Soooo? Who played? I did and had a ton of fun exploring and doing as few story quests as I could.
I'm going to be on Fort Aspenwood with some friends from the CGTalk TF2 server at launch. A lot of the guys from there are joining the Penny Arcade [NICE] clan until we get our own clan going, and I'm sure anybody from Polycount is welcome to join in.
Guild Wars 2 at ArenaNET was fun! Both the game and the office are awesome. It was cool to walk around and see all the awesome concept art up on the walls, huge prints the size of a wall. The free food for the event was also super tasty
Guild Wars 2 Pros:
-No month-to-month payment
-Well designed content scaling. You can go back to low-level areas when your are high level and still get percentage-based experience rewards and actually level up. You are temporarily "down leveled" to the zone you are in so that you can play the content in the area without one-shotting everything.
-Exploration is highly encouraged and even rewarded. There are vantage points where you solve jumping puzzles like Mario to see awesome landscape and get an XP reward at the top
-Amazing art across the board
-Fun combat mechanics, lots of customization with your abilities without having to deal with investing 50 points in some worthless skill to get a good one
-Dye system from the very start for FREE so you can always be aesthetically pleasing
-PVP mode where you are instantly leveled to 80 with all the skills for your class and given level 80 PVP gear. This game is not about farming for 3 months for 1 stupid gear piece to play an imbalanced experience *cough*worldofwarcraft*cough*.
-Incredible questing experience where dynamic quests flow together so well you never have to go to some town to get 10 quests, complete them, return, then go out and do more *cough*worldofwarcraft*cough*.
-We were AMAZED with how fast time flew by because the play experience is so well sewn together
Cons:
-Interface was very overwhelming. However, this is pretty standard for most MMOs as there is just so much stuff to take in all at once it can be intimidating.
-How the main story works (which is fine because you can progress through the game while completely skipping all of it due to dynamic events and PVP). I wanted to be an evil character and cutscenes destroys that. When you have your character being represented in cutscenes with their own voice, it really removes you from BEING the character, breaks immersion
-Some voice acting didn't fit certain races. Excpected the small race to have a higher voice, and the big cat people to have a deeper, brooding voice.
I went in with a completely neutral attitude because I never played GW1 and I'm sick of how every MMO is the same today. I was blown away.
The pros outweigh the cons immensely. We arrived at about 11am, and the next time we looked at the clock it was 5pm! I haven't had that happen since the Diablo 2 days back when I was in Jr. High.
All I can say is I'm glad this is coming out after the wedding because my fiance and I both will be playing the hell out of it
This was the second BWE that I participated in and I was absolutely floored at how solid this game has become. WvW and PvP modes were super enjoyable. Not having gear based combat really helps players focus on actually playing the game and being strategic instead of wasting countless hours grinding specific dungeons and bosses.
The way the game rewards you for exploring was great. The added Vistas are a nice touch. Countless times it was just me wondering, "Alright, how the hell do I get up there?" The game forces you to actually think instead of just reacting to the environment. Jumping puzzles are an especially good use of the environment and give it added flavor.
Some friends and I played on the Yak's Bend server but I noticed after the first day it filled up, forcing some other friends to join other servers. The fact that you can play with friends cross-server is really great. Groups with people from different servers can play together while in a party instead of having to switch permanently.
They sold me a long time ago on this game, but it's just wonderful to see the progression. I can't wait until launch!
I went in thinking the asura were my least favorite race. After playing with them they became my favorite. Goes to show some funny characteristics and good animation can really sell a race. Those walking salads on the other hand....oof
this weekend, my guild rolled almost exclusively Guardians, Elementalists, and Mesmers. we had ~18 people online at what we considdered to be peak times.
within two hours of running around WvWvW, we'd racked up 500+ kills. non stop wiping zerg after zerg, it was AWESOME.
can't wait for the release, we're already communicating with a couple of other guilds who we'd previously fought either with, or against in Warhammer Online, and we're all rolling on the same server to (attempt to) dominate WvWvW non-stop.
I went in thinking the asura were my least favorite race. After playing with them they became my favorite. Goes to show some funny characteristics and good animation can really sell a race. Those walking salads on the other hand....oof
Yeah I'm the same way. I thought I would love salads but nope.
Rolled an asura greatsword/staff guardian this round and fell in love.
In terms of enjoyment of races Asura > Humans = Nord > Charr > Salads.
Not sure if I want to roll a Human when the game comes out thought, I was really underwhelmed by Rata Sum (Asura main town).
I did all the jump puzzles i could find i love exploring in this game for anyone who tried the jump puzzle with the dark room, that wasn't easy. especially since it was bugged out when i did it.
Yep. Put 25 hours into it myself, did some WvW...crafted a pistol, explored 10% of the world, got halfway through 19, capped my demo story to 20, uncovered all of Lion's Arch...all on an Asura Engineer...had a blast.
