Hello and welcome to The Sohothin Courier! A blog dedicated to all things Guild Wars 2. I will post about all things lore, gameplay, graphics, and more! Check back often for updates and info.
The two grand prize winners will receive a trip to Arenanet's studio in Bellevue, Washington where they'll get to spend time with the Guild Wars 2 devs and even get to play it!
The goal of the video was to inform viewers in ~60 seconds what Guild Wars 2 is all about. These 2 very persuasive videos are the winners of the contest:
Icelandic Viking by Leo from Iceland
News Report by Dan from the USA
Congratulations to the winners and have a great time with the dev team!
I figured I'd clear a few things about some game mechanics up for some people.
First off, don't worry too much if your bud wants to be an asura and you wish to make a norn. You can both level together almost immediately due to the wondrous nature of the Asuran gate! Any race can use them to transport themselves to another race's starting area. There will be no fee for this feature, so don't worry about having to rack up a few silver first.
My favorite feature is the storyline driven questing system. Your choices at character creation will affect your story greatly, as will your actions during gameplay. Think of a Bioware game, for example. Another part of this is that when you enter a certain district of a major city you will enter your own instanced version of it for storyline reasons. The npc's will talk and react as you walk by. Another player may enter your home instance if invited.
Here's a short but sweet video of character creation from Gamescom!
Casual levelers will love this next feature: It will never take more than an hour and a half of game time to reach the next level, including 79-80 for example.
Feats, Achievements, and Traits in Guild Wars 2 are all very different things. Feats are similar to daily quests from World of Warcraft. It should be noted that the more of these you do, the more difficult they will become to finish.
Achievements are just like they are in most games, a certain goal to work towards. Think of this like Xbox Live achievements for your gamerscore. There are no in-game rewards for this, just the knowledge of knowing you did it.
Traits, however are very unique. Think of them like a talent system, mixed with a gemming system (similar to Diablo or WoW's). These traits enhance certain skills or weapon types that you have. For instance Snaring Fang would give your Thief's Twisting Fang ability a chance to cripple your foe.
The masters of machine are here at last! Today Arenanet has brought us a preview of the new steampunk-esque Engineer.
In my previous posts I mentioned skills and weapon sets; well, the Engineer can only use a single weapon set at a time. However, this is made up for with special healing and utility kits. These kits provide a bag full of goodies for the engie to use as they please!
Weapon Kits—These are utility skills that equip a new weapon in the engineer's hands when activated. For example, the flamethrower kit creates a short-range AOE weapon the engineer can use to overwhelm foes. The flamethrower has skills like Immolate to damage nearby enemies, Air Blast to defend from ranged attacks, and Backdraft to suck enemies into range of the weapon's powerful attacks.
Backpack Kits—When activated, these special utility kits equip a backpack that replaces the engineer's current weapon skills with a set of more specialized skills. For example, a bomb kit puts a backpack on engineers that allows them to deploy bombs with a variety of effects including smoke, concussion, and fire.
Turrets—An engineer can deploy turrets: immobile allied devices that help defend and control an area. When a turret is deployed, the skill in that slot is replaced with its overcharged version. For example, an engineer can deploy a Thumper Turret to cause AOE damage, and then activate the overcharge version of that skill for a big thump attack that knocks down nearby enemies. An engineer can interact with deployed turrets, packing them up and moving them around. This removes the turret—and the option to overcharge it—triggering a short recharge before that turret can be deployed again. Only one of each type of turret can exist at a time.
Tool Belt—An engineer tool belt is a set of special skills above the weapon skill bar. It enhances the effectiveness and functionality of the engineer's utility and heal skills. The tool belt can add a self-destruct skill to turrets or a detonation option to all mines. When paired with the grenade kit, the tool belt allows a grenade barrage; with the med kit, it adds a self-healing skill.
However this profession isn't entirely reliant bullets and bombs to get the job done. They also have items such as a healing turret, an elixir gun, and even a flamethrower. There's also talk of med kits, which should make you medic playing FPS aficionados quite happy!
Here's the official trailer for the Engineer class, showing off turrets, bombs, grenades, and even a shield reflect!
Thanks for coming to the grand opening of The Sohothin Courier! As the weeks move on, I'll blog about everything from armor dyes to the lore of near every race on Tyria. Even if you have barely heard of Guild Wars 2, you should stop by every so often for a fresh perspective on why this will be the game for you.
I'll start off with everyone's favorite part of an MMO experience... Smashing things with a hammer!
There are many different types of weapons in Guild Wars 2, some of which are limited to certain classes.
One-Handed: Axe, dagger, mace, pistol, scepter, and sword.
Two-Handed: Greatsword, hammer, longbow, rifle, shortbow, and staff.
Offhand only: Focus, shield, torch, and warhorn.
For instance, a Thief can only use certain weapons:
Main Hand: Sword, Dagger, and Pistol
Off Hand: Dagger and Pistol
Two-Handed: Shortbow
In most MMORPG's you would use whichever weapon had the most DPS and/or best stats for your class, right? This is not quite the case in Guild Wars 2. Whichever weapon you use will change which class skills you are allowed to use. For instance if you're using a dagger in main hand and a pistol in your off hand, your first 2 skills will be dagger based,
There are also a few profession specific abilities, such as the Thief's
Steal
You an catch some of these abilities in action by checking out the official Thief skills trailer!
It is worth a note that the thief is the only class where 3 uses both weapons simultaneously. In other classes, 1-3 will be main hand and 4-5 will use your off hand weapon.
