Guild Wars 2

[dionious]

https://buy.guildwars2.com/

Available for Pre-order April 10th!



Standard: $59.99

Digital Deluxe: $79.99

Collector's Edition: $149.99

Still crossing my fingers for this month's beta invite =x

[ItsSeflol]

Is Archer in it?
Or at least Babou?

[Yorke]

more like babou or at least archer

[ItsSeflol]

2shay

[dionious]

Did anyone else participate in last month's beta? IMO from what I played, it lived up to the hype. Had some connection issues though which sucked.. although expected.

Definitely glad I pre-purchased.

[Yorke]

Did not, I retweeted from Bethesda's blog the other day about an online elder scrolls...that would be so badass.

[dionious]

Just got done participating in another beta weekend which was pretty amazing. They fixed the connection issues and allowed us to use our characters from the previous beta. Loving the WvW pvp and PVE so far. You guys need to check it out =o!

[Bodycount]

It looks good, but I don't think I can make time for mmo's anymore.
I don't care what they say, you can't play a mmo casulally and get much accomplished

[dionious]

It looks good, but I don't think I can make time for mmo's anymore.
I don't care what they say, you can't play a mmo casulally and get much accomplished

I agree with that statement in most MMOs, but that's where guildwars2 differs. Gw2 seems to be all about playing at your own pace, how you want to play, and with others regardless of playstyles.

Something to keep in mind is that this game has No endgame. There are no end game raids, end game tiered loot, end-game anything. So it's hard to say that you can't get something accomplished whether you're playing in 30 min spurts or playing for hours.

Not sure how much you know about Gw2 but it basically has 3 modes:
PVE (Dynamic questing, personal story-questing, 5 man dungeons, exploring)
WvWvW (Server vs Server vs Server pvp)
Structured Pvp (Like battlegrounds in WoW)

In each of these, there are a plethora of things you can do. My favorite aspect is that no matter how much more I play compared to my friends, we can always play together because the game focuses on horizontal progression as opposed to vertical.

For example in:
PVE: Each zone has a level range, if you're over the level range, you're "de-leveled" to it. You keep your abilities,equipment, and such but you're stats are lowered.
WvWvW: Everyone is automatically set to the max level, 80. The only difference between characters are the weapons/abilities/traits they have learned/equipped.
Structured PvP: You're in control of another character who is max level and has every ability, weapon type, and trait unlocked. This maintains balance and aims towards skill > gear.

So in all of the above scenarios, I can play with my buds and not have that bored feeling of "Ugh, i'm level 75 and gotta help my level 30 friend catch up so we can do fun stuff ~_~". You guys know you've been there before!

Also, I'm a self-admittedly Gw2 fanboy =p

[Ploid]

I looked at a Guild Wars 2 beta vid and noticed Necromancer! How are the pets? Are they easy to die? Do the Necromancers change up to Poison Darts because their summons are useless after a while?

I'll be getting this and Torchlight 2, but Guild Wars 2 later. Don't think I can spread myself that thin. I stil lwant to play through the Dragon Age games I got recently, also I need to finish Dead Space 2, Mass Effect 3, blah blah blah. Too many games.

[dionious]

I looked at a Guild Wars 2 beta vid and noticed Necromancer! How are the pets? Are they easy to die? Do the Necromancers change up to Poison Darts because their summons are useless after a while?

Personally I've only played Guardian(30) Thief(9ish), and Mesmer(3) so those are the ones that I'm most familiar with. But from what I've seen of the necromancer, through pvp and indirectly while questing is that you can sorta spec into different playstyles. You can go certain builds where pets are the focus and you can have a mini army of them. Also, from what i've seen, they seem to last forever or until they die.

I usually just see a necro resummon them but like I said i've never tried the class. I've faced melee Necromancers that take a shitload of damage, long-ranged necros that nuke, and different variation of pet necros. To be honest it all depends on the weapons you chooose, the utility abilities you pick, and the traits you spec into your character as you level.

You may think I'm BSing but you really can play any class however you want to and be effective at it. Be mindful that the "Holy Trinity" is gone from this game, aka the DPS / Tank / Healer concept. Arenanet made it clear very early on that every class will be able to fill every roll in the game.

Also on a side note, I just picked up Dragon's Dogma for xbox360 and it's awesome! (combat-wise, but story... so-so)

[Ploid]

Reading about the diversity of a class as you describe it seem totally different from Diablo. They seemed to want to make things diverse in that game but I'm not seeing it. I liked the way this game looked in the videos. Going to do the Necromancer thing for sure.

How will alt characters be? It seem you have to buy another slot like ffxi. Can you respec your main? No job change?

[dionious]

Reading about the diversity of a class as you describe it seem totally different from Diablo. They seemed to want to make things diverse in that game but I'm not seeing it. I liked the way this game looked in the videos. Going to do the Necromancer thing for sure.

How will alt characters be? It seem you have to buy another slot like ffxi. Can you respec your main? No job change?

Up to 5 character slots, additional slots can be purchased, i'm not sure how much tho. Yes you can respec. No job changes, just make a new char.