I've been playing on Darkhaven because there is talk of a guild with people who know people, but I will seriously consider Fort Aspenwood. Darkhaven is a high population world.
Salad Warrior here!
I feel that they could have made the voices cooler for the salads, they're a bit to "hello ol chap!" right now, some kind of garrus thing would be nice. Reverberation, rustling leaves.
Spoke to a friend at work today who's an avid WoW player and refuses to give GW a try, I told him how much he's missing out on and now he's considering making the jump XD
So has anyone gathered others on PC to pick a server? Would be cool to meet some people on PC in game. A few buddies of mine are heading to Piken Square (think its the unofficial RP server) so people would be welcome to join, unless everyone is gathering elsewhere
Anyone else find the environments a little weird? Some parts show a lot of effort, and then you can run to a stump that looks like no one cared to give it much love.
So I didn't play the first one, didn't get in the beta and basically had WoW be my first MMO experience right before Cataclysm came out and have played it very often since, even signed up for the annual pass on it and will keep playing even if I get this. What i want to know are a couple of things:
Despite the UI being different, how nice is this game at explaining it's functions to new players or those besmirched by the "taint" of other MMOS?
Is it fully freeroaming like WoW or has hub cities connected to areas?
Is it like the old Guild Wars where you can only travel with a small group in each area? or more like WoW where you bump into hundreds if not thousands people out in the open?
Is the combat all about hitting buttons after a cooldown or more dynamic than that?
Just want to get an idea of thing also it looks pretty as hell
...how nice is this game at explaining it's functions to new players or those besmirched by the "taint" of other MMOS?
It took me a little bit of getting used to coming as a long-time original GW player (who has also played a mryiad of other MMOs - City of Heroes, Aion, Final Fantasy, various free to play, etc). The game is actually very very simple, mostly the UI is what can make it weird to figure. I found it easiest to pick up by reading the wiki. Figured it all out in a very short amount of time after doing so.
Is it fully freeroaming like WoW or has hub cities connected to areas?
It's not fully free roaming. Certain areas (such as the large cities) function as "hubs" of a sort. That being said, it's significantly more free roaming than the original GW.
Edit: As an example, here's an image of a portion of the map. The giant circle is a city, Divinity's Reach (which is fucking massive). Everything outside of that circle is free roaming, where you'll encounter lots of other players.
Is it like the old Guild Wars where you can only travel with a small group in each area? or more like WoW where you bump into hundreds if not thousands people out in the open?
It's not like the old Guild Wars. Your party is limited as I understood it, but you can and will encounter a wide variety of people while you're out questing and exploring. In fact one of the game's highlights to me is the presence of dynamic "events" - things happening around the game world that you'll just run across and find a shit ton of other players participating in. Like a giant wasp queen that you see flash up on your map, and then show up to fight it along with tons of other random players. Some story-related quest portions are instanced.
Is the combat all about hitting buttons after a cooldown or more dynamic than that?
Both? If you read the "skills" page on the wiki, it'll give you a great idea of what to expect. Depending on your build you might be smashing shit as soon as it ends cooldown, or you might have to really focus. Another highlight of the game for me is environment-affecting skills. I for example as a necromancer might produce a cloud of poison somewhere, and then archers who fire through said cloud will get poison added to their shots, etc. (Tons of shit like this, btw.) Combat is both pretty simple and pretty complex. Learning your own character doesn't take a ton of time, just knowledge of the basic system. But battle definitely has a lot going on.
Despite the UI being different, how nice is this game at explaining it's functions to new players or those besmirched by the "taint" of other MMOS?
I'd say it does a pretty good job at being intuitive. They've put a lot of effort into providing tutorials which get you in the right mindset, and objectives are doled out as you get close to them, so you usually know what to do.
Is it fully freeroaming like WoW or has hub cities connected to areas?
Is it like the old Guild Wars where you can only travel with a small group in each area? or more like WoW where you bump into hundreds if not thousands people out in the open?
It's kind of a hybrid- there are hub cities, but there are also areas connected by loading screens. Though one thing I should note is that areas are huge. You can run into platers as you play, though I'm not sure what the max in an area is, the most I've seen in the same area I would estimate to be 100, though I chose a medium population server.
Is the combat all about hitting buttons after a cooldown or more dynamic than that?
Think of it as a hyrbid system. The combat is more about positioning and movement than pure DPS, so far as I've seen, and most skills do have a cooldown. Attacking is automatic, so spamming the attack key doesn't change anything.
Just want to get an idea of thing also it looks pretty as hell
I'd normally advocate the look before you leap approach, but here I'd say just jump in. Very few games can make me play 12 hours straight and still want more. They devs have put a huge amount of variety in the game (found a place where you had to answer algebra and geometry problems to activate an event), and considering there isn't a dedicated payment system, You aren't losing much other than the ability to buy the next 8 hour console title.
EDIT: for an idea of the scale on Two Listen's image, 3 or four players can walk abreast on the reads.
