Guild Wars 2

shinies? Gimme shiny first!

If they would do this, I might return to the game again. I miss needing coordinated teamplay in GW2.

Let me answer this from the point of view of someone who hasnt played GW2 for a few months now.

I don’t like the living story. There have been some times in the last few weeks where I fired up GW2 again, only to find that I have no idea why everyone suddenly was in Southsun, why I should care about refugees or where they came from.

I’m sure living story is fine, when you are around to experience it. But if I were to log in today, I would have no idea what the previous chapters were. Who the main characters were. What happened at the dragon bash festival. And there is no way for me to relive it – I can only try to find some info on the wiki – but where is the immersion in that.

Playing GW2 for me right now is like walking in the cinema in the middle of a movie. You don’t know the story, you don’t know the characters. As a result, it’s just… meh.

And THAT results in me not really caring to log in anymore at all. There is no way to catch up, no way to feel that immersion in the story.

If they put in some way to relive the old stuff, even if it’s only the storyline, it would be much more fun for me – and newbies in the game. Hell, just throw in some old fashioned quests if that’s what it takes.

differences in taxes? I dunno.

Something – anything – that needs true teamplay. Synchronizing builds, fast communication, having to know your teammates. Depending on each other. Win as a team or lose as one.

I really miss that feeling in GW2.

*Edit: disagree strongly on the geartreadmill

Have fun

15charsmarchingdownafieryhell

RoRo.8270:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Prophecies is not an expansion – it’s the original game. So for 15 euros, you’ll get Prophecies and EOTN. Factions and Nightfall are expansions.

And yes, you can probably buy them all twice for 100 euros

*Edit: I see it’s indeed cheaper to buy the trilogy + EOTN – then you’ll have them all.

This is a lie. The only expansion is EotN. You don’t need prophecies to play factions or nightfall and vice versa. You only need 1 of the 3 prophecies, nightfall, factions to play eye of the north

You are right. I started playing GW1 when proph was only a few months old, so I always considered Factions and Nightfall expansions as well. But yeh, technically, they are stand alone games.

Prophecies is not an expansion – it’s the original game. So for 15 euros, you’ll get Prophecies and EOTN. Factions and Nightfall are expansions.

And yes, you can probably buy them all twice for 100 euros

*Edit: I see it’s indeed cheaper to buy the trilogy + EOTN – then you’ll have them all.

Prophecies
Pro’s
Most interesting storylines imo
Pre-searing ascalon

Con
It takes the most time before you reach level 20

Factions
Pros
The assassin was one of the most fun classes ingame
Alliance battles

Cons
Kaineng. Beautiful, but I got lost every. single. time.
Bland storyline

Nightfall
Pros
Beautiful
You’ll be level 20 in no time
Heroes

Con
The story, though it’s still better than GW2’s story

You’ll need Eye of the North if you want access to the hall of monuments (which gives some nice stuff for GW2). I would recommend Prophecies + EOTN. You’ll learn the most of the lore that way, at least the stuff that matters for GW2. If you have some money left over, after that I would buy Factions first (for the assassin) and Nightfall last. Unless you want to get to level 20 really, really fast, then Nightfall first and Factions last, but reaching max level isnt that important anyway.

Treat this game not as an MMO, but as a single player game with multiplayer options. I would not call it dead yet, but it’s a shadow now of what it used to be, and you won’t find PUGs for most areas.

And expect a totally, TOTALLY different game than GW2. It has some of the same vibe, but the playstyle is so different that I now have trouble with the controls whenever I go back to GW1.

And if you get the chance: try the PvP. Especially GvG, but you’ll need a guild for that.

What has finally put me off this game are not the reasons you mentioned. It is the lack of teamplay. PvE is a faceroll. All you need to do is know when to dodge. WvW is zerg vs zerg, and nothing you do or don’t do makes an impact. sPvP is bland. And all the while, there is no real reason to play as a team. There is no need for communication, no need for a good leader.

