f13.net

Yea, so the gallery stuff isn't in place. Fucking deal with the rediculous image download, I had the quality cranked up to high on the jpeg saving in photoshop.

Ok. So in the otherthread I slipped into fanboi nonsense mode. I apologize. I'm going to do a long writeup that is the complete inverse of Haemish's Dear MMOG letter tonight.

Anyway, without further ado - Guild Wars. What is it? Pretty MMO Style Diablo. I don't know how else to say this. Click on an enemy it autoattacks. You have 8 skills to use during battle. When you make a toon you get a primary and secondary class, MUCH like CoH where you get skills from both schools but your secondary school is slightly weakened. Loot is exactly like diablo. You even hold down Alt to see everything on screen. To cycle through enemies you hit delete. Did I mention it's Diablo? Ok, here are the screenies.

(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw001.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw002.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw003.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw004.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw005.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw006.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw007.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw010.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw013.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw014.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw018.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw020.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw021.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw024.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw025.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw026.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw027.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw029.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw030.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw031.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw032.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw033.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw034.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/guildwars/gw036.jpg)

Did I mention the boobies?

You're a pretty princess.

I picked her because of the translucency effects.




























Ok. It was the boobies and hair.

You know, it looks an awful lot like they used the same engine that was used in Lineage 2. Or they did the same as Lineage 2 and used the Unreal engine to build that, but the graphics have some striking similarities. That is a good thing. Guild Wars looks damn pretty. Now I have to wait 8 hours to get home before I can even play. Damnit!

Is it wrong that I want to touch schild's boobies?

Very, very pretty. I've never played Diablo so this might actually seem novel to me.

From the sound of it, it is like CoH, but even a bit more shallow?

Maybe a list of reasons why you like it better than CoH?  Or do you?
Is it the FREE thing or the PVP thing?

If it is just because you love diablo I might just pass.  Diablo was fun for a few hours and then it got old FAST.  At least for me.  Obviously it was super popular.

How many servers are there?  Everyone in one world or heavy instancing?

Just some questions off the top of my head.  Probably to be answered in your review when you get it up.

Supposedly the entire game world outside of the major city is instanced Alluvian.

I don't know, see my post on the other thread. I found the world to be barren and ugly, with graphics that I was highly disappointed in. Character models were ok, but I felt like I was playing in some kind of wasteland.

I may try it again, but my reaction has been substantially different from Schild's. Part of that may be my aversion to PvP, part of it is just nagging suspicions I have, like they're gonna find no subscription fee to be hard to maintain.

The game is too slow paced to be like Diablo. A game where you click to attack instead of targeting then hitting 'A' doesn't really make a game like Diablo, neither does randomized loot. Diablo is really an action game with hotkeys for potions and mana and swarms of monsters.

GW reminds me much more of L2 than Diablo.

If it's like L2 that'd explain my immediate "bleh" feeling. It just wasn't what I was hoping for.

I did a couple minutes of play in single mode.  Its OK, but the world reminded me of KOTOR.  The artificial constraints on movement that are created by the use of hills you can't climb and what not.  I am somewhat impressed (in a sad way) with the amount of effort put into making the female characters pixelicisous.

I downloaded this last night and screwed around for an hour or so and had about the same feeling as Schild... All the shallowness of Diablo with an even slower pace.  Some of the scenery was interesting to look at, but I never really got over my initial "meh Diablo" reaction to feel immersed.

Looks like I'm going back to Skyway City.

I loved KoToR but understand the frustration with constraints on movement. I also didn't figure out a way to jump, which after SWG is a warning flag for me. I hate nothing more than being thwarted by ankle-high barriers.

Just to clarify, I'm not ripping on KOTOR, it's just that the limitations on movement that I saw in the game would piss me off if they were used in a MMOG.

Perhaps GW's movement is simply suffering in comparison to CoH's.

And WoW's as well. I don't know, the feel of the game just wasn't...exciting to me. Even the spells were kinda boring. I might give it another go, especially later when it's in beta and is further along. Right now I just wasn't impressed.

And I understand, you'll accept limitations in a single player game that you won't in a MMORPG. Most people are the same way. That said, most MMORPGs have some impassable terrain. Certain mountains in WoW. Anything ankle high in SWG....

The problem with the impassable terrain in this game was that I was in a little valley. No exploration really, just sorta herded along a single path.

While an hour or two of play time has convinced me of the viability of instanced combat zones, it hasn't sold me on the game, at least as presented in this version. If you take Diablo and remove the need to click frequently in order to kill the stuff that's flying at you, you have Guild Wars. While it does have the 'EQ 1.5' click-to-autoattack-and-throw-in-the-occasional-special-move-every-now-and-again functionality, that really isn't anything to write home about. And the lure of no monthly fee seems to exist solely because it is unlikely anyone would pay a monthly fee for this.

