Realizations of an Old Ranger

As I'm now at 5 and a half years I'd like to give a little rant on what I've learned from and about Guild Wars.

The good

1. Guild Wars is a story of the most unlucky people in the world, a true novel about Murphy's Law. It is almost comical the way everything goes wrong, and the only progress made is rite at the end of the campaign.

2. The values of persistence

3. The benefits of friendships

4. The annoyance of poverty

5. The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results, therefore. The players of Guild Wars have to have a certain amount of intelligence to actually progress in the game.

6. Small guilds are way > Large ones

The Bad

1. The new wave of players is probably the laziest bunch of idiots I have ever met.

2. The ignore list will never be large enough

3. Important NPCs (Mehnlo and Togo more than anyone else) would be better off waiting at the beginning of the mission than walking along with you.

4. Everything you do in Guild wars will be forgotten in Guild wars 2 and not only that but you meet your demise when SPOILER ALERT: you return to fight glint and she kills you. However each one of the EOTN hero are mentioned in the lore as hero of the past while you are just "that looser that got killed by glint"

The Ugly

Now for the serious part, Guild Wars lore is a piece of art, everything happens for a reason, every quest is important, even the small ones. Everything you do has a story and a purpose BUT new guild wars players no longer know this. New players no longer read the lore, they don't watch the cinematic, they don't even walk from town to town anymore. No, this new generation of players is a group of people who are more ego driven than most World of Warcraft players I've known. It seems that people have forgotten how to enjoy the game instead turning it into a job.

I don't think its the age of the players that causes this, sometimes it's not even that their lazy, no, I think the real problem with Guild Wars now may actually be the "Guilds". As someone new enters Guild Wars for the first time they are instantly barraged with guild invite, guild spamming, whispers along the line of "so I see you don't have a guild," so this player who intended to play the game and enjoy it is not trusted into a very very large community of numbers. Few to what may be no large guilds will take the time to help the newbie learn the game, instead the guildie' is forced to solo every mission every quest everything they do. The game becomes not run and with hopes of actually doing anything with the new found friends the new guild member does what they can to complete the campaign as fast as possible.

There is a healthy supply of runners who will not only do the quest for you now, they will also walk you to the end of the campaign. They believe since they got their running builds from PVX they a real elite player, even if they may have only been playing for a few months, I think the worst part about this is that people are actually willing to pay someone to play the game for them. You may say Guild Wars is boring that the only thing to do is fill the HoM so you can be "l33t" in GW2 but i would have to disagree with you.

The most important this I've learned in GW is that if you have a small guild of people who you consider really good friends it will make the game fun again and that small guild of 7 or 8 people you know personally is worth far more than a guild of 150 or more strangers and 8 jackass recruiters.

for those tl;dr's

tl;dr=

Huge guilds/alliances fail because the more people there are, the better chance there is for anything you say to offend someone and snowball into a trainwreck.

ANet is not helping in this regard.

Not so, history will remember everything. Just not your name. You can't expect people 250 years from now to remember 1 person out of 3 million who did the same thing. How many foot-soldiers from the American Civil War do you know by name?

Also, it never says that the heroes get killed by Glint, just that they return to fight her.

no no its in edge of destiny she kills them

I dare you to find where it says she kills them, because I can assure you that all it says is that they returned to fight her again.

Lazy guys are like terrorist. You don't let them get what they want, or else they will keep doing that.

If a guy says 'brb' go on without me, and stays at the begining, I WAIT. I'm not playing the game for them.
If they take to much, I leave. I'm not playing the game for them.

If a guy stays back, and when asked why he does that he says stupid things like: "I'm weak", "I have no skills", "I'm getting survivor", I tell them to play with the rest of the kids, or else I'll ragequit their asses. I'm not playing the game for them.


Fotunately, things like those rarely happen to me, excepting at very late hours.
Maybe there's less people like that in 'euro' time zone.


