Getting Ready for Guild Wars: The King is Back?

Yeah, I'm picking up Guild Wars again for the GW:EN sneak peak. I plan a marathon weekend of gaming to exhaust the available content. Worst case, I've blown 10 bucks on the preorder and I'll never touch the thing again. Best case, I'll become somehow entranced by the new content and I'll wind up buying the game at release and spiraling into my, by now, familiar pattern of infatuation with the game for a few months, disgust with it for a few more, and then comfortable apathy until the next release. Good times. I think, in likelihood it'll be somewhere in the middle. I'll mildly appreciate the game but decide I don't have time for it at the moment and resolve to pick it up at some later date. The holidays are a good bet. I'll have free time and I can always get some sucker, I mean, friend to subsidize my addiction with a gift.

Anyhow, the plan is to try and sample everything. From the missions to the skills to the Dwarven Brawling, if I can find it. At the moment I'm watching some obs mode while trying to decide which character to use. I've gotten the game installed and gotten my feet a bit wet again. Did a little RA, ran a few missions, that sort of thing, just to shake a little rust off. Tried hard mode for the first time. And, well, it's aptly named. I got my ass handed to me. As for obs mode, nothing spectacular to report. HA seems to be a bunch of teams running the same build – some kind of Sin caster thing – because that's what's been winning. I'm not sure why but I've been watching a lot of the Hero Battles – probably because I've never seen it on the obs before and I have a strange fascination with it. Again, the meta seems to be pretty static with everyone running the same team – everyone plays a sin supported by casters and Monks and Rits. Send a defensive caster, usually with Shield of Regen off to the side and fight for the central shrine yourself. I don't recognize any of these teams but it's an off-hour so who knows.

I think I'm going to be using my sadly neglected Monk – I started her way back during Factions and haven't done much with her since. In the past, I've rolled up a new character for each expansion but with no new professions and, grr, no new character slots, that's not an option here. But my Monk hasn't even made it off the newbie island yet, so it'll almost be like the same thing. It's been a while since I went PvE Monking, too, so I think I'm set there.

My most pressing need at the moment is cash. I have a pretty good stockpile of skill points and will no doubt have more than enough by going through the campaign. A full store of Faction, too, which is why I haven't gotten much PvPing in - no point to it. But I still need a plat for everyone of the new skills. Plus the miscellaneous funds to cover kits and keys and scrolls and the like. So I need to go through my inventories and figure out what I can sell off.