Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-pax-south-weekend-line-game-cost-slashed

Guild wars 2 will be it's cheapest ever this weekend. $9.99. 75% off.

After reading everything you guys have said about this game makes me want to try it (especially at that price) but sadly my time is all but monopolized by FFXIV (hell I still haven't gotten around to beating Shadows of Mordor and AC4). Plus I have an expansion coming out in 2 or 3 months. Sigh, so many MMO's to try and no time to play any of them.

Well there is no monthly fee if you want to store it in your library. This is the first MMO I truly ever got into hardcore. I loved SWTOR, but only played it like a single player campaign game. I know a lot of WoW players do not like GW2 because they play completely different. GW2 survives completely off addicting micro-transactions. If you don't want to spend $300 on this game. I recommend staying away. You are given everything you need to beat the game. The micro-transactions are purely vanity and convenience based. Mostly vanity. But I've seen everyone go down the path I have and buy stuff justifying it as a "monthly fee" since you don't pay one. XD . The games economy is extremely complex. There is a trading post to sell and buy items listed by players, which is connected to the gem store where the micro-transactions take place for real money... OR, if you are a gold farmer, you can buy those things by converting a good amount of in game gold to gems, instead of real money. Anet makes a fortune off its gem store though there is no doubt. The amount of free content that comes out for this game is clearly funded by the gem store purchases. The endgame is fantastic because of it.

In the game you have your own personal story quest, which ends at level 80, after that there is a ton of things to do like World Bosses, Dungeons, and something called "The Living World" which is an entirely separate story that gets released like episodes (at no charge). I'm not even including the exploratory part of the game in PvE. PvP is completely separate from PvE and is divided within a couple different groups. There is SPVP (1v1) Team PVP (2v2,3v3), and World vs. World, which pits entire servers against each other... this is my favorite, when you have a massive army of 100+ clashing against an equal sized group... its like Battlefield's Conquest with 20 flags guarded by walls and champion monsters. You have to build arrow carts, catapults, and other siege weapons to breach the fort and capture the area. Things can get crazy epic like out of some medieval film.

Oh did I mention the community? Its pretty hard to find assholes... yeah the map chat is always going have smartasses, but its all in good fun. There is no greifing in this game. I rarely see trolls, and everyone is very helpful. Its a very courteous community. Someone is always there to revive you when you are down in the open world, I've partied up with randoms so many times, and only had one bad experience out of more than a thousand. (Ironically that was with Sledge when some douchebags kicked him from the party when we were seconds away from beating a dungeon ). Anet takes the community seriously. If someone harasses you, they will get banned if reported. Telling someone "fuck you" will get you banned. There is zero tolerance for toxic behavior. I often find myself helping random people with jump puzzles, or just about anything. Is pretty cool when you are struggling to get to an area and someone comes up and guides you to it. Its really one of those game communities that makes you want to give back.

Lastly, the customization is lovely... I'm sure it is in every MMO, but I love how unique every character is... its taken me over a year to be able to recognize a few of the skins people use to piece their character look together. I still discover new ones every day. I can't count the many times I've received a whisper to link them my armor skins... I've done it myself.

My ranger, thief, and guardian. (sadly the image quality is compressed)

Strider, I highly recommend this game. Even Lady is buying a copy at this price.

No monthly fee, you can make a character and play whenever you feel like or only during events and feel no obligation to keep getting your moneys worth. You can play it like my brother does and not pay an extra dime too. He converts his in game gold into gems for purchasing account upgrades that are all conveniences like extra bag storage and bank storage tabs.

It does look like the possible expansion will cost money but the game has been out for 2+ years now already so that's not to bad. I've been playing this game for 4 months or so and I have still only seen half the exploreable map.

Edit

Even with my own gem store purchases I have still spent less on this game than when I bought bf4 + premium. And I have over 250+ hours in gw2.

I forgot to mention, if you do get the game strider, choose jade quarry as your Server. If it is full then I recommend tarnished coast and then black gate as the third. The only thing the server selection does is determine the team you are on for world vs world, ie.. server vs server. Other than wvw, anyone can party up with anybody else in the game no problem. Me and Dx are on jade quarry, but my niece and nephew are on a different server which is no big deal. They don't even play wvw.

