I origionally posted this in another forum for different reasons, but was persuaded to come here to recieve an explanation.

I posted this:

"But that also being said, GW2 claims to have an individualized experience for every player.

As in, I burn down a bridge for a quest, and the whole player base is affected<-- Although I wonder how it will work out since there will be hundreds of players and how many bridges? And what then happens? Do ALL the hypothetical bridges stay burned down for good? Until they run out? Or does somebody else start a quest to re-build the bridge, and make my little feat of "architectural arson" redundant."

I watched a trailer for the game, and having never played GW1, I don't have any experience in the style of gameplay.

The trailer made it sound as though the DEVS didn't want the fact that "You kill a quest boss, and the world isn't REALLY affected...because in 2-3 minutes the boss respawns as though nothing happened. Just waiting for the next guy to complete the quest"<---or something to that effect.

The DEVS made it sound as though the game world would be affected by the players actions.

So I was wondering how exactly they meant this to work? And in what level of depth it would work?

What I mean is, say for WoW, you get a quest to burn down a bridge then kill some guy.

-I burn the bridge (Watch it go up in flames)..it disappears for a minute, I go kill the guy, then in another minute the bridge respawns, I can still walk across it (even though it was meant to now be non-existent to me) And the guy just pops back up in-front of me...sometimes killing me if I went afk or hung around too long not paying attention.

But if GW2 is different, how will this work? I am curious. Maybe I misunderstood, but they seemed to stress this point on the trailer.

My other question:

Will there be contested lands in GW2?

I rather enjoy the fact that in a lot of areas in the game, you can be *ambushed* in a flash without having a choice.  (Well, I did have a choice,A: when I initially joined a server and chose PvP..and decided that I would need to be on my toes in some areas of the game. and B: choosing to avoid the contested area or pick a class that can *hide* or *escape* easily from enemies.)

I find it very exciting, and makes the game THAT much more enjoyable for me.

I do not like that to PvP I must join a battleground, or that I must flag myself as PvP active.

I prefer that on the particular server you agreed to, that you understand sh!t can and will happen if you don't focus.

First off, welcome.

There's three parts of GW2 I need to talk about in order to answer your question.  There's the open world which features Dynamic Events, there's the Personal Story which is solo and instanced, and then there's World PVP.

In the Manifesto Trailer, it's slightly confusing the way it's cut.  Colin Johanson is talking about Dynamic Events.  Ree Soesbee is talking about the Personal Story (though what she says also pretty much applies to DEs)

Ok Dynamic Events.  The open world of GW2 doesn't have quests, it has events.  A lot of these can happen whether players are there or not.  They're entirely cooperative.  Everyone in GW2 is on the same faction and a good guy.  They actually happen to the game world and have persistent (not permanent) consequences.  So for instance, Centaurs attack a bridge.  There won't be a quest to pick up, but rather you'll see them attacking and NPCs running down the road yelling that centaurs are attacking.  If players stop them, the bridge is saved and then the event might chain into another event which is a counterattack.  If the players fail, the bridge will be destroyed and there will lead to another event where you try to fight off the centaurs and assist NPCs in rebuilding the bridge.  If you fail that event, the bridge will stay destroyed for as long as it takes until someone fights them off (literally months or whatever, it won't reset).

In the open world, you can't burn down a friendly bridge (though you'll undoubtedly help destroy enemy things).  When Colin is talking about a single act by a player, he's talking about whether you help or not (or are successful or not) and how that will change the landscape in different directions.  Waypoints can be lost, merchants won't have certain items to sell (or will be dead).

Personal Story.  Each character in GW2 has a biography at character creation.  There's a smaller part of the game which compliments the open world and that is your character's personal story.  Based on the questions at creation and the decisions you make in game, you'll do a solo, branching, instanced story with permanent consequences.  Each player has a Home Instance, which is an entire section of town which will show these.  I see Shoju commented about one of the choices which is to save an Orphanage or a Hospital.  Whichever one you don't save stays destroyed.  NPCs you know can live or die.  Think of this as your character's one big epic quest from beginning to end.

World PVP.  There are contested lands in GW2 and those take place in World PVP.  Unlike other games which divide up the players into factions, GW2 has huge server vs server vs server battles that take place 24/7 and last 2 weeks.  They take place over 4 giant maps which can hold at least 500 players apiece.  They have capturable points and dynamic events of their own.  For instance, if you capture a central keep and a mine, a DE will start which will try to deliver ore to the keep.  Other players can try to take it.  There will also be artillery and destructable environments.  These zones are separate from PVE but not technically instanced, as everyone taking part goes to the same ones.  I really don't think of them as a battleground because they're going to be so big and varied.  At the end of the two-week period, servers are matched up against new servers based on W/L and strength, so they'll be even more challenging and fresh than always fighting the same people.

