Guild Wars 2

Anyone else beta testing Guild Wars 2?

WOW! Very nice opening beta in April, I am excited for the next test day.

I was at the beta weekend event. Tried out the Elementalist and Guardian.

First of all, let me say that I loved how you could keep moving when using skills. Makes the combat much more fluid.

The "quests" are nothing truly groundbreaking, but it's the way they are presented that makes the deal. There is no quest log telling you what to do. When you arrive near an area with an objective, you get alerted to it. There are many ways in which you can complete the event, and you can complete it by doing any of those objectives, or a mix of them all. To make things even better, all players in the same area contribute to completion. Kill stealing is effectively out of the picture.

The skills in the game are situational. This, to me, is actually a good thing. The autoattack skill is your bread and butter damage dealer, while the other skills are to be used when needed. I like it that way. I find the concept of skill rotations to be terribly dull. I prefer a game that tests if you know when to use your skills than one that tests the order in which you use them.

Make no mistake, Guild Wars 2 does not hold your hand. You will die. A lot. Do not expect to go on your merry way slaughtering mobs, even in the starting areas. Fortunately, you get a chance to come back to the fight when your health reaches zero if you play your cards right. But be warned anyway, this game is hard.

Last, but definitely not least, is the business model. There are no subscription fees. You pay full price upfront and play as much as you want. The game is further supported by an ingame cash shop that sells aesthetic and convenience items. Players are able to freely trade ingame money and cash shop tokens between them. This means that you only pay what you wish to pay, and the devs don't need to add pointless grind to the game to keep you playing your monthly fee. Everyone's happy.

In a nutshell, Guild Wars 2 is nothing completely new, but it polishes the common tropes of MMORPGs and takes them in a new direction. The wait seems to be paying off.

I felt the GW2 beta was quite nice, but at the end of day didn't really offer anything new. It's "more of the same", but in a refined, improved way. I think it'll be quite popular with the MMO crowd. :)

Personally, for me, the highlight of the decade is Diablo 3, but that's for another thread!

Yeah. There were some people saying Guild Wars 2 was going to be an entirely new experience, but the devs made it quite clear that it was going to be a hotbar-based MMORPG. The difference was always going to be in the details.

Though I guess events with branching paths depending on your actions in an MMO game is something new.

But for me, the main selling point of Guild Wars 2 is how it handles player cooperation in an unorganized PvE environment. With other games of the genre, you're encouraged to avoid other players like the plague when questing, so they don't get your kills. Heck, when you see another player in trouble, instead of helping him out, you ignore him and leave him to die, just so you don't get accused of kill-stealing. In Guild Wars 2, all players get the same experience and rewards for a fight, regardless of who initiated the fight or who dealt the final blow. Seeing another player pass by and help you out with whatever you're doing is always a good experience, even more if you form a temporary group and go tackle the same challenges after that.

And besides, I refuse to play any game with a subscription fee on principle. I think is a dishonest business practice that can only work with bland Skinner's Box techniques.

As a last point here, I absolutely love the scope of the customization in Guild Wars 2. Two characters of the same class can play completely different depending on their weapon and trait choices. I had already decided I wanted to make a Charr Warrior with dual axes and a rifle when the game comes out, so I went on the net to see what I could do. The build I made was quite scary.

One thing I liked was receiving experience for resurrecting other players. SO people wormed together more. I also liked how the personal story worked into the game. Champions online touched on that with a customized boss and minions, but GW2 seems to take it to an entire new level.

The reward system where your cut of the treasure is based on how much you help alone makes the game less frustrating. I can not tell you how many time I yelled at the screen in GW1 for players that coasted though a mission where every one else worked hard on. Or other games where greed let other players take your reward.

The new "No Trinity" is quite refreshing, and combat has the best strategy/tactics I have ever felt. For example - I was fighting and got lazy with a little button mashing which quickly got me into trouble. So I had to knock back the enemy, teleport out of range, then set up a doppelganger of myself to distract my enemy and attack it while I self healed and circled around to flack attack for increased damage. That is the excitement I want from an MMORPG battle.

Best yet not only is there no monthly fee, but items purchased in the store will only add color to game play and will not give you unfair advantages. In other words you can not buy a more powerful character.

I can't wait for the game to go live.

*note to players there is a stress test May 14th.

As a last point here, I absolutely love the scope of the customization in Guild Wars 2. Two characters of the same class can play completely different depending on their weapon and trait choices. I had already decided I wanted to make a Charr Warrior with dual axes and a rifle when the game comes out, so I went on the net to see what I could do. The build I made was quite scary.

Nice build post CyberDagger

Went through some more things with my Guardian yesterday. Still having framerate issues, but I'm positive it'll won't be a problem anymore in the next build, once they optimize the graphic processing.

Went through some more things with my Guardian yesterday. Still having framerate issues, but I'm positive it'll won't be a problem anymore in the next build, once they optimize the graphic processing.

I had no lag or graphics problems on the Stress Test day, even with my four year old graphics card (which will NOT run new games like Arkham City).

While I am liking GW2 more each time I play, I find that teaming with friends is cumbersome, and even difficult if you are not on voice to coordinate. The overflow is confusing, and for a game that is based on cooperation I hope they find a fix for teaming.

GW1 was a breeze to get together with friends.

They have recognized that the overflow it poorly implemented right now and they're doing their best to fix it. The stress test used the same build as the BWE, so we didn't get to see Overflow 2.0 yet.

And I'm on a 4 year old laptop which wasn't even a dedicated gaming rig back when I bought it. Explains the low framerate. But it can run League of Legends perfectly, so I'm fairly positive I'll get decent framerate once that part is optimized to make full use of the graphics card. (The graphics processing in the current build is mainly CPU-bound.)

Explains the low framerate. But it can run League of Legends perfectly, so I'm fairly positive I'll get decent framerate once that part is optimized to make full use of the graphics card. (The graphics processing in the current build is mainly CPU-bound.)

That explains why my 4 year gold graphics card is not lagging since I have a quad core and 16 GB of memory.

Thanks for the info CyberDagger.