Guild Wars 2 - U jelly cuz its free

[MrAngryFace]

Its not that im getting consistently bad performance, its that im getting dips outta nowhere. Already nuked shadows just in case. oh well- whatever- just annoying.

[etiolate]

Yeah, some people have had that problem. It seems random. I thought it was just Nvidia cards, but I guess not.

I do get occasional dips, but its normally on some sort of transition. I wonder if its their occlusion system.

[Rahxephon91]

The Norn starting zone is way better then the human one.

[etiolate]

I liked the human one more, but I do like the Bunny Feed Heart in the Norn Area, and the snowball fight Heart, along with the Dynamic event/dialogue that happens around it.

[Rahxephon91]

Really, my main reason for liking the Norm starting area is because of the Maw and Dome events. They really just show how awesome the World Events can be.

[etiolate]

I'm not sure what those are. I haven't done much of the Norn areas. I know they fight the Dredge a lot, so that interests me.

I did Sorrow's Embrace today, the big Dredge dungeon. It's pretty damn long. The final two bosses are pretty interesting. The last boss is that huge mechanical thing from the Gamescon trailer. It lava beamed me dead right off the bat.

[ManaByte]

Since the Mac client is in beta I decided I'd try it out. So I logged into the official site with my GW1 account and found that my display name is my GW account key.

ArenaNet told me it couldn't be changed. FUCKING IDIOTS.

[etiolate]

What?

But yeah they just announced Mac client support out of nowhere.

Yes, you read that right. Guild Wars 2 is available for Mac -- now. ArenaNet just announced that Guild Wars 2 will be supported on Apple's Mac OS X moving forward. Anyone who's purchased Guild Wars 2 has both clients available to them. Players using a Mac client will have all the same features and access to the same servers as a PC client.

[etiolate]

I wandered into Sparkfly Fen tonight, fighting some Risen hordes along the way. As I was hopping Dynamic Event to Dynamic Event, I wandered into my second dragon.





So many people. =/ Framerates dropped to the teens. I escaped to his tail and started killing his tendrels that pop out of the ground.

[etiolate]

Fought Jormag's Claw dragon last night. It's by far the most interesting of the dragon fights, but I think that's only because they execute the layers of the fight better and enforce them more than the other two fights. Jormag has multiple phases. In the first phase, he flies overhead and drops ice claws onto the ground which spawn Dynamic Events to take down the claws and the champion level mobs they spawn.

That's the point where CG and I wandered in, unwittingly, to the start of the dragon fight. We were basically mob-skipping and gathering nodes and food items, when the Dragon flew overhead and dropped a nasty on us. The moment where you hear the dragon and see it's large ass shadow pass over you is pretty cool.

After this first phase, the dragon rears up and faces the little war outpost nearby. The outpost has cannons that fire on the dragon's wings to bring him down, but when the dragon lands, it creates ice walls in front of him to protect from the cannons. Then you have to break down the walls and deal with some add spawns. Once you break down the walls, you can start hitting the dragon. At about 25% intervals, Jormag's Claw will rise up into the air again. At this point, lots of Champion level adds come from the cliffsides (you fight on a mountain, mainly fighting at two cliff edges and the battlepost in the middle of them) and attack the cannons and explosives at the outpost. You have to protect the ammo and cannons, and take down the Champions. Once you cannons are freed up, they fire again on the dragon. Everytime this happens, Jormag makes a run at the outpost from the air, and the sky explodes with anti-air fire. Then the dragon lands from the hits, and it goes back to the ice wall stage.

After you go through this enough times to get the dragon down to 25%, it flies up and takes one last big run at your battlepost. This time the cannons hit hard, take out the dragon's wings, and the dragon bounce crahses off the mountain and lands on the other cliffside. I thought that was the end of the fight, but instead, the dragon refuels without its wings and goes back to 100% health, but can no longer fly. Now he summons repeated Champion mobs from the cliffsides, and creates little ice spikes in the ground. Up close, he does a lot of damage. The Vigil and Kodan (two factions fighting with you) then send in Golems carrying bombs that need to navigate through the ice spikes and adds, and then suicide bomb the dragon. So this final phase consists of protecting the golems, while hitting the Dragon. clearing ice spikes and doing all the battle rezzing and helping that the fight has been full of so far.

