Guild Wars 2

Ascended items need Fractals or Laurels. Exotics can be crafted, dropped in big chests, or just bought on the TP without worrying where the seller got it.

Population seems to vary server to server and by time of day. I’m lucky enough to be on the NA unofficial RP server, Tarnished Coast. I always see people.

Charr only run on four legs without weapons (and like all other races, are slower with the weapon out. You can keybind a sheathe weapons toggle to rapidly swap states).

The only quest you “collect” is your personal story; it is tracked in the screen upper right.. Everything else is either with hearts (do all the tasks they want, you do not have to talk to them first, just be in the area) or dynamic events. Oh, also you can work on daily quests for xp and laurels, if you bring up the achievement panel in your hero window you will see the list of choices for the day. Those reset at 8 pm Eastern.

Crafting is fun. I find the cooking and armor crafts much more fun than weapons, because you only make boring looking weapons for the most part. It’s free to learn a craft, so once you have some materials (like jute scraps for tailoring) you can give it a go. The real leveling of craft skill comes from discovery. In the discovery panel you can drag 2 to 4 items to the boxes and if it will make something, you can discover how to make that thing. They’ve done a few things to make it more fun, like if you are processing 100 jute scraps it speeds up quickly so you don’t have to grind them out slowly.

I don’t try to make money but I do get gold building up over time. You don’t need tons of the stuff to have effective fun in the game, only to get high end cosmetic items. Crafting is usually not a moneymaker; dungeons are quite lucrative if you don’t get too many repair bills.

I can’t help with guilds, I’m in one designed well before beta. If you’re on Tarnished Coast and want to RP, check guildwars2roleplayers.com for guild listings.

WvW is World v World. It’s a large set of maps with keeps to capture and supply caravans to guard. Hundreds of people can run around in it. While there are some PvE parts of it (some events, skill points, vistas), mostly you are attacking or defending against other players. Three servers go in at time, with a reset to new opponents every … 2 weeks? They may have changed the frequency. I have always loathed PvP because I hate getting ganked but I have enjoyed WvW when running around with friends. Since the enemy names are just the names of their server, not individuals, you get less kitten rage and it feels more like you are just in a very smart AI environment.

Umm … points to above post I like the effect on my warrior.

Pets are account bound and permanent. However, you must have them in your bag to use them, and they count as collectibles. Thus unless you have them in an invisible bag they will go into your bank every time you deposit all collectibles. Also I think they despawn on any zoning or relog. I don’t use them enough to be sure on that.

They are in the collections tab of the bank, at the bottom. Any of your alts can take one out and use it while it is in that alt’s inventory. They are also tradeable, so you can sell them on the TP if you want (make sure to deposit them once in the bank so you get them ticked off on the pet collection achieve).

Is that a good kitten or a bad kitten? I like the effect on my warrior, but she’s a woman with a lot of anger and resentment issues so it fits her. That simmering seething roil might not work so well on a serene zen warrior.

No, it’s a mod.

Pitch is a good choice, yes. Also, as you can preview off the TP, you can look there for dyes you like. It takes a long time to page through and preview every dye but it will show you exactly what it will look like on your particular armor without worrying about a 3rd party site. I did that on my guardian and bought all the cheap ones I wanted and wrote a list of the pricier ones I’d like.

You get an indicator when the heart quest list at the upper right vanishes, and there is a little audible tone, the same as when you enter an area. I’ve learned to keep an eye on that.

I think the Thief meant himself. As Toughness holds aggro more (or so many believe) he was likely ruing having so much Toughness that the karka couldn’t be peeled off him.

Latency I’m not sure but you can see your FPS at the bottom of the options window.

I know of no suicide method beyond jumping off a cliff or letting a foe slay you.

You could try getting on TC in the wee hours. If that fails you can go wherever else you like and then guest over to TC to play with us. You can’t World v. World with us unless TC is your home server, though.

Server is account based as you noted. You can transfer later if you are willing to spend real cash or else to convert game gold (lots of it) to gems. All your characters will move, but any guild you have made will not, i.e. the guild bank remains on the server on which it was created as do all guild benefits.

I hope you can make it onto TC! I’ve been on it since beta as it was selected by players for RP and it continues to be busy and friendly (ignore the trolls and griefers, they exist but are not able to do nearly as much ruination as in WoW).

People go on dedicated fast runs through the Orr zones to collect the orichalcum ore just to sell it. Add in the omnomberries and they get some good coin for the effort.

