1)
who?nin. You know, the guy with the 8000+ posts.
2)
Well...er...what? Isn't strenght an attribute so really not that much of a bonus from the warrior (or I am guessing I have access to more armor?) No, strength is actually an upgradeable skillset in GW. Bit confusing I know. It honestly isn't that useful on its own (it gives 1 whole frigging percent Armor Penetration per point invested in it, which isn't all that much), although it has some skills that go with it that are moderately useful.
See, every class has 4 skillsets. You put points into that skillset, and then EVERY skill that is a part of that skillset will be upgraded. For example, if you upgrade your Healing Skillset as a monk, from 3 to 4, ALL your healing spells will be better, not just one.
For my warrior, is one better than the other for my secondary? I was not paying attention to what I clicked on (/yawn at boring quests) and apparently got the low level mesmer skills which seem cool because (a) they give me a way to heal in combat (w/o the 40 armor reduction thingie) and that one bleed attack procs more than my rage-based one does. A mesmer is a pretty strong class, although it's probably the most involved / difficult to play, since it's a counter specialist (ie, it counters what enemies do). Warrior primary can do well with pretty much every secondary, although I still think that anyone who plays a Warrior / Ranger (Ranger / Warrior) kinda has things confused
Healing is something every class can do, actually, SELF healing that is. Some are slightly better than others, but only the monk can do it well, and can heal others better than they can heal themselves.
The downside to being a Warrior / Mesmer is that Mesmer has a lot of high energy skills and your warrior energy pool is currently only 20. (will go up to 27 with gladiator armor later, and you can, I suppose, use a side item in your offhand to go to around 35, but that will negate the use of a shield...)
Are there actual crafting/customizations skills/professions or is it literally buying the (finite) kits, break crap down, lugging crap around my inventory, and hoping I stumble upon a crafter NPC that can make something nice? Speaking of space, is there a GW bank or storage center? Yes, but not until you leave the newbie zone. Once you exit the newbie zone, there is a bank in every town that you can access. The cool thing is, ALL your characters access the same account, so it's easy to swap stuff between characters. The downside, ofcourse, is that storage is pretty limited.
There is no real crafting structure in the game besides the limited crafting I already explained. I just sell most stuff, and if I ever find I need to craft something I just buy it back. Easier than hauling it all around.
But...I already hit level five or fix just in playing a very short bit this AM. Unless it slows down drastically (ddrrraaggggg,) does that not mean the "growing" part of your character ends fairly abruptly? That was a real killer in WoW and this one seems even more limited. Is it really just (boring) PvP or endlessly hunting around for the next 1337 item? I guess all the games really break down into this, but they generally do not do it so early or there are the jobs/profressions to add some spicey variety to the game. Well, you do level EXTREMELY fast in the newbie zone, because of the fact that the monsters, while utterly crappy, are still of comparable level to you, and thus give you a lot of XP. It will still take you quite awhile to reach 20 (believe me).
But yeah, once you reach 20, your character "growth" is over, although you can still gain extra skills and such (and hunt for Elites, if you can be so bothered).
I agree that I personally enjoy having that character grow more, but in the end, whether it's 60 or 20 or 150, a level is a just a number. You'll reach it sooner or later (sooner in GW), and once you've reached it, you get bored if you're all about character growth.
Once you've reached 20, there are some fair few missions / instances made especially for level 20 characters, and a few more being released soon, but yeah, if you don't ENJOY doing those missions (they get a lot better btw, so far all you've done are quests, the real MISSIONS don't start until after the newbie zone, and most of those are a LOT of fun to play through), then you're going to get bored with GW pretty quickly.
