Guild Wars 2

People who install the game after 3rd January will probably have a lot less to download because one of the things you’re getting at the moment is all the Wintersday (Christmas) festival stuff, which includes several new instances, lots of NPCs, new enemies etc.

But one of the selling points of MMOs is that you get regular free updates as well as paid expansions in some games. There’s another one due for GW2 some time in January so there will be more to download then, but at the end of it we’ll have a bunch of new stuff to do.

Urthona.3198:

Iris.5918:

Jumping puzzles give me motion sickness so if you add a need to hurry I just can’t do it.

This is one of my main problems. Winter Wonderland isn’t nearly as bad as the Clocktower in terms of inducing motion sickness, but it’s still a factor. I’m also terrified of heights, which doesn’t help.

I use my mouse for movement and I have a decent framerate. It’s just that looking at the thing literally makes me sick. I know the problem is rare, so I’m not really asking to be accommodated by the designers or anything. I’m just pointing out to those insisting that it’s easy that for some people, the motion-sickness aspect really factors into the difficulty.

I think it’s fairly obvious, especially since we were talking about what proportion of players can do it, that the people saying it’s easy (and the ones saying it’s difficult) were talking about average players, not people with exceptional circumstances. There are a lot of factors that could make it impossible for one particular person (a friend of mine with only one hand would have a lot of trouble for example) but those are rare anomalies, not a factor in whether it’s reasonable to expect most people to do the puzzle.

Same way I doubt anyone takes arachnophobia into consideration when discussing how difficult a champion is, even though it’s much harder for me to fight a giant spider because I’m very likely to panic if it comes close to my character. For most people it’s not an issue so it’s not relevant to a discussion of typical difficulty.

That said have you tried turning the graphics down? I can’t check right now but I think one of the things it does is shorten the distance you can see, so the ground might not show and it’ll look like you’re just a little way above a white surface.

I’m not sure how it works but it wouldn’t surprise me if they deliberately made it pick a random target rather than the best one to encourage people to pick their own targets whenever possible. Otherwise it’d be too easy.

Snipey.6937:

It never feels like exploring anything when a breadcrumb trail of POIs and Waypoints holds my hand through a zone.

If you’re one of the people who “explores” by getting just close enough to a waypoint or POI to check it off the list and then dashes off to the next one then that’s your problem. I think the GW2 world has a lot more depth and a lot more things to find, but a lot of them aren’t signposted in any way. They’re not part of designated quests and not directly adjacent to POI’s but they are there.

They’ve even included side-quests, believe it or not. You can still speak to NPCs who will say they need help with something, or are worried about someone and you can go and fix the problem. You just don’t have the game telling you to do it. Until I figured that out, and the DE chains, I was feeling frustrated with this game because I missed those short story arcs and the lore they give you.

There’s also lots of interesting places and things to find with no functional purpose as far as I can see, but they’re more fun for me in a way because of that – I don’t feel like I have to find them to complete the game so it seems more like a bonus. Like getting down to the bottom of Rata Sum the internal way.

Well they’re obviously not ignoring us because they have made changes to the game based on player feedback, much of it on this forum. For example the wintersday jump puzzle was obviously an attempt to improve on the halloween one – splitting players into smaller groups, making the platforms clearer, getting rid of the glitched animation at the start etc.

They could potentially reply to the forum more, but bear in mind they’re not going to do it in their spare time so all the time they spend tracking down the threads that they want to reply to, typing replies, explaining their replies, explaining the explaination (you know they’d have to) and then explaining why they aren’t replying to other threads or using those ideas is time they’re not actually working on the game.

And IMO it’d be for relatively little benefit to us. We can see when they’ve listened when the changes appear in-game. All we’d gain from them posting it on the forum is well is even more people with a sense of entitlement demanding that Anet respond to their thread.

My main (ranger) is a human because I wanted her to be descended from my GW1 characters.

My ele is a sylvari because I wanted an ele just because they seem fun and I wanted a sylvari for the same reason so it seemed logical to combine the two.

My engineer is a norn because I like the idea of her defying the races conventions and doing things her own way.

My thief is a charr for a similar reason – the contradictory nature of a huge monster sneaking up unseen is fun to me. But also because I like the Ash Legion.

My guardian is an asura because I liked the idea of a tiny girl with a giant sword holding off mobs. Although I’m not sure if it’s going to balance out the fact that I find the guardian fairly boring in general, so I might not keep her.

