3561

Awesome. I’m looking forward to getting further along, then–I’m having a blast with mesmer even at level 12. I find it just as exciting as I did in GW1, even if the hoist-by-their-own-petard factor is a little bit smaller.

3562

Just to add to the heat/performance data in the thread.

My wife’s system (i5-2500k, GTX 570) runs it great, but she let me know the other night the system was making weird noises after a while during play time. I checked it out and her system is definitely generating significantly more heat than the other games we’ve thrown at it.

I need to double-check my temps next time I play, but I think it’s pushing my system (i7-920, GTX 560 ti) pretty hot as well. I don’t notice any additional fan noise, but I’ve built my system to be quiet even under load.

3563

I am running FX -8 core AMD with Nvidia 660 and had to turn shadows down (everything else is maxed) so I can have smooth WvW. Before that large-scale group combat in borderlands would drop my FPS enough that I would notice, but not enough that it would turn it into a slideshow. Aside from WvW, zero problems. I am surprised Nvidia 560 would have problems…

3564

Based on my experience (with other games, as I only began GW2 the day after building the PC) the 560ti gets quite limited by CPUs that are worse than an i5.

3565

You could drop the FPS stuff and I’d feel the same way. The games grab me for a bit but as soon as I figure out what’s different about them I start to enjoy them less. World exploration does nothing for me.

What tends to drive me through the game is the desire to see my character progress and the desire to get to the end game. GW2 is very nice about the latter, letting me jump straight to it, but not so great about the former. I’m at the point now where character progression is an incremental jump in stats and little more when I level so the effort to make a level hardly seems worth it.

So I’m doing the WvW and will probably enjoy trying out some other classes and learning how they work. The game still has some legs for me. I really hope they add some new game types to the PvP too.

Anyway, just for the record, I haven’t managed to stick with any MMO long enough to get a character to the level cap since WoW. I got three characters to 60 in vanilla WoW and none since. Sooner or later the PvE in these games gets to be uninteresting to me and it’s difficult to continue to play. I feel like that’s happened with me in GW2 with my engineer at this point.

Oh well, the beauty of the game is it’s free to play. I can jump in and do some WvW or play a different class and have a week or two of fun learning how to play that class.

3566

I’m up to level 50 now on my Engineer, and at this point making progress through leveling interests me only insofar as it opens up more dungeon instances to run in PvE, so it’s just kind of a fun thing that’s happening on the side while playing the game, but is simply a means rather than an end.

I’m more interested in keeping my crafting skills up so I can keep my weapon gear up-to-date with my character. This gives me a good reason to earn money and gather materials out in the world.

I’ve had the chance to do successful runs through the level 30 dungeon in both Story and 1 of the Explorable paths, along with the level 40 dungeon in Story. I’m looking forward to doing more dungeon runs and plan to at a minimum complete every dungeon and Explorable path at least once.

I’m also having fun going from zone to zone and striving for a 100% completion. I’ve cleared 4 non-city zones this way so far and am getting close to finishing Harathi Hinterlands now. This isn’t, of course, required, but it’s a task I enjoy doing because it encourages me to explore the entire zone, tracks my progress, and then rewards me at the end.

In the middle of this I’m doing sPvP tournaments whenever I can find a group, or just dropping myself into PUGs (and having reasonable success even so, especially if it pairs me with a group of 4 guys working together, because I’m experienced enough to figure out how to fill in the blank and be where I’m needed). This isn’t going to be everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s quite well designed from a balance, strategy, and tactical point of view. Do not get the Tournament sPvP confused with joining random servers. The difference on these maps of playing as a 5v5 versus an 8v8 is night and day. For one thing, in a tourney the goal straight up is to win by hitting 500 points - not to be a superstar running around ganking people for personal glory. More importantly, when you’ve got 3 control points and one or two additional map objectives split between 8 players you’ve got gank-squad gameplay, because it’s entirely plausible for a group of 5+ people to roam and faceroll. When you’ve got that with just 5 players on each team, you’re going to be having 1v1 and 2v2 fights popping up all over the place. Builds focused entirely on being defensive, or on simply stalling out multiple members of the opposing team even if you never kill them, those become perfectly viable and may even be necessary.

Also, WvW. But I’m still overwhelmed by how much stuff I not only have left to do, but want to do, and that’s precluding rolling alts and the like.

3567

How is the dungeon experience? I just hit 30 on 2 characters (don’t ask), so I’m ready to run something.

