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Games => General Gaming => Topic started by: MysterD on Wednesday, March 21, 2007, 05:47:27 PM

Title: Guild Wars 2
Post by: MysterD on Wednesday, March 21, 2007, 05:47:27 PM
NEW -- 3-5-2015:
Guild Wars 2 goes F2P for all. (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/play-for-free-today/)
Guild Wars 2 Table - Restrictions for F2P users; Benefits for GW2 Core Owners; and Benefits for Heart of Thorns owners. (https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/95982157?_ga=1.240955781.78332403.1436571105)

OLD:
Escapist -> GW2 probably won't have expansions; might not be a GW3 (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122516-Guild-Wars-2-May-Be-The-End-Of-The-Franchise)
GamePro -> No GW2 retail stand-alone expansions planned. (http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/220412/guild-wars-2-wont-have-retail-expansions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GameProNews+%28GamePro.com+Daily+News%29)
Links, Stuff, Info, Etc.
Eurogamer -> Guardian class will replace the Monk class entirely. (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-01-27-guild-wars-2-guardian-replaces-monk)
Youtube -> Over 50 minutes of awesome gameplay footage -> thanks, Idol! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Q2KIt5X9U)
Shacknews -> History of ArenaNet. (http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/67052)
Massively.com -> GW2 Community Manager debunks PCG saying that dungeons will be DLC - thanks, Idol! (http://www.massively.com/2010/10/21/arenanet-community-manager-debunks-guild-wars-2-rumor/)
PC Gamer -> Guild Wars II will have DLC and micro-transactions. (http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/21/guild-wars-2-to-have-dlc-microtransactions/)
PC Gamer -> Hands on preview. (http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/18/guild-wars-2-hands-on-preview)
PC Gamer -> Dungeons. (http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/19/guild-wars-2-exclusive-dungeon-reveals/)
GuildWars2.com -> Hall of Monuments Reward for GW1 players that will go into GW2 - thanks, Idol! (http://hom.guildwars2.com/index.html#page=welcome)
Arena.Net -> James Boer on creating Cinematics. (http://www.arena.net/blog/james-boer-opens-the-cinematics-toolbox)
Arena.net -> Horia Dociu on creating Cinematics. (http://www.arena.net/blog/video-creating-guild-wars-2-cinematics)
Arena.net -> Loot. (http://www.arena.net/blog/a-rewarding-experience-john-hargrove-talks-about-loot)
Arena.net -> Dye System. (http://www.arena.net/blog/live-and-let-dye-kristen-perry-on-the-gw2-dye-system)
Arena.Net - "Manifesto" Trailer - thanks, Idol! (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/media/videos/#gw2-video-manifesto)
Arena.Net - Leveling includes a no curve; it's flat and a straight-line - thanks, Idol! (http://www.arena.net/blog/progression-and-leveling-in-guild-wars-2)
GameSpot at Comic Con - Preview on GW2. (http://comic-con.gamespot.com/story/6270906/guild-wars-2-uniting-behind-community/?tag=gs_news)
Arena.Net - Weapons, Professions, and Races Preview. (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/part-two/)
Gamespot - Preview. (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/guildwars2/news.html?sid=6260499&mode=previews&om_act=convert&om_clk=previews&tag=previews%3Btitle%3B2)
MMORPG - Preview. (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/4198/Guild-Wars-2-Exclusive-Interview.html)
RPS - Preview. (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04/28/guild-wars-2-interview-part-1-fighting-fires/)
Arena.Net - Preview. (http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto#more-1891)
Shacknews - The Voice-Actors Trailer. (http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/61673)
Onlineweltern.com - Interview. (http://www.onlinewelten.com/games/guild-wars-2/interviews/arenanet-im-interview-teil-1-4633/seite-4/)
TenTomHammer.com - Preview. (http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/49163)
Lots of Guild Wars 2 info. (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2648062)
Title: Re: Guild Wars II and Guild Wars: Eye of the North (Expansion, not Standalone) Info
Post by: idolminds on Wednesday, March 21, 2007, 07:53:50 PM
Interesting about the next expansion. I like that it'll be cheaper. I was wondering what, if anything, they were going to do with new classes. I mean, how many more can they honestly come up with that are unique? Especially since you get to mix classes any way you like, they've already covered everything.

GW2 I'll wait untill we learn more to comment.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II and Guild Wars: Eye of the North (Expansion, not Standalone) I
Post by: MysterD on Wednesday, March 21, 2007, 08:20:46 PM
Interesting about the next expansion. I like that it'll be cheaper.
Me too. ;)

Though, it should be cheaper, as if does REQUIRE one of the three GW chapters to actually run. So, GWEN is an actual true-blue expansion pack.

Quote
I was wondering what, if anything, they were going to do with new classes. I mean, how many more can they honestly come up with that are unique? Especially since you get to mix classes any way you like, they've already covered everything.
I guess they ran out of ideas. :P
Or are saving them for GW2.

Quote
GW2 I'll wait untill we learn more to comment.
Too early in development to worry about it, really...

Though, seems interesting they might allow for 100+ level characters and/or a way to hopefully try and have NO LEVEL CAP.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II and Guild Wars: Eye of the North (Expansion, not Standalone) I
Post by: Jedi on Thursday, March 22, 2007, 02:17:20 PM
Me too. ;)

Though, it should be cheaper, as if does REQUIRE one of the three GW chapters to actually run. So, GWEN is an actual true-blue expansion pack.

Can I just point out that it'll still be free to play online and that they need to make money some how?
Title: Re: Guild Wars II and Guild Wars: Eye of the North (Expansion, not Standalone) Info
Post by: Pugnate on Thursday, March 22, 2007, 02:44:51 PM
Yea I am pretty sure if you are buying the fourth expansion you own the game.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II and Guild Wars: Eye of the North (Expansion, not Standalone) Info
Post by: MysterD on Tuesday, November 11, 2008, 09:03:02 PM
This article here talks a little bit about GW2 (http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/49163)

Quote
Speaking about Guild Wars 2 is like dropping bits of golden honey out of a gilded pitcher for eager fans to lap up. When discussing the story in Guild Wars 2, Bobby [Stein of NCSoft] said that since it takes place 250 years after the first series, "it's a blank slate."

"We were able to keep the coolest things from the world while letting the rest remain in the annals of history," Bobby said. "Despite all that has changed, Tyria is very much in need of heroes."

"A lot can change in a few hundred years," Bobby continued. "New races have risen to prominence. New threats have surfaced. You’ll see threads of current Guild Wars history, along with some new stories."
Title: Re: Guild Wars II Thread
Post by: MysterD on Sunday, February 15, 2009, 04:52:42 AM
Guild Wars 2 has been delayed at least until 2010-2011. (http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57254)
Title: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: idolminds on Thursday, August 20, 2009, 04:33:12 PM
So awesome (http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/60095).

Arenanet has some of the best artists around.

Preview (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/guild-wars-2-preview_4)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: MysterD on Thursday, August 20, 2009, 04:38:20 PM
This reminds me, I need to go finish the GW1's four pieces.

Very nice trailer.
The artistry -- again -- looks fantastic.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Quemaqua on Thursday, August 20, 2009, 07:42:40 PM
That's the most epic trailer I've ever seen in my entire life.  Seriously.  Trailers are usually fun and neat and whatever, but it's pretty rare that they do to me what that trailer did.  I'm fucking psyched for this game now.

Yes, ArenaNet has some of the best artists in the industry.  That's one of the biggest reasons I love the original game, and it looks like they're upping the ante by about a billion times with this new one.  I will seriously consider investing in a huge widescreen monitor and beefy video card for this game.

Also... FUCKING AQUA ZOMBIES.  BEST GAME EVER.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: idolminds on Saturday, August 22, 2009, 09:30:29 PM
Who wants some of the most epic wallpapers ever (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/guild-wars-2-unofficial-wallpapers-t207.html?s=3f9dae6ef35d7327f6f82f60d6118c11&t=207)? And these are just stills from the trailer.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: MysterD on Friday, August 28, 2009, 04:54:18 AM
From GW2 Official Page -- check out all kinds of wallpapers and art-work. (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/art/)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Quemaqua on Friday, August 28, 2009, 07:20:22 PM
WHAT WHAT?  They show beautiful Guild Wars 2 art book and there's no way for me to buy it right now?!  Fucking madness, I tell you!  MADNESS.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: MysterD on Friday, August 28, 2009, 07:30:50 PM
I knew Que would like that GW2 will have an art book.... ;)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: MysterD on Saturday, August 29, 2009, 10:50:54 AM
GW2 interview with Game Designer Jeff Grubb and Art Director Daniel Dociu of ArenaNet from GTTV.
Run time: a little over 4 minutes. (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gc-09-guild-wars-2/55236?r=1)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: idolminds on Tuesday, September 01, 2009, 10:54:15 AM
Too bad you aren't going to PAX, Que. They are simply giving the art books away. (http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/pax2009/)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: W7RE on Tuesday, September 01, 2009, 11:59:30 AM
The game looks really interesting, but I'm not sure I could get into it. I really enjoyed GW in it's preview weekends, but then I got the game when it came out and just didnt' feel it. I couldn't get more than an hour or so in without getting bored. I've since gone back to it once or twice with the same result.

It felt like they wanted to make an MMO, but they castrated the game to keep from going a pay-to-play. Town was a glorified chat room from battle.net, complete with numbered iterations of it. The leveling zones were instanced, cutting you off from the rest of the player base. You could take a friend, but only if he was there from the beginning. There was no, "hey man what you doing?" "Doing this quest to kill some guy, run out here and help me if you're bored." The PvP was ripped from a FPS instead of open world and unpredictable.



Also BLOOM
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Quemaqua on Tuesday, September 01, 2009, 07:03:08 PM
I could get into why I prefer GW to most MMOs, but I won't.  But really, what most people love about MMOs is the stuff I've come to hate about them, and GW drops a lot of those conventions, thus it's far and away the game I'd rather play.  Plus I only play with idol usually in any MMO, which makes it less MMO and more... futari.

