Chapter 2, possible problems/disapointments

You are correct. I'd answer it myself, but the ignore feature of the forums works as advertised.

Yet another example of people making false assumptions of what I'm saying.

There is no "grind" in GW involving leveling up to 20 - in fact, it's laughably easy to do...as I repeatedly stated. I can do it in a couple of days, without using runners. Not bragging, just reinforcing my point.

Comparing a single player RPG game to a MMORPG game is Apples and Oranges. Business models are completely different, game design is completely different, target audience is completely different, and the sale results are completely different.

here is the direct OFFICIAL scotch to that idea.

we were told officially in posts that we could buy any ones in the series including for example 1,3,5,etc and still have common areas for all chapters.

from the official site not simply my opinion.


AND MIMI?

THIS IS NOT AN MMORPG

anyone have any idea when Ch. 2 is coming out?

According to their (Anet's) website it is.

I do remember Anet releasing a statement that they aren't going to use the Misson system they were using in this current game. Which, if replaced by something more dynamic and fun, would be a welcome breath of fresh air.

As for Anet's paradigm enclosing themselves into a box. It sure can allow for better things, better quests for starters, new gameplay modes, etc. In other words all of the things in the other games that you wanted to do but had to grind to get to them first. As Loviatar so subtly =p pointed out, having bigger numbers doesn't mean anything because the balance of power never changes.
And if you decide to upset the balance of power by introducing gear that is siginificantly stronger than the usual, that is when the game quickly becomes boring, when everything can be accomplished in two swings of an uber blade.

As for the ego and elitsm, you find that anywhere, I've found plenty of friendly players in both tombs and in guilds. Its just like PvE however; all it takes is one jackoff to ruin your day.

1st HALF of 2006, so anytime between January and end of June, though I wouldn't look for it anytime soon.

Well, just started reading this thread, and I just have to add my own thoughts on this.

Grinding for money is not something the casual player does. According to information released by Anet, only 50% of the population has over 10k, with only 75% having over 20k. 10k is attainable by doing the missions through, doing some quests, buying some armor and decent weapons, and having acceptable luck on drops, in other words, a casual gamers experience.

Grinding for skills, I sincerely doubt it. Most casual gamers will play around with the skills they pick up via quests, look at the skills a skill trainer has to offer, and just slap together a build. I didnt get any elite skills for a loong time after ascending, I've never had a problem with skill points.
So for the casual gamer, who spends less/equal time on the game compared to me, no grinding for skills.

Obviously, theres no grinding for experience at all, since level 20 is so easily attainable, and refund points dont require xp anymore.

Grinding for 1337 weapons? Only if you're really desperate will you do this. I've never bothered, I've used dropped weapons, weapons a friend offers to trade me for, or a weapon type I want being advertised for dirt cheap in passing. This is, again, what the casual gamer will do, especially in GW, because max damage is EASY to aquire, and the difference between a 12% mod and a 15% mod is laughably small.

Armor Grind. This is one thing that I have done, but only because I focus on my characters appearance more than anything else about them. Even then, I never bothered spending that much time doing it, just doing it when none of my friends were online, etc.

Faction Grind. Acceptable for a PvP player, needed to unlock skills, mods, etc. that he doesnt want to bother getting through PvE. Casual players wont really bother, because they've unlocked enough things through casual play to get started in competition or team arenas.

Rank Grind. The one grind that a casual gamer is likely to do, but only because of elitism in the PvP community that forces you to get rank to play tombs in a good group.

So wheres the grind for a casual player? It doesnt exist in any substantial quantity.
So really mimi, your complaints about the game being all grind nowadays, dont really apply to anyone except the 1000hr+ gamer.

Anyways, for your concerns about chapter 2, the new stuff will be balanced, or mostly balanced, but they will be DIFFERENT.
Just because its balanced really doesnt mean that they have to be almost the same, theres room for dozens of things that havent been touched in the current game.
Try being able to target landscapes for AoE spells and teleportation skills, dual wielding( although I pray that they wont add this, it'd make IW a little too good.) knockbacks, as well as knockdown, stealth skills, weapons that damage energy instead of health, spells that make your opponents spells fire off at a random target.... Those are just things I thought up in a minute or two, and theres many ways you could balance them. Now think about having multiple months to come up with ideas like this, and you can maybe get excited about chapter 2.

