Guild Wars 2

It’s the Rainbow Phoenix thing all over again ^^ Look up the Rainbow Phoenix from GW. People complained about it because it was so big and obnoxious and rainbowy, but it was the end-game Ranger pet. Plus this only affects two professions: Rangers and Thieves (and there are other weapon options!).

I’m seriously tempted to get it just so I can own people in WvW with it and put them into shame for being beaten by a girl with a unicorn bow (and it will be nice and massive on my Norn) xD

Shiny purple weapons (tormented) were the leet weapons in GW. Why can’t a unicorn bow be a legendary in GW2?

And for all those who say GW2 is dark and serious. Shatterer is cute. The Sylvari area is shiny and pretty. There are quaggan. Even Orr isn’t that dark. And humans? They were complete idiots in GW (trusted the White Mantle, the Vizier, etc). So they deserve their place (beyond that the HUMAN left Destiny’s Edge when fighting a dragon). Plus there are jokes all over the place.

I’ve been fully through a friend’s and up to level 50 on mine (I haven’t gone through the dungeon yet because we want to do it when we’re all there on our storylines). It gets really hard to motivate myself to go past level 50 in my storyline because I already know the story. It’s hardly any different for different races/backgrounds. Beyond that it seems to take ages. And half of it is hopping to one place, dialogue, then hopping back out to where you where and beyond (which makes it annoying with waypoint cost). The two missions that were memorable to me were the Claw Island battle (if I recall correctly) and the mission in orr where in the background it plays the “fear not this night” tune and I think you’re fighting an eye of Zhaitan. But those are the only two.

I’d also like to see more responsive dialogue to your character’s background and race. And also, that Asura don’t talk like humans or Norn don’t talk like Asura, etc. My friend was an Asura and it seemed like he had some really awkward dialogue lines. But the main annoyance with the end storyline is that the levels seem to be far less spaced out and there seems to be a lot more just dialogue and simple little battles that don’t really feel epic. It feels a bit sudden to me when you get to the dragon, also.

I find that before level 50 the storylines are really interesting. It’s that 50-80 that seem dull (I know it was intended to be an epic lead-up to the dragon, but it falls flat for the most part). Partly because if you’re an altaholic, why would you want to go through such similar storylines? I know there are some branches, but I’m not sure I can see them being that different. And with the lack of responsiveness in dialogue, it makes it considerably less personal towards the end.

I personally don’t mind Traherne. He at least gives the story some interest. I think it would be much flatter without his story (which you can argue is a good or bad thing).

Though I kinda wonder if it would’ve been better to have stories like that for each race either focused on the individual or a different NPC of that race. Like maybe the five could have different functions. Like one cleansing Orr, one leading the orders, etc. That way it feels a bit more personal and you can have different storylines for different races with the same end. Even if it’s an NPC (Destiny’s Edge even?), you can feel like you’re buddies going on your Great Hunt/Wyld Hunt/etc together. It would also feel less like someone’s stealing your thunder as some people have complained.

ArenaNet is a rather PvP oriented group (going by the trend in GW, the updates will be prioritised thus: PvP, then PvE, then WvW). They had a fantastic system in GW, they just need time to make it as fantastic in GW2. They had a MUCH MUCH bigger plan for PvE in GW2 than GW, which is currently hurting their focus on PvP, but soon enough, they’ll have probably all the content they intended to have in PvE out so they can really focus on PvP (and I guarantee you PvP updates will be coming, while PvE ones are).

Also, wait a little for people to get their characters/more of their characters to level 80. I only intend on PvP once I know the profession from going through PvE to level 80 with it and get all the skills (yeah, I know you level up, but PvE is a bit of training wheels, if you will).

Plus, wait until some people get their fix of WvW before they go to PvP. You go from PvE -> WvW -> PvP. In GW I used FA and JQ (the closest thing to WvW) for awhile before going to PvP as it was a training ground. Unfortunately I came in the game too late to really get into PvP. This time’s going to be different though.

Obviously these people I mentioned aren’t the “hardcore” people you want, but they’ll certianly add variety to PvP.

As a GW1 Mesmer, GW2 is for me. Though, I do agree that PvP (not WvW!) is less intriguing due to lack of options of modes. I think WvW is great.

