Here is the place to right some wrongs, people talk about the game but a lot of statements are painfully false. So give us your top 5 of misconceptions you've heard and explain in a few words why this is wrong. What's important here: proof! There has to be an official source, screenshots or videos to proof your correction.
these are mine:
1.) GW2 is PvP focussed, so PvE isn't important to the developers.
2.) The story is very simple, because there are only dynamic events. There are no consequences; story is not important.
3.) this Thief/Ranger/... is like the Rogue/Hunter/... in WoW.
4.) there are no quests in GW2
5.) the game is from the Aion-Makers NCsoft and made for asia-mmo-lovers
6.) the characters look asia-style
7.) there are 10.000 (insert a number) dynamic events in the world / there are 1500 eventchains in gw2
8.) Guild Wars 2 has no portals other than city-portals and portals to instances.
9.) GW2 PVE isn't in depth enough to really make many interesting encounters.....can't add much complexity without tank and heals
10.) dungeons don't offer any real reward / gear that is just as good everywhere else. no reason to run dungeons again
11.) PvE-gear is just cosmetical, it's not rewarding, there is no gear progression.
12.) Dynamic Events have to be easy, because of griefing
@1: WRONG:
just watch this (GW2 Manifesto)
@2: WRONG:
sourceYour home instance never stops updating; as your character becomes more involved in their story, it will alter accordingly. Two norn will quickly differentiate their personal area through choices in the storyline. They will encounter different adventures, make different decisions, and their home will change to match their story.
@3: WRONG: you'll have to understand, that each profession ("class" for the WoW friends) can be played in many different ways, the core mechanic is different, depending on the weapon you are using. In WoW there are 3 talenttrees for each class/profession. Each of those trees has a few core-skills you use for your rotation. So there are basically 3 ways in WoW to play your class. You can do a finetuning with all the spec/nonspec-specific skills, but the core stays the same. In GW2 your weapon builds this core. And most professions can swap between 2 weapon-sets during combat.
WoW:
Warrior -> Arms / Fury / Protection
Rogue -> Assassination / Combat / Subtlety
Hunter -> Beast Mastery / Marksmanship / Survival
GW2:
Warrior -> Mainhand: Longbow / 2H-Sword / Sword / Rifle / Axe / 2H-Hammer / Mace
-> Offhand: Shield / Warhorn / Axe / Sword / Mace
...3 Mainhand-Skills + 2 Offhandskills = your core build
each of those builds plays totally different, each of them is totally viable, there is no "best" option, only options that are better for certain situations.
just play with this (Alpha)-Talent-tool and build your own unique fighter.
4.) it depends:
The developers stated that there are no typical quests in GW2, shortly after they explained this statement. Not everybody got this. Some guys see NPCs who give you missions and think: this IS a quest. Well, you can call it the way you want, but the characteristics of those "quests" are totally new:
There are no quests like we know it from other mmos:
-) no questhubs where you collect a list of quests - instead events and dynamic events which happen out in the world. Some of them can be started by players (e.g. escort-events, you defend a caravan - anyone can participate on the fly) and some of them which happen if you are there or not. Some events can even be triggered (e.g. by daycyles: a DE starts on a graveyard at nighttime)
-) no one-person-quests: events are the new quests, they scale depending on the number of players actively participating. This means, if someone helps you damaging event-mobs, the event scales in order to prevent if from becoming easier - more mobs - but the time to finish the event should stay nearly the same.
-) no griefing: you can't steal something from an other person. No loot-stealing (everyone gets his own loot from a mob, if he did damage to that mob), no mob-stealing (it belongs to everyone doing damage) and no mining-node stealing (it belongs to everyone). The entire game is designed so that you are happy to see/meet other people.
-) quests means: mobs who stand around and wait for being killed. Dynamic Events mean: The mobs are actually doing something. If you don't prevent them from attacking a village, it will burn down. The Event becomes a new event where the attackers take over the village and you'll have to drive them out. The world is alive.
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-gam...ents-overview/
http://www.arena.net/blog/colin-joha...vent-questions
http://www.arena.net/blog/eric-flann...vent-questions
@5: WRONG:
NCSoft = only the Publisher this time
ArenaNet = Development Team
-) President of ArenaNet Mike O'Brien, executive producer of Guild Wars 2. Prior to founding ArenaNet, Mike O'Brien worked at Blizzard Entertainment for more than four years. He was the original creator and programmer of Battle.net, wrote the networking code for Diablo and Starcraft, and started the Warcraft III project as the team lead and lead programmer, personally writing the game's 3D rendering engine.
Mike was featured as one of the 25 most influential people in the game industry in PC Gamer's September 1999 cover story, "Game Gods".
-) Eric Flannum, Game Designer, started as an artist and level designer at Blizzard Entertainment where he worked on Warcraft 2, Diablo, and StarCraft. Eric went on to work as Lead Designer on Sacrifice for Shiny Entertainment and The Bard's Tale for inXile Entertainment. Eric is the design lead for Guild Wars 2.