I don’t care about the rewards. I don’t need rewards as long as I can feel I accomplished something difficult with my friends, as a coordinated team. As one. Gw2 is too much about “me”, and not about “the team”.
In GW1 (talking about GvG and early – before heroes – PvE) you needed a good team. You needed to synch your builds. To anticipate your teammates and your enemy. To know not only your character, but the characters of everyone around you. And when you won, you won as a team.

Teamwork creates bonds. Bonds will keep people ingame. There are no bonds that kept me in GW2. There is no need for teamwork. I don’t feel like a significant part in a group. You don’t need to coordinate to achieve something – anything.

sigh It’s a good game. It really is. The world is beautiful, the exploring is without compare. I cannot stand traditional questing anymore. I love being able to walk and cast and dodge. But the lack of teamwork has drained my interest of the game completely. Can’t even be bothered to check the temporary content anymore.

I’m still keeping track of new developments. Until then, it’s LoL for me.

Maybe there was a quest chain, but you missed it?

Anyhow, I agree the DE system has pros and cons. The dragon fights for example, with their timer. Not much fun if you can predict the start of the “dynamic” event to the minute. Or that you run into some DEs multiple times if you have to go back in a map for whatever reason.

But I do like the way NPC run up to you to ask for help. That feels immersive. I like the creativity of some quests (for example the children playing a game in queensdale).
And I do appreciate it that when a farmer asks for help because bandits are raiding his farm, there are actually bandits raiding his farm, instead of just simply standing around in his field doing nothing.
Traditional quest: “help help, bandits are raiding my farm! Kill 20 of them and bring back badges as proof!” So here you go, killing 20 bandits. When you are done, you turn in the badges, the farmer thanks you for “saving his farm”, but when you turn around, those 20 bandits have respawned and are once again just standing in the same field you just left. Where is the immersion in that?

But yeh, maybe the game could use some traditional quests to get some more depth in there. A few, mind you And they would look more like “investigate this spot to find X”. “Help, my daughter has just been kidnapped!” should always be a DE.

And they should put the “dynamic” back in some DEs, instead of those blasted timers.

Cspence.6921:

It appears Tanished Coast is a FULL world that I cannot transfer too…

Any other suggestions :<

Guest there? As far as I know, you can still guest on a full server

The only thing that is challenging enough for skilled players, is playing against other skilled players. GW2 needs GvG.

I played a lot of GvG in my GW1 years, and that is probably what I miss the most: content which truly, TRULY forces people to organise and work together as a team. I don’t care if that team is 5 persons or 8. I want to synchronise builds and tactics, and work together toward a common goal. I want to follow a good commander into a nerve wrecking battle which tasks our group to its limit.

GW 2 has dungeons and WvW, but nothing in there comes even close to the kind of teamwork required for GvG. sPvP, meh, maybe, but still not the same. Too much cookie-cutter builds and standard tactics. It reminds me of HA in GW1, and I never really liked that either.

Think that is the main reason for me leaving GW2 (temporarily?) behind (yes, I’m sad to say I haven’t logged in in more than four weeks now, even though I thought the game was pretty awesome) and picking up League of Legends.

Soo, do you have, between now and 4 hours ago when you made this thread, tried to guest to another server? I am an EU player myself, but I hear good things about the NA server Tarnished Coast.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

So we now have a beach resort type getaway to do mini games and relax on. And the NPCs that are there have some new flashy swimwear to wear as well.

So where is our fancy swimwear in the gem store for us? I would love a speed-o or some flashy swim trunks.

You can always go find some goggles and run around with the goggle-swimwear outfit :p

Dead horse, meet stick

elementalist. I love the versatility.

After 2500 hours of gaming… there is a life.

Vayne.8563:

I think they started slow because they were testing stuff out. Of course, it could just be that they don’t have the time to properly do this stuff and they feel the need to keep doing it. I guess we’ll see.

True, but then they should not have marketed it this way. Grand announcements, devs posting teasers, interviews with how awesome it was going to be… I think it was mostly because of my too-high expectations it fell flat. It was like the OP said “an expansion worth of content” was no where near what it acutally turned out to be.

