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Hey Kuntor, if you seriously want to see the area changed to something you approve of ,you can't just pass it off as "oh its bad and it always will be." Hell, a simple "skip tutorial" feature would solve all of your problems but you don't bother to mention even something that simple. There are a lot of ways they could play around with it, allowing "training mission" pvp fights before you enter the acadamy, giving more direction for new players, and allowing vets to leave very quickly without doing any quests if they don't want to.

Personally I really enjoyed the area, and I think it needs more action, an overarching theme/conflict to be more apparent, and maybe low-level pvp that you can play (without leaving forever!).

Skip Tut was already mentioned somewhere, since there's 3-4 topics across a few forums about the new area, I don't write everything everywhere. But if it was skipped, would you auto get your 2nd class and 8 skills or so? Without having to grind for them.

At the risk of agreeing with kunt0r, I have to agree that the "Fast, Furious, Fun" feeling has vanished from the tutorial.

It would be nice if you could directly enter the Acadamy and there would be Skill/Profession vendors. This would also give one last chance to get the second profession.

The outside Explorable Area with its quest system would be for people that wanted to test and sample. For people that knew what they wanted and wanted to "Rush" to 20, it would not be required to explore.

Yes, I liked the new area but, the game isn't just for me.
It was also more confusing than I would have expected. I introduced a friend to the game and they also felt the tutorial was rather drawn out.

OK I went and played through the quests in the pre destruction of Ascalon, and I must say it was impressive. I was level 10 before I entered the academy (cause I knew that was the change over to post destruction).

I was able to acomplish each quest with much greater ease becasue of the compass aides (which I did not find later in the game). These visual cues from the compass seemed to be activated by which ever quest you had last looked at in your quest log. Very nice feature to have. However after the fall this did not seem to work any longer...

There did seem to be one pre fall quest I could not accomplish (loyalty to the king, or true king) the one where you have to talk to 3 residents of barradin estate area... I could only find 2. but that may have been just me...

What I am asking about in this post is after the fall, you can not finish that quest so it should have been wiped out for the rest of the game, but it was not. It remained on the quest log the rest of the time I played with that character.

So two suggestions for this issue:

1: After the Fall of Ascalon City clear the quest log of incomplete quests, since they can not be finished from that point forward.

2: After the fall, I would like to see the compass still help you on the quests by continuing to point you towards your selected quest (from the quest log) step goal. Very helpful for multi part quests...

Ingram of Haz Ranger/Warrior
[SIZE=2]=HT=Ingram www.hazteam.net[/SIZE]

This is probably a good solution to those who want action action action.

I sincerely think from the 2 brand new gamers-of-any-kind I brought to test it that it is just right in pace - but there needs to be more tutorial and popup.

But for those who want action and dynamite from the get go, need that option.


Also, one of them spent an hour farming baked husks to buy me a pair of boots, and then found they couldnt because they were not the right class to purchase them.

It might be nice to allow any class to buy any item for those farm quests, just give them a popup that they cannot use them are they sure they want to buy them? And then they can give them as a gift.

Agreed.

Hah! I wish I had one of those magic compasses in real life, pointing me at the next life goal . But no, I disagree. It takes away all the fun of exploration and RPGs are 1/2 exploration. I am sure you'd find it useful, but I do not like my games "dumbed down" (I do not mean to offend you). It was the case with Freelancer which was transformed into something unplayable and bland. You can always team-up with someone who alreay knows the are and he'll show you arround: Guild Wars is about teamwork .

Old Ascalon aka Newbie land, is simply breath taking, vast in size and will appeal to the majority of the players new to GW. One can spend endless hours in this area exploring and questing.

There is work to be done with the quests as was remarked in the suggestions thread, replace some of the exp rewards with gear for example. More skill choices would be a plus and uping the levels on some mobs would be great also.

The party limit was too low which deters the sense of community. Joining the Academy was a totally confusing experiance, this needs to be reworked so that it is clear what the consecquences of this action entails.

Overall newbieland was great just needs some tweaking and polish, please read the suggestions thread carefully because the posters have covered all the points that need to be addressed.

As for the point of view that Kunt0r is voiceing, I can understand where he's coming from. This game promotes the fact that they have done away with the leveling grind. So give the option to folks who dont want to level grind to get to the meat of the game which is PvP this game is called Guild Wars not EQ2. By making it optional GW can satisfy both these mind sets.

Once a person has been through an area a few times it becomes a grind. Most gamers who have been around the block with other games are not really interested in repetitive game play. It gets old very fast .. been there .. done that.

IF GW wants folks to go out and grind makes it so that if a player does this he is rewarded with an uber item or skill vs opting for the quick levels.

Pax

There is a map bug on the pre destruction area on the wall gate.

Where the lever is to the gate below along the wall to the northern territories.

The eastern area at the top has no railing and a sloped hill going down. but you can not get through there. You have to go up and down the stairs to the west to get to the lever that opens the large gate doors. I assume that there is suppose to be a railing graphic there and it was missed... But the engine knows you don't get through that way.