The largest area I've played in I'd estimate to be larger than this:
Despite the UI being different, how nice is this game at explaining it's functions to new players or those besmirched by the "taint" of other MMOS?
**There are currently no tooltips and the beginner tutorial does little to help you understand how the game is going to work. Having said that, it will take a few hours to really get into a flow. It is best to read up on the game and watch some videos...they will help alot.
**Also it will help a great deal if you learn how the builds go...there are several different ways to build the same profession, generally I will say that only gaming and seeing the layout is going to help.
**GW2 wiki and other sites are good places to start.
Is it fully freeroaming like WoW or has hub cities connected to areas?
**The world is huge and fully free roaming, even more so than WoW. There are no mounts, everything is connected by Asure Gates and by exploring the world you will unlock gates through out the world. Travel from zone to zone with them is much faster than your fastest flying mount in Wow.
***I'll clarify here...The cities are connected by gates which you go through to the next zone, but the loading screen doesnt ruin the immersion factor. It's just enough time to catch a breath waiting for the next chapter to begin...So No, you just don't walk into Lion's Arch, but when you pass through a gate to go there...it hardly matters.
Is it like the old Guild Wars where you can only travel with a small group in each area? or more like WoW where you bump into hundreds if not thousands people out in the open?
*You can travel solo, in a party or in the dynamic events (world happenings, you can suddenly find yourself in a common group of up to 100 trying to acheive the same goal.
Is the combat all about hitting buttons after a cooldown or more dynamic than that?
**It's an MMO that plays like a console...combos, cooldowns and tactics (you have to keep moving....)
Just want to get an idea of thing also it looks pretty as hell
--In Addition, there are no ninja loots, everyone will get treasure off a boss for example.
--There are no ninja gathering nodes...everyone can mine, harvest or gather a node that is on their own minimap.
--Suspend your knowledge of what you think a Thief, Guardian or whatever is supposed to do...this is an MMO as it should be and the mechanics buck tradition...(i.e. There is no holy trinity)
So as a general question to everyone - what's your favorite class so far?
I was really wanting to love the mesmer class - as in the original GW is was my favorite alongside the necromancer. But I gotta say after playing with it I wasn't a huge fan of the mesmer in GW2. I only played in one beta, but it seemed like the clones/phantasms you could make wouldn't usually show up until a good couple seconds after the fact, which really took away from the coolness of it. I didn't play in this beta - was this something they improved upon?
My favorite class at the moment is definitely necromancer. It's what I wound up playing most in the original and it looks like I'll be running one again this time.
-The UI is very simple, if you've ever played an MMORPG you will feel right at home. Each class uses the ability bar differently though so I would do a little reading up on that before choosing a class.
-It's fully free roam, but one difference I would point out is that the paths between the zones are separated by large portal like things. Each zone will be about 15-20 levels worth of leveling so they aren't at all a hindrance. There's no mounts and I wouldn't expect any as the Waypoint system allows instant travel from anywhere and flying mounts would allow you to fly out of the instanced zone.
- The instanced zones can hold a ton of people and if they overflow they are placed in an identical overflow zone. Escalating events are broadcast to the zone so some of the bigger ones like boss fights attract tons and tons of players, in WoW that usually requires a lot of coordination from a guild/guilds, but in this it seems to just happen naturally.
- The combat promotes mobility. Standing still is a death sentence. You don't have your entire arsenal of abilities at hand like in WoW so you have to learn to use what you have to it's full potential.
For these events I played the following in listed order:
Human Guardian
Charr Thief
Asura Engineer
I liked them all surprisingly, now I'm thinking I should give the magic classes a try at launch. I hear necromancer is fun. When I first saw all the classes before beta I wanted to be a mesmer, but after seeing some previews on the abilities it just seemed too iffy.
I often avoid combat in video games because I tend to enjoy exploring and doing things at my own pace, but the combat in GW2 is a really fun mix of hitting your abilities and waiting for the cooldown, and lots of dynamic movement and positioning. Learning to dodge attacks (by double tapping the movement keys) becomes a huge part of combat once you get above level 15, so you're almost constantly moving around and trying to get the best position while your abilities go off.
I haven't played all the classes, but I did play a little bit of thief and it turned out to be extremely fast-paced and almost felt like a shooter when I was dual-wielding pistols.
So I didn't play the first one, didn't get in the beta and basically had WoW be my first MMO experience right before Cataclysm came out and have played it very often since, even signed up for the annual pass on it and will keep playing even if I get this. What i want to know are a couple of things:
Despite the UI being different, how nice is this game at explaining it's functions to new players or those besmirched by the "taint" of other MMOS?
Is it fully freeroaming like WoW or has hub cities connected to areas?
Is it like the old Guild Wars where you can only travel with a small group in each area? or more like WoW where you bump into hundreds if not thousands people out in the open?
