Guild Wars 2

There really needs to be three paths to ascended gear:

1. gathering a very large number of crafting materials (current system)
2. completing every dungeon path — story and explorable, and even the mini-dungeons (possibly multiple times), along with fractals
3. earning a very large number of badges of honor

Option 1 is great for the casual explorers. It takes significantly more time, but can be done entirely solo and at one’s own pace.

Option 2: completing each path in a dungeon gives you a unique token for that path. Collect one of every token, along with X-number of some other currency earned through high-level fractals… and maybe a stack of Bloodstone Dust (what else are we going to do with all that stuff?), and you get your choice of a single piece of ascended gear. Rinse and repeat to get another piece.

Option 3 is dead simple. Each piece of ascended gear costs X-number of badges of honor (where X is a sufficiently large number).

Not only do you have the freedom to play the parts of the game you like best and get the same rewards, you can also mix-and-match between different game types — get your chest from crafting, your leggings through dungeons and the rest through WvW, etc. — or whatever ratio matches your play-style.

TEQUATL: “Dude, you don’t report me for going outside the map, I won’t report you. Deal?”

:)

SOUTHPAWS UNITE! Here’s something for the lefties out there.

I play with my mouse in my left hand, and use the numeric keypad with my right hand. Using my mouse’s software, I’ve mapped the left side button to CONTROL and the right side button to SHIFT (i.e. not the primary left and right buttons, but the ones on the sides of the mouse — buttons 4 and 5). And the middle button is loot/interact.

- keypad 8, 4, 6 and 2 (up, left, right, down) for movement; 7 and 9 for strafe
- 0 = jump
- plus = target nearest, SHIFT + plus = next target, CONTROL + plus = previous target
- minus = accept called target, SHIFT + minus = call target
- enter = swap weapon
- 1, SHIFT + 1, CONTROL + 1 = skills 1, 2 and 3
- 3, SHIFT+3 = skills 4 and 5
- 5, SHIFT+5 = skills 6 (heal) and 7 (usually my condition removal / stun break)
- period, SHIFT+period, CONTROL+period = skills 8, 9 and 0
- asterisk = autorun, SHIFT+asterisk = toggle walk/run
- arrow keys (next to the keypad) = the F1 – F4 skills (warrior burst skill, ele attunement swaps, etc)

Remember, all these are on the numeric keypad, and I’ve got SHIFT and CONTROL mapped to mouse buttons 4 and 5. It seems really weird at first (especially if you’re not left handed), but if you look at how it’s laid out it’s actually very ergonomic (for us southpaws at least).

We already have the ability in-game to display external HTML data (the trading post / Black Lion). Why not build a similar UI panel that pulls the text from the stories on the website and displays it in an in-game window?

Have a Lore Master in each capital. When you talk to him, you can choose a dialog option like “Tell me more about the Mad King’s son…” and then up pops a window that displays the story, pulled straight from the website with pictures and all.

Be sure to also craft potions and tuning crystals. Remember that you earn more experience from discovering new recipes than from repeatedly crafting ones you already know, so check the wiki and try to craft all the potions from each tier.

If you like the look then transmute it with another item which has the stats you want.

From Wikipedia:

“Witchers are taken in as children and subjected to potions and martial training for most of their young life. Ultimately, only about 40% of the children survive the final trial and potion. The process gives a witcher special powers, such as the use of low-level magical abilities based on the four elements, faster movement, rapid healing, quicker reflexes, and the ability to drink toxic potions that would harm normal people. The only downside is that Witchers become infertile when they pass the trials.”

I’m thinking an axe/dagger necromancer, who ignores minions and instead focuses on wells and signets.

From the wiki: “It is important to note that conditions only inflict damage over time in one second intervals and any fractional seconds are ignored.”

So, yes – if a skill repeatedly applies a one-second condition, that effect can be nullified if the target has a buff which reduces condition duration. Even though the condition is applied every second, the duration will be reduced to less than one second… and thus the initial damage packet will never trigger.

A previous thread seems to confirm this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/condition-duration-reduced-to-less-than-1-sec

That was from 4 months ago, but unless they’ve changed conditions so that the first damage packet is front-loaded, I think it still applies.

Here on the forums, go to Support > Account Issues. Post in the thread “Tickets for Review (3 days and older) [merged]”.

You won’t get an official answer because they don’t want to get into endorsing or not endorsing every 3rd part program that comes along. But SweetFX is ok to use. It doesn’t provide you any advantage and doesn’t affect the gaming experience of other players.

