Guild Wars 2

mjharrison.3209:

Anet got greedy and now they are paying the price:
http://beta.xfire.com/games/gw2

There’s no doubts about which direction this game is heading.

having in mind that you don’t pay monthly, it’s not actually impacting the company, now thinking about the player base I would actually love to see less whinnies and more content, because I’m enjoying it, so essentially it’s all good.

Done WvW with both my necro and my elementalist (very squishy), both have exotic gear and yet still what I earn is more than what I spend repairing. And I do die a lot. Do not buy equipment or upgrades if you have no money to spare and you should be going to the + side of your wallet.

ASB.4295:

Mirta.5029:

There’s no vertical progression

Lying about things doesn’t make then untrue. By the time the ascended set is out, and most of the dedicated players have gotten it, it’s time for Masterwork Infusions to be released. A few weeks/months later when most of the dedicated players have gotten Masterwork Infusion, it’s time to release Rare infusions.

The foreseeable end of this particular treadmill is after ascended infusions have been released. Then your statement about there not being vertical progression becomes true.

Infusions are only good for dungeons. Now tell me do you need exotics to get ascended? Do you need blue to get green? Do you require green to get yellow? THAT is vertical progression. You will NOT need the beginner infusion to get the masterwork infusion. The same way that I can run a dungeon with greens and get ascendeds. Call it a grind if you want, but you can’t call it a vertical progression if there’s no requirement of owning something previously to get the next tier.

kiranslee.4829:

Mirta.5029:

kiranslee.4829:

Ill just say once again “take a lot of time” is incorrect factor completely. Its fact that many ppl spent cc 20-30$ to get 200-400g and obtain 90% of requirements. Others used bots/hack tools to do the same.
Im not saying there are no ppl who play fair, what im saying there is nothing that “take a lot of time”.
To be perfectly honest, long term goals should be achievements , tittles. To common player, finishing full map is taking long time, if he is trying to enjoy it.
Legendary is already taking far more time to obtain , w/o need for insane amount of gold, so that distinguish it from, exotics.
What was the problem to implement “mentoring” new players, or “craft” starter gear, or hell, achievement on revive ?
Would it not be far more RPG if you would have to “save/rebuild the overrun village” in some zone ? If you think about it, this would srsly help almost dead , and constantly contested (example) zones to get some life , and would not be so , easy to obtain since ppl would do it ?
All i say, grind xxx mats , is not , legendary.

PS.
Doing ANYTHING in GW2 takes far more time then buying gold from bots/gems. Thats a fact.

and it will STILL take you a lot of time, because after doing the full explore you’ll still have to level up 240 times to get enough skill points and you STILL will need to far badges and run the same dungeon multiple times over. Even if you bought everything because money is raining from your kitten you’ll still need to invest at least 200 hours.

I see nothing wrong with lvling and dungeons or wvw. Thats part of game , mostl ppl like (i asume). I dont believe anyone can say that farming 250 vials of blood is , fun.

you were talking about the factor of time. I just corrected you that even if you bought everything, there’s still the factor of time.
If I would have not sold every single tier 6 mat that dropped for me I might have already had it. Having in mind that I spent tier 6 mats that I had (powerful blood, etc) to make exotic gear for my 2 chars and my bf I had a lot of it at one point. I’m going to assume now that if we had not sold our loot from when we hit level 70 and started exploring the higher zones, it would not be that much of a grind. Especially if you have to do a full world map, meaning that either way you’ll have to kill high level mobs in 5 areas that drop those mats. And especially having in mind that I had drops of powerful blood, venom sacs, scales, etc in WvW for some odd reason too.

Seras.5702:

Yes.

Before purchase, I was under the impression that GW2 would be like its predecesor, having no vertical progression. It made having multiple characters (which is a must for me) possible, since you didn’t have to break your back trying to keep them all geared and relevant. So I’m a little disappointed that Ascended Gear is the obvious beginning to a gear progression, no matter how slow.

Having said that…

Since I already have 3 ‘main’ characters that I split time between and still haven’t hit 80, the Ascended Gear hasn’t become an issue for me yet. My gameplay experience hasn’t altered.

