Gaming Guild Wars 2

[Desbreko]

[quote]The guild got its start in December 2005 when Savio Striator and Carinae Dragonblood brought together various players who had met and become friends while farming in Sorrow's Furnace.[/quote]

[color=#4B0082]I was one of those various players that met while doing SF. The QKT was pretty dead by that point, with myself being the only person in it still frequently playing, so I left and joined Rare not long after it was formed. Fast forward a few years, and I convinced Beth to get the game and join Rare, which then snowballed into more people from theO/OB also getting the game and joining.

There'll be a Rare guild in GW2 as well, so I imagine the active theO/OB people who get GW2 will migrate over to it. But characters can be in multiple guilds in GW2, so we could start a separate theO/OB guild too if we wanted.[/color]

[Allamorph]

[quote name='Desbreko'][color=#4B0082]Fast forward a few years, and I convinced Beth to get the game and join Rare, which then snowballed into more people from theO/OB also getting the game and joining.[/color][/quote]

[FONT=Calibri]I feel slightly hurt that you remember her getting it but not me. I WAS PLAYING BEFORE SHE WAS, DAMMIT

[I]*shot*[/I]

[quote name='Desbreko'][color=#4B0082]There'll be a Rare guild in GW2 as well, so I imagine the active theO/OB people who get GW2 will migrate over to it. But characters can be in multiple guilds in GW2, so we could start a separate theO/OB guild too if we wanted.[/color][/quote]

That reminds me. [COLOR=DarkRed]Petie[/COLOR], you have to leave your current guild before you can be invited to any other guilds. I added you in as a guest for now, so that should be waiting for you, at least for a little while (it expires after so long, I think), but yes.[/FONT] Edited April 26, 2012 by Allamorph

[Petie]

[color=#0000ff]I left when I got on yesterday so I'm good to go whenever. I did check out the guest invite (seems like it lasts 2 hours, unless you had done it hours before and it counts down out of game as well) though so that worked just fine.[/color]

[Desbreko]

[quote name='Allamorph' timestamp='1335441202' post='711603'][font=Calibri]I feel slightly hurt that you remember her getting it but not me. I WAS PLAYING BEFORE SHE WAS, DAMMIT[/font][/quote]

[color=#4B0082]Oh, that's right. I think I talked to her about it first, but you ended up getting it before her, or something like that.

[b]Edit:[/b] Character name is Kira Namir on the Sorrow's Furnace world. I'm playing a charr thief.[/color]

[Boo]

[quote name='Desbreko' timestamp='1335555723' post='711621']
[color=#4B0082]Oh, that's right. I think I talked to her about it first, but you ended up getting it before her, or something like that.[/color]
[/quote]Even I remember that. I was cheering for LaMoof to beat her to the FLARE. Get it? Not punch, but... flare?

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]Everyone moved over to the Vasburg world because Sorrow's Furnace was full and some people couldn't get in, in case anyone else wants to join us. I'm assuming we'll keep the same home world for future beta events.[/color]

[Allamorph]

[FONT=Calibri]Right, so. First open beta weekend has come and gone. A good few of us have now had a taste of what's soon to come in the full release. Seems like a good time for opinions and takes on the aspects we each sampled. Shall I kick us off?

Once the initial crush of server-crashing prepurchasers finished screwing with ANet's equipment and things settled down, I settled into some casual waters-testing. Didn't really know what I was looking for right off the bat, just wanted a chance to get used to the system and how it worked, and see what the general offerings were. I ended up creating three characters, one of each race, and dabbling a bit with each one. My work schedule didn't really allow for a whole lot of time invested in playing, so that seemed fair.


First up was a Human Elementalist. At the time, I hadn't been planning on playing one immediately when the game released, so I felt that the class would be a good place to start fooling around, since I was already somewhat familiar with what I thought was going to be the playstyle. And it wasn't too bad. As far as the class goes, the Ele packs a decent punch, and being able to swap between element attunements essentially at will and still be full power with them was rather enjoyable. Being able to see the actual area of effect of the AoE spells was a good touch, I think. Means that the player no longer really has to worry about centering the nuke and hoping it has full effect or memorising the area of each spell and firing it off hoping people will enter it, and can instead pop and drop and keep casting. And to that effect, Meteor Shower is absolutely insane. I cackled the first time I used it. Almost wish I had screencapped it.