I’ve used it for the better part of a year, and as long as you download it from the official source its perfectly safe.

Tip #1: If you use SMAA anti-aliasing from SweetFX be sure to disable the FXAA anti-aliasing in game. Thee two can conflict with each other.

Tip #2: Higher values doesn’t mean better picture. Nor does enabling every single effect. Be conservative, both in which effects you apply and what values you set for them.

Once you reach your 25 stacks of Power, it’s actually recommended to switch out to a different weapon because the bloodlust sigil is no longer doing anything for you. Of course, remember to switch back to the bloodlust weapon if you get downed until you rebuild your stacks.

Still works for me.

First, try replacing your config file with a default version – to make sure you don’t have a typo somewhere in your custom settings.

If that doesn’t work, delete all the SweetFX files from your game folder and install a fresh copy.

Temporary workaround: pop into your Hall of Monuments, then pop back out. (Or change maps, but going to the HoM can be done almost anywhere and puts you right back where you were.)

TheRudeDude.1596:

buy armor/weapons for skins and stats separated and be able to change your look without changing your stats and vice versa.

If you’re suggesting a wardrobe system as in LOTRO or Rift, I could definitely get behind that. It would also encourage people to buy more gem store clothing or armor skin items if they could have a wardrobe of appearances and swap between them at will. Heck, ArenaNet could even sell extra wardrobe tabs in the store (give us 2 or 3 appearance sets free, then charge for more). Sounds like a win-win to me.

I wouldn’t be surprised if free skill free respecs were eventually implemented. This was added to GW1 eventually (they didn’t cost gold, but initially they cost attribute refund points which you slowly earned as you leveled). It seems equally logical to me that free respecs make just as much sense here, for all the same reasons. Though, there would still need to be some restrictions on when you could respec. In GW1 you could only respec in towns and outposts, which were standalone public instances separate from the explorable (hostile wilderness) areas. Since towns are not separate instances in GW2, there would need to be some slightly different mechanics — but the intent would still be to keep people from respecing in the middle of a dungeon run and similar “out in the field” situations. Perhaps put trainers in more locations, but make the cost to respec free. The intent of the system is to prevent people from constantly swapping their build for every single one-off fight, and give SOME level of significance to creating a build and sticking with it, but still allowing the freedom to explore and experiment.

I’d also look to see at least one waypoint on each map be free to travel to. In GW1 we could freely travel to any town/outpost. There were far fewer GW1 towns/outposts than GW2 waypoints. So it seems like an acceptable compromise that we could freely travel to somewhere in the general region of where we want to go then hoof it the rest of the way (the equivalent to map travel to an outpost, then entering the explorable area map we want to play). The “price” simply turns into “time”, not “gold”. That’s what we did in GW1, and most everyone was perfectly cool with the system.

All waypoints in capital cities should be free to travel back to from everywhere in the world. Technically, they already are — you just have to jump into the PvP lobby, walk 50 paces forward to take the Asura Gate to Lion’s Arch, waypoint to the gate plaza, then hop through the Asura Gate to your destination city. Why not just make all waypoints in capital cities free to travel to, and cut out those middle steps?

I think these are all reasonable “quality of life” requests, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them get implemented sometime in the future. I will say, though, that if you can’t afford current waypoint costs at level 80 then you’re either waypointing way too much or you’re frittering your money away in other areas. The cost is supposed to be enough to make people think before they just blip all over the place, and prevent people from constantly teleporting directly to their destination and skipping the open world, but not so much that you go bankrupt from doing so a reasonable number of times.

I say do it. It will give more granular details to those who want another tool for theorycrafting and perfecting their build. It will give “a number” for those who want to use gating metrics for joining their group. And it will provide those of us who don’t give a flip a clear indication of which groups we don’t want to join (“LFM CoF P1 — War only, ping DPS check before joining” instantly tells me I can skip that group).

Everyone wins.

I think she’d be pretty ticked that when the charr pressed up to the gates of Ascalon, Adelbern decided to rage-quit and take all his subjects down with him. I could see her view being “If the charr were to wipe us out, then so be it — so long as the last Ascalonian went down fighting. But our nation didn’t die at the hands of the charr. We died at the hands of our own king in a desperate, despicable and selfish act of cowardice.”

She’d be suspicious of the charr and the treaty, but not outright hostile toward them. She’d probably warn the Vanguard to keep an eye on the charr, in case they decide to alter the terms of the deal. But for now, working with them — at arm’s length, mind you — is the smarter tactical move. But when the Dragons are defeated, you better keep your blades out because humanity’s next threat could be the furball that’s been watching your back all this time.

