It's like I said, the only reason that Ele is unpopular I think is because it's kind of boring. We've had mages since Gandalf, so it's overly familiar and not too fantastic any more. "A guy that can shoot fireballs from his palms? *yawn*" I think we'll see more interest in the Mesmer, since that's a non-standard magic profession, if magic professions are your bag.
Hm, that's a rather interesting occurence, because on GW2G the Ele fares much better.
Elementalist 15.07%
Engineer 17.98%
Guardian 16.10%
Necromancer 10.62%
Ranger 13.01%
Thief 13.87%
Warrior 13.36%
Total Number of Votes : 584
As for me, I will be playing an Engineer. I'm one of those who were waiting for the third adventurer to be revealed and unless the Mesmer totally blows my mind I'll most probably stick with my choice.
Yeah, I saw. But consider this: Guru is much less mainstream than MMORPG, it's staffed by the old-school, those of Guild Wars 1, who can't accept that things have changed since the original Guild Wars. They hate on the professions which are the most different from Guild Wars 1 standard, and they praise the professions which are the most similar. But even there you have an undercurrent which supports the Engineer.
The new people whov'e been flooding into Guru have been incredibly supportive of the Engineer and they've been smacking down some of the nonsense, there. Some have even vehemently supported the more high-tech look of the mines (those posts got deleted though, so I guess some mod or other didn't agree with 'em). But the thing is is that due to the ... entrenched ... nature of Guru, you're still going to have more Guild Wars 1 fans there than anything.
That's what's going to effect the ratings there. Guru people seem to, by and large, want Guild Wars 2 to be exactly like Guild Wars 1 and attack anything that deviates with large amounts of vitriol, this even accounts for the mods, too, the mods do that as well. Hang around there long enough and you'll see it. It's like many of them are stuck in the past, which is why I suppose that people who didn't fetishise the original Guild Wars as much have decided to look for other places to talk about Guild Wars 2 at.
Another thing about Guru is that they're into the whole magic thing, they're even worse than the worst nutters we have here, I won't name names but we have a few. So they pick the magic classes above all others, they love healers, they love flinging spells... so hey, the Elementalist and Guardian are near the top. Considering Guru, this isn't a big surprise. I don't think the vast majority of Guru values novelty.
When the final profession polls occur here on MMORPG, I suspect that the order will look something like this:
Engineer
Mesmer
Necromancer
Thief
Guardian
Ranger
Warrior
Elementalist
The reason for this is because this represents the more interesting, clever ideas we've seen to the least so, and I think that's the way it's going to stay. I think there's going to be a surge in more 'standard' classes though, so I think that in the game we'll see the warrior rise way up that list, but I don't think even in game that the professions played are going to be much different. Consider on WoW the popularity of the shaman and druid classes, they're very popular and almost the most commonly played. And this is because those are the most unique classes that WoW has to offer.
It's always the same, people tend to pick the thing they've not played too much before, just to see how it is. And if it's fun they stick with it.
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Oh and ultimately, I feel that the Mesmer will be a very difficult profession to get to grips with, so once the game is out I wouldn't be surprised if it drops below Necromancer.
The order for the first few months of the game live I suspect will look like this:
Engineer
Thief
Necromancer
Warrior
Mesmer
Ranger
Guardian
Elementalist
I base this on my past observations of games. For example: The love of the crowd control class who can deal with just about anything, the rogue character, and the 'dark/emo' sort of character, as those tend to be the most popular top three. Then you get warrior, because warriors are easy to play, that'll be so high up purely on that merit. The Mesmer will hold its position there due to a mix of it being hard to play, but still being well loved by a sizeable amount of players regardless. The Ranger is old hat, so people will eventually lose interest in it more and more, it might even drop below Guardian. Guardian will be just for a very vocal minority who like healers and hope that they can get that sort of play with the Guardian. And the Elementalist is... well, everyone's done that, so it probably won't pick up much steam other than with those who absolutely must play a magic DPS class with big booms.
Uhm, I'm sorry, but you're just making generalizations about a really large number of people and I can't agree with some of your points. I am one of the original GW1 fans and I've been hanging around there for a year and a half. So I'm clearly an exemption to your "rule". And I'm definitely not the only one. Actually, even on Guru the majority of the players like the Engineer or are neutral to the class and I can't understand how you've come to know who's a GW1 fan and who isn't(out of those 800 people that voted on the Love it/hate it/In between poll there). However, liking a class, doesn't mean it will be your main/favorite. Anyway, I plan to try them all out sooner or later.
About the other classes... I think the Elementalist will be still rather popular, there are plenty of people that love their mages. I really can't make predictions about the spread of the professions, I only know one thing: there will be plenty thieves taking a break on the ground come release day. :P The Engineer may be rather complex, but we don't know if he'll be nearly as fragile as the Thief, so maybe people that pick that class up will stick to it. It's hard to speculate anything about the Mesmer, since we don't know about any of the mechanics yet. We only know that it will be the most complex class, according to Arenanet.
i was going to play a thief until i saw the video showing that the stealth (hide) skill has a short timer... if i cant have stealth available until manually cancelled like WoW's rogue, im not interested in the sneaky class.... and and engineer class sounds interesting but in a fantasy themed game i think ill stick with archer or mage/necro (if the last unveiled class is mesmer then i would debate between archer and mesmer)
edit: i hope is ritualist and not mesmer, but yea, any of the 2 are great
I'm just talking about my own observations and experiences over the years, drawing an opinion based upon that, I thought it was clear that I was doing that and I apologise if my opinion, my final analysis, and my simple estimate as to how things will turn out left you butthurt. Again, I find that the loudest are the minority, and they're the people you usually find on forums, but in the game itself things turn out differently.