I guess I like contraditions.

If you think the broken features are actually bugs you’d be better off using the bug report system in game so it goes to the relevant people. Posting it here you’ve got a small chance that the community relations person (or whatever they’re called) might see it and they might pass the message along. Although with it being the holidays people with less time-critical jobs like community relations are probably off.

With online games it’s fairly common to have to update when you first install. The disk could have been made a few weeks before you bought it (or even months in some cases) and they like to add new content fairly regularly.

I’m a “casual” player, I can only play about 1-2 hours absolute maximum on week nights and have missed a lot of wintersday due to being away, I also don’t think I’m particularly good at jump puzzles – they always take me numerous attempts. It took me a while to get the hang of it, mainly because of a few specific jumps where you have to go at a funny angle, and trying to rush the snowball part but I don’t think it’s any harder than any of the other jump puzzles and all the ones I’ve done so far are relatively easy.

I’ve done it 3 times, but after I finished it I didn’t do it often because I find Bell Hero is faster for getting presents, so I could have done it more times if I’d tried.

It might help if you’ve played platformers before, but mainly I think it’s down to your control method. Most people who have trouble and have gone into detail tend to be using the keyboard to turn or doing something else impractical. The biggest thing that helped me was re-mapping jump so I cam comfortably keep one finger on there and one on W (I moved it to \, right-handed people might be ok with Space, or could use C or something) and then I use the mouse to turn and see where I’m going.

I also keep the camera almost directly overhead for the snowflake and candy parts because you’re mostly jumping almost horizontally so it makes it easier to see where you’re going.

Oddly enough I find the ranger more fun than the guardian. But I don’t think I play it the same way many people do. I don’t use bears (I usually use a stalker and black moa) and currently I’m using a longbow as my main weapon. I also have a sword and either torch or axe for when enemies get into melee range.

My playstyle on the ranger is very focused on movement and getting myself into the best position to attack while dodging or evading enemies or keeping them at range. Whereas on my engineer I focus more on doing damage through turrets and grenades and switching kits to be most effective in each encounter. I’d say it’s more tactical but in a different way, it doesn’t really matter where I am except when I’m positioning turrets but there’s a lot more skill switching going on.

I haven’t played my thief much but I think Aeleniel and Pinder summed it up well.

If you’re using the keyboard to turn in timed puzzles (or anything where time is a factor) you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage. If you’re alternating menthods you’re making it overly complicated, which is also putting yourself at a disadvantage.

The way I do this puzzle I use 5 fingers and 3 of them don’t move. I’m left-handed so I have my left hand on the mouse and my right on the keyboard. I use my left index finger to hold down the mouse button and my thumb and ring fingers to steer it. My right middle finger is on W to run and my index finger is on \, which is jump (I remapped it specifically to make this set-up comfortable.)

None of my fingers move from those positions for the duration of the puzzle so that I don’t have to think about it. I’m not thinking “The next snowflake is over there, so I need to turn, how should I do it?” then trying to get my hands into position. I keep the mouse button held down the entire time and just slide the mouse around to control the camera and the direction I’m going. So all I have to do timing wise is press two keys, usually at the same time.

I agree. When you’re doing the puzzle you don’t care whether you’re in the overflow or not. You do care about having a huge box across the middle of the screen.

I like them both for different reasons. IMO they’re very different games in a lot of ways, although there are some similarities too (when compared to other games).

My playstyle is definately very different. I find myself spending more time exploring in this game and doing whatever I come across, whereas GW1 was much more goal focused – I’d do a quest or a mission and if something else came up I’d make a note of it for later.

Over time I see myself spending time on GW2 in much the same way – I’ll go through phases where I’ll play it a lot, either the game in general or working on specific goals. Then I’ll lose interest and stop for a while, playing something else instead. Then I’ll come back to it.

And because neither of them has a subscription I won’t have to plan it in advance or worry about if I’m playing enough to justify it.

mavet.3047:

The first game of any franchise is ALWAYS great, the others, like this one, are usually crap. This game has deviated from the original in so many ways it’s sad. Kind of reminds me of where wow is today from what it originally was…

Not true. Warcraft 2 was a vast improvement over Warcraft 1. Some people (myself included) even say it holds it’s own over more modern games. (I was dissapointed with WC3, but it’s still better than 1 and some people prefer it to 2.)

There are many other examples, but that’s the one that came to mind.

