Guild Wars 2

Excelsior.
I contacted the support already because in no browser I can see any button, any price tag or whatsoever, I just have a plain HTML file like someone wrote it in Wordpad on Windows95, no matter what browser I use. The blue lines are not even links, it’s just blue text. Who is in charge for these kitten-poor things like HTML files that even I can create succesfully in NVU?

The “support” came up with “clearing caches” and that’s it. Wow, great help.
Any further help appreciated. Tried on Edge, Opera and Firefox.

Flatley.1620:

Avatars are nice but they’d need controlling to reduce forum lag. A 10 page thread where everyone’s avatar is an animated gif for instance… Eeuw.

But I’ d agree, they do need an overhaul and brought more up-to-date

Excelsior.

This is not 1998 and dial-up anymore. Don’t you think designers and programmers figured out those problems already when it was really a problem with bandwidth?
First of all, this is what a cache is for since at least 20 years, when you were glad you had “this” 30 KByte file on your harddrive alraedy and not loading it for 25 seconds via 28.8 kBaud (I remember IE4 had a cache on our Win95 PC). Second, the amount of forum users is not that high, so you will encounter everyone in a few days of reading. Third, third-party hosters normally just set up a placeholder, so it does not block any loading.

And no, I like this forum. It’s clean and neat. When I look at the hideous FF14 forums for example, some free BulletinBoard stuff, nah.

Excelsior.

This game is the first game ever where I ditch mages and archers for the “rogue” class.
GW2 has everything I like about thieves (emphasis on thief, not “rogues” and cheap knock-offs like that). What I really love is that the whole class works so well on (my) Asura, and since it’s an american company, you’ve got kitten acessoires (aviator shades, the noble set in black and white and short leather gloves, dual-wield weapons etc) that other games have not, they usually go some very medival fantasy setting or japanese kawaii nonsense.

I for myself love playing Splinter Cell, Dishonored, the THIEF games, so have the same in my favourite MMORPG is just great. I remember the blast I had when I played thief the first time, and everything about it. The sound effect when you dodge. The fact you can actually steal stuff, even though it’s mostly just feathers and such xD

Due to the initative I feel like what an assassin should be like: Prepare, go in, kill, go out, regenerate.

The only thing I really dislike is the staff. A large, heavy broomstick is nothing that I’d associate with this class. I have to admit, I play alone and at my own pace, so I can allow myself to go the aestethic > numbers way. Yes, I say it loud: I am going pistol and dual dagger gasp and my ^-button is under heavy wear while fighting, but whatever.

I love everything about it, the only thing I am not that much enjoying are the cheap “heal” skills. Everything-shadow. Yeeeeah, no. The engineer brought me into this game, and the medkit and its features were great, or the AED, the healing turret. But “shadow this”, “shadow that”…. That’s a bit stupid. But else, I am very, very satisfied.

One day I might finalize my wallpaper, which is here for overy 1 year now. I just made room for some more traits, but I am for now pretty fine with it. Maybe I need more space for the new elite spec :-)

I also think it is not quite an “expansion” with a truckload of new features that make it feel like diving into a totally new experience. It’s more like the same (good) ice cream bowl you order in the Café of your choice, but this time the the little umbrella sticking out has now a different colour. It’s more like a big patch, but everything else is weird and feels rushed.

Since I am soooo slow ingame, I have no big problem with that, but I concerned ArenaNet could bring this great franchise (my first every I feel attached to a bit) down with half-finished things..

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

I just can fully agree to this. Or to the whole server performance and patch shedules.
In the over 2 years I am here now I have never been interfered with any sort of patching or updating issues. In total, I disconnected 3 times, of which 2 were by a very overloaded node in Scandinavia that had a packet loss of almost 100%.

Coming from FF14, which constantly had 900000 errors, patches that were slow and unnecessarily huge (1.5 GByte, I wonder how much was actually new data and not just huge file archives).

Since DooM I appreciate games that put all things in one file (back than it’s the DOOM.WAD and DOOM2.WAD). GW2.dat is huge and when I bought my new computer, there were like 230,000 files to download and written into that big file. (However, fragmentation is of course insane with this).

But in the end, GW2 is the only game ever that is really open 24/7 to me. No 2-days downtimes like in FF14, no emergency patches and roll back like in every NEXON or gPotatoe game.

Excelsior.
If you can’t get warm with the game, it won’t change by random people telling you what they like about it. I don’t like vanilla ice cream, and that won’t change, even though you could deliver me 15 reasons why it’s great ice cream for you.

I was a bit the same. Covered myself in self-pity a bit, “why does everbody have fun but I ain’t? Please, what is the secret?! I can’t see it in this game, I hate it because of that”. I dumped FF14 due to that; I could not get warm with the stoic and robotic gameplay anymore. Leaving something is not a bad thing, you will do so much more bad purchases in your life.. :-)

To me, I had a bit of a hard time to get used to it after FF14, but I eventually got sucked into GW2. I am playing 100% alone for over 2 years now, so my fire for the game gets smaller from time to time; there is simply no one that enrages my fire and desire to play. Which can hurt.

Right now, I massively enjoy Dishonored 2, and being a trap-using assassin using a blade and a pistol, I just re-discovered that I can do that in GW2 as well, and now another game from another genre basically ignited my wish to put my Asura daredevil back in service. Had a blast again 2 days ago after like 3 weeks of being offline, stealth-stealing myself trough a cave full of Dredge and Skritt, unloading hundreds of bullets into them from elevated positions while listening to Carpenter’s “The Windows” (from Assault on Precinct 13). I gained barely any EXP, but it was a joy for some strange reason and worth my time that evening. Also, I realized how nice this game plays, it’s a great 3rd person game with a totally great job – Thief/Daredevil and a character that is totally fitting me (Duh, I created him after all, my long-eared Asura is what I consider as perfect :-))

Sometimes I don’t play for a couple of days, even weeks, but that is not quite the fault of the game.

EDIT: Fixed some very bad grammar.

Excelsior.

They sometimes have longer hair (the females), just put together in buns (Agenz Zrii’s hairstyle for example). If she would open it, it would probably be richer, but not too long.

