Guild Wars 2

Azarul.2064:

Yeah this is definately a known problem. I for one run around with the speed buff, but I try to be very aware of others and if I see someone I stop and kill all that is following me.

I am sorry this has been an issue for you, but as long as people never have real life punishment for acting like idiots online these things will never stop.

Same here.

It’s just not practical to take the time to kill each and every enemy you pass. In some areas it’s virtually impossible because by the time you’ve taken 2 down the first one has respawned, but even when you can take them out relatively quickly it adds up to a lot of time effectively wasted just trying to get where you’re going.

But if I run past another player, or see one start fighting monsters that are trailing me I’ll stop and fight them before carrying on.

I don’t think there is any way to link to accounts together. You could add the other account to your friends list, maybe put them both in the same guild (assuming the guild are ok with this) but for all intents and purposes the game treats each account as a seperate person.

Like other people have said I think it’s be easier and cheaper to just buy a character slot and use their bags to store stuff. Just keep them in a town near the bank and use them to store items you don’t need regular access to. But if you really want a second account I think the only way is to register it as normal.

Nothing at all.

I’ve been playing since the first day of head start but I’ve been taking my time, doing things like talking to every named character I can find (then doubling back to talk to them again when I found out there are Whispers agents all over who you can only identify with a character who’s a member).

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about end-game armor yet. My plan is to wait and see how things are actually working when I get to that point, not just with this update but with future ones. I don’t want to be forced to do a lot of grind for slightly better gear so if that really does become the case I’ll probably do as much of the game as I can without it and leave the rest, but I don’t know and I’m not going to try and plan that far in the future when everything could be changed.

If the OP is anything like me it’s not something you can just choose to forget about.

It’s not like I scour chat channels for people saying ‘toon’ and then rant to myself about it. It’s just a passing, minor irritation, but one that can build up over time to a bigger thing almost without me being aware of it. Like people saying “for all intensive purposes”, or someone whisting out of tune. The first time you might not even think about it. The next few times you might just shrug it off, but eventually when it keeps on happening you want to say something.

Loumy.7841:

Naoko did it occur to you that players who want to win in WvWvW need this new gear because of the better stats?
It’s not optional anymore…

So you currently can’t do WvW without a level 80 character, all traits unlocked and a full set of exotic gear?

That’s a genuine question by the way. I haven’t tried WvW yet, but my impression was that it’s open to all levels and whilst having max stat gear will be an advantage it’s not enough of an advantage that you have to have it to compete.

The important thing for me is that this equipment will only be needed for this one dungeon. Yes they said there will be other dungeons later but we can worry about that when it happens, they’ve got plenty of time to revise the situation before then.

If you don’t want to bother getting Ascended armor all you’re missing out on is the upper tiers of that one dungeon. And if you don’t want to do the dungeon you don’t need to bother with Ascended armor. Unless you’re one of those “hardcore” players who rushed through everything in the first few weeks there should be more than enough content that you don’t need to worry about it for a while yet, and when you do you might find the Ascended armor required is not so difficult for you to get.

We also don’t know how hard it will be to get. It might turn out that it’s actually on a par with exotics and if you’ve reached the point where you need it then it’s reasonably within your grasp.

I admit I am worried that we could end up with a gear treadmill, at least for one aspect of the game, if this continues to be the form that future updates take, but I think it’s a huge jump to say we’re at that point now or it’s absolutely guarenteed that Anet are going down that route.

At the moment it looks more like the infused armor in GW1 or the various titles that give you an advantage against specifc types of enemies. Imagine if they had added Lightbringer ranks and skills after the release of Nightfall. You’ve just gotten into Vabbi and encountered the Order of Whispers, you feel like you’re making good progress but suddenly people all over are talking about how you’ve got to get these special skills and grind this title to fight the final boss or stand a chance in the end-game dungeon. It would seem like an overwhelming amount of extra work.

But actually you start doing it and unless you skip all the bounties (and if you do then that’s your own fault) by the time you need the title you’ve gotten a big chunk of progress already and the rest is fairly easy. (And you actually don’t need max lightbringer rank if you’ve got a decent party.)

