Geek Syndicate Issue 5 | Page 75

Geek Syndicate
perience points, especially if you experiment to find new recipes. The crafting system is nothing new and requires no actual skills: just the gathering of the ingredients. I did become a bit obsessed getting my crafts up to level 400 so I could just create anything in my skill set. Almost every item in the game can be made by someone this has meant that as the game has gone on certain items have been removed from vendors as to create an economy through the trading post. The trading post is the way players can sell their goods and also how NCsoft can take advantage of micro-payments to make their money. In the game there are two currencies, your standard copper, silver and gold and then there are gems. Gems are used in the in game shop to purchase generally rare items. You can buy gems from NCsoft, similar to Xbox Live points or you can trade in game gold for them. Like a real currency markets it fluctuates based on trade and time of day. I like the fact that you don’t actually have to spend real money to get gems and when the game first started I horded a lot very cheaply as now it’s quite expensive to trade gold for gems. Overall the economy is slowly taking shape which is nice to see as it provides an extra lev75

what skill your enemy is doing either which means you have to watch the actual characters to get in those useful interrupt attacks. I enjoy the combat as it’s simple to get the hang of but there’s lots you can do with it to suit your style of fighting. Another aspect is the traits, these are skills linked to your profession which you can set to buff your skills in different areas, below is an image of mine, set out to improve my archery skills and my creatures skills. Each number represents a boost of some sort which is either permanently active or

automatically activates after an event such as a kill. With both the slot skills and the traits you can get quite a bit of customisation out of your character without feeling overwhelmed at the amount of choice which I found happened with the original Guild Wars by the time the final expansion came out. Crafting and Economics Like many MMOs, Guild Wars 2 has a crafting system in which you can choose two skills to be proficient in and the use or sell your wares in the trading post. You can in theory level up purely by crafting as it gives you quite a bit of exImage © NCSoft, 2012