Guild Wars 2 Anticipation Thread! :) (PC)

[Huntn]

My GW2 purchase update- I cancelled my order with Best Buy. Normally they would not allow a refund on a digital purchase, however I argued that all I purchased was a serial number and they can't give me a serial number. I've ordered GW2 from Amazon (not a digital download) and should have it in a few days...

 

[Liquorpuki]

I've been playing GW2 since headstart now, my thoughts

• If I had to sum it up in one phrase, I'd call it an improved version of Warhammer Online. Dynamic Events are Public Quests version 2, with 3-4 quest states that cycle instead of just 1. It's well-done but at the same time, it's not the innovative feature people were making it out to be so part of me is disappointed.
• Dynamic Event drought (when you're in a zone and no dynamic event triggers for a long time) sucks. Mostly because since they took away quest hubs and mob xp is pitiful, you rely on the personal quest, renown hearts and DE's to level up. Personal quest and renown hearts are one time deals. DE's are for all other XP and when they don't happen, momentum just stops.
• At the same time the world feels more alive because there are no quest hubs and DE's alter parts of the world.
• Even though it's masked through Dynamic Events, PVE is still standard Themepark quest grinding. When it dropped I believed TSW had the best questing experience out of all MMO's to date and I still believe it.
• PVP is a lot of fun. From the little I've seen, there's a solid PVP end game here that's better than in most MMO's.
• I love waypoints. If there wasn't waypoint travel, dynamic event droughts would be a gamebreaker.
• The game engine is extremely optimized. The only time I get framerate drops is in WvW when there are a hundred players on screen.
• Still trying to figure out if I like what they did with the trinity. For solo content, every class is a hybrid like a WOW Shaman. In groups though, the trinity is dead because there are no dedicated roles. Everyone can DPS but they removed aggro and targeted heals so there's no tank or dedicated healer. To compensate, they threw a ton of AoE buffs and combos into the game that appear during group combat, usually by DPS triggers. Buffs and combos add healing and up DPS/survivability. So even though there are no roles, tanking/healing ends up being provided through groupwide buffs and compounded DPS. The good part is there's no more LF Healer nonsense. The bad part is group combat looks like chaos where a person still fights like he's soloing but ends up getting buffed incidentally by the person next to him. Meanwhile the person next to him is also fighting like he's soloing.
• Crafting = WOW crafting, except they hide half the recipes from you in the name of discovery. It's not hard to figure out recipes since they all follow a similar pattern but the system is almost like WOW's.
• The classes are extremely varied and make you want to try every class. My favorites so far are the Ranger and Mesmer. Every class plays differently, and each has unique hotbars that distinguish themselves further based on the weapon being wielded. It's fun trying out different weapons and seeing what you get.
• Nickel and diming on bank, bag, and alts sucks. No sub but an additional character slot costs $$$. 8 classes, 5 slots, you want to try all 8 you're gonna have to buy more slots or delete an existing character. There's a shared bank with only 30 slots shared between characters, which means most people are gonna end up purchasing additional bank slots. Bag slots are a ripoff too.
• In game store has some cool cosmetic stuff (sunglasses, boxing gloves, etc) but you can't wear them in combat. Also has some consumables which I think are ripoffs.
• The game is a lot of fun but more of an evolution than something groundbreaking. But it's worth picking up and light years ahead of whatever Blizzard is doing with panda bears

 

[answer348]

Sorry if this has been addressed earlier, but is there any final conclusion on how the rMBP plays Guild Wars 2 (in regards to visual settings, resolution, and frame rate)?

 

[Libertine Lush]

Sorry if this has been addressed earlier, but is there any final conclusion on how the rMBP plays Guild Wars 2 (in regards to visual settings, resolution, and frame rate)?

See the first post: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1404307/

 

[Huntn]