Also... DAMN IT WHY THE HELL AM NOT IN SEATTLE?!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Dragonlor on Thursday, September 03, 2009, 07:49:34 AM
So what's the level cap of GW2...5?  From what little I played from GW made me think they took as much out of it that makes mmos.  Mmos are supposed to be spacious and with as little instance as possible say for dungeons.  From what I understand of GW2 that's what they are going to do.  LOTRO is a great example of open environment.  It takes alot of time even whith a horse to explore on of the zones in that game.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Quemaqua on Thursday, September 03, 2009, 08:57:24 PM
That's kind of the point.  Some of us think it's stupid to slog through a billion hours of gameplay in order to be all elite just because you stuck with it long enough to hit level 126 or whatever.  GW capped at 20 and you then had to rely on actually building a skill set that would be useful and tailoring it to specific situations.  And personally, my least favorite thing about MMOs is all the other people.  I like playing online with people I know and like, but the others tend to do little more than clog shit up.  GW2 will be a bit different.  Hopefully it'll be a slightly better compromise between the very divergent path of the original and the more usual path of traditional MMOs (though I'm hoping it continues to veer in favor of the former).
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Xessive on Friday, September 04, 2009, 02:15:49 AM
That's kind of the point.  Some of us think it's stupid to slog through a billion hours of gameplay in order to be all elite just because you stuck with it long enough to hit level 126 or whatever.  GW capped at 20 and you then had to rely on actually building a skill set that would be useful and tailoring it to specific situations.  And personally, my least favorite thing about MMOs is all the other people.  I like playing online with people I know and like, but the others tend to do little more than clog shit up.  GW2 will be a bit different.  Hopefully it'll be a slightly better compromise between the very divergent path of the original and the more usual path of traditional MMOs (though I'm hoping it continues to veer in favor of the former).
Que just summarized the things I hate about MMOs in general. I'm guessing I would have really enjoyed GW.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Dragonlor on Saturday, September 05, 2009, 05:43:16 AM
Then you should try DDO que.  A much smaller community then most mmos.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Quemaqua on Saturday, September 05, 2009, 05:04:25 PM
My biggest problem with MMOs is actually time.  There are a number of them I really wouldn't mind trying, but I just can't dedicate that kind of time to gaming.  I just can't.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: idolminds on Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 01:23:29 PM
Well the art book is finally for sale (http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/anp09001100.html).
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: MysterD on Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 01:38:38 PM
Well the art book is finally for sale (http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/anp09001100.html).

That'll make Que happy.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Quemaqua on Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 05:58:42 PM
It isn't signed, but it's still good enough for Que.  GO GO GADGET CREDIT CARD.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: idolminds on Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 06:03:10 PM
Also note that the official GW2 twitter feed mentioned that this art book will NOT be part of the collectors edition of the game.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: Delayed at least until 2010-2011
Post by: MysterD on Tuesday, October 06, 2009, 09:47:03 AM
Guild Wars 2 interview. (http://www.onlinewelten.com/games/articles/interviews/4633-guild-wars-2-arenanet-im-interview-teil-1/4/)
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: Delayed at least until 2010-2011
Post by: MysterD on Tuesday, November 10, 2009, 02:55:55 PM
GW2 Beta planned for 2010.
GW2 will likely launch in 2011. (http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=104160)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: idolminds on Friday, December 04, 2009, 11:00:35 AM
The GW2 site was updated to show off the races (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/world/races/). Bunch of screens and two wallpapers per race! And to top it off, a new trailer detailing the races! (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/) You can download it at a bunch of resolutions, up to 1080p!

Also an odd note. The Asura in the vid is voiced by Felicia Day.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: MysterD on Tuesday, December 08, 2009, 07:55:24 PM
GW2 is going to be structured like other MMO's.
There'll be a lot less instancing, this time around. (http://kotaku.com/5422005/guild-wars-2-structured-more-like-other-mmos?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kotaku%2Ffull+%28Kotaku%29)

Quote
Here's what Guild Wars 2 Lead Designer Eric Flannum thinks:

"We use a lot less instancing than we have in the past. The game is structured much more like other MMOs, with the world consisting almost entirely of fully persistent areas. That being said, we have a number of different ways in which we use instancing. Dungeons, for example, are instanced areas designed for group play. We also use instancing very heavily in the players' personal quest chain to reflect decisions that the player has made on those quests. For example, Logan Thackeray, captain of the Seraph, has an office located in Divinity's Reach; his office is instanced because we need to update his status based on choices the player has made."
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: Delayed at least until 2010-2011
Post by: MysterD on Friday, December 18, 2009, 09:32:44 PM
GW2 - The Voice-Actors Trailer. (http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/61673)
Title: Re: Guild Wars II
Post by: idolminds on Tuesday, April 27, 2010, 12:23:52 PM
So awesome. (http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto#more-1891)
Quote
MMOs are social games. So why do they sometimes seem to work so hard to punish you for playing with other players? If I’m out hunting and another player walks by, shouldn’t I welcome his help, rather than worrying that he’s going to steal my kills or consume all the mobs I wanted to kill? Or if I want to play with someone, shouldn’t we naturally have the same goals and objectives, rather than discovering that we’re in the same area but working on a different set of quests?

We think of GW2 as the first MMO that actually has a cooperative PvE experience. When I’m out hunting and suddenly there’s a huge explosion over the next hill – the ground is shaking and smoke is pouring into the sky – I’m going to want to investigate, and most other players in the area will too. Or if the sky darkens on a sunny day, and I look up and see a dragon circling overhead preparing to attack, I know I’d better fight or flee, and everyone around me knows that too.

With traditional MMOs you can choose to solo or you can find a good guild or party to play with. With GW2 there’s a third option too: you can just naturally play with all the people around you. I personally spend a big chunk of my time in traditional MMOs soloing, but when I play GW2 I always find myself naturally working with everyone around me to accomplish world objectives, and before long we find ourselves saying, “Hey, there’s a bunch of us here; let’s see if we can take down the swamp boss together,” without ever having bothered to form a party.

Of course GW2 has great support for parties, but they just don’t feel as necessary as they do in other MMOs, because your interests are always aligned with all other nearby players anyway. When someone kills a monster, not just that player’s party but everyone who was seriously involved in the fight gets 100% of the XP and loot for the kill. When an event is happening in the world – when the bandits are terrorizing a village – everyone in the area has the same motivation, and when the event ends, everyone gets rewarded.

Hit the blog there to read about the combat itself. Sounds so great.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II
Post by: idolminds on Wednesday, April 28, 2010, 11:16:57 AM
Oh my god this blog is AWESOME. Two new articles up today: Part One: Skills (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/part-one/) and Elementalist (http://Elementalist). They have screens! And an elementalist wallpaper! SQUEEL!

The skill bar is now 10 slots (GW1 its eight), but it all behaves differently:
Quote
The first five skills on the skill bar are not slotted directly by the player; instead they are determined by the player's choice of weapon and profession. Because of this, we can ensure that each weapon is balanced with a fun combination of skills. For example, a warrior wielding a mace and shield would get access to strong but slow damage skills like Obliterate, as well as powerful defensive skills such as Block and Shield Bash. A warrior wielding a greatsword would have access to a lot of movement-oriented skills like Rush, and area-of-effect skills like 100 Blades. In each case, the warrior's first five skills are determined by what he's holding in his hands. Weapon skills also take profession into account, so a warrior wielding a sword will have different skills than a different sword-wielding profession.
Really interesting. In GW1 for the most part you take a weapon for its stats. Well, maybe thats just spellcasters. I guess for warriors its already kind of like this. No reason to take sword skills when you're sporting a hammer. But maybe now when a spellcaster picks up a sword it will have some useful skills to go with it.
Quote
We've talked about the first five skills being determined by weapon and profession. What about the second five? These skills are all chosen by the player from a pool of skills determined by both profession and race. To slot a skill, a player simply clicks on a skill slot and it will bring up a list of skills that can be put into that slot. One of these slots is dedicated to healing skills that replenish the health of the character and his allies, while another slot is dedicated to elite skills that trigger visually spectacular and powerful effects. No matter what type of skill is involved, it's important that we give the player a diverse set of tools to choose from so that he can create a build that he'll enjoy playing.
Will have to see how this works out. Since forming a real dedicated party is now not really a requirement I guess making sure people have the ability to heal themselves is a good thing. But it almost sounds like out or 10 slots you only get to freely choose 3 skills.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II
Post by: idolminds on Wednesday, April 28, 2010, 11:56:21 AM
Quote
RPS: I suspect one of the initially controversial decisions will be the loss of Secondary Careers, allowing you to choose from two sets of skills. However, it seems to be that the new ability to give your character a race – and opening up skills from that choice – seems to be somewhat functionally analogous to what the secondary skills did.

Eric Flannum: That’s totally true. The other reason we lost the secondary careers – and we actually did have them in the game for a while, and they were just causing us some issues. And the fact that the races kind of act like secondary careers did help us make the decision, and that maybe they aren’t necessary in GW2. The secondary careers… we tried them out. It was a pretty tough decision, as they were such a big part of GW1 – but we’re getting so much mileage from the races. We’re really pushing how unique each of the professions are. The elementalist has a mechanic where he atunes to different elements – we had a hard time reconciling this with the warrior, who’s another one of our professions, who uses an adrenaline mechanic in order to build up damage during the fight. It was hard for us to combine how the two worked – but it was pretty easy to make the races and the professions work together.
No second professions! ZOMG! Though I guess that makes sense if the races each have a bunch of skills.

More Q&A at Rock, Paper, Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04/28/guild-wars-2-interview-part-1-fighting-fires/), MMORPG.com (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/4198/Guild-Wars-2-Exclusive-Interview.html), and Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/guildwars2/news.html?sid=6260499&mode=previews&om_act=convert&om_clk=previews&tag=previews%3Btitle%3B2).
Title: Re: Guild Wars II
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, April 28, 2010, 01:18:05 PM
I just started playing Guild Wars last week. Great game, really wish I had started it much sooner! hehe

I'm not well-experienced in it yet but I'm building up my Ranger.

I'm kinda glad they're getting rid of the second profession, it's a little confusing at first, and it's just a bare-essentials version of its full profession form anyway.

My Ranger's second prof. is Warrior, so I can deal damage more quickly in case enemies wander too close.

I'm really looking forward to GW2 now!
Title: Re: Guild Wars II
Post by: idolminds on Wednesday, April 28, 2010, 08:12:37 PM
Dude from ANet seems to be posting on QuarterToThree, and he clarified the skill bar:
Quote
You've got 10 skills.

1-5 these are determined by what you're holding in your hands. A two handed weapon will give you five skills. A one handed weapon will give you three but whatever you're holding in your off hand gives the remaining two. You can mix and match between main and offhand items to get different combinations. The skills you get are determined by weapon type and profession.

6 - Healing skill. You can choose between several different healing skills. These always have some sort of self heal component to them but can vary wildly other than that. The pool you can choose from is determined by your profession and race.

7-9 - Utility skills. These can cover a wide range of different effects from being purely offensive to support. You get dozens of skills to choose from here, once again determined by your profession and race.

10 - Elite skill. This is a big badass infrequently used skill that has a dramatic impact on a fight. Again you can choose between several of these from a pool determined by your race and profession.

