Best first class for ease of play and interesting story

[Cowt]

one question regarding me staying for longer - which servers on EU side would you recommend? not looking for any end game or devoted pvp play just looking for a big community and thriving economy (and friendly players ofc)

Just about all trading is done on the Trading Post (read: Auction House), which is not server specific.

Any server with a population of 'High' or 'Very High' is very lively.

Also note that your characters are not locked onto a server in the same way they are in World of Warcraft. You select a 'Home World' which is going to be your default server and the server you will represent in WvW, but you can 'Guest' indefinitely on up to two additional servers per 24 hours. You also have the option to change your home world. Guilds are also not tied to servers.

Essentially you have a lot of freedom to go where you want at any given time.

I'm on Far Shiverpeaks.

[hlx]

one more thing that I'm thinking about while I keep researching stuff - how does the gear progression look while leveling? I keep reading that gear is not the focus of this game, but I assume you do need upgrades while you level. Do you buy that from vendors/AH or get it from questing/drops?
I read that people do not recommend crafting own gear as material gathering to level professions is slower then leveling process itself - so how should I stay up to date with gear?

[catcommando]

Even if you're higher level in a lower level area, you'll get drops close to your level. I often outleveled the zone I was in, but still got usable drops and just filled in the gaps with masterwork gear (green quality) from the AH or karma vendors where appropriate. Gear's not a huge concern while leveling. If you want a loose general guideline, you can replace blues every five levels, greens every ten...but I only bothered with any kind of replacing every ten. Don't craft. It's a good market for low level mats right now, sell all that you gather and make money. Do your dailies if you can, you'll get jugs of karma and laurels that you can use for gear later. Also when you start racking up your achievements and hitting certain milestones save the pvp badges of honor you get for gear at 80 as well. But don't worry about all that right now, just play the game and do what you find fun and interesting.

[Gray_Matter]

thanks for all the responses.
for the weekend I will be mostly looking into warrior (still havent decided which race to choose and which story will be interesting enough for the first 10 levels or so) but I would like to dabble a bit into necro (I do like the concept of the class) and a thief (never liked stealthy classes but maybe in GW2 it will be fun)

I do hope it will be fun enough for me to finally convince myself to dive in and buy the damn thing

one question regarding me staying for longer - which servers on EU side would you recommend? not looking for any end game or devoted pvp play just looking for a big community and thriving economy (and friendly players ofc)

I am on Aurora Glade and it's quite a busy server.

[SinR]

My first 80 was a Norn Warrior. I enjoyed the 1-30 storyline.

Debating maybe an Asura Engineer next, maybe a Guardian of some kind (always have liked plate wearer melee DPS, but that's just me)

- - - Updated - - -

one more thing that I'm thinking about while I keep researching stuff - how does the gear progression look while leveling? I keep reading that gear is not the focus of this game, but I assume you do need upgrades while you level. Do you buy that from vendors/AH or get it from questing/drops?
I read that people do not recommend crafting own gear as material gathering to level professions is slower then leveling process itself - so how should I stay up to date with gear?

at 80, gear is horizontal progression. only difference is the skin.

Personally, I did a lot of the Queen's Pavilion events and picked and chose from upgrades as things dropped. A few Karma Vendor upgrades and a few AH buys (rare GS or Bow, etc) kept me up pretty well, in addition to storyline quest rewards