Darth Hater

Rocket boots are usable in all kinds of buildings and places where speeders are not. So for leveling they are absolutely fantastic. And they work while stealth! You can literally zip into instances stealth using rocket boots, pick up objective and get out. Leveling my new Shadow has made the leveling process so fast I can't even believe it (with 30% xp perks).

In fact leveling is so fast now that the war hero grind makes me vomit. I went from wanting to have one totally geared character in every imaginable way because I dislike alts in MMO's to wanting to play every character class for the story as quickly as possible then putting the game down for good.

So the LS will end up bleeding even more players out... lol...

Liked the Podcast chaps, its become my gym workout ipod piece, so appreciate it, finalyl got done with this one yesterday.

couple of things though,

1 adding the augment slots was in directo response to crit-crafting oranges being the best items, forcing people to grind and craft for the best in slot items. this also lead to that gear being the best for pretty much everythiing PVE/PVP, so they had to do something to a) balance that and b) stick to their ethos of "you can wear any custom gear for any content" theyve been switching too since launch, i do think they went a little far with it, (making relics agumentable which werent previously) but it makes sure people can easily be equal and it gives something else for crafters to make, as for the cost its 30k a slot? which is a couple of dailys.

2.legacy, i agree with some of the criticisms, i mean whoever thought of putting "character Perks" with the legacy page needs firing it doesnt fit, just make a charcater perks tab on the character sheet or the skill tree tab slam the EXP perks on there and your good to go. legacy should be for every character of your legacy. also putting things like repair driods, mail droids, the transports, crafting crits increase be character only is another retarded decision, why cant i just unlock them for my whole legacy..its what the systems supposed to be there for. the part i disagree with you is on stuff like the rocket boots, and the expensive things, these arent supposed to be short term items, theyre long term goals and once you get them you have them for every single character you make ..ever, 4.5million for rocket boots for 8 charcaters? add in charcter slots when they show up, it'll turn out to be a baragin! i know the MMO mentality these days is i want everything now and easily,  but it is good to have something to save and work towards down the line.

There is no Legacy System. There is a Credit Sink system. The only "legacy" on that system is the XP bar.

With respect to maintenance periods, it is far worse for players in Australia and the surrounding regions, where servers go down at 5pm Australian Eastern Standard Time, and don't come back up until possibly 9pm or 11pm.  For those who work or have school, that is a whole night of gaming gone.  Having that once a week on Tuesday night is bad enough, but when they schedule a second round of maintenance during the week (as they did this week gone) it becomes incredibly frustrating.

As a developer and IT admin, I can understand why you would bring all the servers down at once, I just wish they didn't always have to.

If you're on the bastion and have full battlemaster, you have no excuse for not trying ranked warzones.

Type this sometime in fleet

/general Forming a ranked warzone team, must have 1000 expertise and <teamspeak, mumble, ventrillo>, I need <4> more Damage, <2> more heals, and <2> more tanks.  Send tell with expertise, role, and class.

I see this *all the time*.  I also see people saying things like "Marauder 1300 expertise lf rwz"

You will get people, because the incentives in this game are so skewed that losing a ranked warzone is worth  more than winning a normal warzone.  And the best part is?  While you're waiting to get your team formed you can queue up and chat with new people and make new friends.

Even if you don't get the team together, just use your new friends to, well, see if any of them want to be on the next day and try again.  Add them to your friend list!

Jeese, you'd think  the people who play mmos are a bunch of anti-social nerds.  Just talk to other people in the game and make friends.  If your guild doesn't want to do rated warzones, join a new guild.  There's what, 4, 5, Imperial pvp guilds?  Even Ewok Pest Control has a rated warzone team, and they'll take anyone.  Even people with 0 expertise.

Augment slots are ok becuase it alows the player to wear pretty much anything they want, and still get geared out - but it is a huge money sink, so that is the down side for me.

Legacy: HUGE money sink...3/4's of the "perks" are bound to single character (lame) Insanly high prices (lame) and what happened to the "these will be available to players of certain levels or buy if you don't want to grind" because almost everything is $$$ and very little is "social X" or level X ...

Side note - bring some of this famed Rudy's to PAX Prime!!

When my old WoW guild went to blizzcon one of our guys shipped over his restaurants food in an iced box. Was delicious :P

you don't need a grp finder in GW2, Cam.  the game provides its own mechanic for grouping.  GW2 doesn't have an outdated questing model (as SWTOR does).   we can debate whether GW2's take on grouping is better/worse from a social perspective, but that's not what you said.  i happen to believe GW2's take on questing is pro social compared to SWTOR (and all the rest of the mmo based on this model) because you don't compete against other players while questing for mobs, quest items, resources, etc. 

the only place where they might need to think about some form of grp finder would be for the dungeons. 

well, you could consider the dynamic events as large scale open world group content.  the point being is that the game already has a multi player cooperative system.  i understand that this design will turn off hardcore progression raiders because it doesn't cater to their tightly controlled, well-oiled machine play style, but i wouldn't say that it hurts the social aspects of an mmo, or that it shouldn't be considered social activity.  i dispute your assertion that being social is defined solely as the ability to talk to one another.  besides, the game doesn't preclude the formation of traditional groups, nor does it segregate individual groups from the rest of the player base (except for the aforementioned dungeons).  i'm not really sure what you mean by the inability to "talk to each other" either.  you can talk to other people just like in any other mmo.   and this game HAS chat bubbles (unlike TOR). 

i don't know how many of the BWE's you played in or for how long, but my overall feeling having played in all 3 wasn't one of GW2 being a non social game.   GW2 is on a whole, a much tougher game to solo through than TOR (although not impossible) thus making it more attractive (although not mandatory) to group during leveling.  TOR's companion system+easy content+the absence of level normalization/scaleability+competitive model encouraged a more introverted play style. 

edit (7/31/12): GW2 actually does have a LFG tool in game.  it's a simple flagging system that also puts you on a public list (incl why you're looking for a group).

IMHO GW2 does not need a LFG, the events/quests rewards everyone that is helping and finding 4 people to run a Dungeon should not be that hard since you do not need a Healer and a Tank, all you need is +4 players, that is it.