I did have a couple of gripes with the class, though. The first one wasn't so much against the class specifically as it was the time I was able to play, but I was only able to test out the skills for the Scepter, Focus, and Staff. The Elementalist has a few more weapons available to it, bringing a skein of new skills along with it, and I did want to see how the playstyle varied between them.

Other than that, I was sort of underwhelmed by the Air and Earth magic lines. The Air Skill 1 slot for the Wand specifically bothered me; it's a skill similar to the Force Lightning power used in the KOTOR games, and does moderate damage over time instead of a large single packet of damage, but while in more frenetic combat situations I found myself unable to cast other spells until my character was done with the entire duration. Normally this wouldn't bother me, but the Skill 1 slot has been universally adapted to an auto-attack skill for all classes, and I prefer to be able to interrupt my auto-attacking to cast more potent spells at will instead of being required to finish the full motion.

Now, I do think that the auto-attack skill is a vast improvement over the weapon damage from GW1. As a caster, I dislike simply sitting there and wanding out a maximum of 22 damage (before mitigation) every second and a quarter. It's always felt supremely useless, and I can generally do more productive things, like kiting to survive, or casting spells. This mechanic gives the caster something to do while kiting around and still contributes to the damage being done.

Another bothersome aspect of the class I noticed is that there seemed to be far too many skills dedicated to utility, and not enough to direct damage, let alone area nukes, which is what the profession is pretty well known for. And, again, I have no experience with what the Daggers (main and off) bring to the gameplay, but I cycled back and forth between the two weapon sets (Scepter+Focus and Staff) that I had, and I found myself being forced [I]once again[/I] to rely on Fire to get anything done. This pigeonholes me as a caster, I think, and I do not like the idea of being mostly restricted to one particular element in order to cause serious pain. Additionally, I thought that while [url='http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon%27s_Tooth']Dragon's Tooth[/url] was a neat skill to have with the Scepter, I began to dislike having it auto-target an enemy on casting, because if the enemy was moving, the tooth invariably dropped harmlessly behind them. I consider this skill to be an AoE skill, and I would like the option to lead my targets with it like I can with my other AoEs.


The second class I rolled was a Charr Mesmer. This class has intrigued me ever since I first started looking into Guild Wars, but its highly specific usefulness and lack of versatility in general PvE make it a very difficult class to play and enjoy, so I was curious how ANet adapted it to the new system while retaining the same craziness that interested me in it to begin with. I was not disappointed.

Because of the race I chose (I believe), I was started out with a sword as my primary weapon. Right away I was intrigued, because now obviously I'm a Light Armor caster profession running headfirst into the majority of the damage. The immediate feel that I got was almost exactly like the feel of playing Marth in SSBM: up close all the time, dodging, moving, and staying just out of reach of the enemy. The Slot 2 skill for the Sword is almost like a Counter, even; you unleash a flurry of strikes at your enemies and seem to [url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggFKLxAQBbc#t=0m25s']move like an Agent[/url], evading blows directed against you for a short time. Eventually I was given a choice between Pistol and a Torch as my secondary weapon; I chose the Pistol, and soon was darting around the field of combat, slicing my foes, bouncing bullets off of one target to hit a second and a third, and making continual copies of myself that would alternately slash or barrage my target in my stead. And if I wished I could destroy the copies, damaging or stunning or confusing my foes. It was absolutely insane and I loved every second of it.

I didn't play this character long enough to get a different weapon to fool around with, so again my playstyle experience was somewhat limited. I think right now my only contention is that, as a Light Armor class, the increased damage the class takes compounded with the decreased health compared to other classes makes such frenetic gameplay much more high-risk than it initially seems. Squishy casters have to be a lot more careful with how they open themselves to damage simply because not only do they take more damage but they have much less damage they are able to take. I much prefer the universal health bar that the GW1 character system had.

I did notice that the previous distinguishing characteristic for the class had somewhat vanished. In GW1, Mesmers are known for their ability to drop small spells in at just the right times, and have drastically-reduced casting times. That wasn't present, as far as I noticed, in GW2. Instead, the ability to create, sustain, and destroy multiple Illusions of oneself now took that aspect. And, honestly, I think between the two, I prefer the Illusions to Fast Casting.


My third character was a Norn Warrior. I'm not typically a frontliner, and almost never a Warrior in the first place (the combat style doesn't mesh with my thought patterns), but I decided that since I wasn't really likely to play it to begin with, it deserved a test run as well. And I must say I was pleasantly surprised.

