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!

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!

The queues are insane! I don't mind waiting but the last couple of days I've been waiting for like 3 hours and when I did get in there was insane lag! Bit of a downer but I guess it says a lot for the popularity of the game!
 
I leveled a ranger to 10 and jumped in WvW, didn't get out until 30 and I must say I really enjoyed it. You're always at a disadvantage because of your lacking moveset but it does indeed bolster your resolve when you manage to get kills in small skirmishes! Now that I have my ultimate and other utilities unlocked I feel a bit more...shoved into a playstyle. Which is also fine but I liked the real basic moveset that basically forced you to think quicker than the higher ups.
 
You should check out the jumping puzzle in the north/west section of the Borderlands, I had some good fun figuring that one out and even more by waiting next to the waterfall and using Longbow skill 4 (push back!) to knock anyone thinking of jumping to the start of the puzzle off the cliff!  Good fun!

Yes the Queues are insane because every one and there dog plowed into the same server.

Now i am the wvw officer in a 130 man guild (40-60 on in prime time) we are also part of a alliance with a few ohter guilds with a lot more numbers. On Vabbi the server we are on the Q's at the most have hit 1 hour. It is all a question of what server you play on and if you want low Q's find a new server.

@MurderBunny: Yeah I know lower population servers will have shorter waits, that is just basic logic. No way I am going to leave Yak's Bend though, as I am not going to leave Lincoln Force plus all the other friends I have that are on this server. It's normally not a big deal as I can usually do other things while in the queue, it is just annoying on this character because I cannot really do anything besides sPvP while I wait, as per the rules I laid out in Part 1.

@TaliciaDragonsong: Could be the time that I'm playing, but I've always get in instantly on the Yak's Bend WvW. Go for the other borderlands at non-peak times (4-10 EST). Last week Darkhaven was instant all the time.

The queues are the main reason I would make more of a WvW/sPvP character than a straight WvW one, since you can still be queued for WvW while in sPvP. Skill point acquisition is so terrible though, since you only have the 12 or so in the 3 maps.

@pay928 said:

The queues are the main reason I would make more of a WvW/sPvP character than a straight WvW one, since you can still be queued for WvW while in sPvP. Skill point acquisition is so terrible though, since you only have the 12 or so in the 3 maps.

Well yeah I do play sPvP on this character, if you read the rules I made for myself in Part 1, sPvP is perfectly fine because no regular xp is gained from it. Sometimes I just don't feel like playing sPvP though, and that is when the queues are a major bummer.

Shin, i think you need one or two guys to roll world events with you for a few nights and get you to a decent level then you can try to hold your own in the fray.