I'm having a lot of fun... but I'm having it by myself.

Im nearly to Lion's Arch, thanks. The endgame doesn't exist. Nice try. Bait denied

I don't chat much in games. I find the interface cumbersome, and I tend to take too long formulating sentenses. Posting on webboards are much better :-)

Actually, one of the reasons I have mostly avoided online games until now, is that I have felt most of the other "players" rather treated it like a chatroom with nice settings.

Also remember that many players many not be native English-speakers, and while they can read English, they don't feel comfortable writting it.

Some humans are less predictable than AI, and can therefore be fun to play both with and against. PvP in a single-player game doesn't really work out :-)

I have to be honest, have played in a fair few teams of late, I think the issues with Noobs etc etc is at early levels, one you get past lvl 16, the henchmen become increasingly useless and the areas harder and harder.
The A R Soles, will be running around with Lvl 20 chrs with bugger all new skills as they cannot do the coop missions.
At this point they start to complain the game is Lame and leave.
I come from a strong RP background having built / design a PW for Neverwinter Nights. This has a much smaller community and 90% of players actually Team and RP together, in fact most are adults.
With GW, it is a general release game, it has no monthly so it is going to be full of Noobs, L33tz etc for the first month or 2 as it is the first time they have been given access to a MMORPG that doesn't eat at their pocket money.
Not all of the you nger gen are A R Soles, only a few, and general I would say the biggest issue with the game population is the Twitch gamer, the one who thinks GW is Unreal T with swords. Although it can be fun watching these players rushing to their own DOOM, and is often very easy to see it coming.
Also I have found that the above gamer leaves groups either halfway through mission, or as soon as the group respawn as they feel it was the group was crap and that it didn't support there gun hoe tactics. This is good as eventually the group ends up with players who are playing for fun.
As a rule of Thumb group play is actually fun at higher levels and my recommendation to all, is..

IF you find a player that you get along with / Have a good game with add them to your Friends List.
Personally I dont go for guilds, my Nercomancer has Left 2 and been offered membership of 3.
Alot of Guilds are full of Noobs and adolecence who think it is Cool to have a guild and gives them Kudos.
Wait, if you friends list has a fair few members of a certain guild then join that guild.

Yep, sums it up all there. I'd say Lions Arch isn't even really halfway yet.
Geographically maybe, but not on any other scale, certainly not on the scale till ascension.

And yes, there is an endgame of sorts to GW RP. Please stop attempting to replace ignorance for smart alec, the former is much too profound.

You know what the funny thing is? Before I read this post I thought the mainstream people in this game where friendly.
I ALWAYS work with a human party and only experienced two bad team-members. One rushed into everything without a strategy and the other left the party halfway.
The people I've met helped me into the game, talked me through al lot of quests and where friendly. When I shout about a party it takes five minutes to get one.
So am I just very lucky, or isn't it as bad as it seems?

I agree with you, but slowly and surely you find excellent players to populate your friends list with. If you are still having trouble finding a player base or are in need of an extra hand just ping me in game, my toon is a warrior/elementalist by the name of Valarian of Ascalon, and I'm also the guild leader of a small pve guild made up of old teamates from City of Heroes. Never give up hope, and if you find yourself still suffering from the assaults of the ignorant you can always use the ignore option. Cheers. Valarian of the Obsidian Dragons.

Lion's arch is indeed not even halfway, because there is no halfway The game is designed to evolve and expand with time, so....my next part of the post SHOULD, but most likely WILL NOT, make sense for you...

If a game is designated as MMORPG, MMO or what have you, saying it has an actual END to the game, and thus the gameplay, kinda sounds...I don't know, I'll let you figure that out from your wiseman's perch. To me, it sounds like "why bother?" That is heresy

READ DUMBASS:
Forget it :/ trying to talk sense into obnoxiously stubborn people who are ultimately trying to support their ignorance through continued arrogance is like trying to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. (bible quote, whoop!)

