Guild Wars 2

vidiotking.1928:

I could go back to a ‘traditional’ mmo if it were a lot like SWG. If I could ‘live’ in a player made city, in a player made house, with all player made items, I would.

I too have a little hole in my heart where the original SWG used to be – best crafting system ever and I loved being able to change my class choices on the fly. But let’s not forget that the combat was stinky kittens spewing hairballs.

I can’t go back to a traditional MMO. I bought Secret World to have something to do while I was waiting for GW2 to release, and cancelled my sub after a couple weeks. I have all of the WoW expansions except MoP, and have no desire to go back. I gave up on Rift about a month after that released. It had some cool ideas but I was already so burnt on the “if you’re not in the party with the over-levelled character when you do the group event, you get diddly for a reward no matter how much you participated” thing. WarHammer Online ruined the entire public quest thing for me with their weird all or nothing random 3 bag rewards for events where 50 people participated.

I will never again pay to play a game that forces you to talk to a particular NPC to pick up a quest. If there is a “share quest” option, it’s not a game for me. I have no tolerance for logging in and spending the first 30 minutes doing housekeeping in my inventory, auction house, and quest log. Hrm, I think I could work this into a credo.

Eochaidh.4106:

Yeah, because Guild Wars wasn’t exactly like that and didn’t manage to survive perfectly fine throughout the years, right?

Yes, but how many people were totally baffled when they hit 20 so quickly in the original Guild Wars? We have to be patient with folks while we deprogram them. Some we won’t be able to save.

My mother told me once “There’s a butt for every chair”. Some people have fun playing Progress Quest. I seriously doubt that they will be able trick Arena Net into turning GW2 into a WoW clone, and they will eventually wander off to a game that suits them better.

Vorpal.4683:

The single biggest problem with cooking is that there is no room in collections for the intermediate ingredients: no one is going to want to level cooking ‘properly’ but making lots of discoveries if they start drowning in dozens of bowls of frosting or loaves of bread or soup stocks. These things need their own collectibles tabs.

I’m one of those silly folks that level it “properly” because I think it’s fun that way. There is almost an entire tab of my bank dedicated to ingredients that don’t go in my collectibles tab. It’s so much easier now that we don’t have to have the ingredients in our inventory to make recipes we already know, and it will only get better when we can do discoveries out of our bank (which the state of the game indicates is planned).

What I do is I make some ingredient, say garlic bread. I go check my discovery tab and if it’s in there I keep it, if it’s not, I make some meatballs or something with it. I’ve made enough discoveries that my stash of intermediate ingredients is dwindling. If I use an ingredient in a discovery, I make another one and see if it’s still there. If not, I use it to make another of the recipe I just discovered. It’s a little bit of a hassle, but I like puzzling out what’s missing instead of just looking up recipes on guildhead.

I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to put most of the intermediate cooking ingredients in the collectibles tab. I certainly wouldn’t want to see anything that’s discoverable in there. The items stack pretty high, so I’m not seeing much of an issue. You could always dump them on the TP if it starts to take up too much space.

Block fixes the problem of you not being able to have a conversation with other players. I think you don’t really grasp how difficult it is to counter the gold farmers. There is a lot of money in play, and I guarantee you that the spam you see now is a drop in the bucket compared to what you would see if Arena Net wasn’t actively working against them.

Report them, block them, and then be patient. Just from my experience trying to keep the spammers off of a company forum I moderated where there wasn’t millions of dollars to be made by spamming, I can’t imagine what the ANet folks are going through.

If you want to exhort someone to fix the problem, rail against the morons that buy stuff from the gold farmers instead of using the gem store. If there was no market for their services, the spammers wouldn’t bother.

Congrats! I’m glad to see your hard work pay off.

Since the first beta weekend, I’ve been bending the ears of the gamers I work with about GW2 and how much fun it is (probably to the point of being annoying). One of them finally broke down and bought a copy of the game for himself and a friend and I got a call the next day (I’m home sick) confirming that yes, I was right, the Arena Net folks fixed almost all of the things that made us stop playing MMOs.