Also I was getting a lot of stuck points in the Catacombs. near walls especially... No visual obstacle but you can not go any further... Sometimes looping back and then around an invisible blockade or something like that.

And lastly... somehow my game got stuck in visual block mode using f12 key(I just quit and came back in to fix it). I use that key to talk on teamspeak, so it was a shock to see the graphics change on me. Anyhow it did wire frame and blockmode, then back to normal like a toggle. I changed my talk key to prevent that happening again, but I thought I should mention it. I think it was ctrl f12 that did it...

That would be nice but I think of the second profession as a bonus to playing the beginning part of the game. as is the belt and class clothes. If you skip those then you dont get them. Plus the new part is HUGE. I was thinking it needed some more bosses or something besides just the side quests, cause its a game in and of itself really... I could have easily spent my entire time just in those areas. And if I would have been here for previous beta events I probably would have. But as it was I wanted to see the rest of the game as well.

I look at it like this... If you purchase the game brand new at release, it will be good for them to go through all of that pre destruction missions and quests. They dont know whats going to happen so its not too big a deal to them. For us that are playing it from the beta we are privy to a lot more then the average joe playing it for the first time, so we may be inclinde to skip forward faster... But I would think that is a rare thing. Now making new characters on the same account... I can see the problem. But having to go through the full beginning for new accounts would be expected at least once.

I agree... Now that I am seeing this as a tutorial. But what a tutioial!!!! It's a game in and of itself. It makes sence that its in the first part and not the second now that I am reading this in that context.

Thank you...

The Good
- The art is outstanding. Really awesome.
- The academy cinematics explains the searing (although more details could be useful)
- The green dots/arrows on the mini map is incredibly useful.
- The secondary profession experimation is original.
- The slow learning curve is probably good for beginners and newcomers to online gaming.

The Bad
- The selection of starting skills is a little disappointing (at least for my monk): way too much smitting and few skills in other lines.
- Quite a lot of running and some upsetting FedEx quest.
- The academy quest should be cleared stated as a no return point. I was disappointed to leave the area sooner than I wanted to.
- Small party only, no lobby with groups of four.
- I really liked the old quick start of new characters (even when I played GW for the first times), I wish the current slow start can become optional. I'd like a quick start option (with classical starting skills) to quickly move to side quests.

the Ugly
- The ephemeral aspect of this area (no going back after academy) is really bad. I'd like to come back! We're already able to warp through space with the map feature, please add a time warp feature to travel to pre/post searing.
- The tutorial side has to be redone entirely. The old solo intro was better.
- The secondary profession selection is very confusing for newbies (at least in its current state).
- I couldn't find any tutorial on how to use runes, dyes or weapon components. And I saw a lot of questions in the channels post searing.
- The bags! Where's my storage capacity? I like to store stuff for later or for guild mates (even if it's not valuable). Paying 100g (or more) for a bag is not fun, where's the accomplishment in having a new bag? It's really an ugly feature cloned from WoW-like grinders.

My $0.02.

This past weekend was my first experience playing Guild Wars. My thoughts on the game as soon as I started were "Wow! This looks visualy fantastic!".
After my initial "Look at all the pretty colors" feeling wore off I actually started to play the game.

At first I was a bit frustrated with figuring out the controlls and such but that soon passed and I was uprooting Aloe Seeds like there was no tommorow.

I got lost....lots. Especially when trying to find the second (or would she be the third?) Necromancer trainer in the Greenhills near the Warmaster and Monk. Was told to follow the road to the northwest...well..That "road" looked an aweful lot like a "Path" to me.

So ok, I *do* eventually find her and do my thing...I am Level 4 now and enter the academy, like many who have already stated this, there really does need to be more clarification on not being able to get another profession after you begin Academy Training.

But oh well, it was only perhaps 2 1/2 hours of time spent on a Character that I soon deleated and rerolled anew.

I feel those 2 1/2 hours was still time well spent as I became more familure with the controlls, the npc's, map, and gameplay in general.

Overall my experience was a great one for a few reasons:

The Graphics - Just amazing.

Henchmen - After dying LOTS and LOTS because of others mistakes, I choose to hire on a few henchmen till I reached level 9 or so. Made things alot better......(but the AI seems to make a few poor choices in stategy as well sometimes lol)

The Storyline/Plot It kept me wanting to see what was going to happen next!

It's Still Beta It is still beta. I was able to experiment with all sorts of builds (albiet all but two were below 10th lvl) and see what each had to offer.
Another thing is with this being a Beta, I had low expectations going into the game and was greatly surprised at what I found. And lastly, knowing it was a Beta I wasnt too critical of errors and bugs, just sent a /bug to let people know what I had found.
And I didnt get attached to my characters because I knew there was to be a wipe soon.

So, in closing, I think this is a fantastic game that has many great aspects to it and it just needs a bit of tweaking.

I did the same thing....then I left the area she and Warmaster were in and she was there waiting for me.

