Guild Wars 2

As I understand it the trick to getting on a full server is to try during the early morning hours, like 3 am pacific. I hear that you need to not just refresh the page, too, but fully close and reopen to see if the status has changed.

Now, the only reason you need to be on the same home server as him is if you want to play World vs World with him. For all other purposes the game is essentially one large server per region now.

It was Halloween-related. While sometimes they have sales that return previous temporary items, generally you might need to wait until the relevant holiday returns.

That said, just check the forums and gem store in game regularly. People tend to post when something special shows up, and it only takes a moment to open the store and click the promotions tab. Also, sometimes they have a week or even a month of daily specials. Last year they did that all March long (causing some grumpiness when it turned out they were selling things like Rox’s Quiver right before the Wardrobe update that meant people who already had it didn’t need to buy two more of them for alts ….). They’ve also had August sales to commemorate the game launch anniversary.

Zergs.9715:

Test.8734:

Me and four other nice people who are playing to have fun.

Took words right out of my mouth.

And mine.

1) So far no fishing. Treasure hunting, well sort of, the world is full of nooks and crannies and some of them are hidden jumping puzzles with chests at the end containing minor loot. There is however plenty to do. Explore the world, fight in world vs. world or pvp, fight world bosses, work on dungeons and fractals, do the living story and its achieves, rp, work on collections and other achieves, etc.

2) Most crafted items will sell for less than the sum of their parts, though savvy people can find niche markets. The main reason to max out crafting is so you can make your own ascended armor and weapons, as world drops of that are very rare. Now, you don’t need ascended armor and weapons unless you are doing high-end fractals, but they do look cool and do give a bit of a stat boost as well as being account bound so you can swap them to alts. You could also simply make some of the tradeable ascended mats and sell those for good money, assuming you get a supply of the components needed (ungodly amounts of silk scraps go into every bolt of damask).

3) I’m not a necromancer expert but I have read repeatedly since launch that minion builds don’t do so well. The other stuff necromancers do are pretty fun, though. They are less useful in dungeons according to a number of posters (though I remember a guild necro saving our butts quite a bit with condition management in Twilight Arbor early on). You have 5 slots plus as many more up to 64 that you want to buy, so feel free to try a number of professions and builds.

Just a flesh wound says it well. I’ll add that the way to wiki something is to type in chat “/wiki (thing I want to know about)” so e.g. /wiki mystic stone will bring up a browser window with the mystic stone page. It does alt tab you if you don’t have two monitors.

They have not told us how one first specializes, though I believe you must have an 80 of the base profession at the very least. They have said that you can swap back and forth from spec to base any time you like out of combat, and that once there is more than one spec per profession you can hop between all the options. Sorry I don’t have links but that latter is directly said by Colin in his interview with Angry Joe.

To be clear, the 80 requirement is my own speculation based on them talking about this as an answer to post-80 horizontal progression. The rest is stuff I have read or heard from devs via these forums and videos.

Specifically you get one each of the top three quality kits (blue/green/yellow quality, not Basic), don’t use up any charges on them, and chuck them in the Forge with 3 mystic stones. You’ll get 250 yellow quality salvages that only use one inventory slot.

I do see forum complaints that this happens but it hasn’t happened to me. Then again I’m usually in a guild group that PuGs one or two slots as needed. But when we’ve had two PuGs they haven’t kicked us. (This may be because we also tend to kill most everything in the dungeon and cheaters get frustrated and quit before getting near the end ).

That means I’m on the flip side. I’m one of multiple guildies in a run, and we don’t kick people unless they vanish for ten minutes or so without warning. It’s sad if someone ditches us just because we share a tag.

Red Queen.7915:

Donari.5237:

In all my years of MMOing I’ve never been able to WASD. Not only do I have small hands, I’m generally muscle-memory limited to one key tap at a time, no combos, and while I’m a fine touch typist I can’t reliably hit the WASD movement keys while focusing on the screen during combat. Hurray for the Naga HEX mouse, with its simple array of 6 buttons by my thumb. That covers all movement needs, leaving the keys free for firing off abilities.