I've been playing GW2 since headstart now, my thoughts

• If I had to sum it up in one phrase, I'd call it an improved version of Warhammer Online. Dynamic Events are Public Quests version 2, with 3-4 quest states that cycle instead of just 1. It's well-done but at the same time, it's not the innovative feature people were making it out to be so part of me is disappointed.
• Dynamic Event drought (when you're in a zone and no dynamic event triggers for a long time) sucks. Mostly because since they took away quest hubs and mob xp is pitiful, you rely on the personal quest, renown hearts and DE's to level up. Personal quest and renown hearts are one time deals. DE's are for all other XP and when they don't happen, momentum just stops.
• At the same time the world feels more alive because there are no quest hubs and DE's alter parts of the world.
• Even though it's masked through Dynamic Events, PVE is still standard Themepark quest grinding. When it dropped I believed TSW had the best questing experience out of all MMO's to date and I still believe it.
• PVP is a lot of fun. From the little I've seen, there's a solid PVP end game here that's better than in most MMO's.
• I love waypoints. If there wasn't waypoint travel, dynamic event droughts would be a gamebreaker.
• The game engine is extremely optimized. The only time I get framerate drops is in WvW when there are a hundred players on screen.
• Still trying to figure out if I like what they did with the trinity. For solo content, every class is a hybrid like a WOW Shaman. In groups though, the trinity is dead because there are no dedicated roles. Everyone can DPS but they removed aggro and targeted heals so there's no tank or dedicated healer. To compensate, they threw a ton of AoE buffs and combos into the game that appear during group combat, usually by DPS triggers. Buffs and combos add healing and up DPS/survivability. So even though there are no roles, tanking/healing ends up being provided through groupwide buffs and compounded DPS. The good part is there's no more LF Healer nonsense. The bad part is group combat looks like chaos where a person still fights like he's soloing but ends up getting buffed incidentally by the person next to him. Meanwhile the person next to him is also fighting like he's soloing.
• Crafting = WOW crafting, except they hide half the recipes from you in the name of discovery. It's not hard to figure out recipes since they all follow a similar pattern but the system is almost like WOW's.
• The classes are extremely varied and make you want to try every class. My favorites so far are the Ranger and Mesmer. Every class plays differently, and each has unique hotbars that distinguish themselves further based on the weapon being wielded. It's fun trying out different weapons and seeing what you get.
• Nickel and diming on bank, bag, and alts sucks. No sub but an additional character slot costs $$$. 8 classes, 5 slots, you want to try all 8 you're gonna have to buy more slots or delete an existing character. There's a shared bank with only 30 slots shared between characters, which means most people are gonna end up purchasing additional bank slots. Bag slots are a ripoff too.
• In game store has some cool cosmetic stuff (sunglasses, boxing gloves, etc) but you can't wear them in combat. Also has some consumables which I think are ripoffs.
• The game is a lot of fun but more of an evolution than something groundbreaking. But it's worth picking up and light years ahead of whatever Blizzard is doing with panda bears

Thanks for your perspective. I'm now waiting for my hard copy of GW2 to arrive in the mail.

 

[joemod]

I've been playing GW2 since headstart now, my thoughts

• Nickel and diming on bank, bag, and alts sucks. No sub but an additional character slot costs $$$. 8 classes, 5 slots, you want to try all 8 you're gonna have to buy more slots or delete an existing character. There's a shared bank with only 30 slots shared between characters, which means most people are gonna end up purchasing additional bank slots. Bag slots are a ripoff too.

I agree with almost everything you wrote. Just a correction. You don't need $$$ to buy additional character slots, bags etc. You can exchange ingame currency (gold, silver, copper) for gems. I did it few days ago experimenting, where I exchanged 40 silver for around 140 gems. By paying with real money - which in my opinion is fair enough, since they have to maintain the game somehow - you just buy them faster.

Some additional notes from me.
- I am not addicted to this game although I like it. Either it is not revolutionary, or I am getting older.

- Crafting is difficult and cumbersome for me. I chose artificer and clothing(?) which both need salvaging items to raise up. So I have to kill mobs to get items, which I have to salvage, then go back to town and to each of the crafting stations, craft whatever I can craft, discover whatever I can discover, salvage the created items etc.

- I really like the system that different weapons grant different skills, I don't like though that as a healer elementalist I have good healing spells only when I use staves.

 

[Huntn]

I agree with almost everything you wrote. Just a correction. You don't need $$$ to buy additional character slots, bags etc. You can exchange ingame currency (gold, silver, copper) for gems. I did it few days ago experimenting, where I exchanged 40 silver for around 140 gems. By paying with real money - which in my opinion is fair enough, since they have to maintain the game somehow - you just buy them faster.

Are you using gems to by bags and character slots or using ingame currency to buy bags and character slots directly?

Some additional notes from me.
- I am not addicted to this game although I like it. Either it is not revolutionary, or I am getting older.

- Crafting is difficult and cumbersome for me. I chose artificer and clothing(?) which both need salvaging items to raise up. So I have to kill mobs to get items, which I have to salvage, then go back to town and to each of the crafting stations, craft whatever I can craft, discover whatever I can discover, salvage the created items etc.

- I really like the system that different weapons grant different skills, I don't like though that as a healer elementalist I have good healing spells only when I use staves.

