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