f13.net

It started early.

Mr Threve - Necromancer/Ranger
Mad Mr Hat - Elementalist/Warrior Because I can
Le Hat - Warrior/Elementalist Because I'm sick
Tiffany The Harlot - Ranger/Mesmer because I am truely ill.

Twee Hjordis (yeah? your mother wears combat boots)

Monk/Warrior

Tryst Schild

Ranger/Necro.

I will kill bunnies and then fuck them, right in the eye hole. Then bring them back to life only to laugh at them....yea, it's downloading still.

I will be playing, but I have no prior knowledge of the game or classes, so Christ only knows what I will play. Probably some sort of archer, if they are available. Possible names include-

Liryk
Antolin
Anyaala

Or I might just make one up on the spot.

Those bastards. Here I was planning on getting something done tonight.

Any suggestions for combos? I was thinking Warrior/Monk but having not really researched the classes I'm aware if that would be gimpy like FFXI (where you can't cast spells if you're not wearing the right armors).  That or Elem/ Mesmer.

Monk/Mesmer... soon... damn work...

I don't remember it being such insane chaotic madness.  I am a death magnet but at least MrHat keeps me company.  Our group ditched us.  There is no quit button.

I'm confused again.

Ya, holy crap, it felt a wee bit like dungeon siege.

How do I get names to show up?

I found the guild maker, but I gotta work for like a half hour or so, let me know if we wanna get it going.

-Hat

I believe guilds cost 50 gold to form. Just a little FYI. Should be easy enough to scrounge up the cash if everyone chips in.

I've decided Monk/Warrior is not for me.  I am now a Warrior/Monk named Twee Hjordis.  I'm going to read stuff about it now so I won't look so foolish when I play.

Heh, this is funny, my old characters from the E3 beta were still around.

Geldonis Prime, The Great Geldini, Geldon Of The Glade, Mighty Gelderodo

So I wasn't feeling terribly creative at E3.

Unfortunately, looks like they're all borked with the wrong character model.

Yup, Necro/Ranger isn't my cup of tea.

Gonna try an Elementalist/Warrior just for giggles.

Looks like my old characters are playable, but they reset when I first log them in, so all I've really kept is the names and class selections.

Playing as Geldronis Prime now.  

The game has come a long way from E3, I can see.

I'm Viin Seeven, Ranger/Monk - won't be actually playing until tonight tho.

Damnit, why couldn't I have been really sick today instead of yesterday.

Interesting...apparently it didn't start "early" -- it started at 12:00am Friday in Korea time. Wonder if it will close down on Korea time Sunday night (roughly 2pm US CST)? Sheesh. I can tell I'm still at work and jonesing to get home and try it out...ah, the familiar rush of "can't wait to play with shiney new toy." Thought I would have outgrown it, say, 35 years ago?

Wow, I thought this was only for pre-orders but I get the client installed just now and my old character from the E3 preview is still there!

Necromonk Simian Vector, but no joy until late tonight

Yay, the Boss let me have tomorrow off. Now I don't have to bring in my spare Radeon 9700 to play at work! Can I go home now? -whine-

Argh and I work tonight. *sigh* I got it downloaded at least. I'll surf the forums and see the feedback you guys give. Anyone going to be playing late tonight like 2am central time late? (Ya, I know my hours suck, I'm paying my dues. At least that's what I tell myself.)

Mostly like me.  My playtimes are roughly 10-1 PST.

Lucky for me, tomorrow is my telecommuting day.  :P

In-game, a Elemen/Ment name Ayarae Noire

telecommuting = playing games in your pajamas while pretending to work

Hypersped home for "lunch", downloaded and created 2 characters.

Sobelius the Black (Mesm/Elem)
Sobelius the Red (Elem/Mesm)

Played the first through intro mission with Sob the Black.  Really nicely done little intro tutorial/quests -- like the way the NPCs ask me to follow them and then wait if I fall behind because I'm doing something.

Hired an NPC warrior and he did a great job of occupying some zombie animators while I got the hang of nuking and energy draining...

