Lol.  I too, am a I"iddle-aged man with questionable reaction time and coordination."

But I enjoyed the betas like crazy...and did just fine.

Trust me...you're not going to have a problem.

And if you do, we can adapt.

;)

pretty much, ya.

What about a necromancer, are those ranged and pretty straight-forward?

Originally posted by vigg2004

What about a necromancer, are those ranged and pretty straight-forward?

Not a bad choice at all. Like most classes it has both melee and ranged weapons. However, its the only class with a double hp bar known as Death Shroud. This allows you to play more aggresive and is more forgiving. There are a few viable builds, I would suggest reading up on it or watching intro vids.

I am 53 and did pretty good as a warrior in both PvE and PvP, so you will probably do fine! On release I'm switching to Guardian though because it is more my play style. Good luck to you!

Keybind your Dodge to the "Shift" key and just keep moving, you'll be fine. The only really difficult parts of GW2 are PvP and Dungeons, both of which can be ignored if they're not your thing. You'll be fine throughout the general game, though if you over-aggro during larger events you might run into trouble if your reflexes are particularly bad. My advice is, if you see lots of people are starting to participate, and the event grows large and wild, take a step back and play more defensively/supportively. For instance, my Mesmer tended to draw a lot of aggro, so when events went out of control, I played AoE support with Quickness elite and spread boons out across the people around me. When the mobs dwindled a bit, that's when I chimed in with my aoe damage spikes.

Personal Story is a bit challenging at times, but if you attempt them either with a friend to help or after outleveling them a bit first, you can breeze through them as well. Plus when you die in them, you just try again, nothing resets, so even soloing them you're bound to get them eventually.

Originally posted by vigg2004

I'm not a "twitchy" gamer.  I'm a middle-aged man with questionable reaction time and coordination.  I'm not good at kiting or strafing.  Is there any place for me in GW2, or will I just get mutilated?

You will be fine dude, it's all about getting enough practice. As long as you enjoy yourself, don't worry about what others think.

People are going to tell you that you'll be fine because fanboys constantly try to sell their favorite game and convince everyone that they will enjoy it. It wouldn't matter if someone said they hated anything that isn't a pure sandbox FFA PvP gankfest. People would still try to talk them into buying GW2.

The truth? No, dog, you're screwed. If you can't dodge attacks in real-time, you won't make it far at all. Don't listen to people telling you to just play a ranged class, either. You must kite if you want to play ranged in this game. Your only hope is to find a group of players who are willing to carry you through every encounter, in which case you might as well be AFK.

EDIT: You other hope is to, you know, learn how to play. If you're interested in the game, then... yeah... do that one.

Originally posted by Shroom_Mage

People are going to tell you that you'll be fine because fanboys constantly try to sell their favorite game and convince everyone that they will enjoy it. It wouldn't matter if someone said they hated anything that isn't a pure sandbox FFA PvP gankfest. People would still try to talk them into buying GW2.

The truth? No, dog, you're screwed. If you can't dodge attacks in real-time, you won't make it far at all. Don't listen to people telling you to just play a ranged class, either. You must kite if you want to play ranged in this game. Your only hope is to find a group of players who are willing to carry you through every encounter, in which case you might as well be AFK.

EDIT: You other hope is to, you know, learn how to play. If you're interested in the game, then... yeah... do that one.

thats not even true on the ranged part ive played a elementalist to level 30 so far and its far from hard to do. Kiting yes a little but nothing at all challenging . This game is far from twitch , tera is twitch . If you can use one keybind dodge then you can even play melee fine. world vs world also is major scale pvp , you can easily blend right in if you are not trying to solo and not stress yourself out on being super fast on the hotkeys. If you go out ganking solo or small group , yes you can die if you are not faster or more clever then the other player your facing. But in terms of how hard the game is by far not at all . Put it this way , I got a guy thats in his 40s that hates pvp with a passion and twitch games playing with us. We talked smack to him on facebook about how hes going to hate GW2 , now he never shuts up about how much fun it is and how fun the world vs world is.

