1) I think the dungeons are difficult for inexperienced players and easy for experienced players. A player coming from WoW has to learn more in this game. It’s not just oh, I’ll just let the tank & heals do their job while I dps, I need to know what the other players spells look like – a shield wall, a veil, is that black/green puddle the necro laying down going to dmg the enemy or heal me?
2) I’m on Sanctum of Rall which is busy around the clock.
3) By the time you level cap you will easily have mostly rare equipment and will be able to do most of the content. It goes Fine>Masterwork>Rare>Exotic>Ascended. The only grind is for Legendary weapons and Ascended gear (jewelry/accessories/back item only). The only reason you would need Ascended is for Fractals and you get enough by doing Fractals to progress to the higher levels. The legendary weapons can be an intensive grind if you focus on it, but the stats are the same as an exotic weapon, it’s for looks/cheeve only.
4) The cash shop has no impact on gameplay or power of characters since it is vanity/convenience items only.
5) Who knows? Some people think that it’s paid game bashers, some people think it’s a few disgruntled GW1 players, the hardcore group cries in every game so take it with a grain of salt 
I just recieved this ingame mail:
The Guild Wars 2 Team
Thank You!
Because you purchased gems through our Gem Store or via a Guild Wars 2 Gem Card between the launch of Guild Wars 2 and June 9, 2013, please enjoy the attached gift from ArenaNet. These minis are available in the Gem Store for a limited time to celebrate Dragon Bash but we wanted you to have a set for free. We really appreciate your continued support!
Attached was a Dragon Bash Mini Pack. In the pack was:
Mini Holographic Branded Minotaur
Mini Holographic Axe-Wielding Destroyer
Mini Holographic Corrupted Wolf
I just want to say how much I appreciate you folks at ArenaNet, I feel positively spoiled by this company. You’ve continued to impress me day after day, month after month, with your imagination, constant attention to the game and the players, devotion to fun and the guts to launch this amazing MMO that goes against the standard.
Thank you
That was so freaking amazing and such an awesome surprise! Thank you
I get bored of farming easily so I don’t do it very much. A half hour here or there and I’ve had my fill.
One of the main reasons I love this game is there no gear treadmill so I can just jump in the game and do whatever I feel like doing that day – without guilt, without pressure, just pure unadulterated fun.
This week I have:
Played in the Eternal Battlegrounds jumping puzzle. We had about 25 players each world in there – a massive battle, it was glorious fun! We were all setting off the traps, laughing our kittens off, knocking each other off ledges, back and forth play all over the place. It was amazing fun. I gained much respect for the indominatable spirit of a certain charr necro/asura guardian team
Went to Queensdale, found some new players and answered questions, gave a budding elementalist a how-to on the profession, reveled in their wonder at this amazing world and made some new friends.
Found a couple peeps to run the Straits of Devastation event to get quaggan tonics. That Champ Risen Broodmother is haaaarrrddd! But we finally did it, got our tonics, sat by a WP and messed with people as they zoned in. Lots of laughs on all sides.
Showed someone the entrance to Troll’s End jumping puzzle. Lol, I always love people’s reaction to that.
Now I still jump in dragon fights now and then because I love them to death, but I don’t do them nearly as much as I use to. Honestly I think I liked them more when I would spend my play session dragon hunting before the timers existed. The scoping out of the pre-events and all that. Still, lots of fun, but I’m not banging on the Shatterer’s toe – I’m chasing down the adds which can really really hurt if I get careless. I’m much more likely to find a group to run some of the lesser known but spectacular event chains like opening the Font of Rhand or Hidden Garden or Zho’qafa Catacombs or the Dwayna events.
Gold has such little value in this game, and it comes so easily why chase it? I got my legendary this week, but I didn’t farm for it, I just accumulated stuff as I played. I only ran CoFpie a handful of times, just enough to get the tokens gift.
Another idea, since you have fun in WvW, do you jump in your server’s Teamspeak and join in the strategies? Maybe conduct workshops for new players and show them the incredible depth that’s there beyond the zerg? I don’t know, it sounds like you need to find some like-minded friends, people that are more interested in playing the game rather than farming it and you’ll find that freshness again
Graphics don’t mean squat if the game isn’t fun
In that case, WoW loses on both counts!
I heard WoW was bleeding subs like no tomorrow, but the way they keep working the GW2 forums they must really be hurting 
You might have better luck over in the API forum
I’m quite happy with the amount of updates in GW2, but I wish more of it was permanent.
