Guild Wars 2

azureai.9764:

I do play charr. And only charr. I love them. So amazing looking, assertive and that cultural silliness. I honestly have trouble understanding why someone would play a fantasy game and then choose to play as a human. That just seems ultra boring to me.

Interesting that so many folks cite armor as the reason they don’t play charr. I guess even non-charr acknowledge that ANet needs to fix their art designs.

I’m on the same boat as far as humans are concerned, not only on GW2, on all games, MMO or not I’ve played where there’s an option to play a non human race. Probably why my only human character here is a bank mule (might play another him sometime in the future)…

On the armor front, if only the armor designers would remember that charr had a tail, even if it was only by creating a hole in the armor where the tail goes out, I’d be happy

About three days ago, wandering around mount maelstrom after killing the golem, looking for one more event to finish dailies, see an event to kill a random veteran in the middle of nowhere, a black moa bird which called mini moas as adds… kill it, a portal appears, teleported to an area I had never seen before which turned out to be a jumping puzzle.

And also last night when I finally managed to complete it.. (kept falling to my dead in the last part which meant I had to find another event to get back in)..

Might be old news to most, but it was a nice surprise for me..

pro-dueling Vs. anti-dueling

http://gw2cartographers.com/

This site gives you an idea of how much of the map is explorable for the time being.

There are lots of areas named and that were eventually accesible in GW that are still off limits, several current areas even have gates leading out of them that are blocked or somehow unaccesible.

There are also some things in the currently accesible areas that are yet unaccesible, like the floating wizard tower, and others that were open temporarely and will be again when the apropiate events go live, like the queen’s pavillion and labyrinthine cliffs.

Silvercyclone.1462:

Lets just say there are 2 monsters. 1 you fight in a group the other you dont. Would you get the same ammount of loot with the one you fought in a group or the same?

In that particular case, theoretically you’d get the exact same amount of loot.

1. yes
2. no
3. need moar characters!!!

Personally I’m going to do the same thing.

I’m working on ascended weapons as a long term goal. Just started saving ectos instead of selling them outright to start leveling weaponsmith to start with GS for my guardian (he gets first dibs on anything), but while I do like the design of the ascended GS, unless I go with vitality or healing as primary, which my guardian doesn’t really use, it won’t fit his armor color scheme, and a few undyeable pieces I use and really like (back piece, radiant gloves) makes me not want to change it, so chances are when I do get one I’ll transmute it to the GS I’m using now which does fit (guild sunderer).

Jomo.3914:

I read through most of this and I have to re-state that the Charr can’t jump. Have you ever tried to do a jumping puzzle with a Charr? Its like watching a worm try and go up stairs…

Maybe I’m weird in that, but I seem to have better luck doing jumping puzzled with my norn (granted, he’s small for a norn) and charr than with my asura and sylvari. That said, the charr is an engineer and when doing jumping puzzles I’m sure to equip him with a kit (usually flamethrower since he’s mostly flamethrower specced) so that he doesn’t run on all four while doing them.

Raine.1394:

I agree on the relief aspect of giving up on the dailies. But, I also realize that laurels, what the dailies/monthlies gate, is the path of the power curve for a lot of pieces of gear. I have all the professions at 80 and only one character that is moderately attired in Ascended trinkets currently. So, I realize that getting relief here is tantamount to giving up on the game.

Actually, at this point dailies is about all I do, as I can’t stand the grind of GW2. I’m playing other games and hoping to see GW2 return to the GW DNA. It could happen.

I don’t really see it as giving up on the game. I do the dailies most days, but there are just days where I just don’t do them (out of town, working late, spending time with the wife, etc) and honestly don’t find any pressure because of it. It’ll might take two or three months instead of one to equip my chars with ascended trinkets…. so what?.

That I think was the point of the op, the game is supposed to be about fun, as is any game out there, something we only do for entertainment… and if something feels like a chore or a job, and not as something we do for fun (and of course we’re not obligated or paid to do it)… why do it in the first place?.

Vayne.8563:

zaxziakohl.5243:

Wow. The comments here kind of surprise me.

The voice acting certainly has it’s corny moments. That said….

This game has a lot of content and depth that a 12 year old wouldn’t get.

Someone mentioned childrens books. Ever read The Lorax? I loved it when I was a kid. Did I really understand it? Not so much. The full meaning of the book didn’t sink in until I was much older. This went even further when I started reading teen books (loved Animorphs.) Going back as an adult, there is SOOOO much that I didn’t see. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. I loved it. It doesn’t even mean I didn’t understand it! I did! I just didn’t see the depth that was there. Honestly, it had very little to do with me being young, and more to do with me not having life experience, which gives us that ability to read into things more.