EARTH CALLING MIMI
EARTH CALLING MIMI

HERE IS THE QUOTE FROM ANET SITE SHOWING YOU ARE WRONG OR DELUSIONAL

Is Guild Wars an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)?

It's not grind.

..

Okay, that was funny. I'm done lying for the day.

As much as other people love to argue with Mimi, she's right. Yes, there are the more casual players who haven't resorted to grinding, but there are also players who've made over 4 characters and beaten the game time and time again, me included. For us, it's like she said. There just isn't much left to do anymore, and I was never fond of bon-bons to being with.


Runners make it possible. I've pretty much stopped running for people after I realized this, but in the end, I'm only one person. As more and more people ebay money and hire runners, the natural intelligence barriers in the game disolves.


You're my hero. I for one could care less about level caps and power, I want to get on with the fashion show.
Even if skills aren't more powerful, they can still be different. Even if a new class isn't more powerful, it can still be different. Even armor can't be more powerful, it can still be different! Do you get the point people? What if they doubled the skill count for all the existing classes as well as the new ones? Would you be bored? Hell no, you'd be having a blast exploiting broken skills. And that's what GW is all about, isn't it?

One thought I had while reading this thread is this:
Since people like to adhere to the new fotm so much, why not take advantage of it?
Have a week where a certain skill does something extra. Have certain arenas that amplify certain skills. Open up a new area where something is especially effective.. do you see where I'm going with this?
If they made this kind of thing into an event, less people would b!tch and moan, and more people would have fun.


I would too. If there was nothing but a super compelling story, I'd gladly dish out the 50$ for it. And if it was a story with more than one ending, like Deus Ex, it might quickly become my new favorite game.



This is your opinion. In my opinion, they were trying to make the pve game more like pvp - where you can't just send in a tank and set things on fire with minimal losses. The problem is that the game still isn't ENOUGH like pvp. Hence why so few can complete the thirsty river mission without paying someone 30k to solo it for them.



Learn to read.


I can't tell you how much I would love that. I remember someone, forgot who, posting about the difference between MUDs and GW. The difference being social interaction.. that's one of the things that I like most about online games, and something that's sorely lacking from GW. Maybe they could do something like "less instanced" environments, where you're put out in a place with 30 random people or so? You wouldn't all spawn at the same point, but you'd could find each other and chat, help each other out..
I say this, because mostly what goes on is WTS/WTB/LFR crap, and no one wants to do things just for fun anymore.



I know I'm not the only that cares about how my characters look. I'd love to see something where you could change your existing armor to another set for a small amount of gold, that way you can find what works best for you, appearance-wise. And of course a dye-preview feature.


As far as the OPs post, which everyone seems to have forgotten, I suppose my biggest fear for Chapter 2 is lack of a compelling story, and no more social interaction than the current environment dicatates. Obviously there will be new classes, armor, weapons, etc, that I'm not worried about, that's all well and good.

I think they can put multiple ending for Guild Wars but i guess the developer choose not to do it. But look at it from this point of view. (going to talk about a console game for a moment) Halo 2 and 1. How in the hell these two games got so popular. Everyone jumped on the bandwagon for Halo 1 and 2 and there isn't any multiple ending.

I do agree that story is a key factor for people that want to buy games. I mean look at me... i brought all three Splinter Cell games cuz i love stealth action and it's story line. But for A-Net to put in mulitple ending that could happen.

Hey dimwit, maybe you should take your own advice. She contradicted herself about not supporting raising the level cap. Go read my previous post or shut up.

Here let me show it to you again. This is Skulk talking against a level 40 cap:

And this is Mimi's response to it:

Gee, that sure looks like she supports a level raise....but all this time she kept saying that she wasn't and getting mad at people for supposedly not reading, just as you're doing.

how about this for an idea?

have a screen (like the creation screen so you can see from every angle) where you can try on any piece of armor available for your profession and mix and try dye combos on it as well

that way you would know what to get.

