State of GuildWars

Nice generalization. It of course ignores the fact that many people are perfectly happy with PvE and PvP. The people I see complaining the most are the "elite" players who are the same group that bitch about pretty much every game.

ditto

Guild Wars is not just another mmonrpg without a monthly fee. The majority of your changes seem to be aimed to do that though :/

The problem is AN ruined the game for them selves. Everyone was originally against the UAS, even the PvP only people like me, Now that we know you have to beat the game five times to get a decent skills base a majority is now FOR the UAS.

God, I hate the idea of raising the level cap... you know why? I bought it at launch and have yet to hit it. I am the casual gamer who simply can not make time to really powergame on this, yet I find myself advancing at a rate that has me feeling very fulfilled and comfortable despite other people doing so faster.

A higher cap will come in due time, the only real MMO style idea I would care to see is large scale pvp.

For PvP, I'd play in the Tomb more were I in a more PvP-oriented guild. It is troublesome to find a party. When I do, maybe the party is good enough to pass the first round and the second round. And then there are parties who require voice communication (not that it helps). Grouping for me is an obstacle right now.

I don't mind the runes or weapon components issue so much.

I don't like the waiting that goes on in some of the Tomb maches. I remember reading in one of the Fanside Fridays that GW's PvP would be better than disorganized PvP in most other MMORPGs. Hehe, well there is GvG. Tomb still contains a lot of ganking.

For the PvE aspect, I ascended with two characters. My main char is still at Hell's Precipice. I am too lazy to do it. I've tried a few times, but didn't go very far. The story for me kind of broke down in the jungle, so I don't feel motivated to continue. The missions are hard, and again, grouping can be a problem. I don't feel like waiting around. One of my favorite missions was the Thirsty River. But I wish the AI would be a bit smarter. The missions are hard, because the bad guys are higher level and outnumber the players. The more interesting encounters are the ones with mixed classes. It would be great to fight more bad guys like the Mirror. ^_^

I like the level cap at 20, but I really really do not like the way we are gaining our skill points. I'm struggling to have more so I can unlock more skills. It also doesn't help that we only have 4 slots for characters. If only bonuses gave skill points. It isn't hard to reach 20, so the extra 1K XP isn't that meaningful, especially post-ascension.

I don't participate in the economy. It'd be nice to improve it.

^_^ can't wait for observer mode.

I stopped reading your 'i want this to be diablo 3' post after the 'raise the level cap' line.

Iv noticed that if you play and are aiming for a skill point/elite skill/weapon/whatever its grind all right. However iv rattled up massive numbers of skill points just by spending a few days thrashing through heaps of PvP.
I find if you just play youll eventually come across a lot of stuff you want, whereas if your specifically aiming to get this done by this date it feels like work.

As for the limit on characters, Amen. Please A.Net give us six character slots atleast asap. Iv deleted about 5 characters easy.

I agree. It's not a power game, it's a skill game, and if they change that it just won't be as enjoyable anymore. I can't stand power gamers. Keep the level cap!

There will never be a level increase, as the devs have said time and time again, if you like lots of levels go play L2 or WoW. Guildwars was advertised as skill over time played, but in reality that's far from the truth, the game its self isn't enough to keep people coming back time and time again because the grind is very very unbearable unlike L2, EQ, and WoW. If things aren't done the end game is going to be either 10 alpha guilds that were able to play through the grind having fun on the ladder, or a bunch of people who don't take the game seriously PvPing, I say only PvP endgames because the PvE gets very old over time even for people who love PvE. The ball is in the hands of the devs right now, If something isn't done guildwars will be nothing more than a game a lot of people talked about but in the end was ruined, a lot of people who planned on purchasing expansions prior to release and at the beginning of release probably won't buy the expansions even if they do fix a lot of issues that need to be dealt with.

And why is that? Because people will be too busy playing the uber joy that is WoW to play the grinding hell that is Guild Wars?