(I also have to say, and I say this as someone who’s highest level character is 37 and who has never had more than 2g in the bank, that if you’re a “casual” player by choice or because of the limitations real life puts on your game time, then you have to accept that you’re never going to be on a par with the people who devote all their time to the game. I can’t imagine where I’m going to get the time and money to get a legendary weapon, I haven’t even started thinking about exotics yet, but it doesn’t bother me. I’ve got plenty to do in this game alredy and I’m having fun doing it. I had fun playing GW1 for 6 years and never completed UW, never even went into most of the Realm of Torment and never tried HA. I still tell myself I might do one day. I’m very much a completionist, but I accepted a long time ago I can’t, and don’t want to, keep up with the fastest players. I want to play at my own pace and have fun doing it. So I pick and choose my goals and do them in my own time and if someone else gets there first then…well, good for them.)

I spend most of my time exploring, which is mostly because that’s what I like to do in any game, but it seems to be greatly encouraged in this one.

I use the Points of Interest, Vistas, Hearts etc. to guide me around the map and keep track of where I’ve been but when I’m going between them I always hold down ctrl+alt so I can keep a look out for anything worth checking out and even if I just think the scenery is interesting I’ll detour to go and see what’s over there. I’ll also stop or detour for any dynamic events nearby.

If I don’t find many detours then I’m checking off points on my map, completing hearts and consequently levelling faster. But more often than not I’m doing a mix of everything as and when it comes up.

For example the other day I started in the bottom corner of one map and was heading towards a POI I needed when I found a cave mouth. I went in and found a rich silver vein, a different POI which I had intended to get later and an ettin who kicked off an event chain. When that chain ended I found myself near another exit to the cave, which lead me to lots of harvesting nodes and as I worked my way through them I found my way over to another cave, which turned out to be the start of a jump puzzle. It took me a couple of attempts to do the puzzle and I got some nice loot from the monsters along the way. When I finished it I found myself near some diving goggles and a vista. I couldn’t do both at the same time because they were on different ledges so I had to get the vista, jump down, stop to complete a skill point event and pick up a few more harvesting nodes, then back-track to get the diving goggles. On my way out this time I stopped to revive someone who had failed the skill point challenge, helped them finish it, detoured briefly to explore what proved to be a fairly small spider cave and then headed off to finally get that POI I’d been going for in the first place.

All in all that took me about 2 hours, so I had to stop for the night having only achieved one thing I set out to do, but also having had a great time and gained a lot of nice loot.

Oh, it’s often worth hanging around after a DE finishes too and watch what the NPCs involved say and do. There’s often another event that will start up following it, but they rarely go straight from one to the other, there’s usually something that needs to happen in between.

Also someone else has probably said this but don’t forget about crafting. Even if you don’t want to focus on crafting or sink a lot of money into it it’s well worth harvesting materials and then taking some time when you’re in town to see what you can craft with them just for the XP.

Markise.3640:

If you have a mouse 4 or 5 button you can also set that to auto run

I do both of these.

My normal method of moving, what I’ve taken to calling ‘exploration mode’ is to hold down both mouse buttons (your character runs forward and you can turn them by moving the mouse) with my other hand holding down ctrl+alt so NPCs and interactive points show up.

Then I’ve mapped auto-run to one of the spare buttons on my mouse so if I’m going a long way I can just use the one button to turn when I need to.

In combat or jumping puzzles I use WASD, or more often just W, Q and E (strafe left and right) along with mouse movement.

Mystfit.8309:

At first I was a bit intimidated by the scope of the chore, esp since I’ve enver played GW1 and most of what was being said was completely alien to me (Heroes?), but the write-up above was pretty comprehnsice and let’s me feel a little less overwhelmed. Leaving the only question I guess, (which may not have an answer) is can a newly created account still qualify. THere was an old quote form adev saying they didn’t WANT people like me to come from GW2 to go into GW1 soley to get these items. So, that they would be special to loyal fans, which I can understand.

They didn’t say you can’t do it (you can) they just said they are fully aware it takes too much time and effort for most people who have never played GW1 to consider it worthwhile but they have no intention of changing it.

They don’t want to stop new players getting those rewards (or existing players like me who want the last few points and didn’t have time before GW2 launched) BUT they don’t want people to be able to buy the game, sit down with it for a weekend and walk away with all the rewards. They want to keep them for people who have put a considerable amount of time and effort into the game.