Interesting, I feel the exact opposite. A couple people gave me gem cards for my birthday a few months ago, and I’ve been sitting on several thousand gems since then because I can’t find anything in the gem store I want to spend them on (much less need to spend them on). I bought a couple bank tabs and another character slot a few months after release — because I wanted to give some financial support to ArenaNet — and they are still sitting empty. Oh, and I bought the Sport Sunglasses. Being a child of the ’80s, as soon as I read their description (“Can be worn at night.”) it was an instant sale.

I have yet to see any dirty tricks here. It’s all very open, honest and straight forward. I may not agree with their technique in every case: like the appearance items that are single-use or appearance items that can only be obtained through the gambling boxes. But the item descriptions state those limitations very clearly. Poor design choice? Yes. Dishonest or dirty trick? Definitely not.

If you wanted a dirty trick, ArenaNet could have very easily not included the collections tab in our bank and the ability to deposit collectibles from anywhere in the world. Then I would have completely agreed with you that we’re being pressured to buy more inventory and bank space. But it’s actually been quite the opposite – ArenaNet’s added spots for more items into the collections tab since release (loadstones, Halloween/Christmas materials, karka shells, passiflora, and many chef ingredients weren’t in there originally).

I’ve seen MMOs where not only do you HAVE to buy high-end gear from their cash shop, but you actually rent the gear for a limited time. You either have to spend more money every week or two to keep your gear, or it disappears. Or you can’t repair your gear through in-game means – you MUST buy a repair kit from the cash shop. Those are what I call dirty tricks. But there is no such shenanigans or tomfoolery here.

I’d notify Direct Song of the error and simply ask them to send a replacement Disc 1. They might send you the disc without asking you to return the defective one. Even if they do ask you to return it, I highly doubt it would be worth anything. It’s a one-off manufacturing defect. It’s not like the Inverted Jenny Stamp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_Jenny) where a significant number were printed that way.

I wouldn’t say it’s useless. It’s just too tedious, time consuming and/or expensive to do while leveling up because you can acquire the same quality of gear faster and cheaper through other methods.

Crafting Fine and Masterwork gear, especially at lower levels, should be dead-easy since you can easily acquire this type of gear through drops and karma vendors. The amount of materials required and/or the drop rate of those materials should be lowered quite a bit. Rare and Exotic gear should still require substantially more materials since this is supposed to be the good stuff.

While leveling up, crafting was very disappointing and frustrating. I couldn’t acquire enough materials to craft gear appropriate for my level. Trying to farm the materials would cause me to level beyond the the gear I’m trying to craft (and I didn’t have enough materials for that next tier, so I’d farm more and fall even further behind). Or I’d blow all my money buying fine crafting materials to make gear that I’ll out level in short order (and that could be bought for a fraction of the price on the trading post). The only reason I stuck with it was out of stubborn tenacity of trying to keep my crafting level on par with my character level.

The real comedy is that sometimes you gain so much experience from refining raw materials and discovering recipes that you almost out level the gear you’re trying to craft through the very act of crafting it!

Once I hit 80, crafting started to become fun because vertical progression stopped and I now had a fixed target I was shooting for — first getting a Masterwork set, then working my way into a Rare and Exotic set. Finding Rares and Exotics as drops was still fun since it was better than my Masterwork gear, but I wanted to keep crafting so I could get the exact stats I wanted. It was a great progression.

Considering how quickly we level, it needs to be really easy to craft gear at the lower levels, then gradually ramp up to where it is now for level 80 Exotics. By no means should the good stuff be handed to us on a silver platter. But crafting should be something you can enjoy and benefit from during your leveling experience, not something that you put off and only start thinking about once you hit 80 (or if it is something you only think about once you hit 80, then just eliminate the lower tiers entirely and make it so you can only craft level 80 gear).

ArtemusHunter.9521:

Anyone notice this?

ArenaNet said that you would not have to do that whole ‘kill ten rats’ then..

‘Free 10 prisoners’

lol

Good thing too, otherwise we’d be killing 10 prisoners….

Starts at noon Pacific, but it’s not a one-time event — it’s instanced and you can do it at your leisure through the 16th.

I would recommend you take a look at the wiki’s talk page on the Magic Find topic:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Magic_find

Specifically, check out the very last entry: “Data on drops with and without Magic Find”. There’s already a decent study there which spanned 38 hours of farming over a two week period that produced over 18,000 items (roughly half with, half without). Though some statistics folks will probably say that even that sample size is too small, and there’s still issues with it being a single person and in a single area.

