Questions from noobs

[Thanamira]

Skill slots, I read somewhere, you eventually get enough to buy them all.  Also, backing up to other starter areas is a fast way to get a bunch of skill slots points.  I did that a bit: started as human, took the teleporter to the elf lands, wandered around a bit.

[Wren]

Oh sorry yes skill slots you'll be able to learn all of those.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skill#Slot_skills

[AdmiralShardy]

They're not elves, they're walking vegetables!

But yes, you get 70 trait points (what Avi is talking about with Beast Mastery) and an unlimited number of skill points (because you keep getting skill points instead of levelling up after you hit 80--skill points are even used as currency for some level 80 crafting supplies).

Go ahead and dump trait points wherever you want them for now.  You get an automagic free respec whenever you buy a new trait book, plus respeccing is quite cheap once you hit higher levels.

[Gwyddyon]

Right, trait points are finite, but I'm wondering about skill points, which are what you buy abilities with.

[Wren]

we answered that too!

[Winston]

Dumbest question in the world, but I'll ask it anyway:

I'm thinking of getting back into playing WoW again, after a months-long absence due to health issues. I also see the enthusiasm that some folks are putting into GW2. Given a choice between leveling up a level 80 character in Cata and seeing the new content, versus starting a new character in GW2, which would you pick?

[Aviel]

Dumbest question in the world, but I'll ask it anyway:

I'm thinking of getting back into playing WoW again, after a months-long absence due to health issues. I also see the enthusiasm that some folks are putting into GW2. Given a choice between leveling up a level 80 character in Cata and seeing the new content, versus starting a new character in GW2, which would you pick?

I still favor WoW. GW2 is fun, but there are enough little things that annoy me that WoW is still the bigger draw for me. Helps that I raid in WoW.

[Thanamira]

To me, wow is a raider's game, whereas gw2 is a non-raider's game.  Exploration and crafting have significant rewards in GW.

The only draw for me in wow would be the revised 1-60.  That was well done.  The Cata levelling zones were blah and what little of the pandaria zones I saw were worse.

Really, I'd think you'd love GW, with two possible exceptions: 1, I know you're a slow twitch player.  Wow is more forgiving in that regard.  Elementalist, for instance, I kinda need to be medium twitch.  (I am not at all a fast twitch player.)  Guardian, I've only played to 6, and it seems more forgiving as a profession.  2, I know you like the wow storyline, whereas I don't give a crap having barely played W2 and never W3.

So if you haven't done wow 1-60, do that.  Then save money by canceling and come play GW. 

[Aviel]

To me, wow is a raider's game, whereas gw2 is a non-raider's game.  Exploration and crafting have significant rewards in GW.
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Gwyd's draw to GW2 is partially the PVP actually, since it is similar to what Dark Age of Camelot had

[AdmiralShardy]

Yep, Guild Wars 2 has pretty great PvP from what I've heard, though of course it's new enough that they're still ironing out class balance a bit (that should only really matter to the hard core small-group PvPers rather than those who prefer the realm vs. realm vs. realm that Gwyd wants to do.)

I prefer Guild Wars 2 to WoW at this point, largely due to the fact that the game is set up so that you want to encounter other people in the world rather than avoid them.  Shared loot, no crafting node ganking (they're per-individual), events work better with more than one person, etc.  It all depends on what you're looking for.

[Winston]

Shardy asked the key question: What am I looking for in an MMO?

- Not interested in PvP. I suck at it. I'm a liability in any PvP group.

- No raiding/instancing, at least none that requires elaborate prep, grinding, and memorizing encounter strategies. Been there, done that, don't have the time for it now.

- Social interaction: love it; abuse: hate it. I'm OK with what I've experienced in WoW. Part of me wants to create a female toon in GW2 and see how I'm treated, as a litmus test.

- Eye candy: yes. I love walking into a new environment and seeing what a designer has come up with, upgrading to cool-looking garb, gaining neat-looking mounts and pets.

