Newbie advice

(Please move if this is the wrong forum for this type of topic)

Hi, I'm a player hailing from grind-fest MMO's and a friend of mine suggested this game for a change of pace. I picked up Prophecies and I'm so far loving the content, but from my former experience with MMO's I have a few concerns which I hope the community can address.
1.) How is overall balance? From the several topics I've skimmed in the main discussion forum, I can tell that there is a lot of debate between the PvE and PvP sides of the game, but I'm also concerned with classes. Are there certain professions significantly favored over others, and are there professions which the masses seem to flock to while leaving others barely populated? Are there certain class/build archetypes which a player is expected to fill lest they be ranked as a "n00b"?
2.) How difficult is it for a new player to integrate into a fairly well-established community such as this? Basically, how difficult is it to join a good group of players? I'm also worried about the amount of "catch-up" I need to do to reach the level of knowledge and competence necessary to be competitive in PvP.
3.) What are some of the most popular trends of thought these days within the community? For example, in my former MMO certain actions/behaviors were labeled as taboo, while others were expected among the players. What should I expect as the prevailing attitude of players towards the game?
4.) How are updates handled? Is there a certain interval for when patches, new content etc. are released to the community? What is the developer's attitude towards game imbalances; do they favor "buffs" or "nerfs"?
5.) Where can I get a decent compendium of the terminology used in GW?

I realize most of these questions are rather open-ended and can only be answered by opinion, so again, if this type of topic belongs somewhere else please move it. Thanks.

Welcome to Guild Wars, and GW Guru!

1) Balance is decent,as the game developers tend to keep an eye on it and "adjust" skills now and then. Classes tend to be balanced. Warrior/Monk is usually associated with noobs, as it is probably the easiest profession to play when trying to learn the game.
2) You do have to reach a certain level of competence to be accepted into the PvP community. There are lower levels of competition, and you could look for a guild that welcomes new players.
3) Hard to say. I guess common sense prevails as to what is acceptable or not, behaviour wise.
4) Updates are automatically downloaded to your computer when you log into game. Buff/Nerfs .... a little of both, but some would argue more of one then the other.
5) Wiki

I came from a game called Lineage, which is an old school grinding mmorpg so I know exactly how you feel. You're either going to love the non-grinding aspect of gw(there's a small amount of 'grind' but not nearly what some people make it out to be) or you're going to get bored after a while. anyway,

1) balance is pretty good. some classes are better at certain things, obviously. Just starting out you can play warrior, elementalist, or ranger (or monk if you feel up to it) and be able to find groups most of the time. Certain professions like mesmer, assassin, and paragon can be really powerful, but if you play them good luck finding a group because most people are biased against them. Pvp is way different than pve - I would stay pve for a while and learn as many skills as you can, learn how to use them, then start doing pvp.

2) not at all difficult. Find a guild that welcomes people of any level and join it. Be active in it. If they don't talk much and don't help each other, leave it and join another until you find one that is helpful and talkative and active. GW is unlike a lot of pvp situations in which there are a couple of godly spells that dominate and you have almost no way to beat them - in GW everyone has access to the same spells, the same armor level, the same types of weapons. Since you can only carry 8 skills at a time, it's more about learning how to use what you have and working as a team.

3) A lot of people will judge you by your titles, like 'don't take that person unless they can show they're a rank 3 in this title track' or whatever. Some don't, but in a lot of the pvp stuff you're going to run in to that. Don't sweat it.

4) Updates are done automatically when you log in, if there's anything there. There's usually something each week, even if it's only to get ready for the weekend mini-event. People will scream about nerfs a lot, but there's probably as many buffs its just that nobody complains about them.

5) like someone said, wiki.

Wiki definitely has a lot of good info...
I'm a beginner so I really can't improve on crazybanshee's post, but I learned a lot there, since I'm still deciding on my primary. This looks like a great game, I'm starting with Nightfall but imagine I'll get the first 2 plus the new expansion

1) Mesmers are fairly uncommon in PvE, but very good and popular in PvP. Mesmers more of a finesce class designed to annoy and shut down opponents. Thus, it doesn't attrach that many players. A good mesmer however is VERY useful. It is one of my favorite classes to play.

Welcome to GW!

Overall, balance is quite good in my experience. I also think that it's unfair to try to compare PvE and PvP as the two game modes are completely different and offer completely different challenges While skills tend to be rebalanced to favour the PvP environment, it's the PvE players who tend to adapt to changes more quickly as versatility and ingenuity is far more important in PvE.

Some professions tend to be more favoured than others. Warriors, elementalists and monks are always in demand everywhere. Other professions tend to be less understood and shunned a little because they're different. For example, the mesmer is an exceptionally powerful profession except they are very difficult to play effectively and tend to work better in environments with lower numbers of enemies - as such, PvE mesmers are rare but the majority of PvP teams I've seen have had at least one mesmer in the midline. Though when you do find a mesmer in PvE, they can be an increbily valuable asset to the teams they join because of their ability to manipulate and soften up targets.

As far as builds go, in the PvE environment pretty much anything can work. You only need to start to think about set builds for PvP, as your build has to complement the rest of the team and put in a much greater group effort.

It's not that difficult at all. Many guilds recruit players of all skill levels, and these are a good place to start getting help though the game and preparing yourself for PvP. You also mentioned that you have Prophecies, which is the chapter that has the highest PvP significance (as the majority of PvP teams utilise skills that are only found in Prophecies). You may wish to expand your collection to include Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North in the future so that you have a greater number of skills to draw from, but for now the only "catching up" you need to do is learning how your chosen professions work and seeing what your skills do. Everybody has access to the same things as you, so it's just a matter of finding what works best for you and seeing how you do.

That's a bit of a difficult question. While you will find a few players here and there who are a bit elitist or dismissive of newcomers, you'll likely find just as many (if not more) who are accepting and welcoming of newbies. Personally, I treat other players the way I would like to be treated, and offering help to others is a very good way to make friends in game and start building up a social network to make it easier to find groups.

There's usually an update every week or so, sometimes more often if there's some major rebalancing or new content happening. Most updates get streamed to you as you play, so there are no major service disruptions like some other games have.

When it comes to buffs vs nerfs, there's a more or less equal number of both. The developers seem to favour balance, although you tend to hear about the nerfs more than the buffs as there are a lot of whiney players who don't like it when their overpowered cookie-cutter builds suddenly get nerfed. Of course, the 5 minutes of outrage stops when someone else comes up with an alternative cookie-cutter build for them to play with.

The wiki is probably the best source of information on GW. I won't post the link here as it's already been posted above. Also, the wiki has some guides that are targeted specifically at new players like yourself. And if there are any questions you have that the wiki can't answer, you already know this forum which is another exceptional source of game information. Never be afraid to ask a question if you want an answer; the only stupid questions are the ones that never get asked

Thanks for the advice everyone.