Unless you see a flaw in the conditions for this existing study, you may want to consider setting up similar conditions for your own experiment and posting your results along side it.

Nope. Looking is only done with holding the mouse button and moving the mouse. If you can map one of your controller’s sticks to mouse movement and a button (trigger) to the right mouse button, that should get the job done.

Yeah, that’s not to say sylvari engineers don’t make sense. They might be a bit of an oddity in sylvari society, but some of the best and most memorable characters in any fantasy story are the ones who break the stereotypes and go against convention. Take Ventari for example…

Yes, with no characters you’ll be able to freely select a server.

The settings that affect player models the most are:

Textures: High
Render Sampling: Native
Shaders: High
Best Texture Filtering: Checked
Use High-Res Character Samples: Checked

Shadows and Post-processing will have some minor effect.

One of the easiest ways to increase your frame rate is to set Shadows to Low or None, and Reflections to None. I wouldn’t recommend setting anything else to Low or None/Disabled unless you’re really desperate to increase performance. The Medium settings still look very nice, but once you dip into Low you really start to lose a lot.

The biggest issue people have is that the engineer turrets look like charr tech — very / clockwork/steampunk in appearance. If sylvari engineers sprouted different types of seed turrets, and used spores instead of grenades, many people would actually take the opposite stance and say the engineer fits the sylvari perfectly.

The same argument can be made about asura engineers — some people argue that the engineer doesn’t really fit with the asura since their gadgets are based on industrial revolution steampunk and clockwork mechanics rather than magi-tech. An asura engineer’s gadgets would actually be considered rather primitive and crude by his contemporaries.

While there are some vague references to them in the lore, they’re ultimately a meta-gaming mechanic, and one of those instances where “convenient gameplay” trumps “logical and realistic implementation.” How they would actually work in the game world would probably be very different than how we as players interact with them. When roleplaying, I do acknowledge their existence if its relevant, but I quickly gloss over the hows and whys of their functionality. I just assume that their workings are so intimately familiar to my asura character that its not worth his time to try to explain it. And they’re beyond the comprehension of my other races — it’s enough for them to know that “when I do THIS, then THAT happens.”

Konig Des Todes has several good points. I too think their actual use would be similar to what’s shown in Destiny’s Edge, with Snaff’s personal asura gate device. That would explain why we still have escort quests, rather than caravans simply blipping around through waypoints; or why we see people in remote outposts (with a waypoint right in the middle of the camp) complaining about supply shortages. It doesn’t answer why we have to pay money to use a waypoint, or how that’s even possible. But at the same time, you can kill a deer and get a suit a platemail armor and a pile of coins, so I guess one completely illogical situation balances out the other. Consider the other option: waypoints don’t cost money, but only humanoids drop coin and gear, and even then the coin you get would be specific to that that race and you’ve have to travel back to a main city to exchange your jotun stones and skritt shinys for Krytan coins. Or if you’re Sylvari you may not even use coins and would simply barter for goods and services.

Don’t think too much about it, because it opens up a ton of questions, inconsistencies and paradoxes. It’s like sausage — probably best to just enjoy it and not think too much about the logistics of it.

I get your point, but… Tarnished Coast is not an official RP server, and ArenaNet does not even acknowledge it as such unofficially. Similarly, many players neither know nor care about this decision that a small subset of the game’s total population has made.

While the designers put a lot of work into the lore of Tyria, their goal was not to create an RP sandbox. GW2 was designed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. I’m grateful ArenaNet included as many subtle nods and concessions to the RP community as they did.

On some level, I don’t mind people using completely out of character names. It makes it easy to see they’re obviously not role players. If they try to interfere with others role playing by actually claiming they’re Bill Cosby, who was sent to Tyria to defeat the elder dragons with their Jello cannons and to teach the other races to supplement their combat abilities with some bippin’ and a boppin’, and the hippin’ and the hoppin’ — yeah, then we’ve got a problem. Otherwise just turn off overhead names and stay away from the statue of Dwayna in Divinity’s Reach, and you hardly notice them.

One could make the counter argument that we, a small subset of the total player base, are showing disrespect to them by imposing an unofficial decision to “respect the lore when you’re on Tarnished Coast.”

It isn’t necessarily required, but religion can be a powerful story-telling tool that helps add more depth to a culture, an organization, or even an individual.

Take the humans for example. One of their key, defining traits is that they’re a tenacious and resilient people. One of the main reasons for that tenacity is their religion: most humans believe they have a sort of manifest destiny from their Six Gods. They don’t get demoralized when the going gets rough because they believe they’re just being tested by their gods. You can beat them to the edge of extinction, but they’ll just bounce back because they believe it is the will of The Six for them to do so. Their faith and belief defines them.