Anyway - back on topic, my friends list is now extremely populated and there's only 1 or 2 people there i regularly play with. The reason why I never get use out of it (and it would seem this is reciprocated) is because it's not easy to see at a glance what levels and areas people are playing at.

<vent>

Trying to get a party happening in areas significantly after Lion's Arch where it is impossible to complete with henchmen is just plain annoying at times.

I've resolved that if I don't have enough people I want to play with online, i'll go do something else until there's a time I can play properly. I say properly because 80% of my quest parties have failed, and failed miserably - whether it be player starting fights with each other mid quest, thus resulting in one or two members leaving, or players hopping into missions - oh this is my personal favourite - CLAIMING that they want to complete the mission, only to hit the latest drake/exp/items hotspot, then ABANDONING the party once it's done!!
This is always happening, and it's just plain frustrating!

</vent>

*edit* I'd like to add SOT, that your hostile, arrogant attitude is quite simply a perfect metaphor for the contemporary behaviour prevalent in most pick-up parties I seem to put up with in-game. Comments like "less crack plz" and arguments arising over the most trivial of things (and i'll admit, i'm a sucker for personal attacks, they really fire me up :/) result in broken parties and continued frustration in-game. Pity you had to bring it to the forums too.

Please stop the flaming, and the flame baiting.

You can solo, for a good while through the game. I even soloed in the desert while I was looking for the main missions.

The times that I only used henchies was when I was going on quests or exlporing. The missions are not a henchies best friend.

Only too reasonable, good sir. I am sorry for anyone that had to put up with this, I ordinarily hate flaming on forums :/ In my defense though, claiming i'm "on crack" for putting forward a perfectly logical and harmless viewpoint is only targeted at inciting a response, and should not be tolerated here at all.

Heh speaking of soloing today I tried to find agroup for the co-op mission(forget the name it's the one where you use leaf seeds to get around) so I went all henchmen , it was pretty nice. No one complaining about not getting enough heals, no one wandering off doing they're own thing. So whats all this" multiplayer" that keeps getting thrown around

I play with a local buddy who has access to a teamspeak server. Only problem is that everytime we break with the norm and take with us some non-npc players, we have to communicate with them through text which never works out.

Also MOST of the time these players play a character they are not. Like Elementalist/Necromancers that run directly towards 6+ creatures and become a casulty in under 10 seconds. Once ... only once I got to adventure with a player who played with some smarts and picked off lone groups of creatures less than 4 at a time.

I think so far he was one of the better players I briefly played with from the start ICU INHELL was his name I think. But.... when we were doing a 2 part mission... he ran off and that was the last I saw of him =\.

Anyhoo ... My nic is SteveK Aglovale, online. If you see me... give me a shout. Tell me my forum name or whatever and join my small group because we play with SOME intelligence. If you work well in a team and have a mic, maybe we can work together on a regular basis, because god knows form what I have seen ... there are very few fun groups to be in.

Aye, I was playing in arena, and I knew that we would lose do to our monk. I look at him and I see a sword and a sheild.

Depends what modifiers were on them though, sometimes it's best for an ele or mes (that's all I know about from experience) to go into battle with a sword, particularly if it has a nice casting speed bonus or something like that :P (sometimes the really good mods only pop up on 'other' weapon times)

Maby a sword(Ive seen them on mes too, I had yet to see a monk with one though), but a shield? That screams I DONT KNOW WHAT IM DOING.

Well, my experiences run similarly to the original poster, but i have found a few helpful players along the way, but mostly they're a rude amount of people who ignore every question or pm. It would be nice to have access to a guild of older individuals who can swap strategies and builds, and game on a regular basis. I often get blind invites to guilds but find when I ask basic questions they are never answered.... Sigh, maybe someone should start a guild called "Over the Hill Gang" for post 30 year olds or somesuch:-)).

Cheers

I have to say, as an afterthought, I prefer to team up with real players but they tend to be so bad I now use henchmen almost strictly. Id like to find a good group of people who know the game, plus my toon is a monk/mesmer, strictly a healing bot, lol, so who knows how I may impact your team!

