Guild Wars 2

Can you post a screenshot of the problem with the graphics setting window there as well. For the resolution, make sure the game is set to your monitor's native resolution, other than that, it's possible that the Gw2.dat archive is corrupted or that the issue is driver related.

If you are on nVidia 301.42, get the latest beta or revert back to 296.10, 301.42 and GW2 positively hate each other.

 

I really want to play this, but can't afford to upgrade just yet. Im stuck on a 2.5Ghz core2duo and a 9600mGT is it likely ill be able to play at all?

Diablo 3 runs fine at 1080p if that helps.

 

So far, I'm really enjoying the game, although I've only reached level 7, so I can't review it too much

The mechanics of the game are AMAZING and very innovative for the genre. The combat feels so fresh, no more dice rolling and standing still. The ability to step right into PvP on a level-playing field is a dream come true (although I did enjoy low level pvp in other mmos). Dynamic events, not having to talk to quest givers, The whole 'going away from the traditional Tank, Healer, 3 DPS composition of groups' is brilliant. Any combo of classes will work, even 5 of the same, and I can't wait to start some dungeon crawling!

However, there's one thing that's bothering me a bit.

I don't really know how to explain this, but I'm sure avid MMO gamers would understand ... and that's the feeling of "MMO-magic". That ability of a game to fully immerse you into the world, and make you just explore around in bewilderment. I felt it as soon as I stepped into Britannia in UO, Norrath in EQ, in the Dark age of Camelot, and especially Azeroth in WoW (although it probably helped that I was already invested in the Warcraft story).

I stopped playing WoW back in 2010, since the magic was gone, I was hoping that magic would be back in GW2... but so far I'm not feelin it.

It could just be my cynical old age, but obviously I'm having lots of fun playing, and therefore I will keep playing though in hopes that the magic returns

 

I'm on Stormbluff isles now as well.

Vapkez.2036, I think I already have some of you added, but if not add me.

 

The places in this game are just awesome. Keep in mind that these screenshots are much lower quality than in-game graphics.

Spoiler

 

I lol'ed at the shot in the last picture.

 

pooppooppoop

 

Make sure you guys disable auto-attack (think it's ctrl+ right mouse click on your 1st skill on the action bar). Makes the game more like a hack n' slash kinda thing

 

i'm about to just buy the digital download copy right now and see if i can still play before release date.

 

How is the 680m performing? And what drivers are you using? Thanks!

 

I have not tried pvp or wvw yet. But so far so good. Running ultra default settings with my 680m and 3720qm 8 gb ram getting ~60 fps with vsync on.

Funny enough I am also on stormbluff isle. Good to see some nbr members on it as well!

Vergeofinsanity.9103 Human/Mesmer Hope to see you guys on!

 

does race effect your class? i want to make a ranger first.

 

Nope. It just changes the racial-based elite skills, but it is not something drastic.

 

Are their any notable racial elite skills that are really good? Just seems like norms racial kinda sucks

 

no idea. i made a Sylvani ranger and a Human engineer. about to goto sleep and then i'll probably do some extensive gaming tomorrow and wednesday.

 

I'm kinda busy right now, i make sure that everyone who posted is invited in the guild if you haven't been already either later today or tomorrow.

 

Anyone think the controls are a little clunky compared to WoW. I have a hard time turning around fast enough when an enemy is behind me..

 

I agree, it is a bit slow for combat. I have to double tap the 'move down' key to make my character roll back to counteract quicker.

 

Both of these problems can be fixed by simply reassigning keys.
(the "quick turn" key is unassigned by default)

I am pretty sure this is simply due to needing to get used to a new control scheme.

I found the control scheme superior to anything WoW has ever dreamed of being... especially in PvP. /shrug

 

Anyone running the Envy 17-3200 and getting strange lag spikes? Happens about every 45 mins ... and tends to get tied into the sound as well. Everything slows down for a good 30 seconds (including the sound) and then pops back to normal eventually .... I have switchable graphics set for the program to run on high performance (on the 7850) ... not sure what else can be causing the problem. A bit reluctant to try up grading my graphics drivers to beta ... but will give it a shot if you all think its worth it.

 

It could be due to the switching as rubberbanding latency doesn't affect the sound in-game. Is there a way to perma-disable switching when you are going to play?

 

The only way I know is to force it in the configuration, which is already set. I do there is no way to force everything to run under the 7850. It has to be done program by program ... no bios setting or anything.

 

Does anyone know where to go to queue up for smaller-scale battlegrounds? I did some WvW last night and while it was totally awesome, the 5 hour run back after dying got kinda blegh.

 

So far quite impressed with GW2...

