By Grease Coakes
Most gamers are
familiar with WOW, aka World Of Warcraft, as the best selling online
roleplaying game, rich with lore and many things to do and quests to
accomplish. Guild Wars 2, available
to buy online for a fair price of $50, follows the same vein. The
world of Tyria is rich in adventure with incredible realistic
graphics and easy to get into playability. For example in WOW if you
wanted to go from one place to another for a low cost in gold you
hired a wyvern or a griffin to fly you there on a fixed flying route
which took some time. In GW2 you merely press M for map and click on
a waypoint or WP for short. For a small cost in silver or copper you
see a load screen appears for a brief time and you're where you want
to go.
As you create your
character you can pick from four races: the Asura a goblin race which
is small but extremely intelligent, Humans, a larger human-like race called the Norn, and a furry race called the Charr which is a cat/lion furry.
Including the sex of your character, you have a wide variety of
options to choose from. Options include skin and hair, color, height and physical
physique of your character. Last names are accepted for your
character. For example my Charr warrior is Dusty Coakes. You can also
pick colors for your armor or clothes. Don't worry the colors you
pick aren't permanent. One of the many options is dyes so you can
always change the colors of the clothes or armor you wear.
In addition to those
options you also have a set of questions. Like when your character
was growing up who was your trainer and were you born from a noble
family or was your father a traitor? Another question when I made my
elementlist was what element do you feel most connected to? Arena Net,
the game company behind Guild Wars 2, put a lot of time and thought
into this game. There's also eight classes or what the game calls
professions to pick from as your character. There's also a story mode
you can play through with rewards and sometimes you earn a Black Lion
Key. You use these keys to open Black Lion chests which has treasures
you can only earn from these chests.
Warriors are the tough
guys along with guardians. Both of them can wear heavy armor as the
guardian is like the paladin from WOW. An engineer creates guns and
turrets to attack and heal. The ranger is akin to the hunter from
WOW. The thief is sneaky and has lots of tricks to play keep away and
do heavy damage. The Engineer Thief and Ranger can wear medium armor
hence leather armors.
Necromancers use
spooky and death related spells to hurt and drain health from
baddies. Mesmers create duplicates of him or herself to confuse foes
and slowly wear down and kill whomever. Elementlists use the four
elements of fire water earth and air to attack or heal. These three
professions let your character wear cloth armor.
Not only does the game
have fabulous graphics you also hear superb voice acting. You'll hear
voice emotes like “Go ahead hit me!” or “I can outrun a
centaur!” My Elemtlist says things like “Air!” or “My power
will drown you!” when I switch him to water. Cut scenes in dungeons
or in story mode also have excellent voice acting and excellent
graphics.
WOW to get to the
maximum level took a while. As you went from area to area getting
herbs or metals you finished quests to speed up your leveling. GW2 is
in the same way but different. As you travel around you'll see an
empty heart pop up on your screen. There's a text read out explaining
what the NPCs want you to do in the area. When the heart fills up you
receive experience karma and a low gold reward. Filling hearts in an
area helps you level quicker. In fact just completing hearts in areas
will level your character at a very fast pace. Or if you PVP you earn
tomes of knowledge. Each tome of knowledge gives you a level.
Like in WOW you gather
materials for your crafts like tailoring, cooking, amrorsmithing,
weaponsmithing, etc. However to gather materials like wood metals or
carrots you don't have to use a trade slot to gather those materials
or mats for short to create items or sell. So long as you have mining
picks sickles and axes equipped you can always gain these items from
various nodes in the game. So instead of mining and armorsmithing
like in WOW you can have cooking and weaponsmithing as your trade
skills instead. And you can still gather other materials to sell off.
Akin to WOW you can
sell your goods and shop around on the Black Lion Trading Company.
However let's say your bags filled up and you're in no mood to go
back to town to unload your goodies to sell. And GW2 isn't stingy
with gear dropping you'll see gear drop now and again as you kill
baddies in your way.
You could right click
over an item you want to sell and the item is taken from your bags to
be sold on the BL Trading company. Taking a few minutes to right
click everything up for sale takes a lot less time then going back to
town and going to a BL Trading company NPC to sell in person.
In each area there are
vistas, points of interest, waypoints, hearts, and skill points.
Vistas give you a wonderful scrolling view of an area but aren't
always easy to reach or find. Skill points you have to earn either by
your character absorbing the skill point or fighting an NPC for it.
Skill points purchase traits and abilities for your character. Every
time you level up you also receive a skill point. Points of interest
you just find and it pops up as completed.
There's a downscaling
system as you explore Tryia. For example if your character is level
50 and you're in a level 35 area you'll be downscaled down to a level
35. However your gear will still give you high stats. You should have
an easier time killing mobs but don't get lazy you can still die if
you're not careful.
When you complete an
area for example when you start a Charr your first area is Ashford
Plains so you might complete that first. You receive a blue chest
which has goodies for your character. The higher level the area the
better loot you receive. GW2's motto is treasure as the game rewards
you in various ways.
One thing you can do
with random loot you find is use a salvage kit to break apart items
to get ore pieces of leather and essences of luck. Essences of luck
will boost your magic find and you use the materials salvaged from
items to sell or for crafting.
