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Guild Wars

CrusaderTemplar

Liturgist
Joined
Mar 17, 2004
Messages
305
Location
California
Me TOo. I got like 245 Dollars on me for the CE of GUild wars :). and i saw it at frys for 67.99.
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
What are the system requirements for Guild Wars?
Minimum System Specs

* Windows® XP/2000/ME/98
* Intel Pentium® III 800 Mhz or equivalent
* 256 MB RAM
* CD-ROM Drive
* 2 GB Available HDD Space
* ATI Radeon 8500 or GeForce 3 or 4 MX Series Video Card with 32MB of VRAM
* 16-bit Sound Card
* Internet connection
* Keyboard and mouse

Recommended System Specs:

* Windows® XP/2000/ME/98
* Intel Pentium® III 1GHz or equivalent
* 512 MB RAM
* CD-ROM Drive
* 2 GB Available HDD Space
* ATI Radeon 9000 or GeForce 4 Ti Series Video Card with 64MB of VRAM
* 16-bit Sound Card
* Internet connection
* Keyboard and mouse
You should be able to run it just fine.
 

PennyAnte

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 10, 2004
Messages
769
Location
Here instead of playing an RPG.
Fez said:
Opinions on how good the game is aside, do you think it will be a success financially? If it is, it should become a trend setter.
I want to buy it so I can help support it financially so it becomes a trend setter.
Down with MMO games that use shiny new grafx as mere monthly bill generaters with hordes of young zombies staring at the screen thinking OOOOO PRETTYYYyyyy ....
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
I'm currently playing the last WPE (saved my final key for it) and they've added some very nice new wilderness areas. Instead of starting out with a main character class and a secondary class and a bunch of predetermined skills, you now start by choosing your main character class and advancing alone (or with 1 friend, no more) in the first wilderness area, which is very large and full of quests to do. In this wilderness area you get to learn new skills (for free, no skill points are spent) from various NPCs by doing their quests, and you pick up your second class around here as well. You don't need to pick up a second class, but there is no advantage for not doing so, so it's better that you get a second class. All it does is simply allow you access to skills of the other class.

When you do these 'second class' quests, you are bestowed the skills belonging to these classes for a temporary period of time until you decide whether you want to pursue the 2nd class or not to. It's a pretty cool feature that basically allows you to try all the available classes and see what playing style is to your liking.

On top of that, the quests in the wilderness areas give you better equipment and money as rewards. You don't have to do all of them if you don't want to, and some of them are merely collection quests, but you should get all the class-related quests, so you don't have to spend skill points on them later.

Characters created in this manner are called RPG characters. You basically use them to explore the whole game, and you can also bring them into the PVP arenas and guild instances. Alternatively you can create a level 20 PVP only character that's based on a preexisting template with predetermined skills or a custom level 20 PVP character who is equipped with skills that you have found throughout the game on your RPG character. To put it simply, whatever skills your RPG characters discover in his adventures and whatever items he 'identifies' (by using the identifying kit on) will become 'unlocked' for your custom PVP character to be able to use, so you don't have to go through the hassle of creating new characters or transferring equipment for them every time you want to try out some new PVP.

If you delete a character from your account whatever equipment he identified and whatever skills he learned will stay available to the account for your PVP characters to use. But if you have 2 RPG characters and one of them "identifies" a really powerful weapon, you can't duplicate the item for the other RPG character. It will only be available to the PVP character. In case you're worried, items equipped by PVP characters are all 'personalized' so they can't be traded with anyone. Your custom PVP character's skill set and items is sorted out in a special menu in the character creation screen, so you can edit him as you like.

You can trade items to other players on your RPG characters, but you can't trade items that have been 'personalized', like the preorder items, or the blacksmith in the game that upgrades your weapon so it does 20% added damage.

I'll have 1 PVP character and 3 RPG characters, if the character per account limit is set to 4 during the launch as it is currently.
 

PennyAnte

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 10, 2004
Messages
769
Location
Here instead of playing an RPG.
All, if you don't mind, I've got 2 questions since I haven't played the "betas" (presale generators).

1. Lag is a problem for online games. In D2 when it gets laggy, wierd things happen, like your character leaps ahead, is temporarily unresponsive, you get hit while you can't respond and find yourself dead for "no reason" (i.e. actions out of sync), all that crap.

Is Guild Wars better? Sometimes with D2 I'd go back to single play to wait out bad-lag hours.

2. What are some good powergame strats - what kind of class/skill combos are effective and why?

This info would help me decide for sure whether to get it. I'm already inclined to do so, but answers would honestly be a helpful favor.
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
1. Yeah, Guild Wars is much better. I'm playing from Malaysia and my ping times are generally 400ms, but it's a lot more unnoticeable in Guild Wars than it was in Diablo or Diablo 2 for me. It only really lags when there's something wrong with my ISP or if I'm downloading a bunch of stuff while I'm trying to play.

