What do you miss most from the earlier years of Guild Wars?

i miss the days before 90% of my friends list rage quit gw

Sense of wonder and exploration. Time where each outpost was new one for me, each skill gained new option of playing game and each person met potentional friend.

I miss blowing throught tons of skill caps in kryta/magguna, hoping that THIS time, boss will have elite skill. Grouping with two warriors and ranger to do altheas ashes where we had no healer, no-one knew more about quest than where arrow pointed and managing to actually complete it. I miss times when noone would want to skip cinematics. I miss desperate 2-3 man groups fighting to reach "cinematic spot" in order to ress party.

Old times. No nerf or update took that away, no buff or update can bring it back.

Actual grouping, rather than only guilds, H/h, and speed clears.

Read the articles I linked and stop fighting the current, mate.

Someone with a blog writing something that you agree with doesn't cause it to make sense, sorry "mate"

It seems just about everyone that posted misses PUG's, including me. I don't have many friends that play anymore, and the ones that do aren't big into taking time out of their busy GW-lives, and playing with me. While I enjoy having control of hero's, I'd much rather have a full group of real people. Now, if you go into any town in Tyria (except Ascalon, LA, Drok's, and NF some places), there is no one there.

I miss when the game was more about having fun and less about making as much money as possible. I don't give a crap how much money I have if I'm running around with friends having fun.

Agreed. Its fine that they gave an alternative for TRUE solo players, but they failed to put in measures that gives incentives to actual grouping. Namely, massively increased drops for full group of real players, or exclusive drops that would only appear if the entire group is composed of players.

Without those measures they just encouraged a vicious cycle where heroes are better than nearly everything else because it takes less time to form. People do stuff with heroes to save time, making it take even longer to form real group. Then the remaining people switch to heroes to save time....etc.

All of the things you guys have said rings true to me. I'm glad I wasn't the only one "missing" some of the past adventures of Guild Wars. I guess what's why I enjoy Vanquishing so much, as it allows me to go through all of the areas (especially in Proph) that I skipped through, and fight old enemies. Sadly, I'm always doing it alone with H/H, or with people who have a STRICT skill set.

Well if anyone is up for it, I'd love to set together a team to Vanquish as much of Proph as we can, no set skills, not meant for speed, but just for the fun of it. I'm sick of people saying that Sabway or Dischord is the "Best and Only way to Vanquish". Sure me with my ten bone fiends may not kill as "efficiantly" as you, but I don't really care. I have more fun.

Anyhoo, just an idea.

This... how can I forget the old days of Droknar's Forge. Saying that Ascalon City, Loin's Arch and Droknar's Forge were all busy places back then.

Also it warms my heart to know so many of you miss PuGing like I do.

I miss necro energy the way necros used to be.

Having not bought it then (when it came out) and playing F2P mmorpg's instead*

*Ones where you pay nothing at all, then you realise you're crap unless you buy things from the cash shop!

btw whats that monk strike everyone talks about, i guess i wasnt that far in the game 3 years ago

Completely agree with everyone....but are you guys sure it isnt because we have "grown up" im pretty sure MOST of us started at a young age, say 13-15. Every game at that age is full of fun. There is no competition and you dont obligated to do anything. you can do anything u want and have fun. In fact this may go for any game. in my case when i first started playing halo i enjoyed the hell out of it with freinds and we played for fun. But as we got much more skilled we played for competition and even fought amongst ourselves. today we play less and only to "rank up". i believe many of us treat guild wars the same. it may have to do with age and skill level

In the old days of Guild Wars, people were much nicer, and I actually wanted to PUG, because I knew people wouldn't act like d-bags. People nowadays are too focused on getting money as quickly and efficiently as possible, and act like jerks when somebody gets in their way. To me, it seems that everything started going downhill when Nightfall came out.

Also, I miss Xinrae's Weapon and Defiant was Xinrae before they were changed. I'm talking about when they disabled spells. Maybe I am the only person who actually liked them better that way.

This. EoTN has been out for what now? Well over a year, closer to two, I don't feel like checking. I think we all know what the login/character select screen looks like.

Can we get a rotation going?! And I mean start waaaaay from the beginning and just switch is every few weeks on a random day/ time frame.

I'm sure there are indeed a lot of players of your age, but there are a lot of 'adults' in this game too and from the start on. Myself and 4 other life friends joined a guild the first weeks after GW release. Most people in that guild were in their twenties.

