agree with the people who said you should just let her play what she wants how she wants and maybe give her occasional pointers or help her when she needs it.

She might not be very good or get very far in conventional terms but she’ll enjoy it a lot more than being told “No, you need to pick this kind of character, and you have to use this weapon and these skils, ok now go over here…”

I started playing RPGs when I was about 7, with Eye of the Beholder. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, I’d wander around and fight things and sometimes a little red patch with a small number would come up and sometimes a big red patch with a big number came up. Sooner or later they’d die and I’d get some stuff and go back to wandering around.

But I had a ton of fun doing it, at least as much as I do now with games I understand. I also think it’s a benefit to know that sometimes it’s ok to just throw yourself into something and assume you’ll figure it out as you’re going along.

Madness.5810:

hahahaha even letting 7 year old kids in to MMO’s like GW2 wow etc…

Bad times ppl, bad times

As I said above I was around that age when I first started playing RPGs and my sister would have been around the same age when she first started Ultima Online. We also played far more violent and less child friendly games (for example Doom 2, Mortal Kombat 3, a Terminator FPS – because we loved the movies, Duke Nukem 3D, Grand Theft Auto…)

We turned out ok, most people who meet both of us are surprised to learn we’re gamers and neither of us is prone to violence or traumatised or whatever is supposed to happen.

I can completely understand the reasoning behind having an age rating system for games, and restricting kids access to games they’re not old enough for. But I see it as a way of informing parents so they can make a decision on what their kids are ready for and the degree of supervision required

HappyDragon.1578:

I remember when kids that age used to play outside. Good times. I’d get her something more age appropriate, like Pokemon. GW2 is for teens and older people. This game can be very frustrating at times. I wouldn’t recommend it for kids, because they’re more prone to temper tantrums.

I remember when I was that age and I used to both play video games and play outside. And the two kind of bled into each other – a lot of our games had strong sci-fi or fantasy themes.

Also Pokemon can be extremely frustrating, even for an adult so if that’s really your reason for not recommending GW2 I’d say you could have come up with far better options.

IMO the easiest way, assuming you can buy the tapastries from another player is:

3 points – link accounts. (And visit the HoM in GW1.)

1 point – Mox. If you have all 3 campains you’ll find him standing outside the main/port town in each one, speak to him and he’ll join you as a hero, take him to the HoM and you can add him straight away.

1 point – Pet wolf. Create a PVP ranger. Equip Charm Animal or Comfort Animal and go to the Zaishen Menagerie (it will already be on your map). Drop off the wolf with Emryd the Tamer. Create a PVE ranger (you can delete the other one), go to the Zaishen Menagerie and collect the wolf from Wynn. Take it to the HoM and add it for another statue.

1 point – Buy any white mini (they should be cheap and widely available) and add it.

But no method is going to be genuinely quick and easy because the whole point of the HoM is to reward people who spent a lot of time on GW1.

In list form, for simplicity:

Mistfire Wolf: You get this on every character, listed on the Hero Panel alongside your other elite skills. You should not be able to loose or delete it.

Mini Rytlock: You only get one of these. It is mailed to you when you first create or upgrade your account and can only be collected on one character. If you think you’ve lost it check the very bottom of the Collectables Tab in the bank in case you accidentally deposited it. If you’ve definitely lost it contact support for a replacement.

Chalice of Glory: You get just one of these. It will be mailed to you (along with the mini Rytlock) when you create or upgrade your account. It’s consumable so if you use it then it’ll disappear (and you’ll gain some glory points). If you don’t get it or are sure you lost it contact support.

Tome of Influence: Same as the Chalice. You get just 1 (mailed with the mini) and it’s consumable so it disappears when you use it. If you don’t get it or loose it contact support.

Golem Banker: You get 1 of these per character, for every character you have when you upgrade your account and every one you create from that point onwards. It will be mailed to you when you upgrade/create the character. It lasts for 5 days but is one use only. If you lose it or don’t get it contact support.

Heroes Band: This is not actually part of the Deluxe edition. It’s a pre-order bonus item given to everyone who bought any version of the game before launch. Somewhat confusingly however if you got the Digital Deluxe edition it will be mailed to each character along with the Golem Banker. Like the banker you get 1 per character and should contact support if you don’t get it or you lose it.

And for the record all of the above are account bound (the ring and the golem are soul bound) so you can’t sell them on the TP. I’m not sure if you can sell them to merchants.