It reminds me of last year, when the weather announcers promised giant thunderstorms in my area. Now, I am a huge fan of thunderstorms, so I bought snacks, pulled the plug of the phone and settled myself to watch the promised inferno.
The air smelled faintly of ozone, but other than that, I did not even see a single lightning bolt to brighten my evening sky.

It kind of saddens me how the OP cannot handle the reviews on his own review. If you want to give criticism, you better be able to handle it yourself as well.

The OP lost my sympathy with the first paragraph. “Those who disagree are devs or GMs”. Really? Are you so High and Mighty that you have All The Answers? Your opinion is The Only Right One?

Then he proceeds to whine about it being too hard to get gold which you don’t really need in the first place. sigh I’m moving on. Nothing to see here.

In other games, you have to “compete” with the other players for the loot that drops. So even if some nice stuff drops, chances are you are not getting it. In GW2, each player gets his/her own personal loot. So no competing with other players over that one drop.

Or don’t worry too much about the gold, because you don’t really need it. You’ll get enough cash for your bank/inventory upgrades, and everything else that’s expensive is just for looks anyway.

Welcome

Tinfoil hats for sale! Get ’em while they still work!

Peti.7814:

Yesterday I tried the Desolation server. It might have been just luck but I encountered many people, yay! Though everyone disappeared around midnight.

The more I think about it the the less I can accept the lack of free server transfer.
This is utterly, blatantly bad design. Actually this is being close to a business fraud!
Seriously. I payed for the game. The game is MMO, thus it requires other people to provide gaming experience it promised when I bought it.
I can accept the need for separate servers due to hardware limitations but in all honesty who plays in what fraction in a WvWvW battle is a logical thing. It has nothing to do with hardware implementation on a logical level. There might even be multiple GW2 servers run by a single piece of hardware. And while I know nothing of the actual set up, I know that with today’s technology it is entirely possible.
So it is not my responsibility as a customer to make sure there are actually people playing on my “server”. The thought that I need to again pay money so that I indeed have multiple players around me in a game which is advertised as an MMO game is absurd. I’m really offended by this unfair business attitude!

The reason transfers are not free, is because people kept switching servers to spy in WvW. There is guesting for the PvE-ers, that is free. You can also transfer for free if you delete all your characters.

And really, this is not the only MMO with paid transfers. Most, if not all, sub based MMOs let you pay a fee to transfer, usually per character instead of your entire account.

Reese.6379:

All I want is the ability to complete more dailies in one sitting. Im punished for not logging on everyday when I have more time on some days than the others. The further I feel like I slip behind the less interested I feel in coming back. My game play approach is punished when weekly I spend just as much time as others, but I do it on my time.

Why do you feel you are “slipping behind”? I haven’t logged in in GW2 for more than 2 weeks (mostly because of RL stuff and my recent discovery of the fun that is League of Legends – I am only now downloading the new patch to see the new dungeon, after that it’s probably back to LoL again), but I really don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything or falling behind. Laurels buy you nothing really worthwhile, so why chase them?

Aeonblade.8709:

This is a really long post for something that could be handled by check to turn off duel requests.

My first dueling experience comes from WoW. I hard turned on that handy little tool that auto-declined duels. I had just created a new character, one of them blue skinned alien thingies. I was happily questing my way to level 6 when another player came running and jumping around me, spamming “wanna duel? Wanna duel? I’’l give you 5g if you win. You are just scared” etc etc over and over and over again. Basically, just like Vayne described. After I repeatedly told him no in all manners, from friendly to rude, I proceeded to log out as it was the only way to escape said player. Clearly, the option to turn down dueling automatically was not enough.

Now, people in favor of dueling often say that these kinds of players are rare and that most are rather friendly. But this experience ruined me from open world dueling forever.

I really don’t see the problem in having an arena for 1v1 for all those who like dueling. In GW1, I frequently dueled my guildies in our guildhall, and that was really fun. So why do you insist that the dueling HAS TO take place in the open world?

