Making Gold in Guild Wars 2
All you really need to know about making money in Guild Wars 2 is the following:
Pictured: the short version.
This was true before the Trading Post officially came online, and it is especially true afterwards. If you cannot afford your level 40 Trait book (i.e. 1g) at level 40, you are doing it wrong. And not only are you doing it wrong, you are literally throwing real cash money away too.
First, some perspective:
This sort of thing changes everything.
The 100 gem exchange rate has fluctuated up and down since release, but it has generally stayed between 34s and 24s pretty consistently. As of today, it is 25s 25c. Technically you can buy gems in increments as small as 1 gem, but I am using 100 gems as a convenient unit of measurement. As you might have noted, the cash exchange rate (in the US) is 800 per $10, or $1.25 per 100 gems. Useful things like extra character slots will set you back $10, extra bank space $7.5, and so on.
…or you can buy them for 2g 2s and 1g 51s 50c respectively. Which I am about to do as a level 25 character. Here are my main methods:
Step 0: Low-Hanging Fruit
Sell your Unidentified Dye.
At the time of this writing, this item is selling for 6s apiece and you likely have accumulated 5+ by the time you reach level 25. While you may actually be a person who likes tweaking the colors of your character, in my opinion using these items instead of selling them is a losing proposition. Dyes are character-specific NOT Account-Wide, the dye colors you get are random, and since they are selling for 6s apiece, you are paying almost $0.32 each time you double-click.
Many of the “good” colors like Black are going for 2g+ by themselves, but rolling that dice is like scratching lotto tickets. And besides, if you follow this Step and the others, you will likely accumulate enough money on your own to straight-out purchase the colors you want instead of getting yet another Key-Lime Green Dye.
Assuming, of course, you want to spend $10 to make your toon wear a darker shade of black in the first place.
By the way, the Transmog tokens are selling for ~50c as well, which is likely of much better use to you than making your sword look fancy for two levels or less when you get another upgrade.
Step 1: Stop Salvaging
The first instinct you should develop is a desire to VENDOR every non-upgrade piece of equipment you pick up instead of salvaging. Getting 25c for that sword may not sound like a lot of money, but four of them is 1s and that quickly starts to add up. When you salvage, what you are really doing is spending ~3.5c to destroy a 25c+ item into 1-3 crafting components which damn better be worth more than 9c apiece or you are literally throwing money in a hole.
Sometimes Salvaging will indeed net you a profit. Cloth armor below level 20 will typically salvage into Jute Scraps, which are selling for 24c or more. Some low-level heavy armor will similarly salvage into valuable 17c Copper Ore.
Another thing to keep in mind are the Runes/Insignias/etc in Green items – many are generic, but some sell for 1s or more by themselves. You will likely have gotten a few Black Lion Salvage Kits from 100%’ing zones or doing Story missions, so this is the situation in which to use them effectively.
Step 2: Stop Crafting
I can understand that this will be tough for people to internalize – even I’m having a hard time resisting – but between a globalized Trading Post and sanctioned RMT gold-buying, crafting simply makes no sense. Arguably, it never made sense in a game without endgame gear progression, and absolutely makes little sense in the asinine crafting model that ArenaNet is offering.
Just look at what is happening right now:
Good luck being a goblin in this environment.
If that picture isn’t clear, I am buying a massive amulet upgrade for 1 copper over its own vendor price.
A globalized Trading Post means the margins for any crafted good are always going to be razor-thin; it is not about competing with 1-2 Auction Barons, but all Auction Barons everywhere, including the ones willing to work for pennies a day. Supply for most goods is effectively unlimited, so there is no “cornering the market” without cornering ALL the markets. A few niche markets may develop along rare recipe drops (assuming they exist) or legendary materials, but again, they are “niche” across all servers… so not very niche at all.
Think about it for a second. Every weapon or piece of armor you could possibly craft can and will be crafted by somebody else. They will craft said piece multiple times because that is what they need to do to level up their skill, and they will need to sell that piece to pay for all the money they are sinking into the crafting system. Just like 200,000 other people.
When it comes to crafting gear, it is truly a Buyer’s Market.
If you want upgrades every 5 levels like you would get with crafting, simply buy the vendor+1c priced goods instead of effectively paying 10x that amount using mats that you could have sold. Prefer specific stat loadouts that are not represented very well for some reason? Look at the random odd-level gear, e.g. level 21-24 instead of level 25. It might be pricier, but you will have saved an enormous amount by selling your mats. Or, you know, pick up that +Healing +Vitality weapon with the higher DPS and stop trying to twink your very first character.
All of the above ties into the next step:
Step 3: Sell All Your Materials
Tiny Totems are 48c. Tiny Claws are 51c. Vial of Weak Blood is 41c. Jute Scraps are 24c. Copper Ore is 17c.
That last one means each Copper Ore Node is 51c, every five nodes is 2.55s, and every 397 nodes is an extra character slot. That is not counting any of the jeweler pieces you might pick up, or the heaps of other mats you will acquire from killing mobs inbetween nodes. And with GW2’s overall game structure, you can easily collect this amount on your way to 100% map completion in starter zones, no grinding required.
Although, if I’m honest, dicking around Queensdale and other starting zones can be remarkably lucrative. Gear drops are scaled to your own level (e.g. level 25 gear), but the incidental drops like Tiny Totems, Vials of Weak Blood, and those loot bags all drop the same regardless of your higher level. It kinda make me worried in a way, since right now it appears that a level 80 character farming the starting zones might be the way to go given the remarkably low price on endgame ore/wood/etc. We will have to see how it pans out.
Step 4: Never Skip Events
Killing mobs = loot.
Killing lots of mobs = lots of loot.
Killing higher-level mobs = better loot.
Tagging hundreds of higher-level mobs with random AoE in a (badly) scaled Event = Loony Toons amount of loot.
In practice, I imagine there is some behind-the-scenes algorithm that stops Event mobs from dropping loot in the same proportion to random questing mobs. But every since I began to realize that each piece of gear is 10c-30c to a vendor, I will drop everything and run halfway across the zone to “participate” in every Event. What I am looking for are those seemingly endless, bag-filling trash waves where everyone is spamming their AoE buttons. Do the same as them, just spam your Loot key too.