It should also be mentioned that Asura are attracted to each other by the size of the ears. Having long hair could prevent this kind of beauty by covering it, basically like women that just wear jeans and turtleneck collars all day long. No attractive décolleté? No skirts? That would be boring and unattractive to humans. Ears being hidden in long hair…? The same for asura.

Also, when you have huge, floppy ears, I am not sure if I’d like to have long hair as well because you’d have to keep them behind them [ears] all time, and that would probably look very stupid.

My male Asura has regular, rich hair, not too long, not an afro, not bald either. Fits pretty well with my pointy and huge ears.

EDIT: So, it might be an Asura thing, but from what I have seen in my close-up frame-by-frame video checks of the game’s animations, flaring clothes are rendered … visually “sub-optimal”. It might be an engine problem (that could maybe fixed) with widely swinging hair while doing acrobatic stunts.

I also think the loot is unenjoyable. I think it should differ from related loot (e.g. meat from an enemy) and real shiny drops (rare stuff).

The problem I have is that I don’t care about loot the slightest, and everytime I see my bag icon being red, I know I have to tediously throw away all the stuff. Of course, I know the “Store materials” options, but the amount of instant repair kits and such items that require me to type long names in the confirmation box (“5 Schnellverwertungskits” and such stuff). When I get presented random junk after I complete even the smallest events and jobs I am very annoyed by that, mostly because the window just pops in the center of the screen, ESC does not remove it and I died more than once due to blocking my stuff and inputs.

Nocturnal Lunacy.8563:

Every other game in existence runs perfectly smooth with very very high fps even gfx intense games like Skyforge, GTAV and others. GW2 is the only game where there are issues.

Excelsior.

While I agree to your basic statement (I think I just said it yesterday that Rockstar showed me how much they can pull from a “dead” GTX660 in GTAV), it is certainly not limited to GW2.

I had low fps in Mor Dhona (FF14), back then an area called Revenants Toll was the place to be for endgame content players, which is 99% in FF14 due to fast levelling. Even with Square Enix’ “modifications” for the PlayStation3’s older hardware (moving NPC out of the town so they don’t need to be rendered…) I had like 27fps on my GTX670 and i7-3770. No real CPU usage going on per core, VRAM not more busy than 25%.

Bought a GTX970 later, same CPU, all games had a boost in FPS – except for FF14. 30fps still in Mor Dhona. Heck, there was even a place in a very narrow corridor in that game that had FPS issues when basically nothing but a wood texture and one light shader was on-screen.

I can even go back to the year 2000, when The Sims had a very awful scrolling. This scrolling was the same stuttering, slow scrolling on a 233 MHz, our AMD K6-2 350 MHz and even 2,0 GHz.

Right now I am still playing and working fine with my 4 year old PC (i7 3770, GTX970, 16 GByte RAM, SSD and Data HDD) but HoT was really a problem for my GPU. 85°C temps but no real usage is a weird thing. Going back to Central Tyria, wow, the game is so smooth I forgot about how 60fps are. Even though I changed a few opions from High to Medium and I immediately got a 20 fps boost without actually truncating my visual experience that much and only in direct comparison. E.g. the water reflections from “real” to “cheap environmental map” to “none” can increase FPS by 10+ but I still regocnize water as water.

In the end, it’s a nerd thing. I watch a great Tomb Raider 2 playtrough from a nice British guy and he is playing it on PlayStation, which has a weird framerate of someting like 8 – 25, coupled with “bad” resolution. Or “DooM” for DOS runs locked on 35fps, an odd number as well, but I do not mind.

Excelsior.

Sometimes I feel they update textures somewhat or change the map a bit maybe (e.g. instead of stretching a texture over 50 m², they add a few corners/diagonals/polygones so the texture is actually rendered in 5×10 m², at least at very ugly parts.

The performance leaves much to be desired, but then, not everyone is Rockstar that delivers such a beauty even on old hardware (I could not believe what I saw on a GTX 660!) but I often feel slight things change. Especially since I am a guy that values aesthetic over anything, I have pictures and videos of me posing around and sometimes I feel like textures have changed (e.g. I can differ metal from leather on my clothes better than a couple of months before) or certain lighting looks better and stuff like this.

ArthurDent.9538:

4.5k instant 1200 range damage that ignores line of sight is pure cancer.

???

Either I am not getting what you mean, or you worded it wrong, but as glitchy and unreliable steal is, this is just plain wrong. Heck, I died a couple of days before because I could not steal from someone that stood 2 meters away from me just because there was a little rock or root between us; probably internal linedef mapping faults, whatever.

Or you mean that it’s possible to literally steal from someone not being in my line of sight (duh), meaning in front of me, but then again, the paragraph above still matters more than any pseudo-convience I/we got from that.

Also, since we have the lowest range, I think ONE ability is justified, don’t you think (excluding ShadowStepping of course, but that does not deal damage and is also bugged for the reason mentioned before)?

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

As a former Bard in FF14, I liked the idea until they came up with that random archer + singer mix, so I am not sure what that would look like ingame. Mordrem running away because some Norn is bad at playing the Tuba or has a screetching singing voice? Everything else is more something for a cheap Japanese girls game, like the DoReMi anime or something, no, that’d suck.

I was (and when I look a bit to the left and right in the MMO market still am) very pleased with what we have. This is the first game ever I enjoy playing the “rouge” class, normally I am the archer or mage guy, especially the latter when being a diminutive race. But the way the Thief is executed in GW2 makes my heart jump in joy. aNet made it pretty interesting already by panning all the classes a bit so you don’t have the regular “Warrior”, “Priest” and “Fire Mage” stuff.

So, actually I don’t think we need any more. Especially the Engineer is something that is a novelty to me, and it works so well and was the icing on the cake to me.

Excelsior.

I often would turn off the PC, lights, put my pyjama shirt on and brush my teeth to go to bed – and read in the Wiki of both GW1 and GW2. When I heard some FF14 guy talking about “great storytelling” I almost chocked on my own laughter when I compare it to all the background in GW and its universe.

This game has a great set of races to play with and a bunch of great writers and well-executed ingame scenery makes this game so awesome. I am tired of this JRR Tolkien bullcrap of WoW or Sci-Fi stuff. The Final Fantasy series is just repeating itself and calls it “fan service” and turns into some ridiculous TV show-esque opera soap, I mean, Jesus Christ.