If you check the stats of a number of games (as I have) then you'll find that my analysis is fairly spot on. The profession that always turns out to be the most popular is the one that'll be the most survivable in solo play, tthat looks to me to be the Engineer, with turrets, and ways to control what's happening on the battlefield. Even if you're caught alone out in the middle of nowhere as an Engineer, it looks like you'll have myriad ways to command the battlefield, shape it to your advantage, and even hold everyone down whilst you flee, if necessary.
That approach to gameplay is valued, and even if you look at games where you can put your own sorts of characters together, the most popular builds are those which are survivable without the aid of others. In Champions Online, the most common sort of build was one which could handle a broad range of situations better than any other, both combat and being able to escape unscathed if necessary. People enjoy feeling safe in a combat situation, and there's a number of tools that the Engineer has which can keep them safe.
Look at how popular a travel power teleportation is in Champions Online, again, all about keeping the player safe. People want to enjoy danger but they don't want to die, so having a bunch of ways to not only fight, but to also escape alive if necessary is extremely valuable to them. They want to experience danger and the thrill of battle, but most gamers don't want to be dying all the time, so the profession that dies the least will probably be the most popular. This is a fair observation based upon a bunch of games I've played. And a lot of the Engineer's bags of tricks amount to a great deal of versatility and survivability.
So whilst you tihnk that a large number of people won't agree with my points, my personal experiences disagree with you, I think that only a very vocal minority will disagree. When the game is launched and we can see which professions turn out to be hte most popular, we'll find out which person has the most correct viewpoint, won't we? But look at other games with mages. D&D Online? The mage and healer classes are the least popular. Champions Online? The mage and healer classes are the least popular. LOTRO? The mage and healer classes are the least popular. No one really enjoys playing them except for this vocal minority.
I know this by how many of them I've seen around, and for every 100 survivable characters I saw in Champions Online, I saw maybe 1 Celestial build, or one that was meant to be purely a healer, in CO you really need to be able to take care of yourself, even in large boss fights, and the Celestial build can't do that, so people choose other builds which have a bit of healing but can also deal out meaty DPS in a pinch, which, in turn, is similar to the shaman and druid from WoW, which are very popular classes there. If you think about what I'm saying instead of getting angry, it makes a lot of sense.
I'm not talking about intelligent choices, I'm not talking about your favourite choices, I'm talking about the way the profession selections are going to shape up with the masses, based on how things have gone with previous games.
As for how I know who's a GW1 fan, this much is obvious, and I don't need to be a Sherlock to figure it out. I mean, really... you're asking me this? This is where I think you're being a bit foolish. Okay, question! Where did the most potion bashing occur? Here? Noap. On a number of other non-Guru community sites? Noap. Where? Guru. The most potion bashing came from Guru, and there was a lot of it going on over there, the majority of the people there are Guild Wars 1 fans, and they hate consumables, they think it goes agains the 'Guild Wars way,' and thus they were very angry and vocal in their opposition to it.
In fact, I learned about this because a number of threads were linked and talked about in another community, with people wondering why the Guru people were being so frothingly insane about this. The implementation of potions seemed perfectly reasonable to me, and them, but over on Guru you had people going batshit insane over it. And to say it again, that was the only place on the Internet where people were so vehemently against potions, because nowhere else on the Internet will you find such a large conglomeration of people who're devoted to Guild Wars 1, and want Guild Wars 2 to be Guild Wars 1++ (which it clearly isn't and can never be). You might not like what I'm saying, here, but it's clearly the truth.
So how do I gauge whom the biggest Guild Wars 1 fans are? I pay attention. I just watched to see which community hated on potions the most. And yes, that was Guru. Frothing hatred it was, too. It's where all the Guild Wars fanaticists group together in their insecurities about how Guild Wars 2 is no longer their game. :P We have a few such people here, but it's nowhere near as bad as it is on Guru.
Anyway, I think that my post was just tended to be my personal analysis, and again, I'm sorry you felt so butthurt about it that you just had to attack me instead of providing your own analysis, which you could have done.
those classes look ultra sick, i'll be playing diablo 3, but im also getting gw2
my first class will be either the necromancer or the thief, so the chars i'll make will be in this order:
1) necromancer // thief
2) necromancer // thief
i dont know what a mesmer is, never played guild wars
so...
3) ranger // mesmer (maybe, we'll see)
4) ranger // mesmer
i wish there was a class simliar to the warrior, but more samurai-style with katana... and more agility than power/defense, i'd love such a meele-sword class, but well...