(Actually I suspect originally the idea was to give existing players an incentive to move over to GW2, so they wouldn’t feel like they were throwing away up to 7 years of achivements to start from scratch.)

Either that or you’re thinking of name reservations, which did have a time limit on them and have now ended.)

I’m glad I’m not the only one who hates the word toon. I’m not sure why but it really gets on my nerves.

First time I encountered it was in GW1. I’ve been playing for about 6 years now and it’s only the last few years I’ve seen it, but I assume it’s been around longer than that because no one seemed surprised by it. Come to think of it that was around the time I left my old guild too, so maybe it’s just that I was talking to a different group of people.

I don’t remember seeing it in Ultima Online, but that could be me remembering wrong, I haven’t played that game in about 10 years.

And for the record I always say character, or char for short. Yes it could be confused with charr, but there’s a lot of english words which are very similar to other words and people manage most of the time so I think they can handle another one.

Because I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I’ve got more than enough to do with the PVE content at the moment. I’ll do WvW when I’m done with that, or when I happen to feel like taking a look.

Whether I stick with it or not I don’t know yet, having not tried, but I think it’s unlikely it will ever be something I want to do on a regular basis.

This is just a guess but probably to avoid confusing people with the fact that you can’t customise it. Everything you see on the character select screen is customisable, even if it’s just the colour, so if they showed the weapon there’s bound to be at least one person going backwards and forwards wondering how they keep missing the option to pick a weapon.

Either that or because it’s not part of the character model.

I think we’ve actually got more options for customisation than in GW1.

In GW1 we had 8 skill slots and one bonus mechanic from the primary attribute (which was usually to make certain skills stronger, or recharge faster or something like that rather than adding a new effect.)

In GW2 we’ve got 5 weapon skills, defined by the weapon (with a minimum of 3 combinations on the engineer), 1 heal, 1 elite and 3 utility slots. BUT we’ve also got up to 7 minor and 7 major traits from a pool of 15 minor and 60 major. Many of these do things which in GW1 would have required an entire skill slot.

And as far as weapon skills go you’ve got to remember that you’re comparing 3 campains and an expansion pack to 1 campain here. When GW1 first lanched rangers for example had a total of 12 attack skills and every single one was for the bow. Now they’ve got 29 (excluding aquatic weapons and counting chains as 1 skill) across a choice of 11 weapon sets.

How do they fit together?

Before the start of GW1, during the actual Guild Wars, (human) guilds were heavily political entities, usually tied to a particular nation. I seem to remember even seeing a note which said the majority of each nations army was made up of allied guilds, who also provided much of the funding for the army and this left some monarchs effectively unable to control their own nations – they had to do what the guilds wanted because there were not enough independant soldiers to stand against them, but I can’t seem to find where I read that now.

That all changed with the Searing and the aborted charr invasion of Orr. Guilds were forbidden from owning or controlling land on the mainland anywhere except Cantha. They were shifted initially to islands just off the coast of Tyria and later to the Zaishen Battle Isles. (Seriously, for those who don’t remember, guild halls were originally on the island just south of D’Alessio Seaboard.) Their main field of combat became these guild halls, along with the Hall of Heroes in the Mists accessed first though the Tomb of the Primeval Kings and later Heroes Ascent in the Battle Isles.

At around the same time (aka the release of Factions) they also ceased to be tied to particular nations. One guild could have members from all over the world, or join an international alliance.

Skip to present day (GW2) and that idea seems to have expanded. Guilds can now include members from all 5 main races (and hypothetically more, although obviously player guilds are limited to playable races) and if Destiny’s Edge is an example rather than an extreme exception they are not only outside of normal politics but can completely disregard it – for example having humans and charr in the same guild when they were officially still at war with each other.

But that’s the only example I’ve seen in game. So what I’m wondering is are they an exception or an example of whats ‘normal’ for guilds now. Can they have any political influence? Can they choose to follow or disregard politics as it suits them?

And is there a lore explaination for WvW, which seems to be the main focus of inter-guild combat at the moment?

Minor point but if you couldn’t use it until reserved names were freed up that mean it really was reserved. However unlikely it seems at least one person did want the same name as you.

As for name changes they haven’t said anything but I assume it will be available at some point, probably through the gem store.

