some simple suggestions

fraudemonax

Hi... I have been playing Guild Wars for about a week now... and I'm having fun. I know that your developers are concerned more with making a ground breaking game rather than sticking with more traditional mmorpg rules, and that is commendable. The purpose of my posting is to make a few suggestions and maybe ask a little about your future plans for further development for this game.

First of all I have a suggestion concerning missions. I think it would be nice if there were a marker over NPCs that give out missions just as there are for quests. Let me give an example: the mission that you have to do to leave the noob area during which a cinematic war cut scene takes place. After finishing this quest, it is automatically 2 years later and you are landed in a land fraught with war and plague. This mission was not shown with a exclamation marker. I know I spent at least 6 hours of game play searching for more areas/content, whilst trying to figure out how to progress in the game. I am not alone in this; many of the lvl 5-8 people I confronted during this time seemed to be stuck and didn't know how to progress from this point. If this is just a bug, and missions are meant to have markers as well... the fact remains that this should probably be remedied.

My second suggestion has to do with agro radius and running from mobs. First of all, I want to say that I realize that this game is meant to have a strong party aspect. Although, I for one think that the sheer numbers of agroing mobs in any given instance, and the unforgivingly large agro radiuses that exist in the games sometimes make it impossible to travel through a zone without having to kill every foe in it. I know once in awhile when I was soloing some of the easier quests, I had 3-8 mobs on me at a time. Sometimes the way that the monsters pull seems a little glitchy. Once when I was playing with a mage, and we were actually trying to pull groups of mobs, they would follow us for about 10 paces then loose interest. It seems like the times that I least want to be followed are the times that these groups of 8 mobs follow me all the way to the zone barrier.

My last suggestion has to do with mp drain. Let me first say that this idea of having a small MP (energy) bar, yet having it recharge quickly is quite astounding. Its a nice idea, yet at times it seems a little glitchy. Occasionally I look at my MP bar and notice that when I cast a healing spell on myself, no cost is subtracted from it. Sometimes it is reduced, but sometimes it is not. Now perhaps there is some hidden dynamic at play here that I don't understand, and if there is I am sorry to waste your time with such a small issue.

I also have one final question concerning crafting and the interface. Do you plan to make any further improvements to your crafting system? I like the way that you reduced grind time in this game by making NPCs responsible for crafting, and the player merely responsible for acquiring the resources. Its an interesting way to address the issue. Do you plan on adding more and different  types of weapons and armor sets to the game at some point? Do you plan on changing any aspect of the crafting dynamics such as adding level ar ability requirements to creation or just to the equipable items? And also concerning the interface, is the 8 equipable skill thing set in stone, or do you plan on making some small changes to the interface at some point? What reason did you originally have for limiting this number to 8. Its an interesting dev decision that I'm just sort of curious about.

In no way do I intend for these comments to be slanderous towards the game. I like the innovation and change that this game represents; and during the past 4 days that I've spent playing this game I have been quite happy with many aspects of this game. Don't get me wrong, its a new game, and obviously it needs a little work as all online games do at this stage, but this game has solid potential. I will be happy to see this game become the best mmorpg (err... umm... rpg... whatever it is) of all time.

jd269

I'm pretty sure Sir Tydus had an exclamation mark over him for the quest to get to post-searing ascalon.. he did for me, perhaps it was bugged. I do know that your not alone with "getting stuck" in pre-searing ascalon, not a big fan of that place myself.

The game was never really meant for you to solo.. not sure if you are talking about you were "pure soloing" but after pre-searing Ascalon there are henchmen you can invite into your group, if you can't find people to play with that makes things much easier.

There's nothing wrong with the energy bar, some skills simply take none. Every skill with the word signet in it takes no energy, such as the warrior's healing signet which I guess you are talking about.

I don't think they are going to do much more with the crafting system.. they wanted to keep it simple.

Keep in mind that while there are only 8 slots you will find various items to upgrade your weapons, such as bow strings, fiery blades, hammer heads etc... and your armor using items known as runes. So while there are 8 slots, weapons have several upgrade "slots", and each piece of armor has an upgrade "slot" for runes. So it's sort of like having about 18 slots.

Droniac

When I was in pre-searing ascalon I just got a quest stating I should talk to Sir Tydus, because their group would leave soon.
And when I talked to Sir Tydus, it was simply a matter of saying "Yeah I'll go along".
It was a primary quest in your log, so it should've been easy to notice unless they changed it.

As for the aggro radius, keep in mind that the little circle around your character in your minimap is the aggro-range. Keep monsters out of it and you're safe (though that is sometimes impossible).

Some skills cost no energy, e.g.: Signets & Adrenaline-based skills (Adrenaline-skills are warrior-only)

The 8-slot system was introduced to encourage tactics and the use of varieing builds.
If you could use all skills at the same time - it'd not only clog the interface (150 skills but it'd also cut down on the tactics, you don't have to choose what skills to take (and thus leave you vulnerable for certain attacks, e.g.: half my bar is adrenaline based - so I'm very vulnerable to adrenaline-drains) you could just take everything along, most classes wouldn't have any significant weaknesses that way.