Edit: Oh and all of the above also come with the Collectors Edition, along with a bunch of real life stuff.

No. The Halloween materials are still in the game so I can’t see why you’d lose the Wintersday ones.

You just won’t be able to trade in ugly wool items from this point on.

Personally I like the day/night cycle as it is.

Like a lot of people I only get to play about 2 hours a day and always at around the same time. If the cycle was any longer, especially if it was 24 hours, I’d basically be stuck in perpetual day or night which would be extremely boring.

Josh.8154:

I would like to see shorter day hours in the winter time frame to somewhat resemble the world being farther from the sun in the winter. I have rarely noticed the night period but when have I love looking at the stars in the Tyrian sky or fighting the Shadow Behemoth at night.

If I remember correctly the continent of Tyria, at least the southern half where we are, is not that far from the equator (which is just below the island of Istan in Elona). So any difference in day length between the summer and winter would be fairly minimal.

Wired mice are generally considered better gaming mice because they have faster response times and are more reliable. Wireless mice are more of a convinience thing, especially if you’re going to have different ones for gaming and general use or use a laptop and move it around a lot. There are good ones out there which most people would probably say have the same responsiveness as a wired mouse, although really high-end players would still notice a difference.

How many buttons you get is really a matter of personal preference. I recommend going to a computer shop and trying out some different options to get a feel for what you’d find comfortable (note: if you’re left-handed your options will be very limited).

Also think about how much you want to be doing with the mouse. You can get ones with enough buttons that you could map every command you’re ever likely to need to it and never use the keyboard, or you could map a few key commands and use both.

Generally speaking I highly recommend Logitech mice. They’ve got some really nice ones, not as flashy as some out there but nice looking and with nice, user-friendly software. Good built quality too. I’d recommend Razer as well but I’ve heard mixed reviews of their build quality and the only Razer mouse I’ve had didn’t last long. (On the other hand I’ve got a Razer keyboard which is still going strong after several years.)

Finally, you probably know this already but expect to spend at least about 2 or 3 times what you’d pay for a normal mouse.

My mouse (G400) is set up to allow me to do basic gameplay 1 handed:
L and R as normal, middle button is auto-attack.
The button in front of it is Ctrl+Alt (for exploring),
The button behind is F,
And the one furthest back is auto-run.
The two side buttons are inventory and Hero panel.

My keyboard is pretty much the default set-up except I moved jump to \ I’m left handed so this allows me to comfortably use both W and jump with my right hand while turning with the mouse.

I also moved Dodge to Z for the same reason (easily within reach when using WASD, but I might move it to avoid jump/dodge mix-ups).

My set-up is a constant work-in-progress though. Whenever I find a key inconvinient or uncomfortable I change it. Sometimes it takes a few attempts to get it right.

I never really made an effort to do them in the first place. It’s all stuff that happens while you’re playing anyway so I’d just get on with other things and sooner or later (if I had enough time) I’d get the achievement.

Sometimes if I happen to notice I’ve got just a few things left to do I’ll make a special effort, but not much.

Your personal story quests jump a few levels each time because you’re supposed to be doing other things in between. What those other things are is up to you, you can explore, craft, doing dynamic events, do heart quests, go to WvW or some combination of those and it’ll all give you experience.

Also I have to say I’m sceptical that you really enjoyed combat in WoW if it was only enjoyable because you could do something else for fun at the same time. If that’s the only way you enjoy playing a game it might be like Flett said that you just don’t like that type of game.

I use a keyboard and mouse.

I’ve recently set up my mouse (Logitech G400) so I can do basic game-play 1 handed when I need to (aka when I’m eating something), but I don’t think I’d ever go for a full game-pad or a controller.

I know some people do use both and I’ve even seen some mention of using joysticks.

More specifically what a guild is for varies slightly between guilds.

Some are basically just a group of people to chat to while you’re playing, share spare items with via the bank and occasionally help you out with dungeons or other activities.

Others are still primarily social but more structured, they arrange events for their members or do scheduled dungeon runs and things. One is even arranging a multi-part event with prizes for their entire server.

Then there are ones focused around specific activities, like PVP guilds who are basically tournament teams. Or RP guilds for specific kind of characters.

It’s really up to each guild to decide what they want to do, and how to go about doing it and up to individual players to decide what they want from their guild/s.

Just now.

I haven’t paid much attention but I’d estimate that the drop rates averages out at about 1 for every 4 hours of playing for me.