When the boss rolls out though, feel free to tag it and bail. For some dumb reason, Veteran/Champion level mobs do not seem to drop better items (or often any items). So if you have seen this Event before and know there is no treasure chest at the end, there is not much point in sticking around.
Step 5: “Help” Your Neighbors
No doubt this will be controversial along with the boss tag-n-bail I suggested above, but it’s worth noting that you only have to deal 1 point of damage to a mob to get full looting rights when it dies. If you are cruising around the countryside and see a random stranger doing their thing, bust out an instant-damage ranged attack (if you have one) and send it at the mob they are fighting.
If you see some sparkles, congratulations, you win. If not, no worries, continue doing whatever you were doing before.
It might seem unfair, and it technically is from an effort vs reward perspective, but… well, in an absolute sense you did in fact help that stranger and subtracted nothing from them, e.g. their chance at loot remained the same. If this kind of social injustice concerns you, well: don’t blame the player, blame the game.
Step 6: Never Repair
Each time you die, a piece of your armor gets “damaged.” This does not, in fact, mean anything. As the tooltip for the ugly, puke-orange shield states, your items do not start losing effectiveness until they are ALL damaged. While death is a lot more common with the Dynamic Death Trap Events and such, the likelihood of you dying 6+ times in a row before getting an upgrade is actually pretty remote.
Ergo, save your 1s-5s+ repair fees and put it towards replacing said damaged gear with pristine upgrades. Or just pocket it entirely and wait for drops.
Step 7: Be Choosy with Waypoints
If you have not already noticed, the costs for Waypoints is based on your level and the distance traveled. Before too long, they will start costing more than 1s apiece. Needless to say, this starts adding up the wrong direction. The good news is there are a couple of ways to mitigate the sink.
First, instead of using a Waypoint to go from capital to capital, use the Heart of the Mists Express. Press H, go down to the PvP tab, click the Mists button, run into the Lion’s Arch gate, Waypoint your way to the gate area (assuming you have been here before), then take the gate that corresponds with the capital you want to go to. Bam! You just globe-trotted for free. The cool thing about the HotM Express is that you can use it to return to your own capital if you find yourself in some Queensdale cave and don’t want to pay the cover charge; just think of it like a Hearthstone with a 4-loading screen cast bar.
If you need to go from a capital out to the field, you can shave 5-10% off the total cost by simply walking outside the front gates of the capital before using the Waypoint. Since inter-city Waypoints cost nothing, there is really no good reason to not take the one closest to the front door, step outside, and pocket the change.
Finally, well… you may just want to walk sometimes. Some walks are more feasible than others, but all of them will get you out in the general location of resource nodes and profitable random Events. And, hey, I have heard people talk about this “exploration” thing, if you swing that way.
Bonus Step: Buy Some Cheap Food
Seriously folks, crafting is broken:
/golfclap
Whether you are out either adventuring or farming, you might want to stop by your local Black Lion Trading Company representative and browse their 1-Copper Menu. Although I am not level 35, I can still appreciate those noble Cooks who slave away making +18% Magic Find, +40 Power buff treats that last a full 30 minutes and then sell them at a tremendous loss for basically no reason. Know that 1 silver piece I saved you when you followed one of the seven steps? Feel free to purchase 100 of these delicious treats.
For those below level 35, there is still a wide, wide selection of 1 copper buffs, including more +Magic Find ones, if not exactly as high as the Cherry Tarts; you can browse the Wiki entry for their specific names. Some of the other cool ones are the most basic to craft, like Handful of Bjorn’s Rabbit Food (+20 Vitality for 1 hour, no level requirement) if a bit “pricier.” Honestly, when the cash shop is selling 50% XP boosters for 150 gems, getting a 10% XP boost for even 10c is truly a bargain at twice the price.
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Considering how much of a Buyer’s Market GW2 has turned out to be (thus far), any concrete “do this to be rich” advice will probably come in the form of where chests respawn or the most lucrative Events are located. I know of at least one sort of “challenge chest” in the Norn area, but I am almost fearful that looting it even once every few days might constitute an exploit. Nevertheless, I will try and collect their various locations in a future post for your own perusal.
If you have your own gold tricks or locations and feel like sharing them in the comments below, by all means do so.
And on the Seventh Day…
“…He vowed: ‘Forsooth, verily shall ye never again take up an MMO at launch. So sayeth the LORD.'”
-Commonsensthians, 1:1
Given that I fancy myself a topical blogger now, and that my prepaid prepurchase of the prelaunch of Guild Wars 2 was predicated on previewing, this is yet another Commandment that I am probably going to break in the future. However! If you have been waiting to jump into GW2 for whatever reason, let me say that I envy you. The game will either be better, or you will know exactly how dumb it is/stayed.
Stream of consciousness-style:
Characters
I have made characters. Lots of characters.
- Asura Elementalist, level 19
- Sylvari Engineer, level 13
- Norn Ranger, level 12
- Human Guardian, level 6
- [Deleted] Charr Warrior, level 3
- [Deleted] Human Mesmer, level 3
I typically do not play MMOs this way, insofar as splitting my time amongst many alts right away, but GW2 in particular makes me worry that I picked the “wrong” class. You see, I actually enjoyed my Engineer quite a bit, but… well, once I unlock all of the weapon skills, most of these classes just fall apart in terms of interest.
The Engineer in particular gets hit hard because dual-pistols is the only rational weapon choice for leveling; which means pressing 2, 3, 4, backpedal a bit, mob dead. Over and over and over again. For 80 levels. Given the Engineer mechanics, you cannot swap weapons in combat, although you can spice things up by dropping turrets or swapping to a Flamethrower, Landmines, Grenades, etc. But none of those alternate weapons seem to work better than dual-pistols, unless people are accidentally tanking for you. In which case… nope, dual-pistols are still probably the strongest.
Since my friends are now in the mid-20 range, I have been focusing on the Elementalist, which is honestly what I should have been doing all along. I stick in Fire mode 99% of the time, but unlike dual-pistols with the Engineer, it somehow feels different. I think the main thing is how one of the “rotation” buttons requires ground targeting, which necessarily changes from mob to mob, spicing things up (dual-pistols is all straight tab targeting with inherent AoE).
