[Siyu Suen]

Since the beta thread is more of an announcement and a bit specific and we will actually get to play soon, this is a discussion thread for all things Guild Wars 2 related! For general chatting about gameplay, strategies, explorations and screenshots from the upcoming weekend, this is the place!

With the beta starting 12PST tomorrow (), what sort of character are you planning on making first? What class are you thinking of trying out? Are you going to go straight into PvP or try your personal story line first?

[Cristiano]

I'm going into it a bit blind. I was not a big fan of Guild Wars, but GW2 sounds like it has significantly evolved. I'm probably going to start off with some type of magic user. Are there any pet classes?

[Siyu Suen]

Originally Posted by Cristiano

I'm going into it a bit blind. I was not a big fan of Guild Wars, but GW2 sounds like it has significantly evolved. I'm probably going to start off with some type of magic user. Are there any pet classes?

Yep! There is the Ranger, which has a dedicated pet. There are a solid selection of pets which each have different skills which you can either have control over if you wish, or let the AI handle it. Depending on the pet, they have different skills available. You also get a different pet out if you're under water vs on land, such as a shark or jellyfish!

The Necromancer also has "pets" of a sort, they can summon about six minions at once that follow them around. Unlike GW1, they don't expire, and will keep following you until you sacrifice them as an ability (such as a Blood Fiend that will heal you if you sacrifice it).

[Cindy Claveau]

I posted this in the wrong Guild Wars thread, so this is a great place to repost it.

For those of you who have already pre-ordered and plan to try the open beta this weekend, here's some tips dredged from another forum:

Andrii's Tips and Tricks for "Getting the Most out of Your Beta Experience"

- Don't just skip through the questions after you design your character. Your answers impact your story and will also impact some NPC interactions in different areas.

- Guilds can be created the second you are out of the cinematic. Hit "G" to create a guild or to represent/stand down from a guild.

- The intro instance boss encounter WILL down you. This is so you can see how downed works. Even if you stay downed, the NPCs will win the encounter for you. For most classes, the 3 button will get you back up.

- Right away, hit H then select the PVP tab. Hit "Be in the Mists". After you port, there will be an Asura Gate in front of you. Take it to Lion's Arch. After this port, cross the bridge to Lion's Arch. At the fountain make a left. Here there are Asura Gates to every major city. The gates to Asura and Sylvari land will be blocked. Port to each major city and get the waypoint for zippy travel around the world. (This of course will also let you choose your newbie leveling zone)

-Waypoints are graveyards. As you begin exploring and leveling, you want to collect waypoints as fast as possible. Before you start working on a heart or dynamic event, get the closest waypoint or you will be very sad when you die and have to schlep all the way back.

- Go to Divinity's Reach because... god damn it's amazing. Best city in any MMO ever.

- Your weapon skill unlock makes progress by killing a mob. When you get a new weapon, grinding out the unlocks real quick will make for a more varied and strategic game experience early on.

- You can buy AND sell to the auction house (trading post) from anywhere. You have to go to a city to pick up what you have bought or sold however. You can also place buy orders.

- There are no breadcrumbs and no quest hubs. You progress in this game by EXPLORING. Pick a direction that looks good and you will stumble upon adventure. Getting sidetracked is how you will spend most of your time.

- There is no character trading. The mail system is instant, can be done from anywhere, requires no mailbox, and is the primary method for exchanging things between characters.

- You want to gather. There is no gathering skill. If two people hit a node, both get full reward. You can get upgrades for your equipment in the form of crystals from gathering. Even if you don't intend to craft you should gather for the crystals. You will need a consumable to gather. Axes are for logging, picks are for mining, sickles are for herbs and veggies. Most merchants sell these.

- You will start getting karma quickly. When you fill up a heart, the NPC will sell you gear or other goodies for karma. DO NOT BANK KARMA. Keep in mind you aren't getting gear quest rewards... because there are no quests. If a karma vendor has an upgrade for you, buy it then and there. This will insure that your relative power stays above the mobs you are fighting.

- DO NOT RUN AWAY AFTER COMPLETING ANY DYNAMIC EVENT. This is the best advice I can give. Most of the time, after a dynamic event completes, the NPCs will chat for a minute and then another dynamic event will start. You owe it to yourself to hang out and see what the next bit is. If you stay in a place for 3 minutes or so and nothing happens, it is safe to move on. The world around will change A LOT. Whether you are there to see it, is entirely up to you.