Dawdler.8521:

Oh I remember the first time I played WoW. I thought “hey, I dont want to be a noob and play on those PvE servers, PvP **** yeah!”, ran out of the city to level and got promptly insta-killed by a troll (literally of course) with a million bazillion HP that I could do maybe 2 or 3 in damage against.

Worst. System. Ever.

That said, IMO it would be great fun to have more world PvP events, like in the beta. An example:

At 18:00, Straights Of Devastation is turned into a battlezone, with capping zones all over the place. All players in it are kicked out to neighbouring zones. When you enter the zone, you are put on a random side, Risen or Pact. Risen get a zombie look (but keep all stats and weapons/etc), Pact keep their regular look. And… FIGHT! At 20:00, the event is over. Loosing side get a small loot chest, winning side get a big loot chest.

Something like that would make for a fun change in the world.

I’m not much of a PvPer, but I love that idea. Reminds me of that Halloween event in the maze with the villagers vs the mad kings minions.

Kichwas.7152:

I think this is the screenshot to look for:

And yes… a LOT of idiots and fools up there who are not clear on the concept of what GW2 is for. All those zerker runners…

What are they going to do when they get all that gold and a legendary? Queue up for the raid?

Oh that’s right… there is no raid.

/fools

But at least they’re easy to avoid.

Holy hells, I would avoid each and every one of those players like the plague. Guaranteed to give you a Bad Time.

metrica province. The proginies are awesome

tried mesmer yet?

Not yet, but Anet has stated they are working on it.

kokiman.2364:

IIRC colin said that they are not working on new fractals right now. But it’s been pretty quite around the dungeon team(no new dungeon, no changes to excisting dungeons for 2 months now), so who knows.

There’ll be a new dungeon with the april update, so I don’t think the dungeon team has been idle

They did it to prevent WvW player from abusing the system to spy on other servers. As a PvE player, it’s only annoying

Guest on other servers in the meantime?

Aye. Instead of constantly throwing new currencies in the game, Anet should put the current currencies to better use. Karma is a nice example. I have never used my karma for anything other than cooking mats or jewelry boxes, and that’s a shame.

Rezzet.3614:

Lalangamena.3694:

from my experience more MF result in much more white vendor trash and tiny bit more rare crafting materials.

I have not seen ANY correlation between magic find and rare/exotic items drops.

i ve gotten 2 exotics so far with MF but still the rate must be ridiculously low if it took me half a year to get them i dont even wanna think of my chances without mf.

I don’t have any MF gear and I’m an extremely casual player. Since head start I think I found 3 or 4 exotic drops. So I don’t really think MF gear has helped you there, or I’m just really, really lucky.

Drew.1865:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Drew.1865:

Rhinala.1739:

In my opinion GW2 early days ware as it was advertised the game was a blast, it had erorrs some of the events ware broken but it didnt detracted from the fun.
and then came the lost shores update and the ascended gear that created a huge rift in the player base a rift that hadn’t been mended till today. I thought that fractals will be a wonderful dungeon but in reality it wasn’t better then vexa’s lab, this dungeon is a grind fiesta. here the real grind started, Anet promised different ways to get the ascended gear ways that doesn’t involve the fractals, we got the laurels that requires the daily grind and the monthly grind, wait didn’t Anet advertised that this game will not have grind? so why do i need to kill all of those enemies without any reason?
the dailys and monthlies stopped my event search, thy became a part of the grind not something i do for fun. the spawning rate in this game is insane in the manifesto thy said that the player actions will count but the enemies i kill respawn 90-230 sec later sometimes instantly, events i finish reset 5 min later yup my deeds count (for nothing).
i dont mind the cursed shores art but i mind the amount of enemies and cc few days ago i tried to reach arah waypoint i tried to avoid combat and tossed back and forth, later i tried to fight but couldn’t fight the respawn speed, fun times maybe i need to change my perception of fun. The lower level areas feels a lot more polished then the higher level areas, even the sylvari land feels better then arah.