- Platforming: hate it with the hating hatred of ten thousand hating suns. There's not much platforming that I've seen in WoW, but there were a couple of platforming environments in GW2 that Angry Joe had in his video.

Based on what you've folks have seen, how does WoW compare with GW2 on these issues?

[Thanamira]

Lesse...

* I haven't done any pvp.  I have not heard that I've missed cookies because of such.

* first dungeon is at 30?  I think?  Haven't hit it; I'm nearing 30 with Thana.  There are small group encounters.  Often if I just wait a bit -- and I'm impatient, so like 3 mins tops -- someone shows up to help.  Reason being: quest completion reward (which these count as) is probably 10x if not more of your xp.  Probably more than 10: 15?  Huge.  So when I get a bing! that there's a nearby event, I'm motivated to hustle over.  Also, as an Elementalist, I need help, although I'm getting better: I recently soloed one.  As a Guardian, pfft, own. 

* eye candy: I've seen the equivalent of Stormwind, Elwynn Forest, and whatever the next dry-grasslands zone is, plus Darnassus and the first elf starter zone.  No wait, and Duskwood, right.  Elves are visually very interesting.  Story, mrm, a bit toooo tree huggy for me, but dude, their body artwork is MADE OF plants, so okay.  Zones are artistically different: the new Duskwood I'm entering is quite different from the bloody swamp I was in before.

* platforming: I suck at this.  It's only required if you're a completionist: you do some jumping puzzles to reach Vistas, which give you a cool cinematic view.  Getting all of them AND Points of Interest AND Waypoints gives you a nice box of cookies.  Me, I think it's fun.  Have yet to find one too hard for me.  Did I mention I'm really bad at them?  One took me...  8-12 attempts?  Another...  3-5?  So far, when I fail, it's at the beginning, so my theory is that the hardest part is at the beginning.

[Wren]

There was a really amusing interview with some of the developers somewhere about the jumping puzzles. Guild Wars didn't allow characters to jump at all and they heard about it constantly and were like "I don't understand what the big deal is with jumping why does everyone harp on the jumping thing." Then for GW2 they added in jumping and the developers were like oh hey this is fun and then the environmental artists were like "jumping, eh?" and started adding all kinds of little hidden areas that you could explore through jumping (along with all the other little exploration and secret unlockable mini bosses scattered all over) and they just had so much fun with it they decided to keep it in the game.

That's probably one of my favorite parts of GW2, while there are certainly the equivalent of quest hubs that you travel along, you quite often are really rewarded for exploring by finding all manner of puzzles, hidden areas, shortcuts, lore etc  and the areas are really lovely.

 I'm sad about the fountain in Lion's Arch though, I must have missed the event that destroyed it, it used to be pretty spectacular.

[Winston]

I'm sad about the fountain in Lion's Arch though, I must have missed the event that destroyed it, it used to be pretty spectacular.

So there are world events that affect the environment permanently? Are these on a per-server basis? The game site says that the world is affected by players' actions; was the destruction of Lion's Arch the result of the players doing something; e.g., if I went to a server other than Wren's I might find the arch still intact?

[Wren]

It was destroyed by the return of the Mad King during the halloween events, if you go there now it's in the process of being rebuilt (there's scaffolding). I believe it got destroyed on all the servers though as part of the event.

one comment I ran across from one of the developers when players were speculating whether or not it would ever be rebuilt:

I worked way too hard on that thing to throw it away! That would make me cry. Haha… spent a lot of my free time on it actually. You know it has 4,000 frames of animation, and I had to hand track every single frame that a splash happened on every single fish for the audio guys to sync it up. Not that we will never permanently destroy anything. In fact… well, I can’t say more than that. But NOT the lion statue. It’s the symbol of LA. Like the Statue of Liberty is for New York or the Eiffel Tower is for Paris.