Is the combat all about hitting buttons after a cooldown or more dynamic than that?
Just want to get an idea of thing also it looks pretty as hell
Ill try and answer some of these in more depth, if you have any questions feel free to ask.
The game is much more open than guild wars but not so much as wow.
The world is split up into sections and each of these sections are apart from one another but connected by portals (the white blobs with the black stroke) When you are in one of the colored areas they are further split by server and by district, There are also overflow servers as well. One thing that may not be touched on is the fact that if you are level 80 and are in a level 15 zone you are scaled down to level 15, they don't want you to one shot everything and they don't want to have you one shot everything and have other players left without anything to combat.
I have no idea what the cap is but you do not only travel with your party like the first.
The combat is quite different then that actually, if you sit and spam you will die and quickly, enemies hit and they hit hard. You will need to dodge and can also attack while moving, so do so, do not stand still. people work well together elementalists setting up a wall of flames and having archers quick shot through it will give each shot additional damage. There is also no mana to manage cooldown and that's it.
The world is very alive and teeming with life and secrets.
And since you have not played the first i suggest this if your into some lore.
Noticing a lot of water on that map and it brought up the thought that there is and will be a fair amount of water combat. You have a set of weapons/abilities for water combat that work in very interesting ways. That extra axis puts a nice spin on things.
Wow, thanks for the awesome answers guys! I'll set off some money and give it a go, might even pre-order it and thanks for the video too, the lore isn't turning me off the game, so that's good :P sounds rather interesting really.
I've just got one more question really about the combat:
Does it have a cast timer, or is it instant and then wait for the cooldown to finish?
I really like having to move around a lot and be aware of your surroundings, having recently finished Dark Souls, combat like this might really be spot on..
I would like to amend something on that video: it is never explicitly stated whether or not the humans originated from Tyria (the world). Although we do know that humans appeared first in Cantha, and a popular theory is that humans colonized Tyria and Elona.
I've just got one more question really about the combat:
Does it have a cast timer, or is it instant and then wait for the cooldown to finish?
There are cast timers for pretty much every ability you're going to be using in the game, but they vary from "almost non-existent" to "only long enough to play the animation." From everything I've seen, cast times are short. Best of all, you can move while casting basically any ability, be it a normal melee attack or something more exciting like a spell that does crazy damage.
There are, of course, certain things that force you to be stationary for a small amount of time, such as placing a flag for your allies to rally around and get buffs, though they don't really slow you down. That flag, by the way? You can totally use it to pound in people's faces.
Yeah anything could be a weapon in GW2, the bundle system is silly but really fun. Heck, the engineer is practically a class dedicated to the use of bundles. It's always funny to see a mage or a necromancer pick up and utilize a big heavy hammer or sword, it's sweet sweet MMORPG blasphemy.
--Suspend your knowledge of what you think a Thief, Guardian or whatever is supposed to do...this is an MMO as it should be and the mechanics buck tradition...(i.e. There is no holy trinity)
i disagree. they certainly tried their best to get rid of the holy trinity, and hats off to them for that.
however, my guild is rolling Guardians (to be tanky, and use protective utility for the group). Elementalists (for aoe stacked dps), and Engineers (to heal the warband).
now, at the moment there's only 5 man groups and no possibility for larger raid/warbands, so we just make sure we stick to each other as a guild. it makes movement a little more difficult but we manage. i think if everyone is online we'll be running two sets of 25 players.
in WvWvW, the setup described above is absolutely devastating. it's a setup used not just by us, but by the other competitive groups too. why? because it's the most effective for killing numbers 3-4x bigger than your own while taking minimal casualties.
i totally understand when people say "every class brings something useful". because that's true... in pve, and in small scale encounters and dungeons. but in WvWvW... definitely not.
i disagree. they certainly tried their best to get rid of the holy trinity, and hats off to them for that.
however, my guild is rolling Guardians (to be tanky, and use protective utility for the group). Elementalists (for aoe stacked dps), and Engineers (to heal the warband).
now, at the moment there's only 5 man groups and no possibility for larger raid/warbands, so we just make sure we stick to each other as a guild. it makes movement a little more difficult but we manage. i think if everyone is online we'll be running two sets of 25 players.
in WvWvW, the setup described above is absolutely devastating. it's a setup used not just by us, but by the other competitive groups too. why? because it's the most effective for killing numbers 3-4x bigger than your own while taking minimal casualties.
I totally understand when people say "every class brings something useful". because that's true... in pve, and in small scale encounters and dungeons. but in WvWvW... definitely not.
As it applies to WvWvW, I completely agree. Players that group together and stay that way have the best chance of overwhelming the enemy. I saw in one such 3w battle that we were doing quite well on Darkhaven for quite awhile, but we started to lose significant ground when people started doing their own thing or the group would have endless splinters...quite ineffective.
As for the holy trinity thing, I'm sure it's quite easy to tweak the professions to mold them into what the 'normal' mmo roles would have them do, but is it really necessary?
