Guild Wars: Eye of the North Sneak Peek

[WarBlade]

It's time for that pre-release bonus pack to do some good! 8)

GW:EN Sneak Peek Weekend is nigh upon us.

Now you will finally get to see the expansion. See you there!

[Havral]

I am so there.

And truth be told, the pre-release pack has done some good already. The bow is friggin' awesome.

Edit: Loading Beneath Lion's Arch now. Some five-hundred million gigs of it. Snore.

[WarBlade]

Well the preview event is now concluded. It seemed fairly popular and fairly successful from what I saw of people's reactions, with the only glaring subject of crticism being The Hall of Monuments. Players got to see a decent chunk of the content and it was good to see quite a turnout happen from within the guild, at least for the crossover quest at the start and those first few falterng hours. For those of you who missed the finale, it was a non-event. We just error 7'd out and logged back in at the start of various campaigns (Ascalon City in my case).

Thoughts? Impressions?

[Seijin]

...with the only glaring subject of crticism being The Hall of Monuments.

I only got two tapestries for Mune, so I have no idea how the HoM is supposed to work. I didn't know which to activate so I activated the "Fellowship" and "Valor" one's. I have no clue how many Heroes and Pets can be added to the Fellowship monument and maybe I should have read more closely before activating the Valor monument because its only for Eye of the North Weapons and I have no idea what weapons those are (Greens?).

I could care less about the Devotion shrine causing mini pets to become customized. I pretty much understand why they did that.

For those of you who missed the finale, it was a non-event. We just error 7'd out and logged back in at the start of various campaigns (Ascalon City in my case).

I didn't error 7. I went in with my ranger at about 11:20pm, got him across to EotN. Did a few things in the first zone to set myself up to get a few dire pets. Went out at about 11:45pm. And was in the first explorable zone until about 2:20.

Thoughts? Impressions?

Overall, I really enjoyed it over all the other campaigns. Not a lot of new skills to use, but I like some of the PvE only skills linked to the titles. The dungeon system is something different. I think they could make the icons on the map a bit larger.

The Norn Tournament quest gets on my nerves. There's usually one person along the way that I can't get by. And when I do get through all 6 opponents, the Norn guy just bashes my face in. Any good builds to do that quest with a Warrior?

Also, I did only two dungeons. I don't know how many were open during the event, but I got crap drops from those end chests. Both golds. One was a shield I could mod and give to a hero. The other wasn't even max damage daggers (6-16) and had req 13. If the req was lower I might not have minded too much considering they were chakrams and did slashing damage.

I did get a lot of crap drops from the locked chests (lots of grapes) considering they use lockpicks. But on the other hand, my rate of retaining lockpicks seemed a lot higher than in HM.

Some drops I might end up using:


Some other stuff I got or decided to try out due to messing around in EotN:

Mune, Vekk - Dire Polar Bears...Margrid, Jin - Dire Mountain Eagles
Kiy - Dire Mountain Eagle...Vekk - Dire Polar Bear

Mune r5 Norn

Actually started using my Victo's blade and I just love the vampiric mod now.
Started using ritualist hero...I never bothered with Razah, but decided to use Xandra and I found I like having a rit hero around.

I really can't wait for it to go live. Now the thing is, are we actually gonna game together or am I just gonna have to go do stuff on my own again? After this weekend, I'm figuring I have to go do stuff on my own as usual.

[Havral]

I never bothered with Razah, but decided to use Xandra and I found I like having a rit hero around.

Ugh. When I unlocked Xandra (And got the accompanying quest, Haunted) I decided to put her in my party (Again, she's a requirement for said quest). I checked her skill selection and noticed it was somewhat similar to my main rit's setup - Cruel was Daoshen, Ancient Rift - Xandra seemed to be a pocket Daoshen Bomber just like Reishen, and I love being a Daoshen Bomber.

In retrospect, I probably should have swapped her Weapon spell for Channelled Strike. Or, more accurately, I should have just forgotten about trying to keep her as a bomber entirely - She was a bleedin' liability, guv. She pops Daoshen, Rifts, runs in just like I do... And then just stands in the middle of the bloody melee getting pounded on. Somehow she seems to generate an ungodly amount of aggro from enemies - More than my character ever pulls (Having Mo in your character class acronym, even if the only monk skill you have is a repeatable ress, seems to be a giant sign to the mobs saying "Please, tear my eyelids out through my nose."