Both of them have worked in the game industry, and I thought I’d pass along that they noticed and appreciated the quality and the attention to detail. They are having a blast and haven’t even done any PvP yet. One of the highlights for them was being able to jump in to an event and all the sudden be part of a group.

I could go on and on, but I think I’ve hit my annoying fan chatter quota for this week.

I’ve found raptors drop better than Moas, and you get both poultry meat and eggs. I also came across a platypus looking thing that dropped eggs and I can’t remember the exact name. I’ll see if I can find them again. I think they were in the Southern part of Snowden drifts.

Yes, please mark them the way you mark the stuff we pick up for an event as “event item”. I’m wondering now if I destroyed or sold something I should have kept.

I just experienced the same issue. All of my ring choices had adorned gems in them, but the ring I received had an empty upgrade slot. Not a huge deal, but disappointing.

If they aren’t going to charge for switching, then you should lose your progress. There has to be some obstacle to having all crafting skills active on one character. Personally, I prefer keeping my progress and paying to switch.

Derpinator.2894:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Agemnon.4608:

Wow, 10 EXP for killing a level 3 mob while farming heart EXP (worth it for the achievement though I guess). 10 EXP may as well be nothing.

You don’t get much XP for killing stuff at any level.

I was getting 1k xp per mob last night in unexplored parts of frostgorge. 299 for the mob and 700+ explorable. Your statement is simply wrong.

You don’t get much XP for just standing around killing the same mobs over and over. You certainly don’t get a lot of XP for killing mobs in areas where you are down-scaled, nor should you, because they’re flipping easy. 300 XP at level 80 is a pittance. The biggest chunk of your XP came from the “explorable” part.

There are a lot of rewards in GW for simply exploring places. If you let folks run through those areas without having to be careful at all, you devalue all of the content. The map completion, the harvestables, the hidden spot achievements, the chests, all of it. Rewards should have some challenge involved, even if it is walking through a drake infested swamp. You don’t want to be bothered after you explored an area? Take a waypoint.

You should not feel powerful just because you made it to 80. You could have sat in town and crafted your way to 80. I feel powerful in lowbie zones because I can stomp everything that crosses my path, not because I can go AFK in the middle of a dangerous spot. You need to go AFK? Stash your character some place safe. There are plenty of places to hop up on terrain and be out of the way. I have never had a problem, even in zones where I’m not down-leveled, finding a place to hang out for a while without getting killed.

There’s a difference between being heroic and being god-like. Heroic is wading into a fight that would have given you pause a few levels ago and winning because of your skill. My ranger doesn’t kite anything any more and the only thing she’s afraid to fight alone are champions or veterans with minion close to her real level. God-like is running around too self absorbed to be bothered with the problems of mere mortals. If you want to feel god-like, go play a single player game where the mere mortals are all NPCs.

Vivisector.5680:

There is no problem with Cooking.

I agree with you. I’m only a 210 level chef after 100 or so hours of playing (not 100 hours of crafting), but I’ve been cooking for fun (gasp!), not to level or make money. I like trying to figure out the recipes, and it’s gotten sooo much easier now that we can craft stuff we know without having to take items out of the bank. It will be even better when we can discover without pulling stuff out of the bank. I hope that ANet will add cooking recipes the same way they’re planning on changing up the dynamic events. .

I like that items that occur in a lot of recipes now drop instead of having to go find a karma vendor to buy them from (vanilla beans and chili peppers!). That means I can buy them off the TP if I’m in town and run out. They warn you before you select cooking as a profession that it’s expensive and you will have to travel a lot, and I chose it because it was unique among the crafting skills. The recipe discovery is more like a puzzle than the other crafts, and hunting down the ingredients gives me a reason to go places I haven’t been yet.

I really hope ANet doesn’t force cooking to be more like the other crafting professions.

The only other recipe I’ve seen for walnuts was nut bread, and I think that’s purchased from a heart karma vendor somewhere. It seems weird now that walnuts are raining from the trees, but I guess it will get me started on my dye making.

