Guild Wars 2

[AutomaticZen]

Start in Nightfall, do not start in Prophecies, unless you only have prophecies.  That's pretty much it.

I guess I'll spring for Nightfall.  Is Factions worth it?

[Furiously]

Not unless you want to play an assassin.

[Ingmar]

Ugh, assassins. I like ritualists better.

Nightfall is definitely the best campaign.

[DLRiley]

Ironically it was the easiest.

[Furiously]

I thought Factions was easier, other than the grove of trees part.

[kildorn]

Nightfall was easier simply due to having heroes. Factions wasn't hard beyond your NPCs being completely mental.

So I charged through Eye of the North, and got to the second to the last mission and Ow. I mean, OW. I'm getting twoshot by everything. So now I went through all my characters and pooled up some cash, and I'm grinding the last 1k or so norn faction so I can make my armor. And my rare pet is at 17 finally.

But holy crap, Eye of the North starts hitting silly hard. All I wanted was the challenge that gives me hero armor!

[Furiously]

But holy crap, Eye of the North starts hitting silly hard. All I wanted was the challenge that gives me hero armor!

Yea - glints challenge is tough!

Took me a while to get the hang of it. Watch a couple videos of how to control your heroes in it.

[Lantyssa]

Eye of the North really benefits from getting your factions up so that you can get all the bonuses to skills.  Builds also become a lot more important to work out synergies.

[kildorn]

Man, I'm terrible at Glint's. And DoA. But I started running a cobbled together panic at the discordway team and I'm doing okay with it. Discord is pretty silly.

Down side: I need to add some AE in that group somewhere, Glint's basically murdered me through sheer volume.

[Nevermore]

I don't remember Glint's challenge thing.  Do the enemies there leave corpses?  A minion master can help ease the pressure by adding meatshields that can also do some damage, assuming you have enough bodies to work with.  An NPC minion master with death nova can also put out some good aoe if the minions are dying fast, iirc.

[Lantyssa]

If you have several Necromancers for Discord, you can give several Nova and they'll start tagging minions.  Bone Minions is a good skill selection for a bomber since you get two for the price of one skill.  If the Minion Master is a Ritualist, you can get the skill that heals your party every time a minion is created, which is double cast with Bone Minions.

[kildorn]

Yeah, I usually have nova and some minion summons around, but Glints was.. crazy. Like, 20 mobs at a time kind of nuts. I'll try it again with some tweaks in a bit. For now I'm managing hero statues by doing the surprisingly easy Nightfall challenges (you get the armor just randomly from trying, even if you suck at it!)

[Zetor]

I was using a slight variant of this build as an AP caller elementalist (meaning that I didn't actually use elementalist skills for damage... not that elementalists do any damage in hard mode to begin with :p) to do glint's challenge a lot of times... also used the same build to do a few vanquishes for $ and zaishen coins, it works well. There have been reports of people afk farming the challenge, but I never tried that... besides, afk farming seems to go against that entire 'fun' 'game' bit. 

A minion master with aura of the lich + at least one spirit spammer is a must. You can work on the destroyers in one 'lane' and leave your spirits in the other to hold them up. Once you get to the waves where they start spawning from behind and burrow in from underground, just hang near the dragon and call the targets as soon as they pop. Wave 2 is the hardest in there IMO. (also, displaying your deldrimor title helps a lot, but you're probably doing that already)

[DLRiley]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WLnaNw8r8M&feature=feedu

[Lantyssa]

Oh gawd.  Oh Gawd!  Oh GAWD!

[Lakov_Sanite]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WLnaNw8r8M&feature=feedu

TL;DW

Highlights?

[01101010]

Holy shit an hour? Fuck I will need to make popcorn to watch this.

edit: So yeah, they are emphasizing content that brings people together and playing together doing the core content that is built on what is basically a public quest that supposedly scales correctly. And on the other hand, Bioware is building SWTOR that is opposite of that. Fuck me, I'll have to get both...

[tazelbain]

That multi-guild thing is very exciting and great for F13.  Long over due, its a no-brainer that's been ignored because it was made by an indie MMO.  How it interacts with world v world will be key.  Does switching who represent switch worlds?  Can you switch to an opposing world if you are a member of a guild on it or what?

I am happy that WoW expanded the MMO market but I glad someone actually move the medium forward.  Even if Mythic couldn't learn from themselves, A.net seems to have learned from them.  It gives me hope.

[Sky]

If the controls on this game are as bad as GW1, I may have to kill a homeless guy.