I deleted the Warrior and Mesmer so early for a few reasons. First, the whole Mesmer mechanic of summoning and sacking phantasms/clones did not seem like something especially fun. In PvP? Probably pretty fun, or annoying to the opposing team, which is another way of saying “fun.” The warrior was deleted for much simpler reasons: I died at one of the newbie Events right past the tutorial. Remember how I warned everyone that if you were melee, popular Events would kill you practically instantly? Yeah. If you want to be stuck as a Longbow-Rifle warrior, go right ahead, but I was not looking forward to 80 levels of getting owned in Events when I could be dropping meteors and volcanoes and having fun.
Before deleting either class though, I did take them to the PvP lobby to take a look at their Traits lines (aka Talents) and later Skills. The warrior was pretty straight-forward and boring to me. The Mesmer had some pretty cool ones that got the PvP juices flowing though. For example, how about a wall of crazy magic that automatically turns all your teammates invisible when they pass through it? I was imagining dropping that when storming the bases in Warsong Gulch… until I remembered that this was a whole different game, the invisibility lasts 4 seconds, and this would take a coordinated team effort that isn’t likely to happen unless I am in some PvP guild running premades. Which is too bad, because the Mesmer can also make a portal entrance/exit that can be used by anyone to zip you between the two locations instantly as well.
Auction House Trading Post
As of today, still down.
It does periodically come up from time to time, and I make oodles of coin in that brief window. However, I do recognize that actually making money from the Trading Post will not be a particularly long-term endeavor. Crafted goods were generally selling at 1 copper above their vendor price, which is actually selling at a loss considering the obscene ArenaNet 15% cut. Mats are where it is likely to be at, so to speak, but once the Trading Post opens for real, it will be a race to the bottom against botters and their crippling 72 bans.
Where I made my money this past week was selling the Unidentified Dyes for in the neighborhood of 10 silver apiece, which is pretty astounding. It might not sound like a lot of money in any typical MMO, but keep this in mind:
Pictured: You being jealous.
At the time of this writing, I have accumulated 400 gems in this fashion, all for less than 34 silver per 100. The real money exchange rate works out to $1.25 per 100 gems, so I’ve made a cool $5 selling roughly 1g 20s on one character. In case you need reminded, my highest toon is level 19. Incidentally, that is more than I have made in Diablo 3 for the entire 2-3 months I played.
So when I tell you I am very annoyed about the Trading Post being down for the vast majority of the prior week, that is not “entitlement” speaking. This is SRS BSNS. God only knows what the exchange rate for in-game currency is going to be a month from now.
Hint: not likely 30s per 100.
Dynamic (Death Trap) Events
While I will admit that some of these Events have been interesting gameplay experiences – taking out bandits before they set up poison traps for Skritts, or disabling the traps before the Skritt trigger them is probably not something a traditional MMO quest can do – the vast majority of the ones I played are simply trash farming. Which is great for making money (see above), but does not deviate much from the “zerg ALL the things” stereotype I had from the betas.
And then I started running into Events that are either poorly designed, poorly tuned, or (Badly) Working As Intended.
Pictured: my life, in a nutshell.
Let me unpack that collage of failure for you.
First, I was originally questing in the area to fill up a level 15 Renown Heart. Suddenly – or should I say “dynamically”? – the entire complex was filled with level 16 mobs. I died pretty much instantly. After respawning, I came back inside to see if I could chip away at the Renown Heart still, and perhaps see if there were more players around to take down the Event proper. But then I got confused. The Event says it is level 14. All the mobs are level 16, pat around in groups, and even the ones by themselves were generally chained to another mob 20 feet away. I did eventually find a group of 5-6 players, but I was never able to tell whether they were on the premises the whole time (which might explain the higher-level mobs) or if they came in once the Event popped on the radar.
The very next area North of here was the 15-25 zone, and immediately featured two more Dynamic Death Traps. Remember people telling you to complete Events and then follow the NPC when they run back home? Sometimes it results in some exposition dialog, or even another Event. And sometimes it results in instant death.
Surprise! Boss-level Event after you collected 10 lightning bug asses.
There was zero warning that the very next step was going to be [Group] level boss Event. None. Again, it is possible that there were “enough” people in the general area (that I could not see) that would make a level 16 Champion spawning from a collection quest make sense. I saw one dude, who died with me, twice.
By the way, at the current exchange rate, each death costs me $0.0125.
After respawning and heading in the other direction, I encounter this lovely Renown Quest:
It will be fun, they said.
What exactly a level 21 mob is doing in the level 17 Renown Quest area, I have no idea. But, you know, I am a total pro and (slowly) take these fools out. Heart completed, I notice a Dynamic Event spawn nearby. Given my prior experience getting nickle and dimed to death, I said to myself “fuck that noise” and started heading back to the Renown guy to check for upgrades. I make it about ten feet before this happened:
Not pictured: wireless keyboard sailing through the room.
What a swarm of eight level 20 mobs are doing heading towards a level 17 Event is a secondary concern to why they have to…
…you know, what? Whose mind do I imagine I’m changing here? You are either already drinking the Kool-Aid or you are not, and I am fine waiting for the first bodies to hit the floor.
And it is not as though there isn’t other things I could be doing, like…
WvWvW
Just kidding, perma-queues.
I will say that I am impressed by ArenaNet having free server transfers open during this time when ~70% of all available American servers are Full, even at 4am. I have talked a bit with my friends as to whether we want to bail from Northern Shiverpeaks and go down to a Low pop server, but the downside to that would be lack of people in the world for Dynamic Death Trap Events, grouping in general, and so on. Given the PvP guilds located on this server though, it is quite possible that no one else will ever be able to zone in. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Crafting
By the way, I hate the crafting system thus far.
Hmm… maybe “hate” is too strong a word. It’s boring. You only make items in 5-level increments, e.g. level 5, level 10, level 15, etc. Every recipe is Piece A + Piece B + X, where X is either a mob drop, or a token you create from a mob drop. It creates an illusion of “hundreds of different recipes to discover!” when the reality is that a pair of boots with +Condition Damage on it is not really different from another pair of boots with +Power. Yes, if you were stacking Condition damage or something, it matters.