Rift is/was P2P and I was impressed by all the content they released on a regular basis. But, last I heard, they are going F2P as well, or have already done so.Edit: @Karizee, I don’t mind paying a sub and I definitely felt it’s been worth it in most of the MMOs I’ve played. GW2 has so far cost me more money each month than any MMO with a sub.
And I’ve spent less
In this game I have a choice on when and how much to spend for vanity items and zero cost for content.
I also love that I can use my ingame gold to buy those vanity items and even character services like transfers, name changes, character re-customization, etc.
Attachments:
Attachments:
This daughter of Ascalon reached the pinnacle of her epic journey today with the creation of Incinerator
I used this video as inspiration for the home stretch. He tells of his road to incineration, how we must embody hell – becoming servant to the flame in order to wield its untouched glory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnyNTwic9AU
Thank you JawDane, wherever you are.
Hands down the best community I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing with
If 3 rangers use the “Call of the Wild” warhorn ability at the same time, a Lunar Wolf is summoned.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Call_of_the_Wild
One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen a developer put in an MMo
You only need 10 samples so you can skip that one
this could be a best seller at the gem store!
level 80 upgrade!
You can pretty much do this now since crafting gives so much experience. You get 10 levels per craft and can learn all crafts on each character.
Takes a couple hours and a few golds;
http://www.gw2crafts.net/
Very convenient for leveling alts!
As you guys see, we did identify and fix a bug. Thanks to everyone for your help identifying the issue and providing great data for me to start with in my research.
Cheers all,
good luck in the future.
TY John!
So if it’s just a dungeon with more people, what exactly about raids makes them so popular?
There’s the fallacy.
They are only popular with a very small niche community. Even WoW with it’s 8 million subscribers has less than 300k people raiding.
Whoa, that’s news to me – There’s really only 300,000?! I can’t recall meeting any player who has not participated in a normal mode raid, let alone LFR. Do you have a link to this article? I’d be interested in reading up on it.
No article needed. This links directly into their armory.
Scroll down, 26,569 guilds have downed 1 boss (Jin’rokh) Of those, 25,836 are 10 man groups, the rest are 25 man groups.
It really is a very very tiny portion of the mmorpg community that likes raiding. They make a lot of noise but the numbers just aren’t there.
So this is ignoring the implementation of LFR, not to mention is a 3rd-party site? Sorry, this is probably a good representation of some of the higher level population in the game that raids, but it’s also missing a good majority of the more casual players in LFR. I’d be interested in actual Blizzard statistics and/or the population that raided prior to LFR for a more accurate representation. Can you literally think of any WoW players you know that have not raided in some capacity (LFR/normal/Hard)?
People doing LFR aren’t the hardcore PVEer’s looking for challenging raid-like structure that you referenced in your initial post.
In fact, those LFRers are much more likely to enjoy guild missions or meta events
Tip: If you use an Invisible bag or box in your inventory, the items in it will not be deposited to collectibles nor will they appear in vendor sell panes.
Thank you for the tip, I honestly didn’t know that. Seems more like a player fix in which I’ll have to spend some gold on the TP to get XD but I suppose it’s better than nothing if there’s no other fix.
You can craft them with Tailoring or Leatherworking also
Anthrage mentioned the adminstrative work the casters had to do to pull this together, but I’m not sure everyone understands just how much they actually had to do and how LONG this cast was.
At one point about 5 hours into it, Blu mentioned that he was hungry and I thought, jeez – he must be starved! He’s been at this since early this morning, coordinating the teams and their schedules, working with the software programs and synching everything up, all this stuff without even a break. I mean I watched a good bit of it but I was free to get up and get a drink or a snack or take a kitten or w/e. They were just exhausted, I’m sure.
I think they overextended themselves a bit with this first Invitational just with the sheer length of the cast, but I applaud their effort and think we can all do much more to support their efforts. Also, these guys are pretty humble and open to constructive critique – help, don’t bash
I understand that they don’t want to commit to a 2 week content patch schedule, but this makes 6 weeks in a row which is pretty darn exciting. I mean, I was blown away by free monthly content patches – this is really incredible
Free content patches every two weeks – this is insane haha!
No company is doing this, GW2 is really setting the bar
Looks like swimwear is coming on the 28th or maybe sometime in June
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1euooo/upcoming_gemstore_items_may_edition/
(edited by Karizee.8076)
They probably haven’t unlocked these areas yet – hints of things to come!