After you whittle down his health with golem bombs and attacks does the dragon finally perish, and the treasure chest drops.

I have screens if anyone cares, but I thought posting how the fight went was more interesting.

[ManaByte]

Almost level 10. The game is basically what GW should've been. Still not as polished or fleshed out as a traditional sub MMO is. Even TOR feels better than this. Not bad for a free 2 play game, but it wouldn't be worth a monthly fee at all.

[etiolate]

I hit 80 yesterday. My first level 80 goal was to get a badass Greatsword. I picked out the Mystic Claymore as my target, as it seemed the easiest to get. It cost me 50 skill points, 30 Mystic Coins, and the cost of materials off the TP (about 1.7gold). 



http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Claymore

[ManaByte]

It's really the most boring MMO ever made, and lacks any of the charm other games have.

The random events are just a version of RIFT's rift fights.

That made me realize that where Runes of Magic is just a F2P WoW rip-off, GW2 is really just a F2P RIFT rip-off. But a lot more BORING.

[etiolate]

when are you two going to make out?

[Rahxephon91]

I wouldn't say the game is boring, but I'm not quite sure I agree with the "revolutionary/WoW alternative" bent that some reviews have given it.

I do believe that so far(I'm only about level 35 and have only just done the first dungeon" that the game is good. But it's obviously not perfect. The random events are cool and potentially epic. I don't know or care if they are new or whatever, they are new for me. For me they are fun and having tons of people show up out of the blue for them makes the game feel like well an actual online game, something say TOR never really felt like. They also make the game never really feel like there's nothing to do. I mean you can always just wonder around the world and find an event, maybe multiple ones going on. So in a sense the game is never boring.

But on the con side, the random events are basically always the same. Though in the end, isn't basically combat what you do in every mmo and really only combat? But they do seem to lack variation. Also, they basically just become spam-a-thons with no thought. You just gotta hope tons of people show up and can spam whatever their attacking with you. There doesn't really seem to be much thought between the battles and when you have a lot of people and a lot of enemies it's just a chaotic explosion of color that may make you feel like you'r pretty pointless in the grand scheme of things. It could become tiring in the end.

And while it's intersting feature of getting away from the quest long is something cool and new, it may not actually work. The Heart quests basicly always feel the same and while yeah that don't seem to be "go here kill 8 things" they really are. The problem is they kind of make me miss the qest chains. In WoW there could be fun in longer quest lines that took you all around the zone and maybe got you more involved. It did add to a more epic sense of adventure then the Heart quests that GW2. Maybe each zone in the game should have a Zone Chain quest that anyone can do. The personal story quest line only does so much.

But in the end what I liked most when I played WoW, was exploring a well crafted world that felt like a adventure to walk around. GW2 does this very well. Obviously the bonus they give you for exploration are well cool, but the world in this game is so well crafted and beatuiful that I really want to see everything. The level design shits all over TOR which was terrible in this regard.

As for the combat, well I quite like it. I really believe they have made good on the promise of allowing you the player to craft the character anyway you want. Something you couldn't do in WoW. The way they set-up skills makes you think about what you want to do with your character, but it's really not that overly complicated. Character making is probably one of this game's strongest aspects.

Anyway I think it's a good game and I'll probably continue playing it. I'm sure expansions and stuff will only make this game better.

[ManaByte]

https://twitter.com/GuildWars2/status/249391711002955777

 

[Phoenix Dark]

guess I'll be getting MoP before this afterall

[ManaByte]

guess I'll be getting MoP before this afterall

I doubt I'll be playing it much after Monday. Just killing time until MoP. It's no where near being a WoW replacement at all, and there are already rumors that server populations have dropped 45% since launch.

