Guild Wars on Steam

[J T]

I picked it up on the Steam sale. So far, it's mostly just given me frustration. I had troubles logging in and had to do lots of troubleshooting. I still don't think it's properly set up yet. I finally got into the program to play the game, but it's full of more crap to learn. There are a million little info boxes and menus and windows. I played for about 15 minutes and then had to turn it off, but forgot you need to remember your character name to log in again. Arg! I forgot it. I had them e-mail me the info, but I'm not sure if it's even anything I really want to get into. If it wasn't for the fact that several people have given it high marks, I wouldn't be so persistent in trying to get it running.

[Ivo]

You were trying to solo a mage. That's the problem. My first character was a mage. This game really punishes you for high DPS. If you attack more than 1 or 2 enemies you are fucked, even at Level 20 with all your class Elites, I still get trounced solo.

You need a couple of tanks and a monk to survive the later battles. You must manage your DPS, if you do too much damage the horde will just come after you and kill you very quickly.

IF you fancy playing solo then you should roll Monk/Mesmer. That will keep you alive for a looooong time unless you are stupid about it. Battles will take a long time though.

That was probably it. I guess the game just wasn't designed for solo (which isn't surprising and I'm not coming down on them for it - it was just not their goal for the game).

With the NPC team mates I could "hire" (I was taking a healer, a warrior and an archer, didn't think I should double up on the mage) it wasn't going very well. Maybe because they weren't too competent. The option was indeed engage 2 to 3 guys, and still they would go down reasonably slowly as they heal rather fast in some cases (but that's mostly the mini-bosses that are spread around). I imagine that with a more defensive class like Monk/Mesmer there may even be many stalemates where you can't kill the guy and he can't kill you because you both heal faster than the DPS.

Ivo.

[Niode]

I picked it up on the Steam sale. So far, it's mostly just given me frustration. I had troubles logging in and had to do lots of troubleshooting. I still don't think it's properly set up yet. I finally got into the program to play the game, but it's full of more crap to learn. There are a million little info boxes and menus and windows. I played for about 15 minutes and then had to turn it off, but forgot you need to remember your character name to log in again. Arg! I forgot it. I had them e-mail me the info, but I'm not sure if it's even anything I really want to get into. If it wasn't for the fact that several people have given it high marks, I wouldn't be so persistent in trying to get it running.

How strange... I've had this game run on my mac through Parallels, through CrossoverMAC (which is like a sort of Wine for OS X) and natively on XP, Vista and Windows 7 without any problems. Especially now that Parallels supports DX9 it works very well through virtualization on my Macbook Pro.

I have the retail version though. I'm a bit confused that you found it hard to understand, the game is very simple especially compared to other MMORPGs.

[Ivo]

I have the retail version though. I'm a bit confused that you found it hard to understand, the game is very simple especially compared to other MMORPGs.

I don't know why but I also had this "subconscious" feeling of being alienated by the environment / UI of the game. Maybe due to the lack of a good tutorial or something like that?

Ivo.

[Niode]

Interesting. My ex-fiancee didn't have any trouble playing it and she didn't play many games. In fact she was better than me at it.

[J T]

I have the retail version though. I'm a bit confused that you found it hard to understand, the game is very simple especially compared to other MMORPGs.

I don't know why but I also had this "subconscious" feeling of being alienated by the environment / UI of the game. Maybe due to the lack of a good tutorial or something like that?

Ivo.

Yeah, it's that. I would have liked something of a tutorial. Plus, as soon as you start you are hit with a ton of information. You're told to complete a quest, there's a chat window, every character has some floating info over their head, there's a map, there's icons all over and I don't know what they refer to. Thankfully there is an easy to find menu and an in depth wiki for help when needed.

I still don't feel like I know what I'm supposed to be doing exactly though. I ran through a few simple quests that were so simple I was wondering if I was missing something since I apparently need a milllion pieces of information on the screen at all times... even when I'm just going to pick up a broken flute on the river banks. ok. Or walking with some guy named Paulos so he can pick something up and take it back to a monk in town while I basically just walk along and watch him kill everything.

I probably just started on the wrong foot with this game after a big ordeal in figuring out how to log in and use my new NCsoft account. I also need to just rtfm.

[Niode]

Pre-searing is pathetically easy. It's designed to be a prelude to the real game. A tutorial sandbox area if you will.

When you get to post-searing that's when the game really opens up.

If I had GW on my mac I would log in and help you out, but sadly I don't and don't know when I'll be going to back to my house.

[Ivo]

Pre-searing is pathetically easy. It's designed to be a prelude to the real game. A tutorial sandbox area if you will.

When you get to post-searing that's when the game really opens up.

If I had GW on my mac I would log in and help you out, but sadly I don't and don't know when I'll be going to back to my house.

I think I still have it installed, so when you do (no hurry) maybe we could play a bit together - I'm in the same time zone after all.

Ivo.

[Niode]

Sure, that would be fun

[ZeroAX]

it was my first mmo, and I really liked it, until I tried out WoW. Never bothered with any of the expansions. Funny thing is that I like WoW for it's PvP and GW is a much more competitive PvP game.....once you get to 20.

It's just I never found a good guild, and I didn't have a friend playing it to help me through the game, so I can learn about it's PvP. (which is exactly what happened with WoW. Don't think I'd have even tried PvP if it weren't for my friends telling me about it)