Kenjamin

Played nearly 3 hours last night with my brother, a serious rarity for me now that I have children, and we had a blast!

Bottom line is that we just did whatever we felt like, didn't sweat "progress" towards some ridiculous virtual goal, and mixed it up with different characters and events. In that 3 hours, we played four distinct game-modes, with 3 different characters each!

We started with an AC run, which was fun because we did a few things that we hadn't done before, rather than just speed-running it, and we had a few newer players to help along.

Then we went to EB to the jumping puzzle, which I'd never been to. It was a hoot. Didn't get far at all, but had some hilarious 3-way rivalries going with some FA & TC guys: yanking each other around and blasting each other off cliffs. Eventually, more TC showed up so we couldn't progress. Next time!

So the two of us ran around EB being obnoxious: taking camps, jacking yaks out from the middle of small zergs, stealing sentries, or drawing zergs to defend keeps from our two man "attacks". As a mark necro and focus mesmer, we eluded many zergs in some pretty epic chases. Didn't "accomplish" that much, but had some really fun cat and mouse going.

Finally, we dropped into tPvP, where we won our first tournament (we don't play much). We were mostly carried by a helluva thief player, but my brother and I had fun playing a psuedo-bunker-duo with strong team-fight builds. Our teammates were very nice people: didn't even complain when I bombed our first match (15 points maybe?)

So in 3 hours, we did a dungeon, ridiculous jumping puzzle + pvp, hit 'n' run WvW with some really fun chases (we had a group of 4 TC guys chasing us around for nearly 20 minutes), and a tPvP tournament. Never got boring, never felt grindy. We didn't really make much "progress", certainly not compared to focused grinding, but we had a lot of fun!

Much better than mindlessly trying to grind out some achievement, gear, or whatnot.

Geesh. One month?

We're pushing IoJ Borderlands all week. Look forward to seeing everyone out there.

cool story bro,

thanks for letting us know about your feelings

Lordkrall, on 13 December 2012 - 02:49 PM, said:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It CAN.

That's a bit like saying the Mystic Forge is a great source of income because it CAN spit out a precurser

Kenjamin, on 06 December 2012 - 09:56 PM, said:

Quote of the month.

Arewn, on 05 December 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

For me personally, nothing will ever beat playng runescape with a couple of reallife friends.
Mining together, getting killed by that random chicken, doing those complicated quests together, it was so simple and yet so satisfying..

I must say I will have some nostalgia about GW2 in the first weeks too.
Yes it had its problems (guild chat, TP,..) but the player activity, the map chat, doing DE's with 20-40 people, people helping eachother with the hard vistas and jumping puzzles.
I think I will remember that for a long time.

Lordkrall, on 05 December 2012 - 02:32 PM, said:

The only problem with transmuting new stats on a legendary is the item will lose its purple item name. Not a big deal to everyone but if I worked hard to get a legendary I'd like the item to keep the legendary item quality.

Pusha, on 02 December 2012 - 07:11 PM, said:

I think you overestimate peoples willingness to play a game with outdated graphics.  Yes, old timer gamers like me who got my start on games like Dragon Warrior 1-4 (just replayed them on an emulator, still effin epic) and started MMOs on games like Asheron's Call might be able to look past it, but 90% of MMOers joined the bandwagon AFTER World of Warcraft made the genre simple enough your grandmother could play.  Since then, better has also had most detailed graphics!  I like what they did with some of the game systems, but overall I think the impact will be milder than even the most overreaching fanboy thinks.

A note on people thinking WvW is in trouble.  As people who have showed up, tried it out for a few weeks, and immediatly started complaining about it start to finally make their way off the field, the ones that will be here for the long haul are left.  I have a guide to help people enjoy WvW in the correct light, I would love these people to provide input to make it better.  http://www.guildwars...o-enjoying-wvw/ Here is a fun fact, almost every person I have spoken to who thinks WvW is crap QQs about the damn score.  Heres a fun way to look at it:

Here is a scenerio for thought.  Make these following assumptions.

You are GM of a 120 man at a time in WvW guild, enough to fill a single WvW map completely. Lets call your guild [WWQQ]

[WWQQ] is the best guild in the game, they lost no encounters, they kill anyone 1:10 outnumbered, and they cap the entire map they are on always.

[WWQQ] fields these 120 players for 12 hours per day (f your job, f your wife, f your gfriend, WvW FTW)

Now, as crazy as these assumptions are, im betting they exceed your situation by quite a bit.  Now, lets play with the math.  [WWQQ] dominates 1 map for 12 hours per day.  With 4 maps, with 24 hours per day, [WWQQ] can control 12.5% of the match outcome.

1/4 maps is 25%, half the time is 25% / 2 = 12.5%.

