Reply With QuoteI'm not sure elementalist will be all that popular. It looks incredibly complex. 20 abilities per weapon set is crazy.
Wow, you're right. I thought they would take the same stance as with Starcraft 2. That's wonderful to see. Thanks for pointing that out.Originally Posted by Giaddon
Thank you, that sounds very interesting. I guess that makes choice of "home" server for WvW very important. Any info on whether this choice has to be made during the beta already, and if yes, whether this can be changed at retail release?
I'm not sure elementalist will be all that popular. It looks incredibly complex. 20 abilities per weapon set is crazy.
Of course i do not have a crystal ball, but the pew pew fireballs mage class is usually quite popular in mmos, I find.
This blog posted yesterday covers some of those details.
You make the choice during beta and can change it once (I'd be very surprised if this carried over to release since characters will be wiped) during the beta. After release you can change servers for a small fee and with a 7-day waiting period.
Oh, absolutely. I doubt any of these classes will suffer for numbers. It's just that judging by the various videos, the barrier to entry on the Elementalist might be a bit high. There's a *lot* of skills to keep track of...
Then again, GW1 vets will probably have no problem with it.
It's funny to read the thread for excited people who have been paying attention and to find that, even here, people haven't quite grasped the idea that class choice has little to do with survivability or damage dealing.
Certainly there are differences in complexity and dominant play style, but there is nothing about the elementalist class that necessarily makes it any more "pew pew" than the others.
There was a twitter post stating that once the game goes from beta to live, there would be a wipe, so you'll be able to pick a new server between beta and live.
Here is the twitter message:
http://twitter.com/#!/GuildWars2/sta...87938500034561nope server choice will not carry over, everything will be a clean slate come headstart :) ^AT
I've narrowed down my list of servers based on how much I liked the server names. This is just for the U.S. servers though.
- Henge of Denravi
- Sorrow’s Furnace
- Sea of Sorrows
- Isle of Janthir
Courtesy of a post on RedditCode:US Worlds Anvil Rock - 4chan /vg/, Facepunch Borlis Pass - OMFGcata Yak’s Bend - Yogcast, GW2 Guru, GameTrailers, Kinda Ferocious, ZAM Henge of Denravi - NeoGAF, Guild Wars Reporter Maguuma - MMORPG.com, Aureus Knights, Knights of Eminence, Better Late Than Never, Sages' Lost Intrigues Sorrow’s Furnace - (DAoC Vets), VexX Gaming (PvP), Hearts of Chaos (PvX),GuildMag, Kabal, GWDen.com, Arena Junkies, Perfect in Theory (PvP), Descendants of Honor (PvX), Guild Wars Insider Kaineng- (Asian Guilds) Thai Alliance Jade Quarry - PVP, Decisive Action (PvP), Lion's Arch Radio/Blue Isle Fort Aspenwood - RMA Clan (PVP), Penny Arcade Ehmry Bay Ferguson’s Crossing Darkhaven - Reddit (main), Reddit WvW, Oceanic alt, Almost Famous (PvP), Gamebreaker Vasburg - joO Binder (PvP) Eredon Terrace -(Québec/French Canadian) Crystal Desert - (SouthEast Asia)forums.hardwarezone.com.sg Tarnished Coast - Unofficial Roleplaying server, The Gentlemen's Club, rpg.net Steamspur Mountains -Dragon Chasers Blazeridge Mountains - The Gaming Ent, /r/trees Isle of Janthir - Boons & Conditions Sea of Sorrows - SomethingAwful, (Oceanic), (Downunder/AUS/NZ), (South East Asia) The Australian Cybergamer, Harlequin, Aurora Australis, Yakisoba, Aggroculture Deldrimor - (Latin American)La Hermandad, (Spanish) GuildWars2-Online.com Scavenger’s Causeway Moladune Eternal Grove - Sea of Stars & Star Onions, Tribe Gaming EU Worlds Kodonur Gandara - (English) GW2guru, Futilez (PvP), (UK Guild x1) Kodash - guildmag.com Blacktide - (Russian) (Polish) (Dutch), Midnight Mayhem (PvX), guildwars.pl, guildwars2.com.pl, GoHa.ru, Ancientz of Bronze Dragonflight, 4Gamers.be, guildwars-2.ru, Istan - MMORPG.com, Ragnarok, (Finnish) Frozen Dawn, (French) Luna Atra, (FR) JV.com, (FR) Univers Virtuels Vabbi - 4chan/vg/, mmorpg.pl Kourna - (French) gw2.fr Fissure of Woe - (Italian Guilds), (Romanian Guilds), SomethingAwful, (Italian) mmorpgitalia.it, TKOT Underworld - (Portugese), Maltese Community, 4chan alt Ring of Fire - (French) Fr-GuildWars2.net),The Bulgarians (PvP), Facepunch Far Shiverpeaks - (Dutch) GW2nl.nl, GW2nl.nl, (Nordic/Norway/Sweden) guildwars2.no, gw2sverige.se, Guildwars2.dk, Ragnarok Of Primordus, Tweakers.net, Sweclockers.com, The Northern Assembly Petrified Forest - Unofficial Roleplaying server Jade Sea - NeoGAF Desolation - (UK Guilds) Rockpapershotgun, PCGamer Magus Falls - (German Guilds) Whiteside Ridge - Reddit (main), GameTrailers, (Israel) Israeli Community Fort Ranik - (French)JeuxOnline, (French Guilds) JoL, CanardPC, hardwareFR, (Dutch) 9lives.be, gw2.variance.hu Ruins of Surmia - (Spanish) GuildWars2-Online.com Sharp’s Corner - (Spanish alt) GuildWars2-Online.com Aurora Glade - (Spanish alt) GuildWars2-Online.com Riverside - Guild Wars 2 Slovenia, Slovak and Czech community Elona Reach - (German) wartower.de, gw2.onlinewelten.de, guild- wars-2.net Augury Rock - (German Alt) Abaddon’s Mouth - (German Alt)
Current Chosen Communities Servers
Last edited by Contrai; 04-26-2012 at 03:38 PM.