TESO is a bit annoying in that I can’t mouse move forward, but at least I only have to hit W and the mouse buttons do the rest. GW2 and TESO both have nice short sets of buttons needed for the abilities as well.

So the Naga Hex is actually useful for people with tiny hands? I’ve been thinking about it, but since our local stores never have it I can’t test it, and I’m reluctant to just order it when it might not be worth it. I’d be so, so happy if this were a gaming mouse I can actually use comfortably.

Yep, it’s not much larger than a regular two-button-with-scroll-wheel mouse. I have it on one of those pads with a gel wrist rest at the front end. My hand’s close to 7" from base to middle finger tip and with the heel of my palm solidly on the gel my fingers reach to the ends of the left/right buttons with my thumb curving comfortably around the side. I rest my palm on the mouse, which meant getting used to how hot it gets over the Razer logo … but I’d say hands in the normal small range will have no problem with the HEX.

I’ve noticed that the streamed HoT demos all start with that loading screen. Whether that means it will return to live builds is anyone’s guess.

In all my years of MMOing I’ve never been able to WASD. Not only do I have small hands, I’m generally muscle-memory limited to one key tap at a time, no combos, and while I’m a fine touch typist I can’t reliably hit the WASD movement keys while focusing on the screen during combat. Hurray for the Naga HEX mouse, with its simple array of 6 buttons by my thumb. That covers all movement needs, leaving the keys free for firing off abilities.

TESO is a bit annoying in that I can’t mouse move forward, but at least I only have to hit W and the mouse buttons do the rest. GW2 and TESO both have nice short sets of buttons needed for the abilities as well.

Oh, I agree. Just tell the guy that it’s hard to convey the feel of a profession especially to someone who hasn’t learned the game yet, so he should do some testing for himself.

Fourth: Racial skills/ghost wolf are intended to be weaker than profession skills so no one feels they “must” play a certain race to get the skill. So while they might change the flavor of them, they won’t make them on par with profession elites.

The problem with a summary is you might not be interested based on one. Nothing I saw about Guardian had me interested in it until I actually leveled one a bit, for instance. I was so sure it would be my 8th choice. It turned out to be so much more fun than WoW paladins!

Still, your friend will have 5 slots and can test out a number of things before settling on his preferred main.

The old maps weren’t designed with gliding in mind. Gliding would break those maps.

Most fun is a very subjective thing. A profession one person hates will be another’s one and only love. I could write a lot of my subjective opinions on the professions but it would be as a PvE person who barely even does WvW, let alone sPvP.

My impression from reading forums, though, is that thieves and necromancers properly built and played are very strong in PvP.

I’d bet that elementalist would be the hardest to master in any environment, as each weapon set gives you 20 skills you can keep dancing between (5 for each of 4 element attunements) and you are stuck with the weapon set you have while in combat. Plus they are pretty much the squishiest profession. One of my first five alts was an ele and I let her languish at level 30 for a couple of years. Now my only sub-80 is an ele I made as an RP shill and I’ve been dagger/dagger leveling him and finding it much more fun since I know what the heck I’m doing in the game.

Mesmer could also be something you end up liking for complexity once leveled and traited, I know I have a blast with it and I don’t even know how to mimic my clones to help befuddle opponents as to which one is really me.

A note on addons: No. You can get banned for using them, other than some of the overlay things from Overwolf. Be careful and do research on the legitimacy of anything you do to mod the game.

Other than that, have fun! Run around, do whatever catches your eye, explore the maps, find the points of interest and vistas, gather plants, metal, and wood, join in events (in orange circles), do your personal story if you like when you see it come up every 10 levels.

Leveling in this game is supremely smooth and fast compared to other games, and there’s no “curve” after the first handful of levels. It won’t take any longer to get from 77 to 78 than it will from 67 to 68.

Besides PS, race can impact the feel of gameplay. The new camera on Tuesday might change this, but for now he might want to avoid norn and charr due to issues in tight spaces. Plus norn feel slow and lumbering. Imo sylvari have the best dance and asura have the most amusing animations for emotes and skills. Whereas humans have the best starting area and home instance because there are enough buildings to make me believe a population of decent size is supported there (odd, since humans in Tyria are the beleaguered dying race, per lore).