**I haven't played the game enough to make an informed opinion on that one. I would need more than 25 hours of gameplay and quite a few more different toons to work with to see for myself.
My observations are really as they apply to PvE, which is where I spend most of my time...and as you know, what works in PvE generally doesnt work in PvP...this game is no different.
As for my toon, I am working on an engineer "hit and run" build. Fast in, fast out. medium range.
Will it work? Who knows.
I am planning to get more serious with my online gaming with this title.
In WoW, I never really spent alot of time reading about how to build the 'perfect Tank' or whatever, this game however I am reading alot on it...
@Katana - it's absolutely important to define those roles if you're going to be competitive. in competitive play, min/maxing in ALL areas; stats, group makeup, class build etc. they all come into play in a big way.
so yeah, having clearly defined roles, and knowing that guardians can set up defenses for the rest of the team, while engineers can heal/support, and elementalists can bomb bomb bomb... yeah that's important.
don't get me wrong, it's great that people think every class has something important to bring, and it's great that for the most part, they're all "pick up and play" classes with very little need to delve deep if you don't want to. but there's a reason why you'll see groups of 20 taking on and beating groups of 100. and it's not just down to being on ventrilo together.
OK, so let's say I give you a challenge....You have a group of 5 (or 25 - it doesnt matter) toons, you are allowed only 1 profession....could you come up with a series of effective builds that allows for competitive play?
"That in it's essence is what the Devs are saying this game can do.
i disagree. they certainly tried their best to get rid of the holy trinity, and hats off to them for that.
however, my guild is rolling Guardians (to be tanky, and use protective utility for the group). Elementalists (for aoe stacked dps), and Engineers (to heal the warband).
just because your guild is doing that doesn't mean that it's the most viable approach. and engineers are certainly not the best at healing.
now, at the moment there's only 5 man groups and no possibility for larger raid/warbands, so we just make sure we stick to each other as a guild. it makes movement a little more difficult but we manage. i think if everyone is online we'll be running two sets of 25 players.
a commander can gather larger squads in wvwvw and in pve, but becoming a commander is not cheap.
i totally understand when people say "every class brings something useful". because that's true... in pve, and in small scale encounters and dungeons. but in WvWvW... definitely not.
the only thing i have to agree with you and there's hope that they fix that till release, as it appears to be very important to anet.
haha yeah ... though this is one thing im going to miss about gw1, the whole skill bar building, and being able to create unique builds to solo areas and dominate other people, I didn't play too much of the beta so we'll see how this turns out!
There's definitely less build-freedom than the original GW, and I must admit that's one of two things that really bums me about Guild Wars 2. I LOVED coming up with unique builds in the first GW - even ones that were impractical, ones that were excessively hard to make "work" just for the fuck of it. Most builds that I used in the original GW were my own, and I loved having a hundred or so skills to just go nuts and experiment with.
GW2 actually makes it really hard to "suck", or have a shitty build. And consequently, you also have less freedom. There seem to be a lot of "predetermined" builds, or builds that they had in mind when designing the weapon skills and things of that nature. I'll still be doing my best to experiment, but I'm very much hoping that future game updates/expansions wind up giving us more a lot more skills to choose from.
My second gripe is actually the whole down-leveling thing when you go back to a low level area. It has always been a great joy of mine to go back through low level areas with a high level character and get to places more easily, just one-shotting whatever I run across. I understand the free roaming aspect requires something in place to make sure I don't go steal every mob from low level characters, but it still kind of takes me out of the experience. It's like, "So...why am I suddenly puny, just because I went back to this town?"
Replies
Current characters are going to get wiped for the reason and yeah prepurchasers get a 3 day head start.
Also who started this and why is it still around.
I'm going to be on Fort Aspenwood with some friends from the CGTalk TF2 server at launch. A lot of the guys from there are joining the Penny Arcade [NICE] clan until we get our own clan going, and I'm sure anybody from Polycount is welcome to join in.
Guild Wars 2 Pros:
-No month-to-month payment
-Well designed content scaling. You can go back to low-level areas when your are high level and still get percentage-based experience rewards and actually level up. You are temporarily "down leveled" to the zone you are in so that you can play the content in the area without one-shotting everything.
-Exploration is highly encouraged and even rewarded. There are vantage points where you solve jumping puzzles like Mario to see awesome landscape and get an XP reward at the top
-Amazing art across the board
-Fun combat mechanics, lots of customization with your abilities without having to deal with investing 50 points in some worthless skill to get a good one
-Dye system from the very start for FREE so you can always be aesthetically pleasing
-PVP mode where you are instantly leveled to 80 with all the skills for your class and given level 80 PVP gear. This game is not about farming for 3 months for 1 stupid gear piece to play an imbalanced experience *cough*worldofwarcraft*cough*.