Originally posted by cronius77

thats not even true on the ranged part ive played a elementalist to level 30 so far and its far from hard to do. Kiting yes a little but nothing at all challenging . This game is far from twitch , tera is twitch . If you can use one keybind dodge then you can even play melee fine. world vs world also is major scale pvp , you can easily blend right in if you are not trying to solo and not stress yourself out on being super fast on the hotkeys. If you go out ganking solo or small group , yes you can die if you are not faster or more clever then the other player your facing. But in terms of how hard the game is by far not at all . Put it this way , I got a guy thats in his 40s that hates pvp with a passion and twitch games playing with us. We talked smack to him on facebook about how hes going to hate GW2 , now he never shuts up about how much fun it is and how fun the world vs world is.

This is true, also remember there are 10 or 8 year old girls who plays this game and they are doing fine. So, you will do just fine.

GW2 is a game for every1  :)   doesnt matter   even if you will not be best you still can have fun.  Fun is a purpose of any game :)))

Not likely. GW2 is far less twitchy than GW1. Even though interrupt is still part of gameplay, there is no more activation bar to prompt you to interrupt enemy. So it'll serve less importance in the game.

Strategy become more stressed than combat dynamics. It becomes more like a game of Go than Chess. If that analogy make sense >.>

According to GW2 Census data, Rangers are most popular among the older folks. There was some discussion as to why, and I think the general agreement was that they were most old school friendly/easy to control. I can't speak for the truth of this myself as I haven't tried Rangers, but I'd give them a try yourself if you're worried.

Originally posted by lightblade

Not likely. GW2 is far less twitchy than GW1. Even though interrupt is still part of gameplay, there is no more activation bar to prompt you to interrupt enemy. So it'll serve less importance in the game.

Strategy become more stressed than combat dynamics. It becomes more like a game of Go than Chess. If that analogy make sense >.>

I can't agree with this at all, sorry.

Guild Wars 1 had a lot of skill rotation/auto-attack. Two classes just involved having summons do the work for you. The cooldowns were all slower and combat in general was much less active. The one exception would be the mesmer of GW1, who did actually need to react quickly.

Guild Wars 2 has dodging, tactical positioning, active management of summons, quick cooldowns, etc.

I don't know the OP experience, but the game is mildly twitchy compared to some older games he probably played at it's time, like Quake where you shoot air born people or need to master strafe jumping to move properly. If anything you need to force yourself to slow down. But ye the combat is based on twitch, it's not auto face, but is there any mmo where you auto face anyway? I think OP make a bigger deal of it, than it really is.

Originally posted by Poison_Adele

According to GW2 Census data, Rangers are most popular among the older folks. There was some discussion as to why, and I think the general agreement was that they were most old school friendly/easy to control. I can't speak for the truth of this myself as I haven't tried Rangers, but I'd give them a try yourself if you're worried.

having played a ranger also into my 20s with him I cannot agree with this being true even though obviously the data pointing to it is. The ranger is tons more micromanagement then any other class besides maybe a warrior, and i dont mean a bad one weapon warrior. Ranger has to switch from melee to ranged or short and long bow and on top of that manage a pet that is poorly designed UI for the pet and unresponsive. I found the ranger to be annoying at best for best bang for your buck class. Infact most players just let their pets die in world vs world as it takes forever to revive them and they die so easily its annoying to even manage , yet they give up about 25% of their damage and snares by doing so which IMO is very very stupid of the player. But back on topic the ranger i would not suggest in a million years unless you want a ton of micromanagement.

He will get used to it after playing for a bit.

Originally posted by vigg2004

OK, thanks all, this gives me some hope.  What is kiting like as a ranger, is it jump kiting like a hunter in WoW?

hunter in wow is not jump kiting, you got your pet wich takes all the agro and damage so mostly you just stand still and fire up.

if you mean in raid someitmes hunter can kite mobs but what comes to jumping? its just some players style to play.

now i gw2 you play as ranger and again you got pet who takes the agro and damage and you just fire up on pvp you can easily stand on rooftops and shoot and just remember to keep distance, of course you can use shortbow wich fires faster and is mainly used at close quaerters, but what comes to ranger class the 2 handed sword ranger seems to be quite good.

so back to your original question, yea you can play with your slow reaction time and non strafing cause ive seen lot of people play just like that standing still =)

Originally posted by vigg2004

I'm not a "twitchy" gamer.  I'm a middle-aged man with questionable reaction time and coordination.  I'm not good at kiting or strafing.  Is there any place for me in GW2, or will I just get mutilated?

on PvE e WvW you will have no problem, especially if you go ranged. on sPvP not matter if you go ranged or melee, need to have lot of reflex