On the plus side, it's pretty; the combat mages might be more interesting (I played a warrior monk); PvP could potentially be worthwhile; it's only an early build.

(Yes, this was pretty much an /AOL post.)

I'd agree with the Lineage 2 comments IF IT FELT ANYTHING LIKE LINEAGE 2. This feels about the same speed as diablo. The spells are all beautiful, different, and useful. And I don't feel like responding to the detractors.

Sweet, I loved Diablo 2. If this is like it, I will be happy. I think the reason I enjoyed D2 more than most, is that I had 2 roommates and 3 other RL friends who all played a lot. Honestly, I dont think I ever played the single player mode in D2. That I could see as being very horrible.

I will download this when I get home.

You are agreeing with the wrong person then.  Schild is the one talking about how it is awesomeness incarnate and such  ;)

Everyone else are the people saying variations of "Meh".

I loved Diablo 1 & 2. This is an early beta client with a lot of things missing. If the ex-diablo people keep on this path it will be an incredible evolution of those games. That makes me happy. Because it's free every month, the shallowness makes me happy. I can play City of Heroes til I'm blue in the face, get bored, and hop into Guildwars.

Movement restrictions annoyed me as well. If I want to run up a hill, damnit let me run up that hill!

I'm guilty of sloppy prose.  What I was agreeing with was Schild's assertion that the game was reminiscent of Diablo.  When I first started playing the game I said: Diablo, the MMOG.  Guild wars will be a nice game for those times when you want to kill stuff for an hour here or there. Time usually ascribed to FPS's. It will have a place in the genre for sure... especially with no subscription fee.

The meh part was more my personal reaction to the shallowness of gameplay.  Granted, this is an early beta version so I can give a little room there.  I'm just disappointed that mmog's seem to be moving more in the direction of shallow fun rather than immersive depth.  No, I don't want treadmills and the typical mmog crap, but I do enjoy games with a fairly complex economical and social heirarchy.

I think I'll have to keep my eye on the niche market...

Beat me to it.  D2 type gaming and consoles actually play more to my working man lifestyle than the typical mmog these days.

Like I said, I'll give it another try. I want to see if maybe it picks up later. One problem I have is that you're a level 15 character in this alpha, period. That means I don't get to see how leveling works, or any other parts of the game than this probably mid-early stuff.

I looked over my characters equipment and such, it seemed ok. I don't know. As I'm not a fan of PvP, this game needs something else to draw me. I may, may pick it up if it holds to the no subscription thing, but my gut tells me my days will be filled with CoH (for shallow but fun combat) and WoW (for an immersive world).

I'm still going to give it another try, simply because Diablo took a bit to get addicting. Maybe this one will too.

No, it's ok.  Sometimes I want to touch him, too.  Hard.  With a closed fist.  Over and over again.  In my mind he makes a cute squishy sound.
He know's I love him, though.  I just have a hard time expressing sentimental feelings because I'm so shy.

Anyway, this does look pretty and I, too, enjoyed both Diablos quite a lot.  You all know me... I'll give it a go.   Why? Because I always do.

It's hard to tell how "shallow" Guild Wars will be because leveling is disabled in this pre-beta demo. Right now all you can do is gain a few new skills and equipment. Just take a look at the list of skills that are available and you'll start get the feeling that there is a lot more to the game than what you can see in the first few hours of play.

Combat doesn't seem anything like Diablo to me. The starting skills are a bit mundane but the more advanced skills are an awful lot like Magic: The Gathering cards. You have things like AoE heals that will heal anything near you including enemies, AoE damage that hurts anything in its radius including friends, spells that force your victom to alter their play by making them take damage when dealing melee or spell casting, and then of course the game is built for group play meaning that a successful group with have a variety of skills and spells that work well together.

I did manage to do a bit of PvE and I have to say that the AI is pretty good. Better than I had expected.

If "shallow" gameplay means that it doesn't take 45 minutes to get to where you can finally play and playing doesn't include camping a spawn to hear some moronic fucker broadcast DING! then I'm all for shallow gameplay.

I could completely understand people who are looking for that uber game of catassing PvE not liking the idea of not spending dozens of hours grinding to DING! I mean... where's the forced downtime? Where's the overcrowded world filled with killstealing teenagers that only want to interrupt your meaningless grinding?

I agree, that's why I stated that it's very early in beta and I'm willing to give it a little latitude.  The graphics look nice, the mob AI seems like it's off to a good start and the initial quests seemed pretty good.  I just hope to hell they get rid of the "cattle in the chute" feel it has now.  I never liked Diablo or Diablo 2 even though I own both titles. For me there just wasn't much to hold my interest.  