Kimbald.2697:

They are intended as an incentive to buy keys.

The very few keys you recieve in-game as reward, are teasers, nothing else.

It’s the one part of the game where I feel the accountants breathing over the developpers shoulders the most.

The downfall of this scheme being almost no one feels any incentive to buy keys because so few of the things you can get from the chests are actually worth having.

The tonics I mostly scrap, even now you can use them for the costume brawl and I still have most of the boosts I’ve gotten sitting in my bank waiting for me to get through other consumables to use them.

It’s only the random item that’s really worth having, and most of those can be bought from the gem shop if you really think they’re useful enough to spend money on.

As far as I know the drop rate for keys has always been very low, definately much lower than the chests. Otherwise there would be no incentive to buy keys from the gem store.

1) Your GW1 account need to have Eye of the North and you need to have added stuff to the HoM in that game. (I realise this seems really basic but I have seen some people posting where that was the problem.)

2) You need to log in to GW1 and go to the HoM. I’m not sure why but it helps.

3) If neither of those helps then you could try switching servers. Particularly if you’re on an EU server switching to a US one, visting the HoM and then switching back (assuming you want to) seems to help. Although this has gotten a lot less desireable since they limited you to 1 transfer every 7 days.

Well the rule for mouse buttons is that as long as it’s 1:1 key binds its ok, and I think that goes for all other methods of control as well.

As someone else said it would be a problem if you said ‘attack’ and it then started using a whole chain of skills without any further input from you, because that’s basically botting. But if it’s the equivilent of pushing a button then it’s fine.

I’m sure I’ve seen a few human NPCs mention a same sex partner, and definately at least one asuran.

BrunoBRS.5178:

you mean you think they did a nice job about not making a big deal out of same-sex relationships, instead treating them the same way as any heterossexual relationship?

then yes, i agree.

also making one of the main characters lesbian and not making a big deal of it, rather than make her go “LOOK AT ME I’M SO GAY PLEASE LOOK AT ME” as some other writers like to portray homossexuals.

Agreed.

This is something I’ve been wanting to see in a game or TV show for a while (there’s a few books that have managed it already) a gay or lesbian couple who are just there. Not someones big revelatory coming out story with the obligatory friend who takes longer than everyone else to realise they can probably just about live with it. Not the couple where every one of their storylines has to revolve around the fact that they’re gay. Just a couple, like any other, who happen to be the same gender.

Basically if you don’t have account authentication on it means your password is the only thing protecting your account. If anyone guesses/steals that then they’re in.

If you’re confident your password is safe then that shouldn’t be a problem. Or you could change it to a unique password you haven’t ever used for anything before, and keep it unique by not using it for anything else.

But changing your email address might be the best bet in the long-run.

I use two passwords that were randomly generated for a game I played so often it made it easy to memorise them.

Other than that I tend to use combinations of made up words from books and things. Things like ‘mithril’ but usually more obscure. They’re easy for me to remember, but relatively unlikely for anyone else to guess and easy to make long enough to make hacking them by computer incredibly difficult. (I always make it something unrelated to the game/website as well, I wouldn’t use mithrilanduril for LOTRO for example, but I might use it for a music fan site.)

Personally I think buying new armor at lower levels is a waste of money. I’ve gotten to level 35 just using drops and I plan to stick to that as long as I can. No point paying for it when you’ll just be replacing it soon.

Or people have kept buying the game after the launch weekend and because they can’t get into full servers they’ve moved into the others and filled them up.

ComeAndSee.1356:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Your friends will be able to access the server you’re on for this event, no worries.

This makes sense why servers are showing full 24/7. I’m guessing you dropped the cap on what is a full server in preparation for the event. Spaces only open up if someone transfers out.

Servers show up full 24/7 because it’s based on the number of accounts linked to that server, not the number of players online.

I’m guessing guest accounts will get around it by either having a number of slots on each server reserved for guest accounts (easy to do when guest accounts will probably expire after a relatively short time) or by being completely exempt from the cap.

I can’t imagine they would have a problem with people sharing the client because without an account it’s basically just a useless file (or if you have the software to decompile the .dat file a bunch of pretty pictures and text).

It’s not like they have to worry about piracy like off-line games.