It is undoubtedly the best MMO since EQ1 in early game and easily game-of-the-year at this point regardless.

It has some downsides, (death needs a penalty/xp debt... dying needs to sting) but for the most part may very well revitalize MMOs.

To be entirely fair, I still am not high enough to see endgame, so the highest praise must wait.

Funny though... Gw2 in one fell swoop just made a mockery of every other MMO's PvP balance problems.

 

c2d T9300 @ 2.5ghz, 8800m GTX x2 (512 mb each), 4gb ram. I'm running on low settings. During events when a lot of people tend to gather and I imagine during PVP things slow down. Auto-detect actually enabled some shadows and better lighting but I lowered those for steadier FPS. Still running on the auto-detect 1900x1200 resolution or whatever my screen size is, can probably lower for more performance.

 

Thanks for this. Seems im going to have to go really low settings and resolution until i can upgrade.

 

I'm tempted to drop the cash on this. The only other MMO I've played is WoW. Are there like, dungeons and raids and crap like that in addition to the PVP and the world quests? Basically, what is the comparison with WoW (please don't say "WoW is crap and this is good", thanks)?

 

They mentioned that their philosophy is to not punish players with death since it is not fun.

Atm there is no end game besides pvp, pve has dungeons and events but that's it since there is no gear ranking once you are 80, only cosmetic differences. What i mean to say is people will play pve at 80 if it is fun otherwise no.

And since there is only so many dungeons/dynamic events and motivation to get cosmetic gear, i think most will focus on pvp end game. I hope i am wrong though, i want some pve for 80.... but it will have to be a lot of fun to it maintain itself.

 

It's the same, but a fair bit different from wow. Little things like mining ore veins are different in a more sensible way: everyone can mine the vein, so there is no mad rush for them, but you can only mine it once obviously. Quests are better designed in the sense that there isn't really killstealing or camping for spawns, all you need is a single hit on a mob to get quest credit and a chance at loot, which is very easy to do when every class has an aoe skill or 3.

I haven't even tried a dungeon or pvp yet but I know that GW1 pvp was always superior to wow, GW2 has got that the bag by default. I prepurchased it on sort of a whim, seems like a suitable wow replacement if that is what you want. I wanted a more casual mmo since I don't have time anymore to be a hardcore raider like I was in wow, so I'm pleased with it so far.

 

Well, more than likely the world events continue as you rise in level.

One of them I saw from beta is a "smaller" dragon... this is a zone-wide event and the dragon is big enough to squish even a Norn or Charr with its little toe. I think its been since EQ1 that anything with that level of scale and power. Nevermind the elder dragons...

Dungeons are supposed to continue as well and rise in challenge, although they are supposed to be smaller groups. (5man, but may be 10man) Dungeons you already conquered are supposed to have a challenge mode as well.

Ths original release is 1-80. It does not cover beyond that. And to be fair, most MMOs at release don't either.
GW2 does have differing rarities of gear, but once fully epic'd, I do ponder where they will go from there.

Gear in PvP is different than gear in PvE, so I am not sure why PvP is an "endgame" at all. (level doesn't matter as everyone in PvP is up-scaled to 80)

Death needs a sting... they made difficult mobs... for some people those aren't fun either. (the sheer number of crying wow-ites is staggering even without a penalty) Too easy isn't fun either. GW2 needs on more notch turned up and that is -Xp on non-pvp death IMHO.

 

I don't really see what a -XP on death penalty actually contributes to the game. Is death enjoyable otherwise?

 

I thought dying does have a penalty (it's not as dramatic as GW1's death penalty). Whenever you die and have to respawn via a waypoint a chunk of your health is lost. I'm guessing the more times you die and have to respawn, the more health you lose. I don't think you should should get penalized for dying mid-combat and getting rezzed by a fellow player.

There's also armor durability. Die too many times and your equipment starts to break. I personally don't think they should do anymore than that really.

 

I heard there were no mounts in this game and everyone has the ability to run really fast across the planes. I actually prefer mounts over increased movement speed buffs, but what do you guys think about this unconventional approach to travel in MMORPGS?

 

The fast travel does not mean running. It means teleportation to a Waypoint. Which IMO is a lot faster than a mount.

 

I would have preferred mounts then way-points but alas...

 

The concept is that your life (or death) should mean something.

Being able to pile corpses up to eventually accomplish your goal should be heavily discouraged.

XP penalty to death also means that levels mean more.

Each level is an actual accompishment as the environment can and does take them away when you play badly.

As for whether GW2 is worth the money, Id say it is for almost anyone who likes MMOs as they will likely easily get $60 of entertainment out of it even if endgame becomes an issue down the road.