No, by shallow I mean that the trend in MMOG's seems to be moving in the direction of a glorified "Duck Hunt" only without the light gun.  You log on, whack a few foozles, and log off.  In the meantime, you have some mindless "fun" while walking the noticible (or less obvious) treadmill.  The new games seem to focus on giving you prettier foozles to whack, a few more animations of how you whack them, and compressed worlds so you can begin the whack-fest as soon as possible.   I see it more as the genre moving into a checkers-type game than a chess type.  Sure, both are fun but they are fun in different ways.  Fun is subjective... that's why the market is so diverse.  Shit, maybe I just played too many Avalon Hill games in my youth.

The thing that I like about mmog's is the complexity of social interactions and the conflicts and cooperation that they can foster.  Is there something wrong with wanting a game that will make me think?  A game of player roles in an online "society" where there is an in tact economy, dynamic player conflicts, and ramifications for ones actions.  I want to play a game that's hard.  Not hard in the "catass my toon to victory", I mean that fucking up has consequence and good play has rewards.  A game where social structure matters beyond "who belongs to the biggest guild".  Maybe what I want is impossible.  Hell, creating a decent online economy alone seems near impossible.   If someone is going to get my money for some online entertainment, I at least want to get the type of entertainment that I consider fun.

I played a little last night and I like the game. It is what it is. If it cost money to play, I'd feel a lot differently. But for a little hack and slash? To take my mind off of whatever real MMPORPG I'm playing? It seems like fun.

http://www.guildwars.com/faq/default.html

"Will there be a monthly fee for Guild Wars?

No, there will not be a monthly subscription fee of any kind, anywhere."

I got this off of the FAQ.  Turns out it also tells you why it plays and feels like Diablo.

I think I understand what you're saying. Guild Wars is missing random encounters and social darwinism that can be found in most open PvP MMOLGs. You don't have to interact with other players to exist.

Compare Guild Wars to a PvE MMO and it's got everything you could ask for and then some. Compare Guild Wars to a PvP MMO and Guild Wars seems to be missing the darwinistic society that is exclusive to open PvP MMOs.

Does the ability to exist outside of conflict make it impossible for Guild Wars to ever have a real society? There was a player spamming chat and it made me wonder what other players could do to punish him. Sure, you can exclude him from cooperative PvE and PvP missions and refuse to trade with them but is that really enough? It's the same problem that PvP MMOs that use safe zones and PvE MMOs have.

I'm a big fan of open PvP as long as there is accountability. So far accountability has come down to making it impossible to PvP until you grind for long periods of time so that you can't just reroll to escape your reputation. This leaves new players in a bad spot and makes the first X weeks of the game miserable. I'm no longer willing to grind even if it means eventually being able to take part in an open PvP society (which is what L2 is for).

I don't feel as if Guild Wars is missing anything when going up against quasi-PvP games like Dark Age of Camelot but it is definately missing the open PvP feeling of society that you'd get in AC DT. I'm not sure that Guild Wars can ever hope to capture the feeling of an open PvP society for the same reasons that DAoC cannot. You either have consentual PvP or you don't. There's not really any way to mix the two without losing something.

I do *think* that Guild Wars will be stiff competition for PvE and quasi-PvP MMOs after the rest of the game's features are enabled. Considering how few open PvP games there are and how I hate to grind, Guild Wars still looks very good to me. It's not perfect but I like it a lot more than the current offerings. That and there's no commitment to monthly fees so I can play it and something else if I feel like it.

Well, I have played the game for a few hours, and ugh.  Lineage 2 PvE was seriously more fun than this.  Sure I have more buttons to press, but I have to wander around these fucking BORING maps for ages to find anything to fight.  And once I do find something the encounter is rather dull and horribly marred by the fucked up pathing.  This is an alpha issue I assume though so I will withhold final judgement.

The way they do skills, needing to kill a boss mob in the solo or coop regions to get a random gem that has NO chance of being something you want is awful.  The pve SUCKS and now you have to camp boss mobs or engage in pokemon trading to even get your own skills?  Ugh.  I spent 4 hours wandering in the damn solo zone bored to tears and didn't see a single boss mob.  And now it sounds like I will have to kill lots of boss mobs to get skills.  Um... no.  Maybe they are more common in the coop regions.

I will try the coop thing and the pvp thing if I get time, but the pvp will require large amounts of dicking around with the shitty pve.  And the solo zones at least suck monumental amounts of ass.

Again, it is just pre alpha, and a lot of my annoyances were buggy type problems.  Where aoe spells would not hit targets right next to other targets but hit ones that are in no way within the area of effect.  Or how the carrion things flip their tails and fire ARROWS at me.  I assume this is temporary art.

The skillsets I have looked at look like they should be a lot of fun in pvp.  That means that the game will probably have a fun endgame, but I can't imagine wanting to level up through the current crap that is the pve.