My thought is that without feedback it’s very difficult for them to know what works and what doesn’t. And how annoyed people are is just as important as the fact that they are annoyed.

I’m sure some people are exaggerating, but I’m equally sure Anet has experience with the internet and will allow for that.

I would actually be fine with these only coming from an RNG box if they weren’t account bound.

I have some money I was planning to spend on buying boxes, but it’s not infinate and the risk of ending up with useless duplicates and no way to even exchange them makes it not worth my while.

In my experience pay to win games make it virtually impossible to progress without paying. Not just time consuming but almost absurdly impractical.

To get close to that GW2 would have to do something like remove all armor repair NPCs and all free drops of repair canisters and make them account bound so the only way you can repair your armor is by paying real money. You can play without it but you’ll have to somehow get good enough to never die right from the start, or keep buying new armor all the time.

As it stands people who pay to level to 80 and fully equip their character have no real advantage over anyone else because, as other people have said, if you want to you can do the same without spending any real world money in a matter of hours. (I think I first saw a level 80 character on the second day of the headstart weekend.) They’ve also missed a big chunk of the game they paid for. They don’t even have anything to brag about because everyone else can get exactly the same gear, skills, traits etc.

The key word in “Pay to Win” is Win. It doesn’t mean pay to get to the same point other people reached for free.

Lacechan.6524:

Weren’t the chances in the very beginning estimated to be very high because some people got really lucky?

Although the problem with that was the sample size and the methods of counting the drops.

Yep. Originally numbers like 25% were being tossed around and some people said it couldn’t be less than 10%.

People also hadn’t fully considered the draw-back of recieving a random amount of an account bound non-consumable item you will never need more than 1 of.

I know you said you’ve played one other online game, but have you played any other RPGs?

Even with the absense of clearly defined quests (aside from the personal story) this game works a lot like most RPGs – you explore the world and find people to help, monsters to fight, get rewards for doing it and get stronger as you go.

If you’ve played RPGs before you can approach it much the same way as any other, if not then yes it’s going to have quite a steep learning curve – almost all of them do. (Even games like Dragon Age which are aimed at people who haven’t tried the genre before.)

The threads other people have linked to will be a big help, but I’d also recommend taking your time in game to explore everything and read the hints – some of them make absolutely no sense unless you read them when they first pop up but others can be useful. The wiki (link at the top of the screen) is also good. As with all wikis it’s a work in progress and with this game being fairly new still there is a lot missing but I think most of the core mechanics and events/hearts/story quests are covered so searching on there for things you’re not sure about can help.

Also generally if you ask a specific question people here will be happy to help. “I don’t know what I’m doing” is a bit too vauge for us to know where to start, but if you were to ask things like “What are traits?”, “How do I make my own items?”, “What does confusion do?” etc. you’ll get some good answers.

I really don’t understand why they don’t just make the minis tradeable. That way everyone could be happy. Those who have extras could sell them to those who didn’t get the ones they wanted or can’t/won’t buy the boxes and no one would be complaining.

As far as I saw at the time no one complained about the Lost Shores minis at all and they were only available from an RNG box or a very rare drop in-game.

As it stands I’ve decided I’m not going to buy any of these boxes, even after buying the Lost Shores ones with no complaints. Yes it sucks that my collection will never be complete (and I’m not getting into why that bothers collectors, if you don’t get it then you don’t get it) but it’s better than throwing money down the drain to find myself in the exact same position.

There’s a simple way to work it out – he can definately get the cogs from the dungon so it’s only the mailed ones we’re not sure about. If he gets the mail then he can make 3, if not he can make 2.

Well you don’t have to stick to doing the Wintersday activities for the entire time they’re available. Everything else in the game is still there, so if you’re bored you can go do something else and come back to them when you feel like it.

Treeline.3865:

As someone who farmed the puzzle for gifts, no, the jump puzzles aren’t too hard, but they ARE problematic as they do discriminate people who are not good at jumping. I’m all for a skillbased game, but perhaps add some difficulty settings to puzzles like these. Make the 3 paths easy, medium and hard. Give the achievement for completing any, and scale the rewards a bit up for medium and hard. This way everyone can be happy.

And Bell Hero discriminates against people who aren’t good at coordination/rhythm. Toypocolypse discriminates against those who aren’t good at tower defense/RTS games, Snowball Fight discriminates those who aren’t good at PVP, the entire game discriminates against those who aren’t good at RPGs etc. etc.

