Guild Wars 2

[Huw the Poo]

Yay!  Nice one, LongBlade!  I hope you enjoy it.  What will be your first character?

[Huw the Poo]

This is my ranger, Huw Llewellyn, standing on a quay in Kessex Hills.

[LongBlade]

Yay!  Nice one, LongBlade!  I hope you enjoy it.  What will be your first character?

No idea. Am in a holding pattern getting ready to shuttle Daughter #2 to a sleepover. Then I'm cooking some spaghetti carbonara. Then, depending on the Redbox movie they rented I'll either watch that or install and start playing the game. Otherwise it may be tomorrow before I get to it.

[Huw the Poo]

Tch!  What's more important: making dinner for the family or poring over the GW2 wiki to choose your first character?  Priorities, man!

Excellent new avatar, by the way. :)

[LongBlade]

Thanks. I just made that avatar tonight.

I'm GrogHead.8630

BTW the four digit random extension is lame.

[Kushan]

I have four characters now and can't even pick a favourite.

I love my ranger.  Armed with a longbow he can rain death upon groups of enemies from afar  When they get close he calls on his trusty sword and dagger, which deal superb damage while allowing him to dodge and roll around the battlefield.  He has a growing stable of pets which have various special abilities such as allowing him to run faster, or knocking enemies down, and can even revive him.

I love my necromancer.  She's really bad news for the enemies, using her magic to poison, cripple, weaken, and generally piss them off and render them useless.  She summons minions to keep her alive and other minions that are walking bombs and do fantastic damage to enemies.  And when she takes a lot of punishment and defeat seems near, she slips into her death shroud, drawing on her very lifeforce (and that of others) to live again and keep putting out the pain.

I love my guardian.  She's hard as nails.  She can take shocking amounts of damage, all while using her magic to shield her allies.  She can call upon her Virtues to burn her enemies or protect and heal herself, and she can also use them to do the same for others.  In large fights her magic keeps her allies alive long after they should be dead.  She smites her foes with her mace while channelling magic through her shield to create huge domes of protective energy, frustrating the enemies' attacks.

I love my mesmer.  Armed with her scepter she creates clones of herself constantly, confusing the enemy whilst boosting her own damage output.  By switching weapons she can create different kinds of clones and summon phantasms that harass her opponents.  She wears light armour but is rarely attacked directly because her opponents spend so much time having no idea where to strike next.

I just can't pick a favourite.  They're all massive fun to play, even the Guardian despite me generally not liking melee combat in MMOs.  They have their strengths that can be applied to different situations, and of course there are countless ways to spec each class too.  It's a genuine dilemma every time I load up the game; which character do I play this time?

Guild Wars 2 is fantastic. :)

I agree. So far I've got a Guardian, Elementalist, and a Ranger. I can't pick what one I like more. There all fun to play depending on the mood. The thing I like the best game play wise is that I don't feel like I'm repeating content with my any of them. Both my elementalist and my guardian are humans, but I chose slightly different backgrounds for them. I know the outcome of the story will be the same, but they are experienced differently. You don't even get sent to the exact same places. For my guardian I busted into a bandit hide out, while my elementalist got sent undercover to infiltrate a different hideout. Like I said I know the outcome is the same, but after playign WoW for 6 years, and doing every horde quest the exact same way at least 10 different times, GW2 is really refreshing.

My only gripe so far is you only get 5 character slots. With 8 classes I feel like they either need to offer 3 more slots as a micro transaction or feel forced to buy a second copy of the game to try them all out without deleting any of my original 5.

[Huw the Poo]

With 8 classes I feel like they either need to offer 3 more slots as a micro transaction or feel forced to buy a second copy of the game to try them all out without deleting any of my original 5.

They already do this.  Press O in-game to bring up the Black Lion Trading Company interface.  The first screen is a gem store, in which you can pay money to buy gems, and exchange them for things like extra character slots.

I agree with your comments about the storyline.  It's becoming clear now why the game was in beta for so long.  There's clearly been an insane level of polish applied and the team have thought of so much to ensure GW2 was dazzling on release.  I just love this game. :)

[Grim.Reaper]

I want to restart with one of my existing characters name and I know I can delete the person.  When I delete the person, does the name become immediately available or is there some kind of waiting period as the servers and such update?

[Huw the Poo]

I'm pretty sure that the name is available to you immediately, but anyone else would have to wait 24 hours after deletion to be able to use it.  So go ahead! :)

[Grim.Reaper]

awesome....thanks!

[Huw the Poo]

Speaking of names, ArenaNet declined to change the name of my necromancer. :(

[LongBlade]

Speaking of names, ArenaNet declined to change the name of my necromancer. :(

Bummer.

Maybe give it time.

I suspect I know the reason for it - an abundance of caution.

It probably request direct intervention in the database. The problem with that is when you have hundreds of thousands of players already banging the crap out of your DB DBAs are very reluctant to touch a live database without really, really, really good cause.

And adding your name change to the next build is a very low priority in the scheme of things.

Sorry, I've been part of an IT shop as a build manager. I know how the thinking works in them. From a customer perspective it's a huge disappointment, but the less they touch the stuff the works the happier they are going to be.

The good news is that, as an MMO, it's constantly going to be updated. I can see the possibility of allowing for a name change, but it might be a year or so down the road. Sorry :/

[LongBlade]

Yay!  Nice one, LongBlade!  I hope you enjoy it.  What will be your first character?

I made an Asura engineer. It wasn't my initial intent, but it as it evolved it ended up looking about as steampunky as one could hope in this type of game.

I've hit level two (ding!). But am now stuck trying to figure out how toolboxes work. I walk up to them, get the hint to press the F key and...nothing. The good news is that it feels perfectly safe. The bad news is that I'm in N00btopia, location me.

[Huw the Poo]

Ah, never mind.  She's only around level 16 so I could start her again, especially now that I have three other characters to play with.  I have to admit though, that I hadn't considered the implications from a DBA point of view; thanks for the insights.  I imagine they'll allow it - for a fee in gems - later on.

In other news, I found a great new blog called Mesmer Mesmerised that has some great tips.  I'm gonna have to bookmark that one.  I'm getting increasingly impressed with my mesmer.  They're a tough class to master but they can really kick some arse.

[Huw the Poo]

I haven't used the engineer class yet so can't help I'm afraid.  Hopefully someone else around here can.