I’ve been watching some of the PAX streaming today. There are three blindfolds: sash with rune, a weird thing with spikes sticking out horizontally, and one I can’t quite see the details on because no one is turning the avatar in creation but it looks like a series of square plates, maybe? Almost every streamer is checking them all then picking the first one.

The accompanying text suggests that the blindfold is a lore part of the revenant, that they need to block out the visual world to get to the legends they channel. This could limit head armor choices for those who want to adhere to the lore.

I’m fairly sure the blindfolds will unlock on creation, just as Ele gems or thief hoods do. The armor itself? I’d wager that’s just for the demo, and it will be level 80 armor gained by one of the usual methods (craft/rewards/gems).

I see it as more thematic than copy/paste. A lush biome should have more than one of each type of creature. Plus the wyverns aren’t end bosses, just hard world fights, and indications are that wyverns deeper in than this demo will be tougher for various reasons.

It’s like saying centaurs are copy-pasted because there’s more than one tribe of them, or the hylek, or the skritt. They are denizens of the world and will be encountered more than once in one’s life.

Is there a stream schedule available? As in will anything else besides the demo be streamed? I don’t mind it but I’m doing my best not to see the LS portion of it and would love to see video interviews with ANet people, etc.

edit: As I hit post the streamer said “Sunday you’ll see me in Stronghold.” So that’s something, though not anything I’m slavering to watch as I don’t PvP.

I don’t know that tree frogs do so well in a desert climate, not that terrestrial analogues need to mean much for Tyria. It would look odd to me to have healthy Itzel inhabiting a dustbowl.

It would help if they sent out an email today to all who are subscribed, just something saying “We are confirming you are subscribed to our newsletter and are in the pool for a possible closed beta invitation.”

Then anyone who has already registered and doesn’t have the email by tomorrow will have something concrete to submit to Support.

The original beta (not the closed NDA one, I wasn’t in that) was full world afaik, though the PS stopped at level 20. But each weekend we had to roll new alts, so I don’t think anyone ever got much beyond level 40 or so. The final stress tests did let us keep previous alts but even then we simply couldn’t make it to the “end” of the game. This is one reason beta didn’t spoil things, plenty of the game remained to figure out and to see.

I do expect beta to extend beyond the demo, or there’s no point in ANet having it. Good beta testers will find all sorts of things to fix and refine but they have to be able to get at said things.

Wart is everyone talking about here?

I’m hoping to get in, since the first GW2 beta didn’t spoil the game for me and I did have an impact (I organized “RP tests” to see what features supported RP, and my group of people doing that made a lot of suggestions that helped with things like a walk/run toggle, emotes that aren’t zone-wide, etc). I can definitely give feedback on social and UI stuff, though I’m not the one to go to for issues with skill balance and I’m so loathe to break stuff that I tend not to test to destruction to expose vulnerabilities.

Betas can be useful in so many ways. Look at what the players can find …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n29pRGcZnlM

I also prefer normal bags that don’t fling my gear in places I don’t expect, with one invisible bag at the bottom. However, the 20 slot green fractal bags are so cheap that I put up with them grabbing greens; I just put them snuggled up under my backpack and fill my inventory from the bottom up so anything new will always be at the top.

I did try the feature that highlights new items but found it overpowering, as did many others. If it’s been toned down that can help. Meanwhile I just manually shift things around for efficient finding and access. I’m a packrat and I like being able to tuck items in wherever I want to and being sure I’ve looked at new items to make the keep/don’t keep decision.

As others above have noted your home server makes no difference to meeting up with friends anywhere but WvW. Join in a party with them, and if you are not in the same instance of your zone but are in the same zone, right click the shadowed out party portrait and select “Join in (Map Name).” If their map is full you’ll get an error and have to keep trying, or they’ll have to come to you instead if they don’t need to stay where they are (e.g. they are in an organized world boss map).

Now, your home server supposedly makes a difference in that maps try to prioritize lumping together people with the same server. But the open-area RP community on TC has yet to fully recover from the conversion to the megaserver, and RP is more likely to attract trolls and griefers than before. Even so you will generally stumble across RP in the major cities, and I assume that it is more likely you will do so if the game considers you to be a TC resident.