Despite long/slow download times, the game itself never lagged -- not once. Incredibly smooth.

I have a pig following me around that looks like a Disney character.

...and his name is Oink. He casts Corpse Explosion. And it's overpowered, just like diablo 2. God love them. (i'm a ranger/necro).

I'll also point out that the game is running smooth as hell on a work laptop with SQLServer and a project compile going on in the background.

GW is about to fuck the EQ clones.

Kenrick Maclaren (I wanted Kenrick MacLaren, but you can't capitalize mid-word...).   And also no joy for another few hours as it is fiancee's 25th birthday time.

Third Duke of Kent, Elementalist/Warrior, because that's what was on the screen. No clue what the heck I'm doing, but I know where the nuke button is.

Are my tells not working?

Or are you all ignoring Le Hat.

Tells don't seem to be showing up if you have the chat window minimized.

I didn't see your tells until I got back to the city, Hat.  When I tried to reply it said you didn't exsist.

Hmm, I don't show you as online?

I'm playing right now, though the game keeps crashing on me. I see the game still has the goofy restricted movement paths as well.

Iyana Moonbow - Female Ranger/Monk

Strange, maybe I'm bugged, will log out when I get a chance.

I'm still at work. No pvp for me til tonight (or tomorrow). I'll make batcountry asap. I'm halfway there.

Murg The Moderate

Warrior/necromancer

edit: it handles alt-tab well.

Y'all need to answer your tells.  Heh. Hat and I have crewed-up and I can't get ahold of the rest of ya.

Fen Jay.

I don't much know what I'm doing either.

El  Gallo
fighter/necro
downloading ............... 7%...................

Hat, I'm sending ya tells I don't know if you can see 'em or not.

Dowloading as Antolin Reialathan, Ranger/Warrior extraordinaire. At current transfer speeds, I should be in game just in time for the retail launch =P

Is anyone else having graphical issues? i played the e3 beta just fine on the same computer, maybe its because im using directx 9 instead of 8.

My graphics are fine but I keep getting the "you are not connected to the internet" message halfway through downloading a new zone.

I'm in, which way to the ph@t l3wtz?

Rasix Mifune, warrior/monk

I get disconnected and then have to redownload everything.  After downloading the same files 3 times at ~6k a sec I'm done.  Maybe I'll try the game again when they figure out how to store files locally.

crashed and cant get in.

Poison hurts.  It hurts me bad.

Merusk and I (and Hat for a few minutes) just finished a longer than expected instance mission.  

It was entertaining if laggy.  I think the servers aren't ready for the legion of people looking for teh free.  But it isn't debilitating, just annoying.

Yeah, we had one encounter with a L17 mob that looked like it was going to be a permanent fight.  We'd damage him a good chunk, the server would pause and everyone's energy/health would reset.  I think it took us 10 mins to kill that bastard.

In all it's fairly enjoyable, but meeting-up is a pain in the ass. I reccommend sending messages instead of tells.  They'll go through and remain even if the person you're messaging has crashed/ gone offline.

Oh, and rumor is that guilds are 500 gold, not 50. I've got some funds I'll donate to whomever is setting it up.

Did the lag clean up at all? If not, I may not play more tonight.

Disconnected. Can't reconnect. The bug is when you take more than one henchman into a battle instance. I don't know how their QA missed that. Someone is getting taunted tomorrow.

The instanced missions I've gotten so far as a warrior/ranger are pretty long. I don't bother grouping with anyone I just hire the NPCs to fill up my group. The first mission I had the same problem with not being able to kill a mob. He couldn't kill us because I had a healer NPC and we wouldn't kill him because everytime we got him even close to half way down he would just heal himself.

There isn't much internet lag for me but the graphics lag like ass during a fight and it wasn't like that in the E3 client. Either that or it is the sound which lags. I turned off 3D sound so we'll see if that helped at all.


Krakrok Stoneburner if anyone cares. I couldn't remember the password for my E3 account and when I reset it the new password doesn't work so I just started a new account. Kind of wish I had taken warrior/elementalist like I did in E3 though. So far I haven't found any animals to tame with my beast magic (the pigs in the missions aren't tamable) and Ooink disappeared.