Anyway…continuing on. Guild Wars 2 HAS that depth for me. YES a 12 year old can play it. But if you are understanding it in the same way that a 12 year old does, than either it’s a very smart/jaded 12 year old, or your choosing not to read into it more.

You go to the pale tree and you pick out your deepest fear. A meaningful deep heartfelt fear. As part of your wyld hunt (lets face it, they are all on a journey with destiny) you are going to come face to face with your fears, and your hardships. The only way for you to endure, and win in the end, is to win against those fears and survive. You can’t reach your end goal without those.

12 year old version: I had a partner to fight with. We killed lots of mobs to the top. We were kinda successful, but she got left behind. Now we tried to rescue her, but we failed, and now she died.

Deeper meaning: To be strong enough to face Zhaitan, destiny would put hardships in my path to prepare. One of these is facing my deepest darkest fears. I have no issues hacking down enemies, and coming out on top. I’ve done it again and again. THAT I’m good at. I’ve been through pain, I already lost my first partner. They showed me the true meaning of sacrifice for a greater cause. Now I have a new partner, and it’s my fault. My biggest fear come to life, they die, because of me. It’s horrible, it’s tragic, but I survive. And am stronger to beat Zhaitan because of it.

If you guys aren’t seeing the deeper meanings, then maybe you aren’t looking?

Just had to drop by to say that the Lorax, though a kid’s book, is one of the best books I’ve read. It really calls into questions some of the problems the world is now experiencing.

Oh, and I agree with your post, too. lol

Change The Lorax (my first experience with it was watching the recent movie with my son) to The Little Prince and I agree 100%.

I’m guessing something like 30 or 40, probably more (is there any way to check?). Don’t really keep count, when traveling, working late and things like that.

ilr.9675:

Not even Dragons seem to have the power to prevent Ghosts from haunting an area where their traumatic deaths may have occurred. …this seems to tie in with the Mists and ‘the Rift’ itself. There’s a chance we might get more answers on it if the Thaumaneuva Reactor actually gets some rich back story to it, but I wouldn’t your your breath on that. The Living Story team seems more interested in hawking cash shop items than selling us reasonable explanations and plot.

In the case of ascalon, the ghosts aren’t all there because of traumatic deaths but because of the curse of the foefire. Basically the spirits are bound to the foefire caused by Kind Adelbern using the magic sword Magdear (twin of Sohothin that Rytlok now wields).

The foefire killed all the Charr attacking the city at the time, and cursed all the humans, forcing them to relive that day over and over. They don’t know they’re dead, as long as the foefire remains active they keep thinking they’re still defending their city against the invading Charr, and see every living being they encounter (regardless of race) as a Charr. Actually, in the novel Ghosts of Ascalon the main characters meet the ghost of someone that died right before the foefire, and remains because of unfinished business, and it’s completely different from the ones in the rest of ascalon, and more like some of the spirits you meet in GW1, he’s aware that he’s dead and sees the living as what they are and is able to talk to them.

According to the story, the ghosts of ascalon won’t be laid to rest until the true heir to the throne of ascalon returns wielding either sohothin or magdear.

As a side note… wouldn’t be kinda interesting if Rytlock turns out to be the true heir to the throne, being that ascalon belonged to Charr before it did to the Humans?..

Viking Jorun.5413:

Because it has to be held by someone of pure Ascalonian blood, and all of the pieces were never recovered, or something to the extent. Also, the Claw of the Khan Ur should be found first. Just saying.

Fastest way:

Rings: from fractals, if you’re lucky you could get them right away.
Amulet: Laurels and badges of honor. Fastest way to get one would be in 10 days by doing 10 dailies and the monthly achievements (20 laurels total) + 250 badges of honor, that you probably already have if you’ve received any achievement chest. If you have no badges of honor, or don’t want to use them for that, add 10 days more.
Accesories: Guild commendation. Each accesory cost 12 commendations, you can get up to 6 every week, so make it a month to fully gear a character with them (one accesory every 2 weeks). If your guild doesn’t do guild missions, go here: http://www.reddit.com/r/GuildMissions and find one to throw you a temporary invite for them.

So, basically, the fastest you can fully equip a character with ascended gear (excluding weapons) is 1 month.

fellyn.5083:

Waldir.2571:

Joining a party gives more drops only because the amount of damage you have do in order to tag a mob is shared with your party.

More tags = more drops.

I call shenanigans on this. In my experience being in a group or not doesn’t affect a single thing as far as drops go.

Unless some one has some hard proof saying otherwise I don’t buy it.

I depends a lot on your class and the situation. Getting a group wouldn’t change anything, loot related, if you’re attacking a single strong enemy (a champion, for example), or maybe if you’re fighting large groups of mobs but you have a class that already has spammable AoE attacks that can tag and damage large group of mobs already (for example, staff guardian, flamethrower engineeer).