Agemnon.4608:

Wow, 10 EXP for killing a level 3 mob while farming heart EXP (worth it for the achievement though I guess). 10 EXP may as well be nothing.

You don’t get much XP for killing stuff at any level. You kill mobs because they are in your way, drop crafting materials, part of an event, or you need them to finish your dailies. You also get bonus XP for killing different types of mobs instead of killing the same ones over and over. There are quite a few incentives to keep moving instead of staying in one place and grinding.

RobertB.8326:

Well I don’t feel its right that if I’m a level 52 necro and I have to kill stuff while farming for materials in lets say a level 30 zone because if I don’t they will kill me.

So basically, you want to get the same reward without taking the same risk. All that does is devalue lower tier crafting supplies that new folks harvest on their way up. Why shouldn’t folks new to the game be able to make some money on the stuff they find while they’re leveling?

If you want low tier materials and you don’t want to have to work for them, buy them off the TP.

You do have an advantage when you’re down-leveled. You have all those trait and skill points. If you haven’t completely slacked on your gear, and you gave a couple of seconds of thought to your build, you shouldn’t be having any problem with lower level content.

And no, you shouldn’t be able to run through zones and not have to fight stuff just because you’re level 80. You want to get through a zone quickly, take a waypoint. If you haven’t found the waypoint, then you have to explore the area just like everyone else. It’s much much easier to explore zones when I’m over-leveled, especially because I can solo the veteran mobs guarding some of the skill points, and I can kill normal mobs very quickly.

As an added bonus, I get meaningful XP from them and drops of crafting materials. If I want to kill some stuff to get jute drops because I switched over to a new crafting skill, why shouldn’t I get XP from the mobs I’m killing? I can always use another skill point.

I think this is one of the hardest things to get accustomed to in Guild Wars. You don’t use all of your damage skills every time they are up. Everything with a cooldown has a side effect that is best used in certain situations and you have to be really aware of what’s going on. Save your interrupts for the big boss attacks, save your defensive maneuvers for when you’re out of endurance. Save your long cool down combo finishers for when there is a field down. If there is already a certain type of field down, don’t put another one of the same type right on top of it. Don’t knock back or fear a mob when the warrior standing next to it starts his 100 blades. Don’t daze a mob that is already stunned.

I really stunk at GW1 because I could not get the hang of the hex layering. GW2 is easier, but it’s still way more complex than the combat systems that rely on resource management. This is why so many folks are getting smushed in dungeons. Every person on the team has to be aware of and react to sometimes very quick visual cues if you don’t want to have to run back from the waypoint every few minutes. The system is very action oriented, and there isn’t a single class that can stand back, mash their buttons, and be effective against the more challenging content.

There’s no point to face to face trading when everything is a commodity. Nothing you have to trade is unique, so put it on the trading post. Don’t like the prices on the TP? Vendor it or come to grips with the fact that what you have isn’t worth as much as you wish it was worth.

What possible reason is there to trade face to face that doesn’t involve taking advantage of someone? If you want to hand your friend the awesome weapon you just found that your profession can’t use, right click on their portrait and mail it to them. They get it instantly.

If you think the zerg is effective in WvW you’re not playing on (or against) a shard with some larger guilds that are serious about WvW. Our guild pushed the other shards off the map with 30 people split into multiple strike teams coordinating over Teamspeak. After we were done and left, the folks that zerg handed it all back.

An organized group can drag a zerg all over the map and stay two steps ahead of them. Then giggle as they fight to retake a supply camp that has nowhere to send their pack mules.

I think the hearts are different from quest hubs in a few important ways. The task and the person that wants it done are in the same place. There are multiple ways to complete a heart. There is only one heart so once you’ve completed it, you can move on. If a dynamic event starts, you can spend more time in the area, but it’s all completely optional. If you don’t feel like doing it, you can come back at any time and you won’t have out-leveled the heart, and the dynamic event will spawn again eventually (or you can sometimes start it yourself by talking to the NPCs in the area).