Do you get experience for winning in pvp?  If you can level just in pvp then I could see that being a fun playstyle.

I will try and test out some pvp tonight, but I may not be able to.  A friend is flying in and then I am off on a road trip to north carolina to meet up with some long distance friends.

The game needs a lot of polish.  It has a lot of pvp promise in my eyes, but the pve is a long way from fun at this stage for me.

You can also buy the skill gems as well, but you have to pay a little gold to train them using the skill points that you get as you level.

There is no reward or penalty for PVP that I found, whether it was cooperative or competitive PVP. Some of the cooperative missions are PVE only (which does drop loot) and some are PVP.

I will give my impressions in a front-page article tonight.

I think that starting players out in the solo area without a guide was a mistake. The solo area is one of the most ugly and sparsely populated areas in the game. Even the starter quest is lame. They picked a terrible area to use as a first impression to new players.

You can sell the gems you don't want to the gem trader in town and then use the money you get to buy the gems you want. The PvE coop gives more loot and exp than dicking around in the solo area... although if you figure out where the 2 boss mobs spawn near the city entrance then you can just keep rushing out, kill them, and sell off their gems to make a lot of money fast. I made 600 gold in about 30 minutes by killing boss mobs and selling the gems to the gem trader. You can buy most gems for between 20 and 75 gold.

You do have to dink around in PvE an awful lot in order to get good equipment that will give you an edge in PvP. The better stuff starts dropping on the third PvE mission (you have to do the first two in order to open up the third). But then again the game isn't being designed to be played in 3 or 4 days any more than your typical MMO is (not that I believe GW is a MMO).

When I first started playing Guild Wars I jumped straight into the PvP arena (random group PvP area) without ever doing any of the PvE. I only had my crappy starter skills and starter items. I didn't do well, but I got a chance to see how the battles went and learned a lot by the way people would kill me and still had fun.

Like Haemish said, you don't get any reward for participating in PvP, yet... well... other than having fun... but I guess MMO players don't really play games to have fun, do they.

60 more screen shots from Guild Wars ->

http://64.156.213.61/

I found the game to be instantly fun. I was able to group up and run some PvE missions within 5 minutes of logging in. The second mission with the trebuchets was cool but that was as far as i got. The current players seemed mature, and both my PvE pickup groups worked well together. Tomorrow night ill do some skill work then try PvP.

Alluvian, my experience with GW was the exact opposite of what you described. It was monumentally easy to either form or find a group...The PvE was fast paced and I was fighting Boss mobs every 5-10 minutes. I understand that opinions vary, but I'd try some of the main parts of the game before totally bashing it. Co-op was immediately fun and rewarding. For an Alpha it is quite stable...which to me is a great sign and I will buy this game at release.

Love the sky.  It's never blue.

Love the vivid colors, they give the game a canvas-like look.  Like a painting.

Her head is too big.

The game is nice looking, though in a generic way. I had high hopes given the pretty-pretty log in screen with animations. Too bad all the models look pixel-y and angular. Except those boobies on Schild... they looked... well, distracting to be quite honest.

The initial reports of the game made me very interested; I kinda had hopes it would be like a BF1942 in a fantasy setting. Unfortunately, I could not be interested enough in the game play to get any farther than the initial area.

His boobies ARE distracting, but only because they are crooked.

I thought it looked bland and ugly as well when I first started playing, but if you open up the map and look in the bottom left corner, you'll see 3 buttons. Click on the one that says it's a demo of jungle scenery and you might be a bit more impressed. There's also a demo of some arctic scenery there as well. Still, it is a lot like the Dungeon Siege engine and a bit annoying how it limits where you can go, but I found the missions quite fun, with some interesting scripting of npc's at later levels helping you feel a bit more involved.

As to PvP, I found the arena to be a blast. It's nice, instant action, where you get dumped in a random group with 3 other people. If you win, you hold the arena until another group is added and fight them again. Getting in a group that happens to work well together was a fun experience, and fortunately, if you are in a group of ppl with little clue, it's over quick and you can try another group. I think it would be better if they matched 2 winning teams myself though. There's also a defend the castle scenario that's 8 vs 8 which I also found fun, though it currently seems a bit weighted in favor of the defenders.

Some concerns I have however. Right now it's kind of ideal in the PvP sector, all characters are exactly the same level. I'd like to know how they plan to do it on release, if they will level match you or if everyone is going to have to reach the level cap to compete. Also, some skill combinations are way out of balance. Archer/elementalists with a bit of work to get the right spells and a better bow can do a ton of damage, cast zone wide rituals that can have beneficial or detrimental effects like no rezzing or no buffs, while not only doing big damage with bow specials, but having a lightning bolt that can do 120 dmg to a warrior, as the warrior armor has a huge weakness to electrical damage. Some people are complaining about the necro's poison spell (it's desease actually) as it does pretty hefty damage as well, but that ignores the fact that the team casting the spell can also contract it by contact with the enemy who's diseased so it can be a double edged sword. Probably the complainers were archer/elementalists as it's very effective on them when they are sniping from a distance.