Basically, Xandar hit full dp before the rest of my party amassed one death total. On trash. For some reason, Xandar doesn't like to run away, and monks are reluctant to heal her even when the tanks are doing fine. In short, by the time I got to the real fighting, she was being two-shotted on every encounter.

Still, I'm glad she plops into the world at max level. That means I can just leave her out of the party selection and not have to work on levelling her.

[Seijin]

When I used her she didn't seem to grab that much aggro, but then again in this campaign I've been flagging my heroes behind me while I grab aggro and tank.

I've never used a rit hero before and had no idea what I should do with her, but here's what I was using and it seemed to work really well for me:
Template: OACjAqiMJOLTMm3sc+NrmBzLGA
Essence Strike
Splinter Weapon
Ancestors' Rage
Bloodsong
Pain
Painful Bond
Ritual Lord (E)
Flesh of My Flesh

Spawning 8+1
Communing 10+1
Channeling 12+2+1

If you want energy management you could take out Ritual Lord and use Offering of Spirit or Signet of Spirits, or take out Painful Bond and use Spirit Siphon. I never really had a big problem with her and her energy though.

[Hawkmoon]

I really can't wait for it to go live. Now the thing is, are we actually gonna game together or am I just gonna have to go do stuff on my own again? After this weekend, I'm figuring I have to go do stuff on my own as usual.

I'd love to game together - without the excuse of a variant team, even!

I'd be more than happy to start at the beginning of GW:EN, and just work our slow way through the story line. Of course, that means you'd have to be willing to put up with my limited playing time.

[WarBlade]

I really can't wait for it to go live. Now the thing is, are we actually gonna game together or am I just gonna have to go do stuff on my own again? After this weekend, I'm figuring I have to go do stuff on my own as usual.

If I have one criticism about this guild lately it's that there is room for people to be more proactive in jacking up groups. We have a lot of "wait and see if I get invited" going on I think. As for me I played a fair bit along side Jude, sometimes with Mucco and Zero, one dungeon crawl with a 6-player/2-hero AB/RB mixed group and a fun little excursion with a tired Hawkmoon. The parties are there, but the players have to make them happen.

Xandra... Yeah, Ritualist heroes aren't the easiest things to get working properly. They don't handle bundles that well, although backline support Ritualists can be set to passive, which helps a lot with that. Also look to the Weapon Spells for something that they can do better than others. Now that you've had the chance to see the Destroyer of Thoughts' skill bar you might also see a precedent for untrippable buffs.

[Seijin]

If I have one criticism about this guild lately it's that there is room for people to be more proactive in jacking up groups. We have a lot of "wait and see if I get invited" going on I think. As for me I played a fair bit along side Jude, sometimes with Mucco and Zero, one dungeon crawl with a 6-player/2-hero AB/RB mixed group and a fun little excursion with a tired Hawkmoon. The parties are there, but the players have to make them happen.

Ok, so when I log on and ask what people are up to, if anyone wants company/help and stuff like that to get an idea of what's going on and get no response a majority of the time, what the hell am I supposed to do? I'm not gonna wait an hour for a response. I'm gonna go do what I want. I could spam chat, but I'm not like that. After a while I'm gonna stop asking. So its not me "waiting" to be invited. I ask and no one responds. That's f'd up. Not that anyone's noticed, but I don't even say anything when I log on anymore. If no one is gonna listen and answer, I'm not gonna keep talking.

[Lurker Wyrm]

This has been the case with RB ever since the game was released. People are usually already in the middle of something, or absorbed in what they're doing and so don't notice someone signing on, or afk, or whatever else, and if they do notice there's usually a "gimmie 10-15 minutes to finish this and I'll go with you" which turns into about a half hour wait, followed by another 10-30 min of planning. After a while it gets discouraging so people don't ask anymore and then a few months later someone complains that no one's grouping anymore. That's why I've been a proponent of using out-of-game messages to get players. Unfortunately, nobody seems to want to bother with them so it never happens (even though it works, just ask SF, Fox and Jude how many times I've wrangled them in for stuff using aim/msn).

As to GW:EN... if I can pick it up for $30 or lower I'll get it, but I refuse on principle to pay $40 for an expansion.