Guild Wars 2

Just to clarify a few points.

The original Guild Wars (the prophecies campaign) was the one that started in Ascalon and worked it way through to Kryta etc.
Factions was the second campaign and was set in Cantha.
Nightfall was the third campaign and was set in Elona.
Neither Cantha or Elona are accessable in GW2 at the moment.
It is possible to take characters created in Faction of Nightfall to Lions Arch and explore from there, but I am not sure if they can complete the Prophecies campaign or not, not playing Prophecies might mean you still miss a lot of the lore.

The Eye of the North was an expansion which could be used with any of the 3 campains. The hall of Monuments is only reachable with Eye of the North but you can complete a campain then start EotN and work on the monument points retrospectively.

Hope this helps.

Having heard first of a mermaid in Lion’s Arch and now a krait in Divinities Reach it has set me to thinking. As my fellow necromancers know, we have yet to manage to create a flesh golem that can survive underwater. My theory is that the problem may arise as we have been using terrestrial creatures to donate the various parts that make up the golem. Therefore I believe that if we include the respiratory system from an amphibious creature such as a mermaid or a krait this might be the answer we are looking for.

I would therefore, politely request, that if anyone does happen to obtain said organs, they would consider donating them for the betterment of our necromantic understanding

You say you have already bought the game, so as you have already made the only payment you need to to play, my advise is jump in and try it. You might have to check around the servers to find one with a population level you like but I am on Piken Square (EU) and there is normally someone else around, even in the less populated mid level zones. To my understanding (hopefully someone will correct me if I’m wrong) as long as you are willing to delete your characters you can change server for free, which gives you a chance to play around guesting on servers and make a disission before you get too attached to a character. You can pay to change server as well and keep any character you have.

I gave up WoW about 6 months ago as I realised that all my game time was being spent on GW2. I enjoy open world exploration and questing, but I don’t enjoy being railroaded along quests. GW2 is very open, you have to go out and find the quests, keeping an eye on map chat is always worth while and if you start an event mention it in the chat and link the nearest waypoint and you will soon have people turn up to help out. Don’t worry if no one invites you to a party, if one person wins an event then everyone who took part wins. I frequently end up with bronze or silver rewards for events I didn’t even realise I took part in.

And one other thing, learn to dodge, my gnome rogue may have been able to stand toe to toe with ogres, in this game you have to learn to move and avoid the attacks aimed at you.

Have fun.

My normal response is to rez someone who is down but still fighting if possible and then deal with the mobs together or if the person is dead then deal with the mobs and then rez them, either way I like to receive a quick ‘ty’, but don’t mind if I don’t get it, the response the OP received is not what I would expect and that person would probably end up on my ignore list, (not that this would stop me rezzing them in the future).

One thing that I don’t think has been mentioned, if you rez someone while they are down then they don’t receive any penalty, if you rez them when dead or if they revive at a WP then their armor takes damage, repair costs aren’t high but as I found out when I had to go AFK suddenly leaving my character alone in the field, they can add up. I was away only for 5 minutes or so, and when I came back I was pleased to see she was still alive, then I looked at the armor, three pieces destroyed and two damaged. Kind people had been rezzing me only for the mobs to respawn and kill me again.

I sincerely hope that Anet do not introduce phasing. Having played ‘that other MMO’ which had phasing I can’t emphasize enough about how bad it was. Ore nodes that vanished just as you reached them, monsters that appeared out of nowhere right on top of you, half your party disappearing between one step and the next, empty villages because they hadn’t bothered to fill it in if you went exploring before doing the appropriate quest. It was a interesting idea, but a nightmare to play.

I recently decided to join another guild to help me do the group content of the game, Mist Angels was recruiting so I decided to give them a go.

They are a friendly lot and there are plenty of events organised and people willing to do things on a more spontaneous basis as well.

If you are looking for friends to help you out as I was, then I would suggest putting an application in.

While I don’t have a problem with a well behaved train, I do think that having it in Queensdale can give a bad experience to new players and ANet need to do something to spread the train over the various zones.

Yesterday I was in Diessa Plateau and noticed the giant champ was up, put out a call in map chat and there ended up being three or four of us taking him on. For me it was a much better experience of a champ fight than the Queensdale zerg is now.

Yes – Eventually.

I will not go out and grind a legendary, but though general play I will explore all the world, gather all the materials, and even do the dungeons to get the tokens.

The difference between me and some of the other players is I don’t care if I get the legendary tomorrow or in five years time it is still something to work towards.

It has taken me a year to get a character to max level, and it took me about 4 years to manage that on WoW (before they wrecked leveling to please those that said it took too long), so I accept taking things slow and I enjoy just playing the game.