But, I’m now worried because I haven’t hit 80 and haven’t started on Exotics, let alone Ascended or Legendary. By the time I hit 80, how far behind will I be? Will I still be able to enjoy content with other players? Will gear progression make certain dungeons undesireable to even play?

Time will tell. I don’t pay a subscription and I won’t be spending any real money on this game, so I’ll continue playing, enjoying my leveling adventure through Tyria.

if by the time you hit 80 ascended will turn into armor and not only jewelry, skip the exotics and go straight to ascended. There’s no vertical progression so you can just do that. The funny thing is that ascended has not even been released properly yet and people are already whining. Wait for after the new year and see if crafting/ farming it is worth it or are stats just good for dungeons

masztipapa.7519:

Mirta.5029:

Gohlar.3671:

I don’t care about the new gear. GW2 still stinks. Weak classes, weak content, weak pvp.

Game is a let down on every front.

Opinions are nice bro.
Me and my boyfriend spent months experimenting with builds. He always tries to think of ways to make a character OP, I’m thinking about how to make the character interesting for me. There’s millions of different builds you can go for and make your class far from weak. If you don’t feel like experimenting, your problem bro.
Content is plenty and fun and while I wish I could see more maps for PvP, PvP is still awesome, especially when you master your build and pawn people.

Hes right, the game has become a lot weaker than potentially has in it. Also Anet focuses heavily on creating new content instead of fixing existing ones, the diff is so high that the game will never be ~90% fixed before an expension and then the whole thing will start again…

and the game has been launched 3 months ago! You know when WoW fixed their druids and their abilities not reaching, even though the fix is just to drag the reach box to the right place and anyone owning the files can do it? Never.

kiranslee.4829:

Ill just say once again “take a lot of time” is incorrect factor completely. Its fact that many ppl spent cc 20-30$ to get 200-400g and obtain 90% of requirements. Others used bots/hack tools to do the same.
Im not saying there are no ppl who play fair, what im saying there is nothing that “take a lot of time”.
To be perfectly honest, long term goals should be achievements , tittles. To common player, finishing full map is taking long time, if he is trying to enjoy it.
Legendary is already taking far more time to obtain , w/o need for insane amount of gold, so that distinguish it from, exotics.
What was the problem to implement “mentoring” new players, or “craft” starter gear, or hell, achievement on revive ?
Would it not be far more RPG if you would have to “save/rebuild the overrun village” in some zone ? If you think about it, this would srsly help almost dead , and constantly contested (example) zones to get some life , and would not be so , easy to obtain since ppl would do it ?
All i say, grind xxx mats , is not , legendary.

PS.
Doing ANYTHING in GW2 takes far more time then buying gold from bots/gems. Thats a fact.

and it will STILL take you a lot of time, because after doing the full explore you’ll still have to level up 240 times to get enough skill points and you STILL will need to far badges and run the same dungeon multiple times over. Even if you bought everything because money is raining from your kitten you’ll still need to invest at least 200 hours.

They did not disappoint me in any way. I’m prepared to work for ascendeds, because it’s something to do. There’s no vertical progression. I don’t need exotics to get ascendeds and I don’t need rares to beat people. I get them because I’m happy to put in work to get something that looks nice.

[Edit]

Opinions are nice bro.
Me and my boyfriend spent months experimenting with builds. He always tries to think of ways to make a character OP, I’m thinking about how to make the character interesting for me. There’s millions of different builds you can go for and make your class far from weak. If you don’t feel like experimenting, your problem bro.
Content is plenty and fun and while I wish I could see more maps for PvP, PvP is still awesome, especially when you master your build and pawn people.

[Edit: Removed the quote of a removed posting]

you guys are all so pessimistic and yell at the smallest details, only 3 months down the road. It seems that this game can’t get content because people will just kitten. “Oh no, there’s a new tier to do stuff with, how will we live now, even though we can still wear greens and kill people in exotics, but now a new tier is a REAL problem” in the future I imagine it will be “oh no the level cap was increased, I’m not the highest level anymore, I hate this game so much”. Seriously guys, WTF?