Sorry for only responding to one point but...as I stated before, ANet's #s are completely misleading. It doesn't account for a person's storage, and what it contains, beyond gold. Three black dyes shatters that myth. The truth probably can't be realistically be measured, but judging by the amount of people running around wearing FoW armor - at least 15K armor - I'd say that almost everyone has at least 20-50K of "stuff", whether it's gold, items, armor, runes, etc. But that's just a guess.

OK, then you can't compare a single player RPG with a COPRG, MMORPG, or any other label you wish to apply to it.

Otherwise, you win?

i gave you a link earlier to what Anet said.

just give me the link to the Anet site where they call GW an MMORPG

you said their site said it please show me where on the site it says what you said it does.

And that's germane to what part of this discussion?

From: http://www.guildwars.com/gameinfo/default.html

But...whatever. It's not applicable to the discussion about the problems GW has, and what it *may* have in chapter 2. If it will make you feel better, here's a cookie for your troubles.

The only way to raise the level cap without damaging balance is to have increases in level over 20 add no attribute points, health or energy. The only thing you should get is a skill point cookie.

Consider that level increases are logarithmic, that means that for every level there's a greater number of experience points needed to get these cookies. However, we already get skill point cookies for every n experience points above level 20 as it is.

Therefore, raising the level cap steal our cookies.

Bad idea.

Other areas of the game were rather vacant as the population decided to see what was going on in lions arch durring that period of time. Getting everyone to pile into one area, doesnt show how thriving the community is in all aspects of the game. Merely a rough estimate of people who are still willing to log in.

Wow. This thread was about possible wrong directions that Anet might take with the new chatper, I thought. But it turns into yet another argument about the economy (and silly bickering over small points, of course).

I have my small dislikes about that economy (not being happy to need to farm etc. for some runes and 15K armour nowadays), but is this really the most important aspect of the nex chapter? I think not...

Once the addiction of GW takes you, youv'e had it. I find this game boring as hell now, but i play it all the fricking time! im addicted to this shit and it's not funny.

And i don't even care how good the next chapter is, i'll most prob still be playing this crap.

[QUOTE=BeatWolf]Once the addiction of GW takes you, youv'e had it. I find this game boring as hell now, but i play it all the fricking time! im addicted to this shit and it's not funny.[QUOTE]

In which case you should deinstall the game, switch of your PC and go do something completely different. And if you can't, you should go see a therapist or something. It is called addiction: you do something which you don't even like out of habit and/or compulsion. Trust me, I know (I smoke)...

Yeah, and come back when you have quit smoking, and tell me how hard it was :P

Eww.. I hope you mean mary jane and not cigarretes, at least those don't taste like butt.

There are plenty of other games to get fixated on.

I was the one that posted earlier about more social bonding in Muds. I've thought about this in regards to GWars because it's something that I care about, but the GWars enviroment just doesn't foster such a thing. Not because GWars isn't designed right, it's just that it choose a path that tends to make long-term social interaction difficult.

For instance, I like to make a 'helper' character for any Mud I play, one that has maxxed their level and then spends their time spelling up lowbies, healing them, or gathering gear for them. I do this by hanging around the central town, since everyone passes through there it's easy to find me and easy for me to find them. There is no central place in GWars, you can't spell up or heal in-town, and since gear drops are random you can't quickly run out and grab a 'Helm Of Power' or whatever. And if you try to give gear to lowbies you'll more than likely be giving it to someone who already has 500k in the bank and 3 characters and is just taking your free item so they can resell it.

The closest I've come to being a 'helper' character was taking my level 20 E/Me and helping lowbies do the Althea's Ashes run. Now that worked out just fine, barring the occasional idiot but as a helper you learn to live with the few that just can't be helped. I think other people play the 'helper' by hanging around the Ascension quests and organizing groups to get people through them, and by giving free (or very cheap) runs to Droknar's.

But because GWars is so big, and because you log into each town in a random zone, the various 'social' groups just never coalesce into anything larger. There's just no sense of community in-game, the very success of GWars results in a mob instead of a community.