You can’t make everything work for everyone. But the beauty of games like this is you don’t HAVE to do everything. You can even get the overall Wintersday title without doing all the activities. So people can pick and choose the stuff they are good at/want to learn to do and ignore they stuff they don’t like or can’t do.

I haven’t even been in to the Snowball Fight because I know I don’t like PVP and I’m not that good at it. I don’t want to waste my limited time with this event doing something I won’t enjoy. But I’m not going to ask for it to be removed, or a PVE version added because of that.

Ze Dos Cavalos.6132:

Or instead of running around and wasting time go get the chest right after you defeat the boss.
Now if im a party leader and someone takes 5 min to go get the chest i will have to wait for him?

When the chest pops the first thing people should do is open it and not wander around.

It’s not always as simple as that. I’ve been in dungeons where the party leader didn’t even know there was a chest and left as soon as the boss went down. Or happened to be the first one to reach the chest and then claimed they didn’t know they were the leader.

It would be much better if the leader leaving didn’t kick the whole party. That way no one would have to worry about it, everyone could leave as and when they’re ready.

The Toypocolypse is still going on. It’s an instanced tower defense game (with doylaks instead of a tower) using the same map as the Tixx dungeon. As far as I know it rewards gifts and titles.

Speak to the Festive Lionguard in LA who is standing near Tixx to go. You’ll be put into a random team of 5.

As for the Wintersday event in general I’m really glad they did it this way. If they’d taken the same approach as with Halloween and the Lost Shores events I would have missed most or all of it because (like a lot of people) I was away visiting family over Christmas and I’m going to be away again over New Years. I only ever got to the GW1 finale once so this definately makes a very nice change.

You shouldn’t really be looking at your character when you’re doing a jumping puzzle anyway. As long as you have a general idea of where they are you don’t need to know any more.

In this puzzle it’s even easier because most of the snowflakes are positioned so that you can jump from any part of them and land on the next one, as long as you get the angle right and jump while running. (Seriously, that’s my biggest problem, I jump in place then run off the edge because I mis-timed the buttons.)

Late For Tea.1846:

Not sure if you already know this information, but the cancelled expansion was called Guild Wars Utopia and much of the idea has been adapted into Eye of the North. There’s some information about it on the GW wiki.

That article is actually what made me start wondering. Other than a simplified tutorial and rumors of mounts based on odd bits of concept art all it says is “exciting new features”. It doesn’t say anything about what these features actually were, and as far as I know it’s not covered anywhere else either.

As a lot of you probably know the idea for GW2 came about when Anet were working on another expansion for GW1 and realised they wanted to do a lot of things that wouldn’t be possible in that game. So they started working on GW2 and made Eye of the North to link the two together (mainly lore-wise and with the HoM).

Does anyone know what those original ideas were? I can think of a lot of things in GW2 that probably couldn’t be done in GW1, like dynamic events, removal of the trinity, downlevelling, and there might well be more that didn’t make it, but I’ve never seen anything where they said specifically what ideas inspired the game.

Does anyone know? Any Anet employees taking a break from the seasonal mayhem (game related or otherwise) fancy explaining it?

The trick with elementalists is to switch elements regularly as needed. Generally speaking fire spells do more damage, but you need to use them all to be effective.

If you’ve played a lot of RPGs before then I’d say go for whatever seems the most fun. As long as you’re aware the traditional trinity and class defined roles don’t exist in this game you should be able to get to grips with any of them and I think you’ll enjoy it more and therefore find levelling and learning a class easier if you go for one you like.

Erickmwc.9135:

But every time that I die some armor will broke or just sometimes?

Every time you die one piece of your armor will be damaged. Damaged armor still works the same as it did before so you don’t need to worry about that too much.

Once every piece you’re wearing is damaged the next time you die it will break, which means it turns invisible and you don’t get any of the benefits from wearing it.

But it can always be repaired at anyone with a red cracked shield/heart symbol over their head. (Useful tip: it costs the same to repair damaged or broken armor so it might be worth waiting until it’s broken.)

If you’re not in a hurry you can wait for someone to resurrect you and save the money it would cost to get to a way point, but depending on where you are you might be waiting a while.

But you won’t lose any XP or anything. You might not even need to repair your armor if you find a replacement before it breaks.