Conncept.7638:

Drakkon.4782:

Dingle.2743:

Conditions will be viable for the chunks where players have to defend against waves of mobs, especially as they’ll have to spread out.

There will always be mobs attacking the cannons, so condition users should focus on those to get the most out of their stats.

This is the answer to the problem, and the entire reason the OP will NEVER do it. He wants to go toe to toe with the boss like a zerker build DPSer, but he wants to do it as a CD build support. Basically, he’s trying to take a tossing flashbangs and wondering why the heavy machine gun is killing more people. He’s playing his character wrong.

There. I said it. We’re all thinking it. I’m going to call it out.

YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!

CD is support, not DPS. Go help defend the cannons and batteries against the adds. You’re useless on the boss because all the zerkers with incidental conditions in their attacks are already using up all 25 stacks of whatever you inflict on the boss. Go do something useful to the raid. Or go play a zerker alt.

Pick one and quit whining about not being able to DPS as a support. Seriously, if you can’t add anything to the fight against the boss, go find a target you can add to. You’re still going to get rewarded for the encounter. Be useful to the event, or go away.

Please explain to me, if you are capable, of how a stat which deals damage each second on the second is not a DPS stat, or even more curiously, how it can be considered a support stat.

You are aware of what DPS stands for are you not?

Simple, your build is indeed a condition based DPS, but in that particular fight, because of the way the game handles conditions, you’ll be playing the role of support, supporting the efforts to kill the boss by using your condition DPS specced character to defend the turrets and megalaser by killing the mobs trying to destroy them, which in turn are doing support to the ones attacking tequatl by cleaning stunning it, depleting the stacks that protect him, clean the poison, etc.

Of course you can also attack tequatl directly, but due to how the game handles conditions (and one of the characters I play the most is a condition specced mesmer, BTW, so I know your pain), you (and I when playing my mesmer) will be more useful as defense.

You don’t get more drops by doing more damage than other players but maybe by joining a party.

Basically, the way it works, the game tracks your participation when killing a mob, if you’ve done enough of it, you get a drop, if you don’t, you don’t get a drop. Whatever it drops, thouhg, is the same, so more damage doesn’t mean better drops.

So, if someone is soloing a champion, for example, and you get in time to get one shot in, the game might feel you didn’t do enough participation and not give you loot, but if several people are fighting the same champion, your one shot might be considered enough participation compared to the average of everyone else (since each person did less damage overall).

Joining a party does increase your chances to get loot, though, mainly because the game tracks participation on a party level instead of a character level. So, for example, if you’re doing an event with lots of mobs around, and just manage to do one attack in one of the mobs (tag it), you might not get loot on it since the game might think you didn’t have enough participation, but if you manage to tag it, and someone else in your party does enough damage for it, you get loot.

Which is why people looks for parties for some events (like the ones in Orr or during invasions), because while it doesn’t necesarely mean you’ll get better loot, you will get loot from more mobs (which increases the chance of better loot).

Another vote for ele, both because it fitst better scepter with the playstyle you describe, and also because I’ve always felt that meterologicus is the most elementalist looking weapon currently in the game..

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NinjaLog

WARNING: that link goes to a tvtropes page… do NOT go there unless you plan on spending the next few hours hitting on random links on it… that site is worse than wikipedia!!!

I’m a member of a rather large guild that do events most nights a week (and spontaneously as well), there’s really nothing that prevents you from doing them open to the public.

For example, dungeon runs. Pick one of the less traveled dungeon paths and announce that on a set day and time you’ll do a guided run trough that one (for example, Arah story mode for those that want to finish their personal story), get someone that knows the dungeon well, get everyone interested in voice chat if you have it or temporary guild invites, form as many groups as people you have (it’s good to have a guild member leading each group), then everyone goes into the dungeon while the leader explains what to do on each section, and encourage people to wait for the rest of the groups to catch up and give sugestion and the like, be sure to tell them you’ll be doing things like that regularly and that they’re welcome to stay if they like the genetal atmosphere of the guild.

You can do the same for guild missions, jumping puzzles (guiding people trough them and portaling when you can), zone zergs (get everyone together, pick a zone and get trough all the hearts, vistas, POIs, skill points and so on) and stuff like that. Also you can get other random events. For example, my guild has done naked newbie races where you create a new char of a specific race and the have to get from a point to another (given right before the race start) without using WP (unless you died), with prices for first places and stuff like that.

You can advertise events you’re planning to do on the forums, on map chat on LA, and on places like reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/guildwars2 http://www.reddit.com/r/GuildMissions

Well, they are doing something at least, IMHO… decentralizing the fight.

The current tequatl fight if you’re condition damage you’re SOL (and I know that, I play a condition damage mesmer, and switch to a zerker GS for the big boss fights to at least do some damage).