Originally posted by DayFly DEFINITELY necromancer/thief those classes look ultra sick, i'll be playing diablo 3, but im also getting gw2 my first class will be either the necromancer or the thief, so the chars i'll make will be in this order:
1) necromancer // thief 2) necromancer // thief
i dont know what a mesmer is, never played guild wars so... 3) ranger // mesmer (maybe, we'll see) 4) ranger // mesmer
i wish there was a class simliar to the warrior, but more samurai-style with katana... and more agility than power/defense, i'd love such a meele-sword class, but well... necro+thief are awesome enough : )
I'll certainly have a necromancer. They are too cool to not. But my main will probably be a mesmer.
Think of a mesmer as a mentalist or illusionist-type class, for the most part. They conjure illusions to mess with enemies, but they can also do things to control the mind in ways that the enemy doesn't want. There are spells to hurt an enemy each time they attack, to steal their skills and use them yourself, to give them massive cooldowns if they use a certain skill, stuff like that.
Mesmers are all about control, and they are pretty complicated, so while they are iconic and largely loved, they are not terribly common to see, compared to other classes.
Edit:
And based on the information I've seen, you'll be able to make a warrior just like that, though it might be hard to find a katana in Tyria. You might have to wait for an expansion.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
thank you very much for your reply and all the informations !
im pretty new to all the guild wars staff, diablo , but if you're excited about a game (gw2) you'll learn quick ! that'll be the case for me i guess : )
it truly looks awesome, and.. if thats a mesmer, nice ! sounds great, and sounds like a lot of fun
then i'll guess it'll be:
1) necromancer/thief
2) necromancer/thief
3-5) mesmer/ranger/sword-type (or another class)
they all seem great in their own way, hard to decide, but now im pretty sure number 3's gonna be a mesmer xD
hard to decide which ones gonna be my main tho, guess i'll have to wait and actually play the game to decide : P
btw in another forum i read that you'll have a maximum of character slots and that this was an issue in earlier guild wars games, meaning there were like 5 classes for example, but you could only create 4 chars
and if you wanted to create more chars, you had to purchase additional character slots
did they announce that it'll be the same for gw2? cant you just simply delete 1 character? how many character slots do you think we'll get?
btw in another forum i read that you'll have a maximum of character slots and that this was an issue in earlier guild wars games, meaning there were like 5 classes for example, but you could only create 4 chars
and if you wanted to create more chars, you had to purchase additional character slots
did they announce that it'll be the same for gw2? cant you just simply delete 1 character? how many character slots do you think we'll get?
thanks in advance !!
In the original GW the maximum character slots were 4 and you had 6 classes, although there existed a dual class system. The option to buy slots wasn't added until the release of Factions (2006), I believe. No one was forced to buy character slots. You could delete a character at any time you wanted, so you don't have to worry about that. However, people wanted to create more characters without deleting their old ones. Characters received minipets as birthday gifts, and the minipets are different depending on what year your character has turned. Of course, this means that one player couldn't have had more than 4 characters that have been created during 2005 on one account due to the only 4 available character slots. (I have only 2 and I still regret deleting my Mesmer in order to create an Elementalist that I didn't really play and must have deleted at some point.). This pretty much means that those are the first characters to receive the "new" minipets, since they reach that age first and those minipets are really expensive, because they are quite rare. Another reason for people wanting to buy a character slot is to use the new character as a mule. Your storage (bank) was shared between all the characters on your account, however the space was limited. And purchasing a character slot was cheaper than purchasing an additional storage panel.I hope that clarifies things a bit, about why people prefered to buy character slots, instead of deleting an old character and creating a new one.
As far as GW2 is concerned - currently, we do not know how many character slots will be available in the game upon release. Everything at the moment is pure speculation. However, you will be able to delete your characters if you wish so. About how many character slots we'll get, my bet is no less than 5. I personally plan on having at least 8 characters (one for each class).
btw in another forum i read that you'll have a maximum of character slots and that this was an issue in earlier guild wars games, meaning there were like 5 classes for example, but you could only create 4 chars
and if you wanted to create more chars, you had to purchase additional character slots
did they announce that it'll be the same for gw2? cant you just simply delete 1 character? how many character slots do you think we'll get?
thanks in advance !!
In the original GW the maximum character slots were 4 and you had 6 classes, although there existed a dual class system. The option to buy slots wasn't added until the release of Factions (2006), I believe. No one was forced to buy character slots. You could delete a character at any time you wanted, so you don't have to worry about that. However, people wanted to create more characters without deleting their old ones. Characters received minipets as birthday gifts, and the minipets are different depending on what year your character has turned. Of course, this means that one player couldn't have had more than 4 characters that have been created during 2005 on one account due to the only 4 available character slots. (I have only 2 and I still regret deleting my Mesmer in order to create an Elementalist that I didn't really play and must have deleted at some point.). This pretty much means that those are the first characters to receive the "new" minipets, since they reach that age first and those minipets are really expensive, because they are quite rare. Another reason for people wanting to buy a character slot is to use the new character as a mule. Your storage (bank) was shared between all the characters on your account, however the space was limited. And purchasing a character slot was cheaper than purchasing an additional storage panel.I hope that clarifies things a bit, about why people prefered to buy character slots, instead of deleting an old character and creating a new one.
As far as GW2 is concerned - currently, we do not know how many character slots will be available in the game upon release. Everything at the moment is pure speculation. However, you will be able to delete your characters if you wish so. About how many character slots we'll get, my bet is no less than 5. I personally plan on having at least 8 characters (one for each class).
