In the beginning...

I'm curious to find out what the game was like just after release or even during beta. I started playing 2 years ago and I wonder what I missed.

What were some of the skills like back in the day? can some of you describe what the game was like? what skills were overpowered? I keep hearing ether renewal referred to as like the biggest nerf of all times lol... what was it like during it's prime?

about ether renewal, it was an unlimited source of energy so you could spam spells and cause smiting damage all over the area of the guy you were smiting on, it was awesome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1sn51x6Fs8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RrB86eBYAw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IGm5gXZTOs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWYY5Jk4qhY

Less skills/profs before Factions, fewer skill balances(read nerfs) around for players to readjust to, less content as SF hadn't been added, nicer people for reasons I can't begin to fathom, more wow factor in game. Not much missing from then and when you started.

fire storm was king! not changing your attributes around made you stick with one set of skills....skills were cheap. No green weapons....

ah the good ole days.

What darkflame said.

I remeber before SF everyone was nice(ish) then it sorta went downhill

PUG's were everywhere and you could find a group for just about anything, items were expensive and money wasnt as common as it is now, things were actually hard. Dragons Lair for example use to be one son of a biatch and everything about the game just made you stop and think 'WOW'

how i miss the good old days

also, you had to type out your whole bar and atts, damn that was fun!

Not only was dragons lair hard but people considered THK so hard that they would pay monks several platinum to help them through it. Also there was no cap on the number of minions an MM could have if my memory serves me right.

Yea THK was fun back in the day. It is such a joke now every time I have done it I just tab out and let the h/h do all the work occasionaly checking to make sure the king hasn't moved to far.

I remember Eviscerate use to do the same amount of damage as Executioner's Strike instead of what it is now. I remember the dessert missions being three of the hardest in the game up until THK.

The minion armies.OH GOD THE MINION ARMIES!!!
there was no limit on the number of minions a mm could have

Did MMs still sac HP per minon then with BotM?

I can just imagine an MM with 50 minions lagging throught the screen and using that skill. Must have been hilarious to see for a second until you got Zergswarmed.

exactly! reason no1 not to piss of your MM back in the day

i also remeber doing a guild run of THK, and there was a monk there saying he'd monk with another monk for no less than 200k i wish i had screens of it

ahhhh back in the day. It's too long for my old memory to remember all that much now, but I do remember that in the last beta weekend (my first taste of GW) when you came out of pre-sear, you didn't zone straight in front of Old Ascalon. You appeared near the monument where the ranger is (Aidan?) who then proceeded to give you a quest to help him. It pretty much consisted of you doing a nearly complete circuit of the map (out round the back of Sardelac, up the side of it and then back to the old river bed) before you finally got to Ascalon, stopping to kill every stupid devourer along the way.

He also still gave rangers the quest to get Melandru's stalker even if you had one by your side still...

People actually wanted to party, and didn't try to restrict what skills you took. They were just grateful to get a healer + full team. I didn't even find half of pre-sear before I left it.

Oh, and Garfazz Bloodfang was insanely hard to get to in the Diessa Lowlands. It took me and my boyfriend a good 4 hours to get to him through those hordes of Charr, and we were almost permanently on 60dp (thats another one, didn't DP used to disappear if you popped through a portal? I'm sure I remember that at the start of a map if we died, we'd just run back through to the previous area to remove our DP) but we did it. Went back about a year later to do it with a friend who'd just started and it was so much easier, even though we were on new low level characters.

im about 98% sure this used to happen

damn 34months is a long time o.o

so glad you seem to remember this too! The other (few) people I know who've been around this long don't remember it...

Couplea my guildies whove been playing about 30months dont remeber it, but im still not sure O.o

Well, i first bought the game in late 2006 after Factions was published, but I've read the stories about "the good old days" on the forums here. These are the ones that stick out:

- Attribute points were permanent. Once you used the points, you couldn't re-assign.

- Elite skills had to be capped while the boss was alive!!
Ele: "Wait, don't kill him yet. I need to cap this skill."
Wammo: I'm using Eviserate on Undead Lich
Ele: Stop! don't kill him.
Necro: Stop attacking!!!!!
Ele: Stop!!!!!!!
Wammo: Huh? why? I wanna end this mission?
Undead Lich drops 12 bones for Capping FireEle
Ele: ARRRRRGHHHH!!!!!! YOU STUPID MORON!!!!!!!
Necro: ARE YOU A $#%@ IDIOT???
Wammo: What???? I killed him. We're done.

- Only 1 tab of storage.

- No such thing as alliances.

It was not so long ago. I was so pissed off because i just salvaged 2 max armor sets because i didn't have anough storage space for them. ONE DAY BEFORE UPDATE.

ooo those good old days with a army of undead : )

except when the MM got a nice DC and booted.

party of 6 vs 100 minions. muhahahah.

I want my Massive Minion Army back i miss them terribly it was the whole reason I became an MM after the kill of my joy i deleted my necro heh shouldnt have done that, my new one rapes as MM and SS

When it was just me and Guildies, i would sacrifice to death and watch them scream at me in ventrilo hehehe im bad

ROFLed at that one

I used to lend a hand with Althea's ashes quest while playing MM. I could have a solid 30+ minions by the time we got to the ashes (waaaaayyy more was possible, just not in that particular area). I would ask, "Did you get the ashes?" As soon as I got the "yes" response, I would map out, leaving the other few lvl 10ish players behind with my pack of now hostile minions. I loved some of the whispers I would get after that.

Unlimited minions .......

I can remember doing the Galrath quest. Someone (noob!) aggroed all the minotaurs. The whole party ran away, except for me. I backed into a corner with the minions I had and continued building my minion "wall" in front of me. Wiped them all out and laughed at the rest of the party for running.

1 storage
sup abs runes were 60k
sup vigors- 80k
ectos 15k
shards 8k
no 1 knew what rubies, monstrous claws, monstrous fangs, clay bricks were for.\
wait, still dont know what clay bricks r for
feathers were worthless
perfecting the droks run, then it getting nerfed
u could pug anywhere
thk was hard==and now i can h/h it in hm
hadda have a warrior or it was a no go----now they are rarely used cept if they have ursan
yaks bend was called alpine tablau
there were arenas in every major city
u could weasel through the gates in lions arch and find 2 frogs
in the first betas u started in lions arch, and the addition of ascalon later left us in awww
no 1 wanted a nec, then some 1 discovered unlimited minions
aoe didnt scatter
no titles
hadda use points to change skills
no minis

i suppose i could rant on and on, but this is a few

Way back before the Signet of Capture was introduced you had Elite Skill Items that could be bought from the Merchant. I think you had to pay to see what they offered and it was a lottery to see what you got. I remember getting Migraine on my Mesmer and absolutely owning in the HoH with it.

The original Signet of Capture was used like this. It capped the skill last used by the traget boss, who had to be alive. Try capturing insta-cast stances amongst all the other skills they had. Sometimes took some fairly co-ordinated shutdown lol!

There was no elitism in HoH (or any PvP) because no one knew what they were doing. Protective Spirit + Healing Hands made my Mesmer basically invincible too lol. Had a phenomenal Ranger/Mesmer Fragility build too

Also, you could actually find PUGS for Prophecies Missions and grind genuinely didn't exist in any form. I remember trying to do the Prophecies Demagogue Bonus. So hard at the time and so easy now hehe. Glint's bonus was awesome too.

Good times!