Press the spacebar to auto follow. You can group with people not in your area if you know their name. Send them a whisper, and then meet them in the city.

Is anyone playing this? I just got it last weekend, and so far I'm enjoying it. I have an level 5 Elementalist, haven't decided on a second profession yet, and I'm still pre-searing. I like the fact that it creates new instances of non-common areas, and that it is billed as more of an 'online RPG' rather than 'mmorpg', though I know that at the mid- to end- game, forming parties is essential. I'd rather play solo, then party as needed, than play with a group, and solo intermittently, if that makes any sense.

I got it last week, I ended up getting it for my brother for his birthday, but when I saw it was A) on sale + GGC at Best Buy, and B) No monthly charge, I picked up a copy myself. I'm a 12 Monk/Mesmer right now, and it's a lot of fun. Definately a challenge on some of these missions, your group is key.

I've been playing for a while, finally went post searing yesterday. I was having some problems doing quest with the NPC henchmen, but last night changed the henchmen I took and actually did pretty well. Ended up doing/finishing 4 quest and almost hit level 9 with my Ele/Mo.

Edaire Molteff if you want to look me up in the game.

I am having fun with this, too, although I haven't played for a week or so. Now that I have San Andreas for PC, I suspect I won't be playing anytime soon.

Great game, though

So how is the gameplay, treasure hunting, leveling compared to Diablo? Is leveling about the same or is it harder like in a MMPORPG like Everquest, DAoC, etc? Can I get on for about 2-6 hours a week and have a decent character? I know when I played DAoC, if I did not play 2-5 hours a day my characters sucked.


Is it worth trying to play this on a AMD K6-1Ghz? I need a new(ish) video card anyway and this might make me actually buy one.

Anyone (still) playing this? I am about to get and would welcome some advice or some help.

Sorry, I missed your post from 6/29.
No, you don't have to powerlevel.
It depends on how you want to play. You can start the game as a RPG character, level 1, and play solo or with hired henchmen for quite a while, and go through the game at your own speed. Playing like that, it's somewhat like a traditional RPG. There's a plot, and the quests aren't just fetch quests, there's a story to them. You get more experience and skills by doing quests rather than just randomly wandering and killing [although you can certainly do that]. My level 10 character, I have grouped with other real life people for maybe five minutes, to do one newbie quest that requires two people. Other than that, I've used the henchmen.
At any time you can group with real life people, to either do quests or participate in PVP battles [once you get to a certain point].
Treasure hunting, I don't think there's as much cool treasure as in Diablo 2 or other MMORPGs; the good thing is, there's also no camping or kill/lootstealing, due to the instancing of the maps. It's not just a Monty Haul game; while you can certainly go for the neat, powerful stuff, I don't know if there are really any 'uberweapons', and a lower level character, played well and with a good skill set, can easily defeat a higher level character in PVP or a higher level monster.
I haven't played EQ in years, and never played WoW, so I can't compare directly, but the focus in GW is *not* on powerleveling. In fact, the highest 'level' you can get is level 20 [one of my characters is level 10], but you can keep earning skills.
You can only choose 8 skills to have active at a time, and you can only change them in a town or outpost, so strategy and skillful playing is much more important than I believe it is in other mmorpgs.
I have not played anywhere near 2-5 hours a day; I think I've played a total of maybe 24 hours among 3 characters [you can type /age in-game to see how long that character has played].
If you want to jump in and start playing PVP, you can actually create a level 20 character and do it. At the same time, you can start a RP character, because as your RP character advances, the skills s/he unlocks can then be used by the PVP character. In other words, the player is rewarded for participating in both game styles. So your level 20 character, newly created, might be no match for my level 16 character who has got 20 more skills to choose from, and a finely honed play style [I don't, that's just hypothetical].

I'm playing on these specs:
P4 2.8 GHZ
512 MB RAM
ATI Radeon X300 128 Mb RAM
and it plays fine, with almost all the options on 'high.'
My wife's machine is a P4 2.4 GHZ, 512 MB ram, with the Intel Integrated graphics card; technically, it's not supposed to run GW at all, but it does run, with virtually everything on 'low'. Frame rate is not great, but it is playable.
When are you getting it? I can get on some evening this week and be there for questions if you want. It's actually pretty intuitive, when you start a new character, there's the popup help tips, and the first couple quests are really easy; also, the box package comes with a handy keyboard quick reference card which helps. My characters are Alichine Stormwatch, Argilla Seil, and Valour Kand, if you add one of those to your 'friends' list [hit "n"], it'll show you whenever I'm logged on as any of them.

Sweet, thanks. I have been hitting the GW boards and getting some good info. I am waiting to get it, hopefully in the next couple of days - Target.com has it for $39.99 and there is an extra 10% off till 7/13 total w/ shipping was just under $43.
I will go first for a Ranger, this is my weakness, I love the bow. I do not know what I will do for a secondary skill, Elementalist is looking good, but I am undecided. I both like and hate that there seem to be no cookie cutter characters, unber-weapons. I like that there is no need to camp and worry about people swiping from your kill, and the fact that $1.5k equipment is as good as $15k equipment, just not as cool looking. Some seem to think Anet has nerfed the drops too much, I guess I will see when I get on this week.