2. There's some 'power game strats' available at www.guild-hall.net but they're just based on the playing styles of whoever wrote them. There's no real 'powergaming' strategy at this point because everyone I've come across had their own methods of playing the game.

It's really a matter of trial and error. Each class basically has 75 skills available to it, and each character consists of 2 classes, so that's 150 skills available for you to choose from. Your skill belt is limited to 8 (or 9 if you use an amulet for the duration of the mission, I think? I'm nto really sure) skills so you have to figure out through trial and error which skills work best with each other. Some skills might be really poor combinations, for example having a character who's a ranger with marksmanship and a warrior with swordsmanship would probably be a real waste of skillpoints, whereas a warrior with swordsmanship and the ranger's wilderness survival skill would be much more useful because he can dodge attacks and poison his weapon.

When your create your character you should first get some general idea of what character you'd like to play. A necromancer who summons the undead and heals his allies, a warrior who jumps into the fray and uses magic to harden his skin or add damage to his weapons, a ranger who picks his enemies off with the use of his bow and is able to support his allies with healing, and so forth.

Personally, I like a ranger who can pick off enemies at a distance and stun the fuck out of them. For that, I use a Ranger specialized in marksmanship subclassed with an Elementalist with air elemental magic.

You needn't worry about where to spend your stat points either, because can retrain your stat points however you see fit. You can 'retrain' 1 stat point for every 250 xp (just a couple of monsters) you kill.

Here's an example of the stats on a Warrior:
Endurance, Strength, Sword Mastery, Axe Mastery, Hammer Mastery, Tactics

Don't confuse them with 'skill points'. You gain skill points every time you level up and if you hit level 20 (which is the cap), you will gain a skill point every time your experience bar fills up. You can also gain skill points by completing some quests. Skill points are limited to around 75 or so, so try not to use a Leech Signet (used on bosses to steal their skills) for skills that you don't want or need. It's okay to learn new skills as rewards from completing quests though, because they don't count towards your skill points.

On the other hand, you could make it a goal to accumulate every single skill in the game so that they become unlocked for your PVP characters...

All in all, you shouldn't get frustrated if your first character doesn't work out for you, because it might not be according to your playing style. You should just mould the character you make according to what you're comfortable with. There's no point in playing a support healer type character if you don't feel comfortable playing that sort of character.
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
Here's a skill base/profile creator you can use to design your character before playing the game:
http://www.flamberge.de/board/modules.p ... skill_base

Oh yeah, there are some skills which are called "Elite Skills" that you can only have one of in your skill belt at any time. Some of them are basically upgraded versions of regular skills and provide much better bonuses, while others are skills that are utterly powerful compared to regular skills.

Be warned though, that site's skills are very outdated. There are no more Ranger skills that cause a 5% death penalty. Instead, they are now Spirits, which are immobile sentries that bestow an aura in the small location to any friendly characters, so they are affected by the bonuses. Spirits are very useful for ranged characters and casters who can stand within the aura and get attack bonuses from it.

Edit: I've been rethinking my character and I might just go with an Elementalist + something else instead of a Ranger + Elementalist, because I prefer the Energy/Mana bonus that the Elementalists get as their class specialty. I'll be going with Air Mastery, for sure.
 

PennyAnte

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 10, 2004
Messages
769
Location
Here instead of playing an RPG.
How is the melee vs. offensive magic balance? When I look over the spells, it seems like they often have pretty low damage numbers. Is this competitive with say a sword, or is melee more viable?

Do the skills synergize or improve or something?

What about ranged vs. melee?

Those are probably my last worries. In D2 1.10, it was much better to fight from a distance because of how easy it was for enemies to hit, even given all the skills you could muster. Plus more enemy effects, like iron maiden and some others, tended to affect melee users more than magic users. Magic maiden was really the only harsh effect for the sorceress.

That really annoyed me.
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
The 'low damage numbers' can be pretty deceptive, but you need to realize that monsters only have as much health as most players, so it's really very balanced. When you're fighting a monster with only 200 health who regenerates 2 ticks a second, a 70 damage spell is a lot of damage. The damage you do and their potency scales up with the number of points you put into the related attribute. It's the same with melee weapons.

In this regard, they are very well balanced, though melee does physical damage while magic does a variety of different elemental damage types, so if you're a mage you might do well with 2 different damage types in case a monster you go up against is immune to a certain element, and if you're a warrior or ranger, you should likewise arm yourself with an elemental damage weapon as well as a physical damage one (there's a hotkey that allows 4 sets). In PVP, this is crucial. Warrior armor has extremely poor defense against elemental attacks, so mages take them down pretty fast, while mages tend to get killed easily by rangers in duels, because rangers have the best elemental resists on their armor and a lot of ways to stun mages.