So think of it this way. You've got 5 slots that you can slot freely with the caveat that you have to bring one heal and one elite skill. Then you have a package of five skills that is determined by the weapon set you bring. Most professions can equip two weapon sets and switch freely between them in combat even stringing together combinations of attacks between them. That means you have access to 15 skills at any given time and you make a minimum of 7 choices (max of 9) to determine what those skills are. Yes, we restrict some of your choices to particular categories but there is still choice there. If you use the CCG paradigm to explain our skill system we went from a system with almost no deck building restrictions to one that has (what seem to us) some pretty necessary and sane deck building restrictions. The new system is much friendlier to new players and to those who either aren't interested in the deck building aspect or are simply not good at it. It will also allow us to more easily balance the game and maintain that balance. It still allows advanced players to come up with literally hundreds of combinations to trash their opponents with.
That doesnt sound so bad. Earlier posts he was saying that while it was great that players had free reign to choose any and all skills, it made it difficult for new players or more casual players since figuring out skill combos is tricky. This way they are guaranteed to have certain skills and always be viable.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, April 28, 2010, 10:51:55 PM
Sweet, that's right up my alley since I'm more of a casual MMO player.

So far I like the direction they're going with GW2.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II
Post by: idolminds on Thursday, April 29, 2010, 10:19:24 AM
Part 2: Weapons, Professions, and Races (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/part-two/)

Not a lot of new info if you read my previous posts, but still good stuff. The loss of secondary professions is a bit of a bummer but the way skill across professions can interact now sounds awesome. That and using the first 5 slots of the skill bar to change not only on what you are carrying, but interacting with environmental stuff sounds really cool. So the catapult isn't just an ON/OFF switch to fire, but can now have its own "skills" you can use.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II
Post by: MysterD on Sunday, July 25, 2010, 08:19:59 PM
Comic-Con 2010 - GW2 preview from GameSpot. (http://comic-con.gamespot.com/story/6270906/guild-wars-2-uniting-behind-community/?tag=gs_news)

Player Choice And Consequences in GW2
Quote
Against this backdrop, Grubb emphasized the personal story that Guild Wars 2 hopes to tell, one that is dominated by player interaction and social dynamics within the game. He emphasized that player choice will play a more pronounced role in Guild Wars 2, where decisions will impact a player's characters and the options that are open to them throughout the game.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 7/25/2010
Post by: idolminds on Thursday, July 29, 2010, 08:25:16 PM
Level cap revealed! (http://www.arena.net/blog/progression-and-leveling-in-guild-wars-2)

GW2 characters can level to 80. However, unlike certain other MMOs, they don't plan on each level taking longer to reach than the last.
(http://www.arena.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/LevelingCurves-600x403.jpg)
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 7/25/2010
Post by: MysterD on Friday, July 30, 2010, 09:07:53 AM
High-level cap and a straight-line for leveling, eh? That's very interesting, actually. Glad it won't take me forever to level from say Level 51 to 52.

Sometimes, in games w/ high-leveling curves, leveling up from one level to another can be ridiculous. I never finished GW, once I hit Level 9 - never felt like I could level-up and that the curve hit me in the face.

That reminds me...I need to work on GW...
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 7/29/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: idolminds on Friday, July 30, 2010, 09:54:35 AM
GW doesn't have a very steep curve at all. There is a slow area when you get around level 10, but once you get though the Shiverpeak area its all good. They fixed that for the expansions. You will hit level 15 before you even finish the starter area in those games.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 7/29/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: MysterD on Friday, July 30, 2010, 10:20:41 AM
Hmmm...maybe I need to give it a re-try. I have all 4 of the GW components. Maybe I was just entering harder areas I didn't belong in? Hmmmm...
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 7/29/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: idolminds on Friday, July 30, 2010, 10:31:21 AM
Could be. I don't know how much exploring you did, but if you do just the story missions then you'll be kind of behind. Theres a lot of side quests and hidden towns and outposts with quests that the story missions will cause you to skip over. So be sure to go out there and find them.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 7/29/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: MysterD on Friday, July 30, 2010, 10:32:30 AM
Could be. I don't know how much exploring you did, but if you do just the story missions then you'll be kind of behind. Theres a lot of side quests and hidden towns and outposts with quests that the story missions will cause you to skip over. So be sure to go out there and find them.
I bet that is exactly what happened - I mainly focused on the story missions.

EDIT:
Time to go play some Guild Wars.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 7/29/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: Xessive on Friday, July 30, 2010, 11:19:39 AM
I gotta get back into it.

D, try to find me! My character's name is Kaze Rai (I think). I have a few characters but I'm gonna focus on my Prophecies one first.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 7/29/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: MysterD on Friday, July 30, 2010, 11:43:37 AM
I am...
Derick Sands on Prophecies (currently playing);
Derick Ryu on Factions;
and Rex Sands on Nightfall.

EDIT:
X, I added you. :)
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 7/29/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: idolminds on Tuesday, August 10, 2010, 02:55:36 PM
The Manifesto trailer (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/media/videos/#gw2-video-manifesto)

Also known as the "HOLY SHIT!" trailer.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 7/29/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: MysterD on Tuesday, August 10, 2010, 04:00:31 PM
@Idol

That trailer's nothing short of epic.
Wow, wow, wow.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 8/10/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: Xessive on Tuesday, August 10, 2010, 04:13:59 PM
Holy shit, indeed! I'm actually excited about GW2!
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 8/10/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: idolminds on Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 05:22:13 PM
New dye system! (http://www.arena.net/blog/live-and-let-dye-%E2%80%93-kristen-perry-on-the-gw2-dye-system)

Tons more colors! And you don't have to store them all!
Quote
Colors will be unlocked, not muled.

Storage was always a factor when it came to dye colors in Guild Wars. The new system would cripple most inventories if we required characters to lug all the dyes around. Fear not! The dye hues themselves will be unlockable through various means, both in-game and out. Once you unlock the color, it will be available across your entire account, not just the individual character.
They didn't go into as many details as I would have liked. So...do dye bottle still drop and then you get to decide on a color that you've unlocked? Because they still talk about being "out" of a color.

But it sounds exciting. I just hope dyes aren't as rare as they were in GW1. I have a couple stacks of dyes but I'm afraid of using them because they are so damn rare and you don't know which color will drop when it does. So I hoard them instead. My armor is plain old gray, and I sit on a pile of dye.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 8/10/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: Xessive on Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 05:36:30 PM
I'm glad they decided to actually try and resolve the dye/inventory issue and I respect their conviction to reinvent (or at least attempt to) the MMO formula.

There's a lot to look forward to in GW2. I might pick it up on release day just to compensate for not picking up GW1 sooner!
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Updated on 8/10/2010 (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: idolminds on Thursday, September 30, 2010, 07:32:37 PM
Phat lewt! (http://www.arena.net/blog/a-rewarding-experience-john-hargrove-talks-about-loot)

Some really cool ideas here! Dungeons having their own unique armor drops, so when people see you wearing it they know that you've been through that dungeon.

No loot ninjas, no resource (eg, mining node) ninjas. You get your own stuff so you don't have to fight other player for them.

A "transmutation system". You buy transmutation stones from the in-game store. You pick two armors: One that you like the look, and the other that you like the stats. Presto! Now the armor that you like the look of has the stats you want to use!

Armor sets appear to be handled differently. Instead of trying to track down these armor pieces, you instead find these kind of "set gems". Attach them to any piece of armor and that armor becomes part of the set, so if you attach one to all six pieces of armor you have on then you get all the bonuses like wearing a special armor set. Pretty nice, since I have never ever found a full set of armor in Diablo, Torchlight, Titan Quest, WoW, etc before completely outleveling them or finding better stuff.

EDIT

Hmmm, the transmutation stone thing sounds good but it appears LOTRO has a similar system in place. Except you don't have to pay for stones, you just wear two sets of armor...one for looks and one for stats. I can't really begrudge Arenanet for charging for the stones, though. They have no monthly fee and its really just a cosmetic thing.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: Creating Cinematics (10-5-2010)
Post by: idolminds on Friday, October 08, 2010, 08:58:45 AM
Hey, you know how they added the Hall of Monuments to GW1 and said the things you add to it will give you stuff in GW2?

Find out what you get! (http://hom.guildwars2.com) Type in your characters name and see what unlocks for you. See what else you need to do to unlock more! I've only got six points. I need to get some more so I can at least unlock the tabby cat.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: Hall of Monuments Rewards (10-8-2010)
Post by: idolminds on Tuesday, October 19, 2010, 10:42:25 PM
PC Gamer hands on (http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/18/guild-wars-2-hands-on-preview), and they are doing it all week long!

Part 2 talking about dungeons! (http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/19/guild-wars-2-exclusive-dungeon-reveals/)

Also the GW2 art book is now available in softcover for $20 (http://store.penny-arcade.com/products/the-art-of-guild-wars-2-paperback-edition).
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: Hall of Monuments Rewards (10-8-2010)
Post by: MysterD on Thursday, October 21, 2010, 08:26:56 PM
PCG -> Guild Wars II will have DLC and micro-transactions. (http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/21/guild-wars-2-to-have-dlc-microtransactions/)
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: GW2 to have DLC and micro-transactions (10-21)
Post by: idolminds on Thursday, October 21, 2010, 08:35:57 PM
Already debunked. (http://www.massively.com/2010/10/21/arenanet-community-manager-debunks-guild-wars-2-rumor/)
Quote
Guild Wars 2 fans have been enjoying a series of articles at PC Gamer  this week, but unfortunately the series came with a bit of misinformation. If you read through the articles, you may have noticed some news regarding dungeons as downloadable content in Guild Wars 2.

The community was buzzing about that possibility until Community Manager Regina Buenaobra stepped in to clarify things: "We have not made a decision on whether to sell dungeon content as DLC, contrary to what the article states. The author of the article jumped to this (incorrect) conclusion based upon his interpretation of Eric's statements."

Eric Flannum released a clarification that stated in part "...our core philosophy--of not requiring you to spend additional money to play the game and not making the game difficult or painful to play in order to encourage you to buy things from the store--still stands."
I mean, there will be some microtransaction things, we already knew that. But PC Gamer kinda took that too far.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: GW2 to have DLC and micro-transactions (10-21)
Post by: idolminds on Friday, January 07, 2011, 08:16:52 PM
I know what you want. You want 50 minutes of gameplay footage. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Q2KIt5X9U)
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: GW2 to have DLC and micro-transactions (10-21)
Post by: Xessive on Saturday, January 08, 2011, 02:10:06 AM
Wow, man. That looks amazing, for an MMO. It does certainly appear that they have finally added to the traditional formula and the game seems to offer a lot more than the monotony I've come to expect of MMOs.

I'm really looking forward to GW2.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: Over 50 minutes of gameplay footage (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: MysterD on Saturday, January 08, 2011, 07:49:47 AM
Whoa - those cut-scenes have style and are quite cool.

EDIT:
About 23 minutes into this vid.

Wow - "epic" can't even describe how amazing this game looks in every single aspect. The gameplay, graphics (artistic & technical), cut-scenes - everything looks amazing here.

The overhead map looks great - and even tells you where important quests and characters are to the player. Geez - why didn't other games think of something like that before?