With the limited gear available in the demo it's hard to tell how much gear will matter for effective pvp too.

In the PVE missions, there is a semi random treasure distribution sort of like daoc's except the time out for loot to go free for all is a bit short. Unfortunately, because of the usual poor random algorhithm, I've seen one person get 4 pieces of loot in a row, and loot drops are way less frequent than daoc, at least back when I played daoc. This will hopefully be less of an issue on release when you can make a party of all friends rather than random strangers.

All in all, I think it will be worth the price to buy when it's released. I just hope it's released tuned a lot more than it is currently. People are going to work out power combos fairly quickly if the demo is any indication, and I'd like to see the pvp balanced enough to remain fun. With no monthly charge and regular expansions of content it looks like a good alternate game to play for a while when bored with other mmog's rather than a place to live regularly, at least for me. If they don't release early it looks like it will at least be worth the box price to have a month or so's fun with. I played Diablo and Diablo 2 the same way. Often heavily for a few weeks then putting it aside for a few months until I got interested and picked it up again. Of course this meant I couldnt play on closed battle.net with their deletion policy but it didnt bother me that much as I only played with friends.

There is supposedly more open pvp in other zones, so people that annoy you might be killable later if you can convince them to join you there, but currently the best way to deal with idiot spammers is just put them on ignore. I hope the ignore list isnt too small. Personally I'd still rather have it this way than the open uo/sb style some people like. Too many people abuse the system in open pvp games for my taste, while with this game, I've spent over half my time the last 2 days in pvp having fun, losing and winning arena battles.

On instancing. They have made the towns and other meeting points for mission generation set to a preset population it seems, at which point a new instance is spawned. In the top right corner of the interface there's a dropdown menu where you can see how many instances there are and pick a different one to move to if you want to hook up with friends or just leave an instance that's too noisy or annoying. They call these instances districts, which through me off at first as I thought it was just different areas of town early on when there were only 4 of them. Today there were up to 20 or so of the main shopping town, and the first pve mission area.

Ok... I've played a bit, now.  The damn game is so fast that I'm having trouble controlling my movements my camera.

Sheesh... am I just used to lag or what?  I'm sure this problem will disappear when I'm actually playing with others.  Never thought I'd yearn for a game that didn't work so well.

There is just no pleasing me.

r00fle ir0ny PwNed signe!

The combat reminds me almost exactly of lineage 2. The mission set up is like Bnet except the loading areas are in game settings instead of server lists.

The speed of the game reminded me of Dungeon Siege, the world layout also reminded me of Dungeon Siege were your movement is limited by "trails"

Overall I find the best part of GW is the co-op missions. The PVP is questionable, especially given that eventually everyone will be different levels.  But at least the PVP is 4/4 and not zerg battles.

The game will defintely be worth buying for the co-op missions though. However its a good thing there is no monthly fee.

Nix's thoughts on Guild Wars (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1084479165&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&)

(first post for me, be gentle!)

For those of you saying the graphics look bad, check your Options (the little castle like icon on the upper right side) and make sure the graphics are turned up. Unless you are running a crappy non-3D card it should look pretty good.

I like the game. I don't think it's shallow at all. Sure, if you only play in the solo area you might be bored out of your mind - but, as already mentioned, it's the one area that's sparse and without direction. The Coop PvE missions are a lot of fun (the third one is hard! Still haven't beaten it) and you get some pretty good loot/gem drops from the bosses you kill. Just from Missions 1 and 2 I was able to sell enough drop items to buy some other skill gems to play around with.

PvP is where the action is.  Obviously, if you don't like PvP you should be shot and buried under a 5 tons of concrete. As someone mentioned, it's a lot like Magic:TG. There's a ton of strategy in a) picking what spells/skills you are going to use (you only have 8? slots), b) knowing when to use what on whom.

Just because there's not a ton of skill trees and random "complicated" crap doesn't mean this game lacks depth. Just like chess, a finite BALANCED set of possiblities/options can lead to a ton of interesting tactical and strategic choices.

Overall I think this game has a lot of potential. Once they add in the systems that are missing (trading, some class abilities, etc) it'll be a blast to play if they keep up the quality of game and quality of players.

My two cents :)

- Dabry

Finally got around to writing that review I've mentioned. (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1084484239&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&)

Normally when i play a beta i like my fanboi side starts sprouting things like "its ok that its not very good, its only beta" this time though its more like "holy shit its already this good in beta its gonna rock at release".  I would pay for it on its current state.

