Guild Wars 2

[M.Steiner]

Just a head count really. Who here is planning to play GW2 at release? or will at least be giving it a try and then deciding whether they will?.
Besides Planetside 2 which I'm hoping will rekindle some of that NC2 styled pvp goodness (huge battles, base & outpost capturing, guns, vehicles etc) the only other MMO releasing this year which I have any great interest in is GW2. Mainly for it's fantastic world vs world feature which I expect to spend most of my time with and the dynamic world events too. Finally an MMO trying to be innovative, really quite excited for it.

I'm planning to pre-purchase any day now but thought I'd see how much interest there was here before I did. You will have to buy a copy, obviously, but it'll be free-to-play with no monthly subscription charges too so this'd be a suitable game for many of us to play imo. It also has much better grouping aspects than TOR.
(Release date is unknown at this time but July has been the most speculated from what I have seen. I would say anywhere between July-Sep.)

[Ash]

Chances are I will be picking this up at some point, as its free to play once you purchase the game
and i did enjoy alot of the aspects of GW, but it is unlikely i will be preordering.

[M.Steiner]

Just pre-purchased today ^^
Hopefully there will be lots more interest here when we get a release date and what not, would be nice to help set us up another EU guild if there's enough of us. Don't fancy having to look elsewhere for a home heh
Plenty of time though!, don't even have a release yet lol

[SSX-Andy]

Have pre-ordered it. Will probably give it a try and see if I like it or not. Worth giving it a chance at least.

[Whizbang]

I'm interested but will wait on buying until I see a launch date listed. With MWO coming out later this year that will be occupying a huge chunk of my time.

[M.Steiner]

Release date has just been announced today. August 28th

[M.Steiner]

If anyone here wants to give GW2 a try during the final beta weekend (July 20-22) before release go here tomorrow at:
North America: July 15 at 3:00 PM PDT
Europe: July 15 at 7:00 PM GMT
(Or just before is probably a good idea if you need to create an account)

The Alienware site has been giving batches of keys away each day since Thursday but I've only just seen this so I'm a little late in posting. However, tomorrow they're giving one final batch away so I thought I'd let ya'll know.
The only other way you can get to try GW2 is if you pre-purchase so go grab a key whilst you can. GL if you decide to give it a try. Enjoy!

[Ash]

I had a quick blast in last nights stress test, very nice.

Looking forward to next week.

[M.Steiner]

Got some launch times

Pre-purchasers
Sat 25th Aug (Three-day early access)
8am BST ~ Please note that in order to ensure that we’re fully prepared for that fateful hour we may bring servers online up to 3 hours prior

Pre-orderers
Mon 27th Aug (One-day early access)
8am BST

Everyone else
Tue 28th Aug
8am BST


EU Worlds

• Fissure of Woe
• Desolation
• Gandara
• Blacktide
• Ring of Fire
• Underworld
• Far Shiverpeaks
• Whiteside Ridge
• Ruins of Surmia
• Seafarer’s Rest
• Vabbi
• Piken Square
• Aurora Glade
• Gunnar’s Hold
• Jade Sea [FR]
• Fort Ranik [FR]
• Augury Rock [FR]
• Vizunah Square [FR]
• Kodash [DE]
• Riverside [DE]
• Elona Reach [DE]
• Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]
• Drakkar Lake [DE]
• Baruch Bay [ES]

US Worlds

• Anvil Rock
• Borlis Pass
• Yak’s Bend
• Henge of Denravi
• Maguuma
• Sorrow’s Furnace
• Gate of Madness
• Jade Quarry
• Fort Aspenwood
• Ehmry Bay
• Stormbluff Isle
• Darkhaven
• Sanctum of Rall
• Crystal Desert
• Isle of Janthir
• Sea of Sorrows
• Tarnished Coast
• Northern Shiverpeaks
• Blackgate
• Ferguson’s Crossing
• Dragonbrand

When you log in to the game for the first time, you will have the opportunity to pick any available server, or home world. If you choose to select a home world that is in a different region from where you purchased your game, you will be logged out for a short period of time while your account is moved to your new region. Once you have selected a home world, all the characters you create will play on this world and will represent it in our world-versus-world (WvW) format.

While you can change your home world, there is a limit of one world transfer every seven days per account and a charge of 1,800 gems for each transfer. A world transfer moves all of your existing characters to your new home world. Any subsequent characters you create will also play in this new home world.

When Guild Wars 2 launches, you will also have the option to play with your friends on another world with our free “guesting” feature. With guesting, your characters can play on any world where you have friends—with certain restrictions. For instance, you will not be able to participate in WvW while guesting.

[Edit] Update to the above:

At launch, players will be able to transfer between worlds freely. However, once server populations have largely settled and stabilized, world transfers will be restricted to once a week and cost a variable amount of gems based on the population of the world being transferred to.