Maybe it's revolutionary simply because it abandoned the holy trinity? In the beta I did not like the crafting either, but I admit I just need to get more familiar with it. What that means is you might have to keep several weapons for different situations although playing in the beta I don't remember exactly a specific case where a different weapons would have been better.

 

[Liquorpuki]

I agree with almost everything you wrote. Just a correction. You don't need $$$ to buy additional character slots, bags etc. You can exchange ingame currency (gold, silver, copper) for gems. I did it few days ago experimenting, where I exchanged 40 silver for around 140 gems. By paying with real money - which in my opinion is fair enough, since they have to maintain the game somehow - you just buy them faster.

That's true, I should have mentioned that, good correction.

Are you using gems to by bags and character slots or using ingame currency to buy bags and character slots directly?

There's a tab in the in-game shop to convert currency into gems, which you can then spend in the shop. Conversion rate is pretty low and the economy isn't stable yet so it's pretty hard to make $$$ on the auction house but you can do it if you're willing to grind it out. Off the top of my head, I think you need 800 gems to open up a new character slot and 600 gems to get another set of bank slots. Starting with only 30 bank slots especially sucks because they're shared between all characters and they end up being filled quickly with crafting materials.

Maybe it's revolutionary simply because it abandoned the holy trinity? In the beta I did not like the crafting either, but I admit I just need to get more familiar with it. What that means is you might have to keep several weapons for different situations although playing in the beta I don't remember exactly a specific case where a different weapons would have been better.

The abandoning of the trinity has actually been done before IE Asheron's Call. If anything, the game is revolutionary because it's proved for the first time in almost 10 years that you don't have to reskin WOW to break 1 million sales/subs/whatever. Hopefully this pushes MMO devs to start taking risks again.

 

[Libertine Lush]

If anything, the game is revolutionary because...

That you get a level 80 version of your character with maxed gear for sPVP near the beginning of the game, equalizing that portion of PVP for all players--has that been done before?

 

[Liquorpuki]

That you get a level 80 version of your character with maxed gear for sPVP near the beginning of the game, equalizing that portion of PVP for all players--has that been done before?

I never played it but I think the original GW upleveled you for PVP off the bat.

When I say revolutionary, I'm not talking about a single feature, I'm talking about breaking the typical Themepark core. Planetside was revolutionary b/c it was the first MMOFPS. SWG was revolutionary b/c it created a complex virtual world. Eve Online is one of the few revolutionary MMO's still on the market because 1) it's one of the only sandboxes, and 2) the devs are doing cool stuff w/ it like Dust 514.

 

[Libertine Lush]

Eve Online is one of the few revolutionary MMO's still on the market because 1) it's one of the only sandboxes

Maybe I misunderstand what sandbox means. I hear it in reference to games like GTA, Sleeping Dogs. I tried the Eve Online trial period. Didn't get far in it. In what way is it a sandbox?

 

[Liquorpuki]

Maybe I misunderstand what sandbox means. I hear it in reference to games like GTA, Sleeping Dogs. I tried the Eve Online trial period. Didn't get far in it. In what way is it a sandbox?

Yeah some people call open world single player games sandboxes. They're talking about something else though.

In MMO's, sandboxes and themeparks describe two different design approaches. A sandbox is a world where content is created by the players. The developer gives players the tools to shape the world, and the players do whatever they want. A themepark is a world where content is predetermined by the developers. Players just hop from ride to ride.

Sandbox = UO, SWG, Eve Online
Themepark = WOW and every MMO released since WOW

This is a pretty good explanation

I'm pretty fond of sandboxes, not because I dislike Themeparks, but because they provide a different gaming experience and there hasn't been a major studio sandbox created in almost a decade. In 2012, anyone who wants to play a big studio sandbox has to play Eve Online, and that game came out in 2003.

 

[Libertine Lush]

In MMO's, sandboxes and themeparks describe two different design approaches. A sandbox is a world where content is created by the players. The developer gives players the tools to shape the world, and the players do whatever they want. A themepark is a world where content is predetermined by the developers. Players just hop from ride to ride.

Great explanation. Thanks.

Recently, I happened across an incredible looking (Cry Engine 3) MMO from South Korea called Archeage. Takes the action-oriented gameplay of Tera even further and includes things like building homes in large continents alongside other players (not instanced), building large ships, deciding governing/taxing policy in cities that you create, naval warfare... So it seems to qualify for some of the player-shaping-the-world descriptive you gave. It'll get a NA/EU eventually, so it's something exciting to look forward to. Oh, and the character designs are so gorgeous and ornate. Something the South Koreans seem to do so much better than their Western counterparts.

