2981

Note that you can still play without successfully confirming. So yes, it is annoying (and will randomly work) but don’t panic too much about it.

2982

I’m not panicking, but it puts them at the same level of games for windows live where they blocked my account for no reason and then refused to send me an email even though the email was still the same one i use.

2983

The overflow shuffle is turning into a bit of a game for our guild. I (and fellow guildmates) have also found the overflow servers are far less laggy than the home server. Sometimes I re-queue myself for that reason.

2984

I can’t say i’m terribly impressed after putting a couple hours in to messing around with a couple classes.

While it is true they did improve a little on the warhammer mmo style world events, they still seem to be warhammer mmo style world events…

As was predicted, this doesn’t offer any radically new innovation or improvements.

Still, the game is fun for $50, however if this game had a monthly fee, i would not play it over swtor, TSW or even wow.

2985

Dude, you posted in the wrong thread.

-Tom
2986

The perfect response.

2987

Aside from voice acting and the personal story lines, what do you think is better about SWTOR that you would pay a monthly fee for it and not this one?

2988

There really isn’t much if you discount the voice acting and personal story lines. Although even the side quests seem to be superior in swtor.

To be fair though, i’ve only put in a couple hours so maybe the game gets better later on. This is my first guild wars game so maybe i’m expecting too much, but i certainly do feel like i’m playing a mmorpg, the kill quest part at least.

Even still, the game isn’t bad by any means and i don’t mean to imply that, it simply is clear why it does not have a monthly fee.

2989

Is there any reason to hang onto “trophy items”? They don’t seem to be useful for crafting, but they don’t count as “junk” when selling junk…

2990

Yes, yes you are. I think this cracks me up more than anything about most folks disappointed with GW2 (or any other MMO for that matter) - people are expecting something other than an MMO.

2991

Barstein asked in the guild thread what characters people are using, and it’s a great question and definitely worth talking about. But I think it’ll fit her with general discussion instead of in the guild thread. So I’ll start.

I just sort of picked engineer on a whim and I’m really happy with the variety it allows. You don’t double up on weapons like you do with other classes. Instead, you use your utility slots for “kits”, each of which takes over all your weapon slots. For instance, in the world vs world stuff, I was using my grenade kit yesterday, which gives me a variety of splashy area-of-effect attacks. Not much by way of targeting. Just plop them onto the greatest nearby concentration of bad guys! They’re even good for lobbing up at the walls at defenders. It was really gratifying to see a bunch of heads peeking over the parapets shooting down at us and to see them all pull back simultaneously as my grenades explode around them.

My more common build, however, is turrets. You drop them and time when to boost their effects, which leaves me to play with my rifle. Rifles have a net attack that freezes targets, as well as an overcharge attack that blows you and the target away from each other. These are both great for controlling range. I’ve got a flame turret, a rocket turret, a rifle turret, a net turret, and a thumper that injures anyone in the area. I can bring along any three at a time.

One of the engineer kits is a motherflippin’ flamethrower, which I put on autoattack (ctl+rtclick any skill to put it on autoattack). I’ve been using this with gear that improves my burn effect (this is called “condition” in the game). I’ve used in my other skills slots an elixir that buffs my attacks and a battlecry that buffs my and nearby allies stats. I’m also spending my trait points to improve the effect of burning. This is basically my “pour damage onto target” build.

I just unlocked the medical kit and an elixir kit which I want to use to try playing more of a support role in world vs world and dungeons, but I haven’t had a chance to play with these yet. And I’m only about a level and a half away from unlocking my elite skills.

What about you guys? Tell us about your character builds.

-Tom

2992

Yay. Thanks, Tom. I was kind of struggling with all the choices and variations, earlier tonight. I tend to take my time deciding what kind of builds to start with in RPGs/MMOs, in part because I don’t like to switch later. I dislike that feeling of realizing that I’ve just picked something that is already in abundance (hasn’t happened often, fortunately) or something that is just plain less fun.

2993

Tom sounds like you have been playing GW2 fairly intensely if you are already at the point of unlocking elite skills. :) I am level 25 but I have not consciously been trying to power level.