[Freyj]

Been playing on a borrowed account for a few days. My biggest complaint after spending more than an odd hour or so with a class I actually like (Guardian) is the skill system. 1-5 desperately needs to be more like TSW (or the original GW I guess, I haven't played much of it in years). Basic attacks are more boring than WoW. That's saying something considering I've played a Combat Rogue on and off for 8 years.

Quests / Events are pretty much what I expected them to be. Repetitive. But at least the environments are fun and the exploration element is there in droves to stave off boredom.

[etiolate]

The attacks have depth to them once you learn the game. The reason the game can have less skills on screen is because the skills serve multiple purposes. The condition the attack applies, the field or finisher it creates, and the different parts of the chain for chained skills matter quite a bit.

For example, the Engineer has less weapon selection than the other classes due to kits. One of the few weapons they can wield is a shield, and each shield skill has a second chained skill. It is not a matter of always using the chained secondary skill. It really depends on situation and what you're doing. The 4key skill is a electromagnetic bubble that reflects projectiles. This allows an Engineer to "tank" ranged hits for awhile. The 5key skill charges the shield with static and holds it in front of you, causing foes that hit you to be stunned by the electricity. Again, this is a tanky skill that can create a stun versus nearby foes. Then there are the chained parts of these skills. The electromagnetic bubble can be inverted by hitting the skill again, creating a bounce back bubble that knocks foes back. This turns the one shield skill into a control skill and distance keeper/kiting skill. It also makes it support by allowing you to push foes off of allies in danger. The 5key skill has a secondary chained skill as well, where the static charged shield is thrown out at a target, dazing and damaging foes it hits, and then returning back to you, dazing and damage foes as well. This turns the shield into a ranged interrupt and control, and also turns it into a ranged damage weapon. Since the flight path hits anything along the way and anything on the way back, it also turns the shield into an AOE weapon. Now each of those two chained secondary attacks are also combo finishers. The Inverted Magnetic Shield is a blast finisher. This means that if you drop a smoke bomb or a thief has laid a smoke field, you can use inverted magnetic shield to stealth you and nearby allies. You can use it in a fire field to create might. You can use it in a ethereal field to apply chaos shield to all your nearby allies, turning it back into a group buffing weapon. The thrown static shield is a projectile finisher. So if you throw it into a light field, you will remove conditions from allies. If you throw it into a poison field, you will poison foes and apply a healing debuff.

That's two skills serving a lot of purposes.


So, what I am saying is don't be a bitch PD! Get the game.

[Freyj]

I'd still prefer a little more skill breadth than so much focus on skill depth.

Anyway, the idea of combos is great on paper, but it's pretty much never going to happen in any strategic way in a many person environment. I use the Holy and Fire combos with 2H Mace as much as I can, but anyone else taking advantage of that is going to be pure coincidence of positioning.

[etiolate]

I'd still prefer a little more skill breadth than so much focus on skill depth.

Anyway, the idea of combos is great on paper, but it's pretty much never going to happen in any strategic way in a many person environment. I use the Holy and Fire combos with 2H Mace as much as I can, but anyone else taking advantage of that is going to be pure coincidence of positioning.

From my experience, I disagree on the "never going to happen in any strategic way in a many person environment" bit. A lot of WvWvW battles and tactics use combo skills. The blind/regen/stealth fields are used a lot. A lot of the supply/yak gank squads love to pop a stealth effect to ninja vanish on you. Poison combos are very important as well, as you can lower the healing of another large mob, and make it easier to finish them off. In a good zerg v zerg, there actually isn't a ton of dying as organized large groups make sure to get the hell out and also rally to any downed members. Spraying them with poison makes a big difference.

[Damian79]

guess I'll be getting MoP before this afterall

I doubt I'll be playing it much after Monday. Just killing time until MoP. It's no where near being a WoW replacement at all, and there are already rumors that server populations have dropped 45% since launch.

I wouldnt go back to WoW even if it was FTP.  Crafting needs to be fixed if I ever go back to it.  And the game needs o be much harder when you are levelling.  The game has become a cakewalk.

