Ask Nerdy Bookahs

From time to time, we have a look at which search terms were used that led readers to our blog. Occasionally, there are questions that were entered that led people to one of our entries but we know they did not find the answer here. We may have something related to the question but it’s not the answer to what they wanted to know. So we thought we should start this new column: Ask Nerdy Bookahs! We will have a look at the questions that led to our blog and will try to answer them (if they’re related to Guild Wars 2, of course).

Let’s start with the first questions.

“What do players think of Guild Wars 2?”
My personal answer (in a nutshell) is that I really like the game and haven’t enjoyed an MMO as much as I enjoy Guild Wars 2 since World of Warcraft (which was my first MMO and probably explains the nostalgia factor connected to it ^^). I don’t like the bugs and the lack of polish that you can see in some areas (though they are to be expected from a new game…). Still, I can see myself playing and enjoying the game for a very long time! But this is only one single opinion. Let me link you to a few other bloggers’ reviews: Izari from Talk Tyria lists 5 things she doesn’t like about the game. Syp from Bio Break wonders if Guild Wars 2 is the ultimate casual MMO. Verene from Under the Pale Tree reviews the first two weeks past launch and Distilled Will writes about his early impressions.
If you want to know more about what “regular players” think that aren’t also bloggers, you may want to check places like metacritic.com, amazon.com, etc.

“What’s the best PvP server in Guild Wars 2?”
Just so we’re talking about the same thing: There are no “PvP servers” in Guild Wars 2 like the ones you may know from World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic. In Guild Wars 2, you can never attack players from your own server. There is the “World vs World vs World” area which is probably what was searched for here. This area consists of 4 maps and has players from three different servers fight against each other. ArenaNet has now enabled those fights to last for one week. After that one week, the winners will be matched against other servers that have won and the losing servers will fight against other servers that have lost to make sure that servers fighting against each other have approximately the same strength. You can find the current rankings in the official forum and here is a more detailed overview (a player also uploaded this as a google document which you can find in the thread as well).

“Is the Black Citadel the Ruins of Ascalon?”
The wiki page for the Black Citadel tells you a bit about its history. It’s built directly north of the ruins of Rin which used to be the capital of the humans in Ascalon a long time ago.
The Searing refers to the destruction of Ascalon where large burning crystals were raining from the sky. The Searing destroyed Rin (as well as Ascalon City and Surmia). In Guild Wars 1, the area south of “Nolani Academy” is where you can find Rin.
Ruins of Ascalon, thus, refers to the area that was destroyed by the Searing. Rin is part of that area but much smaller. The charr have since taken over the area, though, and only Ebonhawke is still in the hands of humans.
If you want to know more about the mission, you can find the cut scene here.

That’s it for today. Once we’ve gotten enough questions again, we will post them here again. You could also send us questions via email, by the way, but it’ll take a while until we get to answering them… not sure how practical that is. ^^