I’m doing full map explore and these places are making me mad. I have a strategy by now.
1. Take all the repair canisters that you have
2. Run to the middle of both maps (there’s exactly one waypoint that I’ve never seen as contested
3. Attempt to explore by branching out to different directions. You’ll likely die, but this way you avoid running from beginning.
Those zones seriously need a thinning of numbers of mobs. Dynamic events when everything is contested there are not very fun, but it would be one thing if they would be doable, but because of the sheer numbers of enemies… This is also the only not WvW area (and not a huge event) that actually manages to lag me up. Then again there’s about 20 enemies all trying to AoE me at almost any time.

ocfallwind.4821:

Celtic Lady.3729:

This is a problem with all games featuring dynamic style events. The people eventually thin our and/or spread out and the DEs take over from lack of players. This reality should be taken into account when the game is designed so that DEs scale down to one or two players when there aren’t enough people.

Groups events that always remain groups events once launch is over is rather short-sighted.

Agree. Especially when ANet has been introducing new content that suck many players to a certain area. It’s one thing to be lore-oriented. It’s another to restrict playability.

well I still see players everywhere where I usually am used to seeing them, it’s just that those places that were never heavily populated now only feature 1 or 2 people.

70-75, 75-80 and 80+ zone all were made in a way that events are happening pretty much all the time. They were designed for 60 people to be running them constantly. Unfortunately this is a design flaw. 80+ zone will always have people, however the sheer amount of always contested waypoints and enemies with AoE everywhere made 70-75, 75-80 zones really undesirable. If people are out there to level, they’ll do it in the 70-80 zone that is player friendly and has a fun dragon event. I’m trying to get the full map too, so unfortunately I have to run those places, barely gotten past 70-75 zone today and raged at 75-80 zone. Tomorrow I’m going to continue trough it raging. Really those two zones should cut down on the enemy/ event numbers, because otherwise there will never be enough players in there to actually do them, because they will simply feel repulsed by the difficulty of it.

Mimizu.7340:

Karizee.8076:

One of the very cool features of GW2 is that you get to pick a UNIQUE name, not a name that someone on every server has.

You and only you can have your name.

i wish this were so, but with non-english keyboards (or just using alt-codes),
people are re-using names that have already gone.

so unless you have a name without vowels, it isnt unique.

then there are also the names using all caps…

Use names that nobody would want of like then. You’ll be unique

Celestea.4105:

$500 Dollars isn’t much

Then give me that money so I could pay my rent

I fell behind from launch by about 2 months, because my computer was broken and even though I had the Limited Edition I couldn’t play it in a month I achieved everything people achieved from the beginning and now am enjoying my level 80s in exotic gear. Even if they introduce more levels and more gear, even if I stopped playing and came back months later I’m pretty sure that I’ll catch up no prob. There’s nothing you actually lose by falling behind, so go ahead, have a break

Astralporing.1957:

Ditton.3149:

I think its your opinion, its meant to do a little at a time. Set a goal, get one lodestone per trip out, make 10 gold any way you want per day…that isnt a grind.

I have over 400 hours on my account. I have about 20 gold total across all my characters, and show only very slight increases daily. There is no “make 10 gold daily any way you want”. You have to farm for it. If you find it boring, you are out of luck because there is no other way.

I decided not to worry about gold. Tried farming, that’s boring. Now I run dungeons and play WvW for fun and the money just comes slowly. Sure I only earn 2 gold a day, but hey I have exotics, I feel comfortable, why do I need it anyway? When I have enough I’ll probably head for either a legendary, jewelry (they’re crap on all my chars) or prettier exotics (Rata sum has very pretty exotics for 100 gold, I could transmute them to have my stats that I like and their looks ), there’s no rush though. I enjoy the game, so why to complain?

Chamone.6890:

Gnatoay.7581:

nach how would you know if your friend liked grinding or not?

I lost my relationship with my brother because he was addicted to EVE and could not socialise outside of the game. My best friend lost his girlfriend to her WoW guild. I’ve been there myself, my relationship with my own girlfriend almost broke down because I was logged in every waking hour that I was not at work, and she felt like the game was more important to me than she was. The terrifying thing is, on some level, she was right. Luckily I snapped out of it before it went too far. I’m sure we’ve all got stories like this.