I don’t think there are really any runs like GW1 has because there isn’t the same need for them. Most of the GW1 runs were either to get early access to max level armor (ie. Droks) or to skip missions.

Whereas in this game you can move freely between zones but most of the content is restricted by level. You can’t use max stat gear until you’re level 80 so there’s no point getting it early and you can’t skip your personal story quests.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t make up and do runs. Pick an area you think would be fun to run through and figure out a way to do it. You just won’t get people paying you for it.

(BTW since some people seem confused by the term Running in GW1 meant skipping to or past content. For example you could pay people to run you from relatively close to the start of the first campain to a town near the end where you got max stat armor. It took special builds and in some cases a fair amount of skill to do it because the runner had to avoid or solo any mobs along the way and players expected you to do it ASAP.)

I’ve actually gotten more recently than I’ve had for a while.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Steven.9803:

Well at least we get a broomstick hops on WEEEEEEEEEE- oh wait, no speed boost

Which is rather disappointing that they are releasing a Riding Broom.

The Witch Outfit that came with the Halloween Event was a limited time only costume. It came with a Riding Broom and the only way to get it was to buy it during the Halloween Event. So people that have the Witch’s Outfit, have a unique item that no one else does.

Now they are releasing a Riding Broom that (from my understanding) is the same as the Riding Broom from the Witch’s Outfit. Makes those who purchased the limited time only costume, waste their money. It’s kind of a downer for those that bought the item thinking they had something unique, and then a few months later, they sell the best part of the item to everyone else, making those who bought it before, waste their money on a full costume for the broom while others can just buy the broom separately now.

If you bought the costume just to show off that you have something other players don’t I’d say you missed the point.

But I think (hope) that most people who bought it did so because they like it and they won’t care how many people also have it or how they got it.

This is one of the things that really bothers me about this game.

I keep hoping they’ll change it, but I suspect that might be easier said than done, depending on how things like weapon swapping, ele attunement and engineer kits are designed.

I know in GW1 if you changed the order of your skills in something like costume brawl or when riding a Junundu then when you got back to using your normal skills they’d all be mixed around too, and that game allowed you to put any skill into any slot. I imagine it’d be much the same here; if you swapped weapon skills 1 and 5 on your 1st weapon set they’d be swapped on the second set as well.

Even so I think a lot of people would appreciate the effort if they could change it.

I’m still tempted to get it anyway. Just because the name sounds like Triforce.

This is why I wanted to get into the beta tests so much, I used them entirely to try different races, professions and personal story choices so I could start at launch with a character I’d stick with. It also helps that I’ve been playing RPGs for about 20 years now and I have a fairly good idea of my preferred play-style so I always play roughly the same thing.

Other than narrowing down what you want to do and picking the one that fits it best my advice would be not to worry about it. You can have at least 5 characters, more if you buy extra slots, so you could pick several that you like and just play them all. Overtime you’ll probably find yourself preferring one over the others.

Unless you allowed the login attempt to go ahead (which I assume you didn’t) they won’t have gotten in to your account and so all your items are safe. That’s the point of the authentication emails.

As for how they got your password it’s hard to say. Did you use it anywhere except Hotmail and GW2?

There was a problem shortly after launch where several large fan sites (which often use widely available free software with relatively basic security for their forums) were hacked by people who, correctly, guessed that a lot of players would use the same email and password in-game.

But if you’ve changed the password, and changed it to something you have never used anywhere else and won’t be using elsewhere in the future, then you should be safe.

(Oh and also do the usual basic password security things, for example don’t make it something really easy to guess like your email address, name or the word God.)

Dradiin.8935:

Danikat.8537:

Honestly I’m just confused that you were spending $15 a month.

Unless you were converting them into gold I can’t imagine what you found in the gem store to spend that much on.

My daughter uses my account to play also, so i have extra character slots, bank slots, some i purchased more bag space, and yes lots of gems for potential gold conversion.

If i like a game thats B2P or even F2P, i show my support by spending a small amount equal to a subscription.

Both my wife and I have decent jobs, we are not in debt and we both play online games. Generally we play alot of online games because we live in Barrow Alaska and when its minus -40f or worse outside, with no shopping centers or even a movie theatre, well MMOs fill the entertainment slot quite nicely.

As i see it $15.00 a month is a pittance to the amounts of entertainment i get from this game and others like it.