Similarly, the charr’s lack of any religion is a defining characteristic of their race. They were fooled once before by a supposed religious caste who turned out to be nothing but deceptive power-mongers. Now, one of the defining features of the charr race is that they will bow before no one — not even a “god” — and treat anything spiritual or supernatural with extreme suspicion.

Using religion can also help define a character. How a character’s personal religious views match (or contrast) with their society’s views can tell you something about that character. A norn who didn’t believe in the Spirits of the Wild, or an asura who believed in a sentient deity could be a very interesting plot device. Similarly, showing a human character frequently praying to Dwayna is an easy way to convey that the character is loyal, orderly, puts others above himself, etc.

Whether you embrace it, shun it, or are indifferent to it, “religion” has existed in our world since the dawn of civilization. To have a well-developed fantasy world that doesn’t have any sort of references to religions would feel odd. But it’s not completely unheard of. Beowulf is a prime example of a fantasy that is explicitly devoid of religion or any concept of a “here-after”.

I would like to see a gear progression system that uses what I call “silo’ed vertical progression.”

Whatever the top tier of gear is now, stays the top tier forever more. The base stats will never get any better.

A new mechanic is introduced (such as Agony). You are able to acquire upgrades to mitigate that mechanic (Agony Resistance), which can be applied to your existing gear. But those upgrades don’t affect the base stats of your gear — they are only relevant to the content where that mechanic is used.

Now, let’s say ArenaNet introduced a new set of content that uses a mechanic similar to Agony. Let’s call it “Spectral Fatigue”. You can now start earning new Spectral Fatigue Resistance upgrades, which can be applied to the same gear that also has Agony Resistance upgrades. There’s no need to acquire new base armor — you just keep stacking new resistance upgrades onto your same armor. Your gear never becomes outdated. But at the same time, your upgraded gear doesn’t give any advantage outside of the specific areas where these new mechanics are used. The player who enters a new area that uses Spectral Fatigue with max’ed out Agony Resistance gear is no better off than the player who skipped all the Agony-related content and is coming in with a base set of exotic armor. Both players are able to continue progressing and getting better gear (or rather, upgrades for their gear) in the new content.

Benefits:
- Your gear stays relevant
- You’re still able to improve/progress
- There is no power-creep in older content
- There is no gear treadmill. It’s more like a gear highway, and if you miss something that came before you can easily jump on to the highway at the next on-ramp.

At the top of this webpage, click Services > Support. On the Support page, click “Ask a Question”, then fill out that form.

Also, check this post for some helpful tips on submitting a support request: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/How-to-Submit-a-Ticket-Account-Issues-2.

If your ticket goes unresolved for more than 3 days, make a post here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Tickets-for-Review-3-days-and-older-merged/first#post48339

Gaile Gray, our support liaison, regularly monitors that thread (on weekdays — she deserves her weekends ) and is very responsive to players who need help escalating tickets that fall off the radar.

Khal Drogo.9631:

This game isnt for me because the “community” it caters for isn’t for me. I have been told:
If I don’t like SAB or its 8 bit graphics, I am
- self centered
- not part of the time poor cash rich majority demographic of GW2 who are 25-45 living in developed countries
- I hate GW2

If I don’t like new AC, I am:
- a bad/nub player

Pro-tip: the best way to enjoy the game is to ignore the self-proclaimed “community” and play the way you enjoy. Don’t let anyone else tell you what YOUR Guild Wars 2 experience should be.

P.S. I don’t care for SAB either. I also have zero desire to get ascended gear, play fractals (though I have to admit, the one where you become a dolphin was pretty fun) or get a legendary weapon. Guess I’m a noob. But at least I’m a happy noob.

Some general advice. First, don’t start on your personal story until you’re at least level 5 and have a set of level 5 gear (craft it yourself, or buy some off the trading post — it should be very cheap). Instead, focus on completing all the tasks (hearts) in your first area that are level 5 and below. You’ll find the story a lot easier that way. The same goes for later stages of your story. If you want a more casual experience on your story, just wait until you’re 5 to 10 levels over the recommended level. Or if your story sends you to a new map, finish all the tasks on the entire map then go back to your story.

Second, keep in mind that you CAN talk to the task (heart) givers beforehand, and they’ll give you a little dialog about what they need help with. Before I realized this, I just felt like I was randomly wandering around doing stuff for no apparent reason. That goes back to the old quest system of previous MMOs, but having that little frame of reference for why you’re doing all these tasks may help you feel a bit more connected with the world.