4)
Well, mostly I was referring to my attribute skills...or are they really not as important as the talents are in WoW? LIkewise, what should a warrior go with? It looks like strength is good along with specializing in one weapon type...but what about that last, group-friendly skill? I miss having the talent screen in WoW and planning out how I want my character to be shaped, I guess. I don't know what talents are in WoW, so can't really compare. Note that in Guild Wars you can never make a WRONG choice for your character where skillsets / skills etc are concerned. If you upgrade strength now, but later decide you don't like it, you can get those points invested in strength back (simply click on the - in front of it). You earn "refund points" by gaining xp, and they fill up very rapidly, enough so that you can completely redo two whole skillsets from 12 to 0 and up two others from 0 to 12.
So go with what you like. Strenght is pretty decent, although compared to some of the other primaries I find it's pretty weak. Stick with one weapon (they all have advantages and disadvantages) class, put some points in mesmer domination for example, and just fiddle around.
Like I said, you can never make a WRONG choice in GW.
So while you miss the talent screen which allows you to plan, Guild Wars isn't that locked. Go one way, if you don't like it, reverse and go the other. For me, this is one of THE best things about GW, that you don't have to start over from scratch if you put some points into skills you don't like (or, since we're talking about WoW, that Blizzard smacked their nerf bat down on to completely ruin your character).
5
Awww, I have no issue with Gwen, but what else can I do? I have not received a shawl from her so I guess I will have to get her more flowers, but are there any other items I should be on the lookout for? Can't be much help here, I hate Gwen. She gets you stuck, she supposedly heals you but this is VERY rare, and she sucks up gold like nothing else. I think you have to buy her a flute and a cape from the item store.
6. I dun'no - I'll have to group with some people or join a guild to see if there is more to the game, but I thought it would at least have me leveling and growing for a bit instead of having such a small cap and really, really focusing solely on PvP. Also, in GW, is the tank a fighter, a meatshield (tank,) both, neither? Well, like I said, the newbie zone is a VERY poor representation of the actual game. You don't HAVE to focus on PvP (I've never done any, apart from that one battle you HAVE to do), if you like fun missions (that can take hours to complete with 6 characters) and exploring, Guild Wars is a lot of fun. If you enjoy character growth and xp grinding more, then it's probably going to disappoint you a bit.
Again, the missions are probably the core of the game, and you haven't seen a single one yet. You've just seen quests.
A fighter is predominantly a tank, since his DPS is dwarved by that of elementalists, rangers and even mesmers to an extent. The fighter's job is to aggro the monsters, get them to start bashing him, and then have the Elementalist rain an AoE spell on them.
But, with some nice skill combos, fighters CAN dish out some good damage, and inflict pretty decent status afflictions.
As for botters/CD-keys, I honestly thing that is an inherent aspect of MMOG as they currently stand. Most developers blow smoke up our collective ass; they could reall care less so long as they have the sales and (for other games) accounts... Yup. I personally have no issue with botters, I have an issue with Arenanet's RETARDED method of trying to counter them, which basically involves just nerfing EVERY enchantment (by giving almost every mob an instant enchantment removal), thereby invalidating fully one third of all skills in the game.
guess I will have to read the manual ($%@#%$#@$%@# and I am hoping playing with all of you will help things.....but it still seems like this is just a version of Diablo and should not even really be considered a MMOG. Well, noone has ever denied that it is anything BUT a prettier looking Diablo clone, AFAIK
And it's not a MMOG, few people have denied that either
Creston
Collectors generally have useless crap. I don't bother with them at all post-searingThis is NOT TRUE, btw. When you LOOK at what they have, their stuff seems useless, but you can get AWESOME items from them later on, especially weapons. And with Anet CONTINUOUSLY nerfing drop rates to hell, pretty much the ONLY way you can get a decent weapon now is to either buy gold on ebay and spend 200 plat on a frigging sword, or to get one from the collectors beyond the desert and such.
But collectors are well worth it. The ones near piken square give weapons that do bonus damage vs Charr, for example. And since Charr is all you face, it's a helpful weapon to have.
Really, they're pretty good
This comment was edited on Aug 24, 09:47.