Sounds like some well thought out changes. Guybrush

I got to play a little tonight, but not much. Long day Saturday so I'm going to bed. Should have a few hours to try out more with warrior Sunday.

You'll have to come back and share your thoughts after you get to play.

Another small update.

I did manage to take a character to Lion's Arch friday, something I hadn't done in the previous beta. You get to Lion's Arch by entering an Asura Gate in your character's race town. Then LA has gates to the other races, except right now gates to asura and sylvari lands don't function. There are asura and sylvari NPCs around though. I met one of each in Divinity's Reach (human town). The sylvari was talking about how dirty the city was. After the sylvari had wandered off one of the human NPCs said sylvari were cute and wanted to make a pet out of one. The asura was a recruiter for the battles in the Mists but was saying humans it met were too dumb.

That sounds very humorous Guybrush

Interesting: sylvari npc complains that gate travel cuts him off from The Dream for one second and for him it feels like being alone for a century.

Is that a lore reference Guybrush?

Yes. Sylvari are all united in a Dream.

My favorite thing to play so far is rifle warrior. Shot enemies from a distance and when they get too close hit them with rifle but to knock them back. Did it on human since asura not available yet.

ArenaNet is Hiring Character Artists

Wow, sounds like they need some very taleneted tecchies.

Is it Fun? Colin Johanson on How ArenaNet Measures Success

Though they're not erasing the database between beta weekends, they have said that they will purge it before launch. So everyone will start with new characters.

Between the first two beta weekends there were a number of changes including in available items. Several of my characters had items in their inventory described as "deleted item". When I sold junk to merchant the deleted items went away. My elementalist was missing his hat/mask which made him short on armor points. The NPC that sold it was gone too.

Whenever you kill a monster there is a chance that it drops something. Some drops are useful, such as money, weapons, armor, salvagable items. Most common drops, at least in the low level areas, are unusable junk. Junk items are all "soulbound" meaning you can't trade them to other players but can sell them to merchants. When you find a merchant and click on the sell tab two buttons become available "Sell Junk" and "Sell". Clicking on "Sell Junk" sells all the unusable items at once. You use the "Sell" button to sell individual items. Anything thats not junk won't be sold using "Sell Junk", ie armor, weapons, crafting material, salvageable items, consumables.

Salvageable items require a salvage kit. Once you double click on a salvage kit its active for all salvageable items you don't have to click on the kit for every item. If you point the cursor at a non-salvageable item the item will turn red, a salvageable item will be green, click on it salvage it. Salvaging an item will usually result in crafting material. To clear out your inventory right click on an item. Crafting material will show an option to place in in your bank. You can do this anywhere. For all other items, ie armor, weapons, mini pets, consumables, etc you actually have to go to the bank to store them. You also have to go to the bank to retrieve items. There is a storage bank in every racial city as well as Lion's Arch.

There are different levels of salvage kits. The crude kits won't salvage weapon or armor upgrades or rare crafting material. Basic kits have 10% chance to give rare crafting materials and 20% chance to salvage upgrades. Master's kit has 25% chance to salvage rare materials and 80% upgrades. A Perfect kit has only 1 use but has 100% chance to remove upgrades. Oddly on an item without an upgrade it drops down to 10% chance to extract rare crafting material. According to wiki it takes gems to buy a Perfect kit. Gems are bought from the Trading Post will real money or from other players with in game gold. Of course it could be that no one has found a merchant with Perfect kits yet, only seen them in the Trading Post.

In addition to merchants who take coins (bronze, silver, gold) for their items there are also Karma merchants. Karma is earned doing your own personal story, helping other players with their personal story (I haven't done that yet) and completing Dynamic Events. Karma vendors appear in explorable areas after successfully completing tasks which fill their heart markers. There are also karma vendors in the cities. Karma vendors sell things like consumable items that grant some temporary bonus and accessories. Accessories add additional armor points and can be upgraded to include additional benefits.

Help Us Stress Our Servers On June 27

After working for Arenanet for 8 years, lead concept artist Kekai Kotaki has decided to leave Arenanet.

Ahhh Guybrush, I hope that is not because of a disagreement with game direction. Will you be helping them stress the servers?

He's leaving on good terms. Apparently he thinks it time for something new. And they've said he's welcome back any time.

I plan to. I have to see if updating graphics driver fixed a problem I had with betas, Down State and necromancer's Death Shroud, turning screen black. If it didn't I'll need a new graphics card, which will require a new power supply. I'm just barely at minimum stats and those may change once game is optimized, so I may be better of with qholw new computer. I'm waiting to see what final system requirements will be though.