Compare that to a real quest hub, say the crossroads in WoW. There are a bunch of quests you have to pick up. To complete some of them you have to walk all the way to the far end of the zone, keep a bunch of junk in your bag, walk all the way back to turn them in, pick up the next stage, then walk back to where you were. You must carefully plan out what order you’re going to do the tasks in so that you minimize your walking time and finish the lower level tasks before they go gray and you get no reward. It was such drudgery. To complete all of the quests you would spend hours doing nothing but walking to and from the Crossroads.

I’m not having the same experience. I love the fact that I don’t have to return someplace to pick up a quest reward and chart out the most efficient way to complete a long list of tasks. I like that I can get distracted and wander away from the heart area and come back any time and finish it up without watching a quest go gray because I didn’t knuckle down and get it done before I out-leveled it.

It is easy to get stuck in the rut of running from heart to heart and event to event. My secret is that I’m curious. Why is that charr hanging out on that hill? How did that blue Moa get up on that cliff? One thing that folks don’t realize is that you can get gold contribution in an event without having to stick around for the whole thing. Also, the events spawn fairly regularly, and some of them are quite long, so I don’t go running every time I see a hint of orange on my map.

It is easy to barrel through areas when you don’t have dead time walking between quests and back to quest givers. When I see someone with a name, i.e. not just “citizen” or “rancher”, I talk to them and I listen to the scouts to get an idea of what’s going on in the area. I have a chat tab set up just to record NPC chat so I don’t miss what’s being said. And that’s another thing – the amount of voice work in GW2 is stunning. I’ve picked up a lot by eavesdropping on conversations in the main cities.

I also look around. Resource nodes and creatures don’t spawn places where you can’t get to them. If there’s a light in the back of a cave, it’s coming from somewhere. If it looks like you can jump up on something, see where it goes. I found some ruins in a cave that way. I looked up and saw a light coming through a hole in the wall, jumped up on a ledge to get a better look and ended up exploring some ruins full of imps and oozes (and tripping and falling into a nearly bottomless pit at one point). I never did figure out the story behind them, but it was still fun.

The amount of attention to detail in this game has astounded me. The problem, I think, is that we’ve been trained by the MMOs that came before that everything not in your quest log is just scenery that an artist made that way because it looked nice. Stop and smell the roses. But ask that nearby Asura if he’s experimenting on them first.

I don’t believe the recipes were always soul bound because I distinctly remember picking up a jeweler recipe for my husband and mailing it to him. It wasn’t until I bought up a whole bunch of armor smithing recipes on my cook/leatherworker thinking to stash them for my other character that I realized it had changed.

The change affects lower level recipes, but my guess is they don’t want people using one level 80 character to supply a stable of lower level crafter alts with the high end recipes from karma merchants the low levels couldn’t open.

They let you switch crafting professions without losing your progress for a reason. So I just learned the recipes on the character that bought them. Maybe she’ll be an armorsmith someday.

I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I checked and a sword in my inventory has a vendor price of 1s 14c. I can list it for 1s 15c with a listing cost of 6c. So I can still choose to make less than vendoring it.

People undercutting the vendor price is only a problem if people stop putting items on the TP and there’s a shortage of items available for trade. Then prices go up. Then more people sell instead of vendor and prices go down.

I really like that you can stack the chests pretty high. I’ve got almost 30 of them taking up one bank space waiting for keys to drop. I trash the tonics though. It would be nice if the tonics could be traded. I imagine that some creative folks could use them to create some fun short films.

Report it as a bug in game or in the bug forum. I have a pair of pants that has the glove icon (luckily they still look like pants when I wear them!). The icon stayed when I transmuted the look onto a new item. There’s definitely some graphics glitches in the game.