We're in our thirties now and we started around the age of 12. Once a gamer, always a gamer and GW's gave me one of the richest experiences thusfar and I've played hundreds of games. That same rich inovating experience is the thing I miss the most from the early years of GW.

When favor of the gods went to a national district depending on the HA battles represented by teams from individual nations. I remember how everyone in ToA were cheering for their nations team to win and hold favor of the gods. Those were exciting times indeed. It gave HA much more meaning than it does now.

I nearly forgot all about that. Then they'd all run around and make monk only groups.

Anyone remember Perdition Rock elite skill cap runs?

I miss evading.
Sure it was a pointless aspect, but it was only removed because there were no "Can not be evaded" skills.

I think I miss the old skill capping style. Capping it from a boss when he was using it or was the last used skill... If I remember correctly.

I can remember the many times I tried to cap a stance and failed.

Your avatar is funny as shit bro!!


I miss the teamwork I had with my old guild. They all left the game pretty much. I tried one other guild but couldn't get into it.

Updates that were actually on time.

When Highend was more than just stupid 6inch minis that asians got in some giveaway


Oh and when there were no heros so guild wars actually a team game and not solo.


Oh and when there was no set build or SC that everyone and his wife could run.


Oh and when not everyone and his wife had Fow died black with whatever generic item was worth a lot at the time.


Oh and when necros could have 20++ minions

Let's all gather around the fire, its Story time children.

The Monk Strike to my knowledge when I was there was that Thunderhead Keep was a very difficult mission. Back then we didn't have heroes and PVE Skills, so you imagine it was new to everyone. The thing is there wasn't really a PVXwiki, so there was random builds. A lot of people, including myself had no idea how to do the mission and when King Jalis died you lost the mission. I believe 95% of groups I was in didn't get past the ice elementals/summit herders in the first 5 mins. Getting to the fort and clearing it was a miracle. I never even saw the mursaat part there for many months.

Now if my memory serves me right, Monks were very much needed as they always are. The Problem is soo many people, soo many people, etc lost that mission because possibly, a. some were dumb and zerged b. didn't protect King Jalis c Were Wammos, those were a dime a dozen. or D. other.

Eventually most Monk players gave up and went on strike. They didn't want to heal people who couldn't get 5 mins through the mission. You couldn't really use henchmen, well i guess you could.. but idk if they were infused at that time. This lasted for a long time, before i beat the mission somehow, idk how.. must of had a group blessed by Arenanet themselves.

TL: DR Nostalgia tells me times were different back then and stuff happened. I can't summarize any more for you. If i missed something or was off somehow, sry its 1 in the morning. Thanks.

I actually find it super amusing when I read comments about missing pugs and more difficult THK and the like. I mean, I'm not pointing and anyone and saying, "come on now," or anything. It's just that any of us that have been reading the forums since '05 can clearly remember how much complaining has gone through them about idiot pug groups. It just seems like there's a bit of irony in there somewhere. Having been a guild leader through all the spikes and lulls of GW I can say that many, many people always had troubles finding a good pug or pug at all. I say this because myself and my guild officers made it our 'duty' to assist guildees in missions and for weeks at a time all we would do is mission after mission every evening as they asked for assistance. But anyway, yeah, it was still much easier to pug something back when.... just kinda smile when I read thoughts of nostalgia for pugging

Back in 2005 before the AoE nerf I remember farming Caromi Tengu outside riverside province for gold armors. Since GW was still a new game we would salvage the rune out and sell runes unidentified for lots of money.

Bought me my first "15k" armor from this. O nostalgia.

Also exploring Kryta and going to ToA and entering fow for the first time. I thought I was paying 1k for a quest but instead I entered an area with level 28 monsters. I thought that place would be impossible to beat, now people do it in 15 minutes

lol, you make it sound like the Monk strike had some rational, mature thought behind it.

What it truly was is just a few kids playing Monk that didn't think they were getting enough credit for really being the ones getting people through the mission. (* in addition - I believe it might have started from Monks charging to heal for groups and a big stink arising from those believing it wasn't worth what they were charging). They got several more kids with monks to follow along - they /danced in THK for a few hours and refused to join pugs to do the mission. Monks in my guild, along with many others went to help people in their stead, sort of as a "you're being dumb" type of statement. However, it was somewhat funny and ingame news-worthy for a few hours. Some felt that it was more funny and tried to drag it out much longer though. It just faded away....