Some people might say "Join a guild", my reply to that is that you aren't forming a community there you are forming a clique, in a way that's the opposite of what I'd like to see. I think the guild mentality is why you see so much ridiculous 'I'm leet!!!' bullshit being toss around, they don't feel like they are a part of a community they feel they are -superior- to the community.

So much as I'd like to see a real community develop in GWars I'd say the game engine and the sheer number of people involved will ensure that for the indefinite future any civilized behaviour will be found only in isolated incidents. Which is a shame, because one of the best remedies to level 20 boredom would be a community that you could put your skills and power to work for.

Agreed, there is no real community/dependancy. Once you're out in the wilderness, it's rather quiet. I've rarely seen people communicate in towns (when I actually have my chat up) except 'lfg', 'how much' and 'what's in it for me'. And yes, I'm sure chapter 2 will be the same.... lets all start worring about it.

So what type of level cap increase do people want? level 50, 100?

I've posted this before, it's just not fair to compare WoW to GW.

WoW has the whole Blizzard fanbase going for it. I mean, nothing can compete directly against WoW in terms of numbers (What are EQs numbers compared to WoWs?)

Also, for those complaining about lack of a community: hello! Read these forums! Full of people who give advice, offer help on quests, etc.

In game too, I've found level 20s willing to help me run through the early missions of the game (since I've already done them with other chars). Just look around, there is a community here.

As long as Chapter 2 gives new Professions with different playing styles, more quests (Some open ended game play? Quests close and open depending on past quests completed? Different endings?), and, yes, more stuff, it will do just fine.

Frankly, Mimi, I don't get your complaint about stuff. I'd much rather the "grind" be about things that don't really matter.... that way, we are not forced to participate! We can play the game we want (the way I like to play is make a character, play until I get bored, sell his stuff, delete character, make new character). To me, it's not about getting perfect weapons or the best looking armor, it's trying different combos of skills, and exploring the world. Rare drops are just icing on the cake for exploring, not the end all of GW....

In the end, it's impossible to please everyone. The best Anet can do is please their core fan base, and work to expand it. Only time will tell if they succeed in that endeaver or not.

Okay, thats a good point. But even with JUST the gold numbers, it provides a fairly good insight into just how few gold farmers there are in the game. Really, in my experiences with item farmers, etc, they dont really waste time turning their items into cash, except for ectos and shards, which they normally save for their own FoW or for over 100k transactions.

If I counted up all the items on my account, the only really valuable stuff in it is my 3 sets of 15k armor, and a couple of fairly good weapons. Maybe 300k of stuff, at the max, more like 250, IMO. Now about 120k of that was given to me by guildies who enjoyed giving me money for armor, because they dont have much else to do with their cash.
Another 55k of that was earned by me doing runs in the crystal desert for cash, which I did for the sole purpose of earning my 15k armor sets.
And 45k from sale of a sup vigor that I got on a totally lucky drop.
So, thats around 30k that I earned just by playing the game, on 3 characters, I'm not counting the toons I deleted here, because almost all of their cash that I earned with them went to a sigil for my first guild.

So, 10k per character, by playing through the early game(ascalon to desert, south shiverpeaks, RoF not included). Now if you ever got lucky enough to get a good rune or a black dye or 2(I never got a black dye, in all my playtime of GW, including the betas!), With the new key system, you're even more likely to get a good gold drop or two, so average worth of a character that just made it to droknars forge should be around 15k. And there you have all your basic weapon, skill purchasing, and rune needs covered.
That fits with my previous numbers, which only covered gold, so dont make any complaints about me being inconsistent, okay?

I'm counting myself as a fairly average player here, because I do most of the quests, dont skip many missions, except for gates of kryta, ew. And I don't spend my time grinding for cash, except when I really want to get another set of 15k armor.

So for someone with three characters, thats around 45k to 50k of stuff, which happens to fit your estimation quite accurately. However, thats STILL the average worth you should get by playing through the game!

Now these average players go out on a couple of skill capping missions, get their elite skills, and guess what? They're ready to PvP, they're ready to do UW/FoW, they're ready to finish the PvE storyline, they're equal to any other player in the game, as long as they can find someone that wants to use their playstyle.(even a suicidal wammo can be used, although normally only as a deathnova bomb.)