Don’t treat the world as a linear series of tasks in the process of leveling up. Walk out into the world, and just see what’s going on. Wander around, and explore places that look interesting. You’ll probably encounter some dynamic events along the way — jump in and do them. Then look around and see what else is happening. Think of your character as a sort of warden or watchman — you’re out on patrol, keeping an eye on the area and dealing with any problems as they arise. If nothing is happening, just take in the scenery and explore for a bit — something will start happening soon enough.

Don’t focus too much on levels. You’ll always be down-leveled to match the content you’re playing through, so content always stays relevant. And really, reaching level 80 is a bit of an anti-climactic experience — it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Look in your options menu, and you should find some settings to adjust the size of the user interface — making it easier to read. Also, if you click the little gear at the top left of your chat box, you can select a different font size for the chat window. The default size can be a little small if you’re trying to follow along, especially on a high resolution monitor.

GW2 is a very open game. You’re given a lot of freedom to go where you want, and do what you want. The “goal” of the game is kind of whatever you want it to be. You can make it your goal to explore every map. Or complete your personal story. Or complete all the dungeons. Or craft a legendary weapon. Or make it your goal to not have any particular goal, and just jump into the world each night to do whatever strikes your fancy at the time.

But as others have said, Guild Wars 2 obviously it can’t appeal to everyone. I’d recommend at least trying to finish your first map (reaching about level 15). If you’re still not having fun by that point, I would agree that it’s probably not the right game for you. ArenaNet does have a VERY generous return policy, and if you contact their support team (click Services > Support on the menu at the top of the website), they may be able to give you a refund, especially if you purchased through their online store (I’m not sure how that works if you purchased through a retailer, though).

There is no definitive answer since it’s a matter of personal preference and playstyle. I don’t like to completely neglect any area since it creates a critical weakness in my character. I tend to focus on a few key stats that support what I’m trying to do, then get the others up to a level that’s good enough to live with. You get higher bonuses from your chest and leggings, so have those and a few other pieces of gear focus on the stats you want to emphasize, then pick a couple miscellaneous pieces to “fill in the gaps” as needed.

You can also sell the stack of 10 dyes (available for 5 laurels). You should easily get well over 1 gold per stack of 10. For a brand new character, that’s a nice sum of money.

Anyone who claims they “need” ascended gear needs to go back to GW1 and try facing a group of Mursaat without infused armor. That will show you what “needing” certain gear really means.

(Even then you technically don’t NEED it, but your poor monk is going to get carpel tunnel syndrome if you don’t.)

TimoFTW.8017:

I would like to test documents and bugs, Run events for players ingame, and keeping the site up to date.

Those are actually three distinct functions, unless you’re looking at a REALLY small company.

Testing documents and bugs is quality assurance. Most gaming companies have their own internal QA team, but some will outsource a portion of QA to a third-party and/or bring in short-term employees as development ramps up. Some companies only treat QA as an entry-level position, and it can be hard to develop a career around it. Larger companies will have dedicated QA groups and you can work your way up to a lead QA engineer position over time. If you want to build a career around quality assurance and not use QA as a stepping stone to something “bigger and better”, look to a larger company and be sure to ask in your interviews whether QA can be a viable career path in that company.

Keeping the website up to date… well, from a technical standpoint that’s the web development team. Although producing the content that’s posted (dev diaries, patch notes, lore, game overview information, etc) would be done by other groups — typically producers, designers, developers, marketing and community relations. In many companies, the website is developed or even hosted by a third-party, so there may not even be an opportunity to do much more that write some articles that someone else will integrate into the website.

Running events for players in-game… well, a lot of MMO companies aren’t even doing “live” events anymore. And when they do, it’s often entirely scripted. The early days of Ultima Online where you’d have a live person playing the part of an NPC in real-time and directly interacting with players are long gone. Nowadays, a “GM” is usually just a senior customer support agent, and he often has some pretty tight constraints on what he can do. Smaller companies may allow more latitude in what their GMs are allowed, but it’s getting incredibly rare to see “live GM run events” in any MMO. I’ve heard that in GW2 they don’t even have the ability to log in as a GM on the live servers, for security reasons.

