Would like to know a few things.

If these questions have been asked before, I apologize!

Because of school, I haven't been able to play GW for almost... goodness knows how long. I decided I wanted to start playing again and everything seems to have changed, well, a lot has been tweeked.

I just want to ask a few questions and maybe a couple more when I remember them. When I played, greens were still the top weapons, now they're worthless. Why is that? What is the new 'green'? I've heard a lot about modded weapons and would like to know a bit more about them (got a pretty good idea what this might be but I just wanna make sure).

What happened to 55 monk? I heard someone talking about 600 monk a long time a go but now that's dead aswell, what was it?

I know majority of you guys will be like, 'My god, you're like an alien!' I know, I know... I've just been so so SO far away from the game it's like I gotta start from scratch.

Thanks in advance!

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/55_Monk This entry claims that: "This is an extremely niche build that is used solely for farming. It is practically useless in general PvE and PvP."

I don't think Greens are useless. There are probably Golds that are more desirable than Green uniques. I'm a noob, though, so someone else can answer these questions better than I can.

Because of this lovely thing Anet introduced, being an "inscription". This thing enables a player to mod any weapon he likes to exactly how he likes it, thus making every green weapon, with very few exceptions, completely redundant and worthless.

There are a couple that have mods which can't be replicated using inscriptions.

So this leaves the following items that are still worth something:
-Nerfed items (q7/q8 or pre-nerf staffs, -2/-2 shields etc)
-Dual inscription items (+10/-2 shields, and some offhand combinations)
-Very rare or desirable skins

Greens became kinda worthless with the release of nightfall, because inscription were added back then, so 'perfect' weapons where easy to get.
This practicaly made most greens (with a few exceptions) pretty much worthless.
They are still perfectly useable but only a few greens are worth selling now.

55 monks still work, but most farming area's got nerfed (eg. UW with the addition of the skeletons of dhuum which pierce through armor)

Same thing goes for the 600 monk, it still works but the area's where they where frequently used got nerfed, this along with the enchantments that where used to deal damage.
Those enchantments cannot be mantained anymore or dont deal enough damage.

I hope I've helped you a bit

Greens are still top weapons, they just don't sell well. Almost nothing sells well anymore except a handful of extremely rare skins and a few other extremely rare items.

55 monk is still used for some farming, but with the upgrades to spirit spamming and a few other changes their are easier ways to farm. Plus the most common way to earn money now seems to be DOA, or power trading. Add to that all the z quests, and farming to earn money really isn't needed anymore.

Greens are deemed "worthless" because people can now obtain the proper attachments and skins they want and now have their favorite skin (or closer to their favorite skin) with their favorite stats. It's typical MMO evolution, they're not useless, but more so worthless because of their locked in stats and skin.

The 600 is just another variation of the 55. Using smiting and protection, the solo monk just abuses a high health score and low armor, rather than a low health score.

I would say that running either of these is not very popular unless you're doing a niche farm during holiday drops. Mainly because over the years the farming scene has shifted from soloing remote areas to building hyper-optimized team to clear all the elite areas in 10-30~ minutes each.

If you're looking to turn a profit in this game you have to be either 1) a trader 2) a speed clearer 3) a bot. I think the only people who actually use 55/600 anymore on a regular basis are bots, the builds are so brainless they can just set it and forget it and let the computer rake in gold.

Greens can be good depending on what you want/need. If you need certain stats for a build, you might be better off looking for a boss with a green you can farm instead of spending money to buy a weapon and mod it.

Green items are still the among the best you can come by for equiping your Heroes. Since they are cheep, in part because so many are now out there, you can pick up a good number of them with the mods you want quickly and easily. Often much easier then trying to find the mods which some players will sell at inflated prices.

Greens have become worthless because 1) they can't be modded or dyed, and 2) because most of them are too easy to farm and are very common.
Although they all have 'max' stats, most greens have stats that are not all that useful - for you or your Heroes. Since you can't dye them and they often have relatively common skins, they don't have much of an e-peen factor either.

Ah ok, thank you to everyone, this has really helped me. I have another question.

I'm trying to complete Proph on my monk and there's hardly anyone doing the missions, there's only a few people but they're always level 20 and never usually around mine (level 17 at the Crystal Desert), why is that?

The level 20s are there doing them for Hard Mode. The new population is very scattered as there are three campaigns and an expansion. You can change campaigns or got to Eye of the North as soon as you reach level 10 and a port city, so players skip a lot of content until they decide to work on titles.

The desert are really the hardest missions in some respects as party size is still only 6. You should definately make certain you find and complete the quest for your 15 more attribute points as soon as possible. Concider leveling up to 20 before you move on as well.