A non-average player goes through the game twice with their first two characters, probably a warrior and a monk, because they are the best farmers, then run the rest of their characters to droks, a PvP fan will try to unlock as many skills as possible, a PvE fan will then get PLed, ascend, and go do FoW and UW.
So for someone that sticks with the game, playing it 10 hours a day, theres not too much to do. For a casual player, who likes to chill with the socializers, play maybe 2-5 hours a day, we do exist, just check out the more relaxed outposts and you can find us somewheres, theres still quite a bit left at this time point.

And thats where the key point of this game lies. It is what you make it. You could perfectly well drop it and go play another game until chapter 2 comes out, GW doesnt demand all your time, you could play at a slow, relaxed pace with a group of friends, try RPing through the missions, it can actually be a LOT of fun.

Or, you could go and run on the grindmill for perfect weapons, full sets of FoW for all of your three acounts, full collections of runes, black-black-black silver dye on everything you own, and start complaining about how the game is only grind. Thats you whiners here, and its quite a few other people I've seen, but they're the ones who cost Anet money, they arent the ones who feed it money for less server time, they're the ones who Anet wont miss in the long run, because they do not promote a newbie friendly community, they do not promote a healthy economy, and they dont really promote a healthy PvP enviroment, due to their elitist attitudes.

I'm looking forward to chapter 2, I'm looking forward to new cosmetics, I'm looking forward to changes in the game system, but above all, I'm looking forward to seeing the grinders drop out, and the enviroment become healthy again.
I said a while ago that I was going to pre-order chapter 2, and I ws immediately asked, "You're going to pre-order it?" as if it was a dumb thing to do. But after reading this thread and seeing all the people who are threatening to quit if it doesnt offer real character advancement beyond the level 20 status quo, my answer is even more emphatically YES!

Chapter 2 forever!

DISCLAIMER: This post is not meant as a personal attack on Mimi Miyagi or any other grinder, it just reflects my views on the typical grinder, and by no means do I mean to imply that all grinders are evil people who want to destroy the world. Just a lot of them are really unfriendly and stuff.
Also, the 55k I earned in the crystal desert by running people was a heartily enjoyable experience, and I stopped doing it as soon as I became bored and it started feeling like a chore, so it really doesnt count as grind to me, although it may to some of you other people.

as will i preorder chapter 2.

i said back in late May that i had more than gotten my moneys worth at that time and everything from then on was icing on a very good cake.

not perfect and am hoping for much added spices and condiments on chapter 2 but yes i am getting it.

Well, you can look at the populaces "wealth" gap in a couple of different ways, depending on what you're trying to "prove"

80% has less than 20K in their storage. That means that out of 1 million players, 200,000 of them have more. That's a lot. But is 20K really that much of an indication? And just how much "more" do those 200,000 players have than 20K?

They don't say. It could be a million gold. It could be 21K.

A more interesting # would be how many GW players have an excess of 100K in their storage. But again, it's just an arbitrary number. Or, how many have 999K?

Players with that much money tend to convert their cash to commodities simply because commodities tend to hold their value. Black Dye, for example, has a fairly steady base sale price of about 8K or so. Yes, the price fluctuates, but over time, it's steady.

What I've been trying to get at is that the #s don't really reveal anything. The most "cash" I've ever had was about 140K, I spent it on 15K armor simply because I had nothing better to do with it.

People spend crazy amounts of gold on "stuff" only because they can afford it. They either were lucky at the beginning of the game, and won HoH and collected a storage full of sigils, or they spent a lot of time playing the commodities market, or they farmed twin serpent lakes for runes, or griffons for goodies. Or Globs/Shards solo. And it continues today, of course, even moreso despite ANet's best efforts to nerf solo farming. And that's not including the runners charging 30-50K a head, for "world tour" runs. Probably could make 100K a day easily just by running folks.

I'm not knocking it, I'm just saying, ok, this is the way the game is currently, is ANet going to provide an outlet for players beyond this in chapter 2? If the current level cap stays, the current professions don't gain any additional bonuses, better armor, weapons, goodies, skills (due to balance) - then is chapter 2 just going to be more areas to farm from, based on the current state of the game, and the greed displayed by the majority of the players?

