need some guidance

[Girls Sixty Nine.9108]

Hello,
I love Guild Wars 2. But I find myself giving up at some point in time with leveling, playing solo, watching video guides, or build videos; You name it. And then ultimately never finding people who actively play like I do to team up with and conquer the world together, or even just do dungeons, etc. I never made it to that kind of content in this game. When you compare it to WoW, where you get to level 15 or 20 and you're able to experience a lot of mid-tier content without having much of the gear to do it... 

Anyway. I was thinking of playing an Enchantress (I think that's the mage class), for healing play style in particular, as I got introduced to that by someone on YouTube who was explaining all the different classes that are able to offer group healing, shielding, regen, etc... since there's no dedicated Healer class/role in the game. And I wanted to dive full speed into that. However, I want to do so with the right, populated realm (I guess you call them), and a guild that has more active players online throughout the day than just seasonal daily runners. 

 

I was wondering what a good realm for a new player would be to find active players in high quantities for NA. Specifically a guild that may have over 100+ members and over 50 of those members are active at once, is kind of something I am looking forward to. In WoW, I would join a large guild and then only manage to do content with like 5-10 of those members. And then find out that the guild I joined is more active during my offline hours. Etc.

 

Well, that'll be the same thing here in Guild Wars 2 if I am not careful. I don't want to get to level 20 or 40, or whatever and then realize I have to do redo all that content because I'm on a dead realm. So any guidance into the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[costepj.5120]

GW2 has nothing called a realm. The main division is between North America and Europe. Each region has servers in different AWS data centres, meaning you can only actively play with other users in your region. It is possible to transfer between regions but it costs gems and you may end up with poor performance if your path to the data centre (Virginia for NA; Frankfurt for Europe) gets extended.

The different servers within each region only matter for WvW (a map wide PvP game mode which pits server against server), but be aware anet plan to replace that system with one based on alliances of guilds (the latest beta for that new model is running this week).

So provided you join a guild that's active in your region, you can do any PvE content with your guildies. Also, your achievements will never be invalidated unless you start over with a new account.

[Danikat.8537]

Don't worry about which server (what you called a realm) you're on. It only matters for World vs World. Everything else is shared with everyone in your region (EU or NA), all the servers are linked and the game will automatically create as many copies of each open-world map as necessary for the people who want to go there and fill them up, if you're ever on a nearly empty map it will prompt you to move to a busier one. For instances like dungeons and raids you can use the LFG tool to group with anyone in your region even if they're on a different server (or meet them in an open-world map and group up that way). Likewise you can join guilds on any server and you'll be able to play with them.

Also characters aren't tied to servers, if you ever do want to transfer (which you'd only need to do for WvW or to change regions) all your characters will move together, as will your bank, achievements etc. so you won't lose anything or need to start over.

I can't recommend any guilds because I play on EU but you can find one on this forum or asking in-game. You can also find people to play with using the LFG tool in-game. It works for all types of content but is mainly used for group instances like dungeons, Fractals, raids and strikes. You can either choose a group you see advertised or put up your own advert for people to join you if you don't see one for what you want. You can start doing dungeons from level 30 and will unlock new ones every 5 levels. You'll need to be level 80 to do the other instances areas, but it doesn't take long to level up.

[rotheche.2964]

Hang around in any of the capital cities like Divinity's Reach and you'll see people advertising guilds with different focuses as well - some focus on PVE, some PVP, some are on raids etc.

If  you're a Reddit user, there's also r/guildrecruitment/ where people advertise their guilds.

[Girls Sixty Nine.9108]

thank you all for the information.