Guild Wars is great in that department.

Excelsior.

I am 150% with the thread creator. The nights in GW2 are way too bright. If the colour temperature would not be forced to cold and the ambient sound would not change, I could not tell the difference.

In WoW they had a patch a couple of months ago (actually it was just an announcement I read on a MMO website) they want to make nights darker. I also think so.

In general, this can be done so easily by changing gamma a bit and/or add constrat in general. Since this game has sepia, warm, cold and low-saturation colour modes layered on top of the default ingame graphics (that’s why healthbar suddenly change colours when entering a sand storm etc.) I don’t see the big problem there. As a big and long-time fan of classic MS-DOS DooM, I also created many, many maps for it. And even if you set brigthness to 0, you still have an eerie, low light “aura” around you. Just add this aura around the player character(s), too, but not as if they are glowing, just your personal vision. So in the distance, you can see a dark forest and the top of the trees instead of something that looks like 7:00 on a cloudy day..

Also, GW2 has many “random” light sources where no torches are or in caves. Just toggle those to zero or down by 70% or whatever, so dark corners are eventually dark corners..

Bright blue full-moon sceneries are NOT night, also they don’t last long compared to daytimes…

Jinath.1298:

Oh well, I can always take my money elsewhere…like Amazon.com
If Anet only wants to have something in their store for a very short limited time, that is their choice.

Wait, what? So because aNet does not offer a certain item anymore just because soemone takes several days to consider investing €5/$5, you rather rage-spend it at Amazon?

I work in a grocery store and it’s daily business people coming at the very last day of the bargain 1 hour before we close and rage at us for not having all colours in stock anymore. What is wrong with you? The more access to information you have, the less you use it or what? xD

Sartharina.3542:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Alga.6498:

Yes I know we have a sub-forum called ‘’Lore’’ but I want the old Racial subs.

I don’t understand why 6 forums is better than one. Can you clarify?

Because 1 forum covering 6 things when you only care about 1 of those things makes the forum 80% useless.

The Charr, Norn, and Asura forums were really fun (Especially the Charr forums. But then again, I’m a charr enthusiast, and I loved the cross-racial arguments that popped up on whether Norn or Charr were stronger in a fight, and the constant Human/Charr bickering. There was at least one forum member who could not get over the fact that the Charr and Humans are no longer enemies.)

Excelsior.

Humans and Charr are not enemies anymore, but neither friends. And some dead human here and there that provoked some Charr might still happen..

I had the archived Asura forums open on my tablet and I just use my Surface to read when in bed early. It took me several weeks (not reading every day though) to get trough the Asura forums. To me, it felt like a good place to dive deep into this. Many franchises like StarWars, StarTrek, StarGate (StarWhatever…), Simpsons etc. are basically just movies and TV shows, but their dedicated community expand the universe so much not even the writers could think of.

As a hardcore Asura fan, or just short Asuracist, these threads were really, really good and pulled me into this world. If I check for example the artificial lore of FF14 and their “races”, I really can feel the lack of.. everything there.

Asura (and a little Charr, believe it or not but I also like the cats a bit, and that’s an achievment for a guy that plays only midgets in every MMO since 7 years) have a great lore and aNet even admitted they have/had fun writing and creating around those arrogant munchkins in several posts and interviews.

When that “I’ve been at Rata Sum” thread arose I was kinda happy to unleash my favor for the Asura, but then, it’s just a little thread after all….. shrugs

Excellent Name.9574:

01. Pricing the expansion as the full game for players already owning the original game

This is somewhat wrong. I like it was full-price. If I calculate the amount of money I had to pay to play FF14 and get content updates, I paid MORE than a full-price game for it (€13/month * 6 = 78€) and the content sucked often big times AND the expansion for a full price. (I did not buy Heavensward and pre-ordered HoT, that’s who I got here). Together with the cash shop and overly engaged Final Fantasy fanboys buying EVERYTHING for ridiculous prices and same shipping cost, it’s only reasonable for ArenaNet to charge full price for opening a new huge chapter in the game.

To be honest, I’d like to spend much more on the game to show my appreciation, but there is nothing that fits my characters right now and I just want a silenced pistol with the right sound..

Apart from that, I am very, very happy with HoT. The mastery system is great, it really expands my abilities in every bit and gates some content behind a clever system. I mean, of course I do not show up as random guy and instantly befriend with strange Hyleks. It takes some time to learn languages, getting used to gliding and stuff like that. The map design of HoT however is really difficult and sometimes really frustrating, but in the air, it’s so cool to permanently glide trough the air and see Mordrem underneath me, fighting boars and other players.

As solo playability, I’d really like to have a mixed bag. Enjoying that some monsters make me Shadowstep into safety because I picked a fight I can’t win and require a party, but then I’d like to manage more stuff on my own instead of just silently join a mob of players running around without any intent of socializing “becuz da eventz daily speedrunz iz businez”. In the cutscenes and missions I do cool stuff, but outside I am way more helpless all out of a sudden. This has to be balanced out a bit.

Also, last but not least, the HoT areas are way too unsafe for me as Thief or let alone Daredevil. Just last time I killed myself by jumping off a cliff and breaking my neck on a boulder after being 150m in freefall and my glider did not work and/or I have been CCed otherwise (can’t remember what actually happend, but I might also just get rammed off a cliff, but I can not do that in return, meh).
Everything is on a small ledge, peak or some other very small place. Thief’s fighting however contains a lot of jumping and dashing, and it’s just bad that I can not use my skills because else I fall into an abyss. I found myself often just draw my pistols and unload 100s of bullets into a bunch of enemies because it’s the safest way to clear that narrow, elevevated passage in front of me I have to walk up…

Excelsior.

Also, I forgot that of course Asura are able to be nice and friendly to other races, as example Jezza and Florggi from Guild Wars 1.

Florggi is the condesencending, “you ain’t worth it” sort of Asura (“Florggi will greet you with low rank Asura responses, regardless of your actual rank in the Asura title track”) while Jezza will always greet you nicely, no matter who you are.

