Memories of early Guild Wars

Hey,

I was just looking through all the old updates of guild wars wiki and
was thinking of how things were after guild wars came out and it made me smile to think of them.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Updates

These were some of the things that come to mind for me

* I remember when I would load into random arena and see a warrior with a fiery dragon sword on my team and think "sweeet a goood player!"... but looking back, chances are they would not of even customized it let alone it being a blue item.
As soon as i got a hold of my first white storm bow,
first thing i did was head to RA for a few rounds to show it off, thinking i was pro, lol.

* Back when you had to use the sig of capture straight after a boss used the skill. I started playing 1 week after release so i was just near getting posion arrow (the Leet ranger skill) when it changed but i remember reading that some skills like ferocious strike were next to impossible to capture.
Anyone remember trying to capture some tricky elite in this way?

* How when you did pug FoW, 80% of the groups would wipe in that first starting bit?

* The old pvp templates like the spell slasher (mesmer with a sword and skull crack).

* How nearly every person you meet in RA was running one of said templates.. i.e if you seen a warrior, it was a "paladin" and if
they were not, they were generally level 17 with a pet straight off the boat from lions arch.

* That barrel in kryta that dropped crystaline swords (grrrr this one is 21 dmg too #$%#)

* KD + AS warrior lfg (As i was a bit late in the tombs scene, maybe someone can say were some of the first builds that people ran?)

* How when you loaded into thunder head keep there were 10 districts

* How all sup monk runes were 50k and sup absorption was 100k

* How all the arenas were joined to certain outposts that you entered from

* The pain of changing your build (attribute refunds)

* Pets and henchmen not being infused, on top of standing still in all aoe.

* Your first encounter with a 55 monk, mine was one that came with us to UW and then ran off after the tradition pre-enchant (need to recast protective bond until you got that +1 prot ).

* Ettin, lightning drake (had broken air spec) and Tengu rune farming, golds dropped from them like nothing i ever seen since.

Hmm thats all i can think of for now.


What are some of the things from back then (or further back or even just when you started playing) that you can remember?

Some things i wondered about, that maybe someone could answer ..
The 15% always weapons, was there only one chest these dropped from in the desert or was it any weapon that had vamp and 15% -1 regen mods on?

Man Tombs used to be all about IWAY, and spirit spam back when each ranger could put out like 3-4 spirits to block IWAY teams lol. Good ol' days, when there wasn't loot scaling either, 55 for a day and you'd have at least 100k.

Oh and the real kicker is we used to actually have to form groups to complete missions *gasp* what were they thinking?

Not so much early GW but I just started again, got a bad memory, and this was the first thing that came to mind

I remember when Thunderclap went nuts after one update... The original spell was "For 8...18 seconds, if target foe is struck for lightning damage, that foe and adjacent foes are knocked down, and you lose 15...9 Energy or Thunderclap ends." but instead it worked like "For 8...18 seconds, if target foe is struck for lightning damage, that foe and adjacent foes are knocked down, and you lose 15...9 Energy." It didn't end when you ran out of energy, just knockdown after knockdown!

I remember playing in random arenas and it was just team after team of R/E with lightning strings (or some W/E with lightning hafts/hilts) and Thunderclap. You'd stand there trying to cast anything, get half a second into it, and BAM! Knockdown, then again, then again, then again! Over and over until you were dead lol. Total caster shutdown. I remember coming on here to complain about it when it happened, really made it impossible to do arenas! Ahhh good times...

edit: lol, I remember all the IWAY teams. The names were always good for a laugh, "IWAY all the way" "IWAY or the highway" good stuff...

when ppl in LA would buy purple weapons for 1.5-2k xD

when people would actually go to capture a normal skill =P

when i played xD

hehe, yeah i remember that!

My favourite random arena/broken update was that one that made it possible to turn hostile on your own team. You would load in and you could attack and kill your own team and they couldn't do anything
I never tried it myself as it was considererd an exploit (i think people got band for it) but afew times we had them on our team.