Heh. The only thing I know of GW 2 is
a) that there is no more holy trinity
b) 5 races?!
c) lots of hype everywhere.
I knowingly kept myself in the dark and on an information blackout ;). That's why I am so looking forward to the beta in around 50 hours.
Interesting.
I would start by playing a dagger Elementalist, a staff Guardian, or a 2H sword Mesmer, then -- those are some of the more unique options, based on what I've seen.
He was talking about fireball slinging "mages", which are actually fairly thin on the ground in GW2. Yes, there are a lot of ways for most of the professions to play as casters, but Elementalists have the traditional mage archetype down pat.
Ranger, Thief, Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer, Engineer are all very different when using their ranged abilities. Necromancer is a possibility but again the focus is somewhat on pets and the death shroud stuff, along with debuffing.
Yep. I don't think I have ever played an mmo knowing what I will end up as. My guesses are always wrong anyway.
So... servers? :D
Hmm, this makes me realize that I have no idea what I am going to play even at the start of the beta this weekend. I have even less of a clue what I will play on release. I am not sure if this is a good feeling or not, heheh.
I better do a little reading up on what the classes can do in general at least in the next couple days.
Well "pew pew" refers to guns doesn't it? So a class that can use a gun would be more "pew pew" than an Elementalist.
So for the beta weekend, The Wanderers guild will be on Sorrow's Furnace. I mention it because some folks from here have played Warhammer and some other games with us in the past.
Good deal! That is the first world choice of the group I am going in with also.
Class choice most certainly effects survivability and damage dealing. And there are definitely classes that will be more "pew pew" than others. Just because they got rid of the holy trinity doesn't mean they eliminated the idea that certain classes are better at different roles than others.
I was careful with the phrasing of my post, but perhaps I should have been more so.
I said that class has "little" to do with survivability, by which I meant that it is a stated goal for their class design that no one is forced to rely on others to stay alive. Yes, some classes have specs that make them far more hardy than other classes, but nobody should have to shy away from a particular class because they are worried about dying all the time.
The other person's "pew pew" quote was actually "pew pew fireballs mage class", so saying that the elementalist is best suited to that is certainly true. What I was alluding to was simply that all classes have ranged attack options. Yes, the ranged attack options of some classes are more expansive than other classes. Also, the elementalist is in no way limited to that -- in another post I suggested someone try equipping a dagger as their primary weapon, and that causes all attacks to be extremely short range AoE.
My somewhat quippish post was merely intended to point out that there are a lot of deeply-ingrained preconceptions about MMOs at play here. I'm not much of an MMO player, so I am curious to see what people think about the way some of this stuff has been turned on its head after they have had a chance to actually play.
Actually, "survivability" has nothing to do with "forced to rely on others to stay alive". Most of the time, when people talk about survivability, they mean "on its own". So your comment on how "people haven't quite grasped the idea that class choice has little to do with survivability or damage dealing" was quite presumptuous and incorrect.
Certainly different classes will have different survivability. Even simply looking at the number of health points at lvl 80, some classes will have around 18K, some - 15K and some 12K IIRC.
The same applies to damage dealing or, in case of "pew pew", more specifically, direct damage nuking. Certainly, all classes will have some ranged attacks (as they do in most of the games btw) but it's silly to expect a mesmer to deliver the same dps through his nukes as an elementalist, since mesmer has other means to deliver damage - confusions, illusions, etc. when an elementalist does not. Yes, mesmer has some nukes but they are not as good as the ones elementalist has.
[edit] As for the "preconceptions turned on their head", the only one I see so far is the claimed lack of dedicated tanks and dedicated healers. It will be fun to see how it's going to turn out, that's for sure.
Last edited by Stridergg; 04-25-2012 at 01:41 PM.