I have a ranger that uses axe and torch and that is a combination that has no ground targeting and can prove very affective. add in traps and shouts in the utility slots and a ranged pet, preferably with poison and then spec for condition damage. Greatsword also works as an alternative weapon as you end up in melee range fairly quickly as you are not using your pet to tank for you. Specing for toughness and health also helps as you will be in combat a lot.

For necromance I would recomend axe or dagger and focus, again no ground targeting (don’t use dagger off hand the 5 key uses ground targeting). Dagger 2 key syphons health and focus 4 key gives regeneration so while damage isn’t high you are hard to put down and minions can make up for the lack of damage abilities.

hope this helps and gives you something to have a try at. I’m not sure how welcome either build would be in a dungeon, I tend to solo open world alot.

Open world roaming, either solo or with a friend or two. I try to avoid the zergs unless I particularly want the rewards. I don’t want to pug so, as there are normally only two or three of us on, dungeons are there is we really want a challenge. Taking out a champion solo or completing a JP with out resorting to the wiki also give me a sense of achievement.

I recently replaced my keyboard and mouse and I am very happy with what i chose. The Razer Deathadder mouse, mainly because it is what I had before and I had been very pleased with it, as a lefty it is one of the few mice that have that alternative. I didn’t want he number of extra buttons on the Naga, and the Naga Hex isn’t available for lefties yet (as far as I could tell) Liking he mouse, i decided to pair it with a Razer keyboard and got the Anansi. If you are a keybinder it has 7 additional thumb buttons below the the space bar which can be paired with the normal keys for alternative functions. Only a couple of downsides, there are no USB ports on the keyboard and it takes 2 USB ports on your computer, the mouse takes a third port so if you are short on USB ports you might have to get a hub for it. Both are wired so no battery problems.

Guess I’m a different kind of casual player. I am on most days for an hour or three depending on RL stuff, but after a day a work I don’t want to come home to what ends up to be another job. I don’t mind the time gating and having to take things slow. I enjoy being out in the world doing what I feel like. I even enjoy doing a bit of crafting with the materials I have gathered out and about.

What I don’t like is being made to do certain content to get the gear I want (not the gear I need, that’s easy to get, but I would fancy a legendary at some point, and quite like the idea of making myself). Unfortunately to make a legendary I HAVE to do dungeons to get the tokens. To make an asended item I have to fight the champs, do dungeons or WvW stuff.

So what I would like to see is all crafting materials and gear made tradeable or obtainable out in the open world and not only through boss fights.

I would also like to see something done to break the zerg train and spread people out a bit, maybe making the rewards more linked to how many are in the zerg, the fewer people the better the reward, but the champs would have to be scaled so that a solo player would have a slim chance to take one down, but the reward would be worth the effort, (maybe it could get you an asended item with out crafting it, very rare chance but possible). If you started solo and some one joined in half way through then the first person would get the one on one reward and the second would get the two on one reward, so people would not get upset and claim someone ‘stole’ their loot

The krewe might also want to do research into when the dragons should have been woken up. I know what I’m like if I get woken up early, it makes the dragons behaviour seem tame.

Oh and maybe we should also try applying large amounts of coffee to the dragons rather than killing them.

Brilliant read.

I don’t think the problem is just with MMOs, I think it is with society in general. The attitude of ‘Me, Me, Me, Now, Now, Now’ is becoming far too common. People are wanting everything new and shiny and they want it as soon as it comes out, even if the variant they had is only a few months old and still does the job perfectly well, take a look at peoples attitude to smart phones for example.

At the same time people need a goal in these games, whether it is finishing the story or getting the best gear, when you have nothing to work towards is when people lose interest and leave the game.

A lot of people are also competitive and when they do succeed they want others to know it which is why the rewards and achievement points are needed to keep people playing.

So, in my view, the top end gear and achievements which are the ultimate rewards should be very hard to get, but should be available either through besting difficult bosses or through investing enough time into general game play, (call it a grind if you want). I personally would want the rewards for boss fights linked not to the level of the boss or to your level but to the difficulty in winning, taking into account the number of players, and each characters level compared to the Champ. This might also help spread players between the zones as taking down a champ single handed would give a higher reward than just joining a zerg.

I am on Piken Square (EU) and there always seems to be a good number of people around, (sometimes too many, the champ is dead in the time it takes me to get there). i normally finish about 10.00 (UK time) so what it is like later I am not sure but I doubt it would go too quiet to quick.

It is the unofficial RP server, but the RPers are good and it doesn’t need to intrude if you don’t RP.