Started off with a sword and, eventually, a shield for combat. Play seemed pretty straightforward. Fast, constant damage from the Slot 1 Auto, an unexpected but very useful charging leap attack in Slot 2 (which I generally used to open with), and a sort of utility skill to keep foes from fleeing too quickly while you laid down the pain. Shield was used to block all incoming damage for a short time or to knock foes senseless so you could .... continue knocking them senseless, as it so happened. I mean, you're a warrior. That's what you do. I also got to test out the Rifle, which was enjoyable, if somewhat dangerous in large groups until you unlocked Slot 5, and the Axe, which I was given to dual-wield when I briefly tested PvP (which was a bit crazy itself, but will not be discussed just yet).

As far as combat with the Warrior goes, I think a lot of my problems came from not being familiar with the up-front playstyle, and knowing when to tank-and-spank and when to back out and not die, or how to keep up with a fleeing enemy when using melee weapons. I got very familiar with the Rifle while pursuing enemies in PvP, at which point my skill level seemed to jump dramatically, but whenever I was up close I tended to get my rear handed to me. Same with PvE, actually, except that enemies in PvE tend not to kite as much, so I could make up for incoming damage with outgoing damage from my Sword Burst skill. Kill them before they killed me was how I tended to survive.

I actually played the second-most with this class, and was involved in a pretty intense mini-dungeon where we went in, killed a bunch of Dredge, stole a bunch of ore, destroyed a bunch of equipment, and put a bunch of hurt on their big leader dude. Since we ended up with at least fifteen to twenty people (if not more), the enemy spawns were utterly ridiculous, and often I found myself completely surrounded and flailing away, hoping something died so I wouldn't. I think I unlocked my entire set of Rifle skills just in that one instance. It was nuts.

I was going to lay a few gripes about being able to quickly close to an enemy's position and start dishing out hurt right away, but that Slot 2 Sword skill, along with one of the Utility slots ([url='http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bull%27s_Charge']Bull's Charge[/url], I think) pretty well solved that complaint. I was a bit confused at why equipping a Shield didn't raise a player's armor, and instead functioned as a weapon, but since there is a Shield Bash skill I suppose that makes some sense.


I didn't really play much with the elites of the classes I chose. I wasn't nearly high level enough to unlock them in PvE, and so in PvP I tended to forget they were there. I did like the passive effect that Signets now have; equipping one on your Utility bar now provides you with a constant benefit, and then you can basically sacrifice it for a much better instantaneous benefit, and you get the constant one back when your skill recharges.

When I took my Warrior and later Elementalist to the Mists, I also played around with the Traits panel a bit, and I think that adds a good bit of the variety back that the limited skill bar of GW1 had, which first intrigued me. Even with the same weapon equipped, you can gear your character up to favor one playstyle over another, and the more you focus in one line the more passive benefits you gain. For instance, Elementalists can explode with fire or healing rain when attuning to Fire or Water respectively, depending on what lines they focus in, and a particular Trait in the Arcana line increases the radius of their AoE spells.


There are a few other things I have thoughts onâ??specifically PvP, Story quests, Race-related details, and general environment impressionsâ??but I think I'll save those for later discussion.

What are some thoughts you guys have?[/FONT] Edited May 1, 2012 by Allamorph

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]I played a Charr Thief up to level 26 and tried out all of the different weapon combos that they can use. They're pretty much all about using conditions like blind, daze, stun, and cripple in combination with dodging to avoid getting hit. If you do get hit, it [i]hurts,[/i] and your self-healing doesn't cover more than one or two hits from most melee baddies your level and has a 15-30s recharge.

I settled on sword/pistol + shortbow for my two weapon sets after a while. Sword/pistol is very defensive, giving you cripple on the third strike of your autoattack, a 1s ranged daze, and a ranged plus point blank AoE blind. I made use of that last one extensively, and with the right timing, I could alternate between blinding and dodging melee foes and take them down without ever getting hit. Short bow is great for AoE or when you need to stay at range because its autoattack can hit up to three enemies, it has a crippling shot that also makes you dodge back, plus two AoE skills, one of which causes poison. So basically, if I was up against only one or two melee baddies, I could move in with sword/pistol and blind and dodge while hacking away, or if melee combat got too overwhelming, I could kite around and take things out from afar. This worked very well since the Charr areas didn't seem to have a whole lot of people in them and I was playing solo most of the time.