I don’t know if this matches 4) but I just hit 61 on my Mesmer today and I feel that Mesmers are total hax both on land and in water. (PvE, I don’t PvP and hardly ever WvW). Amazingly tough when downed, lots of flexible play.

My Mesmer doesn’t even have an RP persona and I’m loving playing her, which is nigh unheard of for me. Generally RP drives my leveling.

I don’t know if anything can meet 4) for you unless you want to spend money retraiting a lot. However, since I tend to settle in to one gameplay style per character, others should be better able to address that.

I like this idea. For me it would just be another popup box to click since I am never hunting boss fights but I can see it being highly useful for people that only want to travel to main.

At least now you can join your party in main so if you have friends there already you can group with them to get there faster. I use that feature a lot for getting rp gatherings going.

Pixelpumpkin has a good idea, allowing just one special extra. I’d add in making that one a lowercase start. My main is Donari Mal di Bette, but the game makes it a Di not a di. That would help Iruwen as well, allowing the von.

Someone above complained about two word names. Note that mine is four words! Though I did have to shorten it as originally it was Malo not Mal. 19 characters is a lot but not quiiiite enough for a few of my favored names.

Obviously the restrictions are there to prevent egregious leet speak names that really don’t fit the world, but some loosening could permit a wider range of good names.

Because while you yourself might use it responsibly, a vast number of people would not. They would buy their levels, not have the slightest clue how to actually play the profession, and ruin other people’s experience by failing at the simplest tasks.

It’s pretty amazing ANet’s managed to give sPvP instant 80’s without such issues, but they had to balance very carefully and there is still, I believe, a marked difference between new players and those who have practiced their profession a good deal. In the open PvE world that balance can’t be met.

Yes, yes it is. Name changes weren’t even possible at the start. “Player support” doesn’t mean “doing everything every player asks of them, ever.” If the game software doesn’t allow a particular data change, then there is no solution at this time and thus asking them to change the software becomes a suggestion, which rightfully should be posted here.

I’d assume a guild of your size has a website. You could prominently post on that site about the 500 member limit and the factors that might lead to removing someone from the guild. A lot of what you are asking ANet to put in game notes could be covered that way, and tailored to fit your particular needs.

After all, my guild has maybe a tenth that many, and on a good night with a planned event we might have 15 active. So we don’t need to warn about pruning. We don’t mind if people spend time in other guilds, especially on alts that aren’t ICly in our guild (yes, we are RPers).

Phrasing it as “splitting loyalty” is loaded, too. I wouldn’t presume to tell someone they were being disloyal to me because they spent time being friends with someone else. That’s something else that is subjective to your own guild style. Which leads back to putting it on your site, rather than trying to make a blanket announcement fit every play style in the game.

Please check the forums. There are a LOT of threads on this and a LOT of posts explaining why this is not a good idea for this particular game.

I have seen rumors of a Dragon Festival coming. That might fit the bill for you.

Yes, guild banks are only accessible on their home server.

I do not believe either are available in game. At this time. Yet.

Do want. Do hope. -crosses fingers-

There are no player good/evil factions as such. The game is designed to have the player characters be on the good side. Or at least to have enough enlightened self interest to know that it’s better to work together to fight the dragons than to attack each other while the world is turned to an unliving ruin. There are definitely tensions as the Charr and Humans were in all out war until a treaty a year or two ago. But none of the five races are at war with the others.

This means you can team up with anyone of any race. Choice of race affects very little in the game beyond aesthetics and the start of one’s Personal Story. Racial skills are more for flavor than game changers. Norn and Charr have some issues with jump puzzles due to their bulk, though.

Every profession can heal, yes. But no one can heal friends enough to only heal in a fight, that’s a losing proposition. You are meant to heal yourself. Caveat: My guardian has an elite skill that heals the whole party up to full, but has a 3 minute cooldown and takes a few seconds of channeling time.

Several million copies sold in this game, my server is the unofficial US RP server so it’s always vibrantly full. Yes, a lot play!

There are no tanks/healers/dpsers as such. This game has no trinity. Every profession does all three, sometimes on the fly in one fight. That being said, guardians tend more to support and thieves more to pure damage with very little support. It’s all in how you build your character’s traits and gear, and which weapon sets you choose.

I can see the dark side where griefers ping the defeated just to make them wait for a rez that’s not coming. If that issue can be resolved, I’m all for this.

