From the World vs World tooltip:
This feature will unlock at level 31.
But how competitive are you? I know you get upleveled but you don’t have all your abilities yet.
One of the things that bummed me out about World of Warcraft was that by the time I got into it, no one was doing the “early” five man dungeons. Everyone playing by that point thought they were old-hat, and it bothered me that there was a ton of content (the early dungeons, like Scholomance and stuff) that I basically just didn’t get to do.
Is it the same way with Guild Wars 2?
The game doesn’t really start until you reach level 80. If you are level 24, then you are basically still in an extended tutorial. And it can get pretty tedious. I suggest you find and use some experience tomes.
As for WvW, you are at a definite disadvantage if you are upleveled. But the thing about WvW is that it is not meant to be fair. Sometimes your small band will be attacked by a zerg and the only thing you can do is die. Sometimes you will be part of that unstoppable zerg. So don’t worry so much about your relative worth, just enjoy the ride.
If you really do want a taste of high level content right now, you can play PvP. Everyone starts out on a basically even playing field.
Oh I’m not there yet, but just wanted to entice you to hang a little longer XD
I might even just pay for a boost. If you do that, go you get a bunch of hero points too?
I think the game is well-designed and I like the multiple ways there are to level, but a lot of the events start feeling the same after awhile. And really, the combat in PvE is pretty simple. I’ve been trying to play in zones that are several levels higher than I am, but even there the only challenging fights are with the veteran monsters. And most of those are fights that just take longer.
Leveling up gives you hero points even if you do it with a tome. But you will probably want more hero points than you can get simply by leveling up.
As for PVE, none of it is particularly challenging before level 80. And the interesting events are mostly found in level 80 zones.
Are you playing through your personal story? That’s slightly more interesting than grinding low level zones, and will give you more XP.
I haven’t tried to jump into the dungeons in my latest time with Guild Wars 2, but my previous experience with the game has been that it’s always easy to find a pick-up group for a dungeon or fractals. I’m not sure if that’s held up over time, though.
There is unique currency for each dungeon, so the presumably keeps them all relevant? @rhamorim can probably answer this question better than me.
-Tom
Sadly, the rewards for dungeons were reduced and consequently it has become much harder to find a PUG. Supply and demand, baby!
Anecdotally, yesterday I was in need of COF tokens. This used to be the most popular dungeon among PUGs, and literally a new party filled every 10-30 seconds. Yesterday my party disbanded because we couldn’t find anyone to fill it.
At the same time, fractals became more accessible. It is much easier to find a fractal group than a dungeon group, and I suspect many people migrated to the former from the latter.
Well, fractals took the place of dungeons in modern GW2, as far as “instanced content” goes. The old dungeons are still functional and they can be fun in their own way, but their currencies can only be used for aesthetics, and fractal rewards are much more attractive than anything in any base game dungeon.
Not really, tokens are also a way to get exotic gear. For some stat combos, I think dungeon gear can be obtained faster than grinding gold and buying on the TP.
Yeah, you’re right! Dungeons are indeed a good early source for exotics.
I think some of the dungeon currencies are used for Legendary weapon crafting as well aren’t they?
I opened a rare piece of unidentified armor today and it was an exotic short bow. Pretty cool, I thought, as I reflexively check the price on the Trading Post and see its going for 50 gold!
50 gold? Could be a precursor. Plain simple exotics rarely sell for more than 5 or 6 gold.
Since when are bows armor? I call shenanigans.
I’m really impressed by how effectively GW2 fought inflation. Five years and two expansions in and gold retained every bit of its value.
Yeah, Anet did a lot of things to maintain the economy. They routinely created gold sinks to control inflation - for example, recent seasons/expansions added new legendaries. New armor runes use less sought after materials to enhance their values and such. Rate drops were adjusted. There was some inflation, sure, but in the end, they really did an impressive job.
Actually it’s far more inflationary than I thought. Over 5 years gold value inflated by ten times. That would be disastrous in any normal economy but is actually rather controlled compared to many other MMOs.
Looks like shortly after the game launched in July 2013, you got 2g for 100 gems. One year later, 8g/100gems. July 2015 11g/100gems, July 2016 20g/100gems, and it hovers around there still, although the release of PoF was strongly deflationary, dropping it to 15g/100gems today. I expect that will correct itself once the surge of returning players gets their stuff. It did back in October 2015 when the first expansion launched.
As far as the real money trading goes, yes, but if you look at the cost of crafting resources in gold, inflation is practically zero:
Glob of Ectoplasm
Gossamer Bolt
Which makes me wonder if it’s gold inflating or gems deflating.
Excellent point. If gold buying power hasn’t increased in-game, and from your link it hasn’t, then gold isn’t inflating at all. Gems (and thus real money) are deflating. This suggests that gold value is effectively controlled by real-money trading. Fascinating stuff-- Arenanet may actually have a solution there.