So you can keep trying to get on TC before you really start building your alts (for free if you’ve deleted them). The two tricks I’ve heard are to make the attempt in the wee hours US time, say 3 to 6 am eastern, and to fully close and reopen the game between attempts rather than just refreshing, as some claim that refreshing restarts your two minute timer where the servers won’t change status for you or something like that.

I sympathize with your wallet’s pain on that. The trick is to look at the item’s tooltip and make sure it says “Skin Locked.” I’m pretty sure the cultural armor unlocks on purchase, not on use, so you needn’t worry about whether you have it waiting in your bank unused.

I’d like to know specializations and guild halls. On the latter I know Colin was grinning like a little boy at Angry Joe and saying that once the info can come out, the Angry army will love it. And today I saw a forum comment that large numbers of people will be needed to unlock guild halls — this concerns me as a member of a smallish guild. So I really want to hear more about whether my nearly 3 years old guild (we started pre-launch) will be frozen out of getting a space to call our own simply because we’ve stayed small enough to know and trust everyone with our tag.

As to exploring, I used it in the terms of fiddling around with game mechanics. But yes, you really do want to find all the nooks and crannies. A cave might have a chest inside, if you can jump up the right sets of rocks and beams (the chest won’t have hugely exciting loot, but hey, it’s still a you-made-it moment). NPC’s might be having a neat conversation in some alcove. An event might be triggered, such as escorting a little girl home from a fiery chasm. If an NPC waves at you or runs up to you, talk to them to trigger or at least locate events.

Don’t expect normal “quests.” There are no hubs. Just cyclical events that need player intervention to move from one state to another, marked by orange circles on your map when you get close enough.

And the perennial advice to all new players: learn to dodge, when it’s crucial, when you needn’t bother because you need to save your endurance for the big circle of doom. At the very least keep moving as you fight. Standing still and bashing will bring you pain.

Right after the first beta weekend I bought a Naga HEX so I could put all my movement on my mouse. I couldn’t possibly keyboard move and fire off skills at the same time, my hands don’t work that way.

Now, that’s a worthy way to do it.

But I don’t think they even get an extra champ bag, right? If I’m at North and South beats up the Beekeeper, I get a reward popup. I don’t have to tag the Beekeeper myself. So the only “personal” extra would seem to be the mordrem part, which as I said above seems of such minimal value as to give no incentive at all to wanting to tag the boss rather than help the lane one’s in.

ReV.6097:

Okay then, what do we have today? A handful of my best (and personal favorites) that I made over the past year.
16. Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The rest aren’t characters I know much about, but you did a darn fine Buffy (the action shots were a great bonus).

Meeting up: Get into your nearby racial city and find the giant pink portal (it shows up on your map). Step through that, you’ll be in Lion’s Arch with portals to the other 4 cities quite close. Go through the one your friend is at (or heck, stay and explore LA, it’s got no monsters attacking you). At level 10 you’ll be offered personal story, and that will differ by race. You can however join in and help with each others’ stories so long as you are somewhere in the same zone when the story person enters their instance.

You cannot share in the rewards unless you are on the exact same step of the story, and only the one who started the instance can make things happen inside it. There is also a later glitch where if you have picked different Orders you might find your Order swapped if you accept the “Progress your story” option in the other’s instance.

Professions: Elementalist and Engineer will be hardest for true beginners to the game as they require a lot more hotkey management (Ele is extra squishy, too). Warrior, Guardian, and Necromancer will likely be easiest to learn on. Mesmer has a bit of a learning curve, and under the current game model is less effective until much higher levels, but to me it’s the most fun profession game-play wise. I don’t really like Ranger or Thief (even though my main for Living Story is my thief), but which one you will like the most may surprise you. It’s incredibly subjective. Every profession will have its raving fans and its loathers. Don’t decide based on preconceptions. I was sure pre-launch that Guardian would suck for me, then I played it a bit and it became my dungeon main for a long time until I got properly comfy with my mesmers.

Learning Curve: I’m not sure I can answer this as I feverishly took in all the information I could when the game was announced, kept up with forums, and played all the betas. There are a number of things that seem glaringly obvious to me as I’m so steeped in this game (also I have played many MMO’s, including years of Horizons and WoW). Check out the Tips sticky at the top of this forum for all the little tricks and quirks.

