Logged back into Guild Wars after 3 years

Wow, I just logged back in after several years of not playing. I tried Guild Wars 2 and think it sucks. After that, I just never tried GW1 again. I had a few questions:

1) How large is the community?

2) How bad is the economy? It actually looked pretty good to me.

3) Is UWSC still possible? Or other SC's for that matter?

Thanks!
Tail

1) How Large:
Depends on what you mean by "large." It's not 2007 by any means. However usually play the International District because there are too many people in the districts for my comfort. Kamadan is the most crowded. Try it for yourself. It's a personal choice anyway.

2) Economy
Suits me fine. I am currenty working on Elite Skill Hunter and not going broke. Again, it depends on what you want. There is an active trade fest in Kamadan and a lesser one in Lion's Arch. Try it out?

3)UWSC is still possible. The alliance I am in does it often. I dont' much like SC so I only go if coerced. Yes, there are other SC. Saw one for FoW tonight that left about 1200 PDST.

The oly way to find out if you still want to play? Still enjoy GW is to try it. So log in and see if you remember how to kill Rotscale!!

If you want to find the most people and join a guild or an alliance then Kamadan American is the most crowded though a few other places like Pre-Ascalon American with a new character or permanent pre toon.

Guild Wars has switched to allowing 7 heroes with you so many people like to play alone in the missions these days. It makes it hard to tell how many people are playing the game cause most are off in missions on their own if not with guild/alliance members. So PUGs are hard to find. Best chance is in the z mission of the day I guess but my computer is old and I load slow so I'm rarely in American dists cause the more people the longer the load.

Again, like in the old days, best advice is find a good guild and/or alliance or at least stay with some enough to find in game friends you can add to a current active friends list.

So I guess my advice is to go guild-hopping and find a good fit or at least meet some gaming friends in them. Which again means a place like American dists of Kamadan and Pre-Ascalon to find same. Maybe Embark Beach for z missions and bounties and such.

Good luck and enjoy. I myself like the more mellow atmosphere and lack of the immature idiot crowd of trolls and jerks you'd sometimes find in places like American Shing Jea back in the older days.

I've returned within the last couple of weeks after a break since 2010/11. Economy is fine. I've sold a few high end things I had to get ~500e built back up after giving a lot of stuff away at some point around a year after I had faded away from the game. Selling the hand full of unneeded high end items I decided to cut required minimal efforts, and I got more than fair offers. I'm not quite sure what the buying market is like, but people seem to have a lot of everything, so I think it's probably the most favorable time ever to buy basically anything except maybe unded pets(these have gone up a ton of course) or OS weapons, because of course they've only become more rare with people being banned or quitting forever. I've bought max party, sweet, and drunkard titles all in the same day so you can certainly find basic commodities you're looking for.


I've found PvE to be active enough, but you certainly have to seek out grouping now. You can't just sit in an outpost and have people come through like you used to in enough volume to count. It's become more diablo-esque in that you seem to have to go to big hubs, advertise for groups, and then go to where you want to do things rather than having every individual mission/dungeon outpost/etc. be full enough to get groups. I think a lot of people are playing it like a single player game these days.

My friends list was entirely blacked out. There are still some active alliances, and while I'm not sure where I currently am will remain my home, I imagine finding the right guild is essential these days if you want to group without effort///not feel alone in the game.


tl;dr(everything after this paragraph is just elaboration) you need a guild or something along those lines to find groups. Smaller guilds seem to have been widely consumed by giant alliances - the most elite SC guilds now mingle with more middle of the road SC guilds and these alliances as a whole function essentially like SC pugging used to. I'm sure Trading is fine.
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My personal experiences, if you want to read my thoughts in-depth:

After 2 weeks the loneliness and longing for the community this game once had has settled in and encouraged me to look harder for people to play with. I'm attempting to build connections to mixed results - it seems like groups are a lot more tight now, and the ones that aren't are frankly too loose if that makes sense. In other words, the smaller communal guilds or just groups(seems like a lot of people group daily for zquests) seem hard to get in with just because they're very low-key and probably aren't too active in their search for more, and the ones that aren't are often letting anyone in and become a bit messy to say the least. I think this may also be related to the fact that we can assume most people who really care about the game have already finished everything.

The gap between casual and experienced has become a lot wider. There aren't endless guilds recruiting where people just do stuff like help each other with titles any more. I considered those guilds the middle of the road, and while I ended my ~2010 playing in a far more elite guild, I made most of my friends in those types of guilds between 2006 and 2009 and would honestly like to retire in a nice one these days if I can ever find one.

There seems to be giant alliances that probably make up half of the player base and are no more communal than random PUGs used to be. They seem to have some emphasis on owning towns, probably because they can do so easily through sheer numbers. There are the elite SC alliances - I joined one based on previous experience but am finding little motivation to get back into SCing in a 10 year old game and I'm also finding that the guild/alliance chats are very abrasive to anything short of SCing doa/uw/fow/the couple of dungeons that are profitable on the level of the first 3. Even someone asking to do yesterday's zquest in slavers exile was greeted with a couple of people abrasively asking why they would do that over other SCs. Not to say there aren't plenty of great people in these kinds of alliances. The alliance I'm in now often has lower tier groups that are about on par with what good PUGs used to be for doa/uw/fow and that's a huge niche that may appeal to you. If you're interested in that kind of thing you'll be joining an alliance like mine because PUGs don't form any more for any SC.

I have not found examples of my above-mentioned "middle of the road" guilds that are small communities focused on doing basic HM type content and non-SC clears of places, but I'm sure they exist if that's what you're after. Be sure to shoot me a message if you find one too. I think that's where I'd like to be these days.

I came back with the intention of getting HoM done for my toons in GW2, as I'd linked another account to a GW2 account I don't use.

Started off from scratch again, and has been a blast- so much so that I only log in to grab daily reward in gw2 and log off again.

Loving re discovering the various aspects of the game, farm builds, RA builds, and slowly getting back to scratch on pvp (although I'm a lot slower than when I left GW 6+ yrs ago), unlocking skills, etc. So much to do and it all feels like you are actually aiming towards something rather than GW2 which just all feels a bit pointless.

I'm on my third guild since I got back, and have finally settled in to the largest Kurz alliance (owners of HzH, always good for those chest keys!) which is quite a loose alliance and does do some things.

But as others have said, it's not easy to form teams or get previous days ZB, etc done so I'd recommend investing in mercenaries for your account and rolling through the content with them.

Also returned since a week or so.
I saw that UW/FOW was free to enter. But since today its 1k again.
Can't find an explication anywhere. Anyone can explain?

Thanks

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Weekly_bonuses

this week is faction bonus, last week was the pantheon bonus (Free passage to the Underworld and the Fissure of Woe)