-Incredible questing experience where dynamic quests flow together so well you never have to go to some town to get 10 quests, complete them, return, then go out and do more *cough*worldofwarcraft*cough*.
-We were AMAZED with how fast time flew by because the play experience is so well sewn together
Cons:
-Interface was very overwhelming. However, this is pretty standard for most MMOs as there is just so much stuff to take in all at once it can be intimidating.
-How the main story works (which is fine because you can progress through the game while completely skipping all of it due to dynamic events and PVP). I wanted to be an evil character and cutscenes destroys that. When you have your character being represented in cutscenes with their own voice, it really removes you from BEING the character, breaks immersion
-Some voice acting didn't fit certain races. Excpected the small race to have a higher voice, and the big cat people to have a deeper, brooding voice.
I went in with a completely neutral attitude because I never played GW1 and I'm sick of how every MMO is the same today. I was blown away.
The pros outweigh the cons immensely. We arrived at about 11am, and the next time we looked at the clock it was 5pm! I haven't had that happen since the Diablo 2 days back when I was in Jr. High.
All I can say is I'm glad this is coming out after the wedding because my fiance and I both will be playing the hell out of it
The way the game rewards you for exploring was great. The added Vistas are a nice touch. Countless times it was just me wondering, "Alright, how the hell do I get up there?" The game forces you to actually think instead of just reacting to the environment. Jumping puzzles are an especially good use of the environment and give it added flavor.
Some friends and I played on the Yak's Bend server but I noticed after the first day it filled up, forcing some other friends to join other servers. The fact that you can play with friends cross-server is really great. Groups with people from different servers can play together while in a party instead of having to switch permanently.
They sold me a long time ago on this game, but it's just wonderful to see the progression. I can't wait until launch!
within two hours of running around WvWvW, we'd racked up 500+ kills. non stop wiping zerg after zerg, it was AWESOME.
can't wait for the release, we're already communicating with a couple of other guilds who we'd previously fought either with, or against in Warhammer Online, and we're all rolling on the same server to (attempt to) dominate WvWvW non-stop.
Rolled an asura greatsword/staff guardian this round and fell in love.
In terms of enjoyment of races Asura > Humans = Nord > Charr > Salads.
Not sure if I want to roll a Human when the game comes out thought, I was really underwhelmed by Rata Sum (Asura main town).
I've been playing on Darkhaven because there is talk of a guild with people who know people, but I will seriously consider Fort Aspenwood. Darkhaven is a high population world.
I feel that they could have made the voices cooler for the salads, they're a bit to "hello ol chap!" right now, some kind of garrus thing would be nice. Reverberation, rustling leaves.
So has anyone gathered others on PC to pick a server? Would be cool to meet some people on PC in game. A few buddies of mine are heading to Piken Square (think its the unofficial RP server) so people would be welcome to join, unless everyone is gathering elsewhere
Absolutely.
Anyone else find the environments a little weird? Some parts show a lot of effort, and then you can run to a stump that looks like no one cared to give it much love.
Despite the UI being different, how nice is this game at explaining it's functions to new players or those besmirched by the "taint" of other MMOS?
Is it fully freeroaming like WoW or has hub cities connected to areas?
Is it like the old Guild Wars where you can only travel with a small group in each area? or more like WoW where you bump into hundreds if not thousands people out in the open?
Is the combat all about hitting buttons after a cooldown or more dynamic than that?
Just want to get an idea of thing
It took me a little bit of getting used to coming as a long-time original GW player (who has also played a mryiad of other MMOs - City of Heroes, Aion, Final Fantasy, various free to play, etc). The game is actually very very simple, mostly the UI is what can make it weird to figure. I found it easiest to pick up by reading the wiki. Figured it all out in a very short amount of time after doing so.
It's not fully free roaming. Certain areas (such as the large cities) function as "hubs" of a sort. That being said, it's significantly more free roaming than the original GW.
Edit: As an example, here's an image of a portion of the map. The giant circle is a city, Divinity's Reach (which is fucking massive). Everything outside of that circle is free roaming, where you'll encounter lots of other players.
It's not like the old Guild Wars. Your party is limited as I understood it, but you can and will encounter a wide variety of people while you're out questing and exploring. In fact one of the game's highlights to me is the presence of dynamic "events" - things happening around the game world that you'll just run across and find a shit ton of other players participating in. Like a giant wasp queen that you see flash up on your map, and then show up to fight it along with tons of other random players. Some story-related quest portions are instanced.
Both? If you read the "skills" page on the wiki, it'll give you a great idea of what to expect. Depending on your build you might be smashing shit as soon as it ends cooldown, or you might have to really focus. Another highlight of the game for me is environment-affecting skills. I for example as a necromancer might produce a cloud of poison somewhere, and then archers who fire through said cloud will get poison added to their shots, etc. (Tons of shit like this, btw.) Combat is both pretty simple and pretty complex. Learning your own character doesn't take a ton of time, just knowledge of the basic system. But battle definitely has a lot going on.