Could someone who did it perhaps explain how it was done?

I believe the 15 always weapons worked like this:

They had a 15% mod with either -1 health degen or -1 energy degen, you would add a zealous/vamp mod to the sword then salvage the mod off to remove the conditional mod.

Use to love the free chests they had too

I see, thanks.
Do you know though if they came from just one chest in the desert like i have heard mention or was it any weapon that you modded that way?

not completely sure, I think the desert chest was the one to drop crystallines b4 they removed it.

I remember evade and when there wasn't a million of these threads.

The single most abusive bug was when Zealous weapons removed exhaustion. Gale spam everywhere. God, I hated that. (Was boon protting back then.)

There have been some fun ones over the years:

The day when anything that died (including you) dropped stuff.
The 1/2 second Decapitate bug. Ridiculous warrior spikes.
The Arcane Mimicry works on the Base Defender skill bug.

There are others, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

When you could ask someone to trade outside of the town, open trade have them put their thing in there, close trade and the item would drop and you pick it up and run away. Sighhhhhhh

That would of been funny, was this in pvp too? Did people ever drop golds, can see people using a sac farming build

hehe, never heard about that one either, kinda makes the "i'll stand over here" shadow step trade trick look dumb.

I miss the days when the arenas were separate, you could pick and choose which ones you wanted to play at instead of them all being stuck on a random island chain.

I also miss the days of level 1-10 arenas being full of people... People who had gotten runs to the end of the game and capped some over powered elite to beat the crap out of people with in said arena. O,..,O' They were the most fun. -Tear-

Henchmen used to never talk. They were just lifeless little androids who would silently follow you anywhere. Now they have dialogue boxes, battle quotes, and do emotes with you.

They grow up so fast... *sniff*

I miss the first character loading screen, with the 4 characters you had around the fire in Ascalon City.

The first time I beat pre-searing, I freaked out because I thought I did something wrong.

The first few days before 55 was known, and only a few people did it. I saw one of these people farming griffons (hehe), and he said his health was 55... hard to believe, right? When he did it, I almost crapped a brick.

Droknar's Arena was separate from everything else

L15 shiverpeak 4v4 arena.

A buddy and I had just started playing in GW in mid-2005 because we had quit WoW due to it being a time sink, and GW was something casual we could play together. We weren't particularly into GW at that point though -- until we tried the L15 arena that is. We sync join'd (him a monk, me a mesmer) and got 65 wins straight, at which point we decided Guild Wars kicked ass (and we eventually ended up getting into GvG).

Back then Shatter Hex did more damage and had a larger AOE, and that caused many deaths on opposing teams.

I remember when majority of ranger stances are evasion not block and Bull's Strike is a rubbish skill.

Those preset build templates take me back. The joys I had with the Warrior's Bane necromancer and the Abominable Snowman warrior.

I remember when... oh wait I don't really care

Dying my roughspun handwraps black.

Ettins + Griffons + Dreds Chest.

I remember when you could get 100k in 30 Min. just for killing Eittins outside Beetletun and selling their superior runes for 25-100k to the Rune Merchant.

IWAY and Chain Lightning teams in HoM always were fun to play.

I remember when you could run around with 30 Minions, damn I loved that one.

When Elona Reach was a nightmare mission.

It took days to get a decent PUG that would do what was needed and successfully complete.......

The nervous excitement when you got the last crystal and trying to run to the end without being crippled....

I remember poor little innocent GWEN wreaking havoc on us and setting fire to anyone who crossed her path.
Ahhhh that was a fun time that day and still have many screen shots somewhere on this puter .

when everyone's secondary profession was ele coz they liked fire storm in pre xD

when dying nightmares didn't exist in uw =/

When I'd load into Dragon's Lair to a list full of invites because all the monks were stuck at Augury Rock trying to figure out how to ascend. (Either way there probably weren't enough monks going around, but.)

Ahh the days of 18k ecto and 25k black dye...
Griff farming was also really fun

Thank gods all that changed.