But do you understand what I’m saying? Within 30 seconds of crafting two different boots, I implicitly knew the recipes for (possibly?) every pair of boots in the game. Six different mob drops –> six different tokens + six different super-tokens = 12 variations of each item * six levels of the base material (Jute, Wool, Cotton, etc). Looking at the Wiki for Tailoring, it looks like there are 14 token variations instead of 12 at higher levels, but come on.
Anyone remember Spidersilk Boots? I do. Seeing that recipe for a blue item was the precise moment in WoW that I became keenly interested in crafting and doing things with the AH. Contrast that with what I described above; simply rearranging stats around is a Diablo 3-esque crafting system, not an inspiring one. Maybe all the cool crafting stuff happens at higher levels, or at the Mystic Forge. Maybe there are super-secret recipes no one knows about.
Regardless, right now GW2’s crafting system feels like it has been designed by an accountant.
Immersion
One final (positive!) thing I want to talk about today is actually an area where Guild Wars 2 nails down a quality I did not fully understand: immersion.
A lot of people pretend that immersion is some kind of objective term, that the things that pull them into or eject them out of a game are universal Truths. Those people are wrong. Sense of immersion is a personal thing, which should be immediately obvious to anyone who is into fantasy or sci-fi novels but thinks Twilight (etc) is dumb. Different people look for different forms of escapism. Suspension of disbelief is a voluntary action, or at least is informed by your own tastes.
What GW2 has taught me thus far is that I (hitherto subconsciously) place a heavy emphasis on a sense of existing in a 3D space for immersion. It might be easier to show you what I mean:
This impressed me to an almost embarrassing degree.
This fence is Real to me, as it exists in a 3D space and I can interact with it. Namely, by standing on it. You probably do not know this about me, but one of the first things I do in an MMO is find a fence and try and stand on it. Why? Because it tells you a lot about the “depth” game. If the fence is simply a 2D texture papered over an invisible wall, you know there is not likely to be many “real” objects in the game. God forbid if you cannot jump at all.
And I apparently have a thing for fences. Don’t judge me.
While it is also impressive how our feet can actually appear to stand at the correct levels of the fence, I understand that that is more of a “trick” compared to the 3D object itself. A good trick, for sure, but a trick nonetheless.
If I get vertigo in your game, you win.
The above is another one of my favorite screenshots. It looks better in motion, but it feels even better inside my head. GW2 evokes the sense that these floating islands actually exist, that the character I control is not just an elaborate 2D model but an actual set piece moving in 3D space. Immersion success. Indeed, I usually find myself frustrated when I come across a hill in-game that I cannot find some way of climbing straight up, as opposed to going around the “right way.” The hill exists, therefore I keep trying to find that slightly less sloped polygon so I can shimmy my way up to the top. It does not cross my mind that there might be an invisible wall around the hill edge, because invisible walls are for fake-3D games.
And the weird thing is that I’m not even that into platformers.
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With all of that off my chest, in the next GW2 post I might spend some time handing out gameplay tips in the same vein as the Quickstart guide. Because while the things I complain about do legitimately annoy me, GW2 has subsumed the entirety of my gaming time since the head start. Which, if I’m honest, is not something that happens very often.
Turning Off Sales
File this under Double-Take (emphasis added):
Mike O’Brien: […] My priority — our priority — is ultimately making sure that players have a great experience. We spent five years working on Guild Wars 2, and we’re going to spend years and years supporting it. If we got to a point where sales continued to be off the charts, and it threatened the experience that players are having with the game, then we’d just turn off sales.
Q: Turn off sales?
To clarify what I mean by that, we sell the game on our website and we also sell the game at retail. And we know how many boxes we’ve created, so we know how many copies can possibly sell through retail. If it gets to the point where sales are so high that it would be unwise of us to keep selling on our website because it wouldn’t leave enough slots for all the people who’ve already bought and all the people we know are going to buy, then we’d just turn off sales.
That would be a shocking thing to do, obviously — not something that you ever see in the games industry — but for me it’s an easy decision, because for me, Guild Wars 2 is a long-term project. I want players to keep having a great experience, and I know if we had to turn off sales temporarily, it’d be okay. (source)
Wha… err… I don’t even…
Remember waaaaaay back on May 1st, when I did the Guild Wars 2 Preview for the Rest of Us? My first screenshot was this:
Please take… my… money?
As it turns out, it may have been a harbinger of things to come.
This sort of news story can probably be a pretty good Rorschach Test for people. Another sign of of ArenaNet’s “dream team” working outside the box? Baffling corporate hubris? Turning cash-strapped business model lemons into delicious PR lemonade? I mean, presumably, the standard sort of business reaction would be “open more servers,” even if the WvW interaction necessitates opening them in increments of three. Then again, I suppose if they had to close servers down later, they would similarly have to do so in increments of three.
As of the time of this writing, there are 7 Full, 13 High, and 1 Medium population US servers. At 3:30pm EST in the afternoon. [Update] Eleven hours later, there are 17 Full servers and 4 High population ones. Yikes. [/Update]
The game has not been out for a full week yet, of course, so there is understandably going to be some level of churn to reduce the load. Or maybe not, if GW2 is a runaway hit. Either way, my immediate reaction to Mike O’Brian’s words is one of… well, not exactly suspicion, but definitely a cocked eyebrow. Are they truly going to stick with just 21 servers no matter the load? Is the “increments of three” thing the concern for them?
Given my prior predictions vis-a-vis Dynamic Events, I almost wonder if keeping what population exists tightly packed into each world is exactly the business model ArenaNet is going for here. No one buys clothes for a ghost town stroll, and Events become increasingly asinine (if not impossible) when done alone. Keeping servers dense by artificial scarcity ensures that a critical mass of sorts is maintained, solving both problems.
Either way, pretty unusual news.
[Update] Yep, there is an “official” Facebook post (sigh) about them taking down GW2 sales from the website.
[Update 2] There are now 3 additional servers on the list: Devona’s Rest, Kaineng, and Eredon Terrace. How do I know they’re new? There are 24 servers now instead of 21, and those three are listed as Low population when there isn’t even a single Medium pop.
Misleading Product Titles
Out of all the possible game launch issues, I find this one especially embarrassing:
Burn Level: Well-done
By the way, having to scan a Twitter feed for bug updates to a problem acknowledged on Facebook is perhaps the least responsible use of social media technology ever. I am talking 1998 Geocities auto-playing MIDIs level of ridiculousness.
