Hello folks.

Hey everyone, I am considering learning to play this game and was just wondering about a few things before I downloaded the 10 day trial. I haven't played an mmo in about a year and that was WoW. I tried to return recently but simply don't care for it anymore. I remember playing GW back when it first debuted years ago and liked it, but don't remember why I stopped. I can't remember hardly anything about it, but I think I would like to go ahead and rejoin the game to familiarize myself wih it before GW2, whic looks awesome.... debutes.

Would it be fair to say pvp is a large part of the game?

Is grouping with others more common than in WoW for example..... where everything can easily be done solo until end game content?

I've heard success in pvp is more skill based and less gear based like it is in WoW...... true?

Is there a large gap of seperation between the veteran players with well developed characters, and lowly noobs like myself? Or do people help each other out?

Thanks in advance.

No. Maybe it has been years ago, but now it is not the case.

Not really. You tipically play solo until endgame, or particular missions like z-missions or things to do to unlock achievements for GW2. In these cases, you can more easily find someone to play with.

Unless you are lucky and find a good guild willing to help you out and play with you even at the beginning.

It is not gear based since gear is maxed out for all characters in PvP.

PvE-wise, being veteran means to be able to remember how to do each mission, and which builds can make you kill each monster more easily. It's not difficult at all to learn these things. If you can't find people willing to teach, you probably will read the wikis.

PvP-wise, there is a huge difference between newcomers and veterans, but it doesn't depend on how "well developed" is the character. The difference is about the player's experience, but it's a complex thing to talk about here.


My personal advice: find good friends to play with, and if you can a good guild of mature people, and have fun.

Welcome to the forum

To start off, the 10 day trial is a bit of a sham, when I tried to get my friend into it I learned that they only give you a certain number of hours total to play, I think something like 9. If you're interested in PvP you won't be able to advance fast enough to participate at all under that time limit.

Nope, PvE and PvP are 2 different cliques. You can PvE for years without feeling the need to PvP. Someone can provide the link where one of the community mods state that only about 10% of the GW population is PvP, and the two populations don't mingle much outside of mud-slinging in GWGuru.

Nope. Thanks to Heroes most players don't bother grouping with strangers, most people stick to grouping with friends and guildmates. You'll find people grouping for daily quests and various team based farming runs, but not so much in general PvE.

Well, you'll need to unlock some of the higher tier armor runes and weapon mods, and to be truly competitive you'll need PvP unlock packs from all 4 campaigns. To unlock it all you'll need to spend lots of money up front.

Yep, see my point above. It used to take months to earn high enough PvP ranks to be considered acceptable, but you won't actually be able to get into many groups, and the ones that will take you will get beaten so bad that you won't actually earn any points towards increasing your rank...

Sorry to break it to you m8. Save your time and wait for GW2.

The denizens of Riverside (like the poster above me) will try to convince you that all PvPers are hostile, insular elitists. Fortunately, this is not the case - there are many skilled players who are willing to help, provided you are willing to learn.

Unfortunately, there would be quite some obstacles - the learning curve for PvP is extreme, and there's enough hostility from the middling PvP community that doing it alone will be painful.

However, the gear point is correct - perfect gear is available for free, and only builds and player skill matter.

Never used the word "all", just saying that the most visible and successful will be, and they'll quite handily suck any fun out of the format.

You're completely wrong. In GW, it's usually the ones at the top who are often not only the most helpful, but the most willing to help.

I have to agree with lemming. Whether PvE or PvP, the veteran skilled players are the most willing to share builds and give advice. And, at least in PvE, they will drop in and help you out. The worst offenders as far as exclusion and name-calling in PvP are usually the middle-ranked players who don't have the skill to advance further up the ranks.

There are other types of PvP available if you own Factions campaign. You would be able to do Alliance Battles (12v12 pre setup groups) or Fort Aspenwood/Jade Quarry (8v8 random group) which can be fun. You only need to reach the correct area in the campaign.

As Swahnee advised, you should find yourself a guild that does the type of things you in which you are interested. Do not join the ones spamming in local chat. Visit our Guild Connections section and browse the Guild Looking For and post in the Looking for Guild forum.

There are also "those guys" who give PvP players a bad name by being elitist jerks. Something else to consider is that there are different levels of PvP in Guild Wars. Guild versus Guild and Heroes' Ascent are considered high-end PvP, while Random Arenas, Alliance Battles, and the Competitive Missions are far more relaxed. Depending on what you want out of PvP, you may never even venture towards GvG or HA and still have a good time. You can look up these formats on the official wiki: wiki.guildwars.com

Best of luck =)

They're also full of more of "those guys." Just something to keep in mind.

The only way to get away from playing with terrible people who think they know what they're doing is to find people you like playing with in one of the team formats.