---

Edit: How's that? I took 4 NPCs into my last mission and account still works fine. But I finished the mission so maybe that was it.

Did the up the price?  It says 50 gold on the Guild Purchase merchant.

Guild merchant still says 50 gold. I have almost that much already. I haven't seen any trouble with more than 1 NPC per instance; I brought 3 with me on the first mission and breezed through it (it was damned long though). I have my first 'explorable area' available; does that entail fighting without going into an instance?

Also- anyone know how to use dyes?

I am having fun so far, but I wish I had more slots for skills. I just bought a ton of them and can't fit them all. Bugger.

Just double click it in your inventory then click on what you want dyed.

I did two of the starting quests (after the tutorial one) and got to level 16 and over 100 gold... so I bought some spells and went to the PvP arena. And guess what? All my new sh!t (levels, gold, spells, everything) is gone! Fudge! So I log out and back in, same thing. Go back Lions Gate (or whatever it is) and its still gone. Gosh damn it, 2 hours wasted there. :( My quest log shows I need to complete the quests I just did. -sigh-

They shoulda called this a stress test like WoW does. :P

I was wondering where you ran off to. :)

I have 60 gold, I'll register the guild.

Edit: Guild made.

J'es disagree.  I did the first mission this morning (the one where you're supposed go meet Brother thingy, and you get attacked by undead all the time) with 4 henchmen and myself, and it went fine (at least until I died coz I fucked up).  So taking multiple henchmen into instances are fine with me at least...

Kind of.  I think its still instanced, because I've never (disclaimer, in 4 or so hours of play) seen another player in one, but its not a mission.

Well I made my second character (besides the one from E3). I set out to gimp myself as much as possible so made a Necromancer Primary with Elementalist Secondary. I named him The Incarnate for maximum cheesiness.

How do I contact online Bat country people(or whatever the guild name is)?

Qua Fin Ti, Monk/ranger

Anyone that wants in, just leave Rasix Mifune a message and I'll guild you when I'm on. I'm not sure if officers can give invites, but I know I can just leave them out there.  Plus, once you're guilded, all of your characters are.

Ahoy the Matey, Necro/monk

Still trying to figure out the chat commands...

First impressions:

preface: system experience
- connecting via DSL (pppoe) (384 up/1.5 down max I think)
- despite the slow load times, I was never disconnected from the game the entire evening, two small instances of lag that lasted 5 seconds
- running a P3 1.2, 512, DX9, GF3Ti200-128 under WinXP (not SP2)  -- never a single graphical glitch, with settings all at high detail

given the above, it was much easier for me to enjoy the game than it would have been if i'd been among those who experienced considerable lag or disconnects, etc.

interface
- pretty intuitive, though some things were not; overall pretty easy for an mmorpg vet to figure out
- not really customizable, though gets the job done


towns:
-wish there was a separate local and broadcast channel -- too much new player spam
- loved the instanced areas -- Lion's Arch 87 for teh win! -- and the very easy way you simply drop down which one you want to go to and boom you're there
- the basics are here; not intended to be immersive beyond vending machine vendors, though I like the backstory provided to Firstwatch Sergio, the skills teacher.


pve missions:
- did the first two major missions, scouring every corner of the map, with 2 friends and 3 henchmen -- finally quests that felt like quests, even if the paths were ultimately pretty linear a-la-dungeon siege (in fact, a lot about this game reminds me of many aspects of dungeon siege)

overall, a fun experience -- thank God the combat is at least as fast paced as CoH; it's a bit on the too-easy side though, which I think is due to almost all the creatures except boss creatures being equal or lower level -- guessing they are sticking with the idea of pve not being a grind, more of an entertaining way to develop the character on the way to pve; then i tried the tombs solo with 4 henchman and was promptly stomped by some big ass ghouls