I wasn’t questioning how you could afford it, or whether you should be spending it on something else. As I said I was just surprised that you could find enough stuff to buy in-game to justify it.

Breda.6035:

Yes I feel it is the best way but it’s too bad it couldn’t have been implemented right off the bat – perhaps the server balance would have been better then.

It will cut down on a lot of transfers just because ‘server A’ is better than ‘server B’ on any given week and I think it will reduce the number of whole guilds transferring as well. More stability for WvW.

I think it was a good idea to make it free at first because a lot of people wanted to find specific communities or groups (mainly people in their time zone who speak their language) and had no way of doing it except by trial and error, or digging through fan sites for lists of who was on which servers.

Admittedly that problem hasn’t entirely gone away and new players are going to be caught having to pay to jump to a new server and just hope it’s the one they want, but I think it will affect a lot fewer people than it would have done.

I suspect the number of people with money to waste on weekly server transfers who also care enough about WvW to want to be on a winning server but aren’t in a Tier 1 server already or planning to work their way up the ranks on their existing server is relatively small.

Also bear in mind you can buy gems with in-game gold, so it’s entirely possible to transfer without paying a penny in real life.

Honestly I’m just confused that you were spending $15 a month.

Unless you were converting them into gold I can’t imagine what you found in the gem store to spend that much on.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endless_Mystery_Tonic_

Why would anyone make a hack for that? What could it possible achieve?

Alleria Windrunner is probably fairly obvious. (Named after a Warcraft 2 character, 1 letter different because the original was taken.)

Ilex Hedera – It’s the latin genus names for holly and ivy. I was making a character in green clothing at Christmas and feeling uncreative, but not quite uncreative enough to call her Holly. Plus I like the word Ilex.

Danielle Aurorel – Danielle is just a name I like and have always used for my main RPG character for years. Aurorel is a mash-up of Aurora (dawn) and Elen (star).

I’ve also got Wraith Darkblade and Xexxi which were just attempts at lore appropriate names for a charr thief and an asuran respectively.

The best way, particularly if you’re an altoholic, is probably to try them all and decide for yourself. (If you go to the PVP areas you’re automatically scaled up to level 80 and can play around with all the skills and traits.)

Also remember you don’t have to stick to just one. You get 5 character slots to start with and can buy more if you want them.

How sure are you that the problem is with the game and not your internet connection or computer?

I think if it was a problem with the server(s) a lot of people would have the same problem and it’d be mentioned far more often on the forum. As it is I can’t remember many people at all saying they get disconnected.

It’s happened to me a few times but every time that I remember the problem was on my end (based on the fact that my web browser also went out, if it was the games server having problems the rest of the internet should be fine).

Zeivu.3615:

In Gw1, there were incentives for collecting them. But if there isn’t going to be perks for collecting them, I really don’t see the appeal.

The appeal for me is having the minis themselves. They’re fun and I always have at least one with me on each of my characters and have it out whenever I remember. Whenever I’m in town I swap them around so I get to use as much of my collection as possible.

Yes they’re purely cosmetic and arguably pointless, but it’s like getting your favourite weapon or armor skins – something cool you like seeing on your character and get a sense of achivement from getting.

Are there any games that do it differently?

It was the same in GW1, except that all the pets were tradeable. But considering you mentioned some of them being expensive on the TP I don’t imagine you’d consider that a solution. A few hundred gold doesn’t seem that bad compared to stacks of armbraces.*

From what I remember from reading the WoW wiki it seems to be much the same there. Some minis are widely available, others are limited to one-time only promotions or special editions of the game. Only thing I’m not sure is if they’re all tradeable.

Aion is the same too. I don’t know which other games have minis but I’d be surprised if they’re the only 3 to do it that way and all the others have all their minis widely available.

Personally I don’t have a problem with it. I’m quite willing to spend a lot of time and money to complete my collection because the challenge of getting them is a big part of the appeal.

The one thing I don’t like is the Winterday chest minis. Paying an unknown (and potentially infinate) amount of real money for a random chance at getting the minis, with no alternative or even a way to exchange duplicates for ones I’m missing is too many down-sides for not enough reward IMO. I decided to save my money and not count them as part of the collection rather than waste money trying and give Anet the false impression that players are happy with the system.

(* For those who didn’t play GW1 an Armbrace of Truth went for about 22 Globs of Ectoplasm if I remember correctly. Ecto was usually about 7,000 gold each. So we’re talking about 38.5mil gold. Or if we assume 1g in GW1 is worth 1c in GW2 that’s 3,850 gold in todays money.)