How dare you.
I'd say it does a pretty good job at being intuitive. They've put a lot of effort into providing tutorials which get you in the right mindset, and objectives are doled out as you get close to them, so you usually know what to do.
It's kind of a hybrid- there are hub cities, but there are also areas connected by loading screens. Though one thing I should note is that areas are huge. You can run into platers as you play, though I'm not sure what the max in an area is, the most I've seen in the same area I would estimate to be 100, though I chose a medium population server.
Think of it as a hyrbid system. The combat is more about positioning and movement than pure DPS, so far as I've seen, and most skills do have a cooldown. Attacking is automatic, so spamming the attack key doesn't change anything.
I'd normally advocate the look before you leap approach, but here I'd say just jump in. Very few games can make me play 12 hours straight and still want more. They devs have put a huge amount of variety in the game (found a place where you had to answer algebra and geometry problems to activate an event), and considering there isn't a dedicated payment system, You aren't losing much other than the ability to buy the next 8 hour console title.
EDIT: for an idea of the scale on Two Listen's image, 3 or four players can walk abreast on the reads.
The largest area I've played in I'd estimate to be larger than this:
--In Addition, there are no ninja loots, everyone will get treasure off a boss for example.
--There are no ninja gathering nodes...everyone can mine, harvest or gather a node that is on their own minimap.
--Suspend your knowledge of what you think a Thief, Guardian or whatever is supposed to do...this is an MMO as it should be and the mechanics buck tradition...(i.e. There is no holy trinity)
I was really wanting to love the mesmer class - as in the original GW is was my favorite alongside the necromancer. But I gotta say after playing with it I wasn't a huge fan of the mesmer in GW2. I only played in one beta, but it seemed like the clones/phantasms you could make wouldn't usually show up until a good couple seconds after the fact, which really took away from the coolness of it. I didn't play in this beta - was this something they improved upon?
My favorite class at the moment is definitely necromancer. It's what I wound up playing most in the original and it looks like I'll be running one again this time.
Tough I miss the old conjure phantasm.
-It's fully free roam, but one difference I would point out is that the paths between the zones are separated by large portal like things. Each zone will be about 15-20 levels worth of leveling so they aren't at all a hindrance. There's no mounts and I wouldn't expect any as the Waypoint system allows instant travel from anywhere and flying mounts would allow you to fly out of the instanced zone.
- The instanced zones can hold a ton of people and if they overflow they are placed in an identical overflow zone. Escalating events are broadcast to the zone so some of the bigger ones like boss fights attract tons and tons of players, in WoW that usually requires a lot of coordination from a guild/guilds, but in this it seems to just happen naturally.
- The combat promotes mobility. Standing still is a death sentence. You don't have your entire arsenal of abilities at hand like in WoW so you have to learn to use what you have to it's full potential.
For these events I played the following in listed order:
Human Guardian
Charr Thief
Asura Engineer
I liked them all surprisingly, now I'm thinking I should give the magic classes a try at launch. I hear necromancer is fun. When I first saw all the classes before beta I wanted to be a mesmer, but after seeing some previews on the abilities it just seemed too iffy.
I haven't played all the classes, but I did play a little bit of thief and it turned out to be extremely fast-paced and almost felt like a shooter when I was dual-wielding pistols.
Ill try and answer some of these in more depth, if you have any questions feel free to ask.
The game is much more open than guild wars but not so much as wow.
The world is split up into sections and each of these sections are apart from one another but connected by portals (the white blobs with the black stroke) When you are in one of the colored areas they are further split by server and by district, There are also overflow servers as well. One thing that may not be touched on is the fact that if you are level 80 and are in a level 15 zone you are scaled down to level 15, they don't want you to one shot everything and they don't want to have you one shot everything and have other players left without anything to combat.
I have no idea what the cap is but you do not only travel with your party like the first.
The combat is quite different then that actually, if you sit and spam you will die and quickly, enemies hit and they hit hard. You will need to dodge and can also attack while moving, so do so, do not stand still. people work well together elementalists setting up a wall of flames and having archers quick shot through it will give each shot additional damage. There is also no mana to manage cooldown and that's it.
The world is very alive and teeming with life and secrets.
And since you have not played the first i suggest this if your into some lore.
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I've just got one more question really about the combat:
Does it have a cast timer, or is it instant and then wait for the cooldown to finish?
I really like having to move around a lot and be aware of your surroundings, having recently finished Dark Souls, combat like this might really be spot on..
I'm a nerd.
There are cast timers for pretty much every ability you're going to be using in the game, but they vary from "almost non-existent" to "only long enough to play the animation." From everything I've seen, cast times are short. Best of all, you can move while casting basically any ability, be it a normal melee attack or something more exciting like a spell that does crazy damage.