Also, many disputes with Charr and Asura (a great combination by the way, funny and cool at the same time!) often lead to a third guy or girl chiming in with some reconciliation – often by fellow Asura (or Charr respectively).

This game just has a brilliant relationship of each race and all of them are cool and lovable – except for humans, they are just so average at everything it hurts – but man, I am a hardcore #Asuracist…

Excelsior.

Wait, what?
I have levelled two characters to 80 without any event farming, party bonusses or food.
Literally just wandering trough the world and shoot and stab everything that looked strangely at my huge, pointy Asura ears. At about 40% world completition I hit Level 80. And this makes me think I just misunderstood the thread at all… Meh.

Excelsior.

Excelsior. Well, we surely do…

I made a wallpaper for my login screen with many the official Asura descriptions and quotes about the race, and one quote is:
“The Asura believe they are destined to rule the larger, less intelligent races of the world.

I am pretty sure Asura do not want an open fight for this, it’d be strategical very stupid, and that’s for Bookah, but sure want to more or less put themselves at the top of the other races.

Full quote again:
“The Asura consider many
other races beneath them—and are not afraid to tell them so at every opportunity.”

So as some people say they only want to care about science is right, that’s why the Arcane Council is not an option for many, but they are not just doing it for themselves, they, I’ll quote again – as far as I know I have those quotes from the GW1 and GW2 wiki – “Although some say the Asura have integrated into society, it would be more accurate to say they’re creeping over it like
ivy and moss, fingers digging into crevices where their magic can take hold..”

They just would not seek the open confrontation, and as the character description says: …In due time, all will serve the asura." In an archived thread, there has been a good discussions about this, and Asura would excell at self-defense with the possibility of moving their capitol (!) and high protective features, so they are the real opposite of the very openly aggressive Charr that would tell you in the first sentence they’d roll you down with their tanks and annihilate you with their gigantic mortars.

They just do it so subtle with their inventions and general intelligence. Waypoints and Asura Gates are a good argument to begin with (“they play a prominent role in most interracial dealings and travel.”).

Some more quotes:

“They view other races as merely pawns to be manipulated in Asuran schemes.”

“The asura have quickly established their intellectual and magical superiority over the other races and view them as useful primarily for heavy lifting, taking risks,
and asking stupid questions.”

“The arrogant asura prize intellectual prowess over all else.
They use their knowledge and skill with magic to assert
their dominance over other races.”

These quotes, as said, are all more or less official, ranging from the official Wikis and/or pages of 2012 about the cupcoming release of the game, where the races are being introduced.

Is it possible to make people dependent without actual force? Yes, look at Google, Facebook and Co. Turn those services off and you have people begging on knees. Turn off Asura Gates and Waypoints (as major reviving stations!) and you can stop any diplomatic course in a blink of an eye.

The Asura are the reason why I am here and I am, as my signature says, a huge fan of that race, and I have countless of saved PDFs and files about them and it’s obvious they arrogance and condescending attitude would sooner or earlier lead to strong disputes with the other races. Yes, many of those quotes say “…some races” and “….less intelligent”, but let’s not fool ourselves, pretty much everything is below Asura standards in their mind. Especially the playable races for sure. Just listen to many conversations, e.g. one in which an Asura says it’s a waste to let them use their weaponry and inventions – so even closed in by enemies the long-eared midgets still would rather die than handing over some of their inventions. (I think this conversation is in a small Orr camp with 2 Asura, a Charr and Sylvari).

Right now we have to fight off other things, that’s why we have to unite……………

Excelsior.

This is the main reason why I gave up on my tophat. Luckily, both of my regular outfits do not utilize any hats (aviator shades or anonymity mask), but I feel you. I just have little sideburns on my Asura Engineer but it still looked weird.

There are two graphic issues I have with this game: Hats turning me bald and the light always coming from the top right, no matter how I turn or move around.

sorudo.9054:

Keypek.5716:

You could go play swtor who does charge a monthly sub, barely puts out any content, constantly breaks stuff with no fixes, and still has most of their resources invested in their version of the gem store. Most recently charging people $70ish for a lightsaber skin.

tldr: It can always be much worse.

are we playing the same game?

last time i checked they released 2 expansions within a year, far more then the 4+ years Anet has pulled.

He actually wanted to say “Final Fantasy 14”. There you p(l)ay 6 months of subsription fee (not sure, like €10 or €15/month) and people are happy about some lackluster content “update” for the price of a full price game they invested meanwhile (€60 or €90 respectively). Plus, they have a cash shop there. And full-price expansions. But voice overs are “too expensive”, so they rather spend BS in GCI cutscenes.

Also, your argument is not solid. If SWTOR has a subscription fee they can plan better than Anet (you see the cries in the forums every quarterly report) and also 2 expansions in a year… That sounds strange to me. Like those DLCs showing up with the just released game – why hasn’t it been in the core game to begin with?

Excelsior.

Coming from FF14, I am happy this BS is not in GW2.
“Hey, I am a Black Mage, I am such a bad guy hiding myself in dark clothes and manipulate the ether to cast massive flares and fire IIIs on my poor enemy”

switches job stone

“Now I am a happy white mage, wearing all white clothes, I believe in the strength of nature and cast shiny heal skills or let rocks fly all over the place, with the power of nature!” or something like that.

It’s nothing but stupid. When my Asura is a thief, he is a thief, not suddenly turning into a ranger, and a ranger won’t probably even close to be an Engineer. Just like a ganster boss won’t be the Chief officer of the police department, and an electrician won’t become a surgeon within a blink of an eye.

My Lalafell was a Bard and a Black Mage. Those were not interferring with each other immersion wise. Switching around like crazy would also be super stupid to replace people in your group. “Hey, Bill’s not here, let me just click two buttons and do the content without him anyways”. 2 minutes later: “Sorry guys, here I am” “Sorry Bill, I just took your space”. So dumb.

Stop that nonsense already.

Aryan Arlande.6184:

I didn’t buy HOT, because i stay strictly away from toxic environments – real life is toxic enough.

So i wouldn’t play it for free either.

Now i’m waiting for the next Xpac and hope, it will meet my needs better.