I have just started my first ranger and omg YES PLEASE. I spent a good while on an Old Norse dictionary site picking out good names for all the things I’ve tamed and it didn’t even occur to me to write them down. Wasted time, I have to research all over again.

Many weapons and armors share skins across a range of levels and rarities, but yes, you do have to get an actual item with a few exceptions. There are occasional skins from special events or sold in the gem store. Also for badges of honor you can get various armor skins in your borderlands keep in wvw.

Mostly you look for the cheapest thing you can find with the look you want, and transmute that onto your stat item.

A great fast way to find armor you want is at
http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=2&race=2&color=10&sex=1

Just pick race/gender/weight of armor, click a color (I like the far right clear one, it makes details easiest to see). Look for a set you like, click that, and below the turnaround set of shots click Acquisition. It gives you a wide range of places to go to find those pieces, and if you click on a vendor name it opens the wiki page to help you find the vendor.

So much faster than scrolling through page after page of TP armor mixed from all weights!

I will note that a very kind soul saw my post here and sent me info in game. The Lionguard hat CAN be worn PvE! You need 20 badges of honor, I believe. Go to your Borderlands keep, head to the little set of vendors in the covered area. The female vendor to the front has tabs; bottom tab, and scroll all the way down to Conquest, and you get the skin.

I have been so happy with my Thief’s look ever since.

Do you mean the letter you got? Unless you sentimentally want to keep it for the text, it’s absolutely not needed. The letter is only there to make sure you know you have a dungeon available. I’ll assume this one was for Ascalon Catacombs as you sound new to the process and that is the first one. That’s in NE Ashford Plains. Either get 4 friends along who are around your level or higher, or go to the entrance and ask for a slot, or check the lfg website.

You never need the letter to get in and do a dungeon, just to be the right level. Once you do the story version of the dungeon, that alt can thereafter start up explorable mode there.

A guild has to start it and pay the influence to make it go. But this game is all about being able to help and not kill-steal etc, so of course others can help get the guild mission complete. The merits and influence gained all go to the sponsoring guild, however.

I stand corrected! Though I’d still suggest working on it before the 27th if you have the time at all (it’s only a few hours worth of game time total) so you are prepped and ready for the next set of achieves to come out.

It has the same icon and mechanics of equipping/swapping as the candy meter thingie from Mad King. Though I didn’t realize that at first either, I just happened to spot a line in Duilfy’s guide that clued me in. At which point it became seamlessly obvious to me since I had done Mad King.

Hopefully it’s the sort of thing people can figure out with a short question and answer in Map chat.

The sticky at the top of this forum has a title that says it goes to May 28.

Which means get things done by May 27. If you follow Duilfy’s guide you’ll have it very quickly barring hardware issues preventing you from playing. Many people had it within hours of release; I got it this evening since I do a movie with my husband on Tuesday evenings and thus couldn’t play last night.

Go down to the beach from where Ellen Kiel is. When you find yourself in your undies, look to the tables. He’s in the red speedo.

I can’t talk to WvW usefulness, PvP of any flavor not being my driving passion, but I have very much enjoyed my sylvari guardian in dungeons. Heck, in one run of the Molten Facility with a pack of Charr, a couple of times I had to just jump off the final boss platform because I was staying alive but not damaging the boss enough to make it worth everyone’s time watching me as they lay dead … they called me a “resilient little twig.”

Not only does she survive well, as a rule she extends everyone else’s life with all her aegis and such, plus the Elite heal gets everyone to full if I can channel it before someone goes down.

I use scepter/focus mostly, with sword/shield for a change of pace, and utilities that block and protect. I feel very useful indeed.

Oddly the letter arrived on my little level 10 when I zoned her into Frostgorge. And it’s not showing on my other alts. Odd to have Eir saying “We couldn’t have done it without you” when all this alt did was fling arrows into a few level 13 dredge. Still my main was able to use the bonfire and get the achieve and the boon.

One trick is to /sleep. That takes you below the camera range, though it still affects angles of view.

SE Mount Maelstrom, the Kelp Beds. The south area of the shore has a lot of crabs, it’s where I go for Ambient Killer. If you stray a bit you’ll run into Inquest, and you want to keep an eye on the patrolling Champion, but as long as you don’t tag one of the yellow critters like the hermit crabs you will not get any aggro with just a little bit of awareness.