Also you get 5 character slots. Like Dx was saying about customization, I've never seen 2 characters that look exactly alike. The only similarities I have seen are the human male and female faces. Quite a few of those seem similar to me, but as for my charr character I haven't come across another charr that even resembles me.

There is a good chance the expansion is free to prevent a paywall division between players. Even if it is, It will probably be available via gem store like the deluxe version of the game is. The enjoyment I've gotten out of this game is worth $1000. I've put 800 hours into it and over a whole year I've spent $300 ($10 here $15 there) on stupid stuff for my personal enjoyment. . I think the most I've ever played a game before GW2 was 120hrs. Destiny originally excited me because it looked like they were copying a good bit from GW2 FPS style and it all just fell apart as I played that game.

Hell with Lady and You we'd have an almost complete set for Dungeon running.

After watching some WoW videos, I will say that I am not impressed with their "world bosses". Unless I am looking at the wrong videos, they seem to be lumbering idiots that can even be solo'ed? Looking at your game. FXIV, I can say that the combat is definitely no where near as complex. GW2 features a 1234567890 F1-F5 type fighting... it doesn't have 40-100 attacks/buffs/effects to choose from in battle like most MMOs... I guess its more of a diablo type system that isn't top down.

Guild Wars 2 has its share of stationary world bosses that require raw DPS to take down, but it also features world bosses that require strategy, defense teams, offense teams, reflect teams, and specialists... just DPSing them will end in failure. Some of our world bosses will kick your teeth in, and one of them is impossible to beat without being in or knowing someone (like me ) in a massive organized guild.

Tequatl the Sunless is by far the most popular world boss... when he got revamped last year, it took a few months to figure him out. While its hard to find a map that will lose these days, at one point, you had to arrive an hour early to ensure you got into a full map that could organize defense teams and beat this boss. He is by far the most deadly dragon in the game. Battle can last 20+ minutes unless you are in my guild or in a map with my guild that can take him down in under 11 minutes.... unlike the video below.

The Vinewrath and breach event leading up to it has to be one of the most intense boss fights I've ever done in any game. We were there the first night it started and damn that was a learning experience. Everybody was getting their asses handed to him, the champions were one shot killing us.. ppl in the chat were like, "wtf, he wiped our entire group". It was fun to be there and loose like that, because we were part of that boss learning experience. after a day or two everybody started figuring it all.. The patterns, the weaknesses, and it became more organized. Players would put on their commander tags, one at each entry point and the community worked together to take the vinewrath down. It's pretty awesome to do a world boss like that and have 60-80+ ppl all working together.

Tequatl is still one of the best boss fights ever. It's still so intense Regardless of how many times I've done it now.

Lady said for $10 she'll try the game again but made no promises. She doesn't normally play games that require moving with keyboard controls and generally dislikes having to use two hands to play a pc game when she has to keep one hand free to keep a puppy from jumping on her laptop.

Meh, i don't need complicated combat systems. I played one the the hardest dps jobs to master in FFXIV only because it's a positionally dependent class (Monk, requires me to be in certain positions to maximize my damage (currently playing Ninja which is not positionally dependent)). Otherwise yeah the game is straight forward but it's still a damn fine game (plus it's had some of the hardest boss fights I've ever done, no where near GW2 difficulty but we don't have world bosses. Everything for us in instanced into dungeons). Sadly it's going to be hard for me to adjust to playing one class per character. The main selling point for FFXIV (outside of it being a FF game and the fact that I love the story) is the fact that I can do everything on one character without having to make another just to try a different class/job. Such a nice system that I wish most MMO's would go to.

I'll probably purchase it tonight before I head off to work and give it a shot on my 3-day weekend when I'm not mindlessly grinding dungeons for Tomestones (currency for armor and weapons) or working on the damn books for my next version of my relic/zodiac weapon (I will get my damn Zodiac finished before the expansion, even if it kills me).