I am currently playing a Charr Engineer. I’ve put points into Explosives and Firearms. I tend to focus on using grenades, rifle, and flamethrower. Flamethrower does an awesome amount of AOE damage but is an impressive agro magnet. I also use the healing turret and the rocket turret. I tried one of the utility toolkits - spanner or wrench I think? - but it seems most suitable as a support or tanking kit and not a primary attack kit.

2994

I’m playing an elementalist, because I tend to like mages and they were a favorite in Guild Wars. It turns out that although, like the engineer they can’t swap weapons mid combat, it hardly matters because they don’t just have the five standard skills per weapon set…they have five per weapon set -per element-, and you can swap between the elements almost at will. The variety is pretty intense. As a staff wielder, my fire attunement grants me a fireball autoattack that’s damaging, sets people on fire, and deals a small radius of AoE around the target, plus another three burny AoEs of various profiles (ground targeted small damage field, AoE around my target, and a rather spectacular meteor shower skill across a large area that continues while I swap back to fireballs and whatnot), plus a rapid retreat that raises a flaming path as I go. If I switch to water, though, I get a ranged single target attack with splash heal to friendlies in melee range of my target, an AoE damage ice spike, an AoE health over time effect, a cold field that slows any enemy that enters it and damages them, and…er, I don’t think I’ve unlocked the last skill there yet. And then air has another completely different loadout, and earth. But switch to dagger and focus, and I’m doing shotgun and whip style close range effects with walls and shields and charges. And so on. The utility skills mostly seem to build on that with various effects that change based on the attunement I have up, like different elementals, or having attacks inflict statuses like chill and weakness.

2995

Much less important, but race and gender info would also be appreciated. (Thanks, guys.)

2996

Rolled a Mesmer. This is the only class I got anywhere with in GW1, which wasn’t very far so I figured to give it another go. It certainly plays much differently. I’m avoiding reading guides thus far and just playing by feel. Most abilities I have are about spawning my little illusions, with a smattering of buff/debuff spells.

The illusion mechanic takes some getting used to. Some that you spawn look like clones of you and fire off modest attacks and absorb a modest amount of damage but serve well as distractions/decoys. Others have a bit beefier abilities but look all shimmery and stand out more obviously. You can have up to 3 of these going at a time, and at any point you can order them to “Shatter” – They charge in and explode on the target for either AoE damage, the old GW1 backfire effect, a stun, or a bit of self immunity. I find the damage most useful since I think it’s the only one of those that has an AoE, but I’m starting to get the hang of using the others effectively. Another catch is that the illusions dissipate when their target dies, so it’s usually worth while to send em in kamikaze style once the target is near death.

I’m getting the hang of it… sort of. The decision tends to be how long to keep them out for the extra DPS vs. shattering for effect vs. shattering because they’re about to die anyway vs. shattering because the target is about to die. I’m putting my trait points into reducing the spawn and shatter cooldowns, hoping to just spam the field with clones, but the effects aren’t really noticiable yet.

The very weird thing about the buff/debuff skills so far is that they are all random. As in, the abilities say “apply a random buff to yourself” or the like. In a sense, this is helpful for me as a player since it takes away any analysis paralysis that could come from trying to work out which debuff would be situationally most useful. Just fire and forget and assume that anything bad will help.

In case its not coming across: I find the whole thing very chaotic and I have no idea to what degree I contributed to any PvP success we may have had tonight.

My favourite weapons so far are the 2h staff (with a downright insane AoE ability that a) does damage, b) applies random debuffs to enemies within, c) applies random buffs to allies within, and d) seems to trigger those combo thingees) and a sceptre/gun combo. The gun combo is nice in that it has an instant cast stun, and the sceptre periodically spawns illusions with its basic auto-attack. Whenever I get any weapon with better stats than what I’m carrying, I swap it in even if I don’t like the skills too much, just to force myself to (hopefully) learn how to like them.

The 1h sword I did not like since I never live long in melee range of anything. The 2h sword is kind of neat because it is actually a ranged weapon for the Mesmer?