Well I have a story opposite of yours. I found the love of my life because of gaming, my future profession is there because of gaming. Gaming is just a hobby. A hobby like any other hobby. It’s not more dangerous than getting addicted to watching TV or reading books.
I used to be really lonely growing up here. All of my childhood friends went to partying, drinking, smoking when they were 10. I did not share these interests. I felt pretty lonely and unable to find anyone to talk to. I liked gaming. Decided to start let’s playing. There was another person on youtube filming Nightmare Creatures, so I sent him my video, so he could feature it and maybe get me some views. We started messaging and well that’s my boyfriend now. We’ve been together for 3 years now. I learned more about hardware and software. Fell in love with programming. It was the subject that I did the best on in school. In half a year I’m going to study game design and programing in a university. I hope to be a game programmer in the future. We both spend 4 hours gaming together daily in the evening. It helps us relax and is something that we do together.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

They are legendary because all ppl haveing one atm are legendary… FAILERS! Really I played with some by now. they fail in fractals they fail in arah path 3 farming 3 deaths while we killed the other boss duo .. I think that what’s make em legendary atm !

Or they are squishy. It’s a fail if they’re warriors or guardians, but if you were running with an elementalist, that means that they couldn’t dodge once and got hit once. It’s pretty much insta death on a squishy.

tigirius.9014:

cinemapaula.8673:

I have to agree with the OP. I was logging on for the social aspect, if anything, but Fractals killed mapchat in Lions Arch. Now I just don’t log on as much, because chat in LA now consists of ‘LFG LFG LFG’. Sigh….

Now this is the valid concern but all we can do is wait…..

They already apologized for their mistake we must wait for the patches that will fix said mistake.

If they will take the fractals out instead of making a separate channel for group finding I will be one unhappy bunny

yarpen.1364:

simple
buy gems-> change for gold -> buy mats in 5 minutes. in same way buy precursor.

karma, skillpoints, map 100% isn’t problem at all.
it’s hard to say how much gold is needed but it’s a lot. 1 lodestone is around 1,5 gold, powerfull blood around 25 silver . And because you can buy gems and convert it to gold, for now legendary in 95% can be bough buy cash (because can be bough by gold).

Skill points – you’ll need over 300, means that one way or another you’ll be spending a lot of time in the game completing the full map and doing WvW, if you’re already doing that, why not to just save mats up? Also how rich are you? Gems for money is really expensive so what’s the point of getting it, if you will still spend forever for the badges, full completion and skill points?

What would you do in other MMOs? Run raids? That’s the “reached the max level” for you. Things you can do:
- run different dungeons for fun
- have a new alt
- complete all the jumping puzzles!
- climb fractals to see how high you can go
- WvW to gain lots of badges and then showing off the amount of badges on the map chat (you said it’s not for you, but still)
- PvP reaching for its highest rank.
- full map completion! (close to this on my one character, what a pain in the kitten this is, but it’s fun if you want a goal)
- do different dragons one after the other
- go and farm in level 80 zones while having a pleasant chat with people on the map
- complete your story (if you haven’t done this already)
- max out all professions one after the other
- aim for a legendary
- have a break from the game, play something else until you once again feel the want to play an MMO.

There, that’s my full list

I would recommend it. Leveling is fun, stories are well written and funny, WvW is fun to play if your team is focused, dungeons are well made (ran path 3 of AC yesterday, can’t wait to run path 1 and 2 today), PvP is purely skill based and good to test out different builds. There are goals to reach for. Also dragons!
I would recommend them to stay out of the forums full of whinny kids and stay out of the LA chat of “Ascendeds ruin everything!”.

kiranslee.4829:

How they are not related to gem store , if you can obtain like 80% of required materials over gem store, placing almost no effort into gameplay?

and how are you going to do that? Gem store does not sell a single material that you’ll need to make it. I was looking into making at least one dagger for myself. List of things that I’ll need:
1. Gift of Metal
250 Orichalcum Ingots
250 Mithril Ingots
250 Darksteel Ingots
250 Platinum Ingots

All are items gotten in game and not sold in the gem store. The only thing you can use the gem store for here is gold.

2. Vial of Liquid Flame
250 Ghost Peppers
100 Molten Lodestones
100 Destroyer Lodestones

Most of these ingredients to make the components listed above will require you to spend skill points (!) and money. No item is sold on the gem store.