As far as PvE goes, it is much superior. Though there were hundreds of skills in GW1, you only used probably 20 of them (2 builds, plus a couple of flexible skills). The only other time you’d use (maybe) a different build would be in a dungeon, but even in dungeons (elite areas) there were only so many builds and you would be expected to use a particular build (Mesmers had practically one use after they were updated: Use Panic in any dungeon/elite area/PvE/whatever reducing the amount of elite skills possible to use from probably 3 prior to that update to 1 – and they had far more than 3 elite skills to choose from). The reason I played PvP was so that I could use different builds (even then, I only used basically 3 different builds that were solid)!

Stats? You were expected to have a particular set of stats for your profession. And they severely limited the amount of effective skills you could use on your bar. You could use at most 3 skill types to be effective. With a Mesmer you needed Inspiration (to manage energy) and Fast Casting (which had basically no useful skills, but it made your profession and enabled you to be less likely to be interrupted, to get the “first shot in,” and to interrupt better, which, I admit, I kind of miss that role in GW2) so you couldn’t blend Domination and Illusion magic efficiently (and they would have worked so well together if it weren’t for the necessity of Inspiration magic for decent energy management). The energy management required 1-2 skills, along with a healing skill, and a resurrection skill. This resulted in only have 4-5 skill slots open on my bar for any build (which is, guess what, lower or equal to how many we have in GW2 to choose from any skills not stat-dependent!). This isn’t even taking into consideration that we have 15 skills available to use not including profession skills in GW2, whereas we only had 8 in GW1 (and were locked into those 8 ) and in GW1 we didn’t have traits to add effects.

Other professions were similar as you got into the game. My husband was a “splinter-Barrage” ranger. He hardly ever used any other elite/build just because nothing was as effective in PvE. In PvP, he could have more variety! He also had to keep stats heavily on his profession one for energy management, have stats on marksmanship, and he had to secondary as a Ritualist and have stats on Channeling for splinter weapon. He hardly ever changed a skill once we got deep enough into the game. But at least his build had more flexibility. Note: Though he had many options for elite skills, he (practically) could only use one if he went into Hard Mode or an elite area, etc. Whereas now, in GW2 he has more, valid, options for elite skills.

I played GW for a little over 2 years and it was long-in-the-tooth for me then (I’ve done all content but the Underworld, which I have no desire to do considering my three-man group). I’ll definitely be able to get 5+ years out of GW2.

Keep in mind, too, that GW has expansions and GW2 has not had one yet (adding to the number of skills in GW).

Thanks everyone for your answers! I’m glad to hear we can do that. I’m just hoping that “guesting” gets fixed soon!

Is this in any way possible?

I didn’t go to the server of my guildie from GW1 because I assumed that guesting would be enabled fairly early on (I suppose we still could with free world transfers – at least I’m assuming, but I’d prefer not to). Same with another person I met in GW2 (though they’re both on different servers).

I’d at least like to play with (at least one of) them for dungeons and perhaps storyline if nothing else.

My guild only has three level 80s and one level 25, so 1-2 more would make a nice, rounded, 5 for us – depending on when we want to do the dungeon (if we wait for the level 25, we still only have 4 – which is possible, but more annoying, especially if I read correctly at the dungeon we’re stuck at – the one at the end of the personal storyline). If you just suggest “pugging,” we are not fond of it. I’d rather not. It’s always more fun anyway when you’re playing with people you know.

The three of us that are level 80 are at the end of our storyline, but stuck at the dungeon due to lack of other players. We’ll probably wait for our other guildie to get there so we don’t have to do it multiple times, but we’d like to have another player to round out the 5 for the dungeon – and preferably someone we already know.

Beyond self-defence for when their devices go awol, there is an Asuran Warrior in GW1: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Renk (you can draw inspiration from him)

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Prenuptial_Disagreement_%28female%29

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Prenuptial_Disagreement_%28male%29

Though they may not be able to interbreed, a Norn might “desire” your hero :P

Human Dervishes in GW1 used to be able to transform into avatars of the Gods, but the human Gods are quieter now, so perhaps that is the reason for only an avatar or two.

Whereas, IMO, the Norn revere the animals and ask for their strengths to help them and they’re also very close to the animals they revere (“in-tune” with them if you will).

I like your name Sounds good to me!

My ranger is named Lorelei Bloodmoon. I liked the song Loreley from Blackmore’s Night and it has a bit of a cool watery, feminine myth to it, so I like it (you can wiki Lorelei if you like). The surname comes from my husband’s Noiram Bloodmoon (we’re roleplaying them as married in-game, too). He chose Bloodmoon because it is another name for the hunter’s moon (and fits both Norn and Rangers).

