Ding 30! (GW2)

Yesterday I hit level 30 in Guild Wars 2. I'm a bit slower than a lot of people I've been following through blogs but I've been soaking up everything and taking my sweet time. Where's the rush? I don't really know what all is ahead as far as endgame goes. What appeals to me is that it isn't going to just be some big gear grind, I look forward to hitting the cap eventually, by then I think I'll work on a mesmer for my next character to play up.

I've been playing around with my graphic settings and realized I could run the game with the settings turned up a bit. I was showing my brother the game last night and he was really impressed, I have hopes my brothers might play it too, plus the face it runs decently on different specs is a bonus. Right now I think I've found a decent balance.  I'm happy you can do so much tweaking to get the game to run well and still look halfway decent, especially on Dire's machine which is a good bit older than mine.

Upon hitting level 30 I gained the ability to pick out an elite skill, I had enough points saved up to pick two actually. These are pretty handy, some nice utility and cost 10 points each, then I get to pick another really nice one which costs 30 points (ouch!). I'm working on getting up enough skill points for that. I like the fact you can swap these skills out on the fly, with the addition to different weapons, the classes can play in many different ways. I'm really enjoying the longbow and a 2h sword for my main weapons. As for a pet, I play mostly with arctodus as my tanking pet and I swap others around on the side. I recently found the jungle spider makes a great pet for events too, it has an AoE poison spell, so I've been playing around with that a bit too.

I had put off my storyline quest for a few days, almost forgetting about it and so the last few days I've been working on it a bit trying to catch it up. There have been some humorous bits and I am enjoying it. I advise doing it as you level, you get some nice level appropriate rewards for it, I recieved a nice bow that still makes for a good appearance item, even though I've exceeded the level.

I have to say that playing GW2 makes it harder to want to log in to my other games. The way the world works, the way it entices people to work together. I always find myself wanting to see people wherever I go, it enhances the world, something that I haven't felt in my other games in a long time. It is hard to leave that type of play and go back to my games where everyone is always competing, fussing over nodes, or even not playing with other people because adding more takes away from your own xp or just slows you down in general.

I was reading a post on the EQ2 forums about someone who wanted to power-level his son over a double xp weekend, he had many guild members ask to join but he turned them away because it just takes longer as the xp splits and makes it all that much slower. While you can still ignore that bit and group with friends and guild members it still doesn't make some people want to add more people if they get less out of a general grouping session (or power leveling session). I guess for me it is a vacation away from all of that stuff, I don't miss it.

I also think another thing with GW2 clicking, is finding a class that you mesh with. While on my first go I liked the game well enough with my necro, but after trying my ranger I absolutely loved it. Sure it isn't curing cancer, but what game is, lol. I'm enjoying the changes GW2 brings to the table, I don't want MMORPG games to change so much that we can't even recognize what they are anymore. I think this game brings in a good balance to an old setting.

Safe adventures!