“Valkyrie’s Jewel” sounds like one of the things you get in sPvP. Check the Mists lobby vendors. You get jewels for free from them but they only apply to your sPvP gear.

Navzar, the one Kenage found is easily reachable, it’s part of the Grove. Go to the bottom level to a waterfall on the northish side. There are two pools of water. Jump into the left one and swim through the tunnel.

I use that grotto all the time for my sylvari’s commune-with-Mother sessions. Just be aware that you run the risk of surprising ERPers in there.

Sometimes that’s even a disadvantage. I saw an ANetter in the LA bank on Tarnished Coast last week. S/he was being very good natured about the swarm of people mobbing him/her, but really just wanted to head out and play. Yet people kept lobbing guild invites, questions, squeezing in photo ops …

I’m so glad I’m not famous. Life’s much more pleasant that way

I can see these being very fun indeed, with one caveat. The two games I’ve fished in WoW and LotRO, both required you to be ready to click the bobber at a random moment when a fish “bit.” Which means not being able to RP so much when every 20 seconds or so my hand has to be hovering on my mouse and my eyes glued to a tiny point on the screen. That removes the relaxing fun part of it for me, big time, and turns it into a jaw-cracking yawn fest.

So I’d want the typical ANet treatment of “what isn’t fun about this? Let’s get rid of that!” if they added in such a thing. Not that I can think how it would be made fun, but then again I’m no game designer -grins-.

Oh my. Yes, there have been many calls for NPC garb made into player armor/townclothes, but you added in some very pretty pictures to help make the point.

Here’s a personal story outfit that I want so much for my warrior (she’s the one modeling it in this shot and it is ICly -perfect- for her):

http://i48.tinypic.com/sbhq51.jpg

StriderShinryu is right, I should have been clear on that. I did the 12 puzzles last month including a few I’d never seen and it was a lot of fun. The only reason I haven’t done all 12 this month yet is that I am saving them for some RP adventures.

The goal is 100 veterans, 500 salvages, 100 events … that’s off the top of my head. Jumping puzzles you just need 12, and Fractals are just 10, which you can do inside of 3 runs if at least one run is of an even number level so you get the bonus fractal.

I’ve daydreamed about couples dancing in an MMO since, well, since I started playing MMOs. I yearn for it even more now that my arches and general physical condition preclude me from RL waltzing.

Of the new dances, the middle one (the works pretty well with a couple facing each other. It has a Swing feel to it. The built in sync is awesome as well, and could be a step towards physically-linked dances later. I have posted Suggestions here in the past for linked couples dancing. The mixed race issues are a problem, I agree, but I do have faith in ANet’s creativity.

The elitist uses of this are why it’s bad for this game. That means that even making it optional won’t help, because the elitists who would kick you for not having “acceptable” gear would do so for your refusal to toggle on their access to your Hero panel.

I play all 3. Thief 80 (my main for the game), Warrior 80 (strong in RP), and Mesmer 52.

Thus far the Mesmer is by far the most fun and versatile in PvE. Only my guardian is tougher to kill in a fight. Mesmers are apparently desired in dungeons as well.

I admit I do GS/Rifle on my Warrior, mostly because it suits her RP style, and because in leveling it did make me pretty tough. I don’t really PvE with her these days. My Mesmer doesn’t even have RP, I’m having so much fun leveling her even without it that I am amazed. Usually I need story driving my characters to engage my interest.

Give them all a whirl for a bit, see what appeals to your style the most.

You can also get to an edge in Fields of Ruin. Go to the south edge of the branded area, that sort of “alley” heading up the west edge of the map. At the very start you can jump around on the purple branded rocks and get up to see the edge; part of the way you wade through what your eye tells you is solid rock.

My first edge found was on the west edge of … Sparkfly? Whichever map has a rockfall-blocked road going west. I believe it’s from the south side of that that you can clamber up the ridge and go see the world’s end.

Nothing but flat ocean as far as you can see, and if you stand at the edge and spin your camera you find that the rock underfoot is wafer-thin. Eerie.

Oh, that looks awesome but makes me wonder how one would manage a lengthy gaming session. I like to rest my forearms on my chair arms and have thick pads for my wrists on the desk. I’d think having to hold my arms in the air to gesture would kill my neck in short order.

Maybe it could be a supplemental thing, off to the side, so Kodesh and others in his situation could wave fingers for certain situations but not for an entire session?