I hope that helps and the wall of text didn't scare you off.  It's just that GW2 is really trying to do a lot of things differently so I can't just give you a one line answer.  Please feel free to follow up with any more questions.  We'll be happy to help.

Your personal story questline is where you will see the 'permanent' effects of the decisions you make reflected.  There are no tap backs if you choose the save the hospital and not the orphanage.  The homeless oprphans that will now litter the streets of your home district (in Divinity's Reach if Human) will be a constant reminder of the choice that you made.

An impressive wall of text. However if the OP wants something more tangible to help him/her understand the basics of this game, then check out Total Biscuit's channel, to see the game from the perspective of someone who's playing it for the 1st time.

 Thanks Cali, I really apreciate the effort you put in.

Rather than quoteing the "Wall" i'll just assume you know what you wrote ;)

So GW2 does sound like a fun game. Different.

But I guess since I have been indoctrinated by WoW as my first real mainstream MMO, I still automatically set it as my standard.

So as it sounds like atm, Everyone in game are friends..well, at least allies as far as the game is concerned.

Fighting off hordes of enemies (i.e Centaurs) and defending the towns. Pretty much a giant  PvE instance. (running constantly)

..Unless you step into a battleground in which case you are set amongst other servers?Guilds? Which for all intents and purposes is your giant PvP instance? (running 24/7 2 weeks at a time)

And apart from all that, then you also have your own little private world to complete certain "Character specific" quests?

Is this right so far?

And the game is B2P? or P2P?

Originally posted by Master10K

An impressive wall of text. However if the OP wants something more tangible to help him/her understand the basics of this game, then check out Total Biscuit's channel, to see the game from the perspective of someone who's playing it for the 1st time.

Thanks for the thought, but sorry I cant view this link. I am in China atm, and they ban too much crap to keep track of. And proxies are being blocked daily here.

(plus, loading some websites and vids on proxies takes forever from here)

-I sincerely hope all thee "new great MMO's like GW2 arent released for another year or so...when I am back home

Originally posted by Projectseph

 And apart from all that, then you also have your own little private world to complete certain "Character specific" quests?

The personal story quests are 'private' so to speak, but you can invite your friends to join you on them and you can join them in theirs in return.  but that is about as private as it gets.  The rest of the 1-80 PvE game (excluding the instanced dungeons) is out in the open world with everyone else on your server.

The game will be b2p too.

Originally posted by Shoju

Originally posted by Projectseph

 And apart from all that, then you also have your own little private world to complete certain "Character specific" quests?

The personal story quests are 'private' so to speak, but you can invite your friends to join you on them and you can join them in theirs in return.  but that is about as private as it gets.  The rest of the 1-80 PvE game (excluding the instanced dungeons) is out in the open world with everyone else on your server.

The game will be b2p too.

It sounds ..well, so far I can only say Ok. Since I havent seen eough, and since I will miss the rush I get from sneaking around the world (primarily consisting of contested zones) in stealth, ambushing and questing whilst avoiding being ambushed.

If everyone steps into a Battleground PvP instance, then everyone is "ready" to fight..which can sometimes take the fun and/or anticipation away from the surprise of spotting a "lost sheep" trying to finish off that last quest mob.

Originally posted by Projectseph
If everyone steps into a Battleground PvP instance, then everyone is "ready" to fight..which can sometimes take the fun and/or anticipation away from the surprise of spotting a "lost sheep" trying to finish off that last quest mob.

That will most probably the case in the team vs team PvP, but the server vs. server (WvWvW) will be taking place over 4 large maps, containing their own dynamic event objectives so I am sure there will be plenty of chances to pick off lost sheep that are caught out in the open in these zones.

Originally posted by cali59

First off, welcome.

 

There's three parts of GW2 I need to talk about in order to answer your question.  There's the open world which features Dynamic Events, there's the Personal Story which is solo and instanced, and then there's World PVP.