Definitely look over your gear. I was having a hard time doing some underwater event in a low level area and realized that I was using a level 24 spear gun as a level 48. I think because of the gear scaling I was actually adding hit points to the mobs when I shot them. (That was a joke, not a bug report)

Glad you got your account back. Most folks don’t remember the names of everyone they report after the initial hate mail, so you should be able to get your reputation back quickly. I pretty much assume if the character name looks real it’s a stolen account.

Just another way that the gold farming industry is a stinking swamp of kitteny kittening kittenish kittens (yeah I typed those kittens out instead of letting the forum do it for me – insert the offensive words you prefer.)

Market price is the price that the an item is offered in the marketplace. So you were confused when you said “charging more (in line with the market price)”. Market price right now for certain items is 1c over vendor cost. Unless I was confused and misunderstood what you were trying to say there.

The way that ANet has set up the trading post and the number of people participating in the market have made it a good simulation of a real economy. If you don’t want to talk about how real economies work, then you can’t be convinced that what your proposing will be bad for the game economy.

Mayam.8976:

My simple, and only point is that the market is effectively rendered useless for the point of making money when prices actually undercut what a vendor would offer.

You’re wrong. I’m making plenty of money off of the TP and I guarantee you that anyone else that understands supply and demand is doing as well as I am. Here’s a hint: when you see 500 units of something listed by 1 seller you don’t try to compete on price. When you see 5 items listed by 5 sellers, there may be pricing room there. There may not be though. It could be there’s only 5 on the market because nobody wants that item.

You have to keep in mind that people can buy their way into the economy with real money. So when you look at that pile of jute scraps and want to sell it for 25s, go look at the gem exchange rate and see if you feel it’s worth the equivalent in real money. I’ve found converting GW prices into real currency is an easier way to value items than comparing them to the vendor price. In other games I just used the going rate the gold spammers were advertising.

You also want to keep in mind that people can convert their gold into gems and buy items that you can’t offer on the TP. Ok I’ll stop there because I was about to get all intellectual on you again. Sorry, I’m an Engineer and I like understanding how complex systems work.

Mayam.8976:

Wow, I um…. okay lets condense this further. Forget the monopoly, that was worst case. Let me try this; Should it be difficult convincing people that: charging more (in line with the market price) = drumroll more profit! That kind of argument kind of resolves it self.

Higher prices means you will have to make more to afford stuff you want to buy. So all this extra profit you think you’re going to make is not going to amount to much at all if you actually play the game and buy items off the TP. And I think you’re confused about what “market price” means.

There is a mountain of historical evidence that arbitrarily fiddling with prices in a real economy rarely turns out well. You’re only considering the selling end of the trade, you aren’t considering the buying end. Inflation is bad, especially because when the prices go up, our enemies don’t drop more money or loot to compensate for it.

I just did a quick test – I put two different runes in my helm and my aqua breather that matched runes in my other gear. I went underwater, and I’m still seeing the bonus from the rune from my mask. I think both are simultaneously equipped, because I also see the bonus from the rune in my aqua breather on land.

Guild Wars 2 Sales: One Million Pre-Served, Record 400,000 Playing at Once

I think it’s odd that a games/tech reporter doesn’t understand the difference between pre-purchasing and pre-ordering.

GUILD WARS 2 TOPS EUROPEAN CHARTS AND SCORES BIG WITH MEDIA

GW 2 has the number one spot on Amazon also.

Just FYI – when the numbers are available, they’ll be here:
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

Have to wait for the this quarter’s results though because GW2 launched after the end of the previous quarter. The previous quarter is sort of interesting reading. I had no idea that Lineage was such a money maker.

In the original GW teams played teams and the random arenas randomly grouped people. It worked well. Not sure why they would change that – there’s no way for a 5 person team to fight another 5 person team in the hot join? I’m enjoying the WvW, so I haven’t looked at the structured at all yet.

I’m still opposed to make it any easier to pit a pre-made against a pug, even if there is currently a way to do it.

Yes, once you’ve paid the listing price, you can leave it up there forever I think. I also don’t think there is a maximum on how many items you can have up, but I haven’t found a definitive answer on that.