Well, I suggest you all who oppose this alpha give it more of a chance. for the people who claim that the solo areas suck, it just means you aren't finding the right spots to continue on to the next area. Personally I've found 2 new respawn towns and many, many, many named monsters just roaming around. I could probably name 3 that are extremely easy to get to right off the bat....



Btw, not trying to show off, but give it a while, I mean....it's in alpha, and I say this is pretty good for an alpha version of an MMOG

I'll give it another shot, right now I'm just not impressed. I see some potential but overall I had a sort of "eh" feeling.

I was thinking about common MMOG problems that Guild Wars may share and thought of Ebay. In a standard MMOG people who Ebay deprive a publisher from selling a box but don't negatively impact the subscription revenue. Guild Wars doesn't have a subscription fee. Will people who Ebay Gulid Wars accounts cut into Guild Wars' revenue stream?

I suppose no matter where the account came from that most players will still purchase the expansions. I really like both the game and the business model so I hope that they can pull it off.

The starting solo area is by far Guild Wars' weakest aspect. It's ugly, there aren't enough mobs, and you can't bring a friend to keep you company. There are other solo areas on the map that you can get to after you complete more coop PvE missions, but that doesn't change the bad impression that the solo area leaves on new players. If anyone knows a Gulid Wars dev, tell them to add more mobs, add a little color and allow groups of friends to enter the solo area so that players can enjoy it more like a traditional MMOG zone.

People who drop out of missions should be penalized by making them wait before entering a new mission. It doesn't have to be much. Penalize them a minute or two before they can join a group or enter random PvP again. Increase the penalty if they do it often. It's very irritating to have another player drop out early just because things aren't going their way. I've seen teams come back to win random PvP matches after being taken down to the last man standing because of getting a res off. If you quit you can't be rezzed. Fuckers.

One neat feature that every reviewer seemed to miss (or I failed to read about) is the ability to dodge projectiles. You can time your moves and dodge projectile spells and arrows which adds a ton of options to combat other than standing in one place and blindly mashing buttons.

Another missed feature is collision detection. You can't walk through characters or mobs when inside a mission. This means that you can surround and block players and mobs. You can employ tactics such as building a tank wall with casters and archers behind or cornering a fleeing foe. Just having collision detection adds a lot to the game.

The advanced spells and abilities are extremely complex. It takes a great deal of skill to know what to use when and on who. It is every bit as complex as Magic: The Gathering only it moves at a much faster pace. Nobody is going to sit around waiting while you try to figure out what move to make in this game.

Even though I've done more of the PvE coop missions now I still don't think the PvE will hold many players long. The PvP is too fun to want to spend much time in PvE.

I didn't get to play as many of the team based PvP missions as I had wanted to, either. Trying to form a cohesive group from a mix of complete noobs to experienced prior Alpha testers is insane. This feature is something that won't really be useful until groups of players form guilds and play with one another on a regular basis. It's one thing to have a bad group in the random PvP area but it sucks to be stuck with a bunch of morons on the group PvP missions and facing a well organized team.

Right now in its current state Guild Wars is easily as fun as Quake with swords and is in my opinion worth buying. I can't wait to play the beta.

Alluvian you probably had problems finding mobs because they don't repsawn ever. So inless you go back to town then go back into the solo area, once you kill something its dead permanently until you leave the area and return. So its probably not good to wander around for 4 hours looking for things. Otherwise there are two rock bosses right near the starter town. Just go straight away from it and turn left and go down into the canyons and you should find two of them there. :)

Dodge projectiles? If this is true it means that the game has some twitch elements to it rather than being entirely level/equipment/template based. If true it might mean PvP actually has some element of skill in it. This merits thought....

it has full collision dynamics: you can dodge projectiles, block runners with your body, etc. (there is no z-axis)


at e3 in the nvidia area, I had the chance to play one of the animator's characters (i forgot her name though) somewhat in the arena. let me tell you, being able to pick more than the skills you start with is a huge benefit

whoever said it was like magic the gatherign is correct, i think that with a limit of 8 skills per character that pvp will be more of a strategy type of combat system than in other games (where every warrior has the same skills, etc).

p.s. i won a key drive :D :D :D

I guess they got a lot of complaints about the barrenness of the first solo area. A patch today (13th) added more mobs to it. Unfortunately, IMO, they picked some  pretty nasty mobs to add. Anyone playing a more fragile class like a caster is going to die a bunch to them. I can't remember the name atm, but they added the mobs from the pve missions, the horde enemies you are sent out to scout in the first mission and fight through the other missions as well.

I also wish they'd allow you to bring  a friend or two into a solo mission for a less structured type of play. The regular pve missions are obviously tuned for the 4 player parties and other than the first one are quite difficult to win with less people.  A rl friend and I played quite a bit the last few days but had to add some people to get past all the missions but the very first one.