My first character was a ranger, and while I love her, I do find her rather flat to play. My Necro is now 62 and I am loving her, she seems a lot more involved in the fight than the ranger was. I still have a pet to tank for me, but I find I am using my range of skills far more, all my weapon skills and then throwing around wells as well. So basically I am saying try a Necro, you could love it and it certainly seems to be king of condition damage.

A dark sinister forest would get my vote. Lots of trees, small groups of mobs not large events, and plenty of wildlife or undead to kill.

Castles, ruined or not would also be a nice addition.

Underwater realms would be alright when they have sorted out the problems with underwater combat. Having played WoW I came to hate the underwater zones, the maps just never worked.

I think the profanity filter is having a hiccup, More kittens would be nice but that wasn’t what I put and I can’t think why what I wrote would have been filtered.

I would like more kittenes and I could suggest at least one. For anyone who has saved the honey from the bears in Queensdale a number of times then the ‘dangerous person’ kittene would be a must. Listen to the crazy bee keeper lady and you will understand why.

My warrior, Stachys Lanata, (a plant commonly known as lambs lugs) is frosted skin, pale grey blue leaves for hair and a white glow akittens maximum intensity, because as she believes ‘Everything has a right to glow’ and ‘Where life glows so should you’ (I think she may have hit her head a bit in the dream, or maybe she a little deaf)

I like cats, and I dearly wanted to love the charr, unfortunately I am still trying to.

I can cope with the history, the charr making war on the humans and then the peace treaty, but you don’t get the feeling of distrust wandering around Divinity’s Reach as a charr that should exist is the treaty was only a year ago.

However like many before me my main gripe is with the animation of the charr. When walking upright their legs appear too short. They have digitigrade legs so they should appear longer in proportion to the body. The whole way the run both on two legs and on four looks wrong, they have a weird sideways shuffle on two legs on what appears to be some strange swimming motion on four legs with their arms flailing wildly. I have no idea what animals the devs based the movement on but it definately wasn’t cats.

Their bodies seem incredibly shoulder heavy, there should be more options for the sleek and elegant cat shapes in the generation options, as well as the option to stand straight instead of hunched over.

The armour clipping is annoying but what is worse is the way the armour is designed for bipedal creatures and then doesn’t hang right when they run. As others have mentioned, should they really where clothes except for practical uses, a mix of armour for protection and harnesses for carrying equipment, preferably ones that would show off all those wonderful coat patterns you get to chose.

I know it is a controversial suggestion, but like others have said making it that all races run at the same speed regardless of size does make that charr and norn appear slow, maybe the devs could consider making it a racial ability for them to run at a speed that would appear normal and give the smaller races some other ability to make up for it.

I’m not expecting to be able to craft an ascended weapon in a few days, its taken me almost a year to get one character to level 80, if it takes another year or two to get an ascended weapon or a legendary weapon then that fine. What I don’t like is the limits on how I can obtain the necessary materials to make those items. Legendary weapons REQUIRE me to do dungeons and now ascended weapons REQUIRE me to do champions events and dungeons.

I had hoped that GW2 would allow me to craft the equipment with out forcing me to do content I’m not overly interested in. I know I can buy a legendary but I would really like to craft one.

I would even accept throwing things in the mystic forge in hope of getting the necessary materials.

I share your frustration concerning ascended materials, but as I have said elsewhere, it is because I come at it from the other end. I enjoy crafting and want to make the ascended items, particularly if they were tradeable as well. However I don’t enjoy farming champions or dungeons. I’ll do the odd one if I come across a champion battle in my travels, but I prefer wandering the world and enjoying the scenery. I gather every node I come across, and kill standard and veteran mobs, but I don’t go out of my way to find the champions or take part in the big events. This means that I am unlikely to get enough ascended mats to craft anything.

I played WoW for a long time and got really fed up with the fact that as I did not enjoy end game dungeons and raids I could not get or craft the high end weapons or armor. The normal argument was if you don’t do the end game content you don’t need the end game gear. I may not need it, but that doesn’t stop me wanting it. I would gladly pay for the materials if I could.

I see a lot of threads going on about the amount of mats needed for crafting and other threads going on about useless materials that are just taking up bank space. I know I may be in a minority, but I enjoy crafting, particularly going out wandering around the world and gathering materials. What I don’t like is being forced to do dungeons, or join the champion zerg train just to get the mats for crafting.

So my suggestion is to make all the materials required in crafting and all the products tradeable, that way those that want to do dungeons can, those that want to zerg the champions can, and those of us that want to craft can buy the extra materials to make the weapons and armor that the dungeoneer and champion hunters need.