You won’t be punished for picking “bad” skills, except maybe by super picky PuGs in the LFG who want exact builds. Some fights might seem hard to you then someone else waltzes in, swings a blade a few times, and everything dies. Imo you should do what’s fun. Then again I’m still using the same build I patchworked together a few years ago on my thief based on what skills suited his RP persona So he’s not my go-to for instanced group content, and he can’t solo some Silverwastes bull escorts, but I’m comfy with how I have him set up.

Mostly run around discovering things. Try all the weapons you can, read the skill tooltips when not in combat then see what they do in a fight and how certain combinations work better than others.

Oh, and as to what professions you should pick as a team? Sure there are plenty that complement each other. I think you’ll have the most fun if you’re each playing a profession you really enjoy. To that end you may want to make some “throwaway” alts with your extra slots just to get a feel for the basic mechanics of each profession and don’t be afraid to delete low level ones. Just don’t bind anything expensive to a test alt until you know you really want to keep that one.

Someone else would have to give you the exact figures, but the NPC-sold white items are only at certain levels (every 5?) so if you get one that is marked a different level from those you’ll know it’s going to salvage.

I’m not going for a legendary, never have been, though I wouldn’t mind Bifrost, Kudzu, Incinerator, Juggernaut, or Bolt.

I have however seen many a contest held with giveaways not only of precursors but of legendaries. Pink Day in LA was one such. Sign up on some large GW2-oriented forums and keep your eyes open, I guess? Plus head to large events (like the Pink Day I mentioned) and participate for the fun; you might win something to boot.

I’ve been lucky enough not to see this. That is, I’ve seen the mortar user aiming it at the Vinewrath, but not seen a queue to do so or people being nasty about it on one side or the other.

I almost always go to North since it usually needs people and I don’t have reflects for mid and south is full up with people. I try to grab the southern mortar there because it is the most fun I can have, with coverage of the lane and the ammo dump, as well as the ability to support the arrow carts and knock off vines menacing the northern mortar.

Sometimes I dodge off it to avoid getting wrecked by hurled rocks or by poison pools, and sometimes someone else leaps on it when I do, but generally I can keep it pointed at north lane mordrem and burn them to slaggy bits. Fun!

I don’t see how the mortar can be that helpful firing at the boss fight, though. It’s not like you can see where your shots land, and the boss moves around so much you can’t even repeat a lucky hit if you see the damage numbers floating (those floater numbers are how I zero in on the mordrem menacing the ammo dump, plus I can track the movement of burning mordrem as they charge up the alley and more accurately bring the mortar to bear). So it really is to get a tag, and I don’t see the point. Don’t folks interested in parts just get the guaranteed extractor and tag a fort boss? If it’s for crests, jeeze. I’ve bought all the stuff the vendors offer, got plenty of keys, and started funding the Camp Resolve event guy just to clear crests out of inventory and I only do a Silverwastes round once or twice a day, if that. Everyone at VW gets rewards when a lane beats a boss, no tagging needed.

Again, it seems pointless to use the mortar as the OP describes.

I hope the weather in Boston doesn’t get in the way of getting to all the PAX fun. Stay warm and safe, y’all, especially those who are traveling there tonight before the storm moves on out.

There will also be a mastery line where you can spend points (a lot of points) to become immune to wyvern knockback.

I’m not clear yet on whether one point in gliding will be enough to get back on the platform, or if you have to invest further in the line before all the updrafts by the platform will work for you. Still, no review I’ve seen of the wyvern fight has said anything about being one-shot gone from the fray thanks to a knockback and I imagine someone would comment on it if it were a problem.

If you’ve watched anything about the Stronghold mode — needn’t be much, as a non PvPer I’ve barely glanced at it — you’ll know that one of the match mechanisms is to choose to build archers (Tengu) and bombers (Skritt). Bombers don’t fight, archers do, but you need bombers to get through the enemy gate.

All you’re seeing in that screenshot is a built item like a ballista or a trebuchet, only in this case it’s an NPC unit that will help you assault the other team (and defend against their assaults on you).