I will be playing with a previous clan from other games so i doubt I will have this problem once EB get stock again (damn you EB)

Some things my Ne/Me did with henches after LA:
Riverside
Dunes of Despair
Dragons Lair aka "Glint" (no I did not attack her...)
Warrior seconday

I've found that getting good PUGs got easier after.. hmm.. the Wilds?

Not to derail the topic, but...

For a Monk with Divine Prayers/Healing Prayers/Tactics, having a shield can help him/her to stay alive that extra second when being bombarded by arrows or melee attackers, especially when using some of the non-skill draining stances that Tactics offers. In PvE, I have a dedicated monk healer that always has a shield equipped in a weapon slot for quick access, one with a wand and one with a sword. It's saved me and others many times.

In PvP, Healing Monks need to save their skills for healing, instead of pulling from them for defense as well - every point counts. Depending on one's equipment and the scenario, sometimes having an armor boost and using non-skill based defenses can be more effective than having a skill bonus from an artifact and using skill-draining defenses. A dead monk, or a live one waiting for their skill pool to regen, doesn't help anyone.

Back to the topic at hand, these broad stereotypes are the kind of thing that can make it difficult in parties. One needs to allow each player to actually take care of their own character, and trust that they know what they're doing, or will learn through the experience. It would be a mistake for a team to discount my monk's healing ability or give him flack because he carries a shield for energy management purposes.

Of all the professions, Monks seem to be the one with the most backseat drivers...

Then there's other things that shields on a monk are good for... like the dedicated Smiting Prayers monk, the strategies of misdirections and feints, the instilling of false confidence in the enemy... but that's another topic...

Really? I use a shield most of the time with me level 12 E (two out of four weapon sets, but it is those two I use all the time). +8 to all armor pieces seems more useful than the +7 to energy that is on another weapon set. In theory I should switch to that weapon set when I run low on energy, but it is hard to remember in the heat of battle.

One of the two weapon sets has a sword, which I use to defend myself from melee (together with some spells). I have never had much success with fleeing.

The last weapon set has a staff with +5 energy and +4 armor, which might be a good compromise, once I get over that it only do half damage of the wand.

Talk to the collector just outside of Gates Of Kryta.

It doesn't show in the descriptions but he gives wands with +15E, -1E regen.
The base damage is only like 5-12 or something and I dont remember requirement but thats a lot of E to frontload so early in the game.

Again wands with lots of E.
With a +10E focus (you should at least have +8 at this point) you get +25E for a Energy swap weapon set.

I have also recently completed a couple of co-op missions with the help of a friend and a couple of people we didn't know. Everyone stayed together and for the most part played appropriately according to level/class etc.. so it IS possible to find like-minded individuals who like to play properly and as a team.

That said, when the party disbanded and I was looking for another few people to team up with I was completely ignored! I can't understand why groups of people just 'hang around' an area. Fair enough if they are sorting inventory items, trading, talking or even emoting but most of them tended to just stand or sit doing nothing. I asked around for about 10 minutes without a response so gave up and went solo-ing. Even if somebody replied 'f**k off, I'm busy' I would have been happy to have had a response.

I now have a friend who plays the game regularly and two friends who have ordered the game so for the most part we will probably stick to playing as a group using TS, it's a shame. From another point of view, anyone who has bought the game is entitled to play it their own way, it's just a shame there is no way of knowing a players intentions until you are in-mission.

If you are an individual looking for a party to join don't give up hope. Whilst solo-ing is great fun I have found party exploring to be a fun experience, especially when everyone in the party plays as a team. Judging by this thread and the replies there are mature and willing players who are prepared to help out, so keep trying (you can always swap to another district if people are ignoring you).

I don't believe GW times people out..so many could possibly be long-term AFK'ers. But if you consider how many people are in guilds in this game or attempting to buy sell items, the numbers of people busy 'chatting' is probably quite high. So, for the rest, I think you will find that the small percentage of players that are actively seeking a group are much smaller than the visible collective.