I know the big argument against this is that it will lead to more botting, but depending on who you listen to, botting is either already rampant, or is already being dealt with, so I doubt it would make things much worse.

I have to agree with the OP as well, its wonderful that ANet are putting in all the new content, but its too fast. I hardly even bother with the LS now. If I come across something happening while out in the world I’ll take part, but I won’t join the zerg train and I pretty much ignore the LS achievement section.

I would like to see more permanent content added as well. Maybe limit the short term content to once a month and make every forth month permanent content instead.

Oh and yes, I’m another casual, I have to fit in my gaming around a job, a family, a house, all the normal things. Gaming is what I do to relax, I don’t want it to be more stressful than my job is.

Great idea and gets my full support. Maybe an option to let us decide what level of equipment we want that message to come up.

Welcome to the game from another WoW refugee. After far too many years GW2 has finally proved to be the game to make me cancel my WoW subs.

My advise take it slow and enjoy whats offered, pick and chose what you want and don’t get caught up in any treadmill or start to feel forced to do anything, and ignore the whining on the forums.

I started playing at launch and after a year I have just got my first level 80 character, I’m now looking at the legendary weapons and maybe by this time next year I’ll be ready to craft one.

Thanks OP for brightening up the forums and have fun.

Most of my character die lots, particularly my thief.

However I always liked Diablo hardcore and the Ironman challenge that went on in WoW for a while so I set myself the challenge to see how far I could level a character without dieing, no crafting and only using equipment I pick up. Needless to say I haven’t got out of single figures yet, but it is fun and when you know that if you die you delete the character you learn to play a whole lot more carefully

I consider myself a casual player, but my definition is very different to yours. To me a casual player is one who can only play on an irregular schedule and only for an hour or two a day. This means that in things like raiding, or high level grinding content we normally can not keep up. I certainly don’t only play a game for a month, I start WoW back pre Burning Crusade (the first expansion) and only cancelled my subscription a week or so ago when I realised I had not been on for weeks as GW2 had fully taken over my gaming time.

Does GW2 just cater to casuals. I’m not sure, it suits my style of play, dailies can be done in less than an hour so I have a good chance to do them several times a week. I have only just got my first level 80 and still have a lot to do but I don’t feel that the game is leaving me behind, a legendary weapon still looks like it might be something worth working towards.

There is one big reason for a company to cater to the casuals, and that is money. The reason I can only play for an hour or so a day is that I have a job, but that also means that I have money to spend. Unfortunately, what I consider hardcore players are often on benefits for one reason or another which means they have the opportunity to spend a lot of time in game, but very little to spend on the gem store. I am not say that Anet do cater to casuals for this reason, but the reality is they are a company and as there is no subscription people buying gems is how they will fund all the updates that have been promised.

I haven’t retired any in GW2 yet, only just made 80 the other day, and still got a lot of exploring to do with her. However I have on other games, either I have just grown tired of the character, or changes to the class meant it didn’t play the way it used to and the new way did not suit that character or a different class suddenly seemed to click for me.

I always end up with a lot of characters (already up to 15 on my main account and 4 on my secondary account) so I have multiples of most professions and each variations tends to get specced differently so if I don’t feel like playing one it can sit there until I do want to play it.

For me, Ranger, Guardian, and Necro are top of the list, with Mesmer. Elementalist and Thief at the bottom. That said, and looking at the other replies it is very much a personal choice and by trying the different weapon options each profession can be fun for someone.

If you are looking for the highest dps, best survivor, or something like that then I am sure there are websites that will help. If you are really looking to have fun, try a class that appeals, make sure you try all the weapons options and then see which ones you keep playing and which ones end up getting left behind.

A lot of my dream patch has been promised so hopefully it is just a matter of being patient.

1: Open up new areas. I would particularly like to to see the area north of Divinities Reach opened up (Woodland Cascades I think it is called). I’m not keen on desert settings and knowing what he graphics are like, it sounds like this could be a beautiful area.

2: A new race, either Tengu or Largos, possibly associated with the new zones.

3: Player/Guild housing and the gold sink to create it.

4: New skills for existing classes. One or two new weapons and new skills both for weapons and for utility/healing/elite slots. (I have a human necromancer and if my memory serves me right there was only one elite skill that could be used underwater)

Now onto some that I don’t think Anet have mentioned.

5: Scaleable dungeons. I would love to see the dungeon content scaled to the number of players, say from 2 to 10 plays and then a difficulty level set, easy, normal or hard. I normally play with one or two friends so at the moment we either have to pug a couple of people or try it with a below optimum group. As none of us are experienced dungeon runners, this can be off putting.