In the Manifesto Trailer, it's slightly confusing the way it's cut.  Colin Johanson is talking about Dynamic Events.  Ree Soesbee is talking about the Personal Story (though what she says also pretty much applies to DEs)

 

Ok Dynamic Events.  The open world of GW2 doesn't have quests, it has events.  A lot of these can happen whether players are there or not.  They're entirely cooperative.  Everyone in GW2 is on the same faction and a good guy.  They actually happen to the game world and have persistent (not permanent) consequences.  So for instance, Centaurs attack a bridge.  There won't be a quest to pick up, but rather you'll see them attacking and NPCs running down the road yelling that centaurs are attacking.  If players stop them, the bridge is saved and then the event might chain into another event which is a counterattack.  If the players fail, the bridge will be destroyed and there will lead to another event where you try to fight off the centaurs and assist NPCs in rebuilding the bridge.  If you fail that event, the bridge will stay destroyed for as long as it takes until someone fights them off (literally months or whatever, it won't reset).

In the open world, you can't burn down a friendly bridge (though you'll undoubtedly help destroy enemy things).  When Colin is talking about a single act by a player, he's talking about whether you help or not (or are successful or not) and how that will change the landscape in different directions.  Waypoints can be lost, merchants won't have certain items to sell (or will be dead).

 

Personal Story.  Each character in GW2 has a biography at character creation.  There's a smaller part of the game which compliments the open world and that is your character's personal story.  Based on the questions at creation and the decisions you make in game, you'll do a solo, branching, instanced story with permanent consequences.  Each player has a Home Instance, which is an entire section of town which will show these.  I see Shoju commented about one of the choices which is to save an Orphanage or a Hospital.  Whichever one you don't save stays destroyed.  NPCs you know can live or die.  Think of this as your character's one big epic quest from beginning to end.

 

World PVP.  There are contested lands in GW2 and those take place in World PVP.  Unlike other games which divide up the players into factions, GW2 has huge server vs server vs server battles that take place 24/7 and last 2 weeks.  They take place over 4 giant maps which can hold at least 500 players apiece.  They have capturable points and dynamic events of their own.  For instance, if you capture a central keep and a mine, a DE will start which will try to deliver ore to the keep.  Other players can try to take it.  There will also be artillery and destructable environments.  These zones are separate from PVE but not technically instanced, as everyone taking part goes to the same ones.  I really don't think of them as a battleground because they're going to be so big and varied.  At the end of the two-week period, servers are matched up against new servers based on W/L and strength, so they'll be even more challenging and fresh than always fighting the same people.

 

I hope that helps and the wall of text didn't scare you off.  It's just that GW2 is really trying to do a lot of things differently so I can't just give you a one line answer.  Please feel free to follow up with any more questions.  We'll be happy to help.

Great post dude :)

Originally posted by Projectseph

 Thanks Cali, I really apreciate the effort you put in.

Rather than quoteing the "Wall" i'll just assume you know what you wrote ;)

So GW2 does sound like a fun game. Different.

But I guess since I have been indoctrinated by WoW as my first real mainstream MMO, I still automatically set it as my standard.

So as it sounds like atm, Everyone in game are friends..well, at least allies as far as the game is concerned.

Fighting off hordes of enemies (i.e Centaurs) and defending the towns. Pretty much a giant  PvE instance. (running constantly)

..Unless you step into a battleground in which case you are set amongst other servers?Guilds? Which for all intents and purposes is your giant PvP instance? (running 24/7 2 weeks at a time)

And apart from all that, then you also have your own little private world to complete certain "Character specific" quests?

 

Is this right so far?

 

And the game is B2P? or P2P?

Yeah, in the open world everybody are allies.  ArenaNet is really trying to make the open world a social, cooperative experience.  Everybody taking part in a DE is rewarded based on how much they participate.  Everybody who helps kill a mob (5% or more damage) gets full xp and loot for it, even if ungrouped.  There's also "literally hundreds" of cross profession combos so people can work together visually (ranger shooting arrows through an elementalist fire wall for extra damage).  Everybody can rez everybody, even mid combat.  They want other players to never hurt you but it goes further than that.  They want you to want to see other players, not just ignore them, compete with them, or be annoyed by them.

The Personal Story (thanks Shoju for talking about how you can invite friends to it) is yeah, your own little world.  Certain questions of the biography will change it greatly, such as if you're human and you're born as a noble, commoner, or street rat.  It should offer a lot in the way of replayability.  It is one big epic questline.  You won't be killing rats for someone you never met before, it'll be you dealing with local problems before venturing out and making your own impact on the fight with the elder dragons.