It is really open with character creation. There's only 6 professions, but since you can pick any secondary, and then pick any skills from either profession, there's lots of different character builds. I like the fact that you can 'buy back' your attribute points, so you can always 'rebuild' your character's strengths if you want to, although I haven't done that yet.
My main is an Elementalist/Necromancer, mainly because I usually solo and it's nice to leech life or have a couple undead to help me out. Rangers have pets which I think can act the same. My other two are a Mesmer and a Warrior, but I haven't decided what their second prof should be. You do have plenty of time to decide, however. My wife's a ranger so I didn't want to do that.
Which GW boards do you frequent? I lurk on GWonline occasionally, but it's too high traffic for me to really follow or make a presence.

Mostly guild-hall.net and gwonline, if you go to the main guildwars.com they have a listing for several other sites all with ratings. I think GWonline has a better forum, seperated into different professions, but I like guild-hall site better. I usually am just a lurker on sites such as these, I do not think I ever registered at any Diablo site, even though I played these for about 4-5 years.

Is there only one server/world for this game? I have not seen any mention of servers on any of the boards I have been to.


BTW I discovered that on of the best D2 sites has a GW guild, theamazonbasin.com, along with other MMO guilds.

Yes, there is only one server for North America. Korea has their own, possibly other places as well. But the idea is to keep the whole community together.

There's pretty much one world per continent, it puts you on a world matching whatever language you speak based on your country [I think]. However, there are different servers/realms/whatever--if you go into a town/outpost, look in the upper left corner of your screen, and it'll say something like "American District 17.". It randomly puts you in a district based on how busy they all are, every time you go into a town. You can click the drop down arrow, however, and select from any of the American districts, and I think you can communicate via whisper with people on other districts, so you can meet up in the same one.

What about a DVDTalk guild?

You, or other DVDtalkers, can add my Ranger/Monk - Carbri Tilok, to your friends list.


So far I have only partnered once, and that was presearing. I missed several areas during presearing and I won't with my next character. It is wierd to not see any other players out in the "wilds".

Great, I'll add you.

It is weird, although it's kinda nice, esp if you generally play 'on your own' [like I do]. Of course, when you get into a town/outpost and start seeing the spamming and chitchatting and OOC flirting etc, that makes me want to rush back 'outside'.
I probably missed some things presear, I know there's one quest I didn't do, so I missed that area, but I've got two more chars still presearing so I'm going to try to have them explore everything.
That's one thing, the world is BIG. [caveat: I don't know how it compares to other mmorpgs]. After about an hour of traveling the other day, I finally made it to another outpost, and looking on the world map, it's not even that far from the others, relatively speaking.
Do we have enough people playing to make a guild worthwhile? I'm in a guild now, but I'm not getting too much out of it, so I'm not real attached to it.
*update* Okay, I should be able to afford to start a guild, but I can't quite afford capes/emblem, and certainly don't have a Sigil for a guild hall yet. If there's enough interest, I can try to get one started.

I joined my old D2 guild, Amazon Basin, but I would definantly join a DVDTalk guild, although I have no $$ to help right now.
I can not stand all the spam talk in town, and NO ONE uses the trade channel for that crap.

i just bought the game yesterday. started a warrior/monk and at lvl 6 already. it is pretty addicting and i'm still trying to learn the ropes, but i'm cool with joining a dvdtalk guild...

character name: ere darkwind

Just started a couple days ago and have a few Qs

1) What's the deal with all these focus items? It seems all I can do is hold them in an empty hand, but that seems like kind of a pain. Are they like diablo 2 charms where I get the benefit from just having them in my inventory?
2) I've stumbled across a couple of "Quest Items" no one has asked me for (pendant, feather) ... what are they for?
3) I can't seem to find a good "stat page". You know, a run down of my total armor #, attack points, basic stuff like that.
4) I haven't played very long, and am already at level 6. Is there really a level 20 cap?

You have to have it in your hand to get the benefit. These are mostly for caster classes.

Hold on to it you will find a guy outside of Ascalon City Gates that will be looking for a gift.

gwonline has about the best stat pages out there. If you mean a screen to show what damage you do, I do not think there is one.

Yes but there seems to be plenty to do after 20, perhaps they will bump this up after a while.

I don't think they'll bump up the level cap, however, I fully expect them to:
* add quests
* add monsters/enemies
* add items/weapons
* add skills.

If they do increase the level cap, I wouldn't think it would be very high, they don't want people up in the 60's, that would decapitate a lot of the 'fairness' of the game.

And your first 1-8 levels will move pretty quick, then it slows down. Obviously it depends a lot on your playstyle--are you playing with people or henches, are you wandering or trying to solve quest after quest, etc?

I've actually joined to Guild Wars club as of yesterday! Only played about 40 mins so far but seemed interesting. The instanced areas are a bit of a novelty compared to SWG, but I think it probably works out better.

My character is Van Falcon, level 2 Ranger. I seem to default onto the European servers but presumably I can change to the American servers or anywhere else for that matter.

I haven't played in awhile. With me just signing up for WoW, unfortunately this game will probably not be played for a very long time.

Anyone still playing this?