More fun, less yelling

Does not own HoT. Talks about how bad HoT is.
Sounds…reasonable. For Bookah standards.

I am also having a blast with HoT. It’s great and very chilling. I mind my own business, a group comes by, carnage going on (many of you bored, worn-out players would call it “zerg”), leaves off, later I get my 8% participation bonus. No need to do anything by force, yet you get credited. When the day comes up, there is the real tally. Also, the masteries really make my character feel advancing. I like this endless level sort of stuff unlike others that want no levelling at all…

Excelsior.

The German male Asura, I wish I would know his name, is a pure joy to listen to.
In HoT he has a stronger, deeper voice, so he probably talked too much in those few years inbetween the release of GW2 and HoT :-)

I changed to French (and downloaded several GByte of voice files I guess) and English and while they are all okay, I like the German one by far most. The French male Asura sounds too hasty and as if he is not sure what he is doing, especially when deploying turrets. Asura don’t be like this. They would never show any form of insecurity. When I plant a turret, that strong “Geschützturm montiert” sounds really like: Here, look what I’ve done, and that’s how Asura are. The French is like “…I hope it does not fall apart”.

I just wish the voice lines would not be so gentleman-like. Female Asura are pure evil.

The worst of the German voice acting is basically when soft voices are pushed to voice Norns and you can hear them like a kid that tries to imitate his dad. And there are only two old lady voices which are already over-used in German TV, so it’s always “that lady from Malcolm In The Middle” or “that voice in King Of Queens”.

In general, the voice acting is 4/5 and I am glad GW2 has this.

As far as I know and heard and as long as my ears are not betraying me,, Trahearne is voiced by a guy called Heinz Petruo. That guy is not only notorious for his roles as random NPC in Thief or Splinter Cell, Sheldon in Spongebob or Biff Tannen from Back To The Future. His father also voiced movies, so I hope it’s Heinz. But that guy’s voice is probably the most over-used one and when he talks about stuff I just hear Biff talking bout the DeLorean or the sports almanach.

Ariurotl.3718:

TheOrlyFactor.8341:

DirtyDan.4759:

Geology is not a real science.

Remember to stay in school folks!

Yeah, I choked on my tea when I read that.

Excelsior.
He is clearly just the pure anti-Asura: 100% Bookah, and it took him only a few lines to prove that… :-)

Anyways:
GW2 has beautiful and, unlike one of the posters on the first page said, a very interesting set of races and cultures to choose from. Just check the competitors out there: It’s basically human only with a few changes, but still too human.

I just pull out one over-rated game, Final Fantasy 14:
The races are, as mentioned above, humans:

• Hyur = Humans
• Roegadyn = Tall Humans
• Mi’Quote = Humans with cat tail
• Elezen = Stretched, giraffe-like humans
• Lalafell = Small, pear-like humans
• Au’Ra = Humans with toy horns bought at Toys’R’Us for €2.99

It’s stupid and the Lalafell are the best by far. Guess what: NONE of those races have any real culture. It’s a 2-liner about their origins, and that’s it. There is no personal story either, you are a dumb and mindless contract worker doing fetch quests, none of the NPC take you for real, in the cutscenes random NPC come in and yell “WE did it” and you can not even talk apart from “Ah” and “ugh”. However, when a female Mi’Quote fires an arrow (which happens a lot as Bard), it’s “Ahh..Uh!!Ah! Uh!”.

Here we have two races that are very difficult and great design-wise:
The Charr and Sylvari.

The Charr, actual beast-cats (unlike the aforementioned Mi’Quote) that still retained a form of civilization. The subtle grunting and snarling when they talk is just a little but beautiful detail other gaming companies do not care for. I really like Charr.

Sylvari are cabbage people made from tree branches and leaves, I do not like them, but from an aesthetical viewpoint, they are very interesting.

Gaming companies nowadays play save. GW2 is like the last one where you can choose from really different races.

At the end of the day, it’s the Asura Master Race ruling this place, but until then, I love the diversity. The reason why I am here after all.

Excelsior.

I am basically preaching since several years that fun and enjoyment > theorycrafting.
There is not a single week where I am not posting about people should enjoy the game/the profession more and not get mad at every nerf or changes, that they should try stuff on their own (no JP taxis) and not play with Youtube and/or Netflix besides.

Numbers are fine and required, because it’s basically the essence of this game (or similar games). It’s more about the players which apparently can’t enjoy stuff anymore in times of Facebook and “Speed watching” (TV series at 2x speed because they ain’t got time), every 5-liner needs a “TL;DR” and such. Only a few manage to have a passion for high numbers, the other ones are just jumping the hypetrain and cry on the forums when they are not even remotely near those numbers.

Excelsior.

As someone said, it’s more a fun gamble (or it should be) for something unexpected. Putting in things that are more or less wanted is bad. I only bought it once because I wanted Mini Rox (aka the cutest cat in this game) but I immediately hated the slot machine feel to it.

The pity timer is something I wish in many RNG games, like the chores in FF14. Gambling and/or RNG are very bad mechanics in almost every way expect if you have a sure chance on “something” good no matter what and the RNG just selects one of the goodies instead of “goodie or trash”.

I’d even say people would buy stuff from the store if they simply point there and pick it up. If I wouldn’t get Mini Rox from my €10 I spent for those boxes, I would never ever again pick up a BLC because my success rate would be 0% so far and I won’t throw another tenner for more attempts.

Excelsior.

I do not trust any of the tall folks. Sometimes I have to fake sympathy, for diplomatic reasons. I know for a fact some of the cats want to pick me up on my ears and whirl around. And cabbage people are possesed. Humans and taller humans are, well… No. Just no.

No, the only way I feel safe (and sound) is in Asuran territory. Normally I end my duty in Province Metrica, directly in the building left of the Asura starter point. Since the 2 years I play I log off there. Once I logged out next to a Charr and … the paranoia.

My spot in the Metrica Province is clean, there are just Asura, a cute lady is patroulling and the Peacemakers and their golem are taking care of the place. It’s basically Rata Sum’s suburb. Tropical climate and clean. Students, trainees and well-known geniuses all around. Inquest to steal from. Some insane Hyleks, too. All what an Asura needs. Especially a thief.