World PVP takes place against other servers.  Unlike other games which divide up a server's population, world pvp makes the battles larger by putting everyone on one server against two others.  It also deals with faction population imbalances, since it doesn't matter if there are more humans than asura.  It balances things out too across servers by matching them up against new servers at the end of the two weeks.  If one server wins by fielding a ton of people, they'll play against teams that also won (possibly because of their ton of people) so it'll be more even next time.  There will be things for everyone to do.  Solo players might try to capture things like the ore shipments I talked about.  Small groups might try to take the mine itself.  Large groups or guilds might try to take the keep.

There are also dungeons in the game which I haven't mentioned yet.  There's not going to be any raids in GW2, but it's by design.  They don't want to put any mandatory grinds in the game.  They also don't want vertical power progression.  There will be dungeons and elite events for people who want a challenge, but the emphasis is on replayability and just doing whatever you find to be fun, not because you have to.  There are 8 dungeons in the game at launch, but really it's 32 because each dungeon will have a Story Mode and 3+ Explorable Modes.  The Story Mode is full of cutscenes and you help a disbanded group of NPC badasses get back together again.  The much harder explorable modes deal with the aftermath of the story mode.  There will be random and hidden dynamic events in the dungeons as well so that it'll be a fresher than traditional experience each time.

And yes, it's still B2P like the first one.  There will be expansions but possibly at a slower rate than the first one (they found the 6 month schedule kept them from putting in the things they wanted to do).  There will also be a cash shop but it won't sell power, just things like vanity items and extra character slots.  Buy the box, play it forever, no need to buy anything from the cash shop or even buy expansions if you don't want to.  They'll be voluntary purchases as well.

Originally posted by Projectseph

-I sincerely hope all thee "new great MMO's like GW2 arent released for another year or so...when I am back home

With GW2, as I was saying in my previous post, the emphasis won't be on an endgame that people rush to.  They want you to do whatever you find to be fun.  There's a real emphasis on replayability in the game.  One of the things they'll be doing is adding new dynamic events to zones continuously right from launch.  So if you go back to a zone you'll see some new things happening.

Another thing too which speaks to your concern about "missing out" is that the game automatically mentors people down in power when they go do a lower level event or dungeon.  You'll still be powerful, but not so overpowering that you can one-shot everything.  Originally done to prevent griefing, it also lets anybody play with anybody regardless of level (you can also be manually sidekicked up to another player).  Players will still get meaningful rewards for taking part in this lower level content.

So you're not going to miss out on anything if the game comes out before you're back.

@op, forget everything and anything you learned from WoW, if you want to enjoy GW2. It's just way too different. Don't expect it to be the better WoW and don't expect it (GW2) to follow the same rules.

OP, this is a good read for your question:

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/dynamic-events/dynamic-events-overview/ 

Originally posted by cali59

With GW2, as I was saying in my previous post, the emphasis won't be on an endgame that people rush to.

Alas, that won't stop slapheads from trying to rush to it.

Originally posted by Projectseph

I origionally posted this in another forum for different reasons, but was persuaded to come here to recieve an explanation.

I posted this:

"But that also being said, GW2 claims to have an individualized experience for every player.

As in, I burn down a bridge for a quest, and the whole player base is affected<-- Although I wonder how it will work out since there will be hundreds of players and how many bridges? And what then happens? Do ALL the hypothetical bridges stay burned down for good? Until they run out? Or does somebody else start a quest to re-build the bridge, and make my little feat of "architectural arson" redundant."

 

I watched a trailer for the game, and having never played GW1, I don't have any experience in the style of gameplay.

The trailer made it sound as though the DEVS didn't want the fact that "You kill a quest boss, and the world isn't REALLY affected...because in 2-3 minutes the boss respawns as though nothing happened. Just waiting for the next guy to complete the quest"<---or something to that effect.

The DEVS made it sound as though the game world would be affected by the players actions.

So I was wondering how exactly they meant this to work? And in what level of depth it would work?

What I mean is, say for WoW, you get a quest to burn down a bridge then kill some guy.

-I burn the bridge (Watch it go up in flames)..it disappears for a minute, I go kill the guy, then in another minute the bridge respawns, I can still walk across it (even though it was meant to now be non-existent to me) And the guy just pops back up in-front of me...sometimes killing me if I went afk or hung around too long not paying attention.

 

But if GW2 is different, how will this work? I am curious. Maybe I misunderstood, but they seemed to stress this point on the trailer.