They have also added a new style coop pve mission where the ice mountains demo area was before. It looks like it's an 8 person mission. I didn't have time to play it today, hopefully tomorrow. I did spend time in the pick your own team PvP area and it was quite fun. Obviously, as I only knew one other person playing it wasn't much different than getting a random group but the games themselves were quite well designed I thought. Variations on capture the flag essentially. I saw three different games in the same area while playing. I don't know how many more there are there. You get a random mission when you join up.

I wish they had the graphics, landscape and animations of Sacred rather than the 3d Dungeon Seige like engine they're using, but some people like the 3d, even when it does look worse than 2d graphics. I agree with others that the starting areas are kind of blah, but then they do fit the story, which is of an area under constant invasion pressure from an ongoing war. The areas definately look like they've been ravaged by major battles to the point where all life is gone, sadly that's just not very pretty. The jungle area, as I said before, is much more pleasant, but you probably wont reach that until you've hit the point in the story where you've fled the area under siege. The pve story missions end when you reach the mountains in the demo though.

I actually wandered quite a bit, all the way from the starting area into the wastes. I think I hit 3 or 4 different solo areas, as well as some puzzling zones that seemed to have some kind of story but were really nothing more than a few NPC's in one room that talked about something. They seemed to be unfinished, or just not make much sense. I fought at least 2 or 3 boss type mobs, and actually managed to kill one. They were tougher, but not really anything different in terms of tactics. I still maintain that it took a lot of travel to hunt in the solo areas. It felt big and empty. I'm glad they upped the spawning rate though.

Solo, I think the game will be very solo unfriendly. You'll be able to solo, it just won't be very fun. The team PVP and PVE missions are where it's at. If they can build on those, and make the solo PVE not quite so boring, the game has a good chance. I am not convinced yet, but I am interested.

I also failed to mention one feature I did like; instant travel via the map. No travel times is teh gud.

Can someone explain how to use skill gems? i bought one and i have two skill points but i cant figure out what to do with it.

Skill Gems: It says go to town and a trainer can teach you the skill.
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I also see the comparison to magic. I notice that a ton of skills all cost the same amount to use, it's not like one skill is strictly better than another. Rather they are different. One good against high armor, one good against clumps of guys, one good for slowing down fast guys, etc.

I hated the movement and the targetting. It seemed to work poorly with the mouse or with the keyboard. Targetting with the mouse in very frustrating, it is difficult to tell if you are engaged or not. (I was a ranger) Moving with the keyboard seems jerky and the camera tends to move either too slow or too fast.

The collision is...interesting. I like the fact you can block people and get blocked, but combined with akward movement I found a lot of the time I was stuck on things I shouldn't have been stuck on.

Overall it was pretty decent...for a preview/beta. Wait and see.

Personally, I liked the game (http://www.grimwell.com/index.php?action=fullnews&id=118).   I'll very likely be picking Guild Wars up, assuming I have any free time whilst in the middle of 20+ credits of school work by then.

That it will have no subscription is good news to me (I guess I should have read the FAQ).   I guess that's another nail in the "non-MMORPG" definition.   Although really, I think the difference between Everquest or City of Heroes and games like Phantasy Star Online and Guild Wars is very minor.   Sure, there's not hundreds of players fighting mobs on the same map as you, but the thing is you don't have a *need* to interact with more than a few players at a time.   More often than not, this uncompartmentalized approach of tossing everybody into the same mixxing pot just complicates the gameplay, especialy when other players butt in and steal your kills.

I hesitate to call the gameplay in Guild Wars either Diablo or Magic The Gathering, so much as an uneven fusion of sorts.   The way the combat is balanced and quickly flows is where the Diablo resemblence is -- there's even an Explode Corpse ability.    The only resemblance to Magic The Gathering is you can only take 8 abilities at a time (plus two temporary abilities if you discharge skill gems, for a total of 10) out of your "deck" of learned abilities.    This is a good thing because it keeps the balance relatively fair between starting and veteran players, but I imagine post release there will be a definate advantage for higher level players.

One thing Haemish didn't mention in his review is that there is also team PvE events.  You can solo PvE, or you can team PvE in a scenario (as opposed to just roving around and killing everything) where you and the rest of the group are actually following an unfolding scripted story.  Chalk group PvE up as another thing Guild Wars innovates upon.

Also, if you've been walking to your events, you've been going about it the wrong way.

So yes, while you can walk, don't complain about the boredom of it considering they actually offer you ways to teleport directly to where you want to go instantly.   I guess this is a release feature because NelsonT says it is.  (Source Here (http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/gw/showflat.php?Board=arena&Number=542189))

The PvP is quite fun, which is quite an achievement for a MMORPG, and there's actually three distinct varieties of it in the E3 demo.  