Heh, I picked engineer as well. Didn't expect it to be tops just like that other guy.
Maybe the population is hungering for new class ideas more than expected.
That's basically what I figure. I think we actually need a new thread: "Why did you choose Engineer?" I'm curious to see whether my assumptions as to the nature of the very widespread popularity of the Engineer are correct or not.
The thing is is thouogh that anything can get old. Anything. Even "Crikey, I can shoot magic from me palms without any explanation, me! Cor, look at that! Dunno how I do it but s'a bit of a'ight innit?" gets extremely boring after the thousandth person who can shoot fire from their palms, and we've had people who can shoot fire from their palms since the earliest days of tabletop gaming.
I think that--by comparison--because clockpunk is a fresh concept, along with technological advancement in a fantasy setting, people are flocking to it just because it's a breath of fresh air. Many people who aren't hardcore fantasy nuts (who can subsist on the same old, same old forever and ever and ever) are excited by the class. I mean, I'm a fantasy fan myself, otherwise I wouldn't be here. But I read books, so I'm well aware that clockpunk is a subgenre of fantasy, and I find it thrilling to finally see that acknowledged by an MMORPG. I thought that it would continue to be book fodder for a long time to come.
I mean, sure, we've had steampunk. Every Asian RPG ever has done steampunk, with billowing steam stacks, blunderbusses, and airships. So that's nothing particularly new, either. But the engineer is a mix of clockpunk and alchemy, that's interesting. I can't really think of a place where we've ever seen that before.
What I'm getting at is that I think that the thematic nature of a person's choice is more important than we make it out to be. I think the reason people originally tried Mesmer in Guild Wars 1 was because it was a 'non-standard magic user' more than anyone else, they just wanted to have a playstyle, and moreover, a thematic experience which they hadn't been exposed to before. The Engineer is very thematically fresh for an MMORPG. Clockpunk, jump shots, glue guns... this isn't the stuff of MMORPGs. MMORPGs are usually more boring than that.
It's like Colin Johansen said - MMORPGs are usually about, hey, you swing your sword, you swing your sword again, and that's it. Or in the case of magic users, you throw your fireball, you throw your fireball again. That's great for those who like it. But just like the charr are so typically Guild Wars because they're just an idea you won't find anywhere else in gaming, the Engineer is typically Guild Wars too, because thematically there's just nothing else out there like it. You'll be shooting glue guns and doing jump shots. Hell, it'll get to the point where you might use jump shots when travelling just to look groovy.
"See that pillar up there? You normally have to jump to get on that. I'm going to jump shot and land on that!"
Not to mention that the Enigneers are going to bring completely new playstyle options to the field - they have stopping power with o chaotic variables. As an example of stopping power with a chaotic variable - a chaos spell. Magic tends to have chaotic variables, but the Engineer is absolutely about control. So... remember those shell mortars in the Shatterer fight? Who's more perfect to defend those than a group of Engineers? With nets, glue guns, and turrets, you can lock down and deal damage to approaching foes. And with further Engineer backup, you can have someone throwing grenades to deal with foes approaching on an area where you haven't laid out your defence yet. Or you could have engineers throwing down sets of five mines to keep something safe.
The Engineers are the people you'll have guarding stuff like that, a group of Engineers is going to be an impenetrable and this is going to make the Engineer as valuable as any magic class. Someone assaulting your fotress? Lock them down with no chaotic variables to consider! Glue guns, nets, mines, turrets! And this is something I think that the hardcore magic users are afraid of, since normally this is something that only magic users can do. You normally rely on magic users for defence. But here we're seeing a class which presents another option.
This is why I think the Engineer is being hated on by some magic fans, because it's a threat. It's like the whole healer thing, you used to have classes which were needed for certain roles, but Guild Wars 2 is breaking out of that mould and people don't like that at all. So you'll have magic users who're just like healing fans, they'll be throwing a tizzy over it. And really that's the only dissent and negativity you'll hear about the Engineer - coming from them. Since the Engineer is stealing their role and doing it with finesse and panache.
It also means that people who don't want to do the hand-wavey magic thing can have support. So you could have a self-sufficient group of charr with no magic users present at all. With Warriors, Thieves, and Engineers, you basically have all your bases covered. (Respectively - Blood, Ash, and Iron.) I can actually see a lot of charr groups doing that just for fun, to be self-sufficient without magic, just as the lore suggests, and thanks to the Engineer doing as well as any magic user can.
I think that this has been sitting in the back of the gamer psyche for a long time, now. People like fantasy MMORPGs, but they've wanted to break out of the magic theme. People can enjoy fantastic worlds without necessarily wanting to be exposed to massive amounts of hand-wavey magic. That's precisely what the charr and the Engineer profession represents, it's a way to be something different in a setting we're familiar with. And I think that at the end of the day it makes some players feel better about the character they're playing if they're more self-sufficient, rather than relying on aetherial magicks.
So what you're going to see is people who normally play Warriors or Rangers having a crack at the Engineer, since it opens a playstyle to them that they've never been able to embrace before, because thematically it's all been magic and they're not a fan of magic. Now I'm not speaking for myself here, because one of my characters is going to be a Mesmer, I'm going to try lots of things, I even plan on having a Sylvari, but I can understand this perspective and this is why my main is slowly shifting to charr Engineer.
