Guild Wars - some questions

[Ceefer]

I don't get as much time to play GW as I would like, but I'm slowly progressing. I have an E/R level 18 ready to move on from Lion's Arch, plus a couple of other characters still trying to get out of the wastelands south of the Shiverpeaks.

Anyway, a couple of questions for you veterans. I've seen some characters sporting pretty spectacular tattoos. Are these in addition to armour or instead of? Which professions can get tattoos?

When at Gates of Kryta I saw a level 4 character. How do you get so far along in the game at such a low level? Every other character there was level 10+. Is there some cheating involved? I was level 8 before I passed from pre- to post-searing.

While hanging around at Lion's Arch I've heard some folk complaining that Arena have recently modified the programme to make 'farming' more difficult. Does anyone here know anything about this? It seems to me that gold farming, for instance, is pretty easy in some areas if you've got the time to spend. Was there some exploit that has now been stopped?

[Ferral]

Some people were abusing farming and had bots doing it, the way Guild Wars works is that everyone playing can get an equal share of various items but if you have individuals that use these bots the proper players that are farming to inevitably get gold for an armour or weapon upgrade cant get anything decent to sell or trade.

A few months back they changed the code and something like 90 accounts were terminated due to farming using bots, it has helped keep the economy stable overall so you dont pay extortionate prices for the most basic of items as the market isnt getting flooded anymore.

As for the tattoos, different classes of characters can get them, for instance warriors cant get them as they have their heavy duty armour, necromancers however cant wear heavy armour so they get the tattoos instead, think they are wards of a sort, not overly sure as I dont have a necro character but thats the general basis of it.

Finally, the low level characters that are about have joined a high level party and paid to do a run from one place to the next. Strangest one I've seen is a level 5 at Droknars Forge. Some people actually do this to get better armour earlier in the game to make life easier playing through places like The Breach. You can actually leave pre searing Ascalon at around level 3, I left there with my elementalist at level 5 as I just wanted to get into the thick of the game as I had already done everything there with my warrior.