By the way, I knew that about Glint, ever since I first saw her.
It did't make sense for her to let the heroes fight her until she looks as if she was dead, and the dwarves keep one of her eggs to protect it.
The Vizier was pretty obvious, but she was very, very suspicious.

not so... in edge of destiny the heros go to kill glint, but instead she teams up with them to fight an elder dragon... and dies

sadly it was the human that was driven by love that left his team to "save" his beloved princess thus weakening the heroes



back on point....

i agree with the fact that many of the newer players have no clue as to the story of the game, but then again in this generation i have seen many people play games and never took the time to understand what the story is about anyway


i also agree that just cuz you are a frequent user of pvxwiki and the builds and team setups there does NOT make you "L33T", sadly it just proves that you do not have any creativity of your own and are just another mindless robot.... builds posted on websites are meant to guide you


as for those noobs that wanna make a survivor toon... properly equipped heroes and proper tactics will get you to survivor before you know it, stop bogging down everyone else just cuz you dont wanna die

Just my two cents as someone who also has played for 5 1/5 years. Guilds dont dictate what a player does. If someone chooses to play by the rules of a guild even if that means they dont enjoy the game they paid for then thats thier problem.

On another note I do alot of running and the vast majority are people i belive to have played all the way through the game and now would like to get one of there other many characters to the same spot. People play the way they want and choose. If they find it more fun to buy a run and get right to the end then so be it.
You think its more fun to play all the way through and thats great. But i for example have 8 character slots and dont want to play the game all the way 8 times. I buy runs and get my extras to 20 ASAP so i can put them to use.

And in my opinion "e-peen" is what stuff like dungeons and FoW are all about (because lets face it at this poinit they arent to hard). If the rewards werent awsome most wouldnt do them. I have lots of high end weapons and armor...not because others will be jealous but beacause they are badass! Everyone wants the cool stuff when they start a game and guild wars is at a point in its life span where any new player can get the goods much easier than ever before. I think most oldschool players (again me being one of them) like to complain because new players have it much easier than we did. When i first started if i could have bought a run to the parts where i get the sweet gear i would have. Good for them cause come GW2 we are all on the same playing field again.

I'd like to point that I am in a large (10 guilds) Alliance and so far, I have not seen drama or got problem. Sure, I only really-know 2-3 people + the 3-4 people who are alway loged on in AllyChat. But in the end, a massive alliance without beggars or people ragin are possible. I've seen plenty of small guilds with 3 active people (me being one of them)

And I personnally don't think guilds are the core of the problem, I think it's more that we're focussed on endgame content nowaday. In a guild or guildless, I'm sure a lot of players are either playing silently and not talking to you, or going for e-peen and talking to you. Vocal minority are jerkasses, silent majority are just that : silent.

http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/civi...r_veterans.htm

What's funny is I've killed Glint oodles of time with my heroes and henchies and just me. Now how in the hell all of a sudden she can kill us all?

Some very good wisdom, OP. I started the game trying to keep up with a friend, but we were two flare-spamming elementalists, and when he wasn't on, I was alone. The "guild" that recruited me didn't even acknowledge me, and I felt like I was bothering the leader by asking for help. I was in awe of his Fiery Dragon Sword tearing through charr flesh. I cannot imagine what it's like for new players to get "help" in the form of spirit armies, minion bombing heroes and a myriad of consumables.

This, with the line about laziness, is exactly how I feel, though Shayne hits it with Anet: they created the PvE climate of laziness. I don't blame the player, who will take the path of least resistance at the lowest cost.

I remember joining groups just to run to the next outpost, because the Southern Shiverpeaks were no place for first run-through players to get lost in. I miss that feeling of challenge and excitement of traveling together, to rely on others, and moreover to just have an adventure. It's easy to lose that feeling when the game is either too easy or you basically cheat to win.

Anet never felt runners hurt the game, apparently, which is sad, because people should play together. Odd, because that's exactly the drum beat for GW2. GW1 is still their baby, and those who come drawn by GW2 should see those principles in this game, period.

Small guilds FTW. Im now a full year in a guild with only good friends. I never go in a big guild again. I have been in guilds that owns towns and u know no one and every day people leave and enter or never play anymore. In one they had 4 hours meetings every week at my midnight to discus how to keep members.... the only way was the alliance leaders way... arghhh terrible times.

