Guild Wars 2 — 1st Weekend Beta Event

[[FnG] Da Kril]

I cannot get over how absolutely astounding the big cities are -- TREMENDOUS effort and design achievements, all of them.
They are incredible to search through. I've gotten Divinity's Reach 100% mapped, and I thought it was pretty spectacular.
Then I did Lion's Arch and it was more fabulous (a little tricky finding those last two points of interest, what with the hidden tunnels and sneaky gangplanks above).

Have you been to the Black Citadel yet? Incredible, dark sci-fi military feel: if you look up, it looks like they're building the Death Star in there.
Hoelbrak is pretty, but in a more spread-out layout. I must've gained two levels just by exploring, alone.
And that's kewl.

Four thumbs up for the amazing city design!

[[FnG] Da Kril]

Crazy high-dive fun in Lion's Arch!

I'm not sure these screenshots get across the extreme skyscraper-like height,
but it was a bit giddy (also same if you climb Lion's Gate Lighthouse). Wow.







There were swimming goggles near the diving board that you could wear,
so they wanted you to jump. GeronimoooOooooOOoo!
When you hit the water, you are rewarded with XP for finding the
place of interest "Old Lion's Arch" submerged in the bay.

Third shot is after jump, coming out of water on beach seen in first two shots.

fun stuff,
--kril out--

P.S. Also note: armor clipping issues -- seeing a lot of this everywhere.
I have equipped two pistols on my waist: you can see them sticking out through my coat/armor thingy. Oops.

[[FnG] Lazz]

Thanks for that Da Kril. Was drinking a can of Schweppes when reading the captions on your first screenshot, which made me laugh and caused me to dribble it down my tshirt

I have mixed feelings so far. (Yes I bought it!). No doubt the music is great, as is the artwork.

I have heard the game gets better later on (after level 10 or so) but a few problems I have include:

The crowds. I didn't actually realise GW 2 was doing away with most of the instances. In GW 1, part of the fun was preparing yourself for battle, then stepping out of the towns with a few people knowing its just you and your group vs the wild, then exploration leads to the discovery of new places. In GW 2, or at least up to where I am at (level 5), every time I go out of towns, there are people everywhere and it feels like the lines between what is a city and what is the 'wild' are kinda blurred. I do love the events though, which obviously wouldn't be possible in instances but its fun when enemies appear and within seconds, theres 30 people throwing everything they've got at them.

The exchange of dialogue is a bit odd. Granted there is a 'work in progress' sign so it will probably be completely different by the time the game is released, but having 2 characters having a chat infront of a wall of artwork takes me out of the game.

The skill setup is taking some getting used to. Im kind of divided with this. On the one hand, skills/spells being determined by the weapon you are wielding might restrict creativity (i.e. in GW, you might have had 5 AoE spells to do heavy damage to a group of enemies whereas in GW 2, its only possible to have a couple on your bar, from what I've seen). On the other hand, even in GW despite having 8 slots for skills, I had a tendancy to favour only a handfull so we will see.

Speaking of spells, they are nice. They look impressive and even those spells (Im an elementalist) which are the same as in GW 1 are modified to feel fresh. Like the way in GW, the phoenix spell is basically sending a big flame towards enemies, but in GW 2, a phoenix appears, fly's around enemies, setting them on fire, then returning to you.

I also hope that in the final game, there are more tutorial options. On the one hand, ArenaNet wont want to make players feel like they are being spoonfed what to do, but on the other hand, even GW players have been confused with some of the changes.

They are aiming to have 1 beta weekend each month so we will see what comes next

[[FnG] Da Kril]

Doh! Must ... read ... mail messages. AND CLICK!

Was anybody else, like me, kinda 'meh' about this mailbox thing,
where NPCs send you dumb canned messages? Get out of my face,
and why waste time implementing that, I wondered.

OK, now I get it -- it's their new quest-reward delivery system. (or, part of it?)
Each message has a sum of coins associated with it -- scroll through and click "Take All" on each.
Your wallet will thank you.

Still seems doofusly clumsy system. GW's quick pop-up of "You did it! Here's what you get -- take it." was simpler and more elegant, by far.

jeez,
--k o--

[[FDG]Sundae]

They may very well re-implement that. One big complaint people had was that nobody noticed the $$ attached to those messages.

[[FnG] Unholy Eve]

Yer I ignored the messages completley and only opened the maixbox to get rid of the unread mail item, only noticed the money this morning.

Quite nice to go exploring around the new lions arch and more so swimming in the old lions arch.

One thing im not overly impressed with is the Charr, the starting area is not very event heavy, the area recommended level is out by at least 3 levels at a time and the overall difficulty is rather steap compared to its Norn and Human counter-parts. If I had of gone with Charr as a first character for the beta I might not of continued as with out Rampy's help with the story quests it would have been a none starter, even with a party of me, Rampy, Lambik and Yasmin the missions very skills very aggressive. For the last hour we just decided to explore as much as we could and ended up running from the Black Citadel all the way to the Norn starting area and got about 2 level a piece in discovery and warp points bonuses.