The big problem with old ascalon is that it's too spread out and open ended for a newbie area. The beauty of starting people out in an early mission like Ascalon One is that the goals are all laid out for you - there's no exploring, no questions about where what is or what you should be doing. You can just focus on the game mechanics and getting familiar with the interface. In the current tutorial, after getting your first two skills it's incredibly open ended, and to someone who isn't familiar with the game navigating across multiple maps to find your secondary skill trainer is a lot more than you want to give someone that has maybe 5 minutes of experience with the game. Do you really expect a new player to wind his way all the way down to the Elementalist trainer to get that secondary without any prior experience with the game?

I think the best way to address this is to use the academy, having separate introductory and graduate courses. Instead of giving someone the first quest to get skills outside of town, put up an option to take the introductory course, where you put people on rails - here are some temp skills, here's how you target, here's an instance wall, etc. Go over all of the basics. This is of course completely skippable for everyone else. After that, drop people into the wilderness and let them mess around a bit before going on to the graduate course, what is currently 'entering the academy'. That makes learning the game a bit more straightforward, while still letting people get in and out of the area quickly if they so desire.

Peace,
-CxE

I think the best way to do it really would be to missionize the old ascalon area. Make the catacombs a big mission allow groups of 1, 2, 3 and 4.

In the first mission, you solo with two skills, and at the end of that mission you are granted a couple more skills, levels, whatever.

The second mission would be the first group experience with a whomever. ou would be duoing. At the end of the mission you would be "split up" and be placed in a room somewhere in which they detail the importance of a secondary profession (I like that they are not required anymore), and allow you to pick one or not. If you do, they give you a few secondary skills, if not, more primaries. Perhaps the catacombs can be used for this mission.

The third mission would be a trio, maybe a treck through the snowy mountains to slay the beast that has been terrorizing local wizards and the people in the instance nearby (turn the instance into the outpost maybe).

The fourth would be leaving ascalon, and it would be sure to tell you that, blatantly, you will never return to ascalon the same. You will be without friends and family, before entering the mission, be sure to tie up all loose ends and do what you want to do. Then they will start the PvP and how it has already been done.

Just an idea on how to make things easier and more structured as a tutorial/learning area should be. Still allow for exploration and questing of course, but things need to be made more apparent to the person just starting out.

heya I just wanted to say that it looks like some people might want to be a "pure" ranger or warrior or...etc. So why not let them choose that as a 2nd profession and give them extra skills that aa non-pure character cant get? Also I think that you shouldn't get into the academy unless you have 2 professions..either combos or "pure"

Unfortunately I moved on rather quickly, sigh, because I wanted to finish off all the missions and get to level 20 and get elite armor(at least I got the missions done) to become the best I could in tombs and arena. I loved the tutorial, I especially loved how it brung you into skills, into a second profession, etc. I loved doing all the little missions I had time to do, and I believe Early Ascalon was one of the best and most beautiful areas of the beta so far. All in all, it was basically perfect

I totally agree with you. It was awesome, I just wished I could have explored it more , but I acidently entered the academy and there was no way back.

My comments:

1. The compass clues kept me going and I missed them immediately in the post-searing. Despite my years of gaming, I STILL get lost and can't figure out where I am. And, with the number of quests you can have going at one time, the compass cues help you remember which is what.

2. The small inventory space was a complete pain. The cost of an extra bag outrageous. I spent two days in pre-searing Ascalon and NEVER found a worn belt, nevermind five. I spent one day in the post-searing world and found one. Also, Lion's Arch is way too long to wait to be able to buy that designer-priced bag.

3. I liked the idea of collecting things and getting improved equipment or gold. However, the drops for the collectible things were very uneven. I don't know how many Ice Elementals I killed looking for the icy lodestones to buy Monk's Sandals. Not one dropped. Many other people where having the same experience. On the other hand, I collected about 30 Dull Carapaces.

4. Skale Fins need a purpose in life.

5. I ditto the comments about the clarity surrounding the Academy, coming back to the pre-searing world, and clearing quests that can't be completed.

6. I so enjoyed the pre-searing Ascalon, it would be all right with me if it were expanded a lot. However, I can understand that some players want to head off on the Grand Quest immediately, so I think letting people move on through the Academy at level 3 is a great idea. But letting those of us who want to enjoy the lush, green world stay there longer would also be very cool.


Galatea Orea
First there was Woman.
Then came man.
The rest is history.

Clearly you missed the collector right outside the Ascalon City gate who traded a belt pouch for 5 Skale Fins.

But those should be a salvage item eventually, anyway. Just selling those items for 1 gold each after the collector quests is a huge waste.

Peace,
-CxE

IMHO "Action from the get go" is funny. I hear that and think "Oh, that's a hardcore PvP player, and that's about it."

Want to skip the tutorial? Make a PvP only character. PvM and mixed players (like myself) don't mind a few quick levels to get out of the newbie area, if we want to get out quick at all.

It needs some work with the interface training, and a few things need clarified, but that's about it.