There WAS one right? I've never played Guild Wars 1 and I have relative experience with some MMO type games and I've played Diablo 3 a lot when it came out. Yet a lot of the mechanics, menus and whatnot in Guild Wars 2 seem completely alien and strange to me.

The combat, while heralded as a great mix of action and MMO baffled me. Do you still have to target things with a mouse? When I'm near an enemy or something is attacking me it seems to be a dice roll at this point if I attack just once or if my guy will revert to auto attacking. Sometimes he doesn even aim at the enemy who's standing directly behind me. After I think 2 hours of gameplay I realized that each type of weapon has it's own skillset. Imagine my surprise as I switched from a single hammer on my guardian to a two handed longsword and started hitting 2 for my healing aura strike and my guy just stood there.

I'm sure with time I'll get used to everything but so far it hasn't been extremely noobie friendly despite all the tool tips that pop up everywhere.

The tutorial (or lack thereof) is my one gripe with the game. If you haven't played an MMO before, things can be a little rough in the beginning. Have you read the game manual yet?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/manual/

Not sure if it'll help, but you might find some interesting stuff in there.

@eternalrift: I actually skimmed it before just to look at classes and races but I'm actually going to have to dedicate some time to studying it. At some point I was level 4 and the next "story" part of my adventure was level 8 and I was really at a loss as to what I'm supposed to do. The creatures in the wilderness give tiny amounts of xp and there didn't seem to be any random quests. I've figured out that you're supposed to look for those heart shaped instances on the map as they give good experience. I mean at least I think thats the only viable alternate way of gaining experience right? Are there dungeons?

Also how do you travel between areas - I mean like starter areas. I'm a Charr and one of my friends was Human - how would we meet up short of just walking towards one another?

Yeah, the starting areas aren't very helpful in guiding you as to what to do and how to level. From what i remember of the beta, at a certain point you kinda have to go to other races starting areas otherwise your level is way too low to progress in your own area. I was hoping they'd fix that.

As for moving to other starting areas, you have to find one of those portals, can't remember what they're called, but they're basically portals to each race's capital.

@eternalrift: I actually skimmed it before just to look at classes and races but I'm actually going to have to dedicate some time to studying it. At some point I was level 4 and the next "story" part of my adventure was level 8 and I was really at a loss as to what I'm supposed to do. The creatures in the wilderness give tiny amounts of xp and there didn't seem to be any random quests. I've figured out that you're supposed to look for those heart shaped instances on the map as they give good experience. I mean at least I think thats the only viable alternate way of gaining experience right? Are there dungeons?

Also how do you travel between areas - I mean like starter areas. I'm a Charr and one of my friends was Human - how would we meet up short of just walking towards one another?

@The_Laughing_Man: The thing is, it's not my first MMO. It's just all done kinda strange.

@Humanity: Dynamic events pop up all over the place, if you just run around or wait for an NPC to come up to you and ask for help. Those are the equivalent of typical quests.

Exploring, discovering waypoints, landmarks and vista's also give you a pretty significant chunk of experience.

There are dungeons, but they don't come into it until the higher levels.

The tooltips and tutorial pop-ups are all we get. Not much, but I guess it's a sufficient starting point for myself. MMO-newbies will always have too much on their plate to begin with.

I'm a big fan of video tutorials. Anet should've produced such and put them on youtube, and linked to them in-game. As it is, fan-made video tutorial will have to do.

@Humanity: This is a pretty good guide at getting started. As @WinterSnowblind said, the main form of "quest" is the Dynamic Event, which will pop up at specific locations around the map.

There're no dedicated questing hubs, however the heart events are designed to guide you to the beginning of event chains. While the heart events do give you xp, they're more for directing you to correctly-leveled events; originally, the game didn't even have the hearts, but they were put in after people found it difficult to navigate around the world. Of course, events also occur at areas on the map without hearts, so you're encouraged to roam about and explore. The devs really want you to go "off the beaten trail" and one way you can see that is with bonus xp for mobs. The longer a mob is alive, the more bonus xp you get for killing it. So the creatures in hard-to-reach or secluded areas will award more xp for a kill.

Also, gathering crafting materials (ore, wood, etc.) gives xp as well, so you should grab your gathering equipment before you start out and pick up every node you come across.

You can get to other areas in two ways:

First way is through the mists: press H to open the Hero menu and open the bottom tab (the PvP tab). At the top there's a link that says something like "Enter the Heart of the Mists." This will send you to the Mists staging area, and then you can run across the map to the portal on the other side. Once through, there's an Asura gate that will take you to Lion's Arch. When you're in Lion's Arch, run north up the bridge and turn left to the northern cluster of Asura gates. From here you can reach any major city in the game and every starting zone.

Second way is through your main city: when you are in your starting zone, head to your city (should be the portal you start at after the intro sequence). Inside your city (the Black Citadel for you) there'll be an Asura gate to Lion's Arch.

BTW, the Asura gates are the purple swirly portals on the map.

My advice is to 99% an area where possible, saving the 100% reward for when you're much higher level (since it will be worth more gold)

Gravitating towards renown hearts, skill quests, vistas etc. will take you through all of an areas dynamic events as you go. Just go with the flow.

Double tap a direction or hit V to dodge.

Talk to a skill trainer at level 11 to access traits.

Join our guild :)

@Humanity said:

@The_Laughing_Man: The thing is, it's not my first MMO. It's just all done kinda strange.

And this is exactly why it's the most important MMO to come out since World of Warcraft: it tries to do stuff radically different. Try to abandon all that you know about this genre and approach it as a wholly new experience.

The focus of your adventures should be on exploring and doing events, not renown hearts and not the personal story.

To fix your targeting issue, there's an option in the menu that maintains your target in melee combat. That might help.

The hints/tool tips were helpful for me, but I played Guild Wars 1, and have a bit of experience with online/mmo-style games.

I will say that it's a lot easier for me to get into and play than WoW ever was. And since there isn't a monthly fee, I can fit it into my life when I have time - which is VERY appealing to me. I pay a one time price, and then I can play the game anytime I want. That sounds good to me! I don't mind the idea of paying for a game, but I do mind wasting my money on a monthly basis on game I don't have time to play. Plus the whole community quest/events make it far more entertaining. I can play with strangers without having to party or talk to them. Just follow the mob, kill stuff, and chill out.

When I get into a party, I feel obligated to play the game for long periods of time (I don't normally have a ton of free time for that). But just rolling with a mob of folks, I feel like I can pop out anytime without disrupting anyone else's experience. And I can break away and do my own thing if I lose interest in what the mob wants to do.