SkyShroud.2865:

So if you paid the exam fee and you fail your exam, you want your exam fee back? Really?

The problem is that you can see why your exam failed.
In a scam guild, they pull out any random reason (if at all) out of their butt to keep your money.

Also, as many stated, a “deposit” is a deposit, not an entry free. And again, those guilds just can turn it into whatever reason why it turned from a deposit (you get it back when nothing justifies to keep it) into a fee.

In the end, I would never ever do that. AAA websites and all that fancy stuff is done by those nerds with a joy and passion, not by acting like a frigging government installation – the latter has actual laws behind, not just some random kid inflating his ego.

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

As I am PvE only, I just use dual pistols and dual daggers. It’s just how I play this game for a long time now and just like people in certain cultures are being raised, it’s about how I am “socialized” with pistols. As someone that plays alone (and thus not getting any flak or unnecessary comments on “what to use” and “what not”) I simply picked it up and played like this trough the game. Why? Because I am a guy that goes aesthetics over pure numbers. Means: I either wear the Sneakthief outfit (with the Anonymity mask) or the Noble outfit with aviator shades and in both sets, pistols and daggers are more or less hidden by my outfit to be as unsuspicious as I can get – until I start to steal and fight. So any love for pistols would be appreciated, because out of initiative, it feels a bit like waiting for a wonder instead of real fighting.

Also, many people don’t like it for the range (check the Thief forums for example) but I often use it to draw initial aggro and then go into a melee with daggers and fistfights. So I basically do not use (a) pistol(s) during reglar combat, either I can take out that one enemy, then I will unload several times or as said, to check my damage from a safety distance and very rarely as interrupter.

(To be honest, I was kinda disappointed the off-hand pistol of my first class, the Engineer, was kind of goofy with the flames coming from it so I was looking if some sane mind at ArenaNet would’ve picked up the idea of actually firing bullets with BOTH pistols, and well, I immediately lopsided for Thief that moment I saw and read “unload”. It’s just something mean to pump lead into someone this way and totally fits a thief, contrary to a huge broom stick [Bo] or sword.)

Also, an Asura wielding dual pistols is just cute. Period.

Excelsior!

I think you already contradict yourself a bit or answer your own question already when telling me/us why you left in the first place. I do not really mind the living story or legendary items, crafting etc. Because if you do, you would not be casual anymore. (Maybe I just got it wrong and you were not casual before and now want to be amongzzzt of uzz…..)

I became very paranoid and annoyed* (up to pure disgust*) about the average player in every MMO and just spend my time wandering alone in this game since 2 years now. But by doing this, I basically have a lot to do, paired with the fact that I do not have the wish to log on that often or play long. I get more content stuffed into the game that I can play. So one part would be to pick up ONE goal and work SLOWLY towards it. Seen many people basically rushing like the devil is after them, while watching TV or with Youtube guides on. Just strip all of that. Enjoy the game itself. Stop watering down the experience by forcing too much stuff on you that you will eventually find a chore.

In my very specific situation: 2 years of gameplay and still just 53% world exploration. I wander around, find my way(s) trough everything and shoot what I can kill (and run away of what I can’t…). Had this grind BS in FF14 and 10 years ago in MapleStory. It made people sick. Literally. They were nervous, angry and didn’t sound like they slept enough or left their homes…

So, my very casual opinion is to really go trough everything ArenaNet gives you. Try everything like on a buffet in a hotel. When you like something, get more. When you think it sucks, drop it, may it be as shiny as it might get. I can lead to frustration. Do not read many guides, figuring stuff out yourself. Do not ask for Mesmer portals everytime. You know, this sort of stuff.

(*) I miss some sort of general politeness. People spam silent party invites, are not up for a chat, very often far from educated and then just kick you again for no reason when they got their stuff but you did not yet etc. An overwhelming part of the communites are like this, and I stopped letting me being abused just for some chit chat, even I am longing so much for this. But I think I need to clarify what I mean.

DeceiverX.8361:

Went full-generic-Asian RPG especially with all the overdone particle effects and silly weapons/armor and I’m honestly disappointed. It’s no longer got that great rustic feel.

The old areas have indeed a more rustic feel to the game and I often love to go back a bit and in GW2 you can easily see what’s older and what’s new – except for an increased amount of flora and fauna, which is a bit low in central Tyria. What I like is – I have the music off in all games I play – the feel of it. Back in the 90s, Myst created an eerie and haunting feel with a still image and a ambient sound. I still like to just sit there and scan the areas high above on a cliff. The visual impact of great waterfals and green grass next to a lake with some Skelk wandering around while the sound of a cold wind is coming from the speakers. Or the rainy, dark days on the barren land wherever the centaurs are…

But then, have you ever really played an “Asian” game? GW2 is not even close to it. FF14 for example, I think Japan counts as Asia and “generic” because the design philosophys are there for over 2 decades now, starts out to have nice forest areas in Gridania – and at the end of 2.0 (A Realm Reborn), you have Magi-Tech machines, fighting giant mechs, walk around in a metal castle-like building (Castrum X) with literally metal everywhere. It looks more like the Scrap Brain Zone or Megalopolis Zone from SONIC 2 for the MegaDrive than any Final Fantasy setting you would expect. There are literally red and blue neon pipe lamps and futuristic monorail tracks there – and I was there as Bard, fighting with my harp and bow against machines… Yo… The end bosses were basically weird, deformed Power Rangers.. THAT is generic.

GW2 is hard ad the edge of a bit too much Sci-Fi. While I really enjoy that the Asura get their spotlight and their technology is involved much I think ArenaNet should stop here. Asura Technology should stick to their homelands, maybe camps (with these antennae like things) and the Asura him/herself. Now everything’s forced upon everyone. Norn for example, they are basically contributing not much apart from being the big guys acting tough.

Charr technology is also way too advanced with the Charr copter things. I liked their street lamps with the cog in it as if there is a flintstone permanently keeping the flame up and the rattling noise coming from it.

I am at a hotel in the outback of Nuremberg right now due to a workshop, lying in bed and reading this thread was a very funny lecture that entertained me with all the stuff that makes a good video game rage/rant thread: Exaggeration, absolutely useless arguments on both sides, unrealistic scenarios that lack any proof, hyperbole, random Youtube videos, “salt”. I hope you can add more of this fancy stuff and fairytales for the next evening to lighten up my last days away from home.

