ahaha very funny to read this discussion.
just a couple of points first: A- i don't consider myself good, if i was good i would be playing in any decent gvg guilds as that's what i consider guild wars about
B- yes that was my only character since factions, if u exclude a lvl5 elementalist in presearing i barely play
i played a lot that's granted, approx 4300 hours these last 24 months, something around a thousand of which afk on rings, spamadan, bla bla bla. i'm not even debating about wether or not 3300-3500kish hour played across 2 years is considered hardcore, nerdy, nolife or [insert random word here], as i'm not bringing arguements about "hey how mych di U play?". i just don't care.
i work my usual 7-8hours/day 5 days a week, i'm not married and thankfully i have no infant running around the house to be take care of.
it's impressive how everyone here forgot to mention the most important thing in playing a game like this: the fun factor.
i'm not writing here to give lessons or to teach anything about playing for fun etc, would be pointless and boring, i'm just wondering how's possible that the fun factor is the last thing considered in guild wars, specialy in the title hunters comunity? i enjoyed every second of guild wars.
in may 2007, before eotn came out, i had every title but chests-wisdom, kurz-luxon and lucky-unlucky. i was enjoying playing and i wanted to boost my save yourself pve skill... when i saw the 2x faction weekend i joined CAT with the intention to farm r4 in a weekend (10k donated were 40k in the title bar you know) then leave.
I found it to be very funny, ppl still used to run together, the hfff and bot disease still wasn't there. there was the doorman, the shoreguy, the stairsman, the bridge and the mushroom runner, and of course the leechers and the afkers
and guess what, it was FUUUUUUN.
It was fun to shout words at the guys who made the team waste 10 seconds because of a chest they wanted to open, it was fun to take de-tours when stairs-guy died in the middle of the lake, it was fun to see 4 ppl running shore and noone doing mushrooms
The runs were fun, the chatting with crazy people was fun, the thrill of rushing sins to house zu heltzer was fun (CAT and SINS stole hzh from each other a number of times in the following weeks). this said, at the end of the weekend my title bar said 1.880.000 and i just decided to go on aiming at a 5 seconds save yourself, then a 6 seconds one. Once there, saviour was close and decided to finish that title-track.
didn't bot a single run of it, ran with humans till r10 then started flagging heroes cuz it was still fun, but i wanted to do it fast.
when i was at work i even had a nice guy [zha dum sin] flagging heroes for me in the morning so i just had to take rewards and i was even able to work
did 50k a day for at least 3 weeks like that. By the end of the summer i had my saviour, just in time for eye of the north.
Played Eye of the North with many nice people, reached 30 maxed titles the first eotn HM weekend, simply vanquishing and delivering dungeon,hero books, havent farmed a single point (2x reputation weekend helped a lot).
i was done with eotn and decided to join [thpk], in [any] alliance with a couple of CAT saviours, to hunt for few luxon points
I found many nice people in thpk aswell, i just wasn't happy with the general attitude of the alliance: there was a full guild of mount quinai botters, and many people talked about exploiting bugs here and there; when i heard about old CAT saviours forming their own luxon alliance (knights of perfection) i jumped on the train just before it left the station...
Not surprisingly about 2 weeks later tens of people from [any] and allies, including leader of [any] himself and many officers got permabanned for exploiting a bug/hack related to the mallyx-hidden-outpost situation. thpk and another big guild left their alliance.
With [any] leader being permabanned, we had 2 months to "conquer" Cavalon taking advantage of [any] being 2 guilds short, and we did it...
Knights was growing and growing, still having fun farming the arena quest, ab (well not me
) or HM boss runs in gyala hatchery.
We took Cavalon from [any] a handfull of times (back when their alliance still had 8 guilds because [any] permabanned leader couldn't invite new ones
).
That's when [any] officers got angry and tried everything to break our alliance apart. They offered future membership in [any] (future=still banned leader) to our guilds to force them leaving the alliance, had terrorists joining our guild to insult ppl on AC making guild leave etc... it was just FUN, they broke our alliance 3-4 times and we always found new guilds to take Cavalon back
About money:
-i wasn't a money farmer guy, i only had many raptors run during the special drops weekends.
-2 saviours profited me around 3 milions
-chestrunning HM is not a money sink at all. my main source of income were elite tomes. it's a paradox: the more people believe chestrunning is a money sink, the less people actualy run, the more elite tomes are valuable allowing few chestrunners to earn money. i was fine with that for months
-i've been lucky enough to foresee the coming of the party animal title and bought 3 pvp mules worth full of party items in late 2007, do the math yourself to understand what that meant for my storage when the title actualy came.
-proof of the above
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10226002
-more proof of the above
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...1&postcount=31
without any leadership skills or devoting time organizing the alliance (thanks to Aso Sin, Charmane Dweller and many others in old and new CAT) i managed to be officer and leader (tho for few hours) in both House Zu Heltzer and Cavalon alliances.
I reached both saviours still having fun played 99% farm free and had enough money for my titles and some fancy weapons. I never bought fow armor in 2 years because i didn't like it.
I played guild wars a lot and enjoyed every second of it. that's something i will not apologies for