worth it for a brand new player

hello everyone,

I am really looking forward to GW2 more than anything else right now (except D3 if its ever released).

I was always playing different mmos and never got around to GW; but now i have some free time and no other games to play.

I was planning on purchasing GW to prep myself for some game mechanics that will carry over to GW2 as well as familiarize myself with lore and characters.......... so my questions are these:

is it worth it for me to start now; or will i just be surrounded by bots stealing everything in site. poor and under geared?

any good guide on these collectibles/collector guides? i am still a bit confused by this

also kits..........|||1) The game is instanced, so you won't see bots while you play. Likewise, only those people who join your team in town will be with you in instances.

2) You catch up quickly to veterans, in terms of being able to play with them. You get to endgame fairly quick due to the lack of grind to slow you down. What takes long is purely optional stuff like titles, elite armors, etc.

3) I barely used collector stuff, so I can't help you there. Basically, it's an alternative (cheaper) way to get items, but meh.

4) ID kits and salvage kits basically turn stuff you find into parts you can use to build armors. If anything says *not identified*, identify it, it might reveal some mods you can extract using salvage kids. Otherwise, salvage kids will extract materials. You then use materials and mods to make armors etc. Alternatively, you can just buy what you need, and avoid the trouble. Rule of thumb, ID everything after the tutorial area. And learn the prices of good runes / mods so you can sell those instead of merching them.|||If you're just starting, it also depends on where you start. Factions is much faster, and a bit more intense, but it has some good tutorials as you roll along.

Nightfall has a more laid back approach, and it's a great place to start because you get heros, customizeable henchmen right from the get go.

Problem though, you need to unlock skills (meaning as you buy skills for yourself, your account gains these skills for use with heros, and by buying tomes, you can get the skills for cheaper for other charas.) give weapons, and give runes to said heros.

Otherwise you can just use henchmen, preequipped partners you can use while questing or traveling.



Something important to note, while there will be SOME game mechanics that carry over, the way the skills are used, and the limit of skills, there will be some drastic changes between GW1 and GW2. Also, GW2 will be a persistant world, with various servers to log into, not unlike how WoW does things.

As far as bots go, anet just did a mass banning on wed, but we'll see how long that lasts and how it continues to go.|||You can buy the trilogy and expansion for the price of a 12 pack of beer, so there isn't much to lose by giving it a whirl.|||Prophecies is a slow slooow place to start. But if you start elsewhere, most of Prophecies will be too easy by the time you reach it. The three campaigns are fairly independent of each other story-wise. EotN makes more sense if you complete Prophecies first.

I'd say Nightfall is the best place to start. More people there too.|||Collector weapons aren't worth the effort at this point in the game. Players will likely sell or give you random greens cheap enough. - You'll lack skills for heroes, but they're still better than henchman so you'll want them as soon as possible.

Nightfall has the best all around starting area. Istan has the most involved story line, a lot of interesting side quests, Hero skill trainers, reward items, etc. It isn't near as speedy as Factions, but no where near the snails pace of Prophecies.

Factions speeds you up to 20 pretty quickly, and plunks you vs Afflicted early on, which explode when they die. That tends to be rough for new players using melee characters. The missions bonuses are all timed based which is another issue. Kaineng city is possibly the ugliest area in any modern mmo.

Prophecies is much, much slower paced. You get skills slower, you don't get max armor/weapons until 4/5ths of the game is over. Your skill choice is mostly pre-determined by the skill quests. This was always a huge annoyance for me. However, it's very easy on new players, and has the prettiest landscape by far.