Some people have said they can get in/make guilds. Good for you. It has not worked for my small band of players as of this posting, and it is still listed as a bug on the Guild Wars 2 webpage. The good news is that ArenaNet has a workaround!
Sounds eerily similar to how I got my CompSci 150 final project to compile.
I would almost be tempted to try that if WvW for my server had not been in a permanent queue since the pre-launch happened.
On a final note, I take back every good thing I said about one-server games. See, I enjoy(ed) the fact that you can have a name with spaces in Guild Wars 2; it gives you more options, allows for some creativity, naming-schemes, and so on. But the more I think about it, the more asinine it feels to require unique names across the entirety of the playerbase on every server everywhere. We already have the equivalent of “Battletags” for use on the forums and our accounts (e.g. Bob.4375), so why require unique names? The more successful the game is, the more annoying this problem becomes. And it is not as though this is some kind of technological problem: Blizzard has been doing this cross-realm shit for years, nevermind whoever did it before them.
This name thing is especially an annoyance to me in terms of guilds. I liked the name Invictus, in spite of it being a fairly common guild name and yet another “Ominous Latin Noun” (which is itself an ironically standard name). But, no. Some random guy in Wisconsin six servers away claimed ownership first, now and forever, leaving me with choices like The Invictus, XxInvictusxX, Invictus 2: First Blood, and a cavalcade of increasingly poor choices. Is it entitlement to simply desire the ability to title the group of friends you are hanging out with? Maybe.
Then again, the name of the goddamn game is Guild Wars 2, so you would assume that… well, nevermind.
P.S. While I was researching whether guild names are indeed unique across all servers, I came across this interview that I must have missed. It is somewhat topical given the raised eyebrows surrounding the news that some guy hit level 80 in GW2 before the official launch date:
Post: Guild Wars 2 has a maximum level cap of 80 — which is pretty damn high. And with high level caps, there’s always a feeling that players need to grind their butts off. Is there anything in place to prevent that urge or need to grind?
Eric Flannum: We regard leveling as a good measure of progress and not as the ultimate goal of the game. There is an amount of time at which a single level becomes useless as a measure of progress because you can’t make significant gains in a single play session. We are continuing to tweak and tune just how long we think that is but we currently put it at around 90 minutes. Since we aren’t interested in leveling as an end goal this allows us to cap our leveling time at around the 90 minute mark. This means that our leveling curve flattens out relatively early in the game. For example it currently takes about the same amount of time to progress from 79 to 80 as it does to go from 49 to 5o. This allows us to avoid the grind often associated with the later levels in an MMO. (source)
The flat leveling curve is not news, but I was not aware ArenaNet specifically put a 90-minute target down. That is about 120 hours until 80, or roughly 1.5 months if you play ~20 hours/week. Dunno if they revised those numbers since that interview, but it certainly feels a little bit faster than that. And that “we’re not interested in leveling as an end goal” certainly strikes me as a bit amusing since Diablo 3 very publicly turned an aboutface on that very issue just last week.
The GW2 Quickstart Guide
So you bought Guild Wars 2 and downloaded it. Now what?
The following is a collection of tips and tweaks that will hopefully make your beginning experience that much smoother in Guild Wars 2. For the purposes of this guide, I am going to assume you already made it through character creation.
Improving the Framerate
Even if you have a super-computer, chances are good that you may only have 40 fps or less if you start out with everything at max settings. Two quick changes in the graphics settings gained me +15-20 fps, and will hopefully work likewise for you:
And you won’t feel a thing.
In text form:
- Reflections: All –> Terrain & Sky (+10 fps)
- Shadows: Ultra –> High (+5 fps)
I am not sure what possesses MMO companies to add graphical features that require computers from the future in order to run properly, but once you tune those two options down a step, you should gain around 15 fps with zero apparent loss of graphical fidelity. Every computer is different, of course, so your own gains may be more or less. Screwing around with some of the other settings resulted in the following for me:
- Shadows: High –> Medium (+5 fps) –> Low (+10 fps)
- Shaders: High –> Medium (+10 fps)
- Textures: High –> Medium (+10 fps)
Again, those numbers may not be accurate for your machine, or even my own machine for that matter – it could be I was simply in the wrong area for a legitimate test. Regardless, I did notice a reduction in game fidelity (i.e. graphics took a hit) when I started bumping that second set of numbers down, so if you like your shiny games to be shiny, stick with the slight Reflections/Shadows tweak.
If you find additional tweaks on your own, feel free to leave it in the comments below.
Improving the Controls
On the default option screen, the two biggest things are turning on Autoloot and increasing the Camera Rotation speed:
You WILL Dodge to your death many a time.
Turning off “Double-Tap to Evade” is a good idea when you start doing any of the jumping puzzles, and it may be a good idea to turn it off permanently anyway. I have not quite worked out what button to comfortably assign Dodge to though, as it has to be one in which you can reliably hit while navigating around with WASD. Right now, I have it assigned to V but may move it to C later (or see if my side mouse buttons will do the job).
Speaking of WASD, take the time now to disable keyboard-turning, you noob:
MMO companies should really disable this shit by default.
I also recommend moving “Interact” from F –> E, but that is just me. The idea behind it is that with Autoloot turned on, what you can do is run through that pile of bodies created by a nearby Dynamic Event and just spam the E key to pick up all the loot.
Improving Quality of Life
At this point, I am going assume you made it through your race’s tutorial, e.g. level 1-2.
One of the first things I recommend is to save up 72 copper and purchase the three basic types of gathering tools:
Start this early, and you’ll thank me later.
If you spot a vendor immediately upon zoning in from the tutorial, you will likely only have ~50 copper or so. Go ahead and purchase the Copper Logging Axe and one of the other two; the herbs are going to be more common, but the ore nodes are going to be more immediately useful for crafting. Otherwise, you can wait until after you finish your first Renown quest “hub” or so to get enough cash to buy them at the same time.
Once the gathering tools are in your inventory, double-click them to “equip” them and you will be ready to go. Each node you tap gives you the equivalent of ~3 or so mob kills and contributes to your Daily Quest achievement score (which itself nets extra XP and rewards).