I will add that personally, I go solo (or h's only) just so I don't have to be concerned about going AFK due to RL issues which tend to crop up fairly frequently for me (married w/kids). It also gives me a huge amount of flexibility of what my goals are (finish this quest, meet up with a guildmate, decide to pop into the arena, etc.).

A "Willing to group" (vs looking for group - minor distinction) flag next to a persons name would be very helpful in giving a quick visual clue as to how many people are potentially available for doing a mission/EA run in a given District.

Additionally, districts more for RP, trading, would be helpful as well.

I would even suggest that characters that are inactive in local chat or not moving perhaps should 'fade' out from the visual game world for everyone else and could just fade-in when active again. This would also help with the visual disparity between the number of people seen and potentialloy 'active' players.



Lastly, perhaps you should consider that maybe no one likes you, hence you being ignored?

Whilst it is possible that nobody likes me I find it hard to believe based on the fact that nobody knows me. If I can form/join a party at, say, 11pm and then at 11.45pm everyone ignores me, the rumour has gotten 'round rather quickly about my..... that would be telling!!

I hear what you say about AFK'ers and I agree some sort of 'fade' option would be a good way of solving it, let's hope the devs pop in here from time to time.

I did play a short period with an elementalist who didn't know where he was going. It was an "accidental" click btw simply due to the large number of people around the merchant I was trying to buy /sell from. I still haven't progressed a player past lvl10 (but I have a good combo of player finally to do so) simply because it takes so long to slog through lvl4 critters to get to anything worth XP. Fundamentally speaking, I would like to party with a real person more now since I *DID* have mostly good experiences with them.

When soloing, it is hard to "stay in character" as the range of weapons and the speed of monsters prohibit more than 1 or 2 ranged attacks against a monster unless you drag out a fight 10+ minutes to do hit and run tactics. Knowing how hard it is to stay true while soloing I can see how people can do the charge of death.

Sadly, I occasionally don't do rational attacks even as a warrior simply because I get the butt stomp rush you get when you finish stomping packs normally tough monsters. The irrationality only increases if you solo a bunch of bad dudes so I can see how easy it is for a bezerker charge. As a team player, please let me know that I am bezerking and it isn't prudent to do so. Constructively, of course.

I also find myself soloing the game with the help of henchmen. I thought about joining a guild but I am worried about the time constraints. Many of them want you on everyday at certain times. I can't do that because of jobs and family.

I rarel join teams to do quests because I don't want to quit in the middle of something. Sometimes I can play for 2 hours, sometimes for 15 minutes. I try to considerate.

Maybe the answer is for all the people that have responded to this thread to make a guild of their own. We all seem to be reasonable people who would help each other out. Something to think about...

I solo with henchmen constantly but it's not because of rude people. My motives vary during the day, 1 minute I'll be heading straight as an arrow to finish some missions... the next minute I'll look at the map, see that I have about 1/2 of it uncovered and think that I might as well uncover the whole area.


I went out to Grendich Courthouse yesterday (at level 9, that was alot of sprinting but the henchmen sure do get those monsters off my back so I can get away!). I was out there checking on some quests and thought better of it. Came back to Ascalon City and then made my way out to Serenity Temple. Hit level 11 on the way out there and finished off some quests. Came back to Ascalon City again and was checking over my map. I see The Great Northern Wall and think "what was all that about anyways?". I go check it out and see all these people standing around but there was no entrance to the area. After a second it clicks, oh yeah the missions... wonder what those are like.

I spent all last night just doing the first two missions. Then on the third I had a group wipe of all my henchman except for me, so I called it a night (I don't have the room to add the Ressurect Signet to my bar).

As you see, I'm not the most organized player and I tend to wander alot, so I can't really see doing anything but missions with other players (and then, only when I can't do it with henchmen).

I love playing this game. I don't have an opinion on the people either way (no good or bad experiences). I just don't have the want to stay on target since there is sooooo much else for me to experience.

Even if many of them do, there are also many that don't. I would highly recommend looking at the various guild links as I found a guild that fits my personality/family life perfectly and it didn't take very long at all...