We are still carrying some old outdated mechanics, though. Like hitting a button to start PvE missions instead talking to an NPC like in Nightfall or Eye of the North, or the old drop system with all those horrible staff combinations and unmoddable wands, shields and foci.

Sorrows Furnace & Tombs when it was the only place where bosses drop greens. They had so much value back in the day and i actually got my first fow by just selling greens.

I also used to do duo uw ss+55hp a lot before aggro update. Just go in aggro all throw an SS --> BOOM.....aaah so much fun :P

I forgot having to earn points to change attributes.

Henchmen who walked off into the sky, or ran away never to be seen again. Or got stuck, or who blocked you in.

GW has come a long way since retail release.

Oh yeh!!!

Those days farming with of a screen full of damage numbers when I used Mark Of Protection and Zealots fire :-)

(everybody else 55'ed it... but I knda liked my build hehe)

Speaking of henchmen: the time when they didn't have flags, oh boy.

I remember doing RoF with a team who couldn't find a second monk, so they took Mhenlo. The leader would keep stopping at the edge of the lava right after crossing it and go "...stupid Mhenlo keeps trying to kill himself, standing in the lava like that!"

Forming groups to kill the bosses outside Sorrows Furnace and go in. Back then we had insane amount of minions, easy 40+.

I also remember playing with my Ele in the Ascalon Arena. A friend gave me a run to Droks Forge and paid for my armor, so I capped an elite and went back to the Arena. Happened to be Illusionary Weaponary (Ya rly) so I was running the most terrible build you could possily imagine.

Yeah, I can remember a lot of team builds that got nerfed, for HA and GvG. EoE Bomb, Blood Spike, Ranger Spike, Minion Factory and of course IWAY. I gave all of those a try. They were fun for a short time. lol

That was my ascalon arena elite of choice aswell. Was pro.

"a new build of Guild Wars is available." This.

^
I lol'd.

Getting behind the sign in Lion's Arch near the beach before they removed it.

The day I spent 60k for my first gold sword, that I merchant now.

When mobs didnt run from AOE but stoud there and took it.


The day they reset Runes for a few hrs you could buy Sup vig Sup abortion

all the monk and El runes for 1-5k


and sell them in an hr later for 50k-100k

What a mad scamble that was to merchant or even just throw away stuff

just to make room for 45 Sup Absorption (100k) and 45 Sup Vig (100k)

and 45 EL fire and Energy 45 of a mix of all the monk sup runes.


We all got rich that day

Only to blow 500k on a HoD sword that Anet nerfed and was worthless

(but making a comeback i see) and Blow 500k on a shield thats not worth

1k today. The reset of the Ectos that was great too made alot there.



I loved Griffon farming and

Oh ya where i got all my gold to buy the runes on reset day

in the first place

the FREE chests runs one i did was 2.5min to get 4 chests

that would net 25k per hr, not including the the value of the great items

somewent for 500k.


THe Drake run


The little know chest in the Droks run area that produced 500k items all

the time Crystallines galore.


Req 7's max gold 2 moded shields and weapons


18k ectos and 30k black dye.


WHen THK & Thirty were the 2 hardest missions to do and people would do

them 20-30times before completing lol. Now they are easy and do them in

your sleep.


The day they would nerf your fav spot and you got so pissed you wanted to

to quit GW. lol Oh dam they still do that lol


and finally the day i found Guru first week of the game i became a member

AH yes Guru and my first gold sword i bought here from a seller for 60k

By the way it was a

Max gold Long Sword R8 Gold 14% enchanted +29hp and 10-10sundering

no 20:20 then 60k wow i farmed for days getting the gold to buy that one

now its crap lol.

I bolded an oops, did you say that.

Oh yeah, the Henge of Denravi sword, which only skyrocketed in price when Anet decided to remove that sword form the trader. GG.

That mistake was finally corrected with the end game weapon makers in Factions. Now everyone could have their +5 energy HoD sword.