Personally I think it’d be really annoying if transmutation stones automatically changed all future skins to the one you picked. Just because I think one skin is better than another doesn’t mean it’s my favourite and I want to be stuck with it indefinately.

And as Ruggy said I don’t think they’re a rip off. They would be if you had to buy them, but most players seem to get more than they’re ever likely to use from daily rewards, map completion and black lion chests.

I’ve done 7 maps (5 of which are towns) and opened 3 chests and I’ve got about 25 transmutation stones sitting in storage, so they’re really not hard to get hold of.

It’s not the number of players online, it’s the total number of accounts on that server (so on and offline combined).

Off-peak times are supposed to be better but that’s because if someone transfers out there’s less chance of someone else transfering in before you do, not because there are less people online.

Also peak times depend on the local time of the majority of people on there, which may not match your local time. Especially if you’re on the American servers which are used worldwide. So it’s worth doing some research on fan forums and things to try and find out where the majority of people on that server live.

Kumu Honua.2751:

I’d love to see metrics on the gem store sales.

The only things I personally have bought with gems (Transmuted gold) has been bank slots, and the halloween mini’s (x2 since I wanted the chainsaw skeleton).

I’m sure they have sold the keys and lots of the costume stuff.

I wonder if they sell any of the rest of the stuff however.

Exactly what I was going to say.

It’d be really interesting if Anet released some sales figures for the gem store. They’ve obviously sold a lot of minis because a lot appear on the TP and you can’t get them anywhere else but so much of the other stuff is soulbound and ‘invisible’ to other players (no way to see that someone has/is using it) that it’s impossible to know if it’s being bought or not.

I suspect everyone would get some surprises if they did let us see what they’ve been selling.

I always assumed it was either one of those things that many people could do but we just never happened to see, or that it was our characters specifically who couldn’t swim. (This fit my Proph/Ascalonian character perfectly, since she wouldn’t have seen anything wider or deeper than a river until her first trip to Ascalon City, but was a little harder to justify for my cost dwelling NF/Istani.)

But I actually really like this explaination. I think it would be a fun way to explain the addition in lore.

Might be a bit harder to believe that Kormir also introduced jumping though…

Same. My main character is level 34 and has spent the vast majority of her time in Queensdale and Kessex Hills, my other 3 haven’t even left their initial 1-15 zone. But on all of them I see plenty of other players around.

It’s not like it was on the launch weekend but IMO that’s an improvement. It’s nice being able to see what you’re doing and get a shot in during events.

And even if you don’t like that it’s still a vast improvement over my experience doing the free trial in WoW, which apparently could have happened in pretty much any MMO.
It took me literally an hour to find a single other player and when I did our conversation when like this:
Me: Hi
Long pause
Her: Pls leave
Me: Um…ok…

I later found out it was because my being there could potentially slow down her levelling because if I attacked an enemy (and possibly if they attacked me?) she wouldn’t get the XP but not knowing that at the time it was a pretty cold reception. I was also told not to use map chat unless I was selling something and not to sell anything you could find in the starting zones.

I’m on Desolation and the low level areas all seem to have plenty of activity. I haven’t made it into high level areas yet but I assume from what I’ve heard that they’re busier.

I don’t see a need for it.

I’m on a high population server (Desolation) but have been levelling very slowly so I spend all my time in low level zones (1-15 mainly, up to 25-35 or whatever it is) and I agree there are a lot fewer people than there were at launch, but it’s hardly empty. I always see at least a few other people running around and they tend to come together for events.

I do think time of day makes a big difference though. I got kind of lucky there, I happened to get a permenant 9-5:30 job in real life a few months before GW2 came out, so I knew I was going to be playing mainly during peak times for my time zone. So I made sure to find a server with a lot of other UK players, which pretty much guarenteed me plenty of people on.

Although when I have been on at odd times, like a few weeks ago when I was home sick and decided to hang around Queensdale waiting for the Shadow Behemoth (which never showed up) I was still seeing other players on a regular basis, even at odd times.

Tito.3270:

Humans are the only classic rpg race in GW2, the other are just to different to be played by the older generation, if there would have been dwarfs/elves and orcs the race distribution would have been more even.

I really don’t think that’s it. I’ve been playing RPGs since Eye of the Beholder (1990) and if anything it makes anything that isn’t the usual selection more appealing because it gets boring having the same choices each time.