In my opinion some of the game greatest defenders are Anet employees without the Anet tag.

Yep I tend to agree with you about the employee defender part. I’ve seen it in forums on other mmos and it really doesn’t make sense why someone who loves a game so much they would spend time arguing with people on the forums just because the person being critical has the opinion the game could be better instead of spending that time playing.

The only logical reason I can come up with is some are employed and defending the company they work for. Any good employee would do that but the only thing the critical posters have to gain is having their opinions and frustrations heard in hopes they can improve the game for themselves and like minded players.

It really doesn’t make sense why someone hates a game so much spends time arguing with people on the forums just because the person being enthousiastic has the opinion that that particular part of the game is just fine as it is, instead of spending that time playing some other (part of the) game he likes.

The only logical reason I can come up with is some are employed by competing companies and are trying to lure people away from this one to “their” company.

See? I can make conspiracy theories too.

It’s pretty arrogant to say “I am so right about this, that everyone who disagrees with me has to be a paid employee, because nobody in their right minds would disagree with me”, but that is in fact exactly what you are saying. Your opinion does not have to be my opinion, or even the opinion of most of the playerbase. Don’t advertise it as such.

I’m not employed by a gaming company and I could care less about your opinion and I never said everyone who disagrees with me is an employee. 1/10

Me neither, then why come to a discussion forum where you will read my opinion whether you care about it or not and yes you did.

Drew.1865:

Rhinala.1739:

In my opinion GW2 early days ware as it was advertised the game was a blast, it had erorrs some of the events ware broken but it didnt detracted from the fun.
and then came the lost shores update and the ascended gear that created a huge rift in the player base a rift that hadn’t been mended till today. I thought that fractals will be a wonderful dungeon but in reality it wasn’t better then vexa’s lab, this dungeon is a grind fiesta. here the real grind started, Anet promised different ways to get the ascended gear ways that doesn’t involve the fractals, we got the laurels that requires the daily grind and the monthly grind, wait didn’t Anet advertised that this game will not have grind? so why do i need to kill all of those enemies without any reason?
the dailys and monthlies stopped my event search, thy became a part of the grind not something i do for fun. the spawning rate in this game is insane in the manifesto thy said that the player actions will count but the enemies i kill respawn 90-230 sec later sometimes instantly, events i finish reset 5 min later yup my deeds count (for nothing).
i dont mind the cursed shores art but i mind the amount of enemies and cc few days ago i tried to reach arah waypoint i tried to avoid combat and tossed back and forth, later i tried to fight but couldn’t fight the respawn speed, fun times maybe i need to change my perception of fun. The lower level areas feels a lot more polished then the higher level areas, even the sylvari land feels better then arah.

In my opinion some of the game greatest defenders are Anet employees without the Anet tag.

Yep I tend to agree with you about the employee defender part. I’ve seen it in forums on other mmos and it really doesn’t make sense why someone who loves a game so much they would spend time arguing with people on the forums just because the person being critical has the opinion the game could be better instead of spending that time playing.

The only logical reason I can come up with is some are employed and defending the company they work for. Any good employee would do that but the only thing the critical posters have to gain is having their opinions and frustrations heard in hopes they can improve the game for themselves and like minded players.

It really doesn’t make sense why someone hates a game so much spends time arguing with people on the forums just because the person being enthousiastic has the opinion that that particular part of the game is just fine as it is, instead of spending that time playing some other (part of the) game he likes.

The only logical reason I can come up with is some are employed by competing companies and are trying to lure people away from this one to “their” company.

See? I can make conspiracy theories too.

It’s pretty arrogant to say “I am so right about this, that everyone who disagrees with me has to be a paid employee, because nobody in their right minds would disagree with me”, but that is in fact exactly what you are saying. Your opinion does not have to be my opinion, or even the opinion of most of the playerbase. Don’t advertise it as such.

I’m reading: “stop wasting your time doing stuff that others like, and go do what I want right NOW”

It must be hard being you.