-) Colin Johanson is the Lead Content Designer for Guild Wars 2. Johanson has been working in the game industry since 1997, first working for Mythic Entertainment (Dark Age of Camelot)
-) Art Director Daniel Dociu http://www.arena.net/blog/daniel-doc...d-master-award ...one of the best art designers in the business.
-) Writer Jeff Grubb interview with the lore designer - Q&A
...
@6.) it depends, look for yourself
well, for all the ones who believe in the asian style, did some screenshots:
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@7: WRONG:
not quite correct ->
1.) there are about 1500 events in the game when it gets released:
http://www.lazygamer.net/features/ga...olin-johansen/We’re looking at having around 1500 events happen, so its going to take people a long time to get through all of them. As for variation, we want each quest to be unique, so that’s why you’ll have specific objectives and tools with which to complete them.
2.) Events are a part of a big event-chain. But each of these parts counts as 1 event.
-) pirates build up on shore = 1 event; after you have defeated them / got defeated you'll get rewarded with experience and karma on the fly before the next event starts.
-) pirates move inland = 1 event; ...
--> each event-chain consists of events.
this doens't count in all the (hidden) events, only the big event chains in a certain area.
Here is a good discussion about the nature of dynamic events: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/c..._a_discussion/
Here a guru faq: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/...ts-t20958.html
you can make asian looking characters, but the overall style is very western imho
2nd example:
take a look at this:
there are around 60 events on a map. We know that there are 25 zones in the game. Do the maths:
60x25 = 1500
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@8: WRONG:
there are huge zones but each (???) of the zones is seperated by a portal from the other zones. It's quite locical, there are tons of things to load in a single zone because the world is changing constantly. It would be impossible to load so much information on the fly.
here one of the portals between zones:
we don't know yet if there are portals between ALL of the zones, the zones as we have seen from the demobuilds are huge. It can easily take you 15minutes to run from one end to the other.
Here is an unofficial statement about a guy who talked with one of the developers at the pax, don't take this as stated:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cf.../325270/page/1This one has the potential to make people angry. It's needs further confirmation, as the dev I was talking to wasn't 100% sure (and said 'for now'), but there are portals between regions. Each region is comprised of many zones, and there are only 4 regions in the game.
we could think of Maguuma, Ascalon, Kryta and Orr as those big regions, but it's not confirmed.
same sourceYah. Zones are freaking huge (it took me almost half my demo timer to cross Firefly Fen, and I couldn't cross Shaemoor, lol). I think regions will be similar to WoW continents a la Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms.
So what do we know so far? Only that there are portals in the open world. If you have played the demo you know that such a zone is HUGE and has a lot of different geographical landmarks. So don't worry, you'll be able to climb mountains, no problem.
BUT: those portals above could have been implemented only for demo purpose, in order to keep the people in the zone
as I said, we don't know for sure yet
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@9: WRONG:
here is a nice hands on experience preview from one of the dungeons:
http://www.g4tv.com/games/pc/45299/g...ian-catacombs/The explorable mode of the dungeon was much harder than I had anticipated, and that's always something I welcome in MMOs. I love a challenge, and that's exactly what explorable mode offers. Almost right away we were faced with an event where these little four-legged beasts began attacking us in droves. After dying to the nasty critters, we realized we had to take out their burrow nest and then they'd stop spawning. We did so, and were able to continue deeper into the Catacombs, but right away, it was refreshing and a bit harder than I thought it was going to be.
We continued through the Catacombs and came upon another room that was infested with what seemed like hundreds of tiny spiders. It took us over a dozen tries of running back and forth and wiping on the spiders to finally kill them. Once we did, the Champion Spider Queen spawned, and we were able to take her out for some extra loot. She was an optional event boss, and had we chosen to not kill the little spiders, we could have skipped her entirely. She wasn't as tough as her babies though, just stunning us and putting a nasty poison up from time to time that we would have to run away from.
After the Champion Spider Queen, we reached the part of the dungeon where the group could decide which explorable path we wanted to take. There were three options, and all of them offered entirely different paths and bosses to take out. We went with a little Asura named Tzark, and he lead us into a room that would eventually be our doom.
The room was where we had previously fought Vassar and Relena in the story mode of the dungeon, but this time around, the event wasn't so easy. Tzark set up two essence collectors around tombs on different sides of the room, and it was up to us to defend them from what seemed like a never ending supply of gravelings for a predetermined amount of time, something around five minutes. What made it difficult was that the gravelings would spawn from burrows, like the ones in the event at the start of the dungeon, and burrows would keep spawning over and over again.
We had to coordinate with one another to attack the burrows as soon as they spawned, but we constantly got overrun by too many gravelings spawning from the burrows and killing the tombs before the time was up. We were stuck on the fight for almost an hour before we eventually had to give up because the demo was over. It was frustrating because we knew the mechanics, but because we were all new to our Professions we didn't know the most efficient ways to take out the burrows fast enough.