Everything in GW PVE you can beat with 3 people so if you want to have a good time in gw1 just play with friends. If You have none than find a nice small guild with good people.

Been in a good small guild and a good big guild. The small one was fun to learn the game, but the big one opened a lot more of the game up than the small one ever could.

I don't know if i can say players are lazy. There are sertant people who like a game but actually find achievements RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing boring, tho they still want what the achivements give. One of the things I love with GW is that you can get to the good stuff really quick, no 3 month of constant leveling, etc etc.

I don't really have an opinion about if players buy services or not, because I can understand that after 24/7 VQ you really just want to do something else or go afk.

I like small guilds too, but I don't mind guilds with more than 8-10 players either. Your group of friends can be bigger than that. I think it doesn't have to do much with the size(not before it gets above 30 I would say?) of the guild but rather the people in it. Even tho the guild im in is small doesn't mean we're all BFF. I mostly don't know most of them and some of them I even dislike. But I'm there for 2 people, lol.

Pro example of someone who doesn't know the plot.

I've only been playing since last summer, but I wonder how guilds will work in GW 2; it looks to me as if GW 2 will lean toward individual players and PUGs instead of organized guilds -- a lot of players wandering around, as I will, looking for unfolding events. As Subman247 says above, with GW 2 we're starting over.

You's trollin?


Thanks! I love being lumped in with a generalisation! I got my 30/50 in 3 months without making a Survivor that went and boxed some dwarves, without doing SCs, didn't use texmod and didn't have runs.

People are lazy be default. It has nothing to with how long they've played the game. I've seen people who have been playing for 5 years asking for runs and help with things because they just plain suck at the game and haven't made any attempt to improve in that time. To me, that's more pathetic that someone who's just started seeing people doing things a certain way and assuming that's how the game is meant to be played.

As for guilds and recruitment...
Before I came to Guild Wars, I lead a successful guild in another MMO. Guilds have to start somewhere. You can't always interest your RL friends in what you do online. Sometimes they can't afford to play with you, sometimes they don't have the time, sometimes they're just not interested. So what do you do? You make friends. Part of making friends within guilds is through recruitment. I enjoy inviting new people to my guild so they can join in with the good times that my friends and I have. I'll point out now that everyone in my current guild I hadn't met before I started 3 months ago. Not naming any guilds/alliances in particular here, people get the impression that any guild out recruiting is wanting to be like them. We don't all base our guilds/alliances on numbers. Hell, my guild teaches people things, we hold small events, we have a very active forum and Vent. Part of the recruitment is trying to spread that to other people. Right now we have ~50 members. It's nice. Yes, our alliance sometimes holds a town and I'm sure there's many people I'll never really know. That's like life. I'm not forced to play with those people but it's nice to have the option there should I want to. If all guilds in the alliance were at 100 members, no I probably wouldn't want to be there. Uber-alliances put me off. Also, you're assuming that all guilds are led the same. My guild leader is always open to ideas from officers and guild members and will use our suggestions on how to run things. The guild has a very family feel to it. I've been in another guild where the same thing was claimed and the opposite happened. Sometimes in smaller guilds, some people can get away with murder as they're so close to the guild leader that it becomes a mini-dictatorship. People become unhappy, they leave and found a new guild based on what they believe.

While we're talking about recruiting into guilds, yes, I'm someone who will whisper guildless people and ask if they're interested in joining a guild. It could be that they don't know anyone in the game and are struggling with things, it could be they're guildless though choice. If I'm told that they're not looking for a guild, I leave it at that, wish them well and move on. If they're interested, I give them details about the guild, ask them a few questions and see if they would like to join. I have NEVER pressured anyone into joining a guild. Have you also considered that not everyone uses Guru and therefore doesn't see the Guild Recruitment posts? How are you meant to advertise that your guild is recruiting in game? Oh wait, by posting in Local chat that you are! :O

Let's see, the part about people joining guilds and expecting people to help them with the campaigns. Yes, I agree that new players should be given some help BUT you cannot possibly expect everyone to drop what they're doing to help someone else out. I'm MORE than willing to help someone with hero builds, to give them some stuff for collector weapons, to advise them on strategies... But the bottom line is that if I'm in a pug group for a ZM and someone asks me for help with a mission, I'm not going to bail on the pugs. If I'm mid VQ of an area, I'm not going to abandon it to help someone. It's give and take. People do need to learn to do a certain amount of things on their own (or they become lazy and dependant like you're claiming) but some support should be given. Yes, there are people who expect everything handed to them on a plate, but in one breath you're chastising those people and in the next saying that's what we should be doing for them?

