Guild Wars 2

[wahwah]

I've been meh about the progression so far, and been enjoying the exploration.

Yeah, me too. Found myself not caring about leveling at all during the weekend, but really enjoying finding all the spots on the map. I love the vistas and the jumping puzzles!

Level progression just seems to happen along the way, while you do the fun stuff

[Merus]

I think that feeling that your character is more or less complete after not very much time is deliberate. Guild Wars 1 had a very similar approach where you reached the level cap by the first couple of regions and it was all pushing through the storyline from there. It's no coincidence that the dungeons start only after you've basically unlocked every ability.

Although I have to quibble: there's lots of MMO games that don't have progression. MMORPGs generally have, but even there it's not universal.

I find the game a bit tedious when pushing forward for expees but soon remember that the idea is to pick something to do and then go do that instead of running down the checklist of the "next" thing. You could bounce from starting zone to starting zone, trying to trigger the zone bosses, and that would be a totally valid playstyle.

[TheLastBaron]

I think I'm just going to try resetting and trying again. One of my friends got the game online a while back and didn't realize it didn't include head-start access, and one of my friends has been playing on my account and enjoying it so far up to like level 25 or so, and I have an account from my friend who already quit, so I think come tomorrow when my friend without headstart access gets into the game I'll just give the unused account to the person who was playing on my account and the three of us will start over from level 1 and play everything together. I'll try and get to level 40 or so before I make a final judgement on the game.

[youmeyou]

I've been enjoying it quite a bit, and I normally despise MMOs. The game shines in the areas of exploration and group events. Running around, finding a dozen avatars fighting a horde of enemies in an crazy techno temple or climbing up cliffs you wouldn't be able to in any other rpg save for a Bethesda game is good fun. Combat is also great. After playing a little of Rift as a mage character and hating it, I'm seeing a huge difference in how my mage character (necromancer) behaves in GW2. For one, being able to switch weapons mid battle makes fighting so much more fun. I can cast a bunch of AoE attacks from a distance than swap to daggers or axe which have their respective skills and rush into the fray.

[Lu]

Do I've been playing this and I'm in an Ascalan settlement in a little graveyard reading the tomb stones. There are funny ones like "Connie Eddit, 1096-1172 AE, Disagreeable until the end, We couldn't wait to bury you" and "Liss Hart 1132-1227 AE, Took an arrow to the chest, And died of a broken heart" and most of them are like that, but then there's "Anna Bliss, 1136-1137 AE, A small blessing that was all too brief" and my face went from to . That's depressing, kthx.

[Laxan]

Compared to the press betas, I'm finding it much harder to level up. Back then, it seemed like I could do half the hearts in a zone, the story missions and some random exploration and be ready to move on to the next zone.

Currently, I'm doing all the heart quests, all the story quests, some WvW when I can get it, and still finding myself not high enough level to move onto the next zone. After playing WoW, it seems weird to be forced to see everything in a zone before moving out. It basically ends up with me either hating the zone as I'm forced to grind the same events, or go to another zone early and postpone (and make worse) the cycle of being underleveled.

The content itself is pretty fun, I just wish the exp rates weren't slashed so severely.

And I do wish there was a bit more enemy model variation. So far in the Human lands it's just all centaurs all day.

/dump

(I'm currently working through BSG and this icon makes me happy)

[Orv]

One of the big flaws of GW2 is that it's not obvious that you need to be doing the full breadth of things available in the game to level at a rapid pace. Exploring everything, hearts, story quests and crafting all give large amounts of XP. You're missing crafting, it seems, which is an enormous chunk of XP.

[Laxan]

Oh right, I've been saving up materials and doing a craft dump every 5ish levels. It seems weird that in many zones the main city doesn't have any crafting stations, forcing me to go to Lion's Arch to do anything with all the stuff I picked up. I guess I should take more frequent trips back just to pace out the exp a bit better. But I'm still about 6 levels lower than I should be, so I don't think it's all because of my lack of crafting.

[Orv]

I couldn't really comment as to launch XP curves, since all I've done is the occasional WvW. Haven't really felt the urge to play much GW at all yet.

[TheLastBaron]

So I didn my first dungeon today, and while this is probably old news to everyone who did them in the beta weekends, basically you can't fail. There are waypoints throught the dungeons so if you die you can just res mid fiht and run back. And if you wipe, the boss doesnt reset at all so you just walk back and continue from where you left off and their health and everything will be the same. So basically I probably wont be doing any more dungeons, but this game is big enough that there's still a lot of other stuff to do so it isn't a big loss.