I’m not sure why but I’ve often heard that a lot of people just like playing as a human. I find it kind of strange because I tend to think it’s a bit boring personally (what with being a human in real life). But I suspect it’s like the question about why people play their own/another gender – everyone has their own reasons so you’re always going to get different answers.

In my case my main is a human because I wanted her to be descended from my GW1 characters and they all had to be human. But I’ve also got a sylvari, norn and a charr and I’m going to make an asura soon. If I ever add more characters I think they’re most likely to be charr or sylvari because they’re the ones I’ve had most fun with, but it really depends on what fits the character.

Panacea.4927:

2. Seeing how the grass on the other side of the fence is
Some guys like to see how it is to “be” a woman. Most male players will react different to female characters as to male ones. If you now play a female and maybe even try to act as one, then you can see how the grass is on the other side.
Furthermore female characters tend to get helped more often as males try to take care of them. Free gifts, organizing help for a instance run/whatever, more sympathy for mistakes and less claims that you are a “noob”.

2.b
Trying to get much more help and easier gaming as you would get with a male character.

I’ve got to say, as someone who has played both male and female characters in both GW and GW2 I’ve never noticed female characters getting more help or more free stuff.

If you think the ranger has good ranged damage then go with a ranger and ignore what other people say.

If you believe the profession sections of the forum every single one was broken at launch, has been nerfed since then and is due another nerf at any moment.

I think it’s reasonable to assume there will be some fixes included in the patch.

Which ones probably depend on a number of factors. Like how easy the problem is to fix. As I’m sure anyone who has worked with computer code can tell you knowing there is a problem and deciding to fix it is not the whole process, often it’s just the first tiny step in a long and frustrating process. Some of these fixes might not be ready by the 15th.

They might also want to limit the size of the download, maybe spread things out into a few different patches if there is a lot to add and in that case I suspect getting the new content up as promised will take priority over fixes with no definate date.

Although the other side to that is that some things might get fixed before the 15th if they’re ready.

I find it interesting that every so often someone will come into this topic, cherry-pick certain replies and declare that they apply to everyone, inspite of all the other opinions on offer.

Honestly I think the simplest explaination is that there are many factors which can go into character creation and many different reasons for any given choice. If you really want to know why a particular person made the choice they did you’ll have to ask them, and remember that their response applies to no one but themselves.

(Also when looking at the number of female characters remember that GW2 has a higher than average number of female players, so you can’t assume the character is being played by a man.)

Personally I plan to rely on drops and stuff I happen to craft while levelling my crafting skills for as long as I can, possibly all the way up to level 80. I don’t think there’s any point in working out what stats or skin to use or spending a lot of money buying it when you’re going to be replacing it sooner or later (probably sooner).

So far I’m level 30-something (don’t remember exactly) on my main and it’s working pretty well. All my equipment is pretty close to my level and I usually find suitable replacements when I need them, or even before.

When I hit level 80 I’ll probably get a max stat but relatively cheap set as a gap-filler then work out what I want long term and start working on that. Unless what I want proves to be relatively cheap/easy to get.

Mechrophilia.6987:

Many men will play a female character in this type of game because girls who are badaasses are apealing to them. Its this same demographic of men who like movies such as “Kill Bill” and “Kickaass”.

Many of these men would not likely play a female character in a non violent game, such as the Sims. (Although some still might, I imagine).

In the Sims you usually end up playing a whole family. I suppose they could make a gay couple with adopted male children, but I think if anything that would be top of the list for games where most people have both male and female characters.

Azoetia.2183:

Jayne.9251:

I’m not saying this is the rule, there are exceptions, but when women create characters they tend to try to replicate themselves, at least with their first/main toon, more so than men do.

I would hope that it would be more than just an “exception” that people actually have imagination.

When my brother played D&D he always played a male paladin with exactly his own personality. 20+ years of the same character. I get that people of both genders will often play as themselves, but it strikes me as really boring. It’s not as weird to me the first time or two someone is playing a game with a character creation feature, but after a while I would think it would get old.

KOTOR was the first game I played like that. I made a character just like me who did everything just like I would. It was okay. But then I made a different character who was opposite gender and made all decisions differently from myself. Keeping track of and maintaining consistency with a thought process that didn’t come naturally was fun, and the game was far more rewarding when I took that approach.

