In this post, I will be discussion my early impressions of leveling a character (specifically a Slyvari Ranger) from 2-80 in World vs. World, focusing on unlocking skills and busy servers.

I think the above pictures sums up my experience with this World vs. World character pretty well up to this point. There is some truly awesome stuff going on in WvW pretty much all the time, but I always seemed to be unequipped for it. Thus is one of the many perils of leveling a character just by doing WvW. It's not that I think the skill unlock system is a bad thing, quite the opposite. All I am saying is that unlocking greatsword skills by farming raptors isn't exactly helping the cause, and when I do get into altercations with other players, having 4-5 skills makes facing off against someone who has 10 is a bit of a challenge. However, it makes it all the more satisfying when you manage to win a 1-on-1 with nothing but your auto-attack and heal.

The best part of unlocking skills this way though is that things are always getting better, and never getting worse. Once I unlock something, I have it forever and never have to worry about not having it again (assuming I have that weapon equipped of course). This was only really a big deal for the first few levels though, and now that I have all of my longbow and sword/warhorn skills unlocked, I really don't need to worry about farming mobs anymore. I have to worry about something completely unrelated, the dreaded queue.

Apparently Guild Wars 2 is a popular game, but first I didn't think that queues would be a big deal. The first few times I went to go play some WvW on this character, there was a least one Borderlands area I could get into without having to wait, or at least with a minimal wait. However, now that battles have changed from 24 hours to one week, it seems like more people are jumping in to take on other servers. Even during the middle of the day on weekdays, you will still stumble upon a queue. Forget about the weekends. Last night, when the matchups reset, I ended up waiting just under 2 hours to get into a borderlands, and not even our own. Hopefully once the game settles in more, these waits will not be as bad. Anet also mentioned that queues for WvW are currently bugged, so hopefully that gets fixed as well. These waits are the number one thing preventing me from jumping on this character more, as I am currently level 9 and pretty much have the area where you spawn after the tutorial memorized, from the lay of the land to the order the NPCs say their little quips. If you see me on Shin Wanderer and I'm not in WvW, stop by and say hello, because that is where I'll be.

My next post will probably come sooner rather than later, as I take you through the Eternal Battleground Jumping Puzzle and me finally getting into some action with guildies. Until next time, see you on the battlefield, and all glory to Yak's Bend!