I chose a thief as my first character, because I needed to dodge and run a lot. I liked the challenge, and not instantly being able to faceroll all the content was very fun for me. But when I leveled some alts, I found that I needed to learn other stuff as well.

I currently have my thief, ele and guardian at level 80. For my thief, I needed to dodge ’n roll. For my ele, I needed to figure out the best ways to use my attunements and synchronize my skills. My guardian had me pay attention to the needs of my teammates, responding to their struggles.

Yes, all the classes are distinctly different right from the start, but I like that. It gives more options for every type of player. If I could use the same playstyle for every character, I would not nearly enjoy my alts as much as I do now.

Sex IS relevant. Garambola brought up an excellent point of why that is exactly.

Gaming has been a male dominion almost from the beginning. It’s only fairly recent that women find their way in games. And not only the facebook type games, but the MMO’s, RPG’s, shooters, strategy games as well. I have been seriously gaming since I was 15 (now 27), starting with diablo2.

My first online experience was GW1. My first 4 or 5 guilds were horrible. They were filled with immature pre-teens who, once they discovered my gender, could only talk about my female parts or having sex. I would haven given up on online gaming completely, if I hadn’t found a mature 18+ guild in time. And even though that was years ago. I still don’t like using voice chat or telling people my gender because of those experiences.

In my opinion, it is very relevant to talk about this, so that this new curious generation of gaming females will not go through what I went through, putting them off gaming forever. I’ve found the community in GW2 to be refreshingly mature. Even if there is a harassing kitten in mapchat, he is called down very quickly by other players. I haven’t yet seen the kind of stuff like I do in some other games. I really hold this community to be the standard the entire gaming community should be.

I do think it has to do with the fact that GW2 really is a cooperative game instead of a competitive one. It attracts a different breed of players. It has nothing to do with quaggans or unicorn bows. The people who think all females are instantly attracted to cuteness and will go to any length to get to the cuteness, need to get to know their girlfriends better It’s the same as saying that all men only play this game for the rampant female nudity. It’s shallow, and untrue.

And… skritt>quaggans anytime

0
Yay for not wanting a legendary \0/

And don’t forget crafting boosters Cooking is also an excellent choice for leveling – all my alts are cooks ^^

I have never bought gems to convert into gold, and I am no farming player (I loathe farming with a passion).
You don’t need gold for gear – if you run dungeons you can work toward exotic gear while making gold. Or you can spend karma in Orr. You need gold for travel, but one DE or heart usually is more than enough to cover that expense, so unless you bunny hop all over the maps you should be fine. Same goes for repair expenses.

So I really wonder: what are you spending so much gold on?

TooBz.3065:

Vayne.8563:

I can’t even think of a day when it should take more than half an hour, max, to do all the dailies..

And if you only have two hours to play, that’s 25% of your play time your spending doing boring stuff, which to me, if bad.

Okay, so what do you like to do and why are you fixated on doing “boring” stuff?

1. What are meshes? (not kidding, never heard of the word and google isnt helpful)

I never had to buy transmutation stones, even the fine ones. You get them from black lion chests, dailies, map completion. If you don’t squander them on every item you find, you’ll have enough for multiple alts without having to spend a dime.

2. High level jewelry gets some decent profits if you bother to research it a little bit. And if you take some effort to gather crafting materials, this too can be done without a single piece of gold.

3. What server are you on and are you in an active guild?

4. What do you consider a grind? CoF P1 takes you 10-15 minutes tops, and it’s not the only way to make some cash. Not that you really need gold anyway – I’ve never had more than 30g in my bank, and that was because I got very lucky in the SAB the first and only time I played it. Usually I have no more than 3-5 gold in my bank, and I have been playing since head start, 3 level 80’s and several alts on the way.

My beloved norn ele:
Head: Mhenlos Mask
Chest: Winged (crafted)
Legs and shoes: Conjurer set
Gloves: Heavenly bracers (HoM – thank kitten they fixed the clipping)

I will let you know in 101 days if this affects me as well :’)