I know it's not the same game, but in Guild Wars, you could make many unexpected builds that worked really well. Like a tanking Elementalist or a DPS Monk. If we can infer even a little bit from that about GW2, we probably shouldn't jump to conclusions what roles are viable for what class.
Most of the miscommunication here comes down to my being, as I said in my last post, not an MMO guy. I am apparently not using all my terms in the understood fashion. For the record, AoE probably wasn't the right way to refer to what Elementalists do with daggers, either -- it's a shallow cone of effect, not a ground-targeted area of effect.
Regarding the survivability issue, Arenanet actually breaks down the professions into three categories -- soldiers, adventurers, and scholars -- so yes, they are not all equally survivable, and what I said earlier was unreasonably reductive. I still infer from my reading, though, that the least survivable classes in this game are designed to be more survivable than the least survivable classes in a "typical" MMO. I could certainly be wrong.
The thing about preconceptions was basically an empty phrase. I meant that the game evolves the MMO model in some ways that should pretty majorly subvert the expectations of MMO players that haven't been paying attention. First, I think you are probably underselling the significance of the increased flexibility of the classes with regard to roles they can fill in combat. There is also all the positional/blocking stuff, the cross class combos, the everything-is-a-public-quest model, the trait system, the extensive side-kicking/level adjustment, and I'm sure some other stuff. Those things are not utterly unique, but putting all of them together seems like it's going to make for a game that will be an adjustment for a lot of people.
GW1 allowed players to use arbitrary sets of skills with very little guidance-- or constraint. GW2 is different; every set of skills was curated for players. Every class gets the same skills with a given weapon. I don't see too many crazy builds coming out of that, which is a shame, but it's also much more newbie-friendly.
As for roles, the concept of role doesn't really exist. There is no healer class. The guardian does exist, which is kinda confusing, since we also have the warrior. But at any rate, everybody just kinda attacks and heals each other in an orgy of combat and somehow that all works. We'll see.
Oohh, man, I don't know about that. I think you're neglecting/underselling how much of Utility slots can have but on top of that you have Traits, which GW1 completely lacked. I've got a few builds that I've theoretically put together that I think would catch a lot of people by surprise.
I know where you're coming from, but I actually think GW2 has more possibilities, you just have to dig a little deeper (which, if successful, will be great in an "easy to learn, difficult to master" type of setup). This is all just IMO, but it's based off of hours of obsessively looking over the class abilities/traits on the wiki.
Easy to learn difficult to master would be a great improvement over GW1, which was difficult on both.
GW1 was difficult to learn?
Yes, there were dozens of skills and two classes per character.
If you want to play with your buddies, be sure to pick the same server. When the game goes live, your server choice won't be as important because of the "guest" feature that essentially lets everyone play with everyone else (except in WvW, where your server will determine your "team"). However, for the beta, there won't be a guest feature - so if you aren't on the same server with someone, you won't be able to play with them.
KevinC linked the ArenaNet blog post referencing this in #1054 above - you *will* be able to transfer your characters (all of them) once in the beta period for 1800 gems (and beta people will be given 2000 gems for the weekend). But wouldn't you rather use those gems for other stuff instead of a character transfer?
Anyway, just some words of warning.
Also, in my opinion, Elementalists will be pretty popular. They blow stuff up spectacularly. As to the person who said they maybe seemed a bit complicated, all characters have some complexity with regards to weaponskills - many classes let you swap between two sets of weapons, and then there's Engineers, who swap in a whole new set of abilities when they use their weapon kits. So I don't think the Elementalists are more complex than any other class in that regard, just different.
You pick 7 skills you like +a rez or capture signet and 1 secondary skill. 8 choices plus a new one whenever you feel like picking up a new skill. It seems like a clear example of easy to learn, hard to master.
Having recently tried to introduce new folks to Guild Wars 1, I'm with stusser on this. It's not an easy game to learn. Picking those seven skills from among a spread of skills for two classes isn't really what I'd consider easy to learn.
Of course, we all have different thresholds for what that means, but these days, Blizzards seems to me the standard for "easy to learn".
-Tom
ObGW2Ref: Dang, I wish they'd announce a Guild Wars 2 release date already so I know when to get excited and how excited to get.
Especially in the expansions, you can end up with like 40 skills to choose from after just a couple of hours. And depending on your class, a lot of those skills can be super conditional and/or confusing. Take a look at the Mesmer Illusion and Domination lines or the Necromancer curses line, or the Monk Protection line, or the Ritualist, jeez. The skill system in the first Guild Wars is amazing but a big departure from the norm.
Also, enemies will use the whole bandwidth of available skills against you.
You often only have a second or two to react when you are hexed for example.
And to react in a right way is important (especially in PVP) because it can mean life or death (for example not to attack when you are hexed with Spiteful Spirit which hurts you - and everyone around you - everytime you use a skill or attack).
I remember even the devs saying that one reason GW1 could not go on as it was because it got more and more difficult to introduce new players to the game or even for veteran players to keep track of everything with each new expansion bringing in dozens of new skills.
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