Is that what the ones in the sky look like too? (Sorry for the stupid question but I haven’t gotten there yet.)

Generally in video games, or any kind of 3D modelled environment you start with a cube made of your sky texture (or space or etheral mists or whatever the background is), build your world within that and then add cliffs or invisible walls or whatever to the edges so players can’t reach the point where the terrain stops.

But this does mean that if you get beyond, or below, those edges what you’ll see is the ground suddenly ending and going into the sky image, even if real world physics tells you that you should be underground or underwater.

So if these dragons are flying around the sky in this zone they’d be all over the sky texture and therefore if you go far enough in any direction eventually all you’ll see is sky and dragons.

(Also apologies to any game designers or 3D modellers for the horribly mangled terminology in this post.)

I agree with all of the above – you can solo most things and join random groups (sometimes with little/no communication) for other stuff, dungeons in particular.

But if your experience with that one guild is the sole reason you want to I’d also encourage you to give other guilds a try. They’re like any group of people – some good, some bad, and once in a while you find one that’s great.

I’m female too and although I don’t have voice chat (entirely due to a lack of microphone which I plan to fix soon) I’ve never made any secret of it and never felt like it affected how other players treated me. As a matter of fact my guild leader is female and she’s the one everyone goes to for help and advice.

I find the ones right at the start of the game useful sometimes. Mainly when I’m trying out a profession and I want to unlock all the weapon skills quickly instead of waiting for them to drop.

But I never use them after that because until I get to 80 I’m not worrying about my skins (it helps that I’ve always got the HoM ones to fall back on) so I’m just using whatever drops or occasionally stuff I craft.

Some people though go the other way and they like to regularly buy new weapons/armor to make sure it’s appropriate to their level so I imagine they find the vendors very useful.

I’m a player and honestly enjoying the game.

I’ve also noticed a big upswing in activity on my server (Desolation) recently. All the PVE areas, at least the ones I’ve been to, seem to be busy.

The problem is once developers allow 3rd party add-ons it gets very difficult for them to regular those add-ons.

You might only want small tooltips and other minor changes, but someone else will want DPS meters and auto-heal and auto-consume for food and they’ll make it and put it in the game, and from what I’ve heard of other games it quickly reaches the point where it’s just not practical for people to play without these things whether they want to or not because it gives such a big advantage and everyone else expects you to have it.

The simplest way to avoid that is to keep it to 1st (and maybe 2nd) party development. If you want something in the game you can ask for it in the Suggestions section, and if other people agree Anet will consider it but they can still keep the door closed to game-breaking additions.

The only way to open a Black Lion Chest is with a store bought key?
Generally yes. You also get a small number of keys as rewards for story progression and very rarely as drops but the number of chests you’ll find far outweighs the number of keys you’ll find.

BTW You’ll never get anything particularly amazing or game-breaking from the chests. Some items are useful or on very rare occasions valuable but none will make a big difference to the game and you shouldn’t feel like you have to buy keys or open chests to play.

Can the chests be sold locked on the Auction House?
Yes. They’re not worth much though because so many people have spare chests to sell.

When I opened a chest, it never listed the loot in the chat window, does it list it anywhere?
It’s shown briefly on the right side of the screen, above the map. It also shows up in green in the chat window if you have ‘Game Messages’ turned on.

But probably the simplest way unless you’re wanting to count drops per chest or something is to just look at the items in your inventory.

I opened a bag of coins that I got from a chest, again I couldn’t see the amount of coins I received.
Same as above I think.

As a Guardian, it shows that I can use a 2h weapon, but I can’t equip it as a main weapon, instead it goes into the boosts. I noticed the weapon come out when I was underwater in an instance.
Harpoons, Spearguns and Tridents are underwater-only weapons. They go into different slots – to the right of the Hero panel under your accessories and crafting components and can only be used when you’re underwater. (But you’ll want to have at least one because you can’t use land weapons underwater either.)

In an instance, I was having trouble and wanted to go back, kill some monsters, and level up. I got the message you are about to be kicked… would this mean that I would have lost all progress I had made in the instance?
It depends on the instance and how much progress you had made. Some of them have ‘checkpoints’ and if you die or leave you contine from that part of the storyline. Others you would have to start from the begining.