The game drasticly needs some sort of tutorial or help section as just "winging it" has made it difficult at times to understand just whats going on.
Over all the games good but could be so much better.

[[FnG] Nihilist]

Still seems doofusly clumsy system. GW's quick pop-up of "You did it! Here's what you get -- take it." was simpler and more elegant, by far.

Gotta say I disagree with that; I far prefer instant quest reward in my portable mailbox to slugging back to an NPC to turn a quest in.

I feel the mailbox rewards are a nice QOL innovation by AN...but YMMV!

[[FnG] Da Kril]

Gotta say I disagree with that; I far prefer instant quest reward in my portable mailbox to slugging back to an NPC to turn a quest in.

Oh, I wasn't talking about having to visit the quest-giver to turn in the quest -- since quests are by and large gone, then so is that -- and that's fine, agreed.

I was referring to completed missions or completed dungeons -- bang, you're done, reward screen, here's your stuff, it's already in your bag, hit up the chest for an extra. That was fun. And simple.

--kril out--

[[FnG] RampantBunny]

Most of the points have already been mentioned here, i'd give the game in its current state a very carefull 7/10 (and that includes some nostaligia points).

There are some things that will need to be adressed though
1 Somekind of tutorial, running around like a headless chicken kills the fun fast

2 The personal storylines are a very nice feature, i liked that a lot. However they are extremely linear and they do not pose much a brain challenge.

3 Area balance: As a human i was able to more or less potter along and do my thing, beasties lvl'ed as i lvl'ed so no real issues there. On the char side it was seriously messed up though...going ito a lvl 6 heart quest area to get pounced by lvl 10 foes, seriously wtf is up with that. The same happened in the char storylines. Eventually me and eve teamed up (and were later joined by Yasmin and Lambik..and Kabhouter for a short while) that gave us a chance to really push ahead (with some strugles though)

4 The personal story part 2: When you join somebody to help out with his or her storyline, the only xp you get is from killing and exploring. I dont mind that at all because half the fun is being on TS trying to figure it all out together. However it doesnt promote teamplay very much. Maybe the storylines link up as you get further into the game, I do hope they do something with that though

5 Graphics: Yes the towns look nice (and are huge), the open areas look nice, facial detail is ok, body shapes and sizes are soso and you need to tweak your toon to make it look decent. The armor is sadly totally 100% piss poor. At first i though my warrior looked ok in her chain (it looked like chain should look, no weird spikes etc etc)...then i saw Lambik's thief ..It looked like a girl getting ready for attack dog training in a stif heavily padded outfit. 0/0 for that one and that only cos i can't give negative marks. (I did notice the renderer was DX9 that could count for a lot and will no doubt be changed)

All in all: I had fun this weekend, because it was new and there was exploring/discovering to do (i went in in openminded not expecting a gw1 clone ), but so far i havent really been awed. In its current state it certainly will not have the lifespan that GW1 had, but it is a beta after all so only time will tell...

[[FnG] Da Kril]

On the charr side it was seriously messed up though...going ito a lvl 6 heart quest area to get pounced by lvl 10 foes, seriously wtf is up with that. The same happened in the char storylines. Eventually me and eve teamed up (and were later joined by Yasmin and Lambik..and Kabhouter for a short while) that gave us a chance to really push ahead (with some strugles though)

This was the last thing I did, late last night after mapping Black Citadel. Wow, I can confirm the Ashford Plains starting area is indeed srsly borked. I fought lvl 10 doodz in most every dynamic event. Even with a loose group of other players, we were wiping often. Yeah, I was scaled down from lvl 16, but I still had lots of extra buffs and skills (compared to lvl 3–6 players), and it didn't help.

The armor is sadly totally 100% piss poor.

This is a good point, you know? I hadn't really paid much attention to it, being all preoccupied with getting skills, leveling and exploring — but you're absolutely right. Every piece of armor I picked up (quite a few) and put on were really kinda butt-ugly, and I thought, "Well, I won't get this armor when the game's released — i'll get something good instead." But Rampy raises the point, where ARE the 'good' armor skins? Uh, WILL there be good-looking armor? Because I certainly didn't see any that made me go "oh, that's nice" this weekend (quite the contrary).

And the more I think about it, I really didn't see any weapon skins that made me go "wow, that's kewl," either.

I'm wondering if the amazingly improved/complex cities drew resources/time away from designers' efforts to create sexy, sick weapons and armor for us? Overall, this is not a deal-breaker, but as of right now, Guild Wars armor/weap skins >>> GW 2 armor/weaps.

then i saw Lambik's thief ..It looked like a girl getting ready for attack dog training in a stif heavily padded outfit. 0/0 for that one and that only cos i can't give negative marks.