[Phoenix Dark]

I agree with both of those assessments. With each expansion you have a mixture of people who go into the new content with the best raid gear, or average gear. The new content seems to be under-tuned so that no one gets frustrated with anything. To make matters worse it's 5 levels meaning you basically speed run through 3 super fast, and can get to lv90 (or lv85 in Cata) by doing a couple dungeons.

I remember TBC being tough right out the gate. Granted I didn't have the best gear but so many of the early quests could kill you due to patrolling mobs, or random elites walking around, or quests that actually required more than one person.

If I was in charge of expansion leveling design I'd:

-No flying in new zones. That would force players to actually do content
-Better mixture of challenging quests. There will always be easy quests, but I'd like to see more that are designed to kill you; perhaps with more elite mobs
-more mini bosses to further add some difficulty in chain quests. Preferably ones that actually require multiple players to beat
-Lower xp in dungeons, It's very easy to level by just spamming dungeon runs, which is made even easier by the que system

[etiolate]

I have like over 1k screenshots, so deal with it.













And this last one is special for Triumph

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[Rahxephon91]

I really doubt my computer is going to handle some of the late game stuff lol.

[etiolate]

my screens
modern resolution

One day you too Ruzbeh will graduate from 800x600 to the 2000s!

[etiolate]

Why this game is awesome: Go back to a starter area to play with a lower level friend and find an event boss that still kicks your ass. Then go off exploring, find a new area you haven't before. Then grab a town POI and waypoint, then follow a stream of water to some Drakes, kill the Drakes to farm mats, and then see what looks like a dead end. But wait.. there's rocks and some vines covering something...



Go climb those rocks, pass through the vines and see that it's not a dead end..

spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's METROID. Place is called Tekk's Labratory and it's hidden inside the volcanic innards of the mountain range between Caledon Forest and Metrica Province. It's a jumping puzzle with temporary platforms that you activate via terminals. Haven't beaten it yet. Going to wait on CG to join me.

[close]

Total WHOA moment.

[etiolate]

First image I've seen of a Legendary Weapon in action.

[Rahxephon91]

WoW the fist dungeon Ascalonian Catacombs, was extremely hard for me. Every group I went in with turned into basically a corpse run. The 2nd, Caudecus's Manor was surprisingly short and very easy. Yet, it seemed to have a lot more loot.

Anyway, my engineer is at 51. The class is very fun and feels very versatile. My level 41 Warrior is also coming along well, but I'll probably finish the Eng before going back.

[etiolate]

Yeah, there is a difficulty spike with the dungeons. AC is harder than CM even though they said they increased difficulty on CM. Though if you have people who know it well it goes much smoother. The hardest part is the Two Lovers.

[etiolate]

My exotic sword and focus, plus some exotic gear from taking the temple of Lyssa and downing the priestess.

[etiolate]

Playing aroudn with SweetFX and this game. Some stuff looks purdy, but it sometimes darks out UI elements.

[etiolate]

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/events/halloween-2012

Halloween update. Sounds pretty cool. Interested in how much the Costumes will cost in gems, so I can figure out their cost in gold. I would like to do a costume brawl.

The update will also feature the new paid PVP tournament mode that rewards the top two teams with gems. I have like eight or ten tournament tickets sitting in my bank to use up.

also:

The world continues to evolve with new events, jumping puzzles, bosses, mini-dungeons, and achievements appearing across a variety of maps.

I wonder if they will say where these things are or just do as they talked about pre-launch and let people find them themselves.

[ManaByte]

I just realized why the game looks so shitty. Looks like Novalogic made a voxel based MMO.

[etiolate]

mana

that one didn't even make sense

[etiolate]

omg quaggan trick or treating

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/events/halloween-2012/

[Phoenix Dark]

that actually looks amazing. fuck

[Freyj]

So pumpkins all over major cities and some sort of Headless Horseman thing.

NEW AND INNOVATIVE CONTENT.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I don't really care, just seems like a lot of hype for a standard MMO Holiday event.

