The RMAH is Blizzard trying to get their share of the profit from gold selling.

With the implementation of the RMAH people can farm items to vendor for gold and then they can sell that gold in the RMAH for real cash which can be withdrawn, all the while Blizzard charges an amount for ever real-money transaction that happens, whether or not the offer that was put up is taken.

http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/

Plenty of skill choice.

Why would you go suggesting to them ideas that they've obviously already put a ton of thought into? They've only been working on the game for 5 years now, don't you think they've thought about things like dual-pistol mesmers and staff warriors?

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Volkon

Originally posted by DarkPony

Just watched & listened to Cynical Brit's overal impression so far. Essentially 40+ minutes of continuous gameplay in the Norn area and despite the environments looking pretty appealing I couldn't help noticing a couple of things really impacting the "open worldness";

- The amount of loading screens.  Every time you zone in or out: pretty hefty ones too (on his system around 30 seconds each, he even obviously short cutted some of them, probably to make the vid more appealing).

 

- Conversation breaks: pulling you out the world around you and into a conversation setting, playing out a predetermined exchange of lines (without choice it looks like). This is a lesser interuption in my eyes but it will mean a lot of skipping for many people.

- Instanced areas in the open world: running into certain areas prompts you into accepting entering an instance or not and another loading screen, venture too far out and you leave the open world instance.

...

So what's your thoughts on this?

 

The world is zoned, but the zones are HUGE! You can spend hours doing things and never see a load screen. Trust me on that. Things also aren't optimized yet, when they are load times will be reduced.

Conversation breaks are exclusively part of the optional personal story. Once you're past the training area (where the personal story begins) you never have to see one again if you wish.

The instanced areas in the open world are entry points into your personal story. Again, optional. If you're doing your story, you'll go somewhere specific, enter the instance for the story, then leave back to the persistent world when done.

 

Sounds relieving.

But about those open world instances, when they are only part of your personal story, does that mean the same area is just more open world when you are not on that bit of the storyline? Or is that specific area reserved for that instance?

So far the personal story instances seem to take place in sections of the world that have copies made specifically for the personal story. So the personal story takes place in instances that look like sections of the open world.

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by romanator0

Originally posted by star

Originally posted by romanator0

{snip}

Those loading screens {snip} completely optional..

The loading screens between zones aren't :P

Have you seen any? I would like proof that they are actually there and I haven't seen any.

Well, every time he fast travels, whether it is through the map or by accepting an invite to insta-join other people on their quest, shows a loading screen. I think some of those are inter-zone but I am not sure. (Like this one around the 16:00 mark which also seems to be cut short ((as earlier ones in the vid showed the bar fully loading to 100% ))

It would be strange (but nice) if physically traveling between zones would be seamless when most people would only experience that seamlessness only the first time and use fast travel once they discovered the new zone.

That's a transition to a personal story instance. Not a transition between 2 open world zones.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by romanator0

Have you seen any? I would like proof that they are actually there and I haven't seen any.

Here is the portal that takes you into DR:

We know that there are loading screens when you enter towns and move from one race area to another, those are facts.

Then there are into instances,  for the personal story or dungeons.

Besides the ones for the cities that we've known about since 2010?

Originally posted by star

Originally posted by romanator0

{snip}

Those loading screens {snip} completely optional..

The loading screens between zones aren't :P

Have you seen any? I would like proof that they are actually there and I haven't seen any.

Originally posted by DarkPony

Just watched & listened to Cynical Brit's overal impression so far. Essentially 40+ minutes of continuous gameplay in the Norn area and despite the environments looking pretty appealing I couldn't help noticing a couple of things really impacting the "open worldness";

- The amount of loading screens.  Every time you zone in or out: pretty hefty ones too (on his system around 30 seconds each, he even obviously short cutted some of them, probably to make the vid more appealing).

This reminded me very much of Swtor or AoC, even though Swtor's "worlds" are larger than GW2's zones, you frequently had to travel between them; i.e. staring at loading screens a lot. To me personally that became a frustrating aspect. It looks like in GW2 this may even be a bit more impacting due to the frequent use of fast travel (as the time spent physically traveling towards an objective will be much shorter once you discovered an area for the first time and once you are done with something, you can instantly fast travel out it seems).