It's basically about role-reversal without people having to go back on what they want. "I want to do the support role, but I don't want to be a hand-wavey mage." You have to wonder why WAR's engie was one of that game's most popular classes, by a margin, and the answer becomes obvious - because it's opening a door for people that they never had opened before. It's just as hame that the WAR Engineer isn't half as compelling or complex as the GW2 Engie seems to be, and that the content of WAR was lacking, and that the race choices were meh. If WAR had had the Skaven as an option, along with a more leshed out Engineer, and more content, then I would've been enthralled by WAR instead of being disinterested.
But that's what I'm learning to love about GW2 - it's everything WAR promised but wasn't. It's got a truly complex Engineer (yay~!), it's got truly intelligent beast races to play as who eschew magic and are responsible for that world's industrial revolution (subversions, yay~!), and ArenaNet claim that the reason it's been in development for so long is because they want the game to have enough content present to be able to compete with the likes of WoW/EQ II and all of the expansions those games have (yay~!).
It's just enthralling, really. The thing is is that I can understand seeing magic as something of a crutch in a fantasy setting, you're not doing so much yourselves, you're drawing on power put there by gods. Whereas the Engineer is entirely self-made - the materials for their weapons were mined and forged, conceived by brilliant minds, and put to use with intellect and strategy on the battlefield. There's no gods behind our victories, just trust in our comrades and the will to win.
So there you go.
Punk? Don't knock it, clock it, with a perfectly precise rocket launcher.
Comments
Yeah, I saw. But consider this: Guru is much less mainstream than MMORPG, it's staffed by the old-school, those of Guild Wars 1, who can't accept that things have changed since the original Guild Wars. They hate on the professions which are the most different from Guild Wars 1 standard, and they praise the professions which are the most similar. But even there you have an undercurrent which supports the Engineer.
The new people whov'e been flooding into Guru have been incredibly supportive of the Engineer and they've been smacking down some of the nonsense, there. Some have even vehemently supported the more high-tech look of the mines (those posts got deleted though, so I guess some mod or other didn't agree with 'em). But the thing is is that due to the ... entrenched ... nature of Guru, you're still going to have more Guild Wars 1 fans there than anything.
That's what's going to effect the ratings there. Guru people seem to, by and large, want Guild Wars 2 to be exactly like Guild Wars 1 and attack anything that deviates with large amounts of vitriol, this even accounts for the mods, too, the mods do that as well. Hang around there long enough and you'll see it. It's like many of them are stuck in the past, which is why I suppose that people who didn't fetishise the original Guild Wars as much have decided to look for other places to talk about Guild Wars 2 at.
Another thing about Guru is that they're into the whole magic thing, they're even worse than the worst nutters we have here, I won't name names but we have a few. So they pick the magic classes above all others, they love healers, they love flinging spells... so hey, the Elementalist and Guardian are near the top. Considering Guru, this isn't a big surprise. I don't think the vast majority of Guru values novelty.
When the final profession polls occur here on MMORPG, I suspect that the order will look something like this:
Engineer
Mesmer
Necromancer
Thief
Guardian
Ranger
Warrior
Elementalist
The reason for this is because this represents the more interesting, clever ideas we've seen to the least so, and I think that's the way it's going to stay. I think there's going to be a surge in more 'standard' classes though, so I think that in the game we'll see the warrior rise way up that list, but I don't think even in game that the professions played are going to be much different. Consider on WoW the popularity of the shaman and druid classes, they're very popular and almost the most commonly played. And this is because those are the most unique classes that WoW has to offer.
It's always the same, people tend to pick the thing they've not played too much before, just to see how it is. And if it's fun they stick with it.
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Oh and ultimately, I feel that the Mesmer will be a very difficult profession to get to grips with, so once the game is out I wouldn't be surprised if it drops below Necromancer.
The order for the first few months of the game live I suspect will look like this:
Engineer
Thief
Necromancer
Warrior
Mesmer
Ranger
Guardian
Elementalist
I base this on my past observations of games. For example: The love of the crowd control class who can deal with just about anything, the rogue character, and the 'dark/emo' sort of character, as those tend to be the most popular top three. Then you get warrior, because warriors are easy to play, that'll be so high up purely on that merit. The Mesmer will hold its position there due to a mix of it being hard to play, but still being well loved by a sizeable amount of players regardless. The Ranger is old hat, so people will eventually lose interest in it more and more, it might even drop below Guardian. Guardian will be just for a very vocal minority who like healers and hope that they can get that sort of play with the Guardian. And the Elementalist is... well, everyone's done that, so it probably won't pick up much steam other than with those who absolutely must play a magic DPS class with big booms.
Uhm, I'm sorry, but you're just making generalizations about a really large number of people and I can't agree with some of your points. I am one of the original GW1 fans and I've been hanging around there for a year and a half. So I'm clearly an exemption to your "rule". And I'm definitely not the only one. Actually, even on Guru the majority of the players like the Engineer or are neutral to the class and I can't understand how you've come to know who's a GW1 fan and who isn't(out of those 800 people that voted on the Love it/hate it/In between poll there). However, liking a class, doesn't mean it will be your main/favorite. Anyway, I plan to try them all out sooner or later.