In time, we’ll also introduce free “guesting,” which will allow players to visit other worlds as guests as long as they have friends on those worlds. This feature will be free, but guest players will not be able to enter World vs. World, and the Power of the Mists bonuses from their home world will continue to apply to their characters.

Desolation & Gandara seem to been tagged as the unofficial UK servers after some googling. Atm I plan to roll on Gandara.
I've got Sleeping Dogs arriving tomorrow (and PS2 beta as well soonish) so may not be as heavily active as I usually am whilst I've got these other games on the go too, at least straight away. I pre-purchased my copy so it'll be Sat access for me, will post my char name next week!


Anyone else decided to play? No subscription remember

[Isileth]

I have finally in the last 2 days actually started to look into GW2 after being a nervous GW fan and I must say I do like what I see. I will pick it up when I get a comp that can run it.

[Chimera]

Picked this up. The wife and I will be playing on Darkhaven it looks like.

[Whizbang]

Loving the avatar, Chim.

[SSX-Andy]

Think I'll join you on Gandara MS. Have ordered a new graphic card, need something to try it out on.

Will pick up the digital copy so I get the pre access and can start Saturday.

[M.Steiner]

Ohh, whatcha get? ^^

[SSX-Andy]

Think I'll just get the regular one. Haven't bought it yet though.

[M.Steiner]

I meant the graphics card actually hehe
Looking forward to playing this, only 3 days to go now before they start letting us in. I've purposely only played tiny parts of it during a couple of the previous beta weekends so as much of the game would be completely new to me as possible too. Hope it doesn't disappoint!

[SSX-Andy]

Ah. An ASUS GeForce GTX 680 2GB Direct CU II TOP OC. Ought to be able to run the game.

[M.Steiner]

Sweet card you got there ^^
I've got a Radeon HD 6970 here which still manages to run everything I throw at it on max or there abouts so I'm sure yours will be more than sufficient for GW2
I pre-purchased the digital deluxe but I'm not sure just how worth it those extra ingame items will be, will have to see. Was tempted by a boxed collectors edition but 130 quid was a bit too pricey when there are several other games coming out soon too which I want, plus I'd have to find room to store the massive box it comes in lol.

[SSX-Andy]

Got the digital deluxe version as well.

Probably not worth it, but what the hell, in case it is no regrets, if it isn't then wont really care about it in a few months anyways.

[M.Steiner]

aye, plus the good thing with this is we'll never have to worry about a subscription fee so can dip in and out of it whenever we want. Unlike my CE of SWTOR which is now sat in my cupboard with an inactive account :/
(Until that goes part F2P as well I suppose)

[SSX-Andy]

Aye, no monthly fee sure is nice.

And the micro-transactions can't be used to give you advantages. Hate that with World of Tanks. All for them selling stuff for real money, as long as it doesn't give an edge over those who doesn't.

[SSX-Andy]

Less than 23 hours to go. Given any thoughts as to which profession to try out?

[M.Steiner]

I'm tempted to try a Necromancer first. I don't expect it to play exactly the same but it does seem to share a few similarities to a Warlock which I used to love playing. Worth me having a look.
Hopefully ANet will offer some kind of trial at some point in the near future and we can get a few more folk playing. Would be nice since nobody needs to sub

(I should get access to Planetside 2 today too!. PS2 & GW2 within 24hrs of each other, F* yeah.)

[M.Steiner]

Apologies for not replying on steam this morning, Andy. Stayed up most of the night waiting to see if the Planetside 2 servers came back up (they didn't) so I could get the client downloaded and ready to play, still only had a few hours sleep actually so was too tired to get up at 8!
Loaded GW2 up a couple of hours ago and spent a stupid amount of time just sat in the character creation screens being indecisive. Tried several character names but they were all taken unfortunately which is bloody typical lol. Made a quick one up in the end.

Gone with a Sylvari necromancer called Waldsteiner (Wald for forest heh)
and on Gandara too.

After my intro story movie the screen stayed black though. Quit the client and relaunched but haven't been able to get back on since, log-in servers are probably overloaded or something I guess, unless the servers themselves have gone down. [Edit: Ahh, saw this on twitter: "We are aware of issues with server connectivity. We will keep you up to date with our progress"]
I've got some stuff to do this aft though so probably won't be on much other than to fiddle with my graphic settings anyway. Until later on today anyway

Did the servers come up before 8am btw? That go smoothly? and how have you been finding things so far? ^^

[SSX-Andy]

Servers came up at 8am sharp. Had no problems this morning, but now everything seems to be either down, instable or just full.

The space you can have in the name saved me some, made Lysea Snow, norn guardian, and Lysea Snowstar, human elementalist.

Have some issues with my pre-order stuff. Got the ring, golem banker and wolf, but not the other items.