Not sure if this is something a 5-year old could follow but…

1. Click Start, then Computer.
2. Double click the C: drive.
3. Double click Program Files (x86). (Or just “Program Files” if you don’t have a “Program Files (x86)”).
4. Double click Guild Wars 2.
5. Right-click the Gw2 application and select Create Shortcut .
6. Right-click Gw2 – Shortcut and select Properties .
7. A Properties window will appear. The Target field should say C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe . Change it to read: C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe -bmp .
8. Double-click on Gw2 – Shortcut to play the game. You can right-click that file and select Rename to change the name to something a little nicer, and can copy that file to your desktop or somewhere else easier to get to. Just be sure you run that shortcut file to start the game, so that you’re starting it with the -bmp option.

This assumes you installed Guild Wars to the default folder. If it’s somewhere other than C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars 2, then you’ll need to substitute the proper location.

Fully exploring your capital city (i.e. Divinity’s Reach for humans) will give about 1 level of XP just from unlocking all the POIs, waypoints and vistas. Also gives you a few transmutation stones to play with.

Although, on all my characters I always seem to be a level or so below where I think I should be until I hit the mid-teens. Then after the first map, it’s like someone lets off the parking break and my leveling goes into warp-drive.

The whole point of legendary weapons is that they look cool — so go with whichever one you like the look of first. Keep in mind that there are some types of exotic weapons (Weapons of the Mists, Foefire Weapons, etc) that may not be legendaries but still have some really nice effects and have exactly the same stats. For example, I like the look of the greatsword Vision of the Mists better than Twilight and Sunrise. The fact that it takes several orders of magnitude less grinding to acquire is just icing on the cake.

A few ideas from a former guild leader and officer in several online games…

Start requiring new members to post a short (and I emphasize SHORT) application on your forum before they’re accepted. Keep it simple: why they want to join your guild, what they like most about GW2, any other interesting facts about themselves, etc. First, that will at least make sure they’re registered on your forum, and second you and the other members will get to know a little about your new members. Also, if someone can’t even be bothered to make a single post on your guild forum to introduce themselves, that might say something about their level of dedication.

Require your officers to reply to all new apps, welcoming the new members. That will start getting at least some activity going on your forums. Then when you catch your new members in-game you can ask them whether they saw all the responses to their app on your forum, welcoming them. That will probably draw them back for a second visit, and at least some of those people will think “Hey, that’s kinda cool that people welcomed me. I’ll start watching for new apps and welcome them too.”

Ultimately, you’ve got to give people a reason to visit your forums. An event calendar is a must, and you’ve got to let every member (regardless of rank) post events there. Even better if you’ve got a calendar where people can sign up for the events. Then when people ask in guild chat “Hey guys, anything cool going on tonight?”, you can tell them “Actually, we’ve got several cool events planned all week! Check the calendar on our forums to sign up!”

A screenshot gallery is another nice addition. When you do guild events, encourage people to take screenshots and post them on the forums. You can also do games/contests like screenshot of the week, come up with a funny caption for a goofy screenshot, etc.

Forum games are a good way to draw people in too: games like “three word story”, where you take turns writing a story but each person can only post three words at a time; or “the music game” (I name a song, the next person names another song that has at least one word in its title that’s the same as the previous, etc).

But as Mercury Ranique said, getting people to go to your forums is hard. Forums are becoming an archaic concept now that Web 2.0 and social media have become so popular. Perhaps a guild Facebook group might actually be more successful?

Currently there’s no way to do this. Although if you own the official soundtrack you can rip the music and include it in your custom playlist.

1. Not really circle-strafing, but I’m constantly mobile. Even on my warrior, I’m moving around, dodging, pulling back and switching to a ranged weapon when I need to recover then rushing back into melee when I’m ready to unload again. That’s how the combat system works — you can’t just trade blows with your opponent like Rock’em Sock’em Robots until someone’s head pops off.

2. I play with a 5-button mouse. Side buttons are programmed simply to Control and Shift; middle-button is programmed to “F” (Use/Activate). I don’t think that gives me any kind of advantage — it’s just more ergonomic for me. I also use custom keybindings to remap all my skill keys to more convenient locations, using Shift and Control as modifiers so every key has three functions. I do not click directly on the skill buttons. I think using keybinds DOES give me a very distinct advantage in terms of reaction time over clicking my mouse pointer on the skill buttons.

I find open world PvE fairly easy because I have a firm grasp of what I can and cannot handle, have no issues with retreating from a losing fight, and can avoid most fights that I don’t want to engage in. I’m not going to charge headlong into a pack of 50 centaurs just to make it “challenging”.