The way I look at it is you pick the skills you want and then get the weapon that allows you to use them, rather than picking a weapon you like and expecting to use it however you want.

It’s not much different to most RPGs, where most attack skills only work with one or a small group of weapons and each class is limited to a few weapons.

I suspect a lot of people who really did play GW1 since launch don’t remember exactly when various things were brought in. I started just after Factions came out and I’ve caught myself a few times thinking I was using a particular skill or mechanic right from the start, only to realise later it was added in an update or expansion.

You will be able to transfer once it opens up, you have to wait 7 days between transfers but not between joining and your first transfer.

As for when it opens up it’s hard to say. It’s based on the number of accounts with that server selected as their home – not the number of players currently online. So a space only opens up when someone transfers out (or possibly is inactive for a long time). It’s hard to know when that happens but I’ve heard that whenever WvW resets is a good time because a lot of people will change servers to be on one that’s winning that week.

1. You have 2 friends lists – one custom and one for your guild(s). You can check either at any time to find out when your friends are online. If you find yourself missing the notifications you might want to look into the options for the chat window to see if there are any channels/notifications you don’t often use and can turn off to simplify it. Remember you can create different tabs with different options so it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing choice.

2. This I guess depends largely on how you want to play. If you’re a few people short for a dungeon you could pick up some PUGs or recruit people from one of your guilds. Personally I don’t mind repeating PVE content. True you can’t repeat hearts but hearts are a very small part of PVE. I often find at least one DE I haven’t seen before when repeating areas I thought I knew well. Since they fixed the drops it shouldn’t even be an issue of not getting decent loot for your time.

3. You’re talking about a relatively small number of people and you apparently like much the same things – why don’t you all join the same guild instead of each being in seperate ones and having an additional one to talk to each other? I also don’t understand why using a 3rd party program is such an issue. Most guilds, even ones that require people to be representing 100% of the time also have Skype, Vent, Mumble etc. channel so they have multiple options for how to talk to each other. With real life friends I would have thought you’d have even more options.

Alternatively it might be worth planning your meet-ups the same way you (presumably) do in real life. What you’re doing at the moment is the online equivelent of going into town and wandering around hoping your friends have had the same idea at the same time. You’d never really do that – you’d arrange a time and place to meet in advance, so why not do the same in-game? Plan a time to meet and an activity to do and then do it. Or call/text them when you know you’re going to be in-game for a while and ask if they want to meet up.

Zeldain.5710:

The creature comforts and quality of life features – industry standard in other games – are woefully lacking or completely missing here. Terrible.

Out of interest what features are common across most other games that would solve the OP’s problems? I’m genuinely asking, I haven’t seriously played another MMO since UO and that had pretty much no grouping features.

Other than a custom chat-channel, which doesn’t seem much different to guilds, parties or a 3rd party program like Skype or Vent I can’t remember hearing of anything that would help.

I’m particularly curious about what they do to solve the problem of friends with mis-matched levels since my understanding was the complete opposite – that in most games you’re locked out of other races/groups starting areas completely and locked out of your own once you out-level them and at higher levels there is no option to repeat quests (except certain daily ones in some games) and once you out-level content by more than a few levels it becomes so easy that it’s impossible for anyone else to get a hit in when playing with you and you get no rewards of any kind except drops that are next to useless at your level.

Devs very rarely answer topics and it’s even less likely now when most of them are probably taking a lot of time off for Christmas and New Year.

But I’ve never heard of any plans for minis to be anything other than a collectable and possibly used in an arena mini-game.

A lot of the lower level armor (aside from starter) are not revealing at all. I actually struggle to find things that don’t cover my ele head to toe. Whether you think they look cool or not is a matter of opinion so I can’t possibly answer that.

For later levels I’m not so sure, my ele is only level 20 or so, but you can use the wiki, the PVP armor gallery or any of the galleries on fan sites to look through them all and decide for yourself.

Fun fact: GW1 didn’t have guild halls at launch, they were added later in an update. Same is planned for GW2.

As for customisation I actually think this game has more than GW1, it’s just not laid out as clearly. Yes half your skills are defined by your weapon, but you have a much wider range of weapons to choose from, and if you add them up most professions actually have more attack skills to choose from than they did in GW1 at launch (meaning just the Prophecies and Core skills). On top of that you’ve got up to 16 benefits from traits, many of which are things which required an entire skill in GW1.

