First impressions and thoughts

Good morning everyone!

Alright i want to give some of my first impressions and thoughts to you.

First and probably most important topics for us all: Are we staying on Far Shiverpeaks?

The answer is: For the moment, yes. We are still in a critical phase of the game, and most of the issues you face in the game rightnow, like bugged guild chat, lag etc etc. are most likely not a phenomena of only our Server. However, i wish everyone from the guild to stay in RED ALERT MODE for a possible server change solution. You should EVERYDAY check the Forum AND Guild "Message of the Day" (press G for guild tabs). If we are really deciding to switch to a lower populated server, i would really like to do this during the "free transfer period" which will last like 1 week from launch (atleast this is what some sources told me, for any official quotes i would be happy)
So if we decide to stay on Far Shiverpeaks, we will (as you all already noticed) easily get to the top in WvW. This doesnt mean however that we won't have a challenge. Of course during the 24h circles we will face alot of lower pop/weaker servers that we simply harrass, but FS is not the only high population server, so once we reached the higher ranks we will be matched up with Desolation, Gandara and others.
Also keep in mind that today there is a new big wave of customers joining GW2, as its the official release day. Most of those people will join a medium/lower populated Server as their homeserver, simpkly because arenanet blocks Full Servers from creating new accounts on it during primetime.

Next topic: The game:

Im enjoying this game so much in every single part atm. If u ask old members from Rare they will tell you i never liked to PvE... in GW2 though i see me running through several zones just to explore them or rushing from one hearty to the next, taking every single event passing by... As i said before, WvW will take a little role during the first weeks, but i see me enjoying it once the server populations have settled and ANET starts their daily business.

The guild: As you have noticed, the guild related options...guildchat, invites etc. are heavily bugged atm. This also goes for editing options. This morning i finally managed to edit the guild ranks though, from now every member of the guild is able to claim keeps and display the guild emblem (which we dont have yet, but im taking the fastest possible route in the upgrades, so we have it as soon as possible).
I would also like to announce the promotion of the following trial members, to full members of the guild:

DJ (Deej)
Jesper (Mellas, Ybar)
Chris (Bryt)
Tommy (Teutonick)
Nils (Hyrule)
Joop (Naelen)

@ Cyrille (Apoleo); Michael (Edge); Kazys (Wyxz); Alessandro (Scaar); Kanji (Kerov); Antonio (Ragnar)
please let us know about your status and plans as you havent shown up ingame yet!

Im also happy to see Moe (Xedie) and Llithium (Rico) decided to buy GW2 aswell and join up with us!

At the end i want to say that i hope you guys enjoy this game as much as i do, even if it has some bugs atm. I also hope you are not mad at me when i dont call to WvW or other "events" during the first days/weeks so much, i need to learn more about the game before i will get started more regulary in this

If anything is on your mind please share it with us/me, here or ingame or mumble or whatever! Im glad most of you already made it on the server and i can only repeat that im having a lots of fun atm

CU INGAME!!

Hihi,

You guys are lucky not having to work! I so didn't want to go today wanted to stay home lol.

Yes quite a few teething bugs with guild chat, lag etc. I think I spent most of Sunday not being in the guild though I was and not being able to see or send chat but yes I agree is going to be a game rather than server issue.

Is better to be on the higher population server but will be pretty sucky if can't get into PVP without waiting for hours each evening. Is hard to judge this though for a few weeks until it all settles down and the bugs/problems are fixed.

Of course then is going to be a non-free transfer. I don't mind in theory moving to a lower population server, and will follow where ever the guild ends up., but whilst I enjoy a challenge in PVP it will suck on the other side of the coin if you are facing vastly superior numbers etc all the time. I am all for fighting against the odds but not 20 to 1 or something Or even worse being on a carebear server where people don't have any interest in PVP.

I am the same as you Mark with the fact I didn't really enjoy PVE in other games and what made it bearable was playing on PVP servers where possible to add a bit of spice to the PVE with open world fights all over the place

Though damn I have to say I really enjoy it in this game, with the exploring, finding the skill points, seeing the area quests, some of which are hilarious and so on., I also have become a gathering junkie !!! As well as really getting into the cooking craft. If anyone has any chef ingredients I wouldn't say no !

I wouldn't expect you to call WvW events as such anyway, so no concerns from my end there. It will be my main activity once hit the cap etc but for now I am enjoying levelling up PVEing and enjoying the game.

Anyone is welcome to join Mike and I when playing if you are running around solo etc so please just send me a message (if it works )I wouldn't want anyone to feel left out at all. I will be on every evening and all weekends near enough.

I will probably try to get into the habit of logging into mumble in the evenings with the guild chat being borked at present.

Grats to everyone on promotions btw and see you all in game

Looking forward to meeting you Xedie and Rico!