I get the feeling that this is one of those throwback to WoW launch type things. I see people asking in chat for 5 man groups and wipe alot making it a several hour excursion. Eventually it will get easier I suspect.

I’m asking because I don’t have time blocks like that anymore, so I’m probably going to ignore the dungeon aspect of the game. The nice thing about GW1 was that you could solo dungeons with the right builds.

3568

I was going to buy this over the weekend and BOTH Amazon and NewEgg were sold out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen with anything before.

3569

Wow. I’m glad I ordered my box on Thursday, then–I guess I only just managed to get it.

My brother bit on it yesterday, and the local Wal-mart and Gamestop both had a few copies left. You might get lucky if you call around (I know Gamestop will hold a box for you in the store for two days).

3570

I see that comment from time to time and I found I had a completely different experience. I just hit 80 on my Mesmer over the weekend and up to L60 I was seeing massive jumps in capabilities, do to gaining access to the last tier of Traits. I was seeing pretty big bumps all the way up to 80, as every 5 levels meant another minor or major trait and some of those are pretty significant (I had Fury on my Phantasms which gives them +20% crit chance, then I got a major trait that gave stacks of bleeding for each crit. My damage went through the roof).

So I don’t know if that’s just a mesmer thing or what, but I was getting all sorts of nice toys all the way to the end. Not that I focused on leveling or anything, I just do what I feel like (crafting, exploring, WvW) and the levels just kept rolling in.

3571

I did some searches on BestBuy, and a few stores in my area still had some copies.

3572

Yeah, I just picked up a copy yesterday at the local Gamestop for my daughter.

With the trade ins we had and the promises of eternal servitude from my kid (and an end to the begging), I’d say it worked out well heh.

3573

I’ve been fortunate in that we’ve got some nice folks in BFF and were able to do our runs with guild groups using our Mumble server.

The level 30 dungeon is hard. Even in Story mode it’s hard. You can kind of cheese through a couple of the difficult fights through respawn zerging (although at the cost of a high repair bill) but the need to do that is generally a sign that the party is not working together, communicating, and/or knowing how to dodge.

One of the fights (the Lovers fight) has a bit of a trick to it that you need to execute properly to stand a reasonable chance of winning. I think that’s where a lot of parties get stopped and give up.

Explorable AC (level 35+) is extremely hard. One of the fights we did over a dozen times before we beat it, and it required the entire team to work out a strategy together, reslot our skills, and take notes on what was happening during the fights so we’d be ready on the next attempt. Even then it was harrowing and chaotic, with success or failure on a razor’s edge.

But man, was it ever fun figuring it out and then rewarding when we finally won.

The level 40 dungeon in Story was a very straight-forward experience. Completely different feel from AC and I can’t imagine any random group of 5 people having a problem with it. I ended up having some work related stuff come up in the middle of it and some of the sections ended up getting done with me afk, so they effectively 4-manned a portion of it.

I had a lot more fun with AC than CM, but I can certainly see AC being frustratingly brutal if you’re not in a group that’s willing to learn and execute new strategies.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is no Trinity. You will get downed. Your team will need to revive you quickly when this happens. It’s just the way of things. If it’s a melee boss, whoever happens to be getting attacked needs to understand that they need to lead the boss away from downed teammates while other teammates revive them. Everybody shares that duty - everybody should have some “tanky” defensive utility or weapon skills slotted to enable them to do this.

3574

It’s not that there isn’t a lot to do, but a lot of what there is to do feels like what I’ve done before in MMOs. An event where I have to collect things? Done that many times. An event that tells me to go out and kill a bunch of things. Done that. An event to escort someone? Check. XP for exploring? Yep. XP for mining and gathering? Yep.

It’s certainly a game world chock full of stuff to explore and full of things that encourage exploration, but it’s still just playing against the AI and doing stuff that for the most part I’ve done before. In the course of getting 100% exploration for my first area I circled back a lot and saw the same events being run over and over.

I think it’s a great game, but it can’t hold my interest with the PvE, sadly, especially when it’s yet another generic fantasy world. I’m not sure any MMO can. I want open world PvP. Players contesting with one another is much more interesting to me than playing against the AI.

3575

This game has the best MMORPG PvP I’ve seen in any MMO, and I’ve done EQ, DaoC, WoW, CoH, and Shadowbane. The sPvP is very well designed and has a lot of variety, strategy, and tactics. Jumping into free tourneys and trying different builds and strategies is something I could spend all day doing.