6: Remove extraneous currencies. Having recently reached level 80 I have been looking at crafting one of the legendaries as my next long term project, however I have seen the need for dungeon tokens, with reference to point 5, I don’t really do dungeons and I hate feeling forced into content just to get a weapon, I know I could just buy it of the TP but that isn’t the point. I would happily see all currencies except gold, gems and karma removed and the items that are bought with the other currencies made available through those. Laurels I still like as it is a bit of a reward for doing the dailies/ monthlies, and what the vendor sells can be obtained else where.

7: And a spell checker on the forums would be nice, red lining words is all very well but it doesn’t help me when I don’t know how to spell the word anyway.

Can we keep this to fun things and not let it turn into a whining thread.

I guess I don’t really understand why people who keep complaining keep playing if they are not enjoying it, so I wanted to know what people actually enjoy. (and maybe the devs will be listening and keep putting that content in, not just zerg runs)

Yesterday, myself and a couple of friends were running around Bloodtide Coast when Scarlet’s minions invaded so we went over to join in. After 10 -15 minutes of standing spamming rapid fire and barrage using tab to target and aiming barrage in the general direction as I couldn’t see any targets we succeeded in one event and failed another.

I compared that to the night before when I was in Lornar’s Pass when I came across a champion. I managed to take it down to about 25% health solo before someone else came and joined in and we quickly finished it off. I had spent roughly the same amount of time, 10 – 15 minutes dodging around, swapping pets, stealthing and generally having to work to stay alive.

There was only one champion so only one lot of loot, but I enjoyed it far more.

These forums are often filled with complaints and moaning, so, I have a simple question. What have you done in GW2 that was actually fun in itself, not just chance happenings, but something you can go and repeat and enjoy again, and not purely done for the rewards gained at the end,

Well I may have solved the problem for myself at least, ignore DR. I’m not too bothered about the event, I have done the closing ceremony once. So back onto my alts and base out of Hoelbrak, I have just logged in there and it is dead, I only saw one other player around and it rendered perfectly. Looks like all my characters will have to buy warm clothes and move to the Shiverpeaks.

I don’t know if its to do with the culling or if something else has changed, but before this patch my computer would run GW2 without problems, it may not have been on ultra high settings but it looked good enough. The problem isn’t with frame rate although that has dropped from about 35 in DR to about 25, the problem is the time it takes to render the image when I waypoint into DR. I end up standing on a blue screen with a few buildings and figures around for about 10 seconds, (that may not sound a lot but it seems it when I’m waiting). The point is it never happened before. I have changed the culling settings to the lowest number of characters shown and it is still as bad.

My husband also plays and he mentioned that he has had this problem before, his computer is about 18 months older than mine (making it about 3 years old) Unfortunately we can’t afford to buy 2 new high end computers every year and up until now mine at least has managed.

So I guess, after all that, the simple questions are, is it just the removal of culling, was the original setting even lower than ‘lowest’ or has something else changed, and if culling is the problem, can we have an even lower setting, back to how it was.

(Just an update, my husband has just logged on and it took about 20 seconds for DR to fill in for him)

Everyone likes different things and the best a MMORPG creater can hope for is to put in enough content to please as many people as possible. As I said I like leveling, but I can understand that others feel differently. I had a friend playing WoW who had to be on several nights a week to try and kill the same raid boss in hope of a particular item dropping, in my mind boring as hell, but that was what he enjoyed so who am I to say that it was wrong. Hopefully Anet can keep up the expansions and keep as many players as possible happy, including us altoholics and not fall into the trap of only concentrating on end game content.

As for why I have multiples of a class, different builds and weapon sets play differently and I can’t be bothered having to swap talents and skills if I fancy a change, so I just change to a different character, and of cause there are the different races as well.

I like this thread, it makes me feel quite normal with only 14 characters on my main account and 3 on a second account which I got to run hardcore/Ironman style (for those that haven’t come across hardcore or ironman, its a self limiting challenge where you decide what items, skills, traits etc. you allow your character to use, but when you die, that’s it, delete character and start again.)

On my main account I have one level 80 human ranger and several in the 30 and 40s, plus several below 10 that seem to get changed in and out as I keep wanting to try some other class/race combination.

Leveling and exploring is fun for me so multiple characters is my norm, one of my gripes with GW, particularly the expansions was the level 20 cap I never finished any of them and never even bought GWEN. At least in GW2 I’m free to carry on exploring as and where I want and don’t have to worry about the ‘end game’ content, although having seen the pictures for the legendary bows, I might be tempted to work towards one of them.