Incidentally, you might have noticed the Salvage Kits in the vendor window above, or may have received such a kit from completing story quests. Salvage Kits basically “disenchant” old gear into crafting material. I do not recommend buying some right at the beginning of the game like with the gathering tools, especially since you will get several packs of them free from story quests.
If you find yourself lacking in funds, check your mailbox. Each Renown Heart you complete will get you a follow-up letter in your mailbox, which will contain some cash too:
This early copper will be HUGELY useful in the early game.
Between gathering and Dynamic Events, chances are that your bags are going to get full in no time. The good news is that there is an app a button for that:
Hands down the best feature in GW2.
Open your Inventory (I), click the cog, select Deposit All Collectibles. Bam! All your crafting materials (etc) automatically get whisked away to the Collectibles tab of your bank. Want to use those items for Crafting? Any Crafting table will give you access to your Bank and Collectibles tabs, which lets you drop the needed item into your normal bag to use it for crafting purposes. Your bank and Collectibles tabs are Account-wide. There is literally no reason to not use that button, but you can deposit individual items by right-clicking and selecting Deposit from the menu if you wish.
If you find yourself not getting a healthy selection of weapons from drops, check out a weapon vendor. While such vendors can be found sparingly out in the world, it is likely the easiest to seek one out in your race’s capital city. The entrance to every race’s capital city is usually a portal right behind where you spawned from the tutorial. The main entrance is only meaningful for your first trip there, as every time after that you can simply teleport to a Waypoint inside from anywhere.
The weapon vendor will be a marked as a (tiny) icon with a sword:
Harder to find in some capitals than others.
The significance of these vendors is that you can buy every weapon type from them. While the weapons themselves are of low-quality, and expensive for low-level characters anyway, the point is that it is entirely possible to never run across, say, a pair of pistols on your Thief or a Longbow for your Ranger. Not only can you miss the opportunity to level up those weapon skills until you manage to get a random drop, but some classes are worlds more fun with certain weapons – you have not played a Guardian until you played a Guardian with a Broadsword, or an Elementalist with dual-daggers. So if you find yourself creeping up on 2 whole silver pieces and have not unlocked the majority of your weapon skills, I suggest making a shopping trip in town.
By the way, if you happen across an NPC (or object) in town with a golden boot above their head, talk to him/her/it. You will receive a ~5 minute speed boost to make your shopping/exploring trip that much easier.
Improving Globe Trotting
The last Quickstart tip I have is to help you move about the world. Did you roll a Norn and want to quest with your Sylvari friend? Or maybe you just want to check out the Charr area? It is easier than it looks.
- Press H, to bring up the Hero menu.
- Click on the PvP tab, along the bottom left.
- Click “Enter the Mists.”
- If this is your first time here, go ahead and do these tutorial Hearts.
- This next area is the “lobby” for PvP. Feel free to check out your level 80 abilities.
- Otherwise, run into the gate your should be facing. It should say “Lion’s Arch” when near.
- In this next area, press M for your map. It should look like this:
…almost there…
- Run North across the bridge, the hook around to the West.
- One portal for each starting zone.
- Pro tip: you can tell which starting zone a gate belongs to by the race of its guards.
- Go through one of them, grab the nearby Waypoint, then find your friend.
The good news is that there is a Waypoint right at the cluster of portals, meaning you won’t have to the do the PvP portaling trick again. On the other hand, traveling to a Waypoint clear across the world is fairly pricey for a low-level toon (something like 50+ copper for a level 8) so you may want to save those pennies by taking the “long way.”
As you might surmise, each capital will have a portal that leads straight to that Lion’s Arch cluster of portals. If you know your way around your own capital good enough to figure out where it is, feel free to cut out the PvP zone detour. The benefit of the above outlined path is that it is easier to tell someone to click a button and head North than it likely is shepherding them around the utterly massive capitals.
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And that, my friends, is that. Crafting is a bit beyond the scope of a Quickstart Guide, and I am not entirely sure how useful a Renown Heart/Dynamic Event rundown would be in comparison to just running around doing it. In any case, hopefully this post was useful in some way, either to yourself or as something to point a friend towards.
Now if you will excuse me, I’m still trying to figure out which character will be my main.
Collective Individualists, or Individual Collectivists
I usually do not participate in theme weeks, but Stubborn’s recent Individualist vs Collectivist post struck a chord. A discordant one.
But first, as always, we have to define the terms of the debate. Throughout Stubborn’s post, for example, he seems to be using “grouping” as interchangeable with Collectivism. While grouping is certainly something Collectivists do, that is like calling me a Landscape Artist when I mow the lawn. The intention matters.
But rather than get too philosophical about it, I have an easy quiz you can take to determine whether you are a Collectivist, or at least have Collectivist tendencies. Have you ever felt:
- Shame, or
- Guilt, or
- A sense of obligation
…to do or refrain from doing some action in an MMO? If you answered “yes,” congratulations comrade, you are a Collectivist!
I knew the precise moment my WoW days became numbered: six weeks after having killed the Lich King in ICC. There I was, logging on at 9pm sharp, trying to drum up support for yet another ICC run that I did not want participate in, let alone tank and raid lead. So why did I do it? Because I knew that 4-5 of my guild mates wanted to do it, that if I did not personally pull the group together the raid would not form, and that each raid which failed to form would drive said guild mates further and further away (into other guilds, or simply away period). Collectivism is about putting the needs of the Collective ahead of your own. You sacrifice your own enjoyment for the benefit of the whole, because the guild/group/corp/etc is intrinsically linked to your own enjoyment.
Contrast the above with Stubborn’s assertion that Diablo 3 ranks highly on the (arbitrary) Collectivist scale:
D3 gets the most collectivist score because it has no add-ons, heavily emphasizes grouping at harder difficulties, and has individual loot. I’d give it a 5, but I have hopes for more collectivist MMOs to come around, and besides, it stinks.
Do you care about the other people you group with in Diablo 3 beyond their potential function as loot efficiency creators? Do you feel guilt for leaving such a group, or a sense of obligation to stay, or shame when you “fail” them? Probably not.
But… maybe you do. In which case, this debate becomes even more abstract as we are awkwardly forced into quantifying how much a game may or may not encourage Collectivist tendencies in players. Is the game anti-Collectivist, or are the players simply pro-Individualists (read: rational entertainment consumers)?