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is the first expansion for Guild Wars 2. Founded on the idea that the journey is the goal, the Heart of Thorns expansion continues the Guild Wars 2 tradition of challenging the conventions of MMOs to fulfill the promise of what online worlds should be.

To journey deeper into the Heart of Thorns, please check the website: https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com

All classes will have specializations to further customize your characters, there will be collections / missions that will make obtaining a precursor for a legendary weapon more achievable, new legendary weapons, a new profession and more! I'm really hyped for this expansion. No release date yet at this time.

Strider.. if you want a game with some amazing lore, you'll love this game. You don't need to play Guild Wars 1 to enjoy the sequel either. And if you want to read up on any of the massive story, check out the official wikis:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page

Also, making new characters to try different professions is not that bad in this game. It would take a while to level them up fully to unlock all the skills, but GW2 has a daily login reward. You don't even have to do the daily missions if you don't want to, and I wouldn't recommend doing them anyway until a character is at level 65 at least, because they have a daily login reward system. All you have to do is login once a day, claim your reward and log out. The login rewards often include "tombs of knowledge" which you can use on any character to give them an instant level up. I've been saving mine for my warrior. I have about 15 or so now. Once I get him up to 65 I'll go ahead and use them to get him to the level cap quick.

The hypetrain is real @_@ MOOOOAAAARR INFO!

Oh man... what if the expansion doesn't come out for another 6 months? Its not uncommon for things to get hyped up months in advance. I need to get my dungeon runs in for Frostfang. I might get my warrior in wvw and get all those poi and Vistas for green while we're still team green.. I hate being team green now. X_x never ending team green in wvw for our server.

I'm already in love with my elementalist now. I'm going to get her leveled to 80 before the expansion. I've lost all interest in farming world boss trains for precursors. I will enjoy new my new character and continue doing daily karka and vine wrath. Once I get the expansion, my focus will be on the precursor collection. Talk about mob tagging. An ele would be insane on Orrian Cleanse. I'll probably buy a DPS amulet for my ranger and give the magic find to my ele.

Well I did purchase it (the Digital Deluxe edition, for $5 more I figured I'd just go for it) so I'll download it on Monday while I'm sleeping and install it when I get up (after I make some room on my computer). I'll probably give it a shot after it's installed for a bit and see how it plays for awhile. Who knows, maybe it'll be like TERA and pull me away from FF for a few weeks.

A quick run down.

Race has little to do with what your character can do outside of an exclusive heal, condition removal, and 1-2 elite skills. No matter what class you pick you will have access to these skills for that race. That being said, they are more or less the same, just different reskins.

Warrior - pure dps class. Hack and slash like a mindless brute. Has access to the most weapon types in the game.

Guardian - tank support class. Can strip multiple stacks conditions on self and allies, while stacking multiple buffs at the same time. Good AoE skills, and devastating dps. Only downside is you are slow unless you take up precious skill slots for speed buffs or spend the coin on a rune set that grants you a speed boost.

Ranger - shoot people from distances no other class can hit you from. The further away, the more dps you rack up with a longbow. Although you are medium armor, you have pet companions that pull agro, and can revive you and others when downed. Very little support skills.

Elementalist - large amount of support and defense skills, devastating AoE attacks and condition appliers. Can drop powerful element weapons for others in party to use. Very very squishy. Apparently the hardest class to master.

Theif - speed, stealth, conditions. Similar to warrior in that attack skills have no individual cool downs and rely on an initiative meter that refills fairly quick. A lot of dodge/evade attacks, can set traps.

Mesmer - illusions and trickery. Support class.. I don't know enough about it outside of that.

Engineer - utility class. Tons of support and offensive skills. Their coveted healing turret allows you and allies to take on more dps. Utilizes kits more than weapons. Like Elementalist it's one of the only classes that doesn't have weapon swap.

Necromancer - medium armor class that can act like a heavy armor class. Summon minions, remove conditions rapidly, heavy condition stacker on enemies. Essentially has two HP bars with death shroud.. Sledge could tell you more.

