Should I buy this? Help!

[WayAbvPar]

Good stuff so far- thanks for the feedback. Some more specific questions-

Is it a one character does everything/choose your skillset each session, or is it the multiple alts thing if you want to experience different professions? Is combat twitchy at all, or straight DIKU? Is their any decent crafting?

I have to admit I love what I see so far about no quest hubs and exploring the world willy nilly. That alone has me reaching for my credit card. My biggest problem is the first day of pre-release is the same day I have 2 fantasy football drafts to attend in person. I will be exhausted and shitfaced when I get home late that night, so it might make for an interesting[/] first play session 

[kildorn]

Multiple alts (race + class is a character)

Combat is a bit more twitchy than a diku, not as twitchy as say TERA. Projectiles can be side stepped, there is an active dodge mechanics, but you can either tab/click target or attack and allow soft targeting to pick the closest thing you were aiming near.

Crafting: very useful, pretty painless. Amusingly, a decent source of XP for leveling as well. I kind of like the exploration system in the crafting (most notable with .. whatever the staff making one is. It also makes potions if you experiment with ingredients from the other crafting professions)

[Threash]

Having rareish minipets and unopened 6th+ birthday presents is a good way to get enough $ for at least the low 20s in the HOM (esp if you already had pets saved up).

That, or a GW1 sugar{daddy/mommy}. :p

I have every single GW1 present from the first through the last anniversary unopened. Is there a guide somewhere that can just help me knock this out in the shortest amount of time?

The first step should be selling the 7th birthday presents for around 30-35 ectos, 6th birthday also but i am not sure what those are worth.  Right now there are a lot more people trying to get shit for HoM than there are collectors of random useless crap that buy stuff like that so the sooner you sell the better.

[schild]

Having rareish minipets and unopened 6th+ birthday presents is a good way to get enough $ for at least the low 20s in the HOM (esp if you already had pets saved up).

That, or a GW1 sugar{daddy/mommy}. :p

I have every single GW1 present from the first through the last anniversary unopened. Is there a guide somewhere that can just help me knock this out in the shortest amount of time?

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/8510-comprehensive-hall-of-monuments-guide/

Thanks. Guess I can grind it out this weekend.

Edit: And I've totally forgotten how to play. I don't even know how to move my level 20 over to Eye of the North. Or if I even can. And this is why if I don't play an MMORPG on Day 1, I never play it.

[Threash]

There should be an asura gate near whatever capital your char is that will take you to eye of the north.  And one weekend is highly optimistic for grinding out anything in guild wars.

[schild]

You know what, fuck this. I don't have the patience for it at all.

[Threash]

Getting enough points for the heritage armor takes virtually zero effort, if you played the game at all before you should have a few points and you get 3 just for having all expansions.

[tazelbain]

I tried twice to do HoM and failed. They seemed to have rebalanced the game around these crazy 3 ritualist builds.  I don't even have one ritualist hero with most chars. There is probably some trick I am missing, but it was anti-fun to figure out why chars who had previously won their campaigns were complete garage now so I moved on.

[schild]

Getting enough points for the heritage armor takes virtually zero effort, if you played the game at all before you should have a few points and you get 3 just for having all expansions.

I didn't want to do the quest to take a character to the Eye of the North area. I don't actually know how to play anymore and kept hitting spacebar which is apparently autorun.

I'm still pissed, YEARS later, about not being able to jump.

[Threash]

Did you beat all three campaigns or just one? It took me a day or two to get the hang of playing also, but there is a ton of low hanging fruit in the HoM someone with access to cash can hit.  I played for a month when the game launched and just started back up a couple months ago to work on the HoM, once you get a good crop of heroes with decent builds you can pretty much faceroll through everything in normal mode.

[kildorn]

The quest to get to the Eye is really short. You do some tunnel thingy that's 90% running away, and then ignore the quests in the next area and just walk to the Eye. That's the HoM.

What is a bit obnoxious is getting tapestries to enable the HoM panels. If you have a bunch of 20s, run them all to the HoM once to get a free one, and use it. The HoM itself is per account, so they should stay enabled across all characters instead of actually having to do the Eye stories for more.

[Threash]

Easier to bank them and use them all on the char that has the best heroes and easier shot and hom stuff.

[Tyrnan]

The quest to get to the Eye is really short. You do some tunnel thingy that's 90% running away, and then ignore the quests in the next area and just walk to the Eye. That's the HoM.

What is a bit obnoxious is getting tapestries to enable the HoM panels. If you have a bunch of 20s, run them all to the HoM once to get a free one, and use it. The HoM itself is per account, so they should stay enabled across all characters instead of actually having to do the Eye stories for more.