Dynamic Events - So there are no quests in GW2, you never go to an NPC and read a wall of text that says for you to go collect 10 bear furs. You see content as it happens, right in front of you and everyone else. Well how am I supposed to level you ask? The answer to that is Dynamic Events. They’re always happening everywhere around you, when you come across one you'll get a notification that there are new events nearby. Dynamic Events are structured so that you might see a single one-off event all the way to 20 events within a chain. Though a chain isn't a very accurate description, they're more like tree branches. Events aren’t merely black & white though, it’s not as simple as Event 1 goes into Event 2 and then Event 3.

 

Let me give you an example:
Say there’s a Dredge army making their way out of their base. You could possibly get together with people and defeat the Dredge allowing you to push into their base, defeat their commander, rescue captured soldiers, and then even defend the base against rallying Dredge who try to retake it.
 

Now let’s say you either ignore or fail to kill the Dredge army, that army will then create a base in friendly territory, they’ll build walls, create siege weaponry for defense, etc. They’ll then send out bands of Dredge to sack nearby towns, they might send out a sniper to the nearby hills to kill merchants. Now it’s your job to defeat them, destroy their new base, liberate any taken towns, and even then push back to their original stronghold. This all stems from ONE single event, the Dredge army marching from their base and there are 1,600 of these events currently, all hand scripted.


On top of all of this ArenaNet has said things aren't going to just respawn 5 minutes later, events can take hours, days, weeks, and even months to be back in the same exact way you may have seen it originally. Also, this has to take into account player interaction, if no player does anything the enemy will still move on and conquer the world whether you're there or not. Events also affect other events like a chain reaction, some events can have zone wide consequences, some are triggered through player interaction with an NPC, weather systems, day & night cycles, etc. Nor does this take into account the different experiences you'll have playing with different profession combos making even those experiences unique due to profession synergy.

I found this screen that I believe was labeled by ArenaNet to give people an idea of how DEs can be laid out. Also, I think that this only shows what happens in any given part if you succeed, it doesn't take into account when you fail and the events that spawn from there and so on.

 

 

Dynamic Event Rewards – When you complete an event you will be awarded XP/Karma(see below in the Personal Story section for what Karma is) and Coin. Based on how much effort you put into an event determines your reward level. There’s Bronze, Silver, and Gold reward levels, however it’s not competitive. There’s no arbitrary numbers or roll system that determines your reward level and there’s no unique rewards to the majority of the events so people don’t try to farm the “best” event and ignore others. There will be very large server wide type events that take 100 people to do, events like The Shatterer around level 50. When you defeat this dragon, who by the way is a baby compared to the size of the Elder Dragons you’ll fight at level 80, a large chest will drop in which everyone who participated can get loot. Inside the chest we’ve seen upgrade components drop for armor/weapons.

Content Scaling – So when you arrive at an event, you might be the only one there. As you’re completing whatever the objectives are for an event, someone else might arrive, and then maybe 3 more people arrive. During this time a few things happen, the difficulty of the encounters will increase, the loot will be more plentiful, more xp will be rewarded for kills, the enemies will actually gain new attacks, and in the end you will gain larger bonuses for having completed the event with more people than if you had just done it by yourself. This is all whether you grouped up with said people or not, GW2 is built with having everyone working together in mind.

 

My other question:

Will there be contested lands in GW2?

I rather enjoy the fact that in a lot of areas in the game, you can be *ambushed* in a flash without having a choice.  (Well, I did have a choice,A: when I initially joined a server and chose PvP..and decided that I would need to be on my toes in some areas of the game. and B: choosing to avoid the contested area or pick a class that can *hide* or *escape* easily from enemies.)

I find it very exciting, and makes the game THAT much more enjoyable for me.

I do not like that to PvP I must join a battleground, or that I must flag myself as PvP active.

I prefer that on the particular server you agreed to, that you understand sh!t can and will happen if you don't focus.

PVP= no PVP Servers

Structured PvP:

"Hot join" games are the casual side of structured PvP. Hot join PvP can be played from 1v1 all the way up to 10v10.

Players can browse through a list of available games, each displaying the current map, the number of players, etc. Players can search by server population or friends list.

 

Tournaments are the more organized side of structured PvP. Tournament play is 5v5, but matches take place on the same maps that are used for hot join play. 


Pickup Tournaments: These single-elimination tournaments wait for 8 teams to join before starting. Once they start, they go through 3 rounds of eliminations, with winners receiving qualifier points. 