As I walked away from the explorable dungeon, I felt pretty relieved, even though we didn't even kill any main bosses. If there's one thing I hate, it's when games aren't challenging enough, and I felt that even though the mechanics were still pretty simple in the explorable dungeon, it was still difficult enough to satiate my hardcore MMO needs. According to the developers, there are many other types of unlockable events within the Ascalonian Catacombs that we didn't get to see, including an event with a mean Cave Troll and a boss that busts open through a random wall like the Kool Aid man, but we weren't strong enough to test these out.
Overall, the dungeon seemed adequate though, and I'm excited to see what else the dungeons in Guild Wars 2 will have in store for the hardcore players.
@10: WRONG:
take a look at this:
http://gw2ita.wordpress.com/review/i...-italian-blog/Q: We know that dungeons rewards players with tokens that they can exchange for weapons and armor pieces. But, are there also other rewards, such as crafting materials or particular achievements that player can obtain?
A: Dungeons will have other rewards for which you can exchange the token at the end. We know that there is a finite number of weapons and armors that you can collect from a dungeon and we want to give you reasons to keep playing those dungeons after you have collected all of that stuff. So there will definitely be other rewards you can get as well.
@11: WRONG:
thats just not true, there are tons of items in the game with nice stats. The difference here: there are no tier-level jumps. The item-level of the equipment stops at a point where it is obtainable by most people. This doesn't mean that you can't find things with better stats than yours! It only means that the new weapons/armors have the same item-level.
here is just an example how Anet handled with item sets (and the associated set boni):
http://www.arena.net/blog/a-rewardin...lks-about-lootI have had a bittersweet love affair with sets of items that grow more and more powerful as you collected additional items from that set. The reason I describe my feelings as bittersweet is that while I find traditional MMO item sets utterly irresistible to the collector in me, I also find that it’s nearly impossible to collect a full set of them before I’ve surpassed the intended level range for the gear. To address this issue in Guild Wars 2, we’ve devised a new twist to make these item sets more accessible.By linking the cumulative set bonuses to an upgrade component that you can apply to your armor, you can essentially make your own custom sets.
Crest of the Legion (1/6)Double-click to apply to a piece of Light Armor
(1): +10 Intelligence
(2): +20 Perception
(3): +100 Maximum Health
(4): Thunderclap (50% chance on Critical)
(5): +5% Critical Chance
(6): +10 to all Attributes
As you could probably guess, the more crests you have of the same kind on your armor (up to the set’s maximum number), the better the bonuses you receive. For example, if you use one Crest of the Legion on each of your six armor pieces, you would end up having all of the bonuses in this list. All armor and weapons will have a free upgrade slot, so there will be lots of chances to use upgrades like this to tweak your gear’s statistics to your liking.
summary:
the problem with old mmos was: you rarely got a full item-set before you surpassed the intended level-range of this set.
Anets solution: the set-boni are bound to crests which are obtained through loot (,...?). So you are able to create your own item-sets by collecting those crests. The more you have, the more boni you get from them. With transmutation in mind you can give your low-level armorsets really cool item-set-boni, combined with the formidable stats of the transmuted equipment.
gear up:
-> find weapons/gear with best stats (for your playstyle)
-> find weapons/gear for looking damn good
transmute both
-> find high level crests for amazing set-boni
this seems like a lot to do and to look forward to imho
last but not least, here a little collection of known info about weapon characteristics:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/...apon+clockworkWeapon Sets
Ghostly Weapons
Glow during the night, but not during the day.
This is not purely cosmetic (see Ghostly Dagger stats below)!
'Enemy Glow' Weapons
Glow when enemies are nearby.
This may serve a practical function e.g. hidden foes.
Icy Weapons
Break apart "occassionally" and do "a bunch" of ice damage, then reform really quickly.
Seemingly not to be confused with elementalist conjurations; listed with regular weaponry, and bundle weapons presumbaly wouldn't need to reform.
Clockwork Weapons
Concealable - when drawn they expand, when stowed they collapse (I'm picturing the Blade 3 gear & Transformers).
Sounds extraordinarily cool, potentially an asset in PvP.
Individual Weapons
Ghostly Dagger
Power: 365 - 380
+15 Vitality
+24 Intelligence
+15 Willpower
+10 Life Gain on Hit (Daytime)
+10 Life Steal on Hit (Nighttime)
Masterwork Dagger (Either Hand)
Required Level: 45
as you can see, this isn't just boring cosmetic stuff at all.
@12: WRONG:
1.)you can't grief events, you can't grief open world bossfights
let's assume you want to grief/make the event harder for everyone:
-) just standing there and doing nothing -> you won't count towards participation and the event won't scale up
-) fight, but play really bad -> if you die from any attack, AoEs, complicated boss patterns you won't count towards participation
-) hitting other targets then you should -> you won't count towards participation...
you have to do something useful (minimal damage, resurrecting etc) to make the event scale up, so it's not possible to grief a dynamic event.
2.) events do not have to be successfull, there are other options for failure. It's not game over if you can't defeat a big dragon after he destroyed all of the defences and wins the battle. Events will trigger, which let you experience the consequences of your failure. So the developers can make events really hard with a 50% success-rate in mind, so that it isn't written in stone which follow up events you will see.