[WWQQ] is probably in a better position than whatever person is complaining about the score to influence it for the win.  Even with their godly status, they only have 12.5% control over the status of the match.  Why get angry over the remaining 87.5%?  It is out of your control!

I agree with people when they try and build an alliance to control more than that, but honestly, if your an alliance commander, or someone who is running a campaign to control more than just your little 5 or 10 man guild in WvW, you understand this and are working to better it.  What about the 100s of randoms that come in here complaining about the score?  Your not a part of the win in any way shape or form.  [WWQQ] only had 12.5%, how much do you think [random pug]'s contribution was?

Its about shifting your focus away from something like that, and focus on the fights.  Get in a WvW guild, face off against enemy commanders, and take it battle by battle.  flanks, routes, portal counters, stealth sieges, 2v1s, 1v2s, calling ggs for the winner, calling ggs for the loser, THIS is what WvW is all about.  If your playing for any other reason, you are in for a short ride.

That path leads to the dark side...  Not SWTOR...  Well, i dunno, maybe.

Vysander, on 04 December 2012 - 03:54 PM, said:

No matter how advanced the miniaturization technology gets, one has to assume that constraining your design to portable sizes will always come at some relative trade-off: performance, displays, user interface, etc. Maybe I'm shortsighted, but not miniaturizing your components should always result in a relatively more powerful system with a bigger display. The industry can ignore that at its peril; in a hundred years, I think there will still be someone who needs or wants a huge display attached to a powerful home system.

Case in point: we've had handheld gaming competing with other platforms for 20 years now. Its advanced technologically by leaps and bounds and its a completely viable market niche, but it cannot overtake console (let alone desktop) gaming because its subject to inescapable, unique limitations. Some gamers demand portability, but I think all demand immersion.

I have an idea for a compromise.

What if map travel is changed to the following system:
- if activated away from a way point (middle of nowhere), costs remain as is.
-if activated at a way point (by physically clicking one), it's free.

Then players who want to save coin could just take a little more effort and walk to the nearest way point before they port.

In beta weekends I found this charge to severly handicap my ability to solo areas beyond starting areas. They have reduced the cost for both of these at earlier levels so, at launch, I was willing to give it a chance to grow on me. But now that I am lvl 80 it is again too much. And before you WoW players chime in and say how much more it costs in that game for these two usless expenses, I have never played any MMO but Guildwars... and I expect there is a reason for that.

I work for 8 hrs per day so I can have a house and feed my wife and kids. I love my family and enjoy my house. In a fantasy world I would pay my mortgage, put food on the table and then have the rest of my money to use for hobbies, go on vacation, drugs, hookers... whatever I decide to spend it on. But in reality I have to pay taxes, pay for gas to and from work and pay insurance on my car and my house. I also have to pay a monthly charge on natural gas and electricity in addition to what I use (I live in Canada so I can't just cut it off and not use any).

The point is I get far to much reality in real life. I have yet to find a person that says they enjoy these extra burdens placed on us players. Sure there are those that say they are use to it and have learned to manage their funds but as I play this game more, this involuntary spending of my cash is going to be what drives me back to GW1.

I have my share of usless drops and lagged events but I can easily get past those. I Don't understand how other ex-Guildwars players don't rip Anet a new one for putting so much effort into taking the best aspects of all games on the market but failing to bring along one of the greatest things about their own game and, in fact, draging such a negative function into this game simply because all the other games do it.

Paying for travel and repairing armor sucks. If it wasn't for this I would love this game. I hope people don't reply to this with ways around these chagres like the travel to Lion's Arch through the mists trick or easy places to farm where you don't die. I am against ANY charge for travel and armor repair. It really hurts those of us that like to choose what we spend our money on.

Beastgate is by far my new fav troll. Within a week of transferring he just hit the milestone for one million uses of the words "we" and "us" when talking about what SBI has done and is.

Soulstitchmmo, on 08 November 2012 - 10:39 PM, said:

All this talk about "earning spots" implies that WvW is more than having better 24 hour coverage.  It really isn't.

If we win T2, it will because we had better coverage and more people on the map, nothing more.  If we lose T1, it will mean we had less coverage and less people on the map, nothing more.

I feel like so many WvW people take themselves way too seriously.

DreadlockrastaGW, on 08 November 2012 - 06:51 PM, said:

To translate,  don't have a real life & play WVW 24/7 to accumulate badges of honor which for the most part are pretty much useless aside for using them to buy siege gear & come across like being able to accumulate said badges of honor easily somehow provides status which makes you cool !

I hate when you aggro a mob, it chases you and then you decide to stop and fight it, only for it to fight you for a moment and then turn away to run back to its spawn.