Some good stuff. Lots of hyping fluff or pretty standard stuff, but a few really nice things in there. An actual chance to have a semi-functional BC with guild represent: awesome.

[Sjofn]

If the controls on this game are as bad as GW1, I may have to kill a homeless guy.

That is one of my concerns, yes.

[kildorn]

Which controls being bad? I have a load of UI complaints, mostly around targeting groupmembers and picking out targets in melee, but beyond targeting the controls seem pretty bog standard to me. It may just be that I've been playing it so much lately I don't remember what I had to get used to.

For picking out the caster in a swarm though, I dislike that even with the names highlighted, they float around a bit and make it really hard to click on quickly. And dear lord I would never want to actually play a player healer in GW1 due to UI issues around targeting friendlies, and knowing what effects are on them and what is targeting them.

[Sjofn]

It was moooostly the UI "fuck targetting is asstastic and it's a good thing there are healing henchies because healing is hard as hell in this game because I am FIGHTING THE UI" sort of shit for me.

[Lantyssa]

Ditto.  I never take ally-target spells unless I'm only ever casting on myself.  I hate that even in a system with good targeting.  (The one the WAR did right was to have a friendly target split from an offensive target.)

I'm not sure there is even tab targeting in GW2 though.  Videos have made it look like it was a loose aim in a general direction type.

[Sky]

Which controls being bad?

Don't recall all the exact issues I had with them, I know movement was very awkward (imo, obviously). Just didn't have a sense of properly being there, as an EQ2 or Rift did. Janky is probably the word du jour for it? That combined with the terribad character creation meant I only got about an hour into the tutoiral. I really did try to like it, but it's long since uninstalled.

I should probably sign up for the GW2 beta or something so I can find out...

[Draegan]

Playing this at PAX, I didn't have any problems with the controls.  Just as smooth as WOW or RIFT and handle exactly the same.

[Nebu]

Playing this at PAX, I didn't have any problems with the controls.  Just as smooth as WOW or RIFT and handle exactly the same.

I hope that you write up a bit on GW2 and SWTOR vs Rift on one of your gaming sites.  Rift seemed to me to be an improvement on WoW, it just lacked enough content and quality pvp to keep me engaged. 

[Nija]

Maybe it shows just how cynical I am but even for games which I am interested in (guildwars2) I will only watch about 30 seconds out of a 60 minute long demo.

At this point I just refuse to process any of the hype.

[Fordel]

Which controls being bad?

Don't recall all the exact issues I had with them, I know movement was very awkward (imo, obviously). Just didn't have a sense of properly being there, as an EQ2 or Rift did. Janky is probably the word du jour for it? That combined with the terribad character creation meant I only got about an hour into the tutoiral. I really did try to like it, but it's long since uninstalled.

I should probably sign up for the GW2 beta or something so I can find out...

Wait, what is wrong with character creation?

[Lantyssa]

I gobble the GW2 stuff, but they've proven themselves to me with what they've shown.  I'll be the first to admit I'm biased and want this to be my holy grail of gaming, though.

[Sky]

Wait, what is wrong with character creation?

Shockingly primitive and dated. Not going to go well when my human avatar basically repulsed me.

Thanks for the infoes, Drae. I am definitely pulling for the game and hope it dovetails with TOR somehow for my playing time...

[Lantyssa]

It sounds like character creation is going to be more about sliders this time, though I think there were plenty of pre-sets as it was.  I've only found like one person that looked like me.

I've got Cloths of the Brotherhood on consistent farm.  If anyone is interested in trading 5 Ancient Armor Remnants and 5 Mysterious Armor Pieces, or up to 10 Primeval Armor Remnants instead, let me know.  I can gather them up if I know someone is interested in a trade.  I'm not going to bother getting any in excess unless I know there's interest though.

[Nevermore]

I gobble the GW2 stuff, but they've proven themselves to me with what they've shown.  I'll be the first to admit I'm biased and want this to be my holy grail of gaming, though.

I hadn't noticed. 

[Sjofn]

Wait, what is wrong with character creation?

Shockingly primitive and dated. Not going to go well when my human avatar basically repulsed me.

You're high. Straight up.

[Lantyssa]

I hadn't noticed. 

I'll try to be more obvious about it then.

[Ingmar]

Wait, what is wrong with character creation?

Shockingly primitive and dated. Not going to go well when my human avatar basically repulsed me.

You're high. Straight up.

I dunno, maybe he was making a necromancer.