No, I don’t want to see join as group outside of the tournament. Anyone who thinks it’s fair for a group of players on teamspeak to play against a pug that is using chat to communicate is on the pre-made. Get a full team together if you want to play with your friends. I’m sure you could find a couple people willing to complete your team.

Oh, but then you’d have to play against folks where potentially the whole team was coordinated and you’d be at a disadvantage. See how that works?

I found I have to stow my pet as a ranger if I’m going to barrel through some place, because my pet getting hit triggers the slow down. I’m not sure if that also happens with Mesmer and Necro pets.

As an aside, I also stow my pet when I see someone dragging a train toward me, because they always peel off and aggro the pet. It would be nice if the folks running through an area were a little more aware of how their aggro impacts the people fighting in an area. If you don’t want to fight those mobs, what makes you think I want to?

It’s so frustrating when I’ve got a veteran almost dead and someone drags a bunch of fresh mobs down on me so they can tag it before it dies and then just keeps running. I wish there were more aggro management tools available. The only way I know of to reliably drop aggro as a ranger is if I’m downed and I’ve traited for camouflage :/

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Title

There’s no title for completing your story quest. My HOM title is working, so I don’t think they’re broken.

I think you should try the stealth out a little bit before you decide it doesn’t agree with you. It’s a bit different from other games, and it seems like a pretty important defense mechanism for the thief.

I have a trait on my ranger that stealths me when I’m downed and it is awesome to be able to de-aggro mobs in PVE. I don’t know that a non-stealthing thief would be viable in PvP, but I haven’t really dug into the thief builds yet.

They’re looking for flour so they can discover the chocolate chip cookie recipe, and someone told them it only drops from players. That’s why they’re always trying to kill you.

I do think that ANet over compensated for removing a staple ingredient like butter from the karma vendor. I would have moved it over a tab next to the flour, but I suppose the other crafting skills all require some dropped item for their zero level recipes. Cooks could just buy all the ingredients for bread and dough balls. Of course we had to play to get the karma, and we don’t get the refining recipes… wow, this balancing stuff is trickier than it seems.

I switched back to a short bow after using a long bow for a while, and noticed the increased range. This wasn’t always the case – even the wiki still says less damage and range than long bow.

With the range limitation gone, I prefer the short bow after playing 15 levels with a really nice long bow that was a gift. I like the mobility because even with some endurance regeneration, I find myself running out during boss fights. Any ranger skill that says “evade” as part of the description works as a dodge, not just a mobility skill, and those skills have turned out to be really important for me solo.

If you’re playing as part of a regular team or duo, and you trait marksman, long bow would be viable for sniping. I like the vulnerability and pet swiftness on the hunter’s shot, and the AOE arrow rain + sharpening stone is a really great way to bleed a huge group of enemies. I haven’t found the knock back shot to be as effective as the evade back shot on the short bow, mostly because my timing for interrupting needs work.

I don’t like being that far from the action though because if I’m too far from my pet I can’t leverage my combos and some boons effectively. I prefer the speed and mobility you get with the short bow so I can get closer without getting smushed.

Well I’ll answer the easy question first. Mushrooms are cheaper than copper because there are fewer items that they’re used in than copper, so there is less demand and pretty much the same supply. Only cooking uses mushrooms, and then only for a few recipes. Copper is used in large quantities by weaponsmiths, armorsmiths, artificers, and jewelers. It’s actually a bit easier to find copper than mushrooms, but the demand is greater, so the price is higher.

My collection storage for many items is full, so yeah my bag space is valuable. Wood and iron can’t be deposited to my bank anymore. I vendor it if I’m close to a vendor, and I fill orders on the TP if I’m not. I keep a bunch of salvage kits, harvesting tools, food, my HOM porter, spare weapons and such in my bags so I don’t have to stop my adventuring do boring stuff like run back to my bank, find a vendor that has the right level of tools and kits, or manage my bleeping inventory. I love this game for freeing me from that nonsense.