My warrior, Lakia Bloodmoon, came from GW1. I didn’t think I’d like warriors, but I’ve grown quite fond of her. Lakia means “found treasure” in Arabic, I believe. Her story will be that she was raised by a pack of wolves (her totem is the wolf) and she has the name Bloodmoon because of the wolfs raising her (so she’s not related to Lorelei). And her name is Lakia because the wolves found her alone, respected her surviving capabilities, and raised her as one of their own.

I really didn’t think I’d get this much into role-playing, but that just happens with the Norn, doesn’t it?

This was the first event that I can say overall, I did not enjoy it. I would have liked to have been able to do the scavenger hunt throughout the weekend, rather than for just a day – I was not able to complete it, even with it extended through Phase 2, though I could have completed it had it been extended through Phase 3. I have no idea what the event Miyani was doing – the text as to what to do confused me. I do not know what Phase 2 even was. All I knew is that the new map reminded me of Embark Beach in GW1 and was a very nice landscape artistically. Also, the story seemed non-existent (for the entirety of the weekend).

Phase 3 is an entirely different animal. The multiple times you had to kill waves of reinforcements just plain seemed dull. The only thing I found cool in Phase 3 was the avalanche created by players. I didn’t even get to see the final cut-scene because the way point was so far away from the final boss. A way point closer to the boss would have also solved the issue of my guildie not being able to get the loot/us not being able to fight the final boss after being involved in the event for 2.5 hours at that point. A way point and/or an interface (system like that you get after completing steps in your story or your daily or even just completing an event) or mail system based reward system would have been much better. Because my guildie didn’t get his loot and overall I wouldn’t consider that 2.5 hours “fun”, the event left a bad taste in my mouth and I didn’t want to play GW2 again for awhile. I will now, though, now that I know there will be a solution. But I want to see it (hopefully soon).
Also, out of fairness, “flashback” events could occur so people from all time zones could participate in the event fairly comfortably without having to be up at strange hours.

Oh, the dungeon was nifty, too. Just, for our group of 3 currently, not possible to finish.

My guildie and I had to revive at a waypoint right when the event was ending and people were killing the final karka (we’d been fighting nearly the whole time). Because of the long stretch of land (with really nasty monsters on it) between the waypoint and the boss, he became defeated, I had to revive him, we ran down, and somehow we split and he became defeated again. I was able to get my reward, but I was not able to revive him amongst all the karka before the chest disappeared. The worst part of it is he is our chef, the one who could make most use of the 20-slot bag.

Because of this situation, and I’m certain my guildie isn’t alone looking at comments, I’d like to see some sort of method for those who took part in the event to acquire the 2 unique items from this “event” (it was a chest, rather than using the interface reward system or mail system, either of which would have solved the situation). Those two items being of course the 20-slot and the ancient karka shell.

Using that list, other colors possible would be Midnight Rust, Mahogany, Chocolate for the primary color.

Perhaps Midnight Gold, Adobe also for the secondary color.

Cocoa also seems rather fitting of the primary color or at least a highlight, depending on how dark the primary color is…. Actually Cocoa seems just about right to me.

Perhaps even a highlight of taupe or pumpkin pie is in there.

I think Antique Brass probably fits the primary color closer.

On the same website these are browns: http://flufffactor.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/gw2-brown/

I’m in the predicament of Lindelle… I want T2 and T3 for my Norn…. And I want Nightmare for my Sylvari and likely T2 and T3 for that too…. sigh…. And I definitely want to transmutate the T2 Norn armor to level80…. Going without Eir’s set and the T2 just seems inconceivable to me… so I will have to find a way to get the funds for the armor sets and transmutate the T2 armor…

Why did ArenaNet’s designs for Medium armor have to be so amazing and their Scholar armor to be so limiting? It practically necessitates my Sylvari getting cultural armor (because she’s a scholar) and the awesomeness of the Medium armor… well I just cannot refuse.

Dante: I like trenchies, they never get old for me

@Arsenal, I think the Norn children are around human adult height!

My Norn female characters are offended! Haven’t you looked one in the eye? Don’t they have that intimidating look to them? I love it! They look like they could stare you into the ground. Even with makeup and star tattoos. I made an ele Norn with star tattoos just for kicks and I found her in that frilly miniskirt and star tattoos still with a very determined look on her face like she could beat you up if she so desired.