Some of this is repeated from what others said since a lot of it I agree with.

I liked back when there wasn't any Wikis for the game and when you pugged (and you had to back then since there were no heroes), no one cared what your skill bar was. It was just about having fun and helping others (not saying people don't help others nowadays but back then it was better).

I know you said not to bring up nerfs but one nerf that comes to mind is from necros and that was mms having scores of minions all over the place (I don't know exact numbers but it was over double what we have now). I didn't play necro all that much before the limit came about but man those minions were fun to watch. I understand why they nerfed them though since it was pretty much god mode when fleshy creatures were around. We didn't have any flesh golems though to keep minions coming when we ran into non-fleshies.

I love heroes but I'm still fond of the times I had to take the henchies and they always do their henchie things (not healing, over-healing, not targeting who is the priority target, etc). I don't share the sentiment over THK. That mission was sadistic when pugging (since the henchies were just too stupid to bother with there..or in Thirsty River). One of my friends (and former guildmate) had to switch to a monk secondary just because we couldn't get into a party which brings me to something I don't miss and that was what I called mesmer hate. I'm not the only one I've talked to about it but early on, mesmers seemed to be the red-headed stepchild. The only reason she was able to get into parties was because of fast casting heals. Otherwise it would have taken a long time for her to beat the first campaign.

I also miss my old farming runs in FoW before Anet would inevitably nerf every one of my builds over a period of time.

I remember the monk strike.. I can't remember exactly when it was though so for all I know I had already completed the game before it happened. I also have fond memories of Lichy and his addiction to sending me into the lava...every...freaking...time. When redid that mission to get my male necro and first monk the Protector title, he once again had a field day sending me into the lava time after time. I <3 Lichy. Especially since I have the mini of him now...

I miss back when Anet didn't add dungeons and hard mode to the game in an attempt to appeal to 'hardcores' and players of other mmos.

There's probably 20 other things I can think of but I'll keep it short. I don't play the game much anymore (time constraints, etc that I'm sure others here can relate to) but I look back fondly on the 54 months and counting I've been a part of the Guild Wars community...except that one noob in Hell's Precipice that caused a party wipe by aggroing way too many of those annoying sparks of the titans at once. :lol:

No one denies how we all use to have the odd complaint about PuG, but compared to the way things are today I'm sure most of us WANT those days back. The odd bad PuG was better the spending hours on end with a bunch of NPCs.

Livia I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish. But PuG were the best companions of all time!

I miss the pre-hero PuGs. They were such fun. Mis-matched teams with odd builds, but everyone doing their best. My mesmer did some quests and missions in The Wilds as the tank using Physical Resistance because we couldn't find a warrior.

Yeah, that's the sad part. I've been everywhere, I've seen it already. I'm never again going to stop and take in the beauty of Vabbi's floating gardens or Cantha's jade sea for the first time. Maguuma jungle's just another annoying clump of spiders now. I don't really care to watch the cinematics again, and between heroes and consumables, there isn't really any sense of desperation or urgency anymore.

Also I miss the days when my best friend and I played RP characters together, in character.

The thing that is missing from the old days of GW, is the anticipation of the next campaign/expansion.

Korea has favor.. and they had it for weeks on end sometimes.
Attribute refund points were quite awesome as well if you wanted to tweak your attributes half-way through a mission.

When I see this thread I see that most people want pugging back, including me. That's also the reason I stopped playing GW so much, because honestly it didn't feel like an MMO anymore! More like an solo RPG game (serious) So I think heroes kinda ruined the game.

Thats also the reason i'm a little bit sceptic about the sidekick in GW2. But I'm pretty sure it will be more "MMO" then GW!

Game updates.

Atleast Zmissions are somewhat PUGable. I did Urgoz yesterday, almost flawlessly with a PUG, it was fun .

I kind of miss the rush I used to get from finishing a mission, but I think that's an issue of how long I've played, and probably also the power creep.

I mean, the first time I killed Glint, now there was satisfaction. Now you go back in HM and she's cake.

I wasn't around back then; I came much later, during Factions, but I remember doing THK five times for the bonus because people kept forgetting to light the torches.

I also remember that I used to load to a list of invites in Dragon's Lair because there just weren't enough Ascended monks. XD

Secure accounts and not worrying every time I log in that I will find my account stripped.

^
This!

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