Monthly Tournaments: For monthly tournaments, you'll need a certain amount of qualifier points to join. 

Yearly Tournaments: These grand tournaments feature the winners from the monthly tournaments slugging it out for the right to call themselves the best PvP players of the year. 

Player-Run Tournaments: These tournaments will be customized by players, allowing for great flexibility and unique bragging rights. 

Guild Wars 2 PvP features different maps that all dramatically alter a single game type called Conquest. In the Conquest format, teams compete over a certain number of capture points. Holding a capture point and killing enemies improves your team's score. The first team to reach the score limit—or the team with the highest score when time runs out—wins the match. 

WvWvW PvP:

This is a game mode where 3 servers are pit against each other in a FFA across 4 persistent maps in a place off the world map called The Mists. This is joinable by anyone at any time, 24/7. Each battle lasts 2 weeks and the winner of the 3 servers then gets matched up with 2 other equally matched servers. A world's rank increases as it wins more often. During combat there is no direct way for these worlds to communicate with each other.

At launch there will be 1 map that is split into 4 maps, 1 map that is the home map for each server and in the center is a neutral center map. Each map has resources and objectives to capture, things like castles, fortresses, mercenary camps, mines, lumber mills and villages. These sites, with the management of their capture and defense, allow teams of all different sizes to find a way to participate.

For example, larger groups or guilds may take or hold keeps, while smaller group sizes or even individual participants might assist by disrupting supply caravans, weakening defenses, or capturing other objectives that will stop reinforcements. Maps will also be populated with defensively-oriented NPCs to set the pace of gameplay, but their presence is to allow defending players a chance to join in the defense as opposed to being a credible or reliable threat.

Resources gained from mines and lumber mills are used to rebuild walls, create siege engines, and generally defend the world's fortress. Once they move to the central map, players joining will start at their world's portal keep. From there they may continue to capture objectives while dealing with players from other worlds seeking to invade opposing home maps via the central map zone. Thus, play will travel between the central map and home maps as worlds gain and lose footholds such as keeps and strategic points that influence bonuses for their home world.

So all of the objectives in WvW use the Dynamic Event system. Say like your server takes over a mine, a new event will kick off to escort the minecart back to a nearby keep. Both of the other servers will have an event to destroy your minecart. If you get it back to a keep, your server then gains access to siege weaponry to use against your enemies.

World benefits

Territories and control points within the map will confer benefits to the world that controls them, such as faster energy/health regeneration, increased drop rate or increased experience gain for a time.

Individual rewards

Players can gain experience and level their character entirely in World PvP. Killing people in World vs World gives the player loot which means a player doesn't need to leave World PvP to get better gear.

 

This should help you,obviously not my doing but it's great information.

Cali does a great job at describing GW2. So I would definitely listen to what he is saying.

I should also put in that there are plenty of other things to do, besides "questing" (we really have to come up with a new name for that). I know in GW1, there was a large crowd devoted to exploring. There were people who wanted to map out and see every inch of the world ArenaNet created. So if you want to do that, you may. Along the way, you may find some hidden artifact that may begin a rare dynamic event.

If you are juts lazy and don't want to do anything, you could craft or do minigames. Within each major city (Divinities Reach, Black Citadel, etc.), there are a bunch of mini-games that you can do. These include things from bar brawls (yes there will be bar brawls), to I think keg throwing.

Most importantly I should say this, do not try to compare this game to WoW. It's difficult for everyone to compare a new game to another game. It's inevitable that GW2 will be compared to WoW. My advise is to take GW2 for what it is, another MMO that you may or may not enjoy, and leave it at that. Despite all the WoW-hate you see, most new games will pale in comparison to WoW in terms of content, polish, and bugs. So look at GW2 through the eyes of someone who's new to MMOs, rather than someone whose played an MMO for a while (and WoW was their first).

All i can say OP is that i have linked alot for you but this link and the INFO is the best you will see up to this date,it's an epic wealth of GW2 information and lore.

Badtozebones sweeps all before him with this epic write up.

Welcome to the Underground.

http://tu.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=19665&ForumID=219188&TabID=178431&TopicID=9852805&Page=3

Originally posted by cali59

There's not going to be any raids in GW2, but it's by design. 

Well, in a way there actually are raids, they just aren't instanced. Boss events pretty much fullfill all criteria of a raid, minus the private instance, the elitism, and the stupid gear grind ofc ;)

Cali has an uncanny knack of getting me excited for this game all over again. :p