On top of that you’ve got the profession specific mechanics which at their most basic (warrior) add another attack skill and at the most complicated can make a big difference to how you play your chosen profession (for example which element/s an ele uses or which pets a ranger has).

I suspect when Grazingcattle suggested “epic brother trolling” he means maybe your brother is just saying he isn’t able to send it so he can keep it. I’m also pretty sure it was meant to be a joke.

I think there is some limit on either how much gold new characters can send or how often they can mail people, but I don’t know any details – I’ve just seen odd comments online.

I’m not sure what kind of verification they could have for people who aren’t gold sellers. Any automated system simple enough for most people to bother with would be more than worthwhile for gold sellers to go through as well and requiring someone to manually observe activity on each persons account would be a huge drain on Anets resources for a minor convinience (and probably take just as long as getting past the current block does).

About the guild trick remember to check what rank your brother is and what permissions he has. A lot of guilds have a ‘newbie’ rank which does not allow people to access the guild bank to prevent people joining, taking everything and leaving straight away. You might need to get him upgraded, or create a custom rank that allows him to deposit but not withdraw gold so he can deposit it for you.

But other than that I’d suggest just waiting and trying every so often. Soon he will be past the block on new characters mailing gold and will be able to send it.

Although that does remind me of one other possibility – considering your brother is new do make sure he’s actually doing everything right when trying to send you the gold, it might be a mistake on his end.

If you’ve been reading the professions section on the forum I recommend checking the others too. If you believe them all every profession is either underpowered or extremely bugged and desperately needs to be fixed.

In general it’s exaggerated. The engineer does have a few draw-backs and definately some less useful skills but I think a big part of the problem is actually that it’s one of the more complicated professions and takes a lot of adaptability and planning to be effective.

I used to have a Razer Diamondback and I liked it at first, although I could never get the software working so it was basically just a normal mouse. Then after the first 6 months it started falling apart. It wouldn’t scroll smoothly, then the wheel broke and wouldn’t work at all, then the right mouse button wouldn’t stay down so clicking and dragging usually lead to right clicking. I’ve heard it’s a common issue with Razer products – good design but poor build quality. (Although my Razer keyboard has been fine.)

Now I’ve got a Logitech G400 and, so far, it’s fantastic. I went with Logitech because I’ve heard they have excellent build quality and I’ve had good experiences with their other products. It doesn’t have as many buttons as some gaming mice but that’s fine with me, all I want to do is shift some common commands so I can keep my right hand on the movement and attack keys.

I really like the engineer and the elementalist for the variety. I honestly expected to experiment and bit and then lock into a build I liked and stick with it (ie. a particular weapon and element) as I did in GW1 – I always made my own builds but when I did I’d use them for everything and only make occasional tweaks. But with both of these I really like the versatility that comes from switching around, using different kits and elements depending on what I’m doing. Sometimes I’ll even swap just for the sake of using skills I haven’t used for a while.

I also have a lot of fun on my ranger. I like using conditions and dodging/evading or using a pet to tank rather than standing there and taking damage. A lot of their skills are fairly situational, but it’s usually things you can engineer yourself rather than waiting for the right kind of fight, like bow skills that do more damage or apply conditions depending on where you stand and I like working with that.

Nuage.5230:

Is Guid Wars II really a good game at the higher levels considering I only made it to 10?

Oh and lastly, I don’t understand – they say this game is not a gear treadmill, but what do you play for (in game wise) if there is no traditional “end game”? The shop, is that a pay to win type of deal?

What you play for is cosmetic armor and weapons. You can get max stat gear relatively easily, and don’t really need it for the majority of things, but then you can devote time and effort to getting the skins you want, or several sets with different stats.

Alternatively a lot of people enjoy creating and levelling alts because the personal story is a lot like the main story in a lot of recent single-player RPGs and can be completely different depending on the character you create and the choices you make.

The shop is not a pay to win deal, unless you’re a collector and an event is going on. There are a few boosts which make levelling faster and give you better drops, but you can get exactly the same effects with in-game items and really don’t need them at all. Most of the stuff in the shop is purely cosmetic or novelty items.

Whether you think the game is good or not depends on what kind of game you enjoy. I think it’s fantastic and I can see myself enjoying it for many years if they didn’t do anything except fix the bugs. Other people would tell you it needs a major overhaul to be even barely playable.

As someone else said since there is no monthly subscription you may as well just play it and see what you think. You can also look around this forum and see what people think the issues are, then decide for yourself whether it’s something that bothers you or not.