No offence mate but your talking a heap of crap there. The grind is unbearable because before release you envisioned yourself as some kind of uber leet god of PvP, with glowing armor, 8 of the best possible skills, annihilating all who dare challange you.
Then you realised *shock* that in order to to unlock all that content, you would have to, well, unlock it.

You see all those people who got Guild Wars on release, and were expecting to immediatly launch into massive battles with the best gear and have the whole game opened up for their immediate scrutiny have been dissapointed.
However, the great thing about time is, it moves on. People are unlocking everything, albeit it slowly, and more and more people have better and better skills. Things are gradually building up, rather than being all out in the open in the first place.

There is not a whole lot of games out there that people go back to time after time. Personally the few games I play regularly these days, even though iv played them to death and they were released millenia ago, are Star Trek Armada Homeworld, and Homeworld 2, and Morrowind. The point is these games offer me nothing new each time I play them, except a unique and different challange every single time.

Thats right. I play these games repeatedly because each time I play the old familiar elements I enjoy will be there, along with a new set of online opponents, or a new set of challanges created by myself.
Guild Wars, imo, falls into this catagory. Sure months down the line I might not spend entire weekends walking from Piken to Druids Overlook with a brand new fresh out of Ascalon character. But I know for certain Ill fire the game up, dive into an arena or HoH or a GvG and have a blast.

Competitive online play. Thats the games I play. It doesnt even matter if I dont get number one ladder spot whatever, if I game I enjoy offers me new challanges each time I play then ill be playing it for many years.

No offence dude but your post seems to hint that you want to play an Eve-Online style game. A player driven social mmorpg, you want constant change and cmpelling storyline to keep you hooked, that only happens in a very specific type of mmorpg, in my experiance. Perhaps Guild Wars isnt multiplayer/socially involving enough to keep you hooked. Thats a shame, but no loss to me.

Strictly PvE here... I'm fine with the level cap.

I think it all comes down to one thing for both PvE & PvP... make skills points easier to acquire. UAS for the strictly PvP character is fine with me but I would also like to see a 2 skill point per level change to PvE instead of the current 1 skill point per level.

There also need to be fattening of both PVE & PvP content but I suspect that will come with expansions & time. The game is new, I'm sure they are going to add a lot more content.

Something I would really like to see is more places like ToA... some requiring favor & some not. Of course more would require favor as to keep them 'special' but it's a pain not being able to play that part of the PvE game because someone that plays the PvP part of the game controls the HoH. I would like somewhere to go when the ToA is held by someone else.

Actually, it hints that I know the reality of this game. Last saturday I was doing a rush with Karma and Fianna, two of the best guilds in guildwars, karma is one of the best guilds at doing these runs, and it was just so unbearable doing the desert a 3rd time. Now we did it in the most optimized way possible so I find it unrealistic that new guilds that aren't as capable or don't have a real history are going to be able to do it as fast as us, or as bearable as we did it. Please don't make any posts in regards to unlocking or grind if you have yet to ascend twice. Only guilds with a deep history like n0 for example can stand the grind, but a majority of the people who bought this game for whatever reason really can't stand beating the game four or more times. We were all under the impression it was skill over time played, I see you want us to grind for 500 hours but in reality we were all under the impression we'd be able to have a girlfriend, a job, and be in a top guild at the same time. You on the other hand think that time played should compensate for a lack of ones skill, which is fine but that wasn't what was printed on our boxes.

If u want this u better play world of warcraft.

Grind grind grind, that is all I hear about this game, I want more grind I want less grind I want a more engaging grind. I still agree that skill wins games, but it looks like there are almost two tiers of pvp play. The casual play (Lions arch and jazz like that) that I can just go into despite being level 15 and win some fun, luck of the draw games, and then there is the HoH and other arena's where you can form a party. I go to the competition arena's, the powergamers go to whatever they freakin want to. I am fine with that really, as it allows me to kick back and have a few rounds from time to time.