As for other weapon combos, dagger/pistol is pretty similar to sword/pistol but slightly more offensive. You still get the daze and blind from the pistol offhand, but instead of cripple, you get vulnerability on your autoattack's third strike.

Dagger/dagger is more focused on offense, though you still get a blind, a cripple, and also a skill that puts you in stealth for a few seconds, so there's still good ways to avoid hits. I kept meaning to use this combo more, but the AoE blind with pistol offhand â?? which seems to actually provide [i]two[/i] blinds on a single target if you use it at point blank since the shot blinds and the AoE lingers for a bit to blind them again â?? was just so nice... It's a lot of fun to use when you're not getting slaughtered, and I think I'd do much better with it now that I'm familiar with how to survive as a thief.

Pistol as a mainhand weapon, either with pistol/pistol or pistol/dagger, seems very support oriented. You can apply tons of conditions, but only single target unlike the shortbow, and the damage isn't that great compared to melee with a sword or dagger. I can see these combos being great when you've got other people on the frontline, but they didn't really pull their weight playing solo.

And oh yeah, you can steal as a thief, too. I tended to forget about this because you never know what effect the stolen item is going to have unless you've stolen from that type of enemy before, so it might be really good or it might not. It also has a 45s recharge, so you can't use it often. But it's still kind of nice because stealing also acts as a free shadowstep to your target, which is mainly what I used it for.

I really wish that when you steal from an enemy, it would pop up the skill tooltip for the stolen item for a few seconds so you could easily see what it will do. I pretty much never had time to mouse over the steal icon in the middle of combat, so I'd just use it and hope for the best. (It also didn't help that the larger UI sizes didn't work in the beta, so the icon was tiny on my screen.) Half the time, I couldn't even tell what it actually did.

My other problem with the profession is that in order to survive playing solo, you can almost never afford to use your more offensive weapon skills because you have to spend all your initiative on defensive skills. You have twelve initiative points that regen over time (it's basically like energy in GW1), and the pistol offhand's blind takes five, for example. Alternating between blinding and dodging lets me keep that up pretty much indefinitely against a single enemy, but I have almost no extra initiative to use on other skills, and if I forego blinding, chances are I'm going to get hit and lose a big chunk of health. Then you get encounters with multiple baddies at once, and you get slaughtered even faster if you aren't on full defensive.

[b]Edit:[/b] I just realized I forgot about sword/dagger. I don't think I used this combo beyond unlocking the dual skill for it, though, so I don't have much to say about it. It's got two cripples and a shadowstep, which I guess would be good for PvP, but damage output is low compared to dagger/dagger and it also lacks the great defensive skills of pistol offhand.[/color]

[Allamorph]

[url="http://www.arena.net/blog/announcing-the-next-guild-wars-2-beta-weekend"]http://www.arena.net...-2-beta-weekend[/url]

[b]Beta Weekend Event 2[/b] will begin on [b]Friday, June 8[sup]th[/sup], at noon PDT (GMT-7) [/b]and will run until [b]Sunday[/b], [b]June 10[sup]th[/sup], at 11:59 p.m. PDT (GMT-7).[/b]



[font=Calibri]And I no longer have to stand weekend duty days. See you all there.[/font]

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]My thief is level 30 now, after playing her some more during the stress test. I wonder if I'll be able to find a group to try out the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon.[/color]

[Allamorph]

[FONT=Calibri]I'll see if I can get my Mesmer there by the end of the event.[/FONT]

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]We finally got a [url=http://www.arena.net/blog/announcing-the-guild-wars-2-launch-date]release date[/url]. The game will launch [b]August 28[/b], with head start access for pre-purchases opening on the 25th. Only two months away.

Also, the final beta weekend will be [b]July 20-22.[/b][/color]

[James]

[font=palatino linotype]I've missed the beta weekends for Guild Wars 2, but I think I will still be buying this game. I've read some of your comments about it here (as well as bits and pieces across the web), but generally I'm trying to go in with relatively little knowledge about the experience.

I do have one question though - based on your experience with GW2 so far, does it feel much different than the original GW? Better/worse generally?