- If you have no idea where to go, look for a scout. They are marked with binoculars. They will reveal hearts for you. Also sometimes NPCs will beckon to you or run up to you and say "hey jerky, help a bro". Talk to these NPCs. They will reveal previously hidden dynamic events.

- If you see a different looking dynamic event box that has a background and stays active in a wide area, this is the zones meta dynamic event and requires coordination over a wide area to progress. The end of these events are usually really really satisfying. For instance in the human zone, there is a gigantic scary netherworld monster.

- There is no reason why you have to go to a higher level zone. You will automatically downlevel for an area and get appropriate rewards. If you finish a 1-15 zone, consider going to another 1-15 zone.

- Combat: Your 1 skill is autoattack. Everything else has a cooldown. Since you have a small number of skills this means you can do something you've probably never done in an MMO: look up. The primary thing holding your attention should be where and how you are moving and tells from the mob. To take care of that, you've got to watch carefully.

- Combat: Circle-strafe is your friend.

- Combat: If you run up to a mob, usually they will pause for a split second to punch you or to wind up a big attack. Use this to your advantage.

- Combat: Look at your skill tool tips and check for conditions. Conditions are fight changers. Sure you can just spam 1 and win, but proper use of conditions will greatly increase your survival and speed of killing.

- Combat: COMBOS - If you pull off a combo (a special attack combining your skills with another players skills) you will see "combo" in the heads-up combat spam. Experiment with this for hilarity and hi-jinks. The easy combos involve a field + a projectile or a field + a jumping/leaping attack.

- Combat: Move, move, move!

- Your 7, 8, 9 skills unlock at 5, 10, and 20 respectively. To get skills you need skill points. Do skill challenges for skill points. Every major city has a few skill points that you can just buy.

- Traits unlock at 11.

- In combat weapon switching unlocks at 7.

[Edav Nomad]

It looks like I'll be missing out on this beta weekend. Hopefully they will have another before it launches.

[Siyu Suen]

Originally Posted by Edav Nomad

It looks like I'll be missing out on this beta weekend. Hopefully they will have another before it launches.

They've said they might open up digital purchases again over the weekend depending on how concurrency goes up and down, so don't give up yet. Just check the purchase page a couple times on Saturday and Sunday.

There's no denying the Standard Edition is a good deal, with no subscription fees $60 bucks is great for a game with hundreds of hours of content. Not to mention access to the other beta weekends (of which I'm sure there will be several more before launch) and the starting items.

[Joshua Nightshade]

Siyu ignored me when I messaged her with this, but a fun sidenote is that a few weeks ago Adam hired the guy who was responsible for writing the bulk of the content for the first Guild Wars game as well as Factions. When Adam and I were in Shanghai at the start of the month we were having drinks with him; he's a pretty cool dude.

[Rebel Television]

I'll be playing this weekend. I think I'm going to be playing every class to get a feel for what I'd like to play in retail.

[Siyu Suen]

Originally Posted by Joshua Nightshade

Siyu ignored me when I messaged her with this...

SOMETIMES PP's don't go through

Besides you told me you'd hung out with him and might be hiring him ages ago!

[Siyu Suen]

Originally Posted by Rebel Television

I'll be playing this weekend. I think I'm going to be playing every class to get a feel for what I'd like to play in retail.

I have an idea of who I'm going to want to play, but I want to focus on one character for the most part and the beta is probably going to decide what that character is going to be. Worst comes to worst, I'll need to have two main characters

So basically I'll be playing the hell out of the thief and mesmer, trying to figure out which is worthy of the title of Siyu's Main Character.

By the way, since we can make guilds right out of the starting areas I'm going to make one with the tag MASK. If you see someone with the MASK tag, say hi!

[Rebel Television]

Personally I'm looking at the Engineer and Elementalist, because their ability to change kits/attunements allowing them to adapt to a lot of situations, and have extra cooldowns available. Which I can see being important in PvP.

edit: I'm also interested in Necromancer, since I did love minion bomber heroes in GW1

[Joshua Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Siyu Suen

SOMETIMES PP's don't go through

Besides you told me you'd hung out with him and might be hiring him ages ago!