Now, I hero-henched all 3 campaigns and EotN in NM. I didn't ask for help within the guild as I wanted to learn how to do things myself. I sat and looked at why I wasn't succeeding at what I was trying to do. Most people don't. Most people run around with crappy heroes, select bad skills and then wonder why they fail on their own. I remember one guy who begged someone to leave something they were doing to help them because "your heroes are much better than mine". So instead of working on trying to improve his own, he would rather someone did it for him. He wasn't a "new" player either. He'd been playing for 2 years. On a side note, a guildie of mine had to start over from scratch. I stopped working on titles on my main and started playing a Mesmer so he had company. We blasted though all the campaigns together. I gave him things to help him out. So please don't assume I'm heartless and don't assist others simply because I refuse to drop what I'm doing to run and help someone else. I will help people if I can, the same as the rest of my guild. Again, something that in smaller guilds you are more limited with doing. In larger guilds you are more likely to find someone who is doing something that you are. What you put into a guild is what you get out of it. A lot of people won't talk in guild chat, won't interact with other players, then wonder why no one talks to them or helps them. If all you're going to do in a guild is ask for help, then you're going to be looked upon as needy rather than someone who is trying to make an effort into being part of the guild. There is give and take on both sides. If someone is going to be silent in guild, then that's down to them. If you're trying to include people and they don't want to take part, you can't force them.

It's also worth pointing out that a lot of newer players don't have the time to do things how they used to be done. GW2's release is obviously going to have people going "OMG MUST DO THINGS BEFORE IT COMES OUT!!!1!". Very few actually realise there's no realease date yet therefore there's no huge rush. Maybe these people have limited time during which they can play as well. The community is elitist (if you hadn't noticed) and people are made to feel like crap if they don't have at least half of their HoM filled, if they haven't completed all the elite areas, if they don't know what a BDS is or how much an ecto is. It's been that way for a looooooooong time. Sorry to say but that's something that will never change, in this game or any other.

Thank you for pointing this out. On my first play through the campaigns, I sat and watched every cutscene (I still rewatch some now!). I've read articles on Wiki about the lore. I wish I could get my hands on the novels here in England but so far I've been unable to in the shops (going to go via Amazon instead). Again, this goes with my previous points about generalising. It's bad, mm'kay?

You sir, win this thread
/bow



So to summarise, you shouldn't be judging every new player the same way. The community as a whole, yes. There are lazy people, there are those who like to work for it. If these people aren't directly interfering with what YOU do and how YOU play the game, leave them to it. There was a debate in AC yesterday about Survivors, oddly enough. Someone was saying that the way people get Survivor devalues the title. I said the same could be said for GMC and people using texmod. People don't throw shitfits about that half as much as they did a few years ago. AT the end of the day, people don't know how you got your titles unless you tell them. The only thing that matters to most people is that you have them, not how you got them. If you're going to judge every Survivor as a dwarven boxing Kath hammer user, then that's your problem, but in doing so you're also looking down on those who did the title the "legit" way. Same can be applied to speed clears. I've done every elite area balancedway. I'm now in the process of learning speed clears. I enjoy both. Different strokes for different folks. I do personally think you should play the game through by yourself once, do an elite area balancedway at least once before wanting runs/SCs, but that'll never happen. At the end of the day, the people with skill will be more pleasureable to play with than the people who lack skill. And what difference does it really make to YOU anyway?

Thus endeth my rant.

I started playing GW in October, so I'm one of those new players you're lumping together as being lazy.

