Guild Wars 2

[Merus]

That reminds me: can someone throw me an invite back into the guild? Merus.9475.

[Trip Hazard]

If I've got time, I'll probably come on this tonight and have a poke about at the new features. My "tonight" is about 9pm GMT; don't know if that works at all for anyone else??

[Merus]

I just want to make clear that I have no idea when that is in my time, but I'm guessing that'd be when I'm asleep.

[Urthman]

I jumped on to the F2P version just to take a tour of what looked to be a pretty spectacular world.  Even with that expectation, I have been continuously blown.away.ign.com.

 

I've explored and uncovered about 1/3 of the map, and I think I have now said “Holy Shit!” or something similar more times playing this game than in all the other games I’ve played combined. The environment design in this game is unbelievably beautiful.  And not just beautiful, but creative and surprising.  There are so many great hidden caves and underwater passages.  So many moments like exploring the Lost-World-esque jungles of Caledon Forest, poking my nose into what seemed to be a little cave and instead discovering Spekk's Laboratory.  "Holy shit, I'm in a different genre than I thought, more Enik from Land of the Lost than Lost World."  And the thing to do in there was more interesting than I expected.

 

Last night I finally got to Lion’s Arch, and I was feeling almost weepy at how grand it was. Especially realizing that after they had built this astonishing sand castle they had the balls to just kick the whole thing over for a big event a couple years later and left it in ruins for a while before rebuilding it to what it is today.  Wow.

 

I think my only disappointment is that the only other MMO I've tried is DCUO, which lets you freely switch to any style you've unlocked and gives you the entire color palate to customize your character, so having to pay for colors or to switch the look of that powerful but stupid-looking piece of armor seems ridiculously petty.  But other than that, I haven't felt restricted at all by my F2P status.  I feel like they just handed me about 6 Bethesda-sized games for free.

[Merus]

While you have to pay, you don't have to pay real money - dyes are on the trading post (I think free players can't buy them, but I'm sure if they're not too expensive you could charm a Thumb into being your proxy) and transmutation charges can be earned from exploring cities and through PvP.

[Urthman]

Yeah, I was not complaining that colors and styles are a money-maker but that styles you've already unlocked or just plain colors are a limited resource at all.

[Merus]

Yeah, I think what I should have said was that the superhero MMO sub-genre tends to be way more aggressive about character customisation than fantasy MMOs. Most of the fun of City of Heroes was in the character creator, and that set the expectations for that theme. Colour customisation isn't nearly as much of a thing in fantasy MMOs - GW2 has a lot of armour dyes, but you can't change weapon colours at all. In WoW it's a big deal that some classes can change the appearance of certain spells, but you can't dye equipment at all.

[Jutranjo]

If you pick up cooking you can make dyes pretty fast, I could buy the strawberries for those on the AH but not the dye itself. After you got the dyes it's free to swap colours, I like that part a lot. Also I found out you can take off those dumb WoW size pauldrons as well as the helmet!

[Urthman]

Yeah, I think what I should have said was that the superhero MMO sub-genre tends to be way more aggressive about character customisation than fantasy MMOs. Most of the fun of City of Heroes was in the character creator, and that set the expectations for that theme.

 

Yeah, in a superhero MMO, the look of the characters is the most important thing.  The look of the world is often kind of dull. 

 

In Guild Wars, I don't really care so much about how my character looks because I'm too busy gawking slack-jawed at the rest of the world.

[feelthedarkness]

in a fit of life avoiding panic i finished my bioluminescent set this weekend. actually felt pretty good, and getting an ascended armor box is a nice perk. the only part that was really troublesome was the sand wall challenge mote, because those damn elementals reflect projectiles meaning my engi could only use the flamethrower. 

[Merus]

I actually finished it this weekend as well! I soloed it, and it was nasty. (I found the elementals really do not like Caithe's bleed attack, so I used that, waited for them to die, stealthed, stabbed Wildmane in the back, repeat.)

 

Halloween this week, and Heart of Thorns launches on Friday, and I am ready and waiting to unlock legendary crafting. I wants me a Juggernaut, and I wants me a H.O.P.E, and I might do the Quip collections but Quip remains dumb as hell. (Actually the Flameseeker Prophecies might be fun. I think they're all going to be a lot of fun, to be honest.)

[Jutranjo]

I read that they're adding an option to autotarget grenades/mortars at enemies without having to mash the 1 key, just hold it. Also no need to have the mouse over the target. Maybe I'll grenade kit more now.

[feelthedarkness]

oh man, we're all engis! i knew this forum was smart.

 

I did most of the achieves with LFG. i bet it would have been easier solo at times, haha. 

 

The new legendary pistol looks nuts.

 

i did a grunt work for a new legendary (mastery/77 clovers for fortune), then of course found out they won't need those gifts. i like juggernaut but i want to see what the new hammer looks like. my main alts are a war and guard so that works well. maybe i'll use my banked stuff for a funny one like Moot or Meteorologicus. i wonder if old precursor prices are going to spike or tank? 

[Merus]

By 'datamined' you mean 'they showed it on the official stream', presumably. The axe is Astralarium, after the observatory in Elona, and the staff is Nevermore. It seems the new legendaries can cover the character's arms, which is neat.

 

They also mentioned on that stream that you'll be able to break down the Gift of Fortune into their components now that you need them for two different recipes. Clovers will probably still be useful because they drop in PvP; Gift of Mastery is Central Tyria-specific.

 

Super-excited for the action combat camera they showed off on stream. No more holding down the right mouse button, hello precision aiming.

[Jutranjo]

I only picked engi because I wanted to play the class with the most gun.

[Merus]

So here's a comparison of the guild halls coming with Heart of Thorns: https://365gw2.wordpress.com/guild-halls-comparison/

 

Relevant because at some point we might want to stake out our own hall, assuming we get more than a handful of people at any one time.

[feelthedarkness]

SO how are we all doing? I unlocked Scrapper with the point change. I dig it a lot. I don't quite know how I'm speccing it though. I have an exotic cele set, but all my ascended armor/jewelry/infusion stuff is Berserker, and everything is tearing me apart.

 

I moved all 5 of my alts to the itzal village that has 7 flax nodes under it to start working on Nightfury. I had like ONE TINY moment of foresight in my whole game history and bought the bat potion when it was only 60g. i thought about buying more, but i've been burned by that speculation before. 

 

I haven't gotten through verdant brink yet, because i'm taking a class away from home and playing on a Surface Pro 2. 

[Nox Beta]

I'm doing great - Unlocked elite spec on 3 of my chars. Making bank with flax seeds. Getting phat loot from Dragon's Stand and Auric Basin. I'm preparing for the upcoming raid content by gearing up all my chars as best I can with the new minstrel stat combo (support life 5eva).

 

Old guildies have returned in force and are really bringing back the good ol' 'mad rush' feeling with new mmo content. Happy to report that despite going hard out for 2 weeks, HoT still remains fresh and exciting. I feel I've only scratched the surface of the expansion!

[Jutranjo]

Anyone still playing this?