The way the battle seems to be working after the 17th, if you’re condition damage specced you’ll probably still have the same problems with the boss, but you’ll now have to also defend the megalaser and turrets from adds, which you won’t be able to just ignore like now, and which will most likely not have conditions full now. At least it’s something.

Durzlla.6295:

locoman.1974:

Uvatha.5476:

Killface.1896:

Then dont use conditions build on this boss or zerk build,conditions wont do much and you cant crit him so go max power and healing to be most effective in the zerg

True. You can’t crit hit dragons. I hear they count as structures or something like that.

I think you can crit them, but maybe they don’t get enough crit damage.

I’m saying that because I fought the shatterer with very few people around when the invasions were on full swing while playing my condition damage specced mesmer.

When he landed after he flies up, all conditions were back at 0, I had 2 phantasmals duelists out that apply bleeding when they crit, and I definitively saw the bleeds go up fast when they attacked (each duelist do 12 attacks, which means 6-10 stacks of bleeding each) and at least few of them weren’t from other players because if I hovered the mouse over the bleeding it didn’t say “source: XXX” as it says if another player applied them.

Since crits are my only source of bleeding (illusions apply bleeding on crit + superior sigil of earth that has 60% chance of bleeding on hit), I was definitively getting crits on him.

You can’t crit dragons, keep in mind bleeding is THE easiest and most common condi to apply across the board, EVERY profession but Guardian can actually apply bleeding, so them going up quickly when he lands just means everyone and their grandma was using a bleeding skill.

But that’s the thing… if someone else applied the last stack of bleeding, when I hover over the bleeding condition it says “source: XXX”, if it doesn’t show it means that it was me who applied it, and the only way I can apply it is by critting, unless it happened to glitch out and not show it at that particular time.

Uvatha.5476:

Killface.1896:

Then dont use conditions build on this boss or zerk build,conditions wont do much and you cant crit him so go max power and healing to be most effective in the zerg

True. You can’t crit hit dragons. I hear they count as structures or something like that.

I think you can crit them, but maybe they don’t get enough crit damage.

I’m saying that because I fought the shatterer with very few people around when the invasions were on full swing while playing my condition damage specced mesmer.

When he landed after he flies up, all conditions were back at 0, I had 2 phantasmals duelists out that apply bleeding when they crit, and I definitively saw the bleeds go up fast when they attacked (each duelist do 12 attacks, which means 6-10 stacks of bleeding each) and at least few of them weren’t from other players because if I hovered the mouse over the bleeding it didn’t say “source: XXX” as it says if another player applied them.

Since crits are my only source of bleeding (illusions apply bleeding on crit + superior sigil of earth that has 60% chance of bleeding on hit), I was definitively getting crits on him.

Bezayne.6459:

Tachenon.5270:

Also, why the heck would you wear clothes if you have FUR? That’s built-in natural clothing!

This. They have beautiful fur patterns, then you are left with the choice of putting badly fitting / clipping armor over it. Gotta add that I am generally not keen on furry races, though I did play a charr up to the 30s. Just not for me in their current incarnation.

Well, if you play a heavy armor character, there are several armor sets that display a lot of fur, and at least one of the tiers of cultural armor for both light and medium at least are sleeveless

Each order armor and weapons are equivalent to any rare quality weapon and armor you can find in the game as drops, but much more expensive (3.6g for weapons, about 1.5g for each armor piece, rare quality, equivalent gear statwise can be found on TP for less than 30s tops).

Each order has different stat distributiom, vigil has power/thoughness/vitality (equivalent to soldier’s gear), order of whispers has cond. damage/precision/toughness (equivalent to rabid) and the durmand priory has healing power/precision/vitality (equivalent to magi). However, it’s rare and you can probably find exotic gear on the TP for the same price.

That said, each armor has unique armor and weapon skins so most people that get them is because of that, and then use transmutation crystals to apply the stats they want… it’s what I’ve done at least, my guardian uses several pieces of the vigil gear, and my asura warrior uses the priory weapons and some pieces of armor. The whisper’s weapons are really cool as well, several of them fold when you put them away and unfold when you pull them out, for example.

Also you can mix and match different pieces of order gear. If you have a character that wants a bit of armor/weapon from other order, you can just get a character into that order, purchase it, then transmute it to a low level white item and put it on bank (it’ll make it account bount but preserve the skin), then grab that on another character and transmute it again to a piece of gear with the stats you want.

Dyno.9467:

Katz.5143:

I’m one of those who likes all the different race’s. I have 1 asura, 1 charr, 1 norn, 2 humans, and 2 sylvari.

I want to experience the story of each race, their culture, their flavor. The charr area is very interesting.

One thing that does concern me is that I fear less attention will be paid to asura, charr, and sylvari due to the percentages of who plays which. I hope that isn’t the case because if you add up the other races then they equal the mass that is human. Therefore, collectively they are as important.

