Yeah, you didn't have to pay more than 5-8k for the best armor in Guild Wars. If you wanted better looking (subjective of course) armor, then it usually cost more. The stuff like elite and Vabbian armor, or Obsidian armor (which I have 7 sets of) was merely there for "hey look at me" and aesthetic value. It also wasn't hard to make money, you just had to have a bit of know how, and back in the day I was it the right place at the right time for a few of the farms before they got nerfed, not to mention the "open market" towns were always good for making money.

Anyways, 7 hours away wee. I'm looking forward to it, gonna try out what's to be my first character come release unless I change my mind..Norn Warrior.

Well, played for about 4 1/2 hours. I like it, can't wait for it. It's really massive though, I was overwhelmed and some things seem..betaish still..like not smooth etc.

Besides that, exploring/killing/questing is very fun, because it's all one big co-op game. You can revive fallen people, buff them without them being in your party using a shout, hit any creature, join almost any quest. There's no one for all and all for himself, it's all for everyone. Then there will be quests that pop up that require a bunch of people to attempt, I did a number of those they were cool. I've spent the the entire time in the first 2 maps pretty much, one being a city. And if you help attack someone or contribute to a quest a little bit..leave and go somewhere else you can still get credit for helping out with the quest..it's really nice.

It's really laggy though, but a lot of people are playing so that's to be expected, the servers seem to be handling it fairly well..throwing people into an overflow server until their queue number comes up. Fast travel costs 10-20 coins, which is kinda meh.

But yeah there's so much stuff, I can't even tell half of it. Though, most of it's already been told so I don't even have to!

Welp the $60 I spent on GW2 is already worth every penny at level 15. Just went across the most epic boss fight I have came across for quite awhile.

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/836/gw004i.jpg

http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/6711/gw005e.jpg

And this was after the ending of quite a long chain so it certainly was the best finale!

Everything I had hoped it would be and more. I wouldn't be upset if they released it now, as is. I can only imagine how it will be when it is released in a few months.

I am so jelly of you guys right now! Just makes me want to play GW1 again!

If I buy the game from Amazon will I get my code to play in the beta or will I need to wait until the game releases and I get the box?

If you pay in full you should be able to get a code, I don't know if it'll work for this beta but the next ones it should work for. There will probably be a few more before release unfortunately.

I played 20 hours total almost lol. I can see this game sapping up much of my outside of work life when it releases. And I'm okay with that.

Been trying to DL the 18GB beta client for a while today. Server keeps stopping, restart, etc. Only 4GB to go!

I liked GW1 ok for a while (long long ago, never bought any expansions)...curious to see what the differences are. I'll miss the solo play campaign personally, since I like to play alone even in an MMO. Won't have time to try it in-depth, but since it's a f2p game, and Diablo3 is kind of a bust for me, I'm curious to take a peek at least.

Does it feel more MMO like than before? It sounds more MMO like, but that could be description vs. reality.

Yeah it's almost nothing like the original Guild Wars other than the amount of skills on your bar. 5 of them change with the weapon you have equipped. Each weapon has it's own special attack..and then you get a heal, 3 utility skills (that you have to unlock with skill points acquired out in the world by doing various things) and an elite skill (they start at lv 30).

It's much more like an MMO, and I played with people all over even though I joined no party. It's pretty much co-op centered to the max. While out in about in the world (no more instances per se, there are a few relating to personal story quests and going into houses and I think dungeons but otherwise it's all connected) you run into people all the time, mostly doing the dynamic events which are aplenty...at least in the area I was in. You can join the DE's by going into this orange circle that appears on the map and doing whatever the quest has you do, anyone can join at any time before it ends and get a reward for it. Sometimes I could only get in a few attacks on a boss and I'd still get a reward for it. You also get a reward if it fails, though not as big. All kills are shared pretty much, the loot displacement happens randomly sometimes you can loot the corpses, sometimes you can't...but there's no kill or loot stealing.

Quest items, crafting nodes..all are for the person..if one person hits a copper node, it doesn't make it disappear. But yeah, if you die you can get rezzed by anyone in the game and people usually do rez you. You can also rez them, which I think is a neat feature and makes it so everyone helps everyone out.