- Conversation breaks: pulling you out the world around you and into a conversation setting, playing out a predetermined exchange of lines (without choice it looks like). This is a lesser interuption in my eyes but it will mean a lot of skipping for many people.

- Instanced areas in the open world: running into certain areas prompts you into accepting entering an instance or not and another loading screen, venture too far out and you leave the open world instance.

In total it ammounted to an impressive number of interuptions from the immersive flow of an open world experience: fight some mobs, fast travel to town, , run to npc, , fast travel back , run to objective, enter instanced area, fight for a few minutes, complete task, fast travel back to town , etc. (It's obvious how the fast traveling mechanic, rather than a natural, real time means of transport is responsible for most breaks).

I hope they will be able to optimize the game somewhat more in order to make the loading screens less time consuming but I reckon people would do good to invest in a SSD if they haven't already, to cut the annoyance down somewhat.

What remains to be seen if these frequent interuptions are typical for mainly storyline gameplay or not: it could be that while doing mainly random dynamic events in the same zone, they are much less of a factor.

Anyway, this might sound a bit dramatic but I was a bit disappointed about that aspect while watching this vid. I didn't expect to see them so frequently in a 40 minute session and it drains some of the "persistance magic" out of the beautiful surroundings and turns them into a series of somewhat more artificial back drops, rather than a consistent world which might change dramatically around the next corner while you physically travel without interuptions between destinations.

So what's your thoughts on this?

 

Those loading screens, instances and conversation breaks are all part of the personal story which happens to be completely optional. If you have specific scenes you want me to see then tell me what part of the video they're in because I'm not going to watch 40 minutes just to tell you exactly what the loading screens are from.

Beta Access... and then April 2nd comes around and you realize it wasn't a joke.

I can dream, can't I?

Simply removing mob-tagging and kill-stealling and not penalizing people for being near each other in the open world will go a long way in in bringing people together and possibly improving the community. Forcing people to compete with each and every person around them for no reason at all does nothing but drive them away from each other.

F*cking really?! You had to make a thread to discuss THIS?! You couldn't have just used one of the other, much bigger threads that are already discussing the same exact thing?

I'll just repost what I said in the other thread.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Supply

Doesn't matter how much gold you have. You can't do shit without supply. Do your research next time.

I also find it extremely hilarious that people saying an in-game boost that must be bought with in-game currency is pay to win. I assume you're also going to say that top level gear bought from the AH is pay to win also? Maybe crafted gear is pay to win too?

Originally posted by wolvards

just curious, once you buy the blueprint is that it? done, now all you need is the materials? or everytime you want 1 treb you have to buy a blueprint? then, how much materials are needed to make that blueprint, i get your point, but i'm just curious as to how the siege system will work.

Blueprints are purchased with gold or looted from killed players. To use blueprints you need supply which is gained from captured areas such as logging camps and mines.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Supply

Doesn't matter how much gold you have. You can't do shit without supply. Do your research next time.

I dont' want to sound rude or mean but your obsession with the Charr seems borderline unhealthy.

MikeB aka Fony from Gamebreaker has done a video tour of the Eternal Battlegrounds which is the center map of the WvWvW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95MTUmmyFDM&feature=g-u-u&context=G2d93b4cFUAAAAAAABAA

Originally posted by Adalwulff

Originally posted by headphones

Originally posted by Adalwulff

People still dont know the difference between an Instance and a zone?!  HAHAHA!!

For all those people who think WvW is instanced, please do not buy this game, I do not want to deal with you in game, you will obviously be so lost, you wont know what to do with yourself.

Seriously, do yourself a favor and just walk away now...walk away

you'd never see them anyway thanks to them being phased out.

 

You will NOT be phased out in WvW...hahahaha...omg how can you even think that?

I can see it now, three servers, battleing it out to see who wins control of the zone. But wait, half the players are phased out....LOLOLOL!!!!

You dont have a clue do you? You have no idea how GW2 works do you?

I think he might have been joking.

Early on people might do that, but I don't expect the servers to be completely balanced until at least a couple of months after launch anyway.

Originally posted by GeeTeeEffOh

The NDA is still up so they can continue to sell beta access.

No it isn't. Pre-purchase only gets you Public Beta access and that isn't under NDA. The closed beta is under NDA and there is no way to guarantee access to that.

You buy from here:

https://buy.guildwars2.com/

And you get guaranteed access to all public beta events, not closed beta though.