Either way, I’d probably prefer a few more roughed up options, but they’re so much better well done than the human anime 12-15 year old faces, plus maybe that one to two sad 28-30 looking face that the human females have (it’s good they added options for faces for the humans, but it just seems off since they have nothing in the middle and you can make/draw a character to look older, mature, and still come off as stylish/pretty/determined rather than sad and/or tired – bags under the eyes?!).

I am not a fan of body sliders (you start having a rather disturbed looking character with too many), but customizing the makeup would’ve been a great option and of course adding some more builds. But I do love the musle on the Norn. It’s fantastic!

I love the confidence of the Norn. It is part of what drew me to them. They are so confident and optimistic, even in the worst of times. They seem to truly enjoy life and its challenges. I do quite enjoy their racial sayings. I can’t help but grin when my Norn says “I am awesome.” Indeed, Norn are awesome.

To me, it’s definitively a “combat readiness” or pose for best leverage/attack strength (no matter if you’re the strongest, you still want the best leverage technique so you can hit that much harder than a weaker person with a technique that uses the max leverage – If you didn’t use max leverage in your technique it could enable the weaker person to win the battle as they’d have better technique). In many sports, the legs bent just means “ready” – related to what TinyHowie was saying.

Oh… and keep in mind, weapons scale to race so Norn women carry bigger weapons than Asura women!

The forms would break the armor! Though that would be a cool effect…

You can run it in bootcamp on low settings probably (~30fps). The computer looks similar to mine. I’m content with running it in Bootcamp at these settings. I can’t run it on OS X though.

It depends on if you want to play with best performance. If you want best performance, bootcamp will always be the better choice as the mac client is not a native port (it is just using a fork of wine for Macs). If you do not mind lowering your performance, then go ahead and run it in Mac OS X. Mine is mid-2009 and I plain cannot run it in Mac OS X and can only run it in Windows on lowest settings so…

BlurKiller: You’re not the only one. I personally like the Norn dance the most. It’s the most amusing. Love the facial expression. But I would like to see more options for dances. At the very least it does seem odd that both the females and males do the same dance (and in GW we had more options – a male and female for each profession! – by the end there were 10 professions/20 dances). The main thing that’s nifty about them doing the same dance is that you can sync dance with more people.

Though my “main” character is a Sylvari Mesmer, I just absolutely love the Norn. My second-most played character is a Norn Ranger (and I intend on getting the second and third tier cultural armors for her!). I personally think Eir and Caithe are the most reasonable out of the five. I’d say I slightly favor Eir over Caithe out of the five. I really like the blend of cultures that the Norn have… and interestingly, out of the “race communities” I prefer hanging around the Norn community (maybe it’s the laid back, more optimistic attitude?). Besides, the Norn are just plain epic.

As far as humans go, I’m already a human, why should I want to be one in a game if I have an option not to be? I also second Uberrod’s opinion. Norn female characters look so much more awesome than human females.

And yes, EoTN rocks Jora was one of my favorite characters along with Vekk. Plus, you can’t go wrong with “Norn don’t need armies, we are Norn!”

I’ll have to admit, I was thinking that my favorite races in order would be Sylvari, Asura, Norn, Human, then Charr. Now it’s Norn/Sylvari, Asura, Charr/Human. But once I played a Norn and saw their race week, that was it for me!

Thanks for the information. Well, my computer barely meets the min requirements for the Windows game so it definitively doesn’t meet the requirements for the Mac Beta Client. Also, a) I don’t like Mountain Lion (I particularly am not fond of its iOS-like features – which is basically what it changed from Leopard/Snow Leopard) b) It’s too expensive to upgrade just for GW2 even if I did meet the min specs. and also c) I’m not sure it would be smart to upgrade my Mac OS while tri-booting…

I was intending to do a performance comparison between how PlayOnMac runs GW2 and how the Beta Client runs via Transgaming…

As it turns out my OS is too old to run either (Leopard (10.5.8)). I didn’t think there was much of a difference between Leopard and Snow Leopard enough to upgrade. Neither will let me even try

Anyway, I’d certainly be interested in the results if anyone is willing to try… just Google PlayOnMac. (as PlayOnMac runs on Snow Leopard systems and the beta client runs on Lion+). I was thinking that PlayOnMac might be a solution for older systems.