• Arena Mode: Randomly decided two teams of four battling it out.
• Siege mode: Randomly decided two teams of eight, one defending the castle (with a heavy NPC enforced defensive advantage), the other attacking it.
• Competitive mode: The one that Haemish describes with the picked teams, qualifying round versus undead, then several deathmatch/capture the flag/ect elimination rounds.    If you get far enough you actually get to raid this treasure crypt, then defend it against others players in a 2:1 battle.[/list:u]Right now Mesmers and Elementalists are somewhat gimped.  I've noticed a trend where the group with at least four warriors and a good support team seems to be the one that consistantly wins.  But with 6 months left to balance the game chances are good that this'll be ironed out.

I played one large group vs. group battle, we got *reamed* by a team that was nearly all warriors. Part of that may be inexperience though. We could have set up a blocking wall and rained arrows on them, but we were very disorganized. They ran straight at us and that was it. There are a lot of abilities that slow people down, using that plus a few warriors as a wall might have made us do better.

In a team vs. team of total newbs, you would probably expect a straightforward warrior group to do well.

Yeah, Guild Wars is far from balanced yet.   Warriors pretty much power through anything, and if you have a lot of them then you're going to win for sure.    You can snare them, and that's why you need a monk on your team to keep your Warriors relatively healed, but in general it takes so much time to kill a snared Warrior that snaring them is a temporary fix at best.

So, what happens when you have a team of 8 Warrior/Monks?   Running around, healing themselves and eachother, rezzing any of them who you actually manage to take down?

Good thing they've still 6 months left to balance things out.

Part of this is the spell line you start out with. If you look at warrior's armor, it has a huge weakness to electical damage. However mages don't start with any lightning spells. I tried lightning on a warrior and got one hit for 110 damage. 2 Mages could kill a warrior before he even got in range if they coordinated their kills.

Another interesting part of the game is the spell economy. When there are lots of people playing and doing the pve missions, spells sell for cheap to players from npcs but the npc's don't pay much for spells. Yesterday afternoon spells that had been selling for 100+ gold on npc's were down to 12 gold. The first day of the game most spells seemed to be selling for over 100 gold

Another interesting thing I noticed is all characters naked have exactly the same stats. Mages gain their extra mana and mana regen from their armor. Different classes cant wear each other's armor even if their secondary class should allow them to, so you won't see elementalist/warriors running around in plate.

I liked this game as well. Not exactly what I'd call balanced,but it was after all not the full game.

Just thought I'd add something about the economy: Having useless skill gems that only sell for 1 gold is pretty crap. BUT! Spend your golds at the GEM COLLECTOR and you could score some skills the Gem Traders don't even have. Every time I spent all my money on his random gems (25gold for a random gem) I made a profit reselling the ones I didn't want to the Gem Trader.

Of course,this is why the economy went to hell. People did this,earning shitloads of gold,all the while lowering the selling/buying price of all gems,until you couldn't sell at all.

Where the collector is you ask? NE in town. Guild area.

Well, the gem collector was something I had absolutely no idea about...thanks, however I only have 2 hours left to play! MUST KEEP PLAYING AHHHHHH

I missed the gem collector too, but if it got abused that badly I'll bet it won't be in release either. That sure explains why prices went through the floor on thursday.

anything resembling Diablo gets priority in my multiplayer rpg gaming book :) (Diablo 2 Online would kick some serious ass :))
-they should have made combat much more streamlined instead of click-n-yawn-eq-boredom
something with fast action which depends on good player skill (e.g. you have to aim/dodge/and move around, not like usual boring static combat)
basically character/game structure of rpg with fps combat (combining best of both worlds, player character development and player combat/movement/aiming skills)
-camera needs a lot of work too, ability to lock camera, switch chase cam on, etc, same for fully customizable controls, playable in both 3rd and 1st person view with full 3d movement (unrestricted xyz)

dont get me wrong, i'm a big fan of immersive deeply complicated rpgs (Planescape - Torment, Fallout and Realms Of Arkania - Star Trail being on top of my all time fave list), but they just dont work or get boring in massive multiplayer environment

SHIFT KEY

It's not even a beta. This is an alpha client. It did pretty damned well for an alpha. The most I saw as a problem were some pathing issues (my toon would run sideways/backwards and go incredibly slow) and a need for some minor balancing. I like the PvE as some of the mobs I fought ran away and made me chase while they found higher ground to attack me.

I also like the fact that shooting your bow from higher ground makes you hit harder. It's pure logic that usually doesn't apply to any bow type player in any MMORPG.

yeah that was cool, highest i could get was about 3-4x normal damage

I really enjoyed playing.  My favorite bug was respawning after a death, but still in the dead postition.  Having my dead looking monk slide over the ground, popping up to cast spells was hilarious looking.  Plus it was a tatical advantage because the other team thought I was dead and just ran past me.

Too bad that bug won't stay around forever eh?