#4 What's it all about?

What is Guild Wars 2 all about? It's the continuation of Guild Wars 1. (ok smartass, what's it really all about).

Here's an intro video (ooooooh, video)( and those are kitties by the way, not cows)...

Looks pretty cool huh? Yeah, well those are level cap characters you just watched. You will be battling salamanders and bed bugs with a rusty spoon to start out with.

There is some great lore associated with Guild Wars. I recommend you read up on it for background and immersion. The strategy guide has an excellent section on it, or head over to the Lore section of the Wiki. 

We'll presume you have a PC, have purchased the game (somehow) and installed it. You will be asked to create an ArenaNet account (unless you've played Guild Wars 1), etc. For a video (oh yeah!) on basic gameplay, view the official Guild Wars 2 Game Play video. Oh wait, I can embed that one too. Hang on.... Or not. Never mind. You have to follow the link for that one. That video is embedded in the official on-line 'Manual'. Be sure to read through all of the remaining sections. It will step you through the character creation process, the interface, basic combat, your personal story, and competive combat.

Let's create a character shall we? Sure. But hang on just a sec, there are a couple of things you'll want to consider.

First and foremost, you'll need to select a 'World'. What is different about this in Guild Wars 2 is that once you select a world, you cannot create any characters on any other World. Yup. So if you want to play with friends, find out what World they selected if they've already created a character, or let your friends know what World you have selected for your character(s). At the outset you are limited to five (5) character slots. It should be noted that World transfers are available and currently free until the populations across Worlds come to some kind of equilibrium. Then the transfers will be fee based. 
Your first two tasks are to choose a race and a profession. Any race can be any profession, so you might want to choose  your profession first (in your mind, you can't do this during character creation), and then whatever you deem to be an appropriate race. Other MMOs describe professions as classes, but if you stop and think about it, the term Profession makes a lot of sense. You are trained in your profession and you can elect to pursue any profession. Perhaps you can think of yourself as a mercenary.

Available races (listed in ascending weirdness. Maybe.):

• Human (Why are there always humans?)
• Norn (Big, dumb humans. Well, dumber.)
• Sylvari (Plant people. They look like humans with leaves.)
• Charr (Feral Kitties!)
• Asura (Umm... ?... Dobby the house elf comes to mind.)

Note that unlike many other MMOs, there are no 'factions' or sides that war or are antagonistic towards each other. Everybody just gets along. All five races are friendly with each other, so you won't have your buddies segregated to one faction with you on the other unable to play or communicate with each other. This is way cool when you stop and think about it. What? So where does the 'Guild Wars' part of Guild Wars come in? Ah. Allow me to digress in a subsequent post about PvE, sPvP, and WvWvW that exists in Guild Wars 2 or, for a preview, check out this link. Let me just briefly say that whether you enjoy PvE or PvP or both, you can have your cake and eat it too as far as always being able to play with friends regardless.

Just so you know, characters of each race will start in a separate region of the world of Tyria. And while yes, it is possible for a brand new character of one race to travel to the starting area of another, if you do so, you will be missing out on your 'personal story'. My recommendation for friends who wish to play together from the start, is to select the same race. You can still choose to be different professions. In fact, I recommend it.

Available Professions:

• Warrior
• Guardian
• Engineer
• Thief
• Elementalist
• Ranger
• Necromancer
• Mesmer

One last item for you to ponder before I leave for the night. The classic roles of 'Tank', 'DPS', and 'Healer' don't apply in Guild Wars 2. Each profession can do all three to some extent. One of the advantages of this is that any group with any profession mix is viable. Yes, one or two may be tasked with healing or group buffs / support, or tanking or whatever, but it is not critical that you have a dedicated role. You can switch from one to another as easily as swapping out weapons. As I will cover soon, your skills depend largely on the weapons you wield (that's an oversimplication, but mostly true).

So, I'm going to take a break while you are considering all of this. In the next post I'll actually create a character and work through the in-game tutorial in which you play solo while learning some of the basic mechanics.

Ciao!