The art style, inventive existing content, and sheer different look on an MMO is worth the $60 all by itself.

Some exceptions for people who should not bother with GW2.
-Low attention span people. Levelling takes a bit longer than WoW. Its no year-long prospect, but its not the week-to-maxed-out for casual players that WoW-ites expect now.
-Typical WoW huntards. (no I don't mean someone with a WoW hunter, I mean a huntard... a player who redefines awful every time they play and actually get WORSE by playing more.) GW2 will be way "too hard" for these people.
-Anyone mentally under the age of 13. Game is probably too complex for them to comprehend and they won't get most of the in-jokes and lore anyway. Age in years is not important... mental development is actually required for a game like this.
-Anyone who refuses to read in an MMO. if you feel the need to click through dialogue you have never read before, this really isn't your game.

 

There is a sort of penalty system in place, it isn't particularly punishing, but it still makes you think about what you're doing. Every time you die, you get death penalty which stacks (and also disappears after a while). Each stack of death penalty means that you will start with less health once you rally, but that if you're downed again, you will also have less health when you're in downed state making it easier to be defeated and have to go back to a waypoint. That means that you can get downed and die more easily as death penalty accumulates. Once you have enough death penalty (3 or 4 stacks i think), you can no longer enter the downed state which means that if your health drops to 0, you'll be defeated and you have to either wait for some passerby to bring you back up or map to a waypoint which costs you money.

Your armor also breaks each time you are defeated to the point that it looses all effectiveness after a while and repairing it will cost you money as well. Anet didn't go after the xp when you die, they went after your wallet and early in game having to go back to a waypoint and repair your armor often is gonna cost you a small fortune. The exception to having to go back to a waypoint is in large group events where there will always be someone to pick you up even if you enter the defeated state. However, your armor will still break piece by piece and you'll eventually get one hit killed if you don't go back to get it repaired.

On the point of the game being worth the money, look at it this way:

How much do you usually pay for a game and how much time do you spend playing it. GW2 is a one time fee thing, there are no monthly fees, anything in the cash shop is available through other means in game that are feasible and you can even get items from the cash shop with in game currency if you're a hardcore player with a ton of cash. Even if you only get 60 hours out of the game, it'll already be more than the standard console game that costs about the same amount.

 

Love the game, getting 65+ fps with vsync unchecked.

The game play is superior than any other MMO I've played so far and I'm having tons of fun as a Norn Ranger. I have an elementalist as a secondary character but I haven't had much time to play that character. WvW is amazing and so is pvp. One of the best games so far (way better than the other MMOs I've been apart of in the last few years) and it's taking a lot of time away from the other games I should be playing (Transformers Fall Of Cybertron, Max Payne 3, Mass Effect 3, etc)

Repairing armour is a pain and way better than losing experience. Having to hunt down a repair NPC and pay quite a bit to have your gear repaired is punishment enough. A good idea I feel compared to losing experience. I remember dying in AION and losing all that hard to get experience and cursing myself for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

Repairing armor is where the waypoints come in play nicely. Make note of which repair person is close to a waypoint, go there, and then go back to the closest waypoint you were at. I'm a Sylvari so I generally go to the grove as the bank and crafting stations are there as well.

I don't get why someone would want a mount when you have instant travel. "Scotty don't beam me up, I have a mount. see you in 20 minutes"...

 

Finally tried WvW yesterday... I was utterly impressed. Huge siege battles... also capturing the different areas. Ugh.. I'm in trouble... didn't expect this game to be THIS good. Bye bye free time.

680m users.. what settings are you guys using to run your game? I have it set on ultra and for the most part I am getting ~60fps w vsync on (no OC). But there are some times when utilization drops and I get lower fps.. any advice?

 

Yes I am a little worried about this. Sure way-points save time, but it breaks the immersion for me.

Also the fact that there's loading screens between zones is one nit-picky thing I'm not too happy about. Experiencing seamless zones when playing Vanilla WoW for the first time was just breathtaking, especially coming from EQ. It was like witchcraft!

 

On StormBluff too.

KolgrimmSwift.1930
Human/Warrior: Antithesis

If the US guild gets up can I get a invite.

 

The guild is up, i'll take care of sending it.

 

I'm calling it right now - Guild Wars 2 is one of the best online games ever made. Period.