How are the low prices hurting the economy exactly? I can afford pretty much anything I need off the TP without having to grind out cash. The only stuff I have to save up for are things like cultural armor, which should be expensive. Not having to stop having fun and work to earn virtual money to buy the upgrade for my weapon or armor that I want is not a bad thing.

The reason certain items are so cheap is because there is excess supply. Not every item has excess supply, just the ones that are easy to get or have low demand. Here’s some examples of stuff that is selling for more – unidentified dyes at around 5s each. Even the less popular identified dyes are over 50c each. Sesame seeds are 1s each, and yams are 1s 50c each. Guess what they have in common? There’s hundreds of units available instead of tens of thousands.

As far as not allowing people to post on the market in the wilderness, why add drudgery to the game simply because certain folks can’t let go of the WoW auction house? If what you want to sell doesn’t make you a large enough profit, find something else to sell. Why are y’all so attached to the idea that such common things should be worth more? If there is enough volume of trade (which there is on the TP) the prices set by the market are a very accurate indicator of what an item is truly worth.

I like it for my lone ranger solo exploration character. I choose differently for my team build characters.

People are making money on the trading post, or nothing would be listed on it. The fact that you can’t make as much money as you would like on common junk is irrelevant. I profit on everything I post, even when get 15% less than what I could vendor it for.

Profit = revenue – cost
Cost = trading costs + cost of materials + cost of time + cost of storage – manufacturing benefit (level progression, achievements, et. al.)

Cost of time, cost of storage, and manufacturing benefit are subjective. Manufacturing benefit could be crafting xp, it could be running a dungeon, or anything else you do that nets you salable items. Material costs are crafting ingredients, salvage kits, harvesting tools, repair costs, etc.

The folks that think people are taking a loss by selling less than vendor price are not taking into account the hidden and subjective costs of vendoring an item. TP costs are easy to calculate – listing price plus commission. Vendor cost aren’t so easy. It depends on how far away the closest vendor is, how hard it is to get to them, how full your bags are, and how much time and money it would take to get back to where you want to be in the world.

Why do you insist that you should be able to turn a profit on things that are easy to get? That’s like expecting to get paid the same salary as a brain surgeon for digging ditches. If all these folks are losing all this money, why don’t you just vendor everything and make your fortune?

Things are worth what people believe they are worth and not 1c more. Food has no vendor price, and it is so common that you can’t sell some it at an actual loss on the TP. An actual lost meaning that you don’t get back your listing price, not this fictitious if you had sold it to a vendor you would have gotten more type loss.

Yeah there’s still a pause with the F2 abilities, but it’s gotten better.

Random thoughts about the ranger… mine is 50 now and has about half the pets.

The ranger really has a ton of mobility if you go short bow and sword. There are also some utility skills that help mobility, like Lightning Reflexes. I think this a a major advantage of this class over say a ranged warrior.

Rangers have lots of condition damage possibilities – bleeds, poisons, burning. They also have some very solid healing/protective abilities although nowhere near what the guardian can do.

If you choose your pets carefully you can set up lots of nice combos. For example, I use the jungle spider a lot because of the poison field. I keep axe and torch on my swap, and I’m built for +condition damage. A lot of rangers like the drakes because of their blast finishers, which a ranger doesn’t get from weapon skills (just leap and projectile finishers, and the leap can be hard to pull off in some situations).

I like the ranger mostly because I always like the hybrid classes. Medium armor, toughness/vitality traits, melee skills, pet skills, mobility skills, healing skills… you can go down a lot of different paths. Of course that also means if you don’t focus you could end up being completely kitten

I would decide on a theme… Death from afar? You can run, but you’re still going to die (bleeds/poison/burning)? Can’t touch this close combat evader? I’m not really left handed weapon swapper? Then pick your traits and pets and gear to support what you want to do.

I went for condition damage and I’ve got sigils of battle in both my swap weapons, which give me might on swapping. I’ve got runes that increase my might duration, and I’ve got traits that give me a bonus on swapping pets. There’s really a lot more to a GW build than your typical MMO – I love it!