I love my necro. but it is a light armor class like the thief. But with the death shroud option and highest hp pool in the game I hardly die anymore in pve. necros can do some good damage but nothing like the warrior or guardian. The minions are fun to use in lower level areas but I mostly stick with my other skills like wells and spectral abilities. My warrior is great for doing damage. Up close with swords, great swords and maces, duel wielding swords, etc.. or at range with longbows and rifles.

I tried the thief class during a living world mission... it can do more damage than a warrior but only from behind attacks, stealth attacks, etc. Things you have to be really good at doing and I was not. My impression is that its a squishy class with medium damage attacks but great criticals. I sucked with it, but it can duel wield pistols. But with all it's stealth it doesn't have any sniping options.

Mesmers look like fun.. They can make clones of themselves to distract enemies, portal magic and then can make a shield and interrupt other enemies skills. From what I've read they can be hard to master.

My brother has an engineer and loves it except for the fact that he can only equip a rifle I think.. But with his engineer skills he can bust out a flamethrower and done other class specific weapons in the fly.

Rangers are sort of an outcast class. I love mine, but hardcore players don't want them in their dungeon parties, and most pvpers despise them because of the unfair range advantage. They can also accidentally pull an invincible one hit kill monster into a neutral room that their pet agroed that will kill everyone as you way point outta there in a panic. *is guilty*

Well it's certainly and interesting game. Combat reminds me of TERA in a few ways (even though this came out before). I'll probably be putting a big chunk of time into this when I'm not mindlessly grinding in FF. Rolled a Warrior for my first character since i have a thing with be a mindless killing machine and I love how you're skills change based on what weapon you currently have equipped. Really loving the dual wielding axes thing. Also rolled a Thief just to see how similar it is to playing a rogue from WoW (a class I fully mastered before the talent rework in Cataclysm), will work on her later once I'm happy with my Warrior's progression.

Oh yeah I'm also on your guy's server, seems you guys aren't quite full yet (though you are close).

Cool. Lady got on our server too. I took my fully leveled warrior to his first world boss today. Karka queen. Wow he felt squishy at first but then I realized I always killed everything in that area at range so I switched to my rifle and had no problems. I'm really loving the rifle for warriors. I'm hitting high level enemies at 2k damage per shot while staying out of their damage range. And I see why ppl like the great swords, after I buff with might the damage I was doing was crazy.

Since I like the rifle so much I finally looked at the legendary one.. It looks like a bad ass snipper rifle that engulfs you in bad ass flames while you shoot out. I doubt I'll ever get that weapon but I'd love to see someone in game with it. I've never seen that weapon or the legendary hammer.

I've seen he legendary hammer Juggernaut quite often. Its just not very flashy so its easy to miss. With Engineers getting hammers there will probably be a lot more down the road.

Every time I start a new class, I like how different they play, and how the same weapon does vastly different things for each class.

Omg.. So I've been looking at different weapon skins for rifles and I kept wondering why every weapon skin looks like garbage.. then I saw a couple videos and how great Guild Wars 2 looks at 1080p and I saw the weapons looking great. I don't have the best graphics card, so most of my settings are the automatic ones, except I put textures on high. All I wanted was better looking weapons, not 1080p.. I already have textures maxed, so what else could it be? Well, I messed with a few settings last night.. I turned shaders to medium. Holy shit. This game looks beautiful now. I can't believe I've been playing the game this entire time with sub par graphics when even my laptop can handle shaders at medium. I am so impressed with the graphic upgrade. All the weapons look amazing now! And my tentacle back piece looks so shiny and alive.

*edit

And my warrior's armor looks epic now! All glossy and metallic. I need to change my necros armor.. Its very low rez skins compared to the carapace pieces. The flaws in the skins I'm using on him are much more noticeable now.

"Stop treating us like monsters! We are not the enemy!" -Canach

a lot of info on Reverent.

Yeah I'v been playing now and also got my old account back too from when it came out(the birthday ingame mails were nice with lvl 20 boosts).  Sledge has both of my account names but if anyone else wants to add them Mail Eppette for my one account and Riful Omega for the other account.  The game is definitely a lot different from release and bit easier to grasp.  Has a weird feel as a cross between TERA's active battle and a traditional MMORPG.