I like that the character now jumps, rolls, dodges, etc.

This looks phenomenal. I need to go work on Guild Wars 1 + expansions now, thanks...
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: 50 minutes of awesome gameplay footage (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: W7RE on Saturday, January 08, 2011, 09:31:08 AM
I'm actually watching this 54 minute video right now, about 27 minutes in. II was skimming it last night, and if you don't watch any of the rest of it, at least skip to 43 minutes and watch the part with the dragon. This video alone has turned me from, "meh, another GW" to actually interested.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: 50 minutes of awesome gameplay footage (thanks, Idol!)
Post by: MysterD on Saturday, January 08, 2011, 09:47:21 AM
The stuff where you can be the Charr was awesome.
Epic doesn't even describe what this game looks like...
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: Guardian class replaces Monk class entirely
Post by: MysterD on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 03:55:00 PM
GamePro -> No retail stand-alone expansions planned for GW2. (http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/220412/guild-wars-2-wont-have-retail-expansions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GameProNews+%28GamePro.com+Daily+News%29)
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: Guardian class replaces Monk class entirely
Post by: Xessive on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 09:24:02 PM
GamePro -> No retail stand-alone expansions planned for GW2. (http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/220412/guild-wars-2-wont-have-retail-expansions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GameProNews+%28GamePro.com+Daily+News%29)

Good! GW1 and its expansions were getting confusing!
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: No retail stand-alone expansions planned
Post by: idolminds on Monday, August 08, 2011, 06:21:16 PM
Redesigning the Sylvari. (http://www.arena.net/blog/kristen-perry-on-designing-and-redesigning-the-sylvari)
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: No retail stand-alone expansions planned
Post by: Pugnate on Tuesday, August 09, 2011, 08:10:09 AM
That is one cool looking race. I love the hair.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 11:35:59 PM
Guild Wars 2 pre-order is now available. (http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/04/10/guild-wars-2-pre-orders-now-available/)

Is it just me or is it expensive?

The official pricing scheme (https://buy.guildwars2.com/) is akin to Mass Effect 3: regular @ $60 USD, deluxe @ $80 USD.

For some reason GreenManGaming (http://www.greenmangaming.co.uk/games/mmos/guild-wars-2-digital-deluxe-edition/) lists it at $75 USD for regular and $99.95 USD for deluxe.

With the release date looking like December 2012 there's no real rush to pre-order.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: idolminds on Thursday, April 12, 2012, 09:26:17 AM
The price is up there but not really much higher than most new games now. Plus its an MMO with no monthly fee so I'm sure they are trying to cover that a bit.

But yeah, no need to preorder.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Cools! on Thursday, April 12, 2012, 09:51:04 AM
Yeah, I'm more than ok paying that instead of a monthly fee (which I hate and one of the reasons I never got into MMOs).
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 revealed!
Post by: Xessive on Thursday, April 12, 2012, 01:47:05 PM
True, I'd also rather pay a single upfront price for a game and never have to worry about subscriptions.

This will likely be the MMO to which I may actually dedicate myself. Wishful thinking at this stage but I'm optimistic.
Title: Re: Guild Wars II - Update: No retail stand-alone expansions planned
Post by: MysterD on Friday, June 01, 2012, 03:34:06 PM
So you guys know....

GameSpy and GameSpot reviewers have been giving out GW2 Beta Keys on their Twitter accounts.
So, if you looking for one, there you go...

I got my hands on one for June 8-10. :D
Title: Re: The Guild Wars 2 thread.
Post by: Pugnate on Friday, June 01, 2012, 11:41:16 PM
If someone gets an extra one, please pass it to me.

I am going to get this game. Where is the excitement? GW2 looks brilliant.
Title: Re: The Guild Wars 2 thread.
Post by: MysterD on Saturday, June 02, 2012, 08:20:22 AM
If someone gets an extra one, please pass it to me.

I am going to get this game. Where is the excitement? GW2 looks brilliant.

Just so you know, it's gonna be a massive download.
The game requires 25 GB HDD of space...  :o

If I see more Beta keys being plastered on Twitter, I'll let the boards know.
The thing is - they're pretty much gone as soon as they're posted.
So, yeah - you gotta be fast when registering it and filling out the info section...
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: MysterD on Monday, June 11, 2012, 02:44:54 PM
I'm about to go eat...
But, since there is NO NDA and we are encouraged to talk about the game [for good reason, I might add], does anybody wanna hear my thoughts on GW2 Beta when I come back?
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: idolminds on Monday, June 11, 2012, 02:58:46 PM
Sure, Id be interested. I had an opportunity to get a beta key but that download was just not going to happen for a weekend test.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Monday, June 11, 2012, 03:42:04 PM
Yea. My friend preordered the game a while back so I saw the Beta for a few hours at his place. The game looks merely OK. Kinda looks less 'RPG' than I'd expect.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: MysterD on Monday, June 11, 2012, 04:07:58 PM
Intro
Thank God for No NDA's, as I can actually talk about the Guild Wars 2 Beta that I was involved with this past weekend - hell, they encourage even on the splash screen! I can see why they feel this way. This game feels like it's ready to ship. It feels like it's primed and ready to go.

My Thief Character & Personal Quests
My character was a Human Male Thief - which basically set traps, are fast, and can use deadly weapons. Character Creation involved picking your character's look, clothes, etc - you know, the usual RPG decisions on the cosmetic factor. Then, it goes a few steps further. The game asks you a few "character background" questions - and whatever you answer, some of these will cause what some of your "Personal Story Quests", which are basically the instances in the game. To go w/ the Thief theme, I decided to be a Street Rat character, who grew-up in the streets. And that I also decided that I never knew my parents - so I picked that for one of my character's goals. Charm was my special skill. There are other options [i.e. Intimidation and there are others] - and whatever you decide here, these can be important for your personal instanced-quests, which often multiple outcomes to them. Usually, that special skill will be an option you can use in dialogue, when making a decision. That's right - some personal quests involve you making some sort of decision and the outcome of that quest will be different. I did my Personal Quests basically alone without any other online players.

Exploring The Game-World
You will want to explore the game-world. First off, the game-world's huge. Second off, there's rewards for exploring it. There are areas in the game-world and in the cities, which you get experience just by reaching those points on the map. Third off, the game is just down-right beautiful to look at - so it's worth exploring for that reason, as well.

Events, Quests & Whatnot All On A Worldly Scale
The game is nothing short of just about everything happening on a grand and huge epic scale. This is NOT the same GW1 you played before. Most things are happening on a world stage. In GW1, you had towns that were the hubs w/ Lord knows how many players running around in those areas, trying to get a small group together to go off. And then, when you all went off to the game-world, those were the instances. Not here in GW2. The game-world is basically comprised of players, doing whatever quests they are doing. These normally aren't instanced. Basically, you can look at your BIG world-map or your small mini-map - and from there, if you've explored the area, you can see where the quests are at. You don't even have to talk to quest-giver NPC's or anything, when doing these World Quests. On the upper-right hand corner, a World Quest will just pop up and tell you what you and whomever is in the area what they can do in that area. It'll tell you what level your character should be to do the quest, as well. Often, multiple objectives are there and you have to do so much of it that it fills up the meter bar to finish the quest. They often involve numerous things you can do to help out, such as "take care of the land", "kill monsters", "trap monsters", "return specific item to specific NPC", "destroy a specific item the monsters are using as a unit", etc.

Major World Events
Sometimes, you'll be in an area, and you'll get a Major World Event. You'll know when this occurs. You'll see people in the chat for the Map talk about it, tell everybody to go rally there, you'll see the event marked-off on the map, and basically you'll see TONS of players show-up to attack this brutal boss-like character to try to take it down. These often involve a HUGE monster appearing in the area, usually like the smaller ones that are in that region - and you and the players on the map are to take it down. And yes, you'll be fighting ALSO the smaller versions of the monsters, right along w/ the HUGE monster. Don't be surprised if it's hard to keep up w/ what's going on w/ so much action on-screen. I had to turn my setting from Ultra down to High, to alleviate the framerate issues that only were happening when these Major World Events occurred.

Gameplay
Basically, you'll be mostly doing World Events and Major World Events, most of the time.
It pretty much goes like this:
1. Do World Events and Major World Events within your level to do so you can level-up;
2. Actually level-up and spend your points there;
3. Repeat this until you level-up enough to do a Personal Story Quest;
4. Do the Personal Story Quest;
5. Go back to Step 1.

Combat
Combat is similar to Guild Wars 1. You had your option to physically move them or click where you want to go in GW1. Though, you don't anymore have the option to just click where you want to go in GW2. You physically have to move your character directly. Though, there is also an Auto-Run Toggle, so if you hit this key, the character will keep running ahead until you tell him or her to stop by hitting that same key. You may Target Enemies, if you click - by left-clicking on them or using your Target hot-key. Once near an enemy, Right-click will basically auto-attack until you move or fire a skill off from your toolbar. You have a limited amount of skills you can toss onto your toolbar at the bottom of the screen. On the left, are your skills that are tied to whatever you have equipped. Depending on what weapons you equip, certain skills are filtered to that area. Equip a sword, expect certain sword-based skills in Slots 1-5. Equip a sword in one hand and a gun in your-off hand, expect some sword skills on 1-3 and 2 off-hand skills for your gun. For slots 6-10, expect your Utility skills to sit here. These Utility skills, above the skill, is an arrow. Click the arrow, and you can actually switch and swap those Utility skills out while on-the-fly, if you feel the need to do so. There's A LOT of combat in this game, to say the least. Combat looks, feels, and sounds great. You can roll-dodge out of the way, as well - there's a key for rolling and/or in the Options you can enable/disable Double-Tap of a direction to roll that way.