Really folks, this is basic economics. A free price system is an efficient way to ensure that folks are producing stuff other folks want. What’s confusing a lot of folks is that they see a vendor price and think it completely captures that value of the item. It doesn’t. Item values are subjective and that’s why you need a huge number of people participating in a market to make it work.

If there are enough people in the market, the gold farmers aren’t going to be able to monopolize, say, jute scraps. There will be too many people that will go get some jute scraps and take advantage of the attempt to push the price higher. Supply goes up and prices come back down. You could manipulate the market with enough money if you only have a few hundred people participating in it. GW2 has what a million+ sales so far? They all participate in the same market. Good luck trying to buy up all of their jute scraps if you make it worth their while to collect and sell them.

There are costs associated with vendoring an item that aren’t as clearly defined as the 15% cost of using the trading post. I sold a yellow war horn on the TP and got 30c less than what I could have vendored it for. My time and bag space are worth more than 30c. Also, I liked the idea that another player might find it useful. So I didn’t lose any money, I got exactly what I was willing to sell it for, all things considered.

All this complaining about not being able to make money by dumping the junk on the TP is like tchotchke makers complaining they can’t make money because the guy three booths down is selling exactly the same stuff cheaper. If you can’t make money doing what you’re doing, you need to pick a different line of “work”.

In general, to make money, you have to produce something that people want and offer it at a price that is more attractive than taking the time to make the item for themselves would be. If you really want to understand this, read Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics. No graphs or statistics, just historical examples and plain language explanations.

Chantry of Secrets on Stormbluff Isle maybe? That poi was a surprise to me and it spawned it’s own map completion reward (just xp). Not sure about the vista though.

Yes, save up the karma bought stuff and toss it in the forge. I think (I’m not positive) what you get out is bind on acquire though. I’ve had to cycle stuff a few times to get anything worthwhile, but it’s better than destroying it.

What a cool idea – hidden fishing spots sort of like that ledge at Troll’s End with all the strawberries. I remember my uncle taking us down to his super secret fishing spot once – of course it was such a good spot for fish that it was full of fish-eating snakes. I’m hoping the virtual version will be more, um, pleasant.

I like the sushi recipe idea too – we’ve got rice, vinegar & soy. Now we need fish, wasabi, and nori. Hmm also, wasabi covered almonds. Maybe if there’s an expansion where we get back in contact with Cantha…

I’m kind of surprised by folks complaining about lack of content. I think it’s just a different play style. I’ve found some hidden ruins the other day by jumping up to see what was on the other side of a wall. The chest at the end was disappointing, but fighting veteran oozes that knock back while standing on a ledge over a really long drop was pretty exciting.

There are so many NPC conversations in the world that are really entertaining and if you pay attention to what is being said during the events they are much more interesting. I have a chat tab set up just to capture NPC talk. I can’t imagine the amount of work that went into giving all of these NPCs at the hearts and around the events different stories – everything I do has a little story behind it, and not just “I need zevra hooves for my trophy case, but don’t get all 4 of them off the same zevra”.

I think GW2 is a little more sandboxy than other MMOs and it kind of throws people off. Most of the fun I’m having in the game is discovering stuff. The folks that are more goal oriented are probably not having as good a time. OK, I’m 80, now what? OK, we own all the control points on our WvW map, now what? OK, I leveled up my crafting to 400, now what? I think those are the folks that buy legos, build what’s pictured on the box, then put them away. I think the folks that see the journey as more interesting than the destination probably like the game better.

Actually, I think it’s really cool that the front page of the TP has the highest valued items, the most demanded, and the most supplied. If you’re interested in making money on the market, that’s exactly the information you need to get rolling.

Looks to me like the meat of the market will be magic find gear/food (so folks can find the high priced items) and dyes.

And I think it’s unlikely that anyone is going to be able to manipulate the market because it’s across all servers and there are tons of folks playing. Unless some huge guild gets a hedge fund going… not sure the tools are in place to make that viable yet though.