I've worked my way, almost entirely H/H, through Prophecies, Nightfall & EotN. I'm currently doing Factions... I just got done with Gayala Hatchery. I went back a few days ago to do Tahnnakai Temple because my first time through, we missed the masters, and I want masters on all of my missions. I got threatened by the other team that if I did not skip the cinematic, they'd make my "GW career a living hell." These weren't newbies rushing through the game... at least one of them was bragging that he'd been playing Factions since its release and he was tired of "all the stupid noobs being too stupid to watch the cinematics on their own dime" instead of his.

I've been hassled for not having capped the right skills, berated for not understanding when someone wanted me to mapout while gate monkeying (this, despite my specifically ASKING them... "as soon as I trip the lever or once you're through?") and them not bothering to respond. I've been told that the fact that I have "no stones" means I'm worthless. I've been laughed at for using PVX builds and denigrated as stupid for NOT using them. I've had what seems to be the entire population of a large guild stalk and harass me because I objected to one of them trying to scam me in a trade - and a lovely ignore list that maxes out at 10 people.

Do THEY represent all of you oldtimers?

Your profile says you are 20. I am twice your age...I have a son your age... I was playing MUDs and building them before you were born. I may be new to GW, but I've worked in the gaming industry for years and been a gamer since my big brother sat me on his lap and taught me to play Pong during his Christmas break in 1975. He's 14 years older than me... and still games as much, if not more, than I do.

I am in a guild with my husband and my best friend... it's just the three of us. I met a lovely woman here on Guru who has been playing since GW's early days... we're in an alliance with her guild, which also has just three members. We mostly play together now - I don't have to H/H if I don't want to, and I'm not stuck begging to PuG with oldtimers who are going to ping me a build, order me to use it and not even bother explaining HOW it works or WHY its better than what I've got - no matter how many times I ask them to. I met another wonderful young man via Guru who took me into various dungeons for the first time... he not only helped me with my builds, he took a great deal of time to answer my questions, explain what we'd be facing, explain why some skills were better than others for those areas. I've learned a great deal from him.

I've never done a speed clear, my "running" history consists of a lady I met desperately wanting me to see the Halloween decor in LA before it was taken down. I had only made it as far as Yaks and figured I'd see the decor next year. She was persistent (in a good way) and had her guild leader "run" me. Irony of sorts... they pulled the decor while we were running and we got there shortly after it was down. I didn't return to LA until I'd worked my way there.

I'm sure that there are newbies who fit your description to a T... I'm sure there are a whole bunch rushing through content solely for the purpose of getting their 50/50 in anticipation of GW2, who care nothing for the lore, only for being a bit ahead of everyone else when GW2 is released. GW2 is getting a lot of hype, and players of other MMOs don't want to be left in the dust. So yes, I don't doubt that you've encountered some like that...

But acting as if they represent the rest of us newbies is akin to me acting as if that guy who threatened me about the cinematic somehow represents YOU and other long-term players.

I meet new people exactly like me nearly daily. I find them on Guru, I meet them in Outposts, I catch them on the Steam forums, etc. I show them the Wiki, link them here to Guru, offer them what little advice and help I can. They are the majority of new players I meet.

I don't expect anyone to give me anything, to run me anywhere, to play the game for me or to hold my hand. I expect people to be polite and I offer the same in return. What I usually get from the majority of long-term players is the sort of disgusting disdain and condescension seen on the latest "let's QQ about people we meet in PuGs" thread here on Guru. Apparently the fact that I won't blindly follow their orders to switch my build, even as I'm telling them "I've never used that skill, I have no idea how it works" makes me worthy of their insults.

Ironically, I still seem to be able to H/H damn near any quest, area or mission I encounter...even in HM... with the builds I've chosen, the ones that supposedly won't work. I completely kicked ass yesterday vanquishing Marga Coast with just me and three heroes going up against that nasty Acolyte of Melandru & her fort full of Kournans... me AND my heroes all using builds you won't find anywhere on PVX...and not a monk, nor a hex, nor an interrupt among us. And did I mention I'm an elementalist? You know, the profession class which is all but useless in HM without a gimmick build?

Tell you what... I won't write off all the long-term players as being the same as the nutjob doing T.Temple the other day... and you don't write off all the new players as being lazy and ill-educated about the game, hmm?