About the other classes... I think the Elementalist will be still rather popular, there are plenty of people that love their mages. I really can't make predictions about the spread of the professions, I only know one thing: there will be plenty thieves taking a break on the ground come release day. :P The Engineer may be rather complex, but we don't know if he'll be nearly as fragile as the Thief, so maybe people that pick that class up will stick to it. It's hard to speculate anything about the Mesmer, since we don't know about any of the mechanics yet. We only know that it will be the most complex class, according to Arenanet.
i was going to play a thief until i saw the video showing that the stealth (hide) skill has a short timer... if i cant have stealth available until manually cancelled like WoW's rogue, im not interested in the sneaky class.... and and engineer class sounds interesting but in a fantasy themed game i think ill stick with archer or mage/necro (if the last unveiled class is mesmer then i would debate between archer and mesmer)
edit: i hope is ritualist and not mesmer, but yea, any of the 2 are great
@megera23
I'm just talking about my own observations and experiences over the years, drawing an opinion based upon that, I thought it was clear that I was doing that and I apologise if my opinion, my final analysis, and my simple estimate as to how things will turn out left you butthurt. Again, I find that the loudest are the minority, and they're the people you usually find on forums, but in the game itself things turn out differently.
If you check the stats of a number of games (as I have) then you'll find that my analysis is fairly spot on. The profession that always turns out to be the most popular is the one that'll be the most survivable in solo play, tthat looks to me to be the Engineer, with turrets, and ways to control what's happening on the battlefield. Even if you're caught alone out in the middle of nowhere as an Engineer, it looks like you'll have myriad ways to command the battlefield, shape it to your advantage, and even hold everyone down whilst you flee, if necessary.
That approach to gameplay is valued, and even if you look at games where you can put your own sorts of characters together, the most popular builds are those which are survivable without the aid of others. In Champions Online, the most common sort of build was one which could handle a broad range of situations better than any other, both combat and being able to escape unscathed if necessary. People enjoy feeling safe in a combat situation, and there's a number of tools that the Engineer has which can keep them safe.
Look at how popular a travel power teleportation is in Champions Online, again, all about keeping the player safe. People want to enjoy danger but they don't want to die, so having a bunch of ways to not only fight, but to also escape alive if necessary is extremely valuable to them. They want to experience danger and the thrill of battle, but most gamers don't want to be dying all the time, so the profession that dies the least will probably be the most popular. This is a fair observation based upon a bunch of games I've played. And a lot of the Engineer's bags of tricks amount to a great deal of versatility and survivability.
So whilst you tihnk that a large number of people won't agree with my points, my personal experiences disagree with you, I think that only a very vocal minority will disagree. When the game is launched and we can see which professions turn out to be hte most popular, we'll find out which person has the most correct viewpoint, won't we? But look at other games with mages. D&D Online? The mage and healer classes are the least popular. Champions Online? The mage and healer classes are the least popular. LOTRO? The mage and healer classes are the least popular. No one really enjoys playing them except for this vocal minority.
I know this by how many of them I've seen around, and for every 100 survivable characters I saw in Champions Online, I saw maybe 1 Celestial build, or one that was meant to be purely a healer, in CO you really need to be able to take care of yourself, even in large boss fights, and the Celestial build can't do that, so people choose other builds which have a bit of healing but can also deal out meaty DPS in a pinch, which, in turn, is similar to the shaman and druid from WoW, which are very popular classes there. If you think about what I'm saying instead of getting angry, it makes a lot of sense.
I'm not talking about intelligent choices, I'm not talking about your favourite choices, I'm talking about the way the profession selections are going to shape up with the masses, based on how things have gone with previous games.
As for how I know who's a GW1 fan, this much is obvious, and I don't need to be a Sherlock to figure it out. I mean, really... you're asking me this? This is where I think you're being a bit foolish. Okay, question! Where did the most potion bashing occur? Here? Noap. On a number of other non-Guru community sites? Noap. Where? Guru. The most potion bashing came from Guru, and there was a lot of it going on over there, the majority of the people there are Guild Wars 1 fans, and they hate consumables, they think it goes agains the 'Guild Wars way,' and thus they were very angry and vocal in their opposition to it.
In fact, I learned about this because a number of threads were linked and talked about in another community, with people wondering why the Guru people were being so frothingly insane about this. The implementation of potions seemed perfectly reasonable to me, and them, but over on Guru you had people going batshit insane over it. And to say it again, that was the only place on the Internet where people were so vehemently against potions, because nowhere else on the Internet will you find such a large conglomeration of people who're devoted to Guild Wars 1, and want Guild Wars 2 to be Guild Wars 1++ (which it clearly isn't and can never be). You might not like what I'm saying, here, but it's clearly the truth.
So how do I gauge whom the biggest Guild Wars 1 fans are? I pay attention. I just watched to see which community hated on potions the most. And yes, that was Guru. Frothing hatred it was, too. It's where all the Guild Wars fanaticists group together in their insecurities about how Guild Wars 2 is no longer their game. :P We have a few such people here, but it's nowhere near as bad as it is on Guru.
Anyway, I think that my post was just tended to be my personal analysis, and again, I'm sorry you felt so butthurt about it that you just had to attack me instead of providing your own analysis, which you could have done.