Excelsior.

Oh god. With all the, let’s call it “heat”, in this thread with only a few people already, I just can’t imagine what the results will be when it’d hit the mainstream. It’s almost impossible to get it properly done because the balance margin is very thin.

Conclusion: Totally not happy.

Excelsior.

Scrapper sucks so much as well as having a dumb, huge broomstick to carry with me as Thief. Because the evolution of a sneaky, stealthy thief is…carrying a heavy broomstick. Apparently. Not sure.

In other words: I am also not happy with Thief and Engineer and their “elite” specs, yet I really like to and feel pure satisfaction to punch people in their balls with my little Asura fists (First Flurry) and throwing daggers while dodging.

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

I never read any guides* or watch Youtube videos. But then, I am from the MasterSystem and MegaDrive era of players that took a game serios, wrapped up in a blanket, warm chocolate and, well, overall enjoying the game. Fondly remembering “LANDSTALKER” for the MegaDrive. Wow, Nigel and Friday..

Now, 25 years later, I still do not watch TV while I play GW2 unlike others “Netflixing” while playing video games (!!?). Yesterday I found a few skillpoints by gliding a bit off the regular ways and it was great fun.

*I have read a few but immediately stopped upon reading about “I must use X and Z else….”. Had a few forum mail conversations that helped a bit, but those were more hints in the right directions

Excelsior.

Is this even a serious question? When it’s useful, shiny and important, it’s made from and maintained by Asura. They are not there for travel by the users only, they also pick you up when your vital features are below a certain treshold and give you a revive boost.

I guess the income of the waypoints are all funding our Asuran BIG (basic income guarantee). How are we supposed to lead Tyria now and in future when we would have to do care about an income?

Excelsior.

I think this is not easy because this game offers many characters with a lot of diversity and I can’t really put my finger on THAT dude or dudette.

Also, I have a big problem with the area’s names, so I I can’t point even the rough direction, but still I try:

Human: That couple of farmers standing in front of their farm house. She mentions random things and the guy, probably her mid-age husband always goes like “Yeah, uh, whatever” or “I never tought about that” in a tone as in: “I don’t care”.

Norn: —-

Asura: Agent Zrii and Toymaker Tixx. Zrii is cute and evil at the same time, basicall representing Asura attitude at its best. Tixx looks super funny and makes me laugh whenever I see that dude.

Charr: Rox. Spent €10 to get Mini Rox when I saw her. I don’t know why, I’d pet her and comb the fur all the time. Also, the many hilarious encounters between Charr bit..ing at each other, like those two cats underwater trying to fix someting and always blaming the other – just like the two old and grumpy guys from the Muppet Show.

Sylvari: One guy looks like from a German season of BIG BROTHER. That dude also looks like he recorded 80s freestyle in the Bronx. I forgot his name, too.

Excelsior.

I always hate gambling because I have a way-too-strong attitude towards fairness and balance, and seeing people doing the same amount of work and yet the outcome is different is something I hate. The one thing I gambled was one week ago, it was my first thing I really wanted:

Mini Rox.

She is a cute cat I could look at that character for minutes straight for some reason and I had to gamble a bunch of chests and got so much crap it’s like those rigged things at the fairground where 999 out of 1,000 are blanks to draw… €10 and burned a few chests and finally got her. Now I have a mini of the cutest Charr ingame™ but later I realized I was paying for a gamble. It was fun until I dropped to a certain amount of boxes left and it sucked so much that I just can not get her. I won’t touch any RNG now for a while.

Also, I never loot corpses of epic monsters because this whole RNG, luck and strive for the best stuff makes me (and obviously others) sick and full of hatred..

Excelsior.

This thread is super hilarious! “For the love of god”, people want race changes for “over 4 years now”. What’s wrong with you people picking something and then change your mind like that? And the question following up is why would Arenanet do that and why would you want to spend so much money on it? How come that your interests shifted so much you create this thread and it goes on and on? I am playing midgets since I picked Tristana as first character in League of Legends in 2010. I would never suddenly pick a Norn. Make up your mind before that. I mean, you literally changed by 180° if you go from the Maste.. from Asura to Norn, it’s the very opposite. And now you want it to be done in a blink of an eye?

Get your principles straight, man. :-)

ThomasC.1056:

Invidia.9074:

Please tell me you are not going to kill off Jormag/Primordus in a cutscene or something?

Actually, it could happen, considering Taimi is working on a way to more or less have their energies fight each other. Which would open field for a new foe, like Lazarus.

Spoilers. Boo!

Excelsior.

I have been in the very situation, asking the very same questions and after a long back and forth, trying out the classes with the Level 80 boost, I got one important suggestion:

“If you play alone, Thief is for you”.

And here I go. In the end, aesthetical reasons also played a big role; I enjoy the way thieves/daredevils fight. This cold metal (daggers, pistols, sword, arrows) and even a bit of fist fights (as daredevil) is so enjoyable. Sound-wise as well, I like Thief better.
Shadowstepping around, poisoning people while stealing from them and then punch them in their face and dodge their stuff 3x (and automatically throwing daggers at them at the same time) as just incredibly satisfying for me.

If you enjoy games like Splinter Cell or, ahah, Thief, then it’s clear. If you like to go all in and cause havoc, go Necromancer. Thief is more about knowing who to fight BEFORE going in. Mindlessly going in is for Necromancer :-) grins

Going for Thief and now Daredevil was the best decision. I enjoyed Engineer, but Scrapper sucked, so I needed another class. And I would never even thinking of picking Necromancer.

It’s also up to your playstyle. Normally I dislike “Rogues” in MMORPGS, but in GW2, it’s a blast, especially as Asura. Since you apparently already know a bit (if you would know enough you would decide yourself) about the two professions, I would probably flip a coin, give it a shot for one day or two and try the other profession.

Even though it sounds weird, but I had this “OMG, this is awesome” feeling when playing Thief, this feeling deep inside when something’s very enjoyable. Like when you played the new PS1 game over at your friends house. Maybe you can trigger that a bit later one, when you had some memorable fights to compare.