Right, it’s not streaming a Hot Beta, it’s a beta of a means of streaming downloads so you don’t have to wait for the whole patch before commencing play.

I don’t know if it’s in yet, I get fast enough patch loads that I shall bravely stand back and let others test the impact. /ahem

I agree that the manuals should go. Perhaps a GM could use GM power, sanctioned, to simply buy them up? Unless that would inject too much gold into the economy or something, assuming those who put them up are still extant.

Though that could lead to people who’ve hoarded such things tossing them on the TP to encourage dev buyouts, so it might not be a good plan.

GuzziHero.5104:

A question for those who use their middle name instead of forename:

When did you decide/was it decided to use your middle name? Is there a reason why?

When I was a kid my parents let my youngest brother change his name to Robin, as in Batman-and. So unfair, they wouldn’t let me be Batgirl. But that taught me that names can be changed. I didn’t mind my first name until people began mocking it, turning it into diminutives and the like. As it happened my middle name was one almost impossible to do that to, so between 5th and 6th grade I dropped my first and used my middle, just putting on my first name’s initial when having to use my legal name.

I did it that way for many years, until I got engaged in law school. Having decided to use my betrothed’s last name (it flowed better and made a better signature than my maiden name), I investigated and learned that while I could add a last name on my marriage certificate, I could not drop my first name. So I went to the courthouse and did a legal name change, becoming just Middle Last. A few months later we wed and I became Middle Last Marriedname.

I think that my early exposure to the power of choosing one’s own name was one small factor in my ease of adaptation to people using fan names, medieval/reenactment names, and internet handles. It always pained me in court when judges wouldn’t believe a client had borrowed a car from or loaned one to someone they only knew by a nickname, given how many of my friends sported names like Aelfric or Eowyn or Chort … and with my swiss cheese mind I retained very few of their real names despite being close friends with them for years.

Just to alert those who are paying even less attention than I am:

Much of the US will be “springing forward” this weekend, meaning setting the clocks ahead one hour overnight Saturday to Sunday. Getting up in the morning will be extra hard since it’ll feel like an hour earlier than it is.

For those making the change, your daily reset will be one hour later on the clock than it has been (e.g. eastern time zone folks will get the game reset at 8 pm now, not 7). For those not making the change but with friends who are, your friends’ school and work schedules will be altered by one hour and they will be ready for things an hour earlier than you’re used to.

I’m not sure on boss timers, as I generally just check a timer site with a countdown, but if you’re used to finding a boss event by time of day make sure you’re in sync with it. I imagine the events will remain on the current rotation and it’s spring-forwarders who will have to adjust mentally to whether something happens on an odd or even hour.

bobjoelol.5163:

I Don’t see why people will be having trouble saving money for the expansion you can just it with ingame gold its months away just save 10g everyday till you got 4-6k+ gems saved up and you should have enough or close to it. Since the expansion is buyable with gems.

We don’t know that it’s buyable with gems, there has been no statement to that effect. If there has, please link it, I’m sure many people on tight budgets would love to know they don’t have to piggy bank some real money to get ready.

The map I linked above is from WoodenPotatoes’ video. At one point he mouses over the little cloaked figure and gets a tooltip “Collect bugs until time runs out.” I’d screenshot it but YouTube insists on shrinking down from full screen when I try. It’s around 20 minutes in to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEh_LowtX5E

In cities there are weapons and armor merchants, marked on the main map. Oddly they vary in the level of weapons they sell, and I haven’t memorized which ones are which.

You can craft pistols as well, if you learn the Huntsman crafting. Level 1-4 pistols can be made with minimal mats, though as a rule expect any crafted item to sell for much less than the sum cost of its mats.

You can get them back during persistent emotes like dancing by opening Hero and toggling your back off and on. You’d have to be bot-fast to do it for a short emote like /point, though, so machinima might be limited in using the wings.

Here’s mine, previously posted in another thread.

I think you have to opt in, not out, Red Queen.

“To try out content streaming, add -StreamingClient to the end of the target line on your Guild Wars 2 shortcut.”

If you don’t do that, you’re not using the beta streamer.