Why not? it kicks ass.
Meh.
Guardian!
DEFINITELY necromancer/thief
those classes look ultra sick, i'll be playing diablo 3, but im also getting gw2
my first class will be either the necromancer or the thief, so the chars i'll make will be in this order:
1) necromancer // thief
2) necromancer // thief
i dont know what a mesmer is, never played guild wars
so...
3) ranger // mesmer (maybe, we'll see)
4) ranger // mesmer
i wish there was a class simliar to the warrior, but more samurai-style with katana... and more agility than power/defense, i'd love such a meele-sword class, but well...
necro+thief are awesome enough : )
I'll certainly have a necromancer. They are too cool to not. But my main will probably be a mesmer.
Think of a mesmer as a mentalist or illusionist-type class, for the most part. They conjure illusions to mess with enemies, but they can also do things to control the mind in ways that the enemy doesn't want. There are spells to hurt an enemy each time they attack, to steal their skills and use them yourself, to give them massive cooldowns if they use a certain skill, stuff like that.
Mesmers are all about control, and they are pretty complicated, so while they are iconic and largely loved, they are not terribly common to see, compared to other classes.
Edit:
And based on the information I've seen, you'll be able to make a warrior just like that, though it might be hard to find a katana in Tyria. You might have to wait for an expansion.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
thank you very much for your reply and all the informations !
im pretty new to all the guild wars staff, diablo
, but if you're excited about a game (gw2) you'll learn quick ! that'll be the case for me i guess : )
it truly looks awesome, and.. if thats a mesmer, nice ! sounds great, and sounds like a lot of fun
then i'll guess it'll be:
1) necromancer/thief
2) necromancer/thief
3-5) mesmer/ranger/sword-type (or another class)
they all seem great in their own way, hard to decide, but now im pretty sure number 3's gonna be a mesmer xD
hard to decide which ones gonna be my main tho, guess i'll have to wait and actually play the game to decide : P
btw in another forum i read that you'll have a maximum of character slots and that this was an issue in earlier guild wars games, meaning there were like 5 classes for example, but you could only create 4 chars
and if you wanted to create more chars, you had to purchase additional character slots
did they announce that it'll be the same for gw2? cant you just simply delete 1 character? how many character slots do you think we'll get?
thanks in advance !!
In the original GW the maximum character slots were 4 and you had 6 classes, although there existed a dual class system. The option to buy slots wasn't added until the release of Factions (2006), I believe. No one was forced to buy character slots. You could delete a character at any time you wanted, so you don't have to worry about that. However, people wanted to create more characters without deleting their old ones. Characters received minipets as birthday gifts, and the minipets are different depending on what year your character has turned. Of course, this means that one player couldn't have had more than 4 characters that have been created during 2005 on one account due to the only 4 available character slots. (I have only 2 and I still regret deleting my Mesmer in order to create an Elementalist that I didn't really play and must have deleted at some point.). This pretty much means that those are the first characters to receive the "new" minipets, since they reach that age first and those minipets are really expensive, because they are quite rare. Another reason for people wanting to buy a character slot is to use the new character as a mule. Your storage (bank) was shared between all the characters on your account, however the space was limited. And purchasing a character slot was cheaper than purchasing an additional storage panel.I hope that clarifies things a bit, about why people prefered to buy character slots, instead of deleting an old character and creating a new one.
As far as GW2 is concerned - currently, we do not know how many character slots will be available in the game upon release. Everything at the moment is pure speculation. However, you will be able to delete your characters if you wish so. About how many character slots we'll get, my bet is no less than 5. I personally plan on having at least 8 characters (one for each class).
sorry for late reply,
thanks so much for your help, great post !!
thank you : )
Heh, I picked engineer as well. Didn't expect it to be tops just like that other guy.
Maybe the population is hungering for new class ideas more than expected.
That's basically what I figure. I think we actually need a new thread: "Why did you choose Engineer?" I'm curious to see whether my assumptions as to the nature of the very widespread popularity of the Engineer are correct or not.
The thing is is thouogh that anything can get old. Anything. Even "Crikey, I can shoot magic from me palms without any explanation, me! Cor, look at that! Dunno how I do it but s'a bit of a'ight innit?" gets extremely boring after the thousandth person who can shoot fire from their palms, and we've had people who can shoot fire from their palms since the earliest days of tabletop gaming.
I think that--by comparison--because clockpunk is a fresh concept, along with technological advancement in a fantasy setting, people are flocking to it just because it's a breath of fresh air. Many people who aren't hardcore fantasy nuts (who can subsist on the same old, same old forever and ever and ever) are excited by the class. I mean, I'm a fantasy fan myself, otherwise I wouldn't be here. But I read books, so I'm well aware that clockpunk is a subgenre of fantasy, and I find it thrilling to finally see that acknowledged by an MMORPG. I thought that it would continue to be book fodder for a long time to come.
I mean, sure, we've had steampunk. Every Asian RPG ever has done steampunk, with billowing steam stacks, blunderbusses, and airships. So that's nothing particularly new, either. But the engineer is a mix of clockpunk and alchemy, that's interesting. I can't really think of a place where we've ever seen that before.