Here is how I see it: Collectivism is something you bring into the game from the outside.
A game can force you to group with other people in order to play, but whether you identify with that group is 100% up to you. Everyone readily agrees that WoW’s random LFD groups are five individuals looking for loot, but Trade Chat groups were not the opposite by default. Did I have a higher tolerance for failure back in TBC? Yes… because if I did not carry that terrible player through heroic Shadow Labs, it meant I was playing zero dungeons tonight. Walking that player through detailed text explanations of each boss encounter was necessary like wearing a shield and pressing Consecration was necessary – in both cases I was simply pressing buttons, not connecting to another human being.
Perhaps I should just quote Samus, who needs nominated for Best Metaphor of the Year:
Any social element is IN SPITE OF the design of these games. You are sitting in a room with all the chairs facing the wall, praising the room for the great conversation you still managed to have.
Having said all that, I can still agree with Syl vis-a-vis being glad that MMOs like Guild Wars 2 are moving towards “bonus instead of malus” incentives for grouping. If I wanted to be social (the most important step!), many MMOs would make being social difficult; simple things like penalizing group XP, throwing quest barriers up, and placing people in awkward Mineral Rights scenarios (“You take the Copper node.” “No, you!”). These days, I would also include general looting rights, even in raiding. While loot system is traditionally the backbone of a raiding guild’s identity – Loot Council vs DKP vs Main spec > Off spec rolls, etc – it can also be divisive. I might like playing with Bob, but if he is in a guild with Loot Council… well, we can no longer be friends raid together.
Ironically, in a certain light, relaxing these grouping barriers actually seems to make games more Individualistic. And it does. Everyone says LFD is the most Individualistic, community-destroying feature ever… and then praise GW2’s auto-grouping, auto-scaling, individual looting, no-words-necessary Dynamic Events in the same breath¹. And the multiple guilds thing, which is great, but sort of undermines the whole guild loyalty/identity thing though, right? Maybe, maybe not.
I feel like this is one of those rare situations in which the otherwise terrible relationship cliche of “set the bird free, and if it comes back, it was meant to be” is applicable. After all, even a sociopath can fake relationships long enough to get the loot, so to speak. A Collectivist cares about the Collective, and will return even if they are not penalized for leaving. A closet Individualist on the other hand… well, they need the handcuffs in spite of themselves.
Of course, the thoroughly legitimate fear is that there ain’t that many Collectivists after all. And I am inclined to agree. So it is simply up to you to decide whether or not the chance of fake becoming real via going through the motions is worth all the cognitive dissonance and hand-waving.
I say open up that cage and let’s see what happens.
¹ LFD might be worse for basically never grouping the same people together again, but simply seeing the same few dudes in Events multiple times is not all that more social by itself. It is the difference between paying for gas at the pump and paying the cashier inside.
The Secret World’s Other Shoe, and Jay Wilson’s Apology for D3
A little over a week ago, I pointed out that Funcom’s The Secret World was not selling all that well; Funcom’s own public press release highlighted a (presumably optimistic) scenario in which they sell half a million boxes and have ~120k subscribers after a year.
As reported by Kotaku, that other shoe has dropped: 50% of Funcom’s staff has been laid off.
Some of these initiatives are part of normal procedure following the launch of a major project, such as adjustments to the customer service staffing based on the number of customers in the game as well as adjustments to the production team as the project goes into a post-launch phase following years of intense development. Many of those affected on the customer service team are on temporary contracts which is common for a live service such as ‘The Secret World’ where customer service demand shifts based on the game’s population levels.
Even the “good news” part of that – the developers/designers were less affected than “temp” customer service reps – comes across as bad news to my ears. After all, if the MMO was doing better, then one would presumably want to retain a robust CustServ department.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I wonder whether or not we should start using layoffs as a metric of MMO success. Obviously subscription numbers have been used as the de facto measurement for years, and I imagine it correlates with layoffs pretty strongly already, but I think most of us recognize the dissonance between claiming “Game X failed” while it still remains profitable. I mean, for god’s sake, Warhammer Online is still kicking it with a subscription¹. EA is not keeping that thing alive out of the goodness of its heart. In fact, arguably, keeping Warhammer alive is unnecessarily cruel.
Or… perhaps we would all be better off not bothering with arbitrary success or failure designations entirely.
…nah, this is the internet. There can only be one!
Speaking of immortals losing their heads…
You will be forgiven if you have not been following the “Example #38417 of How Social Media Will Ruin Your Day” Diablo 3 news story, staring Jay “And Double It” Wilson.
The short version is that one of the developers of the original Diablo (David Brevik) made some comments about Diablo 3 in an interview, and essentially said he would have made different decisions. More or less. The current developers of Diablo 3 did not like that too much, and Jay Wilson thought it was a good idea to respond on Facebook by saying, and I quote, “Fuck that loser.” You can read the Kotaku write-up if you like, as it includes snippets of the interview in question and a screencap of the Facebook post itself.
Looking at the other comments, I’d say Eric Bachour’s “You’d think that guy wasn’t responsible for Hellgate: London. Lol.” was the more epic burn.
In any case, Jay “Fuck that loser and Double It” Wilson has an official pseudo-apology up on the Diablo 3 boards. I do not expect you to actually click on that link, because most of it is PR bullshit (redundantly redundant much?). Well… alright, if you skip the first four paragraphs, things get more interesting. Or you can simply read this handy list of bullet-point quotes:
- “We believe it’s a great game. But Diablo III has flaws. It is not perfect. Sales mean nothing if the game doesn’t live on in all of our hearts, and standing by our games is what Blizzard does.”
- “If you don’t have that great feeling of a good drop being right around the corner — and the burst of excitement when it finally arrives — then we haven’t done our jobs right.”
- “Out of our concern to make sure that Diablo III would have longevity, we were overly cautious about how we handled item drops and affixes. If 1.0.4 hasn’t fixed that, you can be sure we’ll continue to address it.”
- “Part of the problem, however, is not just item drops, but the variety of things to do within the game. “
- “As it stands, Diablo III simply does not provide the tools to allow players to scale the game challenge to something appropriate for them.”
- “Later in the development of Diablo II, the ‘players 8’ command — which let people set monster difficulty — was added to address this issue, and we’re considering something similar for the next major Diablo III patch to allow players to make up their own minds about how hard or how easy is right for them.”