3. Gift of Baelfire
500 Flame Legion Charr Carvings

you need components from chests only found in a specific dungeon, NOT on the gem store.

4. 100 Icy Runestones

Buyable item, 1 gold each. Not on the gem store.

5. Superior Sigil of Fire

This one you need to randomly drop. Not on the gem store. Not craftable.

6. Gift of Fortune
77 Mystic Clovers
Recipe for 1 (1/3 Chance)
1 Obsidian Shard
1 Mystic Coin
1 Glob of Ectoplasm
6 Philosopher’s Stones

Here you will once again need to spend skill points, karma (2000 for an obsidian shard) and money. No items on the gem store.

7. Gift of Magic
250 Vial of Powerful Blood
250 Powerful Venom Sacs
250 Elaborate Totems
250 Pile of Crystalline Dust

Regular ingredients, all you need is money. NOT on the gem store.

8. Gift of Might
250 Vicious Fangs
250 Armored Scales
250 Vicious Claws
250 Ancient Bones

Regular ingredients, all you need is money. NOT on the gem store.

9. Gift of Mastery
1 Bloodstone Shard (200 skill points needed)
250 Obsidian Shards (525,000 karma needed)
1 Gift of Exploration (100% World Completion)

where can I find these on the gem store exactly?

10. Gift of Battle
500 Badge of Honor

requires WvW. NOT on the gem store again.

11. Spark (weapon)

a higher exotic weapon that you can get randomly by combining 4 exotic daggers in the forge. NOT on the gem store.

So how does it relate to the gem store?

kiranslee.4829:

99% of hacked account are from ppl who are, or were trying to, use some of the hack tools, hack guides, bots, etc. That is not at all anet fault.

not really. Without extra security measures all people need to do to get into your account is hack your email, therefore putting extra security on your email is a good idea. Gmail gets hacked a lot

Vain.7643:

They don’t deserve to be praised when 1000 of accounts are being hacked while they can’t do anything about it.

If your account was hacked, report it. Their security is indeed a bit low. You can set phone confirmation for your gmail and even WoW, but not for this game yet and indeed I’ve known people who had it hacked once, however if you message Anet they are very professional about it and will get you your account back.

They can’t optimize it for every system. My boyfriend has this for a system

i7 3770k @ 4.7ghz
16gb DDR3 1600 Ram
2x 3TB SATA III HDD
1X 2TB SATA III HDD
256GB OCZ Vertex 4, SSD,

and is able to record big events with 50 people on screen with allsettings on the highest at 40 FPS.

I’m on a AcerAspire 5742G laptop
(specs
Intel Core i5-480M
NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
4GB DDR3 Memory)

Can normally run the game on medium at 50 FPS, but when there’s huge events my FPS count drops to 5. I’m actually surprised that it even runs for me. I mean this is a laptop I’m on and Guild Wars 2 is a pretty new, advanced game.

I wouldn’t say that the coding is wrong. I would say that it’s just not perfect for all systems. The same way that I can’t play Planetside because it stutters for me, the same way that some games refuse to run for my boyfriend.

Well it’s a honest mistake. I’ve spent over a gold on high level upgrades only to understand that it’s for weapons only (facepalm), having in mind that I’m not that rich, that was a big deal for me at the time. All that two hours farming powerful blood, killing trolls and poof! Gone. Oh well though, I learned what upgrades weapons and armor only, you learned that you can only have one karka shell at a time and warned me and the rest of the community that could have made the same mistake accidentally. Mistakes happen

I so agree with you!

1. How about achievements and playing for fun?
2. It continues the story of Guild Wars 1, where guilds did war and basically killed each other. It’s the same as saying “I don’t see the Mass Effect in Mass Effect 2”
3. So our screens would be spammed by names? No thank you. You can kill for gear and you can brag about the kills that you made on the team chat.
4. I’m level 80 too. I feel big and proud. There’s more to do for me now. More challenges to take. I’m able to fight the dragon in level 70-80 zone, I’m able to run dungeons and I’m able to spend time grinding in the level 80 zones. What’s the point on having the game easy? Would you really expect level 80-83 mobs to fall like flies to your might?
5. I don’t understand this one. It might be a nice idea though so you’ll have to explain

lacrimstein.5603:

Mirta.5029:

Also expansions are all going to be released free and you never even needed to invest money anyway.