I thought Asura were the top played Toons in this game?

Actually it’s human. According to a graph released by Anet around the anniversary, the numbers are like this:

Human – 36%
Norn – 19%
Asura – 16%
Sylvari – 15%
Charr – 13%

And I’ll just ignore those groups as I already do even if I do have the gear they require, done it in all MMOs I’ve played.

And nothing stops you from finding a chat link of an ascended weapon transmuted to look just like whatever weapon you’re using and link that instead… after all, unless you’re doing high level fractals and might need the extra agony resist, the difference in stats between exotic to ascended in weapon isn’t that noticeable to a third party..

Nuka Cola.8520:

Mesket.5728:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Mesket.5728:

OP, to answer your question. I don’t think so. Changing the engine is as complex as redoing the game.

AFAIK, Anet has its own engine and it’s a really powerful one. It has good physics and great graphics while keeping FPS high. I can’t name a single engine that can handle dragon events like this game does.

hahah especially the physics part

I meant basic physics (falling, speeds, inertia, push and pull). Meaning what’s enough for an MMO but you are right, I over-expressed that. It’s not, speaking objectively, good.

Why its always “good enough for mmo”? Its 2013… mmo’s are stuck in late 90’s, time to evolve this relic of a genre. Destiny will show everyone how its done.

Simply because while computer power has evolved dramatically since the late 90’s, bandwith hasn’t. Heavy physics use works great for single player games and smaller multiplayer games, but in MMOs the results of the physics calculation need to be 100% consistent in all the clients involved, which means either it’s calculated in the server, which heavily strains it as it needs to calculate for every single thing every player do and then communicate the results to all clients, or needs to communicate the results among all clients to make sure they were the same.

A bit of cloth or a chain looking different in different clients isn’t much of a deal, but imagine for example an explosion throwing a character away in a heavy WvW fight, and it landing in different places on each client looking at it (specially if you need to finish him).

Lostwingman.5034:

locoman.1974:

Exactly, and a human from ebonhawke that lived trough the siege would probably never be running so friendly with a charr (which I do believe is reflected in the fact that if you run as a charr in ebonhawke every few steps you get a “XXX insults and threatens you” message).

Or the Heart in lower Blazeridge where you have to mediate conflicts between Ebon guards and Legion soldiers who are supposed to be working together.
Heck, outside of PC’s, how many Legion soldiers are wandering around Kryta?

locoman.1974:

But the war between humans and charr had mostly been in a standstill at ebonhawke for hundreds of years by the time of the ghosts of ascalon novel (which is 1 year before GW2 and its end marks the beggining of the peace talks). As long as ebonhawke held, humans in krytan territories and in divinity’s reach hadn’t really been threatened by charr attacks, which was for several generations by the time GW2 started, and I’d bet they feel centaurs as a more present threat than charr would ever be.

The war was at a standstill, but it wasn’t like they didn’t still live under siege.
Also that might be the case for humans living far from Charr lands but those nearby are the ones who suffered continually against the Charr and by proximity would be the ones having to deal with whatever Human-Charr agreements are created the most.

locoman.1974:

Also, in the Destiny’s Edge novel, which happens 6 years before the events in GW2 (IIRC), Logan, Rytlock and Caithe, finding themselves in Lion’s Arch, plan on each taking an asura gate to their respective cities (the Asura Gate to Ebonhawke was built during that novel, but was destroyed by kralkatorrik so they had to rebuild it again), so even if the war was still going on then the idea of humans and charr living on one place in peace wasn’t foreign to humans, since they did have a direct connection between Divinity’s Reach and Lion’s Arch (and the Black Citadel) which were frequently used by travelers.

Charr that weren’t in a Legion sure or were Ash undercover. How many Blood, Flame, or Iron legionnaires would have been fine with it?
The Charr’s problem is their society.

locoman.1974:

Which is why I don’t see it as something so weird to see humans (non ebonhawkean, at least) and charr fighting together.

This doesn’t have anything to do with “Yea, I could see a situation where humans and Charr fight together” but “Yea, Charr were pretty darn despicable for centuries, I can’t see myself liking them anytime soon.”

Agree with most of it, my comment about humans and charr fighting together was mostly directed about an older comment (which I think was trimmed or something):

Copestetic.5174:

Copestetic.5174:

I think people are not really letting the gravity of the Human situation sink in here; and that’s darn-near extinction.

That and with the war ending not so long ago, I think it’s far, far too soon for humans and charr to be running around as chummy as they do. It doesn’t make sense imho.

Not liking them for being the villains in GW1 I understand (or for any other reason, really), but my main point was that I don’t see it so rare, lorewise, to have humans and charr fighting together in the game.

Science.6709:

Would be funny if you bought the code on Ebay and then received an actual box with a “chance” to have the code in it.