[close]

[etiolate]

ANet does holidays very well. They've always been worth logging in for. There's more to the patch, but they're just showing the cool Halloween stuff for that video. Looks like a Jumping Puzzle for Lion's Arch, so I'm looking forward to that and trying to get the special weapon skins. I'm most curious to see how they do Mad King Thorn in this one. In the first Guild Wars, he'd show up and play a game of simon says. He'd tell a really bad pun and if you didn't /laugh in response then he'd kill you. So you'd see like half the city drop dead all at once.

[etiolate]

[etiolate]

Finished the scavenger hunt quest this afternoon. You get a item from a NPC in Lion's Arch that replaces your weapon skills. I only just figured out today that the fifth skill changes depending on how close you are to the ghost NPC you are looking for. Each ghost gives you a book with clues to the location of two other ghosts.

Anyways, posting some screenshots and such.

COSTUME BRAWL


DEVIL HORNS


Haunted doors spawning shite out in the world


And then when I got a bunch of Candy Corn and finished off the last bit of my monthly achievement, I got 45k karma and had enough to buy the tier 3 Asuran cultural Greatsword


Last is a video from a gaffer who got the Halloween Chainsaw Greatsword out of a Black Lion Chest.

[etiolate]

The Mad King Tower is making me cry. =(

Act 2 of the event went live. I guess it was included in the previous patch and was just set to go at noon today. There's a continuation of the scavenger hunt quest, halloween huts out in the starter areas with activities, more Haunted Doors, Halloween Dynamic Events that may be part of a chain, and the Mad King's realm.

The Mad King Realm requires finding one of the haunted doors in the world and entering into it. The doors are random spawns and only show up for a certain amount of time. I think you have to do some qualifying events to have them spawn. Inside the Mad King Realm is a Labyrinth, a Rumble brawl, nad the Mad King's Tower. The Labyrinth is full of level 80 mobs and everyone gets up-leveled to 80, so any character can do it. Haunted Doors spawn in here and some put out Veteran mobs, while others spew out Champion mobs. After downing a Champion mob, you get a treasure chest that can drop exotics and other loot. I haven't done the brawl, but it seems to be some sort of Halloween pvp thing. The Mad King's Tower is a jumping puzzle. A very difficult jumping puzzle. You get stuck in an instance with other players, a timer counts down, and then you get teleported to the bottom of the tower. The tower spins and instant-kill fog rises up from below. You have to keep moving and making it to the next jump. When you fall and die, you get ported back to the starter gate and wait for the rest of your instance group. Nobody in our group managed to beat it and I had to quit in order to eat. I tried like 30 times. The camera issues show up here and it pisses me off. I still had fun though and will try another go at it. I might try it on a medium sized character. The bigger characters seemed to do better.

[etiolate]

[Freyj]

Etiolate: The Thread.

How's the playerbase retention on this going?

[etiolate]

I've only checked the North American servers, but they're all at High pop to Full. The server I'm on has been full for awhile. Checking right now, 15 of the 24 NA servers are at High and the other 9 are at Full. Sometimes if you try at the right time you can get into the full server though. The Halloween event was so busy that it seem to trigger an issue with ANet's datacenters and the servers actually went down for like fifteen minutes. It was the first real outage that I can think of so far.

[Great Rumbler]

Guild Wars 2 is totally free now, also there's a [paid] expansion coming out in October.

[doctavius bonbon]

Thought etiolate was back for a moment.

It's funny reading the hype prior to release followed by the meltdowns, though.

I got enough enjoyment out of the base game to give heart of horns a try. Someone told me that ArenaNet picked up some of Wildstar's raid devs, but I can't find a source on that.

[thisismyusername]

Guild Wars 2 is totally free now, also there's a [paid] expansion coming out in October.

I tried it the day it went free and found it kinda... boring. I don't know if FF14's beta on PS3 spoiled me in terms of gameplay or what, but the combat here is kinda... uh... yeah.

[Great Rumbler]

Feel better now, you big baby?