It wasn't a private plurk, it was Skype, and I did not tell you ages ago because I didn't know who he was until we were having drinks. We're totally broken up now.

[Lianne Marten]

Other than reading the PC Gamer preview thing, i'm going in pretty much blind.

I'll probably play a melee fighter, I usually do. Either human or norn I think.

[Siyu Suen]

Originally Posted by Joshua Nightshade

It wasn't a private plurk, it was Skype, and I did not tell you ages ago because I didn't know who he was until we were having drinks. We're totally broken up now.

Well, I thought I had responded to it. Maybe you were just ignoring me. Anyhoo though, that's cool and now I vicariously know another Arenanetter

Originally Posted by Lianne Marten

Other than reading the PC Gamer preview thing, i'm going in pretty much blind.

I'll probably play a melee fighter, I usually do. Either human or norn I think.

Well you have your choices then, every class has melee options. It comes down to style of course, but for the most melee variety the warrior would win because they can use a butt load of weapons. But thieves and elementalists have daggers, mesmers and rangers have swords etc, but they all have different styles of using them. Warrior is the most straight forward whack things type of character and are a ton of fun to play, but that doesn't mean you might not enjoy playing a Guardian with a mace and shield and bouncing people off of warding bubbles.

[Mad Mouse]

Bear and I are going to try 3 classes each. Mesmer, Thief, and Ranger for me; Engineer, Warrior and Elementalist for Bear. But knowing what altaholics we are, we may just try them all

[Kalel]

the first one never grabbed my attention...

i'm still on the fence about this game..

[Bullet Bear]

Originally Posted by Mad Mouse

Bear and I are going to try 3 classes each. Mesmer, Thief, and Ranger for me; Engineer, Warrior and Elementalist for Bear. But knowing what altaholics we are, we may just try them all

I changed my mind! Screw elementalist, I'm making a necromancer and trying all of their dirty, nasty little tricks and their sweet downed phantomy modey thingy!

[Cindy Claveau]

Originally Posted by Kalel

the first one never grabbed my attention...

i'm still on the fence about this game..

It took me months to come around to GW1, and then I had to join Siyu's GW guild to really make things click. Those guys were incredibly helpful.

GW2 looks to me like GW1 X 4 million awesome. They've tuned the mechanics, tweaked and added classes, fixed what was wrong and added new shinies. I'm pretty excited about playing it but the timing is just bad this weekend. I WILL be playing once it's released

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBC_ig73aMs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBC_ig73aMs

[Kalel]

Originally Posted by Cindy Claveau

It took me months to come around to GW1, and then I had to join Siyu's GW guild to really make things click. Those guys were incredibly helpful.

GW2 looks to me like GW1 X 4 million awesome. They've tuned the mechanics, tweaked and added classes, fixed what was wrong and added new shinies. I'm pretty excited about playing it but the timing is just bad this weekend. I WILL be playing once it's released

Guild Wars 2 - Top 10 Reasons to be Interested - YouTube

wait.. 3:21 ...you can swim!?! O.O... Dont need to go any further then that...

[Ayumi]

I'm particularly interested in hearing feedback and comparison from people who have played other games in the MMO "WoW" Genre that GW2 is stepping into. WoW, Rift, Aion, Tera, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online etc, or even just unbiased opinions about the good AND the bad.

[Ame]

I'm trying ranger first then necro as they're my favoured GW classes. I can't wait to see what pets you can tame

[Seyla Warden]

I kind of want to get worked up over this, but I've been Molyneux'd way too many times in the past.

Also, I really really don't like pre-ordering unless I've beta-ed something beforehand and know it's decent.

[Twisted Pharaoh]

I was busy elsewhere and the OB starts in like 3 hours and i have no clue how to get into it!

[Seyla Warden]

Originally Posted by Twisted Pharaoh

I was busy elsewhere and the OB starts in like 3 hours and i have no clue how to get into it!

Wait, OPEN beta???

/me starts up Google

eta: Damn, I haz a sad.

If they can deliver on the stuff in that vid up there (I'm really doubting the No Trinity thing) it seems like it will be an awesome game (barring those weird anime mouse race things).

Can't really afford to spend $60 right now, but tempted...

[Rebel Television]

It's not "open", its preorders only right now, and they currently have ordering disabled on the official website (though you can still get a key through some digital distributers).