- “The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we’re not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it’s a problem we can overcome.”
I have a spoiler alert for you Jay: that last bullet point ain’t going to happen. Not only is that cat out of the bag, it has been skinned in more than one way across all nine of its lives.
I played a few hours of D3 since the patch, and I have noticed three things:
- “Normal monster health increased by 10%” = +5 terribly boring seconds per mob.
- I can tank Act 3 Inferno elites in the same gear/skills I was 2-shot in pre-patch.
- Gold prices have gone from $2.50/million down to $1.06/million.
That last one is a real shame, as I was hoping to cash out my ~5 million gold and (combined with the few bucks from earlier sales) maybe purchase a month of WoW ahead of MoP. Then again, that would be kind of silly to do given the Scroll of Resurrection’s free server transfer bonus, and GW2’s imminent release notwithstanding. Oh well.
Kind of wonder if that dude who paid $200 for my friend’s 2H sword is still playing the game. I do not know which possibility would be more sad for him/her.
¹ Warhammer says it is F2P on the website, but as far as I can tell it operates more as an unlimited duration free trial than true F2P. For example, you cannot go to the capital cities, cannot engage in any economic transaction with another player, and are limited to “Tier 1 scenarios,” whatever the hell that means (it’s been years since the one month I played).
Game Changer
I regret using such a punchy title for Diablo 3’s 1.0.4 patch, but good god have you seen this?
Introducing the Paragon System
The new Paragon system coming in patch 1.0.4 is designed to address Magic Find gear-swapping while providing players who’ve reached level 60 with an extended progression system.
Here’s how it works:
- After you hit level 60, any further experience you earn from killing monsters will begin to count toward Paragon levels
- There are 100 Paragon levels
- Every Paragon level will reward you with:
- Core stats such as Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality in amounts similar to what you’d gain from a normal level
- 3% Magic Find and 3% Gold Find
In addition, a distinctive increasingly-impressive border will surround your character portrait in the in-game party frame to denote your Paragon progression, with a new frame earned after every ten levels. Your Paragon level will also be visible to other players wherever your normal level is shown.
[…]
The time to reach the upper Paragon levels approximates the long-term time investment required to get a level 99 character in Diablo II.
Now, the above is in addition to all the AH changes – the biggest of which is the ability to sort by Bid Price and Ending Time (eBay snipe city incoming) – and all the class and difficulty changes I talked about last time. For sheer scope, I recommend checking out the full patch notes as well.
Oh, and it will probably be Live by the time you read this, not the 28th like I thought.
Sitting in my chair, jaw slightly ajar, I could not help but start wondering if there comes a point at which even positive changes become too conspicuous. This patch feels like I just started haggling with a used car salesman and he immediately gave me the keys and said “Here, just take it and go.” Eyebrows and suspicious are raised in equal measure. These are not features Blizzard had planned to roll out at the start, like PvP; damn near everything is a concession based on (negative) feedback that apparently came to a great surprise to Jay “And Double It!” Wilson and crew. Should they be praised for listening to feedback or damned for releasing a game in such apparent need of repair?
Also… what does Blizzard know that we do not? Did they perhaps intend for Diablo 3 to hold everyone over until MoP’s launch, but the negative 2 million subs and the (assumed) precipitous drop in D3 player activity got them spooked? Why else roll out this magnitude of changes? I have no idea. All I do know is that this version of D3 I might be playing tonight is going to almost be a completely different game than the one I started playing four months ago.
And since I haven’t even reviewed Diablo 3 yet… I’m not sure which game to write about now.
Comparison Shopping
During my daily Dealzon (PC) browsing ritual, I came across this rather unfortunate side-by-side apples vs oranges comparison:
1 apple vs 36 oranges, most likely.
I already own GW2 and have no compunction about skipping TSW, both MMOs are going after very different sorts of players, etc etc, yes I know. But… just look at that picture for a second.
Dunno about you, but it gave me pause to consider the relative value of money and how in the world the average person chooses which product to buy when they see two things on a (virtual) shelf. Has $2.12 ever bought a bigger difference?
Just idle thoughts. Carry on.
In An Age 
One Year
Aug 25
Posted by Azuriel
A year ago today, I made my introductory In An Age post.
And it was all downhill from there.
The archives technically go back to December 2010, as I had imported my Player Vs Auction House posts over here when I moved from Blogspot to WordPress and broadened my scope. Looking back, the beginnings of that transition happened when I wrote OT: Firelands, Difficulty, and Cataclysmic Malaise back in March 2011, which remains one of my favorite posts… especially when I established the conjecture as fact nearly a year later.
That is somewhat of a joke.
Incidentally, up until my Guild Wars 2 prediction post last week, the Established Fact one back in January was the most-viewed page on the site. Posting the GW2 predictions and the TSW subscription numbers (#3 highest) in the same week did fun things to my graph:
Numbers removed to protect the innocent, e.g. my ego.
Not that I write for the pageviews or anything.
To be honest, this website is pretty much my sole outlet to talk about dubious patch notes, tone-deaf dev chats, post funny pictures, and wax philosophical about gaming in general. So if you were wondering whether I had some special Plans for next year and beyond, it is basically going to be exactly what you’ve got thus far.
I enjoy what I do here, and hopefully you do as well. But even if you don’t, well, stick around anyway and maybe you’ll learn something. Or possibly the other way around.
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By the way, the Guild Wars 2 headstart went live as I was typing this. My original intention was to jump on the Jade Quarry server because other bloggers seemed to be going there, but it was Full after approximately two minutes of being online. Four hours later, it appears to be merely High, but I wanted to go ahead and jump into the game. So if you want to watch me gleefully man the cannons in WvW, feel free to join me on the Northern Shiverpeaks server.
I picked that server because it was the next largest in terms of guilds that wasn’t Full, or an “unofficial RP server.” According to this page, it may end up being the #6 server in terms of players. I will have more to say about all this later, but suffice it to say, I did not want a repeat of my low-pop Recommended server ghost town WoW experience. We’ll see what happens.
Posted in Commentary, Guild Wars 2
6 Comments
Tags: Anniversary, Guild Wars 2, Jade Quarry, Northern Shiverpeaks, Server, Year One