Well, wouldn’t be the first time… when the playstation II came out in japan before the US, someone was selling on ebay a “playstation II original box and receipt” with a picture of the playstation II box and the japanese receipt on top as a regular auction, which got sold for $425 + shipping in the end… and the buyer received exactly what was described and pictured, and empty playstation II box and the japanese receipt of the purchase..

I don’t know what happened in the end, but last time I heard ebay wasn’t going to do anything because he sold exactly what was described, nowhere it said the playstation was inside..

EDIT: found a mirror of the ebay listing: http://www.whattheheck.com/ebay/ps2box.html

Behellagh.1468:

Not a lot of exploding or destroyable objects in GW2 so none of the obvious particle physics of debris. Maybe cloth. Do ponytails move up when falling?

There are quite a few objects that react with physics (cloth in several items, chains in some weapons and armor), also some objects in the world (blades of grass and small stones affected by effects that push or pulls them, more evident in several guardian bubble skills), also in some skills like guardian’s hammer skill “Vanish” (I think warriors get one too) that sends enemies flying backwards bouncing once or twice.

Lostwingman.5034:

locoman.1974:

Lothirieth.3408:

Copestetic.5174:

I think people are not really letting the gravity of the Human situation sink in here; and that’s darn-near extinction.

That and with the war ending not so long ago, I think it’s far, far too soon for humans and charr to be running around as chummy as they do. It doesn’t make sense imho.

Well, the war ended up a year ago (and really you do get a bit of yelling at you if you run as a charr in ebonhawke), but there were charr and humans (and norn and asura) already living in peace in Lion’s Arch for several years by then.

Humans in Ebonhawke have had a MUCH different experience and life than those who are corsairs and live in Lions Arch.
Do I have to make a comparison of the difference of perspective between Americans and Russians or something to make it clearer?

Exactly, and a human from ebonhawke that lived trough the siege would probably never be running so friendly with a charr (which I do believe is reflected in the fact that if you run as a charr in ebonhawke every few steps you get a “XXX insults and threatens you” message).

But the war between humans and charr had mostly been in a standstill at ebonhawke for hundreds of years by the time of the ghosts of ascalon novel (which is 1 year before GW2 and its end marks the beggining of the peace talks). As long as ebonhawke held, humans in krytan territories and in divinity’s reach hadn’t really been threatened by charr attacks, which was for several generations by the time GW2 started, and I’d bet they feel centaurs as a more present threat than charr would ever be.

Also, in the Destiny’s Edge novel, which happens 6 years before the events in GW2 (IIRC), Logan, Rytlock and Caithe, finding themselves in Lion’s Arch, plan on each taking an asura gate to their respective cities (the Asura Gate to Ebonhawke was built during that novel, but was destroyed by kralkatorrik so they had to rebuild it again), so even if the war was still going on then the idea of humans and charr living on one place in peace wasn’t foreign to humans, since they did have a direct connection between Divinity’s Reach and Lion’s Arch (and the Black Citadel) which were frequently used by travelers.

Which is why I don’t see it as something so weird to see humans (non ebonhawkean, at least) and charr fighting together.

Lothirieth.3408:

Copestetic.5174:

I think people are not really letting the gravity of the Human situation sink in here; and that’s darn-near extinction.

That and with the war ending not so long ago, I think it’s far, far too soon for humans and charr to be running around as chummy as they do. It doesn’t make sense imho.

Well, the war ended up a year ago (and really you do get a bit of yelling at you if you run as a charr in ebonhawke), but there were charr and humans (and norn and asura) already living in peace in Lion’s Arch for several years by then.

Basically it increases the chance of any item dropping by whatever percent magic find you have.

So, for example, if you have 100% magic find, and item X has a 1% chance of dropping, it’ll have 2% chance for you. It’ll only work for actual drops, BTW, so things like chests, dropped containers (like black lion chests) and mystic forge aren’t affected by it.

Lothirieth.3408:

I greatly prefer playing humanoid characters.. so no beasts, funky coloured dark elves, dwarves or hobbits. So that’s why I went for a human first, then Norn.. and then the rest are mainly story APs and cultural armor APs. :P

I didn’t play GW1 but I’ve started reading Ghosts of Ascalon and it’s enlightened me to what the Charr were like. This:

AcidicVision.5498:

In GW we seen them destroy the human kingdom and kill woman, children and elderly. Gwen’s story showed us they had human torture camps. They helped resurrect the titans that could have ended all intelligent life. They held humans for nearly a decade kept barely alive in small cages. They performed ritualistic human sacrifices.

They were bad guys. All of them. Then Pyre comes along and says “uhh yeah, our bad.” And we are just supposed to say “nah bro it’s cool”?

… this is why I have a hard time playing the charr I have just to get the story APs. It’s incredibly hard to see him as any type of hero.