In dungeons, I find the greatest challenge often comes from other party members who are either disorganized, won’t communicate and/or are hellbent on a very specific strategy and can’t adapt. If you play with a well-organized team, the dungeons go very smoothly. If you play with a bunch of skritt-brained yokels, you’re doomed. Also, the dungeons don’t seem to be as much about observing what’s happening and reacting in real-time (playing skillfully), as they are about knowing what’s going to happen and being prepared for it. Granted, you still have to know what you’re doing. But when someone tells you before you enter a dungeon “Be sure to bring these skills and traits… we’re going to get ambushed when we go into this room, so everyone hang back and let the thief trigger the fight then stealth out… and when the boss does [THIS] then you do [THAT]”… it may not be “easy”, but it’s certainly not a challenge.

Rieselle.5079:

to me, what separates the gaming groups known by the labels “casual” and “hardcore” is that hardcore players enjoy improving their playing skill.

I completely agree, Rieselle. To me, “hardcore” isn’t about how much time you spend in the game; it’s about how focused you are around understanding the game mechanics and improving your own skill in playing.

The fractal dungeon is a great step toward offering hardcore content: while there is some level of “progression” as far as increasing agony resistance, advancing to higher fractal levels requires a better understanding of the different fractal encounters and how you can use your profession to work through them.

There needs to be more content like the fractals that offers a good challenge to those who want it, but is completely ignorable by those who don’t. GW1 started with two areas: the Fissure of Woe and the Underworld; and a few months later we got Sorrow’s Furnace (not sure I’d really call SF hardcore, but it was more challenging than anything else short of FoW or UW). Factions and Nightfall took it a step further and offered actual Challenge Missions, complete with leaderboards. If GW2 offered similar missions, in addition to exclusive titles or equipment skins that can only be earned by catching the top spot on the leaderboard (and ABSOLUTELY CANNOT be acquired by random drops from Black Lion Chests or through the gem store), I really think that would be sufficient incentive for a lot of hardcore players. Give them something distinctive that says “I am the best” and not just “I put in a lot of time, spent a lot of real-world money and/or got really lucky.”

Not only would this system meet the desires of many hardcore players (requiring continual improvement of skill and providing distinct recognition), but it has nothing to do with the amount of time someone plays. A group of very skilled players who only plays a few hours a week could still capture the top spot on the leaderboard for a challenge mission, and easily move past players who spend 80 hours a week in game but haven’t progressed past random button mashing of their skills.

I just pulled my Guild Wars 1 box off the shelf and looked at one of the tag lines on the inside flap: “Your skill will be your legend. You’ll prove your worth with every battle as skill, not hours played, decides your fate. Whether battling horrific monsters or competing at the highest levels of tournament play, it will always be your skill that earns you victory or defeat.”

That, to me, is what “hardcore” is all about.

I agree — I’m enjoying what we’ve gotten so far. The pacing has been a little slow up to this point, but I like the new characters and the story. If the Prelude and The Gathering Storm were released over a single month it would have kept the momentum going a little better.

One of the level of detail settings in your graphics options menu will most likely control whether very fine details (like showing the actual arrow being drawn from your quiver) are displayed.

NPCs moving their mouths outside of cutscenes is a new addition that was just added in this month’s patch. Kind of cool to see when you’re zoomed in.

If you’re only looking at ONE stat… it depends on how high you can boost that stat. Critical hits have a base multiplier of 150% (plus your Critical Damage score). So if you can get your critical chance up to 66% – 75%+ (through Precision and traits), you’re going to be getting crits often enough that the fairly-consistent 150% damage bonus could outweigh the flat damage bonus an equivalent power score would give. I’m not sure where that threshold is, though.

But if you really want to maximize your damage, you’re going to want gear that boosts all three of those stats (Berserker’s armor/weapons, Ruby gemstones). Those three stats have a strong synergistic effect with each other — spreading your stats among the three will have a stronger effect than just maximizing one of them. Of course, going with a “glass cannon” build like that means you’re sacrificing defense, but that’s a topic for another discussion.

Although at very low levels when your gear usually only has one stat, I’d say power is your best bet since you’re dealing with such small bonuses.

An elemental weapon serves no purpose if its just sitting there, so I always hope someone else can use my second conjured weapon. The only time I’d grumble a bit is if I’m conjuring a weapon for a specific ally, and some stranger passing by grabs it and runs off with it. Same thing with warrior banners — if someone wants to better position my banner while I’m fighting, or better yet pick it up and slam it back down for a blast finisher, that’s always appreciated. Just don’t run off with it. The asura tailor I buy those things from always price-gouges me (something about a “Bookah tax”, whatever that is…), so they ain’t cheap to replace! :-D