We had lots of new joins this first week of activity: Avangar, Cavolflower, Haru, Ilonerin, lososthefish, Neusy & Prolly. And more are to come.

I would like to thank them all for the trust they're putting in our efforts, to both the "long time DoRs" and the newcomers.

On a purely progress basis news, lots of us are already near or past the halfway to 80, guild upgrades are rolling and we're generally having lots of fun.

Bran, Tesshu: shame on you for not being with us yet.

Launch went semi-flawless.

Characters created...
Leveling mode: engaged...
Real life... ... ... detached.

We'll see you in-game.

After years of ice-cold freezing point, we decided to kick back our forums. Most of the users & threads have been removed but you can still find it all on the old forum.

Enjoy the new home.

New to the game? Let me answer a couple questions for you, 'cause I know you need an answer.

What race should I pick? Races are very characterised in Guild Wars 2. Keeping the "physics" types aside, there are cultural influences and strong mindsets in every race. Charr is based off roman empire, it's divided in legions, and the spirit of this race is that of a "pack", fighting in groups for the same objective. Norn are based off North-European cultures, such as Vikings. They're strong, and stubborn, and they will fight their way into this new land. Humans are... well, humans. Asura are based around Asiatic cultures, they're creative but also a bit too full of themselves at times. And, in the end, there are Sylvari, a newborn race which is fill of curiosity for everything around them.

Depending on how you feel like playing, some race might suit you better than others. If you like fighting in packs go Charr, if you like tinkering around probably Asura are a good pick, and so on... Also, you might want to watch this video: what better way to learn about races than listening to the storywriters themselves?

Are there classes? Which ones? In GW2 they are called professions, and there are 8 of them: Elementalist, Warrior, Guardian, Engineer, Necromancer, Ranger, Thief, Mesmer. All those are very different and all of them are viable and fun. I even liked playing Thief for the first time in my life since I started playing MMOs, and that's something! I could tell you in detail how's it like to play those (and I was initially doing it), but the answer would be quite long and not thorough enough. The fact that there are no roles makes it all easier though: find a class that you think you like and start playing it!

What? NO ROLES? What's this madness? Nope, no classical roles. No tanking roles, no healing roles. Casters can tank, melee can heal, even ranged can heal and tank. It all depends on how you play it and their eventual abilities. Since there's no typical "aggro list", mobs go where they want. This means that you can't just sit there sucking damage: "healer" are gone because they switched it to pro-active gaming instead of reacting, you buff people up, you set up reduced damage, you have auras dispelling effects (every profession has a type or another of buffs/heals) and all classes heal themselves, so you better watch what you're doing. Also everyone can ress. Sometimes even NPCs ress you. And you can't really "tank" anything, you just go around slashing and bashing, and stunning, and chopping their legs off and do what you can to keep them off squishy targets, but that's it.

Gathering professions? Any crafting? There are no gathering professions. You have 3 slots where you equip the appropriate tools (and you can equip them at the same time) to gather herbs, minerals or trees. They're consumable, stacks of 200. The amount and quality of items you receive, depends on the quality of the gathering items. Same goes for the salvaging. You will step, from time to time, into "salvaged" items. These items can be, you guessed it, "salvaged" through salvage kits, in order to slice them and retrieve valuable crafting materials. Materials can also be bought from Trading Post and vendors. As for the Crafting Disciplines there are 8 of them: Armorsmith, Leatherworker, Tailor, Weaponsmith, Huntsman, Artificer, Jeweler and last but not least Chef. The only specifications I think I need to make are: Huntsman, wooden weapons and firearms; Artificer, magical weapons and potions; Chef, food and dyes (yes, you can recolour your equips in-game); armouring disciplines, they're all capable of crafting different types of bags.

How many crafting disciplines can I take? Two of them at the same time. But you won't lose progress if you pick a third or fourth. You can decide to go with another profession and take out one that you have, but all the skills, recipes, and experience you had in the crafting discipline are still there. In order to restore it though, you will have to pay quite an amount of money. But it's still great news compared to the "drop, forget, start again" cycle of professions we're used to in other MMOs.

That's about it. You should now have a grasp of the starting concepts that bother all of us when approaching a new MMO.

We'll be waiting for you in-game.

For older news visit the Official Announcements