Melee beats the shit out of ranged for the most part, which is the case with newbie players, but that would depend on player ability and the skills equipped by the player. A ranger geared towards killing warriors would have a totally different set of skills than a ranger who's geared towards disrupting and stunning mages. For instance, a ranger who wants to kill warriors would do well with snaring arrows, armor penetration, second classed to a mesmer with the skill that causes every "Glyph" to cost 10 points of energy per use. This fucks up both warriors and to a lesser degree elementalists, because they rely heavily on glyphs. Warriors use Glyph of Healing to regenerate their health immediately, and they can use it quite often because it uses no energy. Warriors have very little energy, so its not like they can do much else. Now, if you were to use this skill that makes Glyphs cost 10 energy to use, you will effectively disable the warrior's ability to heal himself.

For some skills, warriors use Adreneline rather than energy, which is built up by hitting things.

Also, if you're worried about stuff like Iron Maiden. Don't worry. There's PLENTY of counterspell skills that allow you to purge yourself, protect yourself, or hell, even FUCK THE OTHER GUY UP FOR USING IT. Mesmers are the sneekiest class, and they can do stuff that basically fucks other people over for using buffs, hexes or curses. One such skill involves turning all hexes casted on you into healing spells, and causes damage to ALL your opponents for each hex casted. Another involves turning all of your opponent's buffs into poison and damage. So if that warrior coming at you is fully buffed, and you cast that spell on him, he'll probably die in a few hits of your ally's blade.

In most games, a buffed up character is unbeatable. Not so in Guild Wars. A good mesmer would destroy buffers and hexers. Each class has its own bunch of hexes and buffs, so you're not relegated to playing a Monk just to buff people or a necromancer to hex. Everyone has their own unique abilities that make them useful in different situations. Unsurprisingly, Mesmers are the hardest class to play and master, because they require you to think on your feet and plan ahead.
 

DarkSign

Erudite
Joined
Jul 24, 2004
Messages
3,910
Location
Shepardizing caselaw with the F5 button.
TS = team speak... a voice over IP program.

Basically what it does is allow you to talk to your team members while you are playing. Its highly invaluable.

Kind of works like a party-line telephone. I would suggest everyone download it if they dont have it, as well as get a microphone.

Holy crap...Ill finally hear Exit's voice? now Ill have a voice to put with the words he writes. That will be funny as hell.
 

Sovard

Sovereign of CDS
Joined
Sep 2, 2004
Messages
920
A few things, not to be a bitch or anything, just to clarify.

Leech Signet steals mana, not skills. Signet of Capture takes skills.

Healing Signet that warriors get isn't quite instant (about 2s if I remember correctly), and they take double damage while using it.

Basically, you want to use the 8 skill slots available to create combinations and versatility. Be it PvE or PvP. For example, Warriors who specialize in Hammers get an elite "knockdown and cause weakness" skill, and can then follow-up with a "overpowers a weakened foe, damaging and knocking them to the ground" skill.

Overall, the PvP can be very annoying. Everyone seems to minor in monk so they can get high health regen and reactive heals. If they don't do that, they're Necro/Mesmers so they can put a bunch of DoTs on ya and run around in circles as you die. Of course, all the PvP is optional, you can never have these problems...
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
It's easy to overcome all those noobs who minor in monk. Take for instance a ranger/monk. They have zero counterspells. Zilch. They're screwed if they ever do that healing hands thing, and a mesmer casts one of his counterspells on them.
 

Ryuken

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 28, 2005
Messages
606
Location
Belgium
I had the chance to play the game every Wednesday the past six weeks because of a special action for the press. It's surely shaping up quite well but that PvP... there won't be territorial conquest in it, isn't it? Guild halls, arena's, capturing obelisks, guiding Ghostly Heroes/Priests was already fun but is there more?
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
I don't think there's any territorial conquest, no. But there's a ranking board and a bunch of PVP rewards that only a few of them have been unveiled. So far I know of a special scepter you carry around when you're in safe areas like towns. There's a lot more, they say, like unique looking armor and neat looking weapons.

There might be more in the future, though. But as it is, the game offers more than WOW or EQ2 ever did, combined.
 

Sovard

Sovereign of CDS
Joined
Sep 2, 2004
Messages
920
Man, I've really come up with some killer combos over the past few days.

Seems to be that my biggest problem with the PvP was the random public groups. They can really suck ass. I recall going into The Crag and having 5/6 Necro majors on my team.

The Tombs are fun when you get together a consistant group. Just wean out the poor group members and you can build a fun, successful group. Still seems to be that the team with the most Monks ends up winning, though.

Fun stuff, can't wait till release.
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
Too many necrosmancers, not enough of anything else. That's what happens in public groups where too many of the members are a bunch of goths who think playing a necromancer is cool because they get to 'raise an army' but none of them even bother to specialize in Hexes. Having more than two necromancers specialized in raising the dead is overkill, because there's just not enough corpses to go around for them to do that.

A good way to fuck up a full monk group is to rip them a new one with mesmer counterspells. Each and every single one of their healing spells turns into a curse that damages their entire group in some way or another, they'll ALL go down pretty fast, I promise.
 

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