No they’re not. Full expansions (not the content patches we’ve been getting) will cost money. Probably around full retail price of a game.

Except that they SAID that it will be released for FREE and will not follow the standards of GW1. Do you even read their blogs or follow the news?

explore the side that you get once the sides change. Immediately when they change. When stuff around you is not captured yet. Wait a week when the strongholds rotate again. Rinse and repeat. I’m fortunate to be on a server that does a lot of stuff so it’s not too hard for me

I love having extra content and extra stuff to reach for. Ascendeds for the win <3

Gryz.8376:

My response to common spoken concerns in GW2:

Stopped playing a few days after I hit level-80.
Haven’t played in weeks (months even).
I will never buy any gems or invest real money into anything ArenaNet creates.
I will never buy an expansion pack.
I will never recommend the game to anyone else.

There, that fixed my problems with GW2.
(I’m only checking the forums here once in a while, when I’m a bit bored).
(Oh, and my common concerns with GW2 have been mentioned a lot on these forums: basically the pve gameplay designers are clueless how to make a game fun. You won’t read much about it anymore, because the majority of players have left long ago (to never return), and only people with low standards are left here).

Opinions are nice bro. If it’s not for you then it’s not for you, however I love it. Also expansions are all going to be released free and you never even needed to invest money anyway.

NaughtyProwler.8653:

If the stat boots on ascended are so minor that they don’t mean anything and won’t affect skill or anything else, why not simply remove them? Thanks. Look forward to your answer.

Why to remove extra content? It’s something new to reach for. I have full exotics and I’m a level 80. I would like to reach for legendary even though it’s nothing more but a skin. I do not do better than people with rares and greens, but I feel like I’ve achieved something by putting work into making and getting it.

Wiser with Age.3714:

Mirta.5029:

I doubt it will ever go widespread, because having ascended instead of exotic puts you on a great disadvantage in WvW and PvP mainly because ascended never has toughness or any other actually useful stats, so it’s only good for the high level dungeon.

Actually this was just Phase #1 of their plans for Ascended. Originally they were going to roll out Phase #2 in mid December (per their original news articles on this site). Also based on what ArenaNet’s Chris answered in the Reddit AMA on Monday, Ascended will be added to every part of the game. It would be probably safe to assume that since they’ve announced intentions of basically making Ascended into Exotic v2.0, we’re likely to see more varied +Stat combinations within the coming months.

The cash angle comes from buying tradeable crafting parts and using them to get Ascended items from the Mystic Forge. Since the current Phase #1 gear pieces can’t be Salvaged or sold / traded to someone else, this will force people who don’t want to grind the Fractal in a RNG gamble for ring drops to instead make things (like Offensive & Defensive Infusions) in the Mystic Forge. This leads to either mega mob grinding for crafting drops or with people buying them from the BLTC (which means that trading Gems -> Gold would speed up the process).

Now the AMA responses did have ArenaNet say that they basically did everything 100% wrong with how they wanted to release and handle the Ascended gear subject. In theory, every single thing they did was basically the complete opposite of what they internally agreed were the best ways to handle the matter…. Does that even make the slightest bit of logical sense? Is it even that possible to mess things up so royally when you’ve already decided on a general course of action?

No matter how you cut it, ArenaNet has just messed up. Either they were complete morons by ignoring 100% of their plans or they never had such plans and think that we’re moronic enough to buy their new PR back stepping. Under either scenerio, I don’t have a lot of faith in ArenaNet as a business savy company. As a result, I’ve become extremely cynical about the entire matter and doubtful about the future of GW2.

If they would be implementing it everywhere, then it’s safe to assume that you’ll be able to craft it too, that it will drop from dragons and you’ll be able to buy it with badges in WvW as well as buy it with karma. If it’s Exotic 2.0 then I doubt that it will as hard to get as legendary is. So far it seems that it’s only for jewelry. As a tier I imagine it will be tradable on the Trading Post too. So, where’s the problem?