Thing is… those things were done 250 years ago, so basically people are saying that it’s bad to blame humans from taking away charr lands because it was generations ago, and yet people are reacting bad to Charr from this generation for things that others of the same race did 250 years ago (and that the legion responsible for all that is currently at war against the rest of the Charr). As far as I know there are no signs in game that recent human prisoners during the war were misstreated or tortured, which should be everywhere in charr lands considering that the armistice started just 1 year before the game started, and that there were areas (Lion’s Arch, for example) where humans and charr already coexisted peacefully for years by then.

Plus, Humans weren’t entirely goody heroes back then either, considering that there were warriors that skinned charr and wore their skins as armor.

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Warrior_Charr_Hide_armor

Considering that this is done because we can guest on any server for free (most other MMO I’ve played, the only way to play with friends on other servers is by either paying for a one time server transfer or creating a new character), I don’t really see it as a flaw.

Also, since this game allow for spaces, you do have a LOT of room to create good character names.

And if you want to keep the names RP friendly, just add a surname or something extra as apropiate… so if you want an asura named “Lokko” for example, just make it “Lokko of Dynamics College”, “Golemancer Lokko”, “Krewe Leader Lokko”, “Lokko the Kreweless” and so on, for Norn, Charr and Human create a nice sounding surname and add it, and for sylvari you can add things like “of the dawn/noon/dusk/night cycle”, “the soundless”, “of the grove” and so on.

GuzziHero.2467:

…Charr… well lets see. Engineers, Warriors and Rangers go without saying. Thieves exist in every society. Guardians are on shaky ground, and there is no way the Charr society would accept a Necromancer or a Mesmer. And as soon as any Charr Elementalist attuned to fire, he would be nailed to a wall on the Viewing Hill. Upside down.

Allowing Charr to be any of the magical professions destroys pretty much every vestage of their lore.

Its not just them though. In reality, only about half the professions would apply to the Norn, whereas even the dumbest Asura would consider any of the professions in GW2 to be far beneath their enormous intellect. Sylvari are just invented so they can do whatever Anet wants them to.

I remember reading (not sure where, I think it was pre-release) that the way the charr view magic is that they generally distrust magic users because of the flame legion issue, but they’re also very pragmatic so they’re not going to completely stop using magic all over because then it would be an advantage they give to their enemies, so mainly magic is something they tolerate but not really encourage in the first place. Actually I do think that Rytlock Brimstone is a good example, he might distrust magic, yet his weapon of choice is a magical sword, and one with fire based magic as well.

That said, I do think that mesmers, which are in general based around confusing and distracting their enemies, would be considered a valuable asset by the ash legion

That’s not so bad.. the first spectral tiger mounts in WoW (rare from the collectible card game) were sold for over $2000, and still today, years later, they’re still going for over $500. Not bad for what was basically a reskin of the regular night elf mount..

http://www.wowwiki.com/Reins_of_the_Swift_Spectral_Tiger

I’m guessing Anet will keep giving them away on events, sweepstakes and the like (assuming they want to keep it event exclusive and don’t add it to the game in other ways, like on the gem store), which will probably take the price down in the future anyway.

Djemo.7153:

But they always mentioned new gear in their previews, always…
I hope im wrong and they suprise me with some kitten undead gear.
Which doesent have a 0.00012 chance to drop that is.

Well, if it takes 2 weeks to craft an ascended weapon (from what they said, I’m just returning from a week long vacation and haven’t played much yet since patch), so don’t expect to have ascended weapons to drop from him any more frequent than needing at least 2 weeks of killing him in average to get one as a drop, otherwise they would just make tequatl the default ascended gear source instead of crafting as they intended in the first place.

Next tuesday, and so far we know we’ll get an updated tequatl and LFG tool, and I’m guessing we’ll get the beggining of the halloween event .

The engine is the very first thing made for a game, as the posibilities and limitations of basically everything else depends on it. Swapping an engine, as others say, isn’t just a matter of just taking one engine out and plugging the new one in, you’d have to basically rewrite the whole game around it.

If they got the engine just now, expect us to know which MMO will be using it in a year or two. And BTW, NCSoft has used the unreal engine for its own games for a while now (Lineage II and Blade and Soul)

The gold looks a bit to me like either flare or pyre from the flame and frost dye kits. However, given that dyes can look different depending on the gear they’re applied to, I’d say that your best bet to identify them is to go to the PvP locker, preview that set of armor on your character, then open the TP without closing the preview window, search for “dye” and start previewing dyes on that armor until you find the ones you’re looking for.

I do have a charr, but it was the last one of my chars (so far) to reach 80 (still don’t have a human 80, though).

Main reason is that clipping on armor is something that irks me out big time, and most armor have big clipping issues with the tail on charr.