Always Online
This is a MMO, so expect to be forced to be online to play at all times. Friday Night, when they upped the player count per map, it basically brought the game to lag-city for about a half hour or so for EVERYBODY. But, it was nothing a hard-reboot of the game and their servers on their end couldn't solve. That was the only issue I had all weekend w/ connecting to their servers. I had no other issues for the rest of the weekend. And I spent a good 13 hours or so in total w/ the game, from Friday to Sunday. If a server's getting packed w/ players, the game has no problem w/ queuing players off to another server to play on and then deciding to ship them off to another server, once a quest is completed or whatever the case might be. I really hope they don't run into any issues online, once the game actually launches to the public officially - b/c I've quite enjoyed what I've played and I don't think we want to see a repeat of what happened w/ Diablo 3. I'm curious how it'll all turn out and what gamers will think of the game once the game is actually released b/c I quite enjoyed my time with this Guild Wars 2 Beta. If my time with the GW2 Beta is an indication of anything, this is going to be a very good and epic action-packed MMO.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Thursday, June 28, 2012, 06:14:51 AM
Guild Wars 2 release date announced:
August 28, 2012

http://www.arena.net/blog/announcing-the-guild-wars-2-launch-date


Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Thursday, June 28, 2012, 07:42:34 AM
Sweet! That's several months ahead of the assumed schedule!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: MysterD on Monday, July 09, 2012, 03:15:07 PM
Destructoid -> There will be 4 disc soundtrack on DirectSong for GW2 that will cost $30. (http://www.destructoid.com/guild-wars-2-gets-4-disc-soundtrack-signed-by-composer-230951.phtml)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Monday, July 09, 2012, 05:20:05 PM
Intro
Thank God for No NDA's, as I can actually talk about the Guild Wars 2 Beta that I was involved with this past weekend

????? You've got to be kidding Greg Kasavin!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Tuesday, July 10, 2012, 08:35:30 AM
BTW there's going to be one more beta weekend event before launch. It will be July 20-22, and will have all races available. (first time Asura and Sylvari have been available for a BWE)

I'm hearing amazon preorders work for getting into the BWE. (I think before you had to pre-purchase: pay the full game price ahead of time)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Thursday, July 12, 2012, 09:25:20 AM
EDIT: Keys already gone apparently lol.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Friday, July 13, 2012, 02:00:26 PM
Here's another link for free keys to the last beta weekend. No idea how long they'll still have them.

http://www.geforce.co.uk/games-applications/pc-games/guild-wars-2/deals-promotions
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Friday, July 13, 2012, 03:33:56 PM
Thanks for that W7RE! Got my key.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Monday, July 23, 2012, 07:37:24 AM
I finally participated in a GW2 beta! It was awesome, to say the least.

It is clearly a MMO and you will still have to level grind from time to time but the way they've changed the formula means that grinding doesn't take forever and you can move on with whatever interests you.

Anyway, I was so impressed with what I had played I went ahead and pre-purchased. I know this is a game I want to play and I'm willing to commit from now.

My GW2 display name is xessive.3568. Feel free to add me! We'll have to figure out servers/worlds etc.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Wednesday, July 25, 2012, 01:43:07 AM
My GW2 display name is xessive.3568. Feel free to add me! We'll have to figure out servers/worlds etc.

There's a buddying system that allows you to join friends on other servers, and I think guilds are even game wide instead of server specific. I'm not sure about the small scale structures pvp or the 5 man instances, but the large scale 3 way server vs server stuff can only be done with people on our own server.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, July 25, 2012, 02:25:04 AM
There's a buddying system that allows you to join friends on other servers, and I think guilds are even game wide instead of server specific. I'm not sure about the small scale structures pvp or the 5 man instances, but the large scale 3 way server vs server stuff can only be done with people on our own server.
Awesome. In the beta they showed off some of the World V World and PVP stuff. I'm not big on PVP but it was pretty fun nonetheless.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Thursday, August 02, 2012, 10:53:59 AM
There's another stress test today. In about an hour actually.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, August 08, 2012, 11:11:16 AM
Felicia Day unboxing her CE!

Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Quemaqua on Wednesday, August 08, 2012, 01:59:25 PM
*sigh*

The Internet makes me sad. I loved the first games, wish I could get into this.

Did they ever talk about shutting down the servers for original GW?
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: idolminds on Wednesday, August 08, 2012, 02:07:32 PM
Last I heard they said as long as people are playing, GW will keep running.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Wednesday, August 08, 2012, 06:30:57 PM
There's another stress test tomorrow, Thursday, August 9, 12:00pm to 4:00pm Pacific.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Thursday, August 09, 2012, 08:42:29 PM
And another stress test tomorrow. Friday August 9, 4:00pm to 8:00pm pacific.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Wednesday, August 22, 2012, 04:26:58 PM
So what's the level cap of GW2...5?  From what little I played from GW made me think they took as much out of it that makes mmos.  Mmos are supposed to be spacious and with as little instance as possible say for dungeons.  From what I understand of GW2 that's what they are going to do.  LOTRO is a great example of open environment.  It takes alot of time even whith a horse to explore on of the zones in that game.

... who the heck is this dude? 212 posts!

Anyway, the game is a few days away! Who is excited?

Anyone going for the CE? The real world items are exciting, but the ingame stuff looks really crap, with such limited use! At the very least they could have had some permanent aesthetic thing, ala Diablo 3 wings.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Quemaqua on Wednesday, August 22, 2012, 04:41:33 PM
All I want is the art book. I have all the CEs of the first game, and only because they had art. The concept art for this series is just fucking mindblowingly good. So much cool stuff.

It makes me really sad that I'm not going to be part of GW2. I still have so much of the original games to explore, anyway. I played a ton but feel like I barely scratched the surface. I'd still probably go back at some point if Idol talked me into it.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: idolminds on Wednesday, August 22, 2012, 07:49:42 PM
That can be arranged.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Quemaqua on Wednesday, August 22, 2012, 09:40:31 PM
Well, you're going to have to compete with school, now, which is going to be even worse than competing with just writing. But we'll see how bad I flunk out.  :troll:
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, August 22, 2012, 10:08:54 PM
I wouldn't mind starting a fresh character just to join you guys in GW1! I'm still technically a noob there anyway :P I was figuring GW2 will be my real foray into it!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Wednesday, August 22, 2012, 11:56:46 PM
I'm super excited. Stocking up on bad junk food and planning on staying up all night playing friday night for the 3 day head start.

I've got all 5 of my character slots planned too. I'm gonna create all 5 now, but then spend most of my time just on the thief. GW1 had birthday presents that your characters got on the anniversary of their creation, so I'm getting all 5 slots filled right away so that I'll get them all on the same day in a year.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Saturday, August 25, 2012, 06:07:14 AM
Head start officially started!

Down side? Connection error!!! ARRRGH!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: idolminds on Saturday, August 25, 2012, 06:44:21 AM
Man I so hope I can play this.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Saturday, August 25, 2012, 12:35:19 PM
Oh yeah! ArenaNet sorted it out and I was able to get some game time!

Created my main character, a Ranger, and I toyed around with a Thief character as well. I'm kinda starting to lean more toward the Thief but I still like my Ranger :)

Anyway, it's awesome and a lot more polished than the betas (of course). Get in as soon as you can!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Cools! on Sunday, August 26, 2012, 08:36:32 AM
This is interesting.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: MysterD on Sunday, August 26, 2012, 08:41:41 AM
Oh yeah! ArenaNet sorted it out and I was able to get some game time!

Created my main character, a Ranger, and I toyed around with a Thief character as well. I'm kinda starting to lean more toward the Thief but I still like my Ranger :)

Anyway, it's awesome and a lot more polished than the betas (of course). Get in as soon as you can!

Even though I'm not buying GW2 soon probably...

Since we were in the Beta - we could just buy a key from somewhere, input key into your account, and it'll update what it needs to, right?
I really don't & wouldn't wanna do that 15GB download again.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Sunday, August 26, 2012, 01:38:07 PM
Even though I'm not buying GW2 soon probably...

Since we were in the Beta - we could just buy a key from somewhere, input key into your account, and it'll update what it needs to, right?
I really don't & wouldn't wanna do that 15GB download again.

Yeah, that's what I did. It downloaded the necessary stuff (nearly 800MB or so for me) and that was it.

Btw, my GW2 username is xessive.3568 if anyone happens to log on! I've put it in my forum profile as well just in case ;)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: MysterD on Monday, August 27, 2012, 05:07:31 PM
Yeah, that's what I did. It downloaded the necessary stuff (nearly 800MB or so for me) and that was it.
Good to know, in case I do get around to eventually buying the game - if it hits a price-drop or something down-the-line...! :)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Monday, August 27, 2012, 05:28:32 PM
It would be nice if people who actually are playing the game would be replying with updates on their experiences.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Monday, August 27, 2012, 11:04:46 PM
Haha sorry, it's too good to express in words! I will give a detailed account of my experience but for now I will say this, it is certainly the best looking MMORPG I have seen to date!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: MysterD on Tuesday, August 28, 2012, 04:31:49 PM
GamesRadar -> One million copies sold already. (http://www.gamesradar.com/guild-wars-2-sells-one-million-copies/)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Tuesday, August 28, 2012, 08:55:18 PM
GamesRadar -> One million copies sold already. (http://www.gamesradar.com/guild-wars-2-sells-one-million-copies/)

Damn right! This game is awesome! ;D
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Tuesday, August 28, 2012, 09:03:43 PM
It would be nice if people who actually are playing the game would be replying with updates on their experiences.

Too busy playing. Play, eat, sleep (a little).

Not sure what to say. My asura thief is level 33 now. I got a charr thief up to 31 in the beta, so thus far it's been exactly as I expected, which is awesome. I've barely touched WvW and haven't done any sPvP. I ended up on a bad server as far as WvW is concerned. It's lower pop than most, and has a lot of PvE and RP type players. So I guess they get zerged, demoralized, and don't bother with it. Common scores are 1000,000+ for other servers, and 20,000 points for our server. A lot of servers have long queue times for WvW, but ours never has queues because no one does it.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Tuesday, August 28, 2012, 11:38:10 PM
Should I get this? I want to get the CE. Worth the online stuff?
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, August 29, 2012, 02:49:10 AM
The online stuff is "meh" especially since most of it 1-time use stuff. I grabbed the Digital Deluxe edition and I'm not regretting it but I'm questioning the value of the extra $20.

If you're gonna get the CE it's a worthwhile package for the real stuff (see Felicia Day's unboxing a few posts earlier).
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Wednesday, August 29, 2012, 03:58:12 AM
I know about the physical items, but what about the digital stuff with the CE? Are they lifetime? I can't figure it out from the website. Like the little follower thing you get. :P
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Wednesday, August 29, 2012, 05:47:48 AM
Digital Deluxe/Collector's in-game items:


Honestly unless you really want the Rytlok mini or the Mistfire Wolf, I'd say your'e better off spending that $20 on gems for another bag slot, more bank space, more characters slots, etc.

EDIT: Also if you buy the regular edition and decide later that you wanted the stuff from the digital deluxe edition, you can buy it in the gem store in-game. The gem to dollar exchange makes it $25 though.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Wednesday, August 29, 2012, 06:19:31 AM
By the way, on the topic of microtransactions, bank space, bag space, etc. Bank space is a little limited if you don't spend gems to upgrade it, but bag space isn't bad at all.


Bag space: http://i.minus.com/ibtr8VfIeF1TFo.png (http://i.minus.com/ibtr8VfIeF1TFo.png)
This is my current inventory space (with all bags combined so it looks like one big bag). 20 slot backpack, two 8 slots bags, and two 10 slot bags. That last icon on the left side with a padlock on it, that's another bag space. You have to pay 400 gems ($5) to unlock that. I don't know if you can unlock more than one or not. It's also worth noting that collections items (crafting mats mostly) can be moved to the bank's collections section from anywhere in the world. There's even a button for "deposit all collectibles", which does that with all valid items in your bags.