I think I got pretty lucky with my guild. They recruited me out of the arena, and it seemed their main qualification for joining was "you seem like you aren't an arrogant a**hole," which sounded good to me. I've since gone questing with them a couple times, and they're a fun group of people. No pressure to be on at certain times or to go faster than my regular pace.

There are good people in there, you just have to sort 'em out from the pricks. Takes some time.

lmao. Another good copy paste from another forum

On topic once more, my ignorance firmly in hand (lol), I have a tale:

Last evening I was wandering around in the outskirts of Yak Bend. I noticed a peculiar colored being, one of those boss type ice people. I decided I give a human to human co-op thing another go, since I am the only member of my guild to make it this far in the game world. I teamed up with some people who shall remain nameless, but are posters here.

We left town, got about mmm oh I'd say about the width between the armorer is Sir Tydus in post-searing ascalon, when the people decided to run off and fight this dwarven mouthpiece who claims to be invincible.

Now this is where the robot henchmen become cherubic for me:

These two people were higher level than I am, but they...died somehow against ONE foe. The foe was only one level up from me at the time, so...Anyway...Stupid pet tricks aside, I took it upon myself to be supportive, not accuse them of "bible quoting mundanity" and offered to try again.

What i got was about 3 minutes of incomprehensible bullshit. Cussing, screaming, accusations. It was my fault the cavalier dipshits got themselves killed. Um. yeah.

Anyhoo, needless to say, but because I can, I went back to town, grabbed TWO npc character, the healer and the necro, and set out again. I made 3 more quests without dying ONCE.

Thank you, please drive through...

If anyone is looking for a good partner or team mate for missions or just wants to explore the landscape look me up, give me a pm or something. I think I have more conversations on these boards then I get from people in game.

Many players I met so far are OK. The main community problem I have, however, is that 90% of the people speaks Gibberish (European account). Really annoying to hear so much French, German, Itallian, Croatian and whatever in the same town. English is not my first language but when I talk to people I always do it in English. I once had someone talking in Gibberish to me (I think it was Spanish) and when I asked him to ask his question again in English all I got was English cussing. Oh - so he did speak English?! Then why ask those questions in Gibberish? Surely, you don't have to speak perfect English (I can't either), but even with a few simple words you can make your self clear enough often.

There's alot of really bad players in this game. It's incredible...One wonders if they've ever picked up a paddle before buying GWs.

Course that don't stop me from making friends with "some" of these folks. Its sad to say that my friends list is rather short. Much of the player base seems to be made up of the younger crowd in GW.

I had my first mid-searing quitter last night. Which might explain why I actually had my first loss out of 4 PvP matches in mid-searing because the weener stunk. The quitters are the type of folks who degrade the GW experience. Of course, the dude was at level 6 and I think there was even a level 3 dude trying to post-sear. BTW, do you get penalized say 5 team deaths when your "team mate" quits in the middle of a PvP battle?

I've had better partners when I accidentally click on someone who is looking to join a party. Usually I am just trying to click on the jiggling merchant name when someone steps in front of me. Those folks usually turn out to be OK and sometimes pretty good folks to team up with. I guess it is luck of the draw.

Don't give up...I had nearly despaired of playing with other humans after joining several REALLY dumb groups (as in NO tactical sense), but it only took a couple of good experiences to restore my faith in team play...

Well, most people on Guild Wars are young... but that doesnt mean they arent fun to play with. take me for example. Im 16, and I am a blast to play with!

If anyone would like to join up with me sometime, or join my guild, message Lord Of The Dawn in-game.

btw, I am one of those people who say "thank you" when someone helps me.

you can count on me - Really Angry W/M12
Always like to talk seriously to people and try to do a good mission

Jab, you have one more friend
Really Angry

i would like that... but sadly, im at school right now, and will be for the next... 7 hours... lol

btw, was that an affirmative on joining my guild, or just hookin up to quest?

Awesome, look up Grant Miller, lvl 18 me/nec . Always happy to have one less henchmen in my groups