In games where you get to make choices my main character will always do what I think is right. But that’s partially to keep it simple and partially because I like to see how it would play out.

Even then I wouldn’t say they have the same personality as me because, frankly, if they did they wouldn’t be in those situations in the first place. They’d be one of the merchants or crafters in town, or maybe at best someone trying to organise the defences and keep people safe. Not the wandering hero out looking for trouble.

But I’ll always make at least one alternate character, usually more, so I can try different choices. In games with good and evil options (as opposed to games like this where none of the choices are really wrong) I’ll always make one where I take all the evil options to see just how bad it can get. (Currently Dragon Age Origins male city elf intro wins that one – your fiancee and your best friend get kidnapped and after killing a bunch of innocent guards to get them back you can take a bribe to let them be kitten and possibly killed, take all the credit for “trying” to rescue them and then let you friend take the fall and be dragged off to be executed when the guards come looking.)

One reason I have 4 characters in this game is so I could have 1 join each order and then decide which one my main character would pick. I’ve also made and deleted a bunch of other characters to try out different story options.

It means you were attacked, defeated and revived enough times that all your armor broke.

It’s possibly the one downside to the fact that anyone can revive anyone for free. Some people have started checking whether you’re afk before reviving to stop it happening, but most don’t.

Although I’d say ultimately the best approach is to avoid going afk in dangerous areas if you can. If you might be away for a while (ie. doorbell/phone rings) maybe shut the game down and come back to it instead.

At the moment I have no plans to make any more characters anyway.

There are a few names I use in GW1 which I might want to carry over at some point, but I’m not worried about them being taken because they’re all fairly unusual. I made them all several years after the first game was released and it wasn’t a problem so I can’t see anything changing this time around.

When I’m making a character I start with a few general ideas like an outline of a personality, or a race or profession I want to play and then I match everything else to it. So in games where it’s purely cosmetic (everything except the Elder Scrolls as far as I know) I pick whichever gender I think suits the character best.

At the moment I’ve got 3 women and one man, but it could just as easily have been the other way around.

Personally I think it’s a bit strange to assume every character a person plays has to be an accurate and complete representation of them. I mean, you wouldn’t insist that a male author can only have male characters in their stories, or even all-male main characters. IMO role-playing isn’t that different, you’re still creating a story about a character, you’re just doing it within someone elses world and rules.

I really like using Prayer to Lyssa but I get so sick of hearing “May Lyssa confound you!” over and over again that I’ve seriously considered dropping it in favour of a skill where my character stays quiet.

It’s not so much of a problem with skills that just have a sound effect but when your character is shouting the same phrase over and over again it sounds rediculous and it gets annoying quickly.

It’d be nice if they only did it every 3rd or so time the skill is used, or maybe the first time it’s used after entering combat and then resets until you enter combat again. Even having it cycle through 2 or 3 different phrases would be a big improvement.

Anything other than hearing the same thing over and over again every time I’m in Combat.

As Synk said I think the best approach is to work out what works best for you by trial and error.

I started off with the default set-up and every time I realise I’m having trouble using a key, or I keep hitting where I expect it to be instead of where it is (usually due to habits from other games) I move it.

What they said.

You have to put the item you want to transmute in your inventory, double click the HoM item and then drag the item to be transmuted into the window that appears, then click the button.

For a very brief time (few seconds) my jellyfish was up on the shore during the launch weekend.

Sadly when I decided to take a chance and move slightly so I could get a screenshot it fixed whatever the issue was and dropped it back in the water.

Slark.1263:

Yes the codes are locked and region specific. If you buy the code in Europe it has to activated while in Europe, your friend would have to play on a Europe server and download the Europe Client. Once the account is activated in Europe it should be able to log in from the USA or anywhere else in the world.

This isn’t completely accurate. I think you’re right that a European code has to be activated in Europe, but you can play on any server. Same goes for American codes (except I think those work everywhere except Europe.)

I’m in the EU and using a European code and for a while I was on a US server, just to try it out.

I think names used in GW1 won’t be reserved from next week onwards.

But there’s also a system where if you create a character in GW2, then delete them, that name is reserved for 24 hours, and I’m pretty sure that one is staying in place.