After a while you may
try your hand at PvP or player vs player. However your level doesn't
make any difference as your character is given a PvP necklace and
runes that makes it possible for any level 1 character to be able to
fight a level 80 character on equal ground.
There's various games
that pop up and in fact you don't have to wait very long for a PvP
game to join. Click the PvP icon and you're taken to a Player versus Player waiting
area. Talk to the Norn and you're good to go. There's a capture the
flag game similar to WOW's Warsong Gulch and other games where
controlling points is the key to victory. If possible like the buddy
system in swimming swim with a buddy for safety reasons.
The buddy system in PvP is a good idea. With at least two people taking a point it's much
easier to defend instead by all your lonesome. The other team may
zerg around and knock the stuffing out of you quickly. Each team is
up to 5 people is a color blue or red and you can take your pick. The
main goal isn't just to chase down and kill the other team but to get
500 points through controlling points.
Fair warning though
PvP is not for the faint of heart. It goes at a very fast pace and
once in a while some players might say mean things. However playing
in PvP can be worth your time and effort if you put the hard work
into it and take your bad games with your good games.
For example my
Elementlist wanted a whole dungeon set before he hit level 80. So
when I did story mode in a dungeon called “Honor of the waves.”
It unlocked a PvP track for me permanently. Usually PvP tracks might
be locked until a certain time when it's unlocked again.
So all I did for a
while was just PvPing and ever so slowly I earned Kodan tokens and
weapon boxes along the way and treasure boxes. Not only that I can
earn scrolls and tomes of knowledge to level up my character and
skill points. When I got what I wanted out of PvP my character hit 80
(which is the max level). So with that character he already had a
full armor and weapons set for a lot of blood sweat and tears. After
that I stopped PvP and went to dungeons instead. However with PvP you
can only do so much PvP before you hit a PvP limit and you stop
receiving points on your PvP track. When you see a red ! Stop playing
in PvP and find something else to do and try PvP again later. Over
time the red! Will go away and you can start again. GW2 must of put
that there so you don't earn treasure from PvP too fast.
As you level up you
also earn traits to make your character better. For example my
elementlist is traited fire and water. And two points in arcane.
There's 5 choices for each profession or class whichever noun you
wish to use. When you hit max level at 80 you have 14 trait points to
spend. Each choice or trait line is a maximum of six. So I have six
points in fire and water and 2 in arcana. Traits also give you
bonuses to your stats. Water grants me vitality and healing power.
Fire gives me power.
Each weapon gives you
options as well. There's weapon choices for each character. For
example 3 on my warrior depending if he has an axe or mace equipped
has two different attacks. If a thief is attacking me in pvp and I’m
smart enough to have a one handed mace equipped I can click
counterblow by clicking 3 which is very handy. If the thief attacks
me his attack is blocked and I thwack him with my mace for very high
damage. The 4 and 5 keys are my shield. Where I can block attacks for
a short time or rush a short distance and stun a bad guy.
Or if I have an axe
equipped and someone I want kill in PvP is running away from me I can
mouse click 3 and throw an axe at whoever. It adds what's called a
condition (something bad on your character.) the condition is a
cripple which cuts down the character's speed in half The opposite is
called a boon which is something good for your character like a speed
or might boon.
As your character
levels up there's also abilities and or spells you can buy with skill
points and the traits you also have to purchase with skill points.
But don't worry the game isn't stingy with skill points as you earn
them in areas or through PvP.
As you progress
through the game there are also skins for armor and weapons that you
earn from the game. My elementlist walks around in a full kodan armor
set and also kodan weapons and my warrior Dusty is in a flame legion
armor set. With transmutation points you can change your character's
clothing or armor appearance from other skins you have unlocked. As
an example I didn't like how my necromancer's hat was covering her
face. So I used transmutation point to change her hat into a
different skin. Transmutation points are earned through pvp or
through daily rewards. My necromancer as a joke is colored pink as
her name is Freehugsofdeath. She always offers free hugs but oddly no
one wants a free hug. Amazingly I do very well with in PvP with her
and she seems to give out lots of free hugs
Like WOW there's also
guilds to join. Chit chat with guildies and also find a group to go
defeat a dungeon. And GW2's dungeons aren't time eaters. A dungeon
like sorrow's embrace could be knocked out in a short time like 20-30
mins.
There's also a world
vs world option which is PvP on a grander scale. I haven't played
much of that nor have I done much with crafting items. However what I
was told is with weapon smithing you could create your own end game
weapons.
With excellent
graphics and easy to get into game play GW2 is an excellent game to
buy for a mere $50. Oh, and the best part of all there is NO MONTHLY
FEE. Once the $50 is ponied up. That's it the game is yours. Keep
playing until the cows come home or until you fall asleep. You could
purchase gems with real money or gold in game for skins or boosters
but to play the game it's not required to use or purchase gems.
If you're looking for
something to play and you enjoy playing with others go use up a
birthday present or buy it yourself and have a great time burning or
bashing bad guys in pvp or in a dungeon. Guild Wars 2 is the Porsche
of online role playing games.
Grease Coakes
