User talk:Enda/Tara Pard

Tara Pard is the last of my original characters that I created during the 3 hour early start to the pre-purchase head-start weekend prior to the games official release. I originally had a Sylvari Ranger, Human Ranger/Thief, a Norn Ranger/Thief, and an Asura Ranger. The Sylvari Ranger was supposed to be my main, but the Mazdak the Accursed missions were, at the time, impossible to complete solo. (I had her up to level 35, got fed up with trying and couldn't change my choice like we could in GW1, so I rerolled her trying the other options but I ultimately failed.) I had rolled the two Human characters as being raised as Street Rats, but the The Rescue and Missed Opportunity missions were unwinnable and I ended up rerolling both. All of the skills were changing almost every day, so I rerolled toons trying the other professions. Rather than addressing the bugs and complaints about the difficulty levels, they concentrated on trying to have single skills that worked both in PvE and PvP. They were trying to avoid the multitude of skills that they had had in GW1, but it really screwed up PvE gameplay, which also caused all of my old GW1 guildmates to leave the game within two months of the game's release. I got tired of the Norn's bravado, but ignored Tara while I worked on the other characters. The game had so many bugs that the devs stopped accepting bug reports for more than a month. Everyone was ticked off that instead of setting up GW2 like GW1's normal mode, they had set it up to be harder than GW1's hard mode. They also seemed to forget their promise to make GW2 soloable. The final mission combined the City of Arah Dungeon with the final mission, which required a group to do, and to few people ever completed it. (my Human Thief barely did) Almost all content was not only in hard mode, but in an extra hard mode for groups. People were annoyed that map completion REQUIRED doing the WvW maps, where groups of people (by their maxed gear during the second day of the head-start weekend I suspected that most were anet people) would wait near poi's, waypoints, and especially near vistas, to wipe out anyone trying to get map completion. Then, amid all of this mess, while still fiddling with the skills, without fixing many bugs, or the difficulty levels, they decided to work on the precursors to the Living World content, but instead of making them doable at your leisure, they were ONE-TIME events. (usually while folks were at school/work) At that time, I left the game, visiting once in a while to see what was going on.

While playing another mmo, someone mentioned that gw2 had fix the difficulty level, split some skills into PvE & PvP, removed the WvW maps from map completion, and that the Living World missions were doable at your leisure. (personally, I think that that individual was someone from anet talking up GW2 as there was a huge influx of old players coming back to GW2 from a multitude of other mmo's at that time)

I came back in early 2017, finally got map completion on my Human Thief, but she was no longer playable, as the skills had so drastically changed. I worked on several characters, and noticed that the Ranger was still pretty much as playable as it had been before I left, so I started working on Tara again. I had gotten her to level 54 when I finally broke down and purchased HoT, and used the boost to level 80 to get her maxed. As Tara was the last of my original characters, and had never been rerolled, I kept her and rerolled the others. Some had been rolled as late as March 2013, just days before I left.

These are notes to myself as my memory is on the decline due to my age.--Enda - talk 18:57, 8 May 2020 (UTC)