In all honesty, I have no objections to making any form of farming of "Grinding" more enjoyable, challenging, or even throwing a thin veil of excitement over it... but I do NOT want to see everything handed to everyone. We would lose a lot more powergamers doing that then we would be losing casual players keeping things the way they are.

Also, please stop making that pathetic false advertising claim. If anyone tries to toss out "The box says..." one more time I will walk to their house and take a smoking crap on their front lawn... and I won't even be a gentleman about it.

Goldfinger, Have you ascended twice(Or even once...)? Have you? I really hate it when people post who haven't even gotten to the point of where you realize how unbearable the grind is in the game yet. On TGH there was a poll prior to release asking if we should have the UAS in retail or not, I voted NO because I thought you should have to beat the game at least once to be able to PvP. I still think that, but now I'm no longer against the UAS because as of right now it's a lot better than the current system. Beating the game once is fine to unlock all of the skills, but four or five times really shouldn't be required.Because you can't really hold up an argument against it?

You keep bringing this up. It's not a status symbol you know. No one I know has a problem with it, we just play the game and love it. Know why? Because we aren't power gamers. Now if you're going to keep asking people to hold back their opinions you don't deem them worthy, then I'm going to ask you to stop bandying around your "two ascension" like it actually makes you more worthy.

This game is fun, and many, many people love it. For much more than PvP power gaming too. Your speculations are pretty baseless, obvious by the amount of people here who love the game. Who cares about grind and how hardcore your character is? Just have fun and take your time with it. I personally like putting effort into things, especially when its this much fun to do. And please don't answer back asking if I've ascended. It's pointlessly trivial and on par with primary school politics. This game isn't a race.

1, I don't want to reach higher levels than 20.
2, I do want more loot,
3, I do want more armours / weapons / upgrades (that are PvE based and no use in PvP)
4, I want the SoC to be purchaseable and not require skill points.
(skillpoints can only be used to buy skills, so you could in theory skip the skill trader and just by soc and go out and capture all your skills if you wanted, but you wouldn't have to wait to level for the skill point. Basically a captured skill would count as a skill point, and increase the amount of skill points you have used to max of 200.)
5, I want more quests, these quests can just reward skill points.
6, I would like the ascended areas, such as the desert / southern shiverpeaks to have there transit areas,(maps from town to town) made easier, leave missions as is.
7, I would like there to be a tag set on players that have reached glint, this tag would open up the high level armour traders, collectors. So that players who aviod the missions and run lonars to get ubered up , can not do it, If you want ubered up gear do the missions.
8, I would like more dungeon areas, pathways through the mountains like the catacombs in pre searing ascalon.
Lost cities in the jungles of Kryta that are hugh dungeons.

The loot is these dungeons to be the best, but have these places team only, henchmen don't cut it, areas.

If they did this , travesing areas could have lowish drops and nobody would care, it would open up the PvE world and make it more explorer friendly.
Some of the simplest exploits in the game would be fixed.
And some of the grind for PvP players would be eliminated. (through new soc not costing skill point system, but added to amount of skill points you have used)

As it stands there are a lot of areas which are really hard after ascention, but there is actually little if any incentive to go to them, they are good to explore, but the reward / difficulty just isn't in place. Quests would atleast give a reason to visit these areas.

It's not a status thing at all, It's a thing of how do you even have the right to talk about grind when you haven't even beaten the game yet. At yaks bend or anywhere prior to ascension it didn't look like there was a lot of grind for me either. It's like giving your opinion on how to drive a car if you have yet to actually get in to the driver seat. We'd like to be able to casually play like you as well but we can't do that whenever you're required beat the game four times to do what we want, which is to PvP. Stop being so narrow and giving your opinion on something you know nothing about please, all of you just stop talking about the grind when you don't even know what we're talking about.

"All of us"? Some of us have beaten the game. Many infact. Some of us play PvP. And some of us still don't have a problem with grind, level caps, or enjoyability. Please stop making assumptions that we don't know what we're talking about.