You might as well be describing my engineer's (male) armor — the description fits perfectly. Ready for Doberman training, or bomb disposal (although the bomb padding sort of makes sense for engineer. Still, boring and ugly, imho.)

_____

I'm curious to see if they wipe our toons in between the Beta Weekend Events.
(we know they will wipe everything prior to the game, but will our stuff persist in the meantime?)
Post if anybody knows, plz thx.
EDIT (I realized it's likely they will wipe in between, but there was also talk of raising the level cap for later BWEs,
and, if so, I could see them letting toons persist...)

Ack, now we can't play... withdrawal, aigh!
--kril out--

[[FnG] RampantBunny]

From what i've gathered from GW2guru.com the armor skins in the beta all kinda look the same, and it was suggested these simply weren't the final skins. I hope they are right (looking at the fact it's a DX9 client i have good hope this is indeed the case)

On the other hand Yas did manage to craft a better looking pair of pants for her ele though, so its possible you will have to craft if you want nice stuff.

Lots of complaints about the melee classes from the beta and guru forums, melee classes are deemed too wimpy and ranged classes seem to become the flavor of the month. ( a remark from the community manager about the fact a warrior can use a gun to stay out of close quarters combat did not go down very wel, as could have been expected .. not the smartest of responses there )

But lets not forget it was still a beta and we will see changes over the next events. (i still want an asuran warior with floppy ears to big armor and a big hitty stick )

Last but not least: As far as i know everytihng gets wiped after every beta.

[[FnG] Yasmin]

hm my characters armor was nice. . .well I thought it was , mine is the one on the left on the 1st pic
I got pants from loot I didnt like so I made these at the tailor and it looked good,
but you get no really good preview so it was just try and I was lucky, I liked it

[[FnG] Unholy Eve]

From all the armor I had as loot and crafted the only set/pieces I liked so far was the starter human necro set, the rest was quite plain and boring imo.

Beta characters are to be deleted after each beta event (unless they decide not to from now on)

[[FnG] Da Kril]

From what i've gathered from GW2guru.com the armor skins in the beta all kinda look the same, and it was suggested these simply weren't the final skins. I hope they are right

Yeah, Sundae just posted a similar thought over on the Fudgies board.

Sundae points out the original GW beta event had armor that looked "roughly like this":
(I will swipe his illustration — thx, Sundae)



...and we know how that finally turned out, so I'm crossing off armor/weap skins as a concern.

@ Yasmin: agree, that's not bad, anyway

--k o--

[[FnG] Lambik]

I was going to play GW2, but now RAMPY is making fun of my beautiful armor, I tend to reconsider playing it
My hunch is that they mixed armor, and that the 'real' armor will be in the actual release(I do hope), else I put a paper bag over my face when playing

I did put up some cons and pros of the game as I experienced it, most are already mentioned before.
cons:
-Targeting system, the lack of it
- Missing the double clicking an NPC to go there. So the basic controls which made GW1 special is gone and changed into the every other similar kind of gametype
like AION, DDO, etc. in there we just put up with it, as GW2 is comming and now GW2 has gone the same path
-Texture glitches, my characters behind appeared through the jacket she was wearing (must be some butt being able to stretch the texture like that )
-To my knowledge, my Thief character was wearing an Engineering suite, which was in anyways ugly (as pointed out by Mr. RampantBunny )
-The animations of spell-cast-effects are nice, but in a group of 15 to 20 players, it's complete chaos, and can't see anything anymore.
- Graphics in high res are still not stunning, that was until I got to Lion's Arch. To bad the dev's didn't think of first entrance make the first impression
- foes do not appear as red dots any more, Silke and Eve will be so not pleased by this.
- missing the mini-map (u-map)
- I can't dance anymore, I can't dance in reallife, and now it's disabled in this little twisted game too

pros:
- Character customization is very detailed
- Event system is very nice, and easy to follow
- not having to turn in a quest is very handy, as is the email system for rewards
- Lion's Arch is indeed a real work of art
- dodging attacks is a nice find to get out of a fight (though I hardly used it, I'd rather die and revive)
- the revive thing is nice, except when dying the target suddenly changes, and not the nearly dead foe is the target anymore
- the personal story line, although not being that personal, is nice
- the party system needs a boost in handling, only from certain points you can travel together to other way points, apart from that you can see where other party members are on the map outside your radar circle
- the trader is a nice thing, to sell even if you're not online.

To sum it all up, at the start of the game, with creating the toon, I was thrilled, a lot of details can be set, and all. But then when the game starts (after 42:58:34), I got dissapointed by the graphics at the spawn.
It just looked like Eye of the North and even more simple, it just took me the next day to get the feel and learn to appreciate the game. They should have spend more effort into the entrance of GW2, as I needed quite some time to get over the dissapointment of the start of the game. The game isn't finished yet, and hopefully the surveys will get the game in the right direction (the direction we like).
Can't wait till the next beta weekend(they should make it a beta Week), who needs sleep after all