WvW is open-world PvP with a purpose that goes beyond gank squads. There are PvE-style events in the WvW maps you can tackle with the caveat that it’s in open world PvP and you could jump or get jumped at any moment. You can also participate in the keep assault/defense gameplay. Either way the game flows, doesn’t lag, and doesn’t purely devolve into rampant CC/AoE-spam. I’m really not sure what more you’re looking for, but if this game isn’t doing it for you then I don’t think it exists, and I’m not sure if it even could exist.

3576

It could be that the last tier of traits is a big difference, but that’s so far off to my level 24 engineer. Running events is starting to feel a bit like a grind now at 24. It’s hard to imagine doing them to get to 60, though I suppose they could get more interesting. (I think one of the problems for me is I have no interest in the lore or the stories happening, and I don’t have any background with GW1. You could transplant Rift’s lore, or Aion’s, or Lineage’s and I wouldn’t know any different.)

I think I can continue to level by doing WvW and dropping into PvE to chase skill points and continue my story quest which has generous XP rewards. And if an event pops I may do it as well just for some quick XP. I wish I got XP from PvP. I get something from it, but I’m not sure what it is.

3577

The game is still out there (at least in Minnesota). I caved (weak, weak human) and bought a copy from Wal-Mart. There were tons in stock at my local one, and a quick internet search shows various Best Buys, Targets, etc. around the cities have them in stock.

So far I enjoy it, though I agree with Mark a little bit - it may be a bit overhyped. I’m playing an Asura engineer, and so far the starter world PvE stuff is all still pretty much the same. Fewer “run over to here and kill monster X and then come back to me” quests, but most of the quests that are there (and yes, they are “hubs” but they are still quests) are still, “Wander around this little area, click on shit, kill the monster that pops up because you clicked on shit, repeat,” things.

I haven’t experimented with PvP yet. That presents its own problem. I want to experience the game organically, but I understand PvP is balanced by basically just popping you to level 80 and giving you access to everything. I really don’t want that until I have at least discovered it myself for the first time through the normal playthrough.

I would also say that the game needs a little work in the tutorial department. The “hints” don’t adequate replace the sort of handholding you get in the first levels of WoW or EQ2, in my opinion. I’m still not confident that I actually increased all of my skills, got all my upgrades, etc. when I leveled up countless times, because the game doesn’t really describe what the point of leveling up is (other than to just give you access to a new skill). I’m seeing things that do “+X to Power,” or Accuracy, etc., but nothing tells me what that really means, nor does it tell me what I’m supposed to do with those little trinkets to get those bonuses. “Combos,” with the vague and confusing terminology about finishers, etc., are really poorly explained. I apparently did a combo, but have no idea how, or what it means, or how to repeat it.

I’m sure that specific examples that I give could be picked at, but I’m trying to make the point that overall, a little more handholding could be useful and it wouldn’t ruin the admittedly joyful discovery aspect of the game.

3578

I never completely finished any of the original GW games, so I’m in a similar boat re: lore. What GW2 really needs is a Warhammer Online-style Codex.

3579

I like the WvW. The PvP is ok but I wish there were different game types. Wouldn’t you like something besides contest to hold three spots? How about CTF?

As to what I’d ultimately like, there’s never been anything quite like Shadowbane for making me care about the game world because we could build our own cities and destroy the cities of our rivals. Every server was unique because of this. Shadowbane doesn’t compare well now, I know, but it was a product of its time. No one really did PvE back then as well as its been done since.

So yeah, put some city building into GW2 and give us PvP servers where we can fight one another in the PvE areas. I’d like that. I’d also like racial factions. There hasn’t been anything like the enmity between Alliance and Horde in WoW I’ve experienced in other games. I really enjoyed killing Alliance. Especially gnomes. I can’t tell you how many times my corpse got spit on in that game. It made it a bit personal.

3580

Rage? :)

After being out of town for two weeks after the headstart, I powered through about 15 hours in the past two days and made it to level 34. One thing I’ve noticed as a completionist is that even finishing multiple low level areas I didn’t have enough fine materials to get my crafting up to tier 2. Did anyone else have a similar issue, and did you grind for more mats or resort to the trading post? Also curious if there’s a good stat calculator resource yet. I’ve been stacking precision and condition damage on my engineer and combining it with the rifle and relevant traits for massive bleed and vulnerability, but I’m not sure if that’s smart or if I should be focusing more on power/defense.