Guild Wars 2 - massive fail for me

[[JiF]Uncle Stinky]

This is the worst implementation of an MMO I have ever seen. I pre-ordered the game from Gamestop and got an e-mail with a product code. When I went to register my account, the program told me I already have a Guild Wars account and need to link the old one to the new one. I have no idea what my old password is, as I haven't played GW1 in years. So I request a password reset multiple times over a 12 hour period and never get a response. I finally made a ticket, and after several pings of support I got an e-mail with a link to the password reset page. I have tried 6 different new passwords, each within the guidelines, and each one has failed. No reason given, just a message that it failed. I can't go to look for reasons why on the forums, because they are down.

I've had it. I just sent GW2 support a request to refund my money. If I get it, I'll re-invest the money in Turbine points for DDO, a game that not only works, but rocks.

-- Wed Aug 29, 2012 5:57 pm --

OK, I've cooled down. I was forced to create a yahoo e-mail account just so I could register a new account. And now I see that they;ve admitted the password reset program is broken. Not a good way to launch a game. Why they force you to link to a previous game account is beyond me.

In any case, it turns out the Blackgate server is Full right now, so I'll wait until later to see if it opens up.

[[JiF]Axe34]

Creating an account to play GW2 wasn't an issue for me. So far, after 6 days, I never encountered a personal problem that would cause my gaming experience to decrease.

Sorry, you have encountered road bumps and glad you found a way to resolve it.

Here's a quote that I found that may explain the difficulties you have experienced:

ArenaNetTeam

Account security - Hackers are systematically scanning email addresses and passwords harvested from other games, web sites, and trojans to see if they match Guild Wars 2 accounts. We're taking a number of steps to protect our players from this, listed below, but we need your help too. To protect your account, make sure you use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else. If your password isn't strong and unique, change it right now. For the highest level of protection, also create a unique email address to use solely for Guild Wars 2.

Here are the things we're doing to protect your accounts.•We have the "password reset" feature temporarily disabled. If you need to reset your password, contact our customer support team.

•We now have email authentication turned on for all players with verified email addresses. With this feature, even if someone guesses your password, when he tries to login from a location that you've never logged in from before, you'll have an opportunity to approve or disapprove of the login through an email check.

•We've noticed that hackers who discover a working email address and password combination don't always immediately exploit the compromised account. We sent email to everyone whose account has been suspiciously logged into asking them to immediately change their email address and password.

•We will also be sending email to all customers whose accounts have been unsuccessfully tested by hackers. We strongly recommend that these customers create a new, unique email address for their account.

•We left in-game mail disabled for another half-day, because it's difficult for hackers to loot accounts when both in-game mail and the trading post are disabled. Keeping mail disabled this morning to prevent account looting gave us time to get email authentication turned on for all players, and gave players time to secure their accounts. But we will be turning in-game mail back on soon, so we ask everyone to quickly secure their accounts.

Email authentication - We started ramping up email authentication after last night's server update, and it's now enabled for 100% of players with verified email addresses. Email authentication provides a high level of security for everyone, and can provide an even higher level of security when combined with two-factor email authentication. Here's how you can set that up. Create a new unique Google or Yahoo email address solely for your Guild Wars 2 account. Verify that email address with Guild Wars 2 to turn on email authentication. Then follow the instructions at Google or Yahoo to enable two-factor authentication for all logins to your email address.


Forums - Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.

Link source from Anet

The game has exceed Anet's expectations, so many players. They are working on building and setting up 6 more servers to hold the millions that joined since launch.
They are working around the clock to fix the problems. (wonder if the employees are working over time and no sleep, lol)

[[JiF]Uncle Stinky]

Yes, I've gotten past the initial frustration, and so far I like what I see. The graphics are excellent and gameplay is smooth. It appears the auction house is still not live.

But all of the problems listed in that Anet notice should have been anticipated before launch. Requiring players to link to old GW accounts makes no sense at all, especially if you then disable an important solution for all those who forgot their old passwords.

[[JiF]Gib]

Stinky,

Im curious to know what you like better over DDO? Is the overall gameplay more fun or just different?

The graphics are pretty sweet from what I've seen.

[[JiF]Uncle Stinky]

It's a great-looking, well done RPG. And because it is a huge, new world, there's that thrill of discovering new things all the time. It's the kind of game you can easily jump into for 30 minutes or 5 hours, depending on our situation. the fact ther eis no monthly fee means I will keep playing this for a long time and not feel guilty if I take time off to play something else.

So far the MMO aspects haven't been too important, but I'm sure they will be as I Ievel up.

They have also done a lot of little things right to take out some of the drudgery of these kinds of game. E.g., you can "teleport" all of your crafting materials from your bags to a special section of your bank account, thereby freeing up bag space on the fly. They also have plenty of waypoints all over the maps, including the huge cities. You can teleport instantly to any of them that you've discovered for a small fee (it's free in the cities). So after gathering a bunch of ore or wood, you can teleport back to a city, do some crafting, then go right to where you were in a matter of seconds. Also, you always go back to wherever you logged out, so there's no running back and forth from/to inns or towns.

I'm a bit embarraased now that I started this thread with so negative a title. Yes, they did screw things up at the start, but I guess most MMORPGs have had teething pains.

I'll give you an example of some fun I had last night. I was playing my Norn Ranger (Jiffanger) and went to a new area to scout out a bear pet that looks like a prehistoric ice bear species. After I tamed him (and named him Choopda, the Korean word for "cold") , I headed back and noticed a huge battle going in the middle of a frozen lake. The game has "events" that trigger periodically that all players can join. There's no invite needed, no partying up. You just go and take part in the fun. in this case, there was a giant Svarn guy who needed to be killed and there were about 25 players attacking him. He kept calling down magic such as ice storms, and many of us died several times (you res at a nearby waypoint). It took us about 5 minutes to kill him, and during the fight my ranger was shooting her longbow and throwing down buffs in the form of little fountains that provided healing and added fire damage to anyone in the radius. At the end, I found my first boss loot in the form a chest that gave me several new weapons. It was all unexpected and a lot of fun.

It is definitely not the same as DDO, which I still love. E.g., there is no healer class. Everyone has some kind of healing ability. I'm not e3ven sure the different races affect your class play that much. So I'm happy to have both experience, the skill-based stuff we do on DDO, and the easy-play general fun on GW2.