Bank space: http://i.minus.com/ibm303oTJBDXHJ.png (http://i.minus.com/ibm303oTJBDXHJ.png)
The section on the left is my inventory. So you have 30 slots of bank space, and can unlock "another tab" for 600 gems ($7.50). I'm guessing the space I have now is considered a "tab", so buying more would double it. One thing to note though, all raw crafting materials (wood, ore, cloth, leather, etc) are considered "collectibles". There's a separate section of the bank for collectibles. It's got a slot for every material type in the game, and you can hold an unlimited number of each. Mini pets also have their own slots in the collections tab, but any that you're carrying with you do take up bag space.

Here's what the collections tab looks like: http://i.minus.com/iGhAIctaoN6RV.png (http://i.minus.com/iGhAIctaoN6RV.png)



Most of the rest of the items in the gem store are cosmetic or negligible. There are items that give a 30-60 minute boost to XP gained, keys to unlock the chests that drop randomly (but they contain mostly temp buff items and temporary disguise items), town clothes items (you have a separate outfit for non combat that you can switch to on the fly), cosmetic armor sets, etc. Assuming they can make enough money from it to keep the game going, I think they've done the cash shop correctly. You don't feel like you're missing out by not buying stuff.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Wednesday, August 29, 2012, 07:15:29 AM
Eye opening, to be honest dude. I had no idea about bank space etc. I get how it works.

So how cool is the Miniature Rytlock? I'll be honest. I love my Diablo 3 CE wings. Yes I am lame, but I like some permanent aesthetic bonus that says I got a CE. So yes, lame, but are these miniatures exclusive? Or can I get other miniatures if I don't have the CE.

At this stage the digital deluxe doesn't seem worth it. So it is down to the CE vs the regular edition.

By the way, thanks a lot Wire. You are the first person who actually explained this stuff to me in laymen terms. I never played an MMO. Ever.

Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Wednesday, August 29, 2012, 07:42:16 AM
The collections section of the bank has slots for 59 different mini pets. Rytlok and 5 others are under a "mini pets (special)" section. So you'll probably see people running around with other mini pets, but the Rytlok one is probably only from the collector's and digital deluxe editions.

Also, in WoW the small pets are stylized so that they look sort of like baby versions of whatever they are. In Guild Wars, they use the same model as the larger version. You could call it lazy, but you also get all the detail of the full size model.

Diablo mini pet in WoW:
(http://l.yimg.com/ck/image/A1665/1665263/300_1665263.png)

Rytlok mini in GW2 (here's a better shot of the model (http://tdchiu.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/charr_rytlock_armor_v7-11-122.jpg)):
(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m95dgd1UNo1ryy134o1_1280.png)



And actually, if you've never played an MMO, even World of Warcraft, that might be an advantage for you with guild Wars 2. With most recent MMOs you have a very linear progression of quests that lead you through each zone as you level up. Specifically I was recently playing the WoW Mists of Pandaria beta and got really bored with the quest I was on. I couldn't skip it though, because without completing it I couldn't get the next quest, and thus couldn't continue questing in that area. I was locked into that quest progression and had to complete every step.


In Guild Wars 2 you explore and randomly run across events happening in the world. When I play I generally see something interesting and run toward it, then sometimes get distracted by some crazy event happening. As an example I was in the Charr starting area yesterday and was at a camp with a couple charr and human NPCs. Suddenly harpies started flying into the camp and someone yelled "the harpies are coming! Don't let them steal our supplies!" I was the only player there, and I fought for a couple minutes, but ultimately the harpies stole all the supplies. Then the charr and human started talking to eachother. The charr told the human to go get the supplies back, she complained that she always has to do everything, he pointed out that he was the reason the charr aren't hostile toward her, and she agreed to go get the supplies. She ran off and I followed her, and when she got near the harpy nests she said "woah, that doesn't look safe. I'm just gonna wait here and someone else can help get the goods back." This started another event, where I killed harpies and collected the goods, and then brought them back to the human. Once she had enough, she ran back to town and told the charr she had gotten the supplies back.

I could have left at any time, all of this was optional. If I went back to that same camp right now, I might now see the same things happen. The harpies might not attack. They might attack and fail to steal the supplies.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Wednesday, August 29, 2012, 12:36:55 PM
Won't these random events feel tiring though? It could be too much where you are running to do your own thing and are distracted by the random stuff..
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, August 29, 2012, 12:49:32 PM
Won't these random events feel tiring though? It could be too much where you are running to do your own thing and are distracted by the random stuff..
It happens occasionally but they're completely optional. You're rewarded based on your contribution to the event's success. There have been cases where a group of players are escorting a caravan and they happened to pass by the area I was in, I assisted them briefly without deviating from my intended path, and when they completed the event I got a Bronze award for my minor contribution to their effort. It's a pretty cool dynamic that gives players the opportunity to be helpful.

Overall the game's structure really encourages cooperative gameplay and that's certainly something I appreciate about it.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Tuesday, September 04, 2012, 08:35:55 AM
Just bought GW2 DD edition. WOOOOH. See you guys.

I am pugnate@gmail.com!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Tuesday, September 04, 2012, 04:36:19 PM
Just bought GW2 DD edition. WOOOOH. See you guys.

I am pugnate@gmail.com!

We need your username.####
I tried to add the email, it doesn't work.



Mine is Fleshfeast.5236
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Wednesday, September 05, 2012, 12:21:49 AM
Pugnate.5209 :)

SO EXCITED! (still downloading!)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Wednesday, September 05, 2012, 12:48:52 AM
OK it is asking for my initial home world! So many choices and it is permanent! What did you guys pick?
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, September 05, 2012, 01:11:20 AM
OK it is asking for my initial home world! So many choices and it is permanent! What did you guys pick?
Crap, I forgot.. Piken? Something Piken.

You can actually apply for a world transfer though there is a fee for that.

On the bright side, you can communicate with your friends no matter what world they're in. I have chatted with W7RE :D yay! "Dear Blizzard, please learn from others."

Dude, I can't wait to start playing with y'all!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Wednesday, September 05, 2012, 08:50:34 AM
Crap, I forgot.. Piken? Something Piken.

You can actually apply for a world transfer though there is a fee for that.

On the bright side, you can communicate with your friends no matter what world they're in. I have chatted with W7RE :D yay! "Dear Blizzard, please learn from others."

Dude, I can't wait to start playing with y'all!

That would be Piken Square (probably, that's a location from the original GW)

Blizzard lets you talk cross-server too. :P

Server transfers are free right now, and have no cooldown. I'm about to move servers for a second time though, so probably don't want to follow me. (my lame friends is a fanboy of this WvW mega zerg guild so he got us all to move to their server. Then they were losing in WvW so they switched servers.) Eventually server transfers will cost and have a week cooldown, but hopefully by that time they're have guesting implemented. With guesting, you'll be able to go play on a friend's server for free without transferring.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, September 05, 2012, 11:16:35 AM
Cool, I guess we can all decide which will be best for everybody.

Not sure about WoW, since I don't play that, but Blizzard doesn't let us chat across servers in Diablo 3, sadly. Each server (EU, US, Asia) has its own friend list and you can only add people who have a character on that server.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Wednesday, September 05, 2012, 12:07:56 PM
Cool, I guess we can all decide which will be best for everybody.

Not sure about WoW, since I don't play that, but Blizzard doesn't let us chat across servers in Diablo 3, sadly. Each server (EU, US, Asia) has its own friend list and you can only add people who have a character on that server.

I didn't know that about Diablo 3.

For WoW, you just add friends with their email or battletag, and you can talk to them cross server and even cross game. I can log onto Diablo III and talk to my friends on WoW.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Wednesday, September 05, 2012, 12:21:24 PM
I don't know if it is because this is the first MMO I've started but the class customization stuff is FUCKING AWESOME. So excited. I can't decide. What classes/professions did you guys pick?
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, September 05, 2012, 01:22:58 PM
I didn't know that about Diablo 3.

For WoW, you just add friends with their email or battletag, and you can talk to them cross server and even cross game. I can log onto Diablo III and talk to my friends on WoW.
Yeah, I think Blizz have unified the social aspect based on region.

Yeah Pug, it is pretty sweet! My main character is a Human male Ranger. Btw, I can't find you via your e-mail. What's your Guild Wars 2 name?
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Wednesday, September 05, 2012, 02:41:41 PM
Pugnate.5209

I wish Blizz hadn't unified the chat options. That sucks.

Regardless, I played GW2 for thirty minutes after hours on the character creation. I suspect I will play a lot more, but was really underwhelmed, especially after the top notch character creation tools. I guess I don't get MMOs yet.

In terms of gameplay, this is inferior to Diablo 3 and Skyrim in every way. I guess people play for the social aspect of it. I think I need to play a lot more. :P

Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Wednesday, September 05, 2012, 05:39:35 PM
I got my asura thief up to level 61 and then decided I'd rather be human. they look really badass in the higher end leather armors, and you can actually SEE the details on the armor. On an asura, you're so small you don't really see the details. So I deleted my level 61 and started over lol.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, September 05, 2012, 09:20:16 PM
Yeah, the combat is semi-turn-based. You can still move freely but it's certainly not as real-time as Diablo 3 or Skyrim. It's a different flavour. It feels more akin to KotOR or NWN.

I've got my Ranger up to lvl 33 right now. I'm at the point where I need to do a bit of grinding before I can proceed with the main plot questline, so I'm exploring the world by jumping through Asura gates.

UPDATE:
Btw, this is by far the smoothest MMO launch I have experienced. No disconnection or major connectivity issues, rarely any lag, everything seems to be working as advertisid except for the first few days the Black Lion Trading store was not ready. Overall pretty impressive. All other games you usually hear the wails of nerd-rage across the webOsphere!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Thursday, September 06, 2012, 07:54:57 AM
I don't get the turn based comment. I know you don't meant hat it's literally turn based, but... I don't know. I'm very active and mobile during combat in this game, much more than any other MMO simply because dodge is so useful. Enemy attacks come at their own pace and each have a cooldown and their animation must finish before the enemy can do another attack, just like all of my attacks.

Maybe as a ranger the combat seems less active because you have a pet that's probably tanking for you. On my thief I'm always moving though. Even if I'm sticking to an enemy for a few seconds in melee, I'm circle strafing it usually.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Thursday, September 06, 2012, 09:03:33 AM
I don't get the turn based comment. I know you don't meant hat it's literally turn based, but... I don't know. I'm very active and mobile during combat in this game, much more than any other MMO simply because dodge is so useful. Enemy attacks come at their own pace and each have a cooldown and their animation must finish before the enemy can do another attack, just like all of my attacks.

