Raids

Anyone who's familiar with EQ and other such MMO's probably know what a raid is. Anyone know if there will be encounters/quests/whatever system this game is working that will require like 30-40+ people to complete? Besides the Guild tournaments that is.

i have heard nothing on something like that yet

on the other hand this is only the foundation of the game they are building

i am already anticipating the next chapter and the game itself isnt out

From what I've heard one of the main reasons raids probably won't be in GW is because of the way that the skills are balanced. The skills are balanced for 2, 4, 6(?), and 8 player teams, and when the parties get to the size of raid groups a lot of the skills go out the window balance-wise.

Skills were somewhat balanced like that in EQ too, for 6 player groups, but the advantage of having a ton of healers, and tanks was good for taking on huge monsters. I just think it would be cool to get a bunch of your buddies together and take down a massive monster, it was one of the things that appealed to me in Everquest. The only reason I stopped playing Everquest was because of the time that was required. I found the only way to actually enjoy the game was to spend at a minimum of like 3-4 hours a day, and get really powerful, before you could do the really cool stuff. I hope that the Guildwars developers actually come through with their promise of not making it a hardcore player oriented game. I just don't have that kind of time anymore

Massive battles of 40+ people don't really take skill; anything can be done with 200 drones swarming over a hapless victim. It becomes less a matter of how well the team works together, and more a scene of "if I can get 20 more people we'll flood over the other group!" i.e.. zerging.

The less people you have, the more responsibility each person takes. Sure, you lose that mass riot mentality (yes, I know, it's lots of fun), but I tend to think of GW as precise and exact -- not a bludgeon of numbers that'll blindly smash your target to pieces, and then keep on doing so.

Well, there's a difference between zerging and the encounter actually requiring that number of people. Sometimes you need people to take care of adds, drag corpses away, etc. Oh, and btw, what exactly is the system when you die? Do you get a corpse you need to run to, or get ressurected, etc? I havn't pre-ordered it yet so I havn't tried one of the beta weekends but I was seriously thinking of picking it up the next time my paycheck comes in. I've heard some good things, and the graphics look sweet, not that bad graphics would bug me, used to run EQ with old models and low texture quality.

I dont think there wont be any of those huge monsters you have to team up to kill, but instead of getting mas numbers, you have to find a team that will work well, and most likely will have lots of experience together (not xp for lvling but having plyed together alot) so that you can kill the monster. and after you have killed it, you will have a great sense of accomplishment that, hey, if i wasnt there, we couldnt have killed that dragon/giant/hamster!

When you die in a mission, either one of your team members needs to res you, or henchmen, if you brought any. However, if you're the only one in the mission and you die, or if all of your team members are also dead, you return to the outpost. Last BWE, they also added locations where you reborn, so sometimes, instead of having to restart the mission again, you respawn at a preset location on that map.

If you do get resurrected, you'll have a death penalty of 15%. A DP lowers your maximum health and energy.. but you can work it off as you kill monsters.

I completly agree, you can't control a group of 40 people... I like the idea of whole hordes of players storming a place, but it isn't realistic i think for this game. You shouldn't always make comparisons with games like Eq (and WoW); GW is GW, it is unique in its own kind of way, like Eq and WoW have their own unique things...

When you die you wait there and if a team mate has a ressuect skill, he/she can ressurect you and you come back with a -15% to your hp and mana, which will go away when you kill enough monsters or go to town. If you all die, then there are ressurect points every once and a while (usually near the instance entrances) that are far apart, but since the monsters dont come back it shouldnt matter too much that you have to run back. And dont worry about graphics, they are awe-inspiring. To date the coolest thing ive seen wat the giant crystal in a lake, which is in the middle of the impact crater of said crystal. Not only are the graphics good, but the way it is used is awesome. Oh and if you are wondering if the screenshots are changed to look better, I have played the game and it looks like that, cause of the glow effect thing, not sure what it does but the game looks awesome.

I have a 64 MB Geforce 2, MX series...I don't think I'm going to be seeing any awe inspiring graphics What really surprises me though is when I browse through these forums there's no trash talk and everyone seems genuinely interested in helping the new people, I'm not used to that

It will never happen people could not handle the graphics. 98% of computers would lock-up so why work on something that won't work?

Regarding graphics and such, you dont have to have the uber graphics cards to experience the wonder of GW for me I love great graphics, it does add a lot to the game but its the little things that impress me so much in this game over anything else. For instance, butterflies fluttering around in grassy fields. You cant interact with them but they add heaps to the experience. Another example is in the snowy regions, snow melts off tree branches. The footprints you leave when you are running around, awe inspiring vistas, chains/tapestries/flags swinging/blowing in the wind. The yaks in yaks bend that just sit around but act like you would expect. The little things just blow me away.

- Iczer

wait you dont think the graphics will work? Now why would you say something like that? I think you just need a better computer, most people playing games have great computers, like me.

Well its partly because of the great work by the people who run the forum, so anyone who doesn't benice and such is gone real quick like. Also the game itself is almost entirely made up of nice, helpful people, and only people who like the game come here, so it's all good!

Personally I think teh whole raid/hoard/whatever you wish to call it, seems like a very nice idea! Whether they're gonna incorporate it in their is another story but hey just have fun kicking the tar outta them baddies!

I suppose you could almost get the same effect by taking a whole bunch of teams and venturing into a much higher level zone But would that even work? From what I've read, it's going to hand out seperate zones to different teams, and would that mean it tailors the zone around the average level of your party?

I have a top notch computer. With a top notch graphics card. But They have to hit the majority not the elite. And the majority are average with average cards also you would have a massive amount of data to dl/ul.

That is why I think that most computers would crash even yours or mine.

Have you ever tryed to play Doom3 with 80 people can you imagine.

The horror...THE HORROR!!!

Then shoot out the lights.

People are already playing it, so I imagine that computers can handle it. On the website it says the minimum specs are a 64 MB Geforce 3, so I'm sure they didn't just get that spec from nowhere, they probably just made a really efficient graphics engine.