But in general I’d say if you’re having trouble and want to level up first (especially if you’re below the recommended level for the instance) it’s better to do it and start over than struggle through the instance.

Also bear in mind that in this game it’s only possible to out-level content in certain areas (mainly the personal story instances) and it only really works at the lower levels.

Ultimately what makes a big difference is making sure you have the best equipment for your level and most importantly a good set of skills and the traits to match (and you know how to use them effectively). That will get you a lot further than trying to out-grind content.

What did you expect? That you’d pick 2 items and it’d create a 3rd that combined the best features of both out of thin air?

That would wreak havoc on the in-game economy.

(Also not to be pedantic but it doesn’t say anything about deleting items because it doesn’t delete anything. It combines 2 items into 1, which is exactly what it says it will do.)

You can’t trade directly from one player to another.

For the majority of situations the Trading Post serves the same function as a trade feature in other games – you offer something for a set price and some random buys it, or they offer what they’re willing to pay and you can choose to sell to them.

If you want to give something to someone specific you can mail it, and they can mail you the payment (if any). Which works fine for friends who you trust to complete their side of the transaction.

So really the only issue is when you want to trade something to one specific person but don’t trust them not to try and cheat you.

Unfortunately that seems to come up surprisingly often.

There were a lot of issues with the pet revive function when it was in. At first it worked like reviving players, including the icon on the map, and a lot of people (both rangers and non-rangers) got annoyed with the fact that they’d rush across the map to help a fellow player only to find it was someones pet which they hadn’t bothered to swap or revive themselves. Or the pet would wander around the battle and people would find themselves reviving it when they meant to loot or revive another player or something.

They tried restricting it so you could only revive your own pet, but that didn’t really solve the second problem – people kept hitting F intending to do something else only to find that right at that moment their pet had wandered in range and now they were stuck reviving it.

Personally I think creating a seperate revive function which didn’t use the same key would have been a good compromise. But I also think there is no good reason to spend time reviving a pet in combat when switching effectively does the same thing instantly, and out of combat they heal very quickly anyway.

Admittedly some traits give bonuses to pets which are lost on swapping, so there is a slight downside, but that’s easily avoided by picking something different (like the traits which give bonuses when you do swap).

Leablo.2651:

Leveling multiple characters simultaneously carries the danger of excessive grind and burnout. GW2 only has a couple zone branches (mainly the newbie areas) and you’re otherwise playing through the same content 5 times in a row. At this rate you might get sick of the game before you even make it to 80.

I disagree with this. It could be an issue if you were levelling multiple characters equally and focusing on levelling/grinding rewards, but from what I’ve heard on the forum I think most people with multiple characters do it more the way I am: My characters are all fairly spread out across the levels so when I do repeat content it’s stuff I haven’t done for a while and it’s more of a fun “nostalgic” feeling than boring (if you can feel nostalgia for stuff you did weeks/months ago).

I also think a lot of people playing alts are more inclined to be interested in exploring and lore than rewards, so we’re more likely to enjoy things like exploring the racial cities again. You might be visiting the same POI’s and seeing the same vistas but you often get different dialogue choices with a character of another race or Order, which makes it well worth doing IMO.

Also I’m finding that even in zones I’ve been through before there is still stuff I haven’t done. I must have gone through the first part of Queensdale a dozen times, but the other day is the first time I remember seeing the Elder Earth Elemental attack the quarry.

Add on the fact that I always aim choose personal story choices I haven’t done before (when I can) and it’s never felt repetative. If taking a particular character through an area does feel repetative I can just switch to another one and come back to them when I do feel like doing that content again.

There are some advantages to focusing on one character, mainly for world completion.

The big one for a lot of people is that in order to get a legendary weapon you need to have gotten 100% world completion on one character (it will track completion on all of them, but for the item you need 100% on one).

The other big advantage IMO is that it’s just easier if you’re going to play with friends a lot to have one chracter who has been to most places so you don’t have to keep changing characters for different activities.

But other than world completion most achivements are account wide, so it’s really up to you if you want to have just one character, many or what most people do which is to have one “main” who is used most often and the first priority for gear and things and then a bunch of secondary characters.

Bear in mind back in the GW1 days (both in-game and in real life) people said much the same about the charr. They were portrayed as monsterous beasts whose motives were pretty much limited to “crush, kill, destroy” and whose society was limited to some of the stronger/more powerful individuals dominating the others. Even though there were plenty of indications that there was far more to it, right from the start.