A few recent ones I can remember.

Defeating Scarlet with 1 second left on the timer when she finished her “dying” speech.

Leveling my asura warrior (he hasn’t been too long at 80), doing one of the centaur events in harathi that ends fighting a veteran with some regular mobs. I knew I was over my head since I was still a couple levels below that area but went in anyway, managed to kill the regulars but couldn’t get the veteran down to even 3/4 of his health when I got downed, the only nearby waypoint I had was contested, watching my health slowly go down… when suddenly a guardian and mesmer arrive, guardian wacks the veteran away with the hammer, mesmer creates the illusions to attack it while it resurrects me, and off we go to kill the veteran and the adds that were respawning by then.

Finishing the southsun skipping stones jumping puzzle on my mesmer. That was a “oh yeah” moment followed by a “oh crap” one… since I proudly start to announce on map chat that I was offering portals to the top of the puzzle, portal a group up, and /say “chest is this way”, jump to the plank to where the chest was, missing the jump and landing flat on my face below..

Doing the cliffside fractals for the first time, and seeing that huge stone giant breaking the chains and walking away.

Armor, weapons and trinkets with magic find will become account bound, you’ll be able to click on it and select any other non magic find stat combination, except for celestial armor (that one will just have magic find removed).

Runes, sigils and doubloons switch to different stats (copied from Dulfy’s):

Copper, silver, gold and platinum doubloons will give boon duration.
Rune of the Pirate will grant power instead of magic find.
Rune of the Traveler will grant all stats, condition damage, boon duration and movement speed.
Rune of the Noble will grant condition damage and might.
Rune of the Scavenger will grant condition damage and life steal.
Sigil of Luck will grant a random boon on kill.

Magic find infusions (as well as food and other temporary MF boosts) will just work as they do now.

And that’s about it.

Danikat.8537:

Q4: Paying attention to Lore, which professions fit with which races?
Any of them can fit with any, but the stereotypical ones would be:
Asura – elementalist, mesmer and necromancer
Sylvari – ranger, elementalist, maybe guardian
Human – thief, warrior, engineer or any really
Norn – warrior, ranger, guardian
Charr – warrior, guardian, engineer

I’d add Ranger to the charr, since they raise devourers to be used as pets and the bigger ones as siege engines (Rox is one fine example) and Thief since Charr can be part of the Ash legion that relies on subterfuge, assasination and cover ops.

Also, one of the main characters in one of the novels is a sylvari necromancer… and her personality was the complete opposite of what you’d expect on one. It was a bit disconcerting to other characters (and something that puzzled her as to why) to see this sweet smiling sylvari asking them if they were ok with her using their corpses after they died…

If it’s gear, I imagine it’ll happen just like the TP ones, will become account bound and return to whoever deposited it (if they’re on guild bank, they’re not soulbound to anyone else).

Runes, sigils and doubloons will change according to this list (copied and pasted from dulfy):
Copper, silver, gold and platinum doubloons will give boon duration.
Rune of the Pirate will grant power instead of magic find.
Rune of the Traveler will grant all stats, condition damage, boon duration and movement speed.
Rune of the Noble will grant condition damage and might.
Rune of the Scavenger will grant condition damage and life steal.
Sigil of Luck will grant a random boon on kill.

Food and other consumable that give temporary magic find boosts will still work as usual.

Depends on the class.

On my mesmer, for example, I run a condition damage build mainly in PvE, with bleeds being the main source of damage. However, I also need a high precision because the bleeds are applied by clones when they crit (I use mostly rabid gear, cond damage – precision – toughness). If a fight lasts long enough for me to get two pistol phantasms out (or two focus ones if it’s a stationary target) I can easily mantain 10-15 stacks of bleeding during the fight with the odd 20+ spike + confusion and cripple, and at least veterans end up dying faster and easier than when I’m playing on my zerker warrior (or at least that’s how it feels).

In that case, no precision = no bleeds = no damage, so assuming no points in precision, then a direct damage would win by a LOT. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Of course, also depends on the situation. If the mob is a regular one, the warrior tends to kill them MUCH faster, the condition damage shines on longer fights (on PvE at least, don’t do much PvP), and also my mesmer is in a disadvantage Vs. the warrior on open world boss fights where the bleed stacks are always capped.

If it’s the one I think it is, it’s called The Charr Triumphant on the 4 CD soundtrack (though I think I’ve also heard The Hammer Falls, not entirely sure, I’m listening to the soundtrack at work trying to identify it).

From what we’ve been able to see both in game (with the current ascended gear) and in the dev video, ascended gear seem to have about slightly over 10% higher stats in average when compared with equivalent exotics, so if that’s the case, that’s how much more damage (or healing, or whatever, depending on build and gear used) you’d expect a fully ascended character when compared to an equivalent geared exotic character.