I don’t understand the rage over ascended. Having in mind that it’s used to resist agony and never has toughness, using it in WvW makes you weaker than a person with exotics. It’s useful only in dungeons and is far from game breaking.

@Wiser with Age.3714 Ascended is not hard to acquire. Spent hundreds of hours online and have not even once spent money on the item shop. Really there’s nothing that could even help you to get ascended there, so I don’t really understand why people suddenly got so angry. I doubt it will ever go widespread, because having ascended instead of exotic puts you on a great disadvantage in WvW and PvP mainly because ascended never has toughness or any other actually useful stats, so it’s only good for the high level dungeon.

I’m a solo player. I like socializing on the map and seeing people, but I don’t like to party up with them. Mostly I just feel awkward when it comes to doing map completion with someone I don’t know in my party. I always feel like I have to say something or keep a conversation going. The only people that I gladly party up with is my boyfriend and his friend.

I make a gold or more doing a single dungeon run. People that craft exotics tend to sell them cheaper than they ought to and their stats match those that you can get for karma or dungeon tokens. In WvW most of the players are level 40s – 60s leveling, so even without exotics you should do just fine, so if you want to go WvW go ahead I leveled from 40 to 60 there on my elementalist with not the best gear and yet did okay. When it comes to gearing up I did not have much of a problem, because when I level a character I tend to take the armoring profession that I’ll need for that character later and craft my own gear. Both for my ele and necro it took me about 2 days to earn enough money to buy enough ecto to make myself armor. Relax, enjoy, have fun in the game and don’t think too much about your money. If you just play it to dungeon run of WvW eventually you’ll have enough for a set. If you’re not a heavy player it might take up to 2 weeks, but you’ll get there. Normally full gear would cost 10 to 15 gold if you buy it crafted or are crafting yourself. So 15 dungeon runs?

The reason why a lot of squishes kite is because if we take one hit we’re dead. Ran a fractal as a necro. Not the squishiest one by far (have a damage specked elementalist with daggers, maxed out on fire. My build while good for massive damage has problems – I only have 12 000 health and because of the dagger range I need to be relatively close to my target, that produces dodge galore), was kitting a boss in my shadow form, got careless, got hit once and got taken from my death shroud to lying on the ground in one hit. Really your armor reduces the damage you take and you can survive much longer than squishies (had one warrior in the group, he ended up resurrecting us all at one point), while dungeons indeed favor rangers, you’re far better off in WvW and PvP than most races because you can tank.

my gaming background:
I’m very passionate about gaming and am currently studying to be a game programmer. I own over 200 games. My MMO experience consists of Runescape (it was good when the internet was bad enough that loading every 2 steps did not annoy you), Perfect World (surprisingly because I was in a good guild I was able to enjoy playing that game. It has good music, I’ll give it that, but it’s grindy grindy grindy) and WoW (far less grindy than PW, but it has its own problems. Classes are unbalanced (they keep on nerfing the wrong type of druid), there’s that OP gear that you can give to your lower level characters to make them OP in PvP and there’s the grindiness of the higher levels where the drop rate of a needed item goes down to what? 5%? Making questing really hard)
My opinion of GW2:
I love it. Leveling is relatively easy, getting good gear requires work, but not too much work, the world is big and there’s always something to do.
What I dislike about it?
Some minor inconveniences that could be changed but not necessarily have to be changed. For instance when a person orders something on Trading Post I wish that they would be forced to order it at least at the base price. I hate as a level 400 Tailor to see orders for exotic gear that costs 2 gold to make suggesting me 20 silver for it. No. Just no. I would also like people to not be able to order account bound items, because that just looks silly. How many orders for apples are issued by now that will never be delivered? Dueling in the game would be a nice thing to add and I would kind of like a dungeon finder, but neither of these problems are game breaking. They’re all minute inconveniences and even if they would never be solved the game is not really worse because of them.

It’s to add something to do. So many level 80s stood around complaining that there’s nothing to do. Now you have what to do! Run the hardest dungeon till the boss to get ascended and add agony resistance infusion to be able to participate and clear the hardest level dungeon. It’s not that hard to get or to afford (agony resistance costs maybe 100 of the fractal tickets and in my last run I’ve got 50). I see nothing wrong with it.