But it made sense because we were seeing them from the human side and all the humans at the time got to see of charr society was their warbands attacking Ascalon.

The same is largely true of the grawl and dredge. Most of the playable races enounters with either is combative for one reason or another, so their perception of these races is going to be that they’re violent monsters. The difference here is that our characters have the oppertunity to go further into their territories, their homes, and see the other side of it.

I’ve been wondering about this too.

I suspect they might keep it until an expansion comes out that re-introduces Cantha though. A lot of the canthan NPCs say they have no real connection to their homeland anymore because their family has been in Kryra (or at least the continent of Tyria) for generations so it’s possible they won’t still celebrate it.

I can’t decide if I’d prefer that to having it in the game earlier though.

No, really, bear with me here.

It’s something that hit me today while I was exploring Rata Sum. Several of the asura really reminded me of norns. Not the norns you all know and love (or tolerate anyway, big loud bookahs that they are) but the norns from a somewhat obscure 90’s video game series called Creatures.

Seriously, put some clothes on these guys and you’ve got yourself some Asura:
http://images.wikia.com/creatures/images/b/bc/Bondi.gif
http://images.wikia.com/creatures/images/b/bd/Pixie_c1.png
http://images.wikia.com/creatures/images/7/77/Bruin_Male_Norn.gif
http://images.wikia.com/creatures/images/d/df/CivetNornSampler.png

It’s mainly the big ears, big eyes and relatively minimal hair that makes me think they’re similar. And for the record I’m not suggesting Anet stole or copied the design, I just find it amusing that two such different games ended up with fairly similar character designs when it’s not exactly a typical design.

There probably are plans to re-balance theives.

But on the other hand this sort of thing is what the meta-game in any multiplayer game of any genre is all about. As soon as they do balance/nerf this build those who actually grasp the theory crafting will begin working on another build that has the same degree of advantage and as soon as they work it out a bunch of other people will copy it. Then Anet will balance/nerf that one.

Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

You need to have them all in there at the same time. Even if you take them out and have them in your inventory it decreases the number counted for the achivement.

I think it might depend on how exactly you’re doing it.

I know in GW1 they allowed people to use Textmod to change in-game images because the changes were only visible on your end and aside from making the explorer title slightly easier didn’t give any kind of advantage.

Obviously what you’re doing is similar in that respect, changing the image on the loading screen isn’t going to affect anyone else or give you any benefit.

But I think it was also an important factor that Textmod can’t be used to do anything other than change images (or specifically textures). Whereas if you’ve found a way to hack the .dat file and change the image stored there or something it could be an issue because it opens up the possibility of more serious changes.

Strangely I was thinking about this on my way home today.

Specifically I’m thinking about getting The Dreamer for my ranger but thought it’d also be fun to take some screen shots of my huge, serious, charr thief using it and I wasn’t sure if that would be an option.

Personally I think it would be better if they were account bound too.

Karizee.8076:

Danikat.8537:

I do wonder how much it’ll cost though.

Last I looked, if you purchased gems with cash it was about $20 to transfer to a High pop server, $12 to go to a Medium and $8 to go to a Low pop server.

That includes all of your characters since your account is server bound.

Last you looked? As far as I’m aware proposed costs were only mentioned once, in a blog post around the time pre-purchase started. A lot has changed since then and considering the’ve put paid transfers on hold completely and tweaked the free transfer system in the meantime it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re re-working the costs as well.

I’m working on a similar thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/The-Server-Choice-Thread/first#post1214980

It’s not gotten many responses so far so there isn’t a lot of information but I’m hoping to improve it.

In theory any of the US servers that aren’t claimed by the Asian/Oceanic players should fit your needs. In practice there’s probably more variation but I couldn’t tell you how exactly it works because I’m on an EU server.

But in case it helps anyone else out I’m on Desolation and it seems to be very busy during UK/GMT peak times (ie. about 6pm to about midnight.)

Note: Edited the first post with some more info.

SteveK.5827:

Would be nice if Australia and Newzealand had their own server or even Oceania. I am sure there is enough of us !
How many players does each server hold ?

I read somewhere (wiki possibly) that the server cap is 15,000, but it’s never been entirely clear whether that includes players who are currently offline. Some people say the cap has been increased (and possibly decreased) since launch but again Anet has never said whether that’s the case or if it’s culling bots and/or inactive accounts that causes the periods when there’s a lot more open space.