Guild Wars II Open beta Weekend

[conmcb25]

First of all rather a fun game. Is it equivalent to the second coming of Jesus like SWTOR was??? Well no but sufficiently fun enough that I think Ill sink a far amount of time into it.

Its Guild warsie but not Guild wars.

Ill post some more later but wanted to get some screen shots up:

This is the current version of Aranarth Elessar, who made it up to level 13 Ranger. He is human. (He always is)



And his Bear Pet, you get a pet from the beginning, that levels up with you.



And UnO made it into game with me. A Charr Engineer, he didn't make it out of the newbie area though



BTW UnO if naming is important to you, I would suggest you reserve names early. Unorthodox and Unorthodoxx were already taken. This guys name was Unorthodoxxx. You can't put capitals in the middle of a name nor use numerals. Same for Guild Names

[conmcb25]

Reserved

[conmcb25]

Very open cooperative gameplay.

Very large open persistent world.

Huge cities, Im talking the Guild wars cities x 20. I was absolutely amazed at the size of and detail of Divinities Reach the starter Human city.

Wow cities x 2 or 3.

Very exploration orientated, I spent the whole weekend wandering from area to area in the huge starter area (level 1-15 zone)

Lots and lots of events and other things to do. Exploration and event completion give the most exp, killing mobs do not give much.

Very easy to port from city to city and to areas within the zones. Mounts won't be needed in this game.

Very fun, involved crafting and gathering system. Not complicated but involved enough to make it interesting.

I did not get a chance to do WvWvW but its the spiritual successor to Jade Quary or Fort Aspenwood, a blend of PvE and PvP, that even the people who never PvP have been raving about.

Thats just a quick and dirty first impression. The heavy focus on exploration and cooperative game play really did it for me here is a good example from the forums, that I experienced several times in various forms over the weekend:

In one example, I found a narrow (and very dangerous passage) leading up to a skill point unlock in the mountains. I had my ass handed to me attempting it alone and ended up respawning at the base of the mountain only to find another player trying her luck. Without speaking, we simply worked our way up the mountain together, watching each other’s backs out of a mutual understanding towards our common goal. In another game, I might have been inclined to let the other player grab aggro and perhaps even die to one of the mobs so I could make it up the top safely and fight the skill challenge mob by myself in order to ensure I would have it. Why do this in Guild Wars 2? We both get full XP and loot for helping each other kill our way to the top and this includes credit for the skill point fight as well. We never said a word to each other and were eventually even joined by a third player, but we all fought our way to the top and left happy campers with our extra skill point unlocked. My entire experience with the game was similar to this one snapshot. Everything was collaborative, not competitive. Don’t get me wrong, I love competition, but I’d rather leave that to PvP than adventuring.

I am sold, the exploration focus and cooperative game play did it for me.

[Unorthodox]

Ranger....

Whoda guessed.




yeah, I'm so popular everyone wants to copy me these days. I'm pretty sure my character names will be free. They're obscure enough no one will pick them.

[Unorthodox]

Hey....tease us with reserved posts and then disappear?

[godking]

Ya, just like Con....

[conmcb25]

Yep kind of a busy week and Im also going on training next week so not a lot of time to satisfy curious minds, I am about to post a thing or two in the reserved areas.

[Unorthodox]

Not to be a pest, but as someone who's never approached a "real" MMO, and the closest they have been is GW (or maybe a MUD or two way back when), and who loved the instanced nature of it...what exactly does this 'open persistent world' really mean?

IE, I see the example of the people cooperating to complete the quest and all getting credit. That's one of the problems I've had with most MMO ideas. However, now that quest is "done", does it respawn after X minutes, or does the next new person do something else? What if you were stuck at the bottom of the mountain when those at the top killed whoever? Keeping in mind there's going to be thousands of people trying to get going at the same time, it could get crowded.

Also, I'm assuming they have to break out the servers somehow and not 'everybody' will be playing the same persistent world? (unless things have changed lately, which is entirely possible) Where you're more east coast and I'm more west, any word on how that break is going to be yet?

[conmcb25]

Ok three types of "quests" none of which are go to an NPC and get it. They just appear in your UI as you approach them.

hearts: quests that usually appear around some burg or fort out in the persistent areas. They are usually satisfied by doing several things, gathering stuff, fighting mobs. They are static and nonce you have done them the heart fills up and you can repeat them you just don't get as much credit. They usually open up a merchant type guy and you can buy different stuff in different places..

shields, those are the events everyone has been talking about., much less static and more fluid and they can change the game world. You might get one to defend a fort from centaurs. If you are successful the burg stays in "ggod guy" control. If not the Centaurs can take over and the area becomes 'contested. depending upon whether you win or lose it can set up another chain of events.

skill challenges: usually harder quests to get skill points, the example above was a skill challenge.