Raine.1394:

BTW, you are fortunate to be on TC as the population there is high and the dead open world problem which was created by the introduction of vertical progression is minimal there. Bottom-line, I’m confident in the developers ability to stabilize what is a very good game—but, I’m concerned about the misstep and am waiting to see how it plays out.

I wouldn’t say the “dead” open world issue was created by the addition of vertical progression so much as the fact that a sembalance of vertical progression was added via a new dungeon, which is still the shiny new toy for all the people who got to 80 relatively quickly and had been over the existing “end-game” content several times. Once the novelty factor of Fractals wears off, as it already is to some extent, more people will shift back to Orr and dungeons and levelling alts.

You also have to remember that right now the game is not remotely representative of normal player distribution because most people are focused on doing the Winterday content before the event ends.

You cannot transfer to any world marked ‘full’ (at least not until someone else has left it, at which point it will be marked ‘high’ instead of full).

You can only transfer once every 7 days.

At some point they may bring in a charge for transfers. They originally said it’d cost money, then said it’d be free until the server populations settled down and they would announce the change well in advance, but I would have thought that should have happened by now if they were going to do it.

I’m not 100% sure but I think intellectual property rights don’t always cover every single name/original word used within that IP. For example someone might well be able to use the name Legolas because even though the character is part of an existing (and protected) IP the name itself is not copy-righted. (Except if it wasn’t that was probably changed when the movies came out, but you get the idea.)

So there could well be many names we might look at and think ‘well that’s obviously a reference to/copy of XYZ’ but legally it’s ok. The name of a movie on the other hand is definitely protected.

(This is based on someones far more technical attempt to explain why I had “gotten away with” the name Alleria Wildrunner for several years, I may or may not have gotten all the facts right and it might well vary by country.)

Another important factor is that different professions do the same role in different ways. So it gives people an opportunity to find one that suits both their playstyle and the role they want to fill instead of choosing one or the other.

For example warriors and thieves are both typically straight-forward damage dealers who rely on killing the enemy before they get killed. But they do it in different ways. Warriors have high armor and a lot of strength buffs which allow them to take a lot of damage while dealing continuously high damage back.

Meanwhile thieves have less armor and are generally weaker but have a lot of dodge and stealth skills which allow them to avoid getting hit in the first place, and deal high damage in spikes from particular attacks.

Similarly elementalists provide support mainly through healing, whereas guardians do it mainly by using buffs and control skills to stop their allies taking damage.

I agree with Eli, and everyone else who has replied.

SO FAR I don’t think the ability to convert gems into gold leads to a pay to win system because what you can buy isn’t any better than what you can get through playing the game, and as someone else pointed out someone who levels to 80 by crafting and then buys top of the line gear will actually be worse than someone who levelled up by playing because they won’t know how to use the character. (I’d also guess that relatively few people would go this route because generally what those types are looking for is bragging rights, and since hitting 80 and even getting max stat gear is relatively easy in this game it’s also less impressive.)

However I do think there is a risk that Anet could end up going the route of “free” to play games where you basically have to either pour hundreds of pounds/euros/dollars into the store or hundreds of thousands of hours into grinding to get anywhere. I know they said they won’t and I do believe they genuinely meant it when they launched this game, but give it time and those hundreds of dollars might start to look more tempting than making good quality content in return for people saying they enjoyed it.

On another note I do think the ability to convert gems to gold is affecting the in-game economy and pricing casual players out of the market for a lot of items. But I don’t expect Anet will try and change that and I’m not sure they could if they wanted to. If converting gems to gold wasn’t possible it’d be people with more free time to play and the willingness to spend it all farming who would have the advantage. They did try repeatedly to stop that in GW1 and it never really worked. So why would they bother when at least this time they’re being paid for other peoples greed?

I agree. I was hoping for a long time that they had put special pets in and it was just taking people a while to find them because I had a lot of fun collecting and levelling them in GW1.

They wouldn’t even need to do anything special. In GW1 all the pets were statistically identical (except the pre-Searing black bear which attacked slightly slower) and people still enjoyed getting special ones.

I have the same problem as Sarcasmic.

An invisible bag will stop you from accidentally depositing them, but it doesn’t help at all with remembering you need to get it out again every few minutes. It would be great if there was either an equipment slot or a setting on the minis to make them appear automatically whenever they can.