[ItsSeflol]

The only thing I really enjoyed during the whole month I played WoW was the soloness of leveling to 85 and then the PvP battlegrounds cuz they were pretty entertaining.

[Bodycount]

Does square have some kind of patent on one character/do everything gimmick? No idea why more games don't work like that...

[dionious]

Idk if you'd want to do that though since each character has his own personal story. At the beginning of the game you choose a bunch of background information regarding your character and they directly effect your story and how people see you in the game world.

Also, any future decisions that you make throughout the game from there on out, effect you're home-world instance. I remember in one of my story quests, I had to quickly choose between saving my char's best friend or saving the city from being poisoned. Upon choosing the city, later on you see references to the event; some are quests, some are objects in town like a tombstone for example.

I think a handful of things are account-bound as well. For example, getting invited to a guild is account bound instead of character bound.

[Dhiloda]

Whats the skinny on crafting?

[Ploid]

Whats the skinny on crafting?

[dionious]

Whats the skinny on crafting?

I've personally never done it because I wanted to focus on PVE and WvW during the betas but crafting has been getting a lot of buzz lately. I'll just quote the page of the wiki.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crafting

Crafting disciplines

Armorsmith Heavy armor
(Used by Soldiers) Talismans and runes inventory boxes

Artificer Magical weapons
(Foci, staffs, scepters, and tridents) Sigils

Chef Food

Huntsman Ranged weapons
(Harpoon guns, longbows, pistols, rifles , shortbows, torches, and warhorns) Sigils

Jeweler Jewelry
(Rings and necklaces) Jewels

Leatherworker Medium armor
(Used by Adventurers) Marks and runes Inventory packs

Tailor Light armor
(Used by Scholars) Crests and runes Inventory packs

Weaponsmith

Gathering Materials

Primary article: Crafting materials

There are four main methods for obtaining crafting materials:

Gathering raw materials from resource nodes.
Looting fallen foes.
Salvaging scrap items.
Purchasing from vendors or via the Trading Post.

Skill level

Each discipline has 400 skill points spread over 40 levels of advancement. For example, a novice becomes an initiate when they have earned 100 skill points. As a character advances in skill, they will unlock recipes for basic crafting components. Combining suitable components allows a player to discover new recipes via the discovery tab of the crafting station. Although you can unlock recipes for higher level items early on, you will be unable to craft the component items required to craft them until you obtain a comparable crafting rank.

Crafting skill level is also used to determine some titles and achievements.

Crafting experience

Each time an item is crafted, the player earns an amount of crafting experience applied towards the discipline of the crafting station they are using. For example, refining jute shreds into bolts of jute at the Tailor station will earn points towards that discipline, although they can also be refined at other stations. You gain bonuses for certain types of crafting:

Discovering a recipe grants a 100-150% bonus to the base experience earned.
Crafting multiple items as a stack grants a bonus of 15-50%.
You do not gain any experience for crafting lesser items.
A critical success can also grant bonus experience.

Creating items

You can only craft at designated crafting stations, which are located in every city and major outpost. The crafting panel includes two tabs:

The recipe tab shows all available recipes.
Recipes are color-coded to show their required level relative to the character's crafting rank: red (for items of higher level), gold (items of comparable level), green (items of slightly lower level), and white (items far below the character's level). This affects the amount of experience earned (with no experience earned for using white recipes).

The game shows you how many items you can craft using each recipe, based on the contents of the character's inventory.

The discovery tab allows you to attempt to mix and match components to learn a new recipe. Drag and drop or double-click items to add (or remove them) from the mix.

Only items that can be used to unlock a new recipe are shown.
You can use this tab to create a single high-level item if it unlocks a new recipe, even if that recipe requires a level far in excess of the character's current rank in the discipline.

As you add (or remove items), you can also see how many unlocked recipes remain. If there are none, you can press the reset button to start from scratch.

Recipes

Primary article: Recipe

A recipe is a list of component ingredients required to craft a particular item. There are three primary methods to unlocking new recipes:

Discovery, by mixing an matching items at a crafting station.
Obtaining a recipe item, either as loot or from a vendor.
Earning ranks in a discipline.
When you speak to a master crafter for the first time to take on a new discipline.

Notes

The crafting process never fails, while a critical success in crafting can either grant an experience refund or refund some of the materials used.
When crafting a stack of items, the process speeds up: each item queued reduces the required crafting time by half. For example, if it takes two seconds to create a single bronze ingot, it will take only one second to create the second, and an additional half second to craft a third.
Recipes are the same for all players and all characters.

[Machdaddy]

The game is pretty ace. I'll probably be going either warrior or elementalist.

One other thing that is pretty neat. By the time you ding 80, the gear you have is already about the max in statistical power. The gear you work for at level 80 is of equal power, but looks more awesome. So everyone is on the same level gearwise in pvp/pve, so skill will reign supreme, and the people who can do the hard stuff will basically just look cooler than everyone else.

Another thing; the game engine seems to be beautifully optimised. I was participating in large battles with spells and shit going off all over the place and my fps didn't dip at all.