Ok lets take on the "open persistant world", Ill put it into GW1 terms. Ascalon City and the surrounding areas in GW 2 are the noobie areas for lack of a better term. In GW2 Ascalon city city would be huge, think times 20, and Im not exaggerating. (I could believe how big Divinties Reach was) It would be its own zone and you would have to cross a zone border to exit. Just like leaving AC in GW1. But all of Old Ascalon, instead of being a bunch of zone separated sometimes by other smaller cities, is now one huge big area, and it that area is wilderness and other little towns and forts. No zoning, Just one big chunk of a persistent world. Now to get to the next area leveling up you would have to zone, but again its another huge area just like the first one. I probably played 12 to 15 hours total last weekend, doing lots of heart and sheild quests and I did not finish exploring all of the 1-15 huge zone, much less any other zones. Its big much bigger than GW. Persistent means its up all the time and other adventurers are there with you but you share all rewards. if you do something you get something. No kill stealing or ninja looting.

There are a lot of different servers, you will have to chose one and if any of you guys play, we will have to coordinate. And no queuing at login to get on a server, you will have several mirrors of the same servers as "Overflow" servers to handle the load. Kind of like the numerous numbers of city instances.

and for the different kind of quests, hearts and skill quests constantly re-spawn statically, so wait a bit and waht you need to gather/ kill/ or whatever will be back once again.

It won't get that crowded except maybe right at launch until the numbers "spread out", because there are different servers and there are overflow servers for the server you are on.

Did that answer most of your questions?

[conmcb25]

Ok Ive been waiting almost two weeks UnO.

I tried to answer your questions, did it work?

[conmcb25]

Oh and the break is going to be US and EU for the servers.

So we could be on the same server, no problem.

Euro guys and us will have issues, if nothing else increased ping.

[Unorthodox]

I just don't know, the whole quest stystem is sounding rather foreign to me. Just a wait and see how it works type thing I guess. "Wait a bit" isn't always an option for me. Nice little controlled 45 minute mission chunks was easy to handle in GW1. "wait a bit" isn't controlled... Nor is leaving the character in a fort and coming on a few days later to find it a contested area. I just don't know about this type of game for me.

[conmcb25]

UnO

Just because you are in a quest arc doesn't mean you have to do it. And there are a lot of relatively safe zones outside of cities. Most of the mobs aren't auto agrro, you have to attack them first.

And there are portals all over that allow you to teleport. So if you are playing and need to log, go to a portal and transport yourself back to the nearest town and log. It takes no time at all.

Being in a Guild Wars I mission was much more restrictive, because once you started, you had to finish or start over again. Here if you don't fill up a "heart", you just log and come back when ever and finish it up. Or don't ever finish it and do something else. you dont have to do everything everywhere to advance.

Based on what I know GW2 is going to complement your play style, not hinder it.

[conmcb25]

Did I answer your previous questions?

[Unorthodox]

Like I say, it's just something I'm going to have to see in action before I understand how it works.

It's SUPPOSED to run on my laptop, so I'm most likely to be getting it either on release (if the June rumors are true, lines up great with my bday), or by Christmas (if it slips a few months I'll not want to distract myself), depending on timing of release.

[conmcb25]

Much more free form play than GW1. I don't know if you'll "like it" but its definately going to fit in with your RL realities.

There is no way this is getting released in June. My guess is the Fall.

[Unorthodox]

In the modern era of release early and patch later, nothing would surprise me anymore.

[conmcb25]

Sure there is going to be patches but this isn't going to be a disaster like most MMO's.

They aren't ready to release in June, and they won't.

I guarentee it.

They already got way more cash coming in then they anticipated thru the pre-purchases. They don't need to overly rush this out the door. And they have to make sure game sales are steady, there is no monthly fee to bail em out. Bad release means bad sales, and they will have a hard time recovering IMHO.

Decent to good release = increased sales. They aren't going to deliberately screw that up.

[Unorthodox]

Yeah, saw news some NCSoft person says it's been pushed back out of this quarter, so definitely after July.

That makes it Christmas or later for me.

[conmcb25]

Yeah, saw news some NCSoft person says it's been pushed back out of this quarter, so definitely after July.

That makes it Christmas or later for me.

Ya well Ill hopefully be playing with OTG by then so I should have the basics figured out when you start to catch up. Sounds like SAGE is also going to assimilate into OTG with some members of LP (which is mostly inactive)