I know those are very open questions that can't easily be answered based on a beta experience, but still, I'm curious. In some of the videos I've seen, it doesn't look terribly different than its predecessor. And yet at other times it seems to sport features that are quite dramatically different.[/font]

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]In terms of gameplay, GW2 is extremely different from GW1. Combat is much more action-oriented and faster paced. There's a much bigger emphasis on avoiding damage rather than soaking it through prot and healing, so without smart use of dodging and defensive/shutdown skills, you'll die a lot even if there's another player with you who has some healing skills. That plus the lack of heroes or henchmen means you need to be mostly self-sufficient, since you can't always count on help from other players. If you were to make an ele in GW2, for example, and tried to play the same way as you would an ele in GW1, you'd get completely slaughtered.

The feel of the world, however, is still very much Guild Wars. There are lots of things, both big and small, that I've recognized from GW1 while playing the betas. I think ArenaNet has done a great job in tying the games together and making GW2 feel fresh and new yet still familiar to GW1 players.

It's impossible for me to say whether I think GW2 is overall better than GW1 at this point, considering I've spent thousands of hours with GW1 but only a few weekends with GW2. I have no idea if I'll care to spend as much time on GW2 yet. And GW2 has also been in beta, whereas GW1 has had seven years of polish.

I do think GW2 does a lot of specific things better than GW1, though. The persistent world instead of personal instances, open cooperation between players without needing to party, dynamic events instead of traditional quests, branching personal stories instead of static missions, and the trading post instead of trade spam in chat are some of the big things. So the potential to surpass GW1 is definitely there. Really, I think they only way I'd end up not liking GW2 more is if I end up not liking the combat as much, but again, that's something I'd need far more time with the game to tell.

Btw, [Rare] is going to try and get on the Sorrow's Furnace world at launch, and if that doesn't work out, Yak's Bend is the backup. My main character's name will be Amelia Desbreko if anyone needs to contact me in game.[/color]

[Pumpkin]

I'll probably be playing on the Tarnished Coast Server on the 25th as a Sylvari Mesmer!

[Allamorph]

[FONT=Calibri]Aww, so we won't ever see you, then. =([/FONT]

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]As I understand it, you can still play together with people on other worlds by forming a party with them and/or having each other on your friends list, which will let you visit their world as a guest. Not sure on the specifics, though.[/color]

[James]

[quote name='Desbreko' timestamp='1335555723' post='711621']
[color=#4B0082]Oh, that's right. I think I talked to her about it first, but you ended up getting it before her, or something like that.

[b]Edit:[/b] Character name is Kira Namir on the Sorrow's Furnace world. I'm playing a charr thief.[/color]
[/quote]

[font=palatino linotype]I am on the Sorrow's Furnace world. Just joined in now.[/font]

[Pumpkin]

I got 2 days early access...unfortunately my internet connection is SO slow I've spent the last two days downloading that stupid patch. I should be up and running about by tomorrow it should be done.

My name will be Akishunda. I'll be on Tarnished Coast server. Unofficial "roleplay" forum.

=) Be prepared.

[Gavin]

[font=tahoma,geneva,sans-serif]Bought the game yesterday after much prompting from my WAR/SWTOR guildies. Currently playing a Norn Warrior and quite enjoying it. For those who remember him Jokopoko is also playing so perhaps we could get an oldies OB group together at some point.

Username: Solkan.8524
Sever: [color=#000000]Piken Square[/color][/font]

[Petie]

[color=#0000ff]Hey! I've talked to a couple of you in game already but here's my info, just in case:[/color]

[color=#0000ff]Username: Petie.3250[/color]
[color=#0000ff]Main Character: Artemis Pheraea[/color]
[color=#0000ff]Server: Sorrow's Furnace[/color]

[color=#0000ff]I hope to see you in game![/color]

[Gavin]

[font=tahoma,geneva,sans-serif]Cool. Am out and about at the moment but might see you this evening Petie. [/font]

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]My character info:

Username: Desbreko.7906
Main Character: Amelia Desbreko
World: Sorrow's Furnace

If anyone wants an invite to Rare, let me or Beth or Al know and we can send you an invite.[/color]

[Gavin]

[font=tahoma,geneva,sans-serif]What classes are you guys maining OOC? I've got quite attached to my Warrior but I've been considering testing out an Elementalist in the next while.[/font]

[Petie]

[color=#0000ff]In the beta, I tried a Paladin and then, for like 15 minutes, a Thief. My main now is a Ranger though I also made a Thief to mess with as well. I may go back and make a Paladin eventually too but one issue I already forsee is that the game, at least the beginning, seems very linear and going through it multiple times in quick succession does not seem like a fun idea.[/color]