There are, of course, certain things that force you to be stationary for a small amount of time, such as placing a flag for your allies to rally around and get buffs, though they don't really slow you down. That flag, by the way? You can totally use it to pound in people's faces.
i disagree. they certainly tried their best to get rid of the holy trinity, and hats off to them for that.
however, my guild is rolling Guardians (to be tanky, and use protective utility for the group). Elementalists (for aoe stacked dps), and Engineers (to heal the warband).
now, at the moment there's only 5 man groups and no possibility for larger raid/warbands, so we just make sure we stick to each other as a guild. it makes movement a little more difficult but we manage. i think if everyone is online we'll be running two sets of 25 players.
in WvWvW, the setup described above is absolutely devastating. it's a setup used not just by us, but by the other competitive groups too. why? because it's the most effective for killing numbers 3-4x bigger than your own while taking minimal casualties.
i totally understand when people say "every class brings something useful". because that's true... in pve, and in small scale encounters and dungeons. but in WvWvW... definitely not.
As it applies to WvWvW, I completely agree. Players that group together and stay that way have the best chance of overwhelming the enemy. I saw in one such 3w battle that we were doing quite well on Darkhaven for quite awhile, but we started to lose significant ground when people started doing their own thing or the group would have endless splinters...quite ineffective.
As for the holy trinity thing, I'm sure it's quite easy to tweak the professions to mold them into what the 'normal' mmo roles would have them do, but is it really necessary?
**I haven't played the game enough to make an informed opinion on that one. I would need more than 25 hours of gameplay and quite a few more different toons to work with to see for myself.
My observations are really as they apply to PvE, which is where I spend most of my time...and as you know, what works in PvE generally doesnt work in PvP...this game is no different.
As for my toon, I am working on an engineer "hit and run" build. Fast in, fast out. medium range.
Will it work? Who knows.
I am planning to get more serious with my online gaming with this title.
In WoW, I never really spent alot of time reading about how to build the 'perfect Tank' or whatever, this game however I am reading alot on it...
Either way, it's going to be a fun ride.:)
so yeah, having clearly defined roles, and knowing that guardians can set up defenses for the rest of the team, while engineers can heal/support, and elementalists can bomb bomb bomb... yeah that's important.
don't get me wrong, it's great that people think every class has something important to bring, and it's great that for the most part, they're all "pick up and play" classes with very little need to delve deep if you don't want to. but there's a reason why you'll see groups of 20 taking on and beating groups of 100. and it's not just down to being on ventrilo together.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_engineer_traits
And the build I am currently figuring out. I want it for both pvp and pve...which is something I feel in WoW is harder to do.
http://www.gw2builds.org/create/bwe_1/engineer#1.1-1.6.1.4.1-10.30.5.5.15-0.0.0.0.0
@almighty_gir
OK, so let's say I give you a challenge....You have a group of 5 (or 25 - it doesnt matter) toons, you are allowed only 1 profession....could you come up with a series of effective builds that allows for competitive play?
"That in it's essence is what the Devs are saying this game can do.
just because your guild is doing that doesn't mean that it's the most viable approach. and engineers are certainly not the best at healing.
a commander can gather larger squads in wvwvw and in pve, but becoming a commander is not cheap.
the only thing i have to agree with you and there's hope that they fix that till release, as it appears to be very important to anet.
There's definitely less build-freedom than the original GW, and I must admit that's one of two things that really bums me about Guild Wars 2. I LOVED coming up with unique builds in the first GW - even ones that were impractical, ones that were excessively hard to make "work" just for the fuck of it. Most builds that I used in the original GW were my own, and I loved having a hundred or so skills to just go nuts and experiment with.
GW2 actually makes it really hard to "suck", or have a shitty build. And consequently, you also have less freedom. There seem to be a lot of "predetermined" builds, or builds that they had in mind when designing the weapon skills and things of that nature. I'll still be doing my best to experiment, but I'm very much hoping that future game updates/expansions wind up giving us more a lot more skills to choose from.
My second gripe is actually the whole down-leveling thing when you go back to a low level area. It has always been a great joy of mine to go back through low level areas with a high level character and get to places more easily, just one-shotting whatever I run across. I understand the free roaming aspect requires something in place to make sure I don't go steal every mob from low level characters, but it still kind of takes me out of the experience. It's like, "So...why am I suddenly puny, just because I went back to this town?"
I'm sure I'll get used to that, though.
100g on launch is not cheap.
100g a month after launch... and every monkey in the game will buy commander rights, and spam the map with useless drivel. good stuff!
there are players who got 80+ gold by the end of this beta weekend.
Really? Wow...I only got to about 12s...:(
@Two Listen : I know what you mean about the downlevel thing....but I one-shot bunnies, so that was ok...:)
It's all about the auction house. A friend of mine was playing the auction house and had something like 12 gold by the second day of the BWE.
Seems like a silly waste of time, unless a toon needed cash to experience something epic in the game....though no time to truly enjoy it.
Am I missing something here??