But yeah, there's way too much for me to tell about this game..you gotta try it for yourself lol. From what I've been hearing, I think the Norn area has the best experience DE wise, as they're almost always going on.

Well I got a preoder and into the beta weekend. Playing mages is really fun, especially the elementalist, just so much you can do. 4 elements to choose from, different weapons for different skills. Necro is really cool too. The mesmer was sort of dissapointing. I knew it was different than the GW1 Mes, but all of the subtlety that made the mesmer a mesmer seemed to be thrown out the window. That said, the class itself was very fun.

I haven't got a chance to try WvWvW yet, but that is what I am looking forward to the most.

Not sure what I think of melee though. Casting seems superior in every way. Not only funner, but in the dynamic events melee seemed to get destroyed if it got close to a boss while ranged kept safe.

I am really not a fan of the artistic style for the human males though. Very korean-style, prepubascent faces and hairstyles. With very few choices to look any different. In GW1 you had a wide range of faces. Old, young, scarred etc. Here you have 1 older looking face and a ton of baby-faced ones. Also not a fan of the male norn (though this isn't a surprise). The female norn look great: big, tall, strong amazonian style women. Then you have the male which is more like Blob or The Hulk. Really wish they had gone with a style closer to the females looking more like a giant human.


Despite all that I am looking forward to the game.

Well jeez, I enter the game, know nothing, follow the msg (go to inn, see this, defend the bridge etc) and I'm just following people, not knowing what to do/what's going on. Couldn't figure out how to draw a weapon for a while and stood amidst chaos looking at my hotkey menus and so on. Very confusing. Don't like that intro when you're someone going in completely blind to the game. (edit:that's not meant as some kind of big negative, just not familiar hence feels very chaotic, heh)

Then I get dumped into a waiting room for a spot in the next level.

Do like the look, sounds, etc. Graphics nothing special but looks good, with the weather and all of that.

The waiting room is basically another server, you can still do everything you're doing now. I was playing on the Overflow servers the entire time today just about, there are still quite a bit of people on those.

And yeah, they throw you right in and tell you nothing. I'm sure they'll have a tutorial in there by the time the game releases.

So I finally got my GW1 password reset and sent to me. Log in and my runes are gone and someones been playing my account. Look around further and find that I now have 105 ectos oO. Reset my passwords on anything connected to my account. Now I need to find a way to hopefully change the account name of my GW1 account.

Hmm... not really a bad thing. Maybe you should let them continue to play.

So I can just leave the waiting room? Why bother telling ppl you're waiting for one to open up, then, eg what's the difference if any?

I'm sure once you know how to play, that intro is no big deal. I'm just easily confused. heh. I started a Guardian, thinking it might be good for solo play, even tho I'm not good at melee. I miss the Monk.

If I could run Guildwars 1 smoothly, could I run Guildwars 2, if not with a little bit of lag?

Possibly if it's fully optimized at launch Anet has gotten 8 year old GPU's to run it. Even had to special order some because they needed more that age. But at the momment its more CPU heavy which is what Anet will be tweaking after the current BWE.

Epic bunny is epic.

http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/6215/gw008s.jpg

Never played the first game, but Game Informer and other sites have slowly been peaking my interest for the second one. How long is Arena Net planning on supporting the first game's servers? I may have to pick it up just to get ready for this one.

They are staying open after GW 2 launches, I don't know for how long though.
Well you can get in a queue for the main server you chose. The overflow servers are like servers where people go when waiting for the queue, and there could be people there from other servers. Take today for instance, I got asked if I wanted to be in the queue for my main server, got placed in the overlow and about 10 minutes later I got into my main server.

As for solo play, you won't be doing a lot of it come release. You might be solo but there will be people helping you out on events left and right, and you will be helping them...if you plan on doing the dynamic events. Everyone helps everyone in this game.

This is kind of old news, but for anyone who was curious, the system requirements are on the online pre-purchase page. Aside from taking up a massive amount of hard drive space, they're actually surprisingly light.