 

[luffytubby]

gw2 benchmarked at notebookcheck: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Guild-Wars-2-Benchmarked.81604.0.html

 

[TallManNY]

Sorry if it's already been covered, but does anyone know how this will run on a 2011 iMac with a 3.1 i5 and 1GB 6970m at native resolution (2560 x 1440)?

Thanks.

That is what I'm running using boot camp and it seems to run fine. I haven't checked frame rates and stuff but I've played a few hours. The graphics card is plenty strong so I never had any concern that this game wouldn't play fine.

 

[luffytubby]

That is what I'm running using boot camp and it seems to run fine. I haven't checked frame rates and stuff but I've played a few hours. The graphics card is plenty strong so I never had any concern that this game wouldn't play fine.

im the new Imac gets a 680m then the game should fly for real!

 

[joemod]

That is what I'm running using boot camp and it seems to run fine. I haven't checked frame rates and stuff but I've played a few hours. The graphics card is plenty strong so I never had any concern that this game wouldn't play fine.

Have you played in WvW? Specially in skirmishes involving lots of players. This is a case where a system gets stressed.

 

[TallManNY]

Have you played in WvW? Specially in skirmishes involving lots of players. This is a case where a system gets stressed.

No I havent. I played launch weekend though and there are lots of folks in the newbie areas. When you join a dynamic event there might be as much as 20 other players joining in at the same time. Aside from that just being a cluster frak I didn't have any problem with frame rate that I noticed. I've got my setting up pretty high as well. But I'm also not super particular about this stuff and when playing WoW I found that I was fine with 30 FPS (though of course that was with my prior iMac, I do much better than that with my current set up).

I'm really quite certain it is going to play fine at all settings. The GPU is a very respectable one. The minimum specs are a core 2 duo and a 256 mb video card. It says it will run on an intel HD 3000. This game is trying to compete with WOW and they kept the spec requirements low to help compete.

The only problem is that the game takes up a huge amount of disk space at 25gb. My 100 gb partition boot camp is way too small for all the games I would like to put on it.

 

[mzjin]

I've been playing GW2 since headstart now, my thoughts

• If I had to sum it up in one phrase, I'd call it an improved version of Warhammer Online. Dynamic Events are Public Quests version 2, with 3-4 quest states that cycle instead of just 1. It's well-done but at the same time, it's not the innovative feature people were making it out to be so part of me is disappointed.
• Dynamic Event drought (when you're in a zone and no dynamic event triggers for a long time) sucks. Mostly because since they took away quest hubs and mob xp is pitiful, you rely on the personal quest, renown hearts and DE's to level up. Personal quest and renown hearts are one time deals. DE's are for all other XP and when they don't happen, momentum just stops.
• At the same time the world feels more alive because there are no quest hubs and DE's alter parts of the world.
• Even though it's masked through Dynamic Events, PVE is still standard Themepark quest grinding. When it dropped I believed TSW had the best questing experience out of all MMO's to date and I still believe it.
• PVP is a lot of fun. From the little I've seen, there's a solid PVP end game here that's better than in most MMO's.
• I love waypoints. If there wasn't waypoint travel, dynamic event droughts would be a gamebreaker.
• The game engine is extremely optimized. The only time I get framerate drops is in WvW when there are a hundred players on screen.
• Still trying to figure out if I like what they did with the trinity. For solo content, every class is a hybrid like a WOW Shaman. In groups though, the trinity is dead because there are no dedicated roles. Everyone can DPS but they removed aggro and targeted heals so there's no tank or dedicated healer. To compensate, they threw a ton of AoE buffs and combos into the game that appear during group combat, usually by DPS triggers. Buffs and combos add healing and up DPS/survivability. So even though there are no roles, tanking/healing ends up being provided through groupwide buffs and compounded DPS. The good part is there's no more LF Healer nonsense. The bad part is group combat looks like chaos where a person still fights like he's soloing but ends up getting buffed incidentally by the person next to him. Meanwhile the person next to him is also fighting like he's soloing.
• Crafting = WOW crafting, except they hide half the recipes from you in the name of discovery. It's not hard to figure out recipes since they all follow a similar pattern but the system is almost like WOW's.
• The classes are extremely varied and make you want to try every class. My favorites so far are the Ranger and Mesmer. Every class plays differently, and each has unique hotbars that distinguish themselves further based on the weapon being wielded. It's fun trying out different weapons and seeing what you get.
• Nickel and diming on bank, bag, and alts sucks. No sub but an additional character slot costs $$$. 8 classes, 5 slots, you want to try all 8 you're gonna have to buy more slots or delete an existing character. There's a shared bank with only 30 slots shared between characters, which means most people are gonna end up purchasing additional bank slots. Bag slots are a ripoff too.
• In game store has some cool cosmetic stuff (sunglasses, boxing gloves, etc) but you can't wear them in combat. Also has some consumables which I think are ripoffs.
• The game is a lot of fun but more of an evolution than something groundbreaking. But it's worth picking up and light years ahead of whatever Blizzard is doing with panda bears

I played GW2 in the pre-purchase 3 day headstart and got a refund instead.