Over the last ten years, I've played very few games that actually offered something new and different. Something I had not seen before. Battlefield 1942 and Planetside pushed wide-scale gameplay with lots of players. Star Wars Galaxies despite being a failure created a revolution in sandbox thinking and offered unique gameplay. Battlefield 2 offered gameplay within the game. Sucked at shooting? You could now become good in other ways, like focusing on being a Medic or Engineer doing other tasks and still being rewarded. WoW offered a large seamless world that was really impressive for it's time. Left 4 Dead offered unique co-operative gameplay combined with a director system that offered scaling.
That's really the extent of it for me as far as meaningful online experiences I personally have had over the last decade. You could argue COD4, but to me it was, even with it's advanced unlock system still just a personification of what BF2 had already done. COD4 offered tons of guns and fluff and flair, but to me it was just that. Not substantial long term, when you had things with much tighter netcode like CS.




Guild Wars 2 is AMAZING. You are still doing the same crap. It's still collect, protect, kill, gather, guard, escort. You know the drill. There is only a few tweaks to the formula in GW2 but these tweaks makes it amazing.
Meaningful play. GW2 wants you to play with others. your not restricted by leveling differences, amounts of players for groups, which zones you can go to, which questing paths your on, the faction, race or class choices of your friends. the server type of your friends. you can even switch to a different continent server if you want to. you dont need to group. everyone is in one big group. you cant steal resources.

the more players you are, the more enemies the game spawn. you havent played for 30 minutes and the game spawns so many enemies that its like your standing in the middle of dynasty warriors: centaur edition. its absolutely amazing.



you become addicted to do 100% ac (all clear) through zones. you go crazy to collect all the skill points, the vistas, the PoIs. then there is the jumping puzzles. the skill challenges. the dynamic events. the hearts.

a player in chat said to me "dis game. i just dinged because i harvested an onion!". you can get all the way to 80 by crafting. thee discovery system is amazing. dont know a recipe? just take your onions, your bread, your salt and some cucomber, and the discovery system will turn it into a new recipe called onion sandwich le skritt. its amazingly inutiive. it encourages discovery, exploration.

everything gives you xp. there is something for every playstyle. you virtually just stand in the world and go in some direction until you see something crazy. tons of world weapons and objects. tons of things to turn into. i was turned into a pig who had to dig after truffels! i turned into a snow leopard who had to scavange the bushes to stalk wild deer. you get new abilities for everything.



and then there is the pvp. and the wvw.

and personally, i love the personal story. its not the best writing, but its pretty fun, and some of them are really hard. the looting is amazing. you get so much loot. its like diablo 2 levels. even the merchants scale with you no matter what zone.


i just turned lvl 30 and did back and did the norn starter zone. the game downscaled me and the loot i got was even finetuned to me. This effectively mean that you can backtrack and have a fun challenge, get meaningful loot and explore earlier zones even if your a higher level. i fought a world boss and got great loot even though the zone was for max lvl 15.

this means that you can play meaningful with other people even if there are lots of levels between you. this game is amazing. its different enough to stand out. the art is wonderful. the music by jeremy soule (skyrim, kotor) is fantastic. and there is no monthly fee.

there are lots of bugs, problems and optimization issues. but all this PALES, in comparison to how great and awesome this game is. be part of this launch. seriously. this game. this freaking game!

 

Let's face it, repairing armor really isn't much of a penalty.
Indeed, on the rare occasions I have needed it, it hasn't been really costly at all. Indeed, its so low I just click repair automatically. Also, I have never needed something and wasn't able to buy it without plenty left over... note, I am not doing anything except normal adventuring, exploring, area events and my solo quests. No merchant stuff for me yet.

Maybe this matters a lot more for heavier armor toons.
It could be because my main is a mesmer, having my armor be less effective doesn't change much. If I am being hit my HP drops like a stone even fully repaired. (mesmers' enemies not hitting illusions or controlled are either overpull or you goofed in skill use)

I still consider the death penalty way too low... nothing really prevents the pile on corpses method of advancement through content. The game would be massively improved if it were to stop rewarding poor playing technique. The XP penalty for death doesn't need to be large, just enough to prevent corpse piling. Say 5% of a level or so. Die once, and you are back to the positive within a few minutes (30 seconds or so at low levels). Pile corpses and you are going backwards.

When the world is more difficult the community rises to the challenge and you have better communities.

 

The increased cost of Waypoints. My wallet!

 

This is what I never understood. What impact does the lack of a -XP penalty have on your gameplay and experience?

 

Rely on warping to LA and departing from cities. Pro tip. Do not use waypoints to get across a huge distance across the map if you want to keep your monies.

 

Hey guys tonight I am thinking about doing some group PvP. If you are on later I will try and get a group going and I believe that if we PvP as a guild it also gives influence, which can help the guild get upgrades and other various things.

 

I'll be on! Though I might actually gather more and finish Kessex HIlls.