What I'm getting at is that I think that the thematic nature of a person's choice is more important than we make it out to be. I think the reason people originally tried Mesmer in Guild Wars 1 was because it was a 'non-standard magic user' more than anyone else, they just wanted to have a playstyle, and moreover, a thematic experience which they hadn't been exposed to before. The Engineer is very thematically fresh for an MMORPG. Clockpunk, jump shots, glue guns... this isn't the stuff of MMORPGs. MMORPGs are usually more boring than that.
It's like Colin Johansen said - MMORPGs are usually about, hey, you swing your sword, you swing your sword again, and that's it. Or in the case of magic users, you throw your fireball, you throw your fireball again. That's great for those who like it. But just like the charr are so typically Guild Wars because they're just an idea you won't find anywhere else in gaming, the Engineer is typically Guild Wars too, because thematically there's just nothing else out there like it. You'll be shooting glue guns and doing jump shots. Hell, it'll get to the point where you might use jump shots when travelling just to look groovy.
"See that pillar up there? You normally have to jump to get on that. I'm going to jump shot and land on that!"
Not to mention that the Enigneers are going to bring completely new playstyle options to the field - they have stopping power with o chaotic variables. As an example of stopping power with a chaotic variable - a chaos spell. Magic tends to have chaotic variables, but the Engineer is absolutely about control. So... remember those shell mortars in the Shatterer fight? Who's more perfect to defend those than a group of Engineers? With nets, glue guns, and turrets, you can lock down and deal damage to approaching foes. And with further Engineer backup, you can have someone throwing grenades to deal with foes approaching on an area where you haven't laid out your defence yet. Or you could have engineers throwing down sets of five mines to keep something safe.
The Engineers are the people you'll have guarding stuff like that, a group of Engineers is going to be an impenetrable and this is going to make the Engineer as valuable as any magic class. Someone assaulting your fotress? Lock them down with no chaotic variables to consider! Glue guns, nets, mines, turrets! And this is something I think that the hardcore magic users are afraid of, since normally this is something that only magic users can do. You normally rely on magic users for defence. But here we're seeing a class which presents another option.
This is why I think the Engineer is being hated on by some magic fans, because it's a threat. It's like the whole healer thing, you used to have classes which were needed for certain roles, but Guild Wars 2 is breaking out of that mould and people don't like that at all. So you'll have magic users who're just like healing fans, they'll be throwing a tizzy over it. And really that's the only dissent and negativity you'll hear about the Engineer - coming from them. Since the Engineer is stealing their role and doing it with finesse and panache.
It also means that people who don't want to do the hand-wavey magic thing can have support. So you could have a self-sufficient group of charr with no magic users present at all. With Warriors, Thieves, and Engineers, you basically have all your bases covered. (Respectively - Blood, Ash, and Iron.) I can actually see a lot of charr groups doing that just for fun, to be self-sufficient without magic, just as the lore suggests, and thanks to the Engineer doing as well as any magic user can.
I think that this has been sitting in the back of the gamer psyche for a long time, now. People like fantasy MMORPGs, but they've wanted to break out of the magic theme. People can enjoy fantastic worlds without necessarily wanting to be exposed to massive amounts of hand-wavey magic. That's precisely what the charr and the Engineer profession represents, it's a way to be something different in a setting we're familiar with. And I think that at the end of the day it makes some players feel better about the character they're playing if they're more self-sufficient, rather than relying on aetherial magicks.
So what you're going to see is people who normally play Warriors or Rangers having a crack at the Engineer, since it opens a playstyle to them that they've never been able to embrace before, because thematically it's all been magic and they're not a fan of magic. Now I'm not speaking for myself here, because one of my characters is going to be a Mesmer, I'm going to try lots of things, I even plan on having a Sylvari, but I can understand this perspective and this is why my main is slowly shifting to charr Engineer.
It's basically about role-reversal without people having to go back on what they want. "I want to do the support role, but I don't want to be a hand-wavey mage." You have to wonder why WAR's engie was one of that game's most popular classes, by a margin, and the answer becomes obvious - because it's opening a door for people that they never had opened before. It's just as hame that the WAR Engineer isn't half as compelling or complex as the GW2 Engie seems to be, and that the content of WAR was lacking, and that the race choices were meh. If WAR had had the Skaven as an option, along with a more leshed out Engineer, and more content, then I would've been enthralled by WAR instead of being disinterested.
But that's what I'm learning to love about GW2 - it's everything WAR promised but wasn't. It's got a truly complex Engineer (yay~!), it's got truly intelligent beast races to play as who eschew magic and are responsible for that world's industrial revolution (subversions, yay~!), and ArenaNet claim that the reason it's been in development for so long is because they want the game to have enough content present to be able to compete with the likes of WoW/EQ II and all of the expansions those games have (yay~!).
It's just enthralling, really. The thing is is that I can understand seeing magic as something of a crutch in a fantasy setting, you're not doing so much yourselves, you're drawing on power put there by gods. Whereas the Engineer is entirely self-made - the materials for their weapons were mined and forged, conceived by brilliant minds, and put to use with intellect and strategy on the battlefield. There's no gods behind our victories, just trust in our comrades and the will to win.
So there you go.
Punk? Don't knock it, clock it, with a perfectly precise rocket launcher.
Never doing that again.
Elementalist, Engineer, and Guardian are the most interesting to me.