2997

First, with respect to the disappointment that this is an MMO, part of the cause for that might be that the first Guild Wars wasn’t an MMO. It was a party-based (or npc party-based) action RPG with a ludicrously broad and prohibitively complicated skill system (which I loved). Oh, and it had a huge focus on organized small group PvP.

I am not an MMO player – I try most of them for a few hours and then groan and turn them off. LOTRO (and, to a lesser extent, Eve) is the only one that I ever stuck with past my initial month, and I found that it was the environments and the exploration that pulled me through. Its crowning achievement, as far as I’m concerned, was the vague nature of the world map. There was very little information there, and you played by actually looking around the world rather than following icons on a map. I am a huge fan of the artists at Arenanet, and I was rather disappointed to find that it’s a very “stuff on the map”-driven game. They go so far as to have a few guys in every zone that literally circle all the important stuff on your map and tell you where you want to go in the zone.

After playing for a couple of days, I realized that to get maximum enjoyment, I dragged the minimap as small as it will go (it’s about the size of my watch face) and try to stay away from the world map (and never talk to the scout guys). I really like the feeling of seeing something cool and walking to it. The quest-less design of GW2 marries perfectly with that approach, as you just sort of do stuff as you walk around and you get credit. No talking to people, no waypoints, etc.

Wow, I am getting pretty far afield from my original point. It’s much more an MMO than its predecessor, but it’s possible to play it in such a way that what I consider the genre’s failings are mostly avoidable.

2998

I made a Thief because I always enjoy blink moves and evasive actions, and the Assassin was loads of fun in GW. It is a really fun and unique class because none of your skills have cooldowns, and instead deplete a renewable resource called “Intiative”. You’ve got 12 intiative to start with, and each spell costs a certain amount. It recharges over time. It’s cool because it lets you use the same spell multible times! Like with the dual dagger build, you can cast Heartseeker Strike 4 times in a row, which leads to some insane damage output on lower health enemys. Also, I believe every weapons auto attack gains an additional effect if you use it from stealth.

I really like the double dagger / pistol dagger + shortbow. Double dagger gives you heartseeker strike, which is a nasty nasty bleed in PvE and PvP, plus it gives you a 3rd dodge. The dagger pistol gives you similar (not the same) damage but with more survivbility. The shortbow is almost required, I feel, because it gives you a large amount of AoE. Plus, it’s great for escapes because you can teleport and roll back 2 and 3 times respectively (with full intiative).

I’ve been going for 2 different utility builds in PvE and WvW. For PvE, I take Spider Venom, which applys a large DoT. Roll for intiative rolls back (a 4th roll with a dual dagger build!) and gives you intiative. It also breaks stuns. I’ve been experimenting with the last slot, but I really like the Ambush trap, which spawns a bot that either uses a pistol or daggers, and can scorpion wire / blind people and attack them. Really handy! What is really cool about all these rolls is Steal. Steal teleports you to an enemy and steals a random ability. The abilitys aren’t great (and they are random) but they’re a lot of fun. Anyway, you can really juke people out by jumping in with Heartseeker Strike, doing 2 death blossoms, rolling backwards to get intiative, stealing back to them instantly, and pulling off another death blossom. This’ll almost guarantee a kill on NPC’s. Plus, it’s fun.

The PvP build I use Spider Venom, Devourer Venom, and Scorpion Wire. Devourer venom makes your next 2 attacks immobilze an enemy, for a total of 4 seconds. Scorpion Wire pulls an enemy to you. As you can imagine, it is stupidly fun to pull an enemy off a wall in a siege and then eat them alive as they struggle to figure out what just happened.

So… yeah. Not sure if anyone is going to read that, but it was sure fun to type!

-Kyle

2999

I found this video on GW2 website that explains how to register your account officially after the pre-purchase etc.

http://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8982/~/guild-wars-2-registration

I followed the instructions and it seems to have worked (except that the four digits after my name were changed - but I see the new four numbers listed in the Guild menu so everything seems to be fine and I was able to login to the game).

3000

Ha, they actually named the “GET OVER HERE!” ability Scorpion Wire? Gold.