The combat mechanics are just horrible - the gameplay itself is awful.

Diablo 3's gameplay was 100 times better, but Diablo 3 also had the worst storyline, end game, customization etc of any game.

GW2 is probably a better game overall, but at least D3 was fun for the first time you leveled from 1 - 60. After that, it's trash.

 

[Washac]

I played GW2 in the pre-purchase 3 day headstart and got a refund instead.

The combat mechanics are just horrible - the gameplay itself is awful.

Diablo 3's gameplay was 100 times better, but Diablo 3 also had the worst storyline, end game, customization etc of any game.

GW2 is probably a better game overall, but at least D3 was fun for the first time you leveled from 1 - 60. After that, it's trash.

Take it you dont like either then, I like Diablo III and cannot wait for my copy of Guild Wars 2 to arrive

 

[Liquorpuki]

Recently, I happened across an incredible looking (Cry Engine 3) MMO from South Korea called Archeage. Takes the action-oriented gameplay of Tera even further and includes things like building homes in large continents alongside other players (not instanced), building large ships, deciding governing/taxing policy in cities that you create, naval warfare...

Yeah that totally sounds like a sandbox to me. If not, it's a hybrid with strong sandbox elements.

I played GW2 in the pre-purchase 3 day headstart and got a refund instead.

The combat mechanics are just horrible - the gameplay itself is awful.

Diablo 3's gameplay was 100 times better, but Diablo 3 also had the worst storyline, end game, customization etc of any game.

GW2 is probably a better game overall, but at least D3 was fun for the first time you leveled from 1 - 60. After that, it's trash.

To me they're totally different games. GW2 is an MMO with typical MMO combat (they give you an active dodge and cap how many skills you can activate but otherwise, it's typical). D3 is a hack n slash dungeon crawler. I agree with you that the first play through was a lot of fun though. After that, I got bored b/c the replaying felt like grinding and Nightmare Mode was impossible. Supposedly the last patch fixed all this but I don't care enough to go back.

I also stopped playing GW2, not b/c I'm bored but because the game started crashing nonstop for me due to the Maincli.cpp bug. Plenty of people are reporting this bug, Arenanet is telling people it's because their memory is bad and telling them to replace their memory, which is BS.

 

[joemod]

Yeah that totally sounds like a sandbox to me. If not, it's a hybrid with strong sandbox elements.



To me they're totally different games. GW2 is an MMO with typical MMO combat (they give you an active dodge and cap how many skills you can activate but otherwise, it's typical). D3 is a hack n slash dungeon crawler. I agree with you that the first play through was a lot of fun though. After that, I got bored b/c the replaying felt like grinding and Nightmare Mode was impossible. Supposedly the last patch fixed all this but I don't care enough to go back.

I also stopped playing GW2, not b/c I'm bored but because the game started crashing nonstop for me due to the Maincli.cpp bug. Plenty of people are reporting this bug, Arenanet is telling people it's because their memory is bad and telling them to replace their memory, which is BS.

At least you need to replace (if so is true) only your ram. I need to replace the whole system, because of low fps and constant crashing either because I am running out of memory or because a graphics assertion occurs.

Offtopic but if this memory corruption is true then it's the OS duty to mark it as corrupted and not give it to applications. It's ok if something goes wrong in a game but what happens when a critical application uses it?

 

[KadMac]

So I just bought Guild Wars 2 today. There was a discount through Gamefly that I used which got the price down to $49. I am installing it now. Can't wait!

 

[Washac]

The anticipation is killing me here, I have a hard copy order sitting with a UK supplier still saying out of stock, but the guildwars2.com site has it back on sale as a digital download but for lots more money than my hard copy will cost.

Anybody know when the game will return to stores or do I swallow my pride and pay lots more for a digital
download ?

 

[robertcoogan]

VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop

I have run GW on both Fusion 5 and Parallels 7. Fusion performance is ok, but graphics can lag a bit (it is still playable). It runs great on Parallels, very little lag, and it isn't really noticeable.

I haven't run it under Boot Camp, but it will probably run much smoother.

---------

iMac
2.7 GHz i5 Quad-Core
8 GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512 MB