As for me, it looks like my only options are PlayOnLinux and Windows. I’m intending to try PlayOnLinux later (if it works, which I’m thinking it will, but that basically means that the Mac “port” was pointless for me and I have a Mac…).

My husband plays a Ranger as his main and really likes the Warrior as his secondary character… perhaps the Ranger would be a good alt? Just try a few though and see what you like

DarkVengeance.5042:

I’m using a brand new macbook pro retina display 2.6 GHz i7 16GB RAM …. i get half the frame rate on my mac that i do on this same laptop bootcamped…

there’s something wrong with this picture why do i feel like they just wrapped their game in a wine skin or something… this isn’t a real port or the performance wouldn’t be this terrible.

They did just wrap the game with Transgaming/Cider (which is a fork of Wine). I’m hoping to do some performance tests this weekend on my min-spec Mac for Windows (below req for Mac game).

@Danikat
In PVE, the some of the armors depend on what level you are. I think the armor sets you have are mostly correct except for two:
Country Pants can be a mini-skirt at lower levels.
Acolytes Pants are a ridiculously tiny mini-skirt at least until level 60, if not all the way to level 80 PvE (I have not reached level 60 in PvE to test this theory, but I saw level 60 Acolyte armor in WvW that shows the skirt/pants you are talking about – it’s also a mini-skirt in WvW until level 60). Unfortunately this is THE set that drops EVERYWHERE. Thankfully I have a HoM, but I know some people aren’t so lucky >_<
That is mainly a warning so that when you see Acolyte Armor you don’t get your hopes up for something decent. It’s by far my least favorite Scholar Armor set. Hopefully in PvE it will turn into something nicer by Level 60, but I’m not going to be surprised if it’s still that way by level 80.

I believe there are two cultural armor sets for humans that are pants for scholars.

Sometimes I’ve literally laughed at female scholars, especially humans because of how silly they look. Sometimes I’ve been disturbed by female scholars with some of the armor sets because of where they reveal skin o.O

I’m so glad my Mesmer (current primary character) is a Sylvari. At least with looking silly you can blame on their curiosity and their cultural armor is fantastic.

I’m 100% with FootDive. Where is the cool and stylish Mesmer-like armor that GW1 had? And they had really cool pants-sets.

Oh no, I just realized I made a Human Necromancer. I better change that Necro’s race…thankfully I haven’t done anything with her.

I would definitely like to see a Linux version. I tri-boot my Mac. On Windows I can only run GW2 on lowest settings and I am below the system requirements for the Mac OS version. I would like to have another option. Beyond that I am not fond of the newest Windows or Mac operating systems (Mountain Lion, Windows 8 ), so in the future (and I intend to be playing GW2 for awhile) I am likely to be primarily using Linux, maybe dual-booting Windows for work if absolutely necessary.

@Chobiko: I have had my Windows XP disk for a long time, it was my last native Windows machine. I do not want to spend the money to buy a Windows OS disk (they are quite expensive) when I already have an XP install disk. So sticking to Windows XP when Windows 7 is (arguably) better, might be what someone needs to do if they do not want to fork up the money or just plain cannot afford it at the moment (plus, XP is still a solid OS).

@Silvaria I tri-boot my Mac (an early 2009 Mac) with Windows XP, Fedora, and Leopard(The only use I saw in Snow Leopard was improved PDF highlighting which wasn’t enough for me). TBH, I really dislike the new Lion and Mountain Lion systems and OS. I dislike the trackpad works like it would on an iPhone (bugs me – it is a computer, not a phone) and all the other extra junk to make it look like an iPhone/iPad. Plus, I have heard it is awful when working with Parallels (which is basically a must if you use your computer for work). In my personal opinion, it would be a bad sacrifice just for GW2, especially because the hardware requirements are so high and it may not even make a difference. I would not do it just for GW2. I would either run it in Parallels or Bootcamp. Personally, I am hoping for a Linux version. Both Apple and Microsoft are going down roads with their OS’s I am not fond of.

Keep in mind that discoveries follow a formula with the jeweler.
Band/Hook/Chain + Setting + gem/upgraded gem = item
and
filigree + gem = upgraded gem.

Keep in mind the metals and gems appropriate for your level. Note: I am currently at level 162 in my jeweler discipline.

How did you get your norn in that outfit/armor? It does indeed look fabulous especially with his expression xD