What people keep failing to grasp - is that I'm asking what ANet can do BESIDES a level cap change to make chapter 2 not turn out to be sorrow's furnace x 20? If the activity for SF is any indication of what the future holds - it doesn't look good, from my perspective. I hope ANet has some tricks up their sleeves that we're not aware of that will keep that from happening.

That's all I'm really asking, and it's the point people fail to understand, and continually bash me instead of reading what I write.

Shrug.

What you say above about is not entirely true, you can keep the level cap the same and still add in the following: better armor, weapons, goodies, skills, etc. How is this possible, by adding in items to Chapter 1 that are equivalent to the new items in Chapter 2, but what this won't solve is peoples ingrained thought process that they must have these things and therefore have to "grind" for them. I believe that the play style you see now is not a fault of the game design, but a fault of the players themselves to not see anything beyond the "want/need" factor. I could still be missing your point entirely in which case just ignore everything that I've said.

P.S. - I couldn't tell you what different things they can do in Chapter 2 than 1 if I wanted to.

Sorrows Furnace was one thing only. A set of new quests, with one gameplay change thrown in(the chests.)
Chapter 2 will have possibly a new race, 2 new professions, definately several hundred new skills, 2-3 sets of armor for the old professions, plus the new professions armor sets, new weapon types, which I said in my first post, which are DIFFERENT than the current ones in areas besides textures, but it can all still be balanced.

If you had any sense at all, you would realize that balance doesnt mean things stay the same as always. Just look at PvPX, how it really did rebalance the PvP game, and substantially changed the PvE game, even though the game had been balanced before, after PvPX, it was balanced differently.
Chapter 2 will do the same thing, except on an IMMENSELY larger scale, with NEW skills being added, rather than old skills being changed to do almost the same thing as before, the games paradigm will shift.

So really, Anet doesnt have to do anything that we havent guessed to make chapter 2 a success. Rebalancing the game, with 2 new professions, extra character slots, new skills, new armor, probably new damage types....

Character advancement isnt the end-all be-all of RPGs. The key to a good online RPG isnt grind, its allowing change to occur naturally, players to improve upon the way the game works, and to keep the balance fluid, not static.

You probably wont listen to me, since you seem to ignore most of my relevant points, but really, listen to yourself! They way you phrase your question makes increasing the level cap seem like the only logical solution.

It's not.

As long as chapter 2 removes the current status quo by doing what I've said before, 800,000 players besides your 200,000 grinders will enjoy the expansion, and most of those grinders will still buy the expansion, just because they obviously dont have anything better to do.

The chance of Chapter 2 being Sorrows Furnace 20x over is so small, it's non-existent. Even if theres just ONE new skill added, the entire balance of the game would shift dramatically, changing running, farming, soloing, etc, etc. (probably)
DISCLAIMER: This post has been shortened significantly to avoid rehashing points I already said in earlier posts. If you guys would all do the same, we might be able to have an even better discussion here.

Yeah, that's why I complain (whine?) so much about people getting all worked up over cosmetic changes. The cost difference between a "perfect" +30 health mod and a +28 health mod is ridiculous, yet people are willing to spend crazy money over insignificant things of that nature. I'm not the only one, of course, that views this greed as silly, but it's just the way things are.

The leveling treadmill has been ingrained in player's psyche since the dawn of the pen and paper game crowd. What made the difference wasn't in the goodies (the monty haul campaigns) but the story, the challenges, the quest, the traps, the social interaction, etc. If you were blessed with finding the right GM, you had a much better time making do with a +1 sword, instead of being handed a Mournblade or Stormbringer at level 3 (sorry, completely geekified old school gaming reference there).

BUT (huge but) the ultimate goal was to progress, not just enjoying the scenery. Progression meant newer spells. You couldn't wait to get to level 7 for Fireball - and then seeing it's power and destructive force grow as you went further up the levels. It didn't matter that the monsters got bigger, badder, more HPs, lower AC, multiple attacks to keep pace. It was still a rush to grab a handful of six sided dice and blasting 30+ points of damage instead of 4.