Maybe as a ranger the combat seems less active because you have a pet that's probably tanking for you. On my thief I'm always moving though. Even if I'm sticking to an enemy for a few seconds in melee, I'm circle strafing it usually.
Yeah, it's a lot more active than most MMOs but it's not quite as reactive or instant as the combat of a game like KoA: Reckoning or Darksiders. It is by no means a turn-based tactics game like Heroes of Might & Magic. It is semi-turn-based because to an extent each attack waits its turn before it can be used again, a lot like Neverwinter Nights or KoTOR (minus the ability to pause), except the basic attack which is on auto. But you're able to move and dodge freely across the field. Despite that there is a dice-roll going on behind the scene the combat is very active and you have to pay attention.

I am kinda wishing the game supported gamepads like DC Universe Online. With time-consuming games that don't require aiming I'd rather sit back and relax rather than hunch over with my mouse and keyboard. I save that for stuff that demands accuracy.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Thursday, September 06, 2012, 09:52:33 AM
Here's a video of my taking down a couple normal enemies, then a veteran. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTDETqHDKGU) This shows how active I am in combat. I actually feel like I'm able to dodge enough attacks that I just go with a glass cannon type build with almost no defense. If I can dodge most attacks through skill, I can just focus all my stats on offense.

Obviously this doesn't work in all situations, but for leveling and dungeons (mostly), it works fine.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Thursday, September 06, 2012, 11:41:45 AM
Here's a video of my taking down a couple normal enemies, then a veteran. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTDETqHDKGU) This shows how active I am in combat. I actually feel like I'm able to dodge enough attacks that I just go with a glass cannon type build with almost no defense. If I can dodge most attacks through skill, I can just focus all my stats on offense.

Obviously this doesn't work in all situations, but for leveling and dungeons (mostly), it works fine.
1) that was bad ass and 2) yeah, the thief plays very differently from the ranger.

Have you played DC Universe Online? It's very similar but the combat feels like even more "action" because it's close to God of War, KoA, and Darksiders' style. Nonetheless the combat in GW2 is great and a fresh breath compared to most other MMOs.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Thursday, September 06, 2012, 12:56:24 PM
Yea I played DC Universe Online a bit. I played it for the first month it was out, then played it for a couple days when it went free to play. I think my GW2 thief probably plays a lot like my gadgets/controller did in DCUO, but with a lot more popping in and out of stealth.

That's something I've noticed about this theif. I really hate when MMOs limit how long you can stay in stealth, and it just makes me not want to play the stealth class, which is what I usually play in any game. In GW2 though it's still so badass that I don't care. My thief is a ton of fun.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Friday, September 07, 2012, 06:55:34 AM
Having fun now! It takes a bit of getting used to. Why haven't you guys added me yet? What are your screen names ?

edit:

I don't get the turn based comment. Though it is a bit like NWN in that sense I guess.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Friday, September 07, 2012, 06:56:28 AM
Having fun now! It takes a bit of getting used to. Why haven't you guys added me yet? What are your screen names ?
You're on my list :) I added you a couple of nights ago.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Friday, September 07, 2012, 06:57:54 AM
I don't see you! What is your display name? What is W7REs? How else is on here?

COME TO GW2 ALL OF YOU!

Played a lot more. This is awesome. Killing with people online can be fun and I have some cool skills as a ranger. :)

edit:

Added Fleshfeast. Don't need the numbers. To add me just write Pugnate.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Friday, September 07, 2012, 08:05:55 AM
Yeah, you don't answer when I whisper to you, brah! C'mon, brah! Why you disrespectin' me, brah?!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Friday, September 07, 2012, 08:59:33 AM
If someone adds you and you don't add them, they show up under the "followers" tab in the friends list. I added you a couple days ago too and I haven't noticed when you were online.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Friday, September 07, 2012, 01:30:19 PM
You can only whisper when they are online. X what is your ID? I added fleshfeast though.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Friday, September 07, 2012, 02:19:30 PM
Here's my asura thief before I deleted him to make a human, and then my human thief at 40 wearing the same armor. (different dye setups, and the headpiece hidden on the human)

(http://i.minus.com/iyRemAxY8nQh3.png)

(http://i.minus.com/iE3kANuGJiO3a.png)





The Asura wasn't bad at all, but I like the human more. the detail on his armor is easier to see, and he looks badass in some of the later sets, including some of the human only armor.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: MysterD on Friday, September 07, 2012, 05:30:16 PM
ArsTechnica -> 11,000 accounts approximately affected by a GW2 Password Attack. (http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/09/guild-wars-2-password-attack-affects-10000-accounts/)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Saturday, September 08, 2012, 02:07:29 AM
OK this game is just brilliant fun. I think my comment in comparing with D3 and Skyrim seems a bit silly now. I said that because while the game is really pretty on an artistic level, the polygon rates are really low, making it seem like the environment is made out of paper for someone coming from those two games. :P My friend Jamal has been saying how GW2 is a better game than D3 or Skyrim for a while -- can't even compare them --, so that's why I was disappointed, having gone in fully prepared to love the game.

But the low poly rate is not really an issue. It is understandable considering it is an MMO and the massive amount of players online. There are some very beautiful looking levels though. Very picturesque. It is one of the prettiest games I've played.

The gameplay itself is really good. The problem is that the game thrusts you in with no tutorial of any sort. So basically you can use most weapons regardless of class, and each weapon brings wit it five skills. To unlock the skills you just keep using the weapon until the five skills are unlocked. Let me tell you, the third skill for the two-handed broadsword is brilliant. Jamal, who lives close by, joined me last night, and guided me through stuff. I simply targeted a little goblin type creature, and by just tapping the third skill button my huge ranger sped forward, and did this awesome slashing and thrust attack that lasted quite a while.

I am a ranger so I have some awesome pets too. Anyway, I guess the point is to use all the weapons till you unlock every skill associated with them. I think the point where I realized how amazing the game could be is when an event began, with I'd say at least fifty other players joining together to take out some goblin like creatures. It felt like war.

There is also a very play when you please sort of quality to this. You keep wanting to play, but you also know you can come back and repeat the quests whenever you want. That's cool.

The only downside is the narrative, which feels pretty disconnected. I am not into the game's story at all, and the way questing happens, basically it feels very much like we are playing a game. There is very little suspension of disbelief. Even Diablo 3 with everyone running between objectives had a huge level of immersion still.

Anyway, overall the game seems quite amazing. I see myself playing this for a god long time. The amount of content is staggering.

Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Saturday, September 08, 2012, 04:06:16 AM
X, my friends and I are on the European server, Gandara. I don't know what server you are on, but I think server swap is free for now. If there is nothing holding you there (friends etc), can you come to mine? It would be awesome to play with you. :)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Saturday, September 08, 2012, 05:29:02 AM
X, my friends and I are on the European server, Gandara. I don't know what server you are on, but I think server swap is free for now. If there is nothing holding you there (friends etc), can you come to mine? It would be awesome to play with you. :)
Nothing holding me back, switching to Gandara neow!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Saturday, September 08, 2012, 11:02:50 AM
I think they said that the free server swapping is partially (if not completely) due to the guesting feature not being in. Once it's in, you can join people on any server for anything other than WvWvW. I've got friends that are swapping servers go play with someone for an hour, then swapping back when they're done. Guesting would be a bit easier though.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Xessive on Saturday, September 08, 2012, 12:26:31 PM
Yeah, guesting make sense. Have a friend in a different world? Invite them over for some cooperative gameplay!

I moved to the other world, Gandara (EU), to play with Pug but I noticed my ping shoot up to about 350ms. Turns out Piken Square (EU) seems to be the best option for us right now with an average latency within the range of about 150ms~200ms, which is tolerable. So we're both on there now, I get to explore Pug's Norn side of the continent! ;D Gotta find me an Alpine Wolf to charm as my loyal pet!

Btw, I've been playing the game basically solo this whole time, occasionally allying with other players during random encounters, and it is good fun, but it is SO MUCH MORE fun when you're playing with friends :) Even though both Pug and I are rangers we have different weapons and skill sets that work well! We never really feel compelled to find a tank or a healer, we just took on the roles ourselves as the situation demanded. I really appreciate the versatility the game allows.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Saturday, September 08, 2012, 02:25:58 PM
Haha that was awesome. I am going to be playing more in a little bit.

Yup, switched to X's server. The thing is I may be switching back to my home server, because my guild created by my friend will be hard to shift with everyone. Also, shifting servers will cause the guild influence to drop or something.

Guesting would be awesome. :)

I am not shifting back yet though.

The game is awesome with friends, and seems to have been designed from the ground up that way. It is also very casual in terms of commitment. Its strengths can be interpreted as weaknesses though, but for people in this day and age busy with lives outside of gaming, GW2 seems like the evolutionary step.

In terms of weapon bonuses classes are useless with anyone able to wield most weapons, with each weapon having a certain amount of skills open to anyone able to wield that weapon. Personal skills have a enough depth though. GW2 has pretty much made a 'healer' useless. That takes away from the frustration, but it also takes the game in a somewhat casual direction. Well, casual isn't the word. It isn't like the game is 'dumbed down', it is just that it tries to make it easy for anyone with commitment issues to have as much fun as those looking for a longer term relationship.

What does bother me is how quests repeat themselves nonstop so you can perform one an infinite number of times by just joining someone who has started it for themselves. Basically if I finish a quest in area A, and I am just hanging around there, it will mean that within minutes after finishing it, I will have to watch an alert that it is activated again.

I understand the appeal of this, but the double edged sword is that quests feel meaningless. Essentially, this isn't a game you want to try and play alone like a traditional RPG. That being said, there are lots of traditional RPGs to choose from, and in some manner, GW2 feels like Tribes gone RPG or something. The game is really special, and the most fun I've had in ages.

I have been playing for ten hours I'd say and have only completed 0.8% of the game.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Saturday, September 08, 2012, 02:54:49 PM
One of the best reviews I've read from PCG in a while:

http://www.pcgamer.com/review/guild-wars-2-review/

He writes from a perspective I didn't have on the genre, but understand now that I've read the review.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Saturday, September 08, 2012, 05:14:48 PM
In terms of weapon bonuses classes are useless with anyone able to wield most weapons, with each weapon having a certain amount of skills open to anyone able to wield that weapon.

2 different classes will have different abilities with the same weapon. for example, grab a shortbow on your ranger and see what your 1-5 abilities are. Here's mine on my thief with a shortbow:

1 Trickshot - Bounce an arrow between multiple nearby foes.
2 Cluster Bomb - Fire a cluster bomb at the target area. Detonate it midair for multiple explosions.
3 Disabling Shot - Do an evasive leap away from your foe while firing a crippling shot.
4 Choking Gas - Fire an arrow that fills the target area with a poisonous cloud.
5 Infiltrator's Arrow - Fire an arrow and shadowstep to the target area, blinding nearby foes.


