Group hug!

[squirrelfanatic]

Hey there!

One of the best things about Guild Wars 2 is - in my humble opinion - travelling through the world with its cities, forests, planes, tundras, eh... formerly sunken empires and enjoying the pretty views and lovely details while progressively growing your character. However, at some point some people might feel that one character is not enough (never enough...) and that looking at the same things over and over again in short order might be a tad boring. Or maybe these people would like a particular character to become more of a hero in less time. Who can blame them? I certainly can't. Can you? Hmmmm?

This thread is meant to be a place for people who would like to progress their characters less slowly and in a more interesting fashion than walking through the woods and killing boars by themselves would allow them to. After all, GW2 is an MMO, so somehow one could get the idea that the game is designed to be particularly fun to play together with others.

Anybody who would like to get together with like-minded people to group up can post in here, maybe with a date and time in mind and ask around if someone else would like to join in. Given the neat downscaling mechanisms there should be no shortage of players available.

Right. Let's kick this off with a short series of group events!

Tonight (16th Jan), I would like to take my level 22 Elementalist for a walk. Let's say around 7pm UK time, venue would be Lion's Arch at the Asuran Gate hub.

I haven't yet had time to look up awesome quest chains, but that would be something worth considering to do. I would assume that groups of players are a bit more durable than single meatbags, so we should be fine visiting areas around level 20-25, provided there are enough people at similar levels. Of course lower levels are also welcome, we can scale down accordingly.

After that, the idea would be to have such groups every (other) night until the weekend. Then, we could organise further / larger groups at a certain level to play together. Does that make sense?

I'll be around tonight (obviously), so just chat me up or post here if you want to join.

[squirrelfanatic]

Ok, this is live. Just ask in /g chat if you want to join on the run.

[Lippsy]

Thanks everyone it was a ton of fun tonight

[EPICTHEFAIL]

Dammit I missed it. Curse my refusal to visit forums more than twice per day. Any chance of it happening again?

[Zpinget]

Definitely. Nice to wander, chat and kill things.

[squirrelfanatic]

Yeah, this wasn't a one-time thing. I might be around tonight for another go. Just need to be careful not to overdo it, I don't want to pull people out from WvW.

Also welcome to the guild epicthefail!

[Lippsy]

Fridays are mostly a good time since everyone is taking a break from WvW and waiting for the reset.

[jha4ceb]

Fun was had last night; thanks!

You mentioned about event chains for leveling. There's a nice compilation here of long chains which we might find useful: http://es.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/co...nt_chain_list/

[EPICTHEFAIL]

Yeah, this wasn't a one-time thing. I might be around tonight for another go. Just need to be careful not to overdo it, I don't want to pull people out from WvW.

Also welcome to the guild epicthefail!

Thanks! Just one question: am I allowed to bring my lvl 68 minionspam Necro, or will I have to make do with my neglected lvl 15 elementalist?

[squirrelfanatic]

Yesterday night we had a group of characters at around level 15-25, which worked fine. Later, Krathor joined in with his level 80 Guardian, so there are really no level restrictions. We just need to make sure that everyone participating gets a share of the experience, meaning that the higher level characters need to restrain themselves a bit and don't beat up every enemy before others have a chance to deal damage to them.

Other than that I think everyone should play what he likes best.

Edit: Also, if there is enough interest, we could arrange several groups of different level ranges, if someone feels bored or would like to tackle tougher zones.

[squirrelfanatic]

Sorry for not editing my last post for this, I thought this announcement would justify a new post.

After yesterday night's great success I have decided to have another run/stroll tonight. Once again, I am bringing my Elementalist, now level 26/27. Thanks to jha4ceb we now have a list of dynamic event chains at our disposal, so I suggest we give those a try. This event chain looks suitable for characters in a range of levels around mine (it's the Assault on Ascalon Settlement chain in Gendarran Fields). Let's meet up at 7pm UK time, at the north exit of Lion's Arch (Canal Ward waypoint).

From there, we can travel through Gendarran Fields as a group, activating waypoints and maybe grabbing a Vista or some stuff for the daily achievement until we stumble across an active quest of that event chain.

We'll be using Mumble for communication!* If you can, please try to join us there (details on the guild tab, press [G] in game), it makes communication that much easier. Of course, we can also use party chat, but I'd like to keep us from spamming guild chat.

I know this might a tad too tough for some lower level characters. My idea is to test the whole event chain thing to see if it works well. Of course, we can set up a second group for a lower level event chain (see jha4ceb's post above for a list of event chains) or go straight for that if not enough people turn up for two groups.

Hope to see you tonight!

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumble_%28software%29

[jha4ceb]

I'll be on late tonight but might be able to catch the tail end of this.

[squirrelfanatic]

I forgot that for tonight there is another Xcore WvW event planned. Hopefully, this won't get me into a conflict of interests...

[EPICTHEFAIL]

Good run tonight IMO, the mini-dungeon was nice enough I guess. Maybe try AC once everyone is leveled up enough? It is annoying to play through, but still...

Anyway, that`s my 2 cents, hopfully next time will be even better, but overall playing with a group was a blast for me.

[squirrelfanatic]

Again, I had lots of fun last night, thanks to everyone who turned up. The mini dungeon wasn't something I had anticipated to happen, but that's exactly what makes it fun to play with people from the community: You never know what lies around the next corner. This wouldn't have happend if I had played on my own, that's for sure.

Anyway, we gave the event chain thing a first try and went through the Flame Legion Battles chain in Diessa Plateau once. In ~1.5 hours, I gained 2.5 levels, that's alright I think. However, it is pretty obvious that there are better event chains to use if it comes to straight leveling. For the next event, I am aiming at the Assault on Ascalon Settlement quests, which yesterday's group (or parties of similar strength) should be able to manage easily.

By the way, since we are already playing in a halfway coordinated group, we could play around a bit with combo fields and also call targets, which should speed things up even more (if we want to).

Oh, and if anyone wants to get some Fire Elemental Powder (very useful if you can watch after your Ember), you can do so at a pretty low level, I managed the run with both a level 22 Elementalist and a level 30 Guardian. You probably have to do the required quest with a higher level character or get some help from others for that (but that's what guilds are for, right?), but the run itself is not too hard if you bring some Swiftness and/or Block/Aegis. I'll gladly put up some screenshots of my route later.

[Karuji]

Ok so here is the thought (and hopeful plan)

On a Wednesday we gather for a RPS WvWvW group hug.

Why? Because playing GW2 is more fun with RPS, and there is nothing regularly scheduled for a Wednesday so we can relax and have fun. Just to note that this isn't a Karma train/bring your lowest level alt for some XP, but it also isn't have Duke put on his hat and roll with a zerg.

Even though this is an expedition into WvWvW I would like to keep the group hug tradition. So Lion's Arch beach 7PM (UK) and Duke will keep his clothes on this time

[EPICTHEFAIL]

With the establishment of the Server-wide PvE events thread I was wondering if announcements of group hug events will still be done here or if they will migrate to the other thread. Now I am guessing they will stay here as it does say server-wide, but still, it wouldn`t hurt to ask.

[squirrelfanatic]

Yeah, sorry about that, I guess it's all a bit confusing. Maybe we can try to get some threads stickied, so that we can concentrate announcements in one or two threads.

To address your question: This thread is meant for RPS people to group up for general PvE events, the other thread is meant for announcements that concern the whole GH community and will regularly be cross-posted to the GH community page.

[Lippsy]

can we do this at some point :P

[Zpinget]

Oh my... What in the... HOW DID THEY DO THAT?!