Claire

thanks for promotion

i love this game so far, but they need to work very fast on this wvwvw queues

hope we can get into some instances together soon, i try to keep my work to minimum and level up

Well, I too enjoy the game. Although, surprisingly for me and similar to what others have observed, it's the PvE that is my main focus right now. Very well done, no doubt. The other reason may well be that WvW is a bit of a mess at the moment, as we have all seen. I do hope they will rotate the servers soon (maybe theat already happened?), but playing against two servers with zero WvW ambition is pretty pointless. Oh, and then there is the qeue ^^ I am also not entirely happy about the whole zerg fight balancing. As an elementalist with all traits currently towards damage abilities, I simply can't kill anything unless the person is afk. Fireing off all my aoes + crit skill + burning etc - doesn't produce nearly enough dmg to bring anything down. So I guess for WvW we'll have to carefully coordinate amongst all aoe classes to have any chance of wiping attackers at keeps.

There are a few things that I am not quite sure are bugs or maybe just me not knowing what I am doing. But I found that oftentimes when I am in a zone slightly below my level, the adjustment of my characters overall power/strength is incorrectly calculated. I am getting my butt handed to me a lot of times...but if I am fighting enemies on my own level, it is usually not a big problem. That makes for some very frustrating experiences. Most obvious examples are the human elementalist story quests - a few times I got absolutely slaughtered over and over, even tho I was already 10 level higher than the quest. Those are hopefully things they will be able to iron out over time.

Lags, lags and lags - but I believe they are dealing with them.
I'm more dissatisfied with those "Overflows", more about server population. It's now hard to get in WvWvW, you are always (me) switched to "Overflow server" in Lion's Arch, then have to wait for a switch to normal and just then can stand in a row to get in WvWvW. And it's just a beginning of the game, later it would be harder to get in because more people will get dressed and get more lvl so more would want to try their skills in battles.

And if you are PvE with group and traveling to another map, you can be moved to "Overflow" separately , your party will be transformed. They could move all party to the same "Overflow server".

Edit:
Reade after posting in FB

Guild Wars 2 status - Wednesday, August 29
Parties, guilds, etc. - Parties, guilds, and other social features are periodically failing. This causes issues such as party members not appearing on the map, and party members not staying in the same overflow servers as they travel between maps. This happens particularly during times of peak usage. We're working to fix related problems and mitigate this issue with each subsequent update.

It's now hard to get in WvWvW, you are always (me) switched to "Overflow server" in Lion's Arch, then have to wait for a switch to normal and just then can stand in a row to get in WvWvW.

You should always port to the Mists before queue'ing for WvW, it never happened for me that i am on an overflow server there.

There are a few things that I am not quite sure are bugs or maybe just me not knowing what I am doing. But I found that oftentimes when I am in a zone slightly below my level, the adjustment of my characters overall power/strength is incorrectly calculated. I am getting my butt handed to me a lot of times...but if I am fighting enemies on my own level, it is usually not a big problem.

I thought this was just me I completely agree with you.

My game personally has been running smooth since release which I am happy about though do have slowdowns with lots of people and spell effects still but that is to be expected.

It is annoying though with the when you zone and you are in a different area to your group and you can't join up with them using the right click on portrait. I also yesterday night was not able to chat in guild and said I wasn't in the guild again.

Last night I also discovered whilst doing my epic quest and had to go to Divinity Reach that I had lost all the waypoints and vistas I had discovered last Sunday which was a bit annoying though I guess I can get the experience for them all over again lol.

As to how the PVP will work out when people hit 80 is completely another thing how the queues will be.

Overall though it has been a smoother launch than I have seen in previous games, and I think it is a clever idea with actually having spare "overflow" servers so you can at least play even if it isn't ideal and annoying with groups etc.

You should always port to the Mists before queue'ing for WvW

I'm always doing like this. Yesterday waited over an hour in queue to port to wvwvw.

Not really sure at the moment if buying this game was the right decision. I enjoy the leveling up part a lot, but when it comes to pvp (which is and will always be my main focus) this game isn't what I expected it to be.

WvsW won't be any fun for me, but I knew that before. Sadly spvp doesnt seem to be that great as well. Tried it for some hours now and well I dont like it besides some balance issues (hi @ heartseeker spam thiefs^^) it seems the whole combat system is not mine. Last hope will be the competitive tpvp.

well atleast when we settled among our max level and max gear we should think about team-pvp and small men in rvr zones (those zerg fights are atm way to big)

anyway what disturbes me most are the queue-times for getting in the rvr zone... i have to wait 1-3 hours to join on of the battlegrounds.
but to raise the amount of player in a zone is also not a correct step, because more hundred players will kick the fps even more. (wtb disable casting effects like in DAoC)
to handle those queue times the server needs to be smaller, but idk how to realize it...