Where to dip my toes back in...

1st Official Post

    So I've just posted in the introductions thread, and I'm generally looking for advice on where and what to do given the happy-go-lucky approach probably won't work anymore with the distinct lack of other (casually bumming around) players. Everybody has purpose! For background, I left the game 10 (TEN) years ago and recovered my account yesterday, to find myself in an empty ToA. I've come to understand everybody is pretty much on the American servers nowadays, but I would love to quest with some other European folk to avoid the inevitable lag.

    I'm a pretty bum player (and gold-poor as a result) and enjoy questing / PvE, sometimes PvP if I'm in the mood. I never got an ecto although I did see one once when solo-ing in UW but died getting to it :D I only have prophecies and factions - so one question is: should I bother buying Nightfall / EotN? I don't really fancy solo-ing missions...

    If you ever fancy some casual playtime, add me to your friendlist. We can go get an ecto together! :P

    Edited once, last by Quesi (March 22, 2017 at 1:22 AM).

    • Official Post

    Welcome back! Given your decade long absence I'd advise you to just treat yourself like a new player. Make a new character, preferably in Prophecies (the pre-searing community is still strong) and just play through it and relearn everything, because I'm sure you've forgotten a lot.

    Joining a guild would be ideal. Given the age of the game, a significant proportion of the population stick to high end stuff so it'll help a ton to find people in the same boat as you. Also realise that some areas game will seem empty, but this is because that for standard everyday stuff people typically fill their team with heroes and then just go do the thing rather than sit around in outposts. Again, joining a guild will help connect you with people and organise activities.

    There really isn't any value in sticking to the European servers. I live on pretty much the opposite side of the world to the American servers and I don't get any meaningful lag. In PvE a bit of lag doesn't make a difference anyway.

    If you're committed to playing GW, picking up NF and EotN would be good investments. While they're expensive for their age you get a ton of content. Also, I think you might be forgetting about henchmen. While NF and EotN offer heroes (which are customisable), the pre-set henchies are more than capable of getting you through the content if you can't find people to regularly play with. Anet updated their skills some time ago (except for the Prophecies ones, for some reason) so some of them have bars which are close to meta anyway.

    • Official Post

    Yes! Welcome back!! It's nice to see folks who enjoyed the game years ago come back (I started in 2005 as well...just never left)
    I would 2nd what Marty suggested, guilds are the best way to get groups now---and there are a few guilds still around that cater to 'new' people and are willing to help out.
    I would only buy nightfall and eye if you can find them at a store for cheap (either brick and mortar or online store--not 2nd hand places eg ebay).
    If you have a character from 10 years ago--I am sure you found a few extra items in your inventory...10 years worth of birthday gifts!
    so welcome back and enjoy the game

    I think it's also worth mentioning that daily Zaishen quests are helpful for finding players, because they gather in those spots throughout the day. It will also help you by building up money fairly quickly by cashing in the rewards.

    As for picking up the other games, I'd recommend it if you're sure that you want to keep playing. People say the game is dead but pretty much every single day for at least a few hours a day, you can find others looking for people to play with easily. You can still find stragglers in the later hours. Plus, I'm sure people here would be happy to join you as well.

    Thanks all, good tips. I have just started a new character as suggested. Still can't stop myself from choosing Mesmer (!) but apparently it's in vogue nowadays? I remember really struggling to get into parties, everybody hated Mes back in the day.

    Good tip on Zaishen quests, I think they are a new (!) addition.

    Pre-searing does have a decent amount of people - you're right. I think I was just disheartened by an empty Ascalon city and ToA on European servers...

    Finally, those miniatures are really pesky inventory fillers. I got 3 gold: miniature Shiro, Flame Djinn (looks pretty cool) and a White Rabbit. Worth much? (sorry, I know this is slightly off-topic) but might help me realistically achieve that Obby armour one day!

    • Official Post

    Skill updates from about 2010 onwards were strictly buffs. Presumably Anet didn't want to push anyone away given the declining amount of new content and the arrival of GW2 so they didn't want to nerf anything to any meaningful extent and spoil anyone's fun. (There are exceptions, of course.) As such, "bad" professions such as Mesmer went from generally unwanted to game breakingly powerful. I don't use that term lightly. Rits are also stupidly powerful too.

    In addition to Zaishen quests (people typically prefer to do these in hard mode though for better rewards, so if you're not comfortable with that it'll be harder to find people), there's also Nick gifts, which are immensely lucrative. All you need to do is collect a bunch of random collectable trash, trade it for gifts (max five per week), then sell to others for ~3 ectoes each. If obsidian armor is on your bucket list then you'll be glad to know it's significantly easier to attain than it used to be.

    Birthday miniatures are generally worth only a token amount nowadays. A lot of people just delete them, though the gold and green ones can fetch a couple of ecto. You could also hang onto them (sell/delete/attempt to give away any duplicates) so that you can dedicate them in the Hall of Monuments, if you care at all about that. You'll need EotN to access it. The exception to this is that seventh year gifts have a very small chance of producing previously limited minipets - be very careful not to trash these if you get any.

    I have recently also returned after a very disappointing 15 minutes of GW2 the day it came out and have been gone ever since. So if your looking for someone to party with I am more than happy to lend my services. I also felt quite bumbed to find the old places empty.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Marty Silverblade


    As such, "bad" professions such as Mesmer went from generally unwanted to game breakingly powerful. I don't use that term lightly. Rits are also stupidly powerful too.

    Every profession that got a profession update became rediculously powerful, rits were meh until the rit update when they got the ability to solo VQ areas with spirit spam, mes was pretty much the worst pve profession until the mes update which made them the strongest bulk caster profession in the game, dervs were a bad primary profession to use until the dervish update, now they are the strongest physical attacker in the game.

    Yeah, they really were not keen on nerfing anything once those started coming out xD