Yeah, it's a tried and true paradigm, comfortable, predictable. GW mimics some of these effects - the more attribute points you place (as you rise in levels) in your skill branches, you do more damage, spells/conditions last longer, healing is better, etc. But, once you've reached level 20, the progression stops. You'll never do more than 10 pips of degen with a skill. You'll never do more than (just a number) 140 points of damage with a lightning strike. Your armor won't absorb any more damage than it does now.

Arbitrary, absolutely. But if that progression isn't there, then something else must take it's place, or players won't feel satisfied simply because of the ingrained expectations they have. Your character must continue to evolve, or it become rote, stale, boring. In addition, as the game wears on, players become more efficient in their builds - their skills, their knowledge of the game mechanics, which simply amplifies the results.

A week ago, I took one of my characters though Defend Droknar's Forge with a PUG (which took about an hour to assemble due to lack of players at GC). Once we got started, we made it to mineral springs ok, but once people started to die, they abruptly quit. By the time we (all five of us) finished the quest - an hour and a half later, all of us at -45 DP or higher, we were spent.

I organized a guild trip to do that very same mission last night, and we blew though it in about 30 minutes or so. I had built up the trip as being extremely difficult, and long, and at the end everyone was saying "well, THAT wasn't hard at all".

Part of the reason why the guild trip went so well was communication and better teamwork, but a lot of it had to do with my prior knowledge of how to successfully tackle the monsters, and in what order, and where to go, and what to expect at the end. The same can be said of any mission in GW - they are almost mechanical now even with PUGs because most people have done them before - some multiple times.

It's one thing that saves GW for me - the social interaction of a good guild, not the game itself. If I wasn't in a guild with great folks, I'd have quit long ago. Believe me, I've been in "bad" guilds before, they're a nightmare.

But, that's just me.

I have seen nothing since the game came out to lead me to believe anything different. I have heard nothing from ANet to make me believe anything will in the future. The constant nerfing hasn't been enough of a clue yet? What's the difference (retorical questions here) between a curse that does -3 degen, a hex that does -3 degen, a preparation that does -3 degen, a condition that does -3 degen?

I'm (finally) going to end this conversation (on my part) by saying "we'll see, I guess". Perhaps a year from now I'll be eating crow and taking a lot of abuse for how wrong I was. I hope so.

A prep can't be dispelled, and a curse and a hex are the same thing.


Vorlin, I'm glad you posted, sorry I didn't remember your name. I'm a lot like you, I feel without a cause if I don't have somebody to help out.
I wish they'd change the super-instanced nature of the game in the future, but if I made any suggestions, they sure wouldn't be educated ones.
I guess all we can do is hope and wait for Chapter 2.

I named the title of this thread POSSIBLE problems/disappointments for a reason. I wanted to have a discussion on how things will be implemented in chapter 2 regarding level cap, balance issue's etc. As said by many ppl in this thread, there are a lot of ways on how to develop characters with lvl 20 staying max and how the expansion will be challenging. I myself for instance started thinking in a different way regarding characterdevelopment after a post by Loviatar (page 1). Anet is reading threads like these and might be influenced by some posts. Therefor it's more usefull to come with idea's on how to make chapter 2 a great expansion instead of assuming all kinds of negative things be4 it's even released. I'm sure that Anet is aware that with keeping lvl 20 being max, they have to do other things to make the expansion worthwile for the hardcore players who have done every single thing in chapter 1. Many things are possible. The more idea's we post and discuss about, the more likely it will be that Anet creates an expansion which be appealing to all of us.

i agree, wats the point in playing a game if you already know wats in it

I find it really sad that a lot of people hate gw for the whole lvl 20 cap... like a lot of people said, it's all about skills(talent) and strategy. I also think that you guys, like Snowman said, have little faith in Anet. Chapter 2 keeps the story moving, i think it'll keep the PvE'er keep playing for sure because, hey, it'll be boring if you PvE but dont follow story. I'm sure as hell they'll make things A LOT better, because no one makes part 2 to a game worse than part one... it'd be a lost of time and money... items and armor? heh think about it... new places = new crafter = new armor and weapon... thats pretty much how it works... i actually wrote this in two parts so i kinda lost my train of thought... but i think i got the gist of things