Also, some abilities say "Combo Field" in their tooltips. Some others say "Combo Finisher". Use a Finisher through a Field for a special skill combo effect. Like an arrow through a poison cloud will cause the arrow to do poison damage on impact. If I use my thief's leap attack through a smoke cloud field, I get put into stealth.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Saturday, September 08, 2012, 05:54:18 PM
Wow. I had no idea. I was lead to believe that it doesn't matter. Cool stuff! This means a lot more replay value! I played a lot more. Am at level 9. I see myself playing this for ages.

X I will change back to your server if we are on at the same time.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: MysterD on Tuesday, September 11, 2012, 08:40:55 PM
Guild Wars 2 (PC)
REVIEWS



Scored out of 100
TenTonHammer -> 94. (http://www.tentonhammer.com/reviews/guild-wars-2?page=2)
PC Gamer -> 94. (http://www.pcgamer.com/review/guild-wars-2-review/)

Scored out of a max of 10:
AtomicGamer -> 10. (http://www.atomicgamer.com/articles/1433/guild-wars-2-review)
AusGamers -> 9.5. (http://www.ausgamers.com/games/guild-wars-2/review/)
ActionTrip -> 9.2. (http://www.actiontrip.com/reviews/guild-wars-2.phtml)
GameTrailers -> 9.0. (http://www.gametrailers.com/reviews/zif2eg/guild-wars-2-review?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter)
IGN -> 9.0. (http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/12/guild-wars-2-review)
IncGamers -> 9. (http://www.incgamers.com/2012/09/guild-wars-2-review-war-in-heaven/)
ImpulseGamer -> 9. (http://www.impulsegamer.com/pcguildwars2.html)
EGM -> 9. (http://www.egmnow.com/articles/reviews/egm-review-guild-wars-2/)
Polygon -> 8.5. (http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/9/6/3295570/guild-wars-2-review)

Scored out of a max of 5:
G4TV -> 5 stars (http://www.g4tv.com/games/pc/45299/guild-wars-2/review/)
DigitalSpy -> 5 stars. (http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/review/a404469/guild-wars-2-review-pc-the-world-of-warcraft-killer.html)
CCC -> 4.7. (http://cheatcc.com/pc/rev/guildwars2review.html#.UFADI40Uh8F)
GameSpy -> 4 1/2 stars. (http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/guild-wars-2/1225879p1.html)
GamesRadar -> 4 1/2 stars. (http://www.gamesradar.com/guild-wars-2-review/)
GameRevolution -> 4.5 (http://www.gamerevolution.com/review/guild-wars-2)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Wednesday, September 12, 2012, 11:40:37 AM
Pug, you keep messaging me while I'm away. Then when I get back and respond, you don't say anything. (it's easy to miss a whisper if map chat is going fast)
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Wednesday, September 12, 2012, 01:27:43 PM
Pug, you keep messaging me while I'm away. Then when I get back and respond, you don't say anything. (it's easy to miss a whisper if map chat is going fast)


hahaha I think that's when I am AFK. ;D
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: shock on Thursday, September 13, 2012, 06:25:44 PM
I'm so excited for this game.  I just have to wait until my desktop arrives.  I quit WoW because PvP got old.  I'm hoping this can keep my attention.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: Pugnate on Thursday, September 13, 2012, 06:28:40 PM
Add us when you do bud. The game is awesome!
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Sunday, November 11, 2012, 12:44:27 PM
Bumping this because the game is out now, and it's pretty good. Also we were discussing it in Idol's thread about his pacifist WoW character, which got locked? (sorry, didn't mean to hijack it)

@shock PvP in Guild Wars 2. There's no pvp in the open world like there is in WoW, and there's only one faction. The two types of PvP are Structured PvP (sPvP) and World vs World vs World (WvWvW). In sPvP everyone has equal footing and you'll never be outgeared. In WvWvW the gear cap is relatively low and it's pretty easy to get the "best gear" in the game so that you're on equal footing with your opponents.

sPvP: You use the game UI to jump into an area that's basically a PvP lobby. There are vendors that will give you free armor and weapons. Your level is boosted to 80 and all of your abilities are unlocked. You can reset your character's spec for free as many times as you want. The setup for your character in this lobby and in all of sPvP remains completely separate from your PvE progression. There's a character you can talk to to get a list of PvP games, which looks and works very much like old school online FPS server browsers. You see a list of numbered rooms and see how many players are in each. You join one, and it plays a match, then cycles maps. The only game type currently is a capture and hold mode similar to Arathi Basin or Battle for Gilneas in WoW. Each map does have a secondary objective that's map specific though.

WvWvW: You use the game UI to reach this one as well. Your stats are boosted to 80, but you are limited to the gear and spec of your PvE character. A low level character isn't as powerful as a level 80 in good gear, but you can easily contribute to larger scale confrontations. This mode has 4 zones: 1 central zone with a massive castle to fight over, and 3 home zones for each of the 3 servers participating. This game mode is for large scale keep/castle sieges, and 3 servers fight for control, with the server matchups changing every 2 weeks based on who won/lost.




I should say a little more about the gear grind at max level. The armor/weapon quality coloring is similar to WoW:
Basic (white)
Fine (blue)
Masterwork (green)
Rare (yellow) - These are rarer, and sell for a bit more. Probably not worth using before level 80 because of the price.
Exotic (gold) - This is your goal for all equipment slots, unless you're going for a legendary.
Legendary (red) - It takes an obscene amount of time, materials, and gold to gather the materials to craft these. I believe they have the same damage and stats as exotics (maybe negligibly more), so they are purely for cosmetics. Some change your footprints to leave fire, shoot rainbows, etc.

All items of the same quality, at the same level, will have the same amount of stats/damage. Different prefixes will give you different stats, but for example all level 80 exotic daggers have the exact same damage range. You'll start in whites and by level 10 or 15 can easily be wearing all blues/greens. You'll see the occasional yellow, but you're probably better off selling those. You can pretty easily keep your crafting leveled up as you level up your character, and make yourself gear every 5 to 10 levels, so a yellow item won't last long. Once you hit level 80 you should craft or buy a set of yellow gear. Then you start working on exotics. You can get them from WvWvW, crafting, buy them, get them from dungeons, or farm karma for them. Karma is a currency you get for completing open world events, and a couple of the level 80 zones have exotic level 80 gear you can buy with it.

Once you have full exotics you're done farming. Unless you want another set with different stats, or want to go for some items for a different look, you won't need more gear.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: idolminds on Sunday, November 11, 2012, 01:26:05 PM
Huh, must have been locked accidentally. Oh well, good to move the GW2 stuff here anyway.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: shock on Sunday, November 11, 2012, 06:06:19 PM
Thanks W7RE!

What are the mechanics of combat like?  Is it as crowd control centric as WoW?  Cooldown-focused?  I know combat is very different anyway in GW2, but just curious about the big picture.

Again, thanks!  UPS paid me for my computer (and let me keep the mostly broken hardware!) so I should be getting it fixed up soon.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Sunday, November 11, 2012, 06:43:34 PM
What are the mechanics of combat like?  Is it as crowd control centric as WoW?  Cooldown-focused?  I know combat is very different anyway in GW2, but just curious about the big picture.

There aren't nearly as many CC abilities as WoW. Most abilities have a cooldown of some sort. Also you have a dodge-roll button, and you can 100% avoid just about any attack if you dodge at the right moment.

Everyone has a single 10 button action bar. Your equipped weapons determine what are on slots 1-5. Number 6 is hour heal, which you have 3-4 options for on each class. 7-9 are utility skills that you pick and choose from. 0 is your elite ability, which is usually pretty strong, but on a longer cooldown. Slot 1 is going to always be something spammable, usually with auto-cast enabled on it so it'll just continue going off as long as you're not using other abilities. (this is the closest thing you have to an autoattack) 2-5 will have short 2-10 second cooldowns usually. Except on a thief. Thieves get 12 initiative that auto-regenerates, and skills 2-5 use this up. (works basically just like rogues in WoW)

Most classes (all but engineer and elementalist) can weapon swap also. You can equip 2 weapon sets, and switch in combat with 1 button press. Because skills 1-5 are based on your weapon, you choose weapons based on the abilities they give you. They usually make some sense too. If you want to do broad aoe swings on your warrior, grab a greatsword. If you want to stun and knock down, grab a 2 handed hammer. You can use a shield to get an active block ability, or a warhorn offhand to give temporary buffs to you and allies. On my thief I use dual daggers for high dmg and popping in and out of stealth a lot, and swap to a shortbow for kiting/ranged/aoe.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Monday, November 12, 2012, 08:17:43 AM
They released some info about the Nov 16-18 update:



They're supposed to be giving more info on how the friend invite thing works today, and I think it starts today too. Probably so that invited people have time to download the client.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: shock on Monday, November 12, 2012, 08:23:07 AM
Awesome - that's really helpful.  It sounds like it is definitely worth giving it a whirl.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: W7RE on Monday, November 12, 2012, 09:58:54 AM
BTW the reason those 2 classes can't weapon swap is because they have their own mechanics for accessing more abilities. Elementalist has 4 attunements for 4 different elements (fire, ice, wind, earth). Switching to a different element changes your abilities. The engineer can equip "kits" in his 7-9 slots, which each give an extra passive ability on F1-F5. Activating a kit changes your 1-5 skills until you deactivate the kit, which takes you back to the abilities determined by your weapons.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2
Post by: MysterD on Saturday, August 29, 2015, 02:30:11 PM
Guild Wars 2 goes F2P for all. (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/play-for-free-today/)
Guild Wars 2 Table - Restrictions for F2P users; Benefits for GW2 Core Owners; and Benefits for Heart of Thorns owners. (https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/95982157?_ga=1.240955781.78332403.1436571105)

Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 -> Update: Now is F2P. Get playing.
Post by: idolminds on Saturday, August 29, 2015, 02:36:50 PM
I will be checking this out.
Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 -> Update: Now is F2P. Get playing.
Post by: MysterD on Saturday, August 29, 2015, 02:39:57 PM
I will be checking this out.

I did Beta Test it back when it had no NDA's (http://www.overwritten.net/forum/index.php?topic=1702.msg111725#msg111725).
It was awesome then in Beta, so....I'm betting it's still awesome. :)

Title: Re: Guild Wars 2 -> Update: Now is F2P. Get playing.
Post by: MysterD on Saturday, October 05, 2019, 09:08:59 AM
President of ArenaNet, Mike O'Brien, leaves the company:
https://www.pcgamer.com/arenanet-president-leaves-studio-was-reportedly-working-on-new-guild-wars-game/

Notes:
- Mike O'Brien, President of ArenaNet for around 19 years, leaves the company
- He was supposedly working on laying the ground-work for another MMO, which could've been for possibly Guild Wars 3.
- 8 developers are also leaving ArenaNet.
- Mike is going to form a small studio & work on smaller games w/ some of his friends.