Can't you go there at level 10 or something? Seem to remember you get a buff that boosts you up to level 20 in EotN if you're not already.

[tazelbain]

Good to know you only have to the tapestries once. I looked up good builds but they all based 3Rit backline.  How does one get 3 Rit heroes?

[satael]

I'm still pissed, YEARS later, about not being able to jump.

Funny how they went from no jumping in gw1 to jump puzzles in gw2 

[kildorn]

The quest to get to the Eye is really short. You do some tunnel thingy that's 90% running away, and then ignore the quests in the next area and just walk to the Eye. That's the HoM.

What is a bit obnoxious is getting tapestries to enable the HoM panels. If you have a bunch of 20s, run them all to the HoM once to get a free one, and use it. The HoM itself is per account, so they should stay enabled across all characters instead of actually having to do the Eye stories for more.

Can't you go there at level 10 or something? Seem to remember you get a buff that boosts you up to level 20 in EotN if you're not already.

Yes, you do.

[kildorn]

Good to know you only have to the tapestries once. I looked up good builds but they all based 3Rit backline.  How does one get 3 Rit heroes?

Is it actually 3 Rit/*, or can */Rit work for them? Last time I looked most of them actually just cared that Rit was in there for the skills.

As for 3 Rit heroes, probably mercs if you want to spend the money. I know I never ran three Rit/*s

[Threash]

I never used 3 rits either, i use 2 rits 2 mesmers 2 necros 1 monk.  Just google 7 hero support.  There ARE three rit heroes though, Razza Xandra and Zei Ri, but you are almost better off turning Razza into a mesmer if you get the other two rits.

[Ard]

There's also the fact that by the time you've unlocked Zei Ri you're probably done with most everything else also. 

[Lantyssa]

Geez.  I don't even have Zei Ri, and I've got 30 points.  (Of course Winds of Change was really annoying back when I tried.)

[Ard]

Yeah, I don't have her either because Winds of Change sucks balls.  I couldn't get past the 4 player party missions.  I'm willing to admit the problem is me, and I'm okay with that because I'm done with the game for the most part anyhow.

[Threash]

Only reason to bother is because it does give you a shit ton of cash rewards, plus and extra rit is always handy.

[Feverdream]

I'm not going to bother with the HOM stuff, though I bet I am going to regret that.  But this blog post from 2010 (right after HOM was implemented) has good tips about the 'easy 30' that might be helpful for some:

http://huntersinsight.com/the-easy-30/

[kildorn]

This is what I should do this weekend. I checked and I'm only at 17. Cry.

[Numtini]

I surrendered on the HOM. I finally got my NC Soft account unblocked and rejoiced, then when I tried to log into GW found out they still have that account locked and want me to go through the entire "call them during business hours" nonsense.

[01101010]

I never even played GW1... but I will be around for the launch of this titanic.

[Ard]

This is what I should do this weekend. I checked and I'm only at 17. Cry.

Getting to 20 is the easy part.  Beating all 4 campaigns and kitting out heroes so you can get the rest of the points is not, especially if it's been a while since you've played the game.  It'll take way more than a weekend to do.  Don't let the guides mislead you, it's extremely time consuming to get to 30.  Even getting to 15 mostly requires beating the 3 main campaigns.

[Threash]

On the other hand it is also not a terrible game.  I enjoyed playing through the campaigns once, and building a hero team is something i will miss in GW2.  It's a bit late in the game if you are starting from scratch but you can get a few things done in a couple weeks, specially if you already played at some point in the past.

[Furiously]

I'd suggest nightfall first. If you want to try it. Has a fairly short campaign, and gives you most of the heroes you need to build a great team.

[Zetor]

A pretty big caveat for the HOM is that you pretty much need all of the GW1 expansions* to get a decent number of points (you may be able to skimp on Prophecies). Of course this isn't an issue for those of us who already had the game+all expansions to begin with...

* Nightfall so you start with some good heroes + get easy access to elite hero armor for the statues, Factions is a must for ritualists, and EOTN is obviously required; you also need all 4 campaigns to do the black moa quest, unlock MOX for a free statue, etc. Prophecies is good because it has a lot of cheap elite armor for the armor monument. Another big thing is that I'm fairly sure that the best 7-hero builds use skills from all 4 campaigns, and coming up with suitable substitutes may not be easy.

[Kageru]

Of course this has nothing to do with whether you should buy GW2 because I'd expect all these rewards are cosmetic and GW1 is nothing like GW2.