Also, I transfered to one of my friend's servers (server transfers are currently unlimited and free) and in WvW we completely destroy the other realms. As in, we controll basically everything, have all the bonuses, and our pie graph looks like a green circle with a red line in it (last time I checked I couldnt even see a pixel of red). I haven't done much WvW, but I have a feeling that it being this one sided is going to make it pretty boring, so I might try transfering while its still free.

[Orv]

Baron, are you on Henge of Denravi?

[TheLastBaron]

Nope, Black Gate

[Orv]

Ah. Seems that's a common issue then.

[TheLastBaron]

I'm assuming it's population based, as this server is full most of the time. Is Denravi the same? Hopefully things end up working out after the first round of WvWvW ends and servers are re-matched up.

[Orv]

I'm assuming it's population based, as this server is full most of the time. Is Denravi the same? Hopefully things end up working out after the first round of WvWvW ends and servers are re-matched up.

Denravi has 4chan and the (TMK) games only mega-alliance of five guilds on it, so they never lack for people. Hopefully their matchmaking algorithm gets worked out before I lose all want to play WvW.

[bakka bakka bakka]

I'm on Ehmry Bay and there's absolutely no way we can do anything to move Stormbluff Isle in WvW. It really makes WvW an unbearable experience.

[Laxan]

So eventually all the best servers will be matched against each other in WvW, right? Will this lead to a situation where the top US servers need a healthy EU playerbase to maintain overnight shifts in the eternal battlegrounds? WvW is weird.

[Twig]

After jumping through five thousand hoops last night, I finally managed to get my GW2 serial key this morning.

Never buy digital games from Best Buy.

But all of the servers I've been told to join by various groups of friends are full. So that's nice. I have literally zero desire to play if I can't be on a server with friends.

[Orv]

After jumping through five thousand hoops last night, I finally managed to get my GW2 serial key this morning.

Never buy digital games from Best Buy.

But all of the servers I've been told to join by various groups of friends are full. So that's nice. I have literally zero desire to play if I can't be on a server with friends.

Going to have to wait till late late weekday to join a full server.

[Twig]

Oh god, now it won't even let me log in, because it's claiming I'm logging in from a new IP and so activated my email authentication, but I'm not receiving the email to authenticate.

This has seriously been the absolute worst game-buying-to-playing experience I've ever had. I want to break something. I am so frustrated right now. ):

[TheLastBaron]

But all of the servers I've been told to join by various groups of friends are full. So that's nice. I have literally zero desire to play if I can't be on a server with friends.

Keep checking the server list (if your above issue gets fixed and you can log in again), if you try at off peak hours the server will probably only be high population, or at least thats how it was for me.

[Twig]

I've been told similar by friends, so I plan to do that, yeah. Good news is the problem was resolved. Bad news is I hate low-level MMO play more than I ever did. Playing this game just kind of makes me want to play WoW again literally only because it would mean I wouldn't have to level up to get to the good PvE. Not that I have any idea what high-level PvE is like in this game. Could be completely awful!

Tomorrow I'll try WvWvW, though. I have much more hope for that maybe?

[TheLastBaron]

Playing this game just kind of makes me want to play WoW again literally only because it would mean I wouldn't have to level up to get to the good PvE. Not that I have any idea what high-level PvE is like in this game. Could be completely awful!

I think ANet have made a point in stating that the game is the exact same at the max level, or at least they've said that in other MMOs the game that you play at max level is a different game that you play when you are leveling up, and that they are directly opposed to that philosophy and want the High level content to be the same as the low level content. I play very infrequently and am only level 30 so I don't know first hand how similar or different high level PvE is, though I have my suspicions.

[Twig]

Right now it feels identical to every other low-level MMO experience I've had, except with a bit more emphasis on "personal story" - which is something I detest in an MMO, anyway.

I do like the weapon system, though! That's neat!

[TheLastBaron]

After jumping through five thousand hoops last night, I finally managed to get my GW2 serial key this morning.

Never buy digital games from Best Buy.

My friend just bought the game from them because the digital copy was sold out on Amazon and through Arena Net (which is weird for a digital copy). Same experience, except for the part about getting the serial key.