Yesterday I got my lazy butt up and earned some hero points for my Daredevil and it got even better, something I could not imagine from reading plain text skill descriptions.

In short: Flip a coin, get into tough situations, see how you deal with it and when it feels right, you have your decision. By simply asking “what do you think?” people will get into theorycrafting, but this does not matter that much when you dislike the class or you are motorically not able to react/to play as intended.

Excelsior.

As Dawdler put correctly, server localization (often in terms of laws and also connectivity/ping times) is easer when the world is divided into several parts.

The problem I often see in other games like LoL or FF14 is that a natural hurdle can save a lot of mad beef. Look, people usually speak English to get together, so do you. If there is Russian text,it invites Russian players to the game that can not understand English. And this is more alienating as it sounds in the first place.

I am already kinda annoyed when there is a French or Polish chat going on in /all, but fine, it’s an MMO and I enjoy the social aspects. But please, in English. It’s just a matter of time before cyrillic chats go on. I am German, yet I stick to English.

In FF14 it causes a bad climate when you have a bunch of French players that immediately refuse to speak English because there is ONE more Frenchman in that group. The other 6 players in that 8-man group is excluded and the Frenchmen are distracted. In MapleStory 10 years ago it happened to the Spanish community.

There is one common denominator: The English language. More or less basic.

Excelsior.

I am in the very middle with this. The “people want applause” for something is as equally childish then getting mad at them for having it. The problem I see is not about “being childish”, it’s a psychologic effect happening to everyone- to get something you look for and everyone else gets it. Some people can just deal with it more, but that does not mean the poor guys not/never getting it are whiny crybabies.

I don’t think the OP is actually hating for not getting it, he is just getting frustrated – which is totally fine and understandable and a part of a set of emotions and just totally human.

But since I am somewhat agains people posting pictures of their food or other ADHD-like stuff on Facebook, Twitter and all these bullkitten sites I am of course also against this “Look at me!!!!!111!!” sort of people.

Totally out of context, but I’d go with
A gentleman never tells there. :-) You don’t know these people and they do not honestly care about you after all as well, so why want some fake accolades and congratulations?

When I got my first Zodiac weapon in FF14 after several months I just said “I finally got it” in the guild chat and that’s it. I did not feel any worse than yelling it out in the area where everybody was farming it in vain for weeks straight.

Geez, you don’t stand long in a discussion, do you? I wonder how (and if) you would survive a job interview…

-1 – Skills on Cooldown and you can still use them? What is this? Does it add a multiplied CD on it, just like when you do too many push-ups despite you are at your limits but still do more push-up until you get muscle ache which takes your out for the next time? I mean, imagine a shooter where you ran out of ammo and you somehow still can get a fresh mag and “later penalties”. That already sounds dumb. A cooldown is a restriction, so why have it in the first place?

-2 – That sounds okay-ish, but I am not sure if it fits into the “ecosystem” of this game. I never played BDO, but it is basically some sort of specialization, just like in other games where you can upgrade your shotgun skills if you use the shotgun more often and suddenly you can carry 2 more shots and stuff like that? I don’t know, man..

-3 – We have an instant weapon-swap going on. So far it sounds like it’s to buffer any sort of delay? So it’s really redundant.

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

First of all I don’t think GW2 is “worse” now. Things have changed. Not only the game has changed, also the market around it – und thus the players. I am fairly new (about 2 years now) and I am having a blast, so while you might be dissatisfied, others are now attracted and vice-versa.

About advertisements, since switching to Kaspersky 3 years ago I barely see any advertising banners. Before I remember seeing GW2 adds on the old Youtube layout. The other ways to advertise, well, I am not sure since “the world” just wants new. New flashy graphics, new this, new that. Even this forums has its “New expansion 2 soon” stuff. A game “this old” is probably hard to market, as in creating deja-vus. As top-notch game website, I would not want to bring up older games. As regular player that still actively plays DooM and DooM II (1993/94) I do not share this attitude in the slightest, but you get my point.

GW2 is too shy in that matter. While every small fart in FF14 is worth a message, even when YoshiP burped, GW2 news are only for new content – which is, of course, not happening often. But why not highlighting the free2play aspect and other aspects unsure gamers today might be interested in. This game has many features others don’t have, FF14’s lack of dubbing is ridiculous, still people want to tell me about its great “story telling” (neither has it a great story, nor does it present it in a good way) or a super stiff and slow combat – but SquareEnix markets this slow and boring gameplay as “fun” and people still fall for it somehow.

I am sure this game won’t attract a huge playerbase nowadays since a big chunk tends to play on toys, pardon, consoles with gamepad and no keyboard (forcing lame combat as in FF14 which is more like playing SimCity2000 on the GBA) and the other ones ruin their eyes by playing on 5" phone screens. The people that sit in front of their PC, with keyboard and mouse, a pizza and a coke is apparently a dying race. But amongst 1,000 new players are probably 5 new die-hard fans like me, and those we need.

Excelsior.

There are more than enough players here. GW2 is far, far better than people want to tell, probably they are busy playing…

At least when I die the most ridiculous deaths there is always someone who saw it..

Excelsior.
There are just a very few I know in 4K+, but not quite what you just showed there.
Since I am very pleased with this game, I do my own wallpapers, usually revolving around my Thief and Engineer. But else, the ones I know higher than 2K (1080p) are here.

Excelsior.

I like both actually. Not a fan of cinematics myself, because, for example, where is the sudden orchestra coming from playing in the background or tracking shots and camera movements revealing everything around the area that is not visible to my character. So the zoomed in dialogue with the nice and calm flash animations had something stylish and classy to it.

The new on-the-fly dialogue is also nice, because it’s not like someone puts a straitjacket on me. You know, when in every game a cutscene starts your controls stop to work, it goes into letterbox and you are not a player of the game anymore and you are forced to sit and watch. Nah. I like that I can walk around while I talk to people or they talk to me. It’s good and nice this way.

If my Asura ears would not be so stiff while talking. I must be very excited in those dialogues… :-D

So, why would you want a change in the first place? You want to re-invent the wheel for what’s sake especially.