outdoor exploration:
- explored northern Krtya and Neb-something Terrace, found the general that sells additional skills
- nicely done, though the mobs are pretty much the same from the missions, so far
- huge kudos for being able to go back to town or to any starting point whenever you want just by clicking a dot on the map -- no more boring horse rides

crafting:
- pretty obviously not fully implemented
- not intuitive that you have to use the salvaging kits to break down loot to get the odd components for upgrades and new armor
- love the fact you go to a crafter to craft, hand him/her the ingredients and money and presto you get your gear; though some of the armor recipes are fixed, you can upgrade weapons by slotting new hafts/strings/heads, etc. I used the advanced salvage kit on a sword and got a special hilt, so I see now how you can then use this hilt on any other sword to upgrade it

pvp:
- lets just say being a mesmer/elementalist will not be a viable combo until I get access to faster casting -- good use of advanced skills helps, but in the 4-on-4 pickup groups that are in the gladitorial arena, there is little to no time to coordinate group tactics and caster types need tanks to keep the enemy tanks off of them and healers to heal; did not get to try the guild v guild pvp, which I think will be much better assuming the guild members can chat through teamspeak and know what to do -- still an adrenaline rush that rivals anything in DAOC without the hour o fwaiting just to die in 2 minutes -- at least I can get right back into another wipe-the-floor-with-me-fest without having the bother of xp debt, rez sickness, etc.

fun night -- looking forward to seeing others online tomorrow and Sat.

--Sob

ps. I also find the game really gorgeous to play in -- fast gameplay, smooth frame rate, and rich graphics -- killer combo

My thoughts so far:

I am more impressed than I was during E3. My E3 impressions boiled down to "meh".

Now...

Graphics: Pretty good. I'd say they're somewhere between EQ2 and WoW. I don't think they'll age as well as either though, not having WoW's artistic style or EQ2's polycount. Spell effects were underwhelming however. Also this game seems to have less customization than WoW.

Sound: is it me or is this game seriously lacking in the sound department? I got a cutscene at the end of a quest where I was made a knight and I remember thinking how it'd be so much better with sound. I had some subdued music and that was it. Combat sound is boring as well.

Controls: Easy. Casting time felt slow but the spells were kinda fun.

UI: I didn't much care for the UI. It was easy enough to use, just kind of ugly.

Gameplay: My biggest complaint would be that gameplay is too linear. I mean, I literally had to follow a set path in the 3 quests I tried. I also don't like not having a jump button. SWG taught me how necessary jumping is.

I liked the quests for the most part. They felt fast paced and fun. Combat was good and fast, almost COH fast in alot of ways. I did find it ironic that I'm a necromancer walking around with my small army of Bone Horrors and I kept being asked to defend people from undead.

I also liked being able to hire henchman rather than needing to mess with other people. I hired 1 henchman of each type and they did their jobs pretty well. I did however wish that my henchman had names. Something beyond "Warrior henchman".

Overall the game felt like a bastard child of diablo and dungeon siege to me.

Quests are ok.  I didn't find them to be special or anything.  I'm not really in this game for PvE or questing, though... I just want the opportunity to kill my friends.  

I hate hate hate the UI.  

I want to jump and I don't want to be stuck on edge of the world.  I want to go where I like and I'd even accept falling damage to do it.  If I die because I fall off of a mountain, it's my own damn fault... just let me fall off, for fuck sake!

Crafting is for gurlies.

It took me 10 minutes to figure out why I couldn't buy anything.  I didn't even notice the little box on the bottom to put the item in.

I wanted to sell stuff.  I dragged the items to the proper place and then cleared it.  I dragged it all over again... 3 more times.  I got different total prices each time.  Way different.  I don't get it.

But I enjoyed it.  It's purdy.  I have big boobs.

Sorry about my post structure.  It's nearly 5:30 AM and I've been up all night craving cigarettes.  I'm tired, too.

Im currently playing Alyson Rivers, warrior monk. And I have to say I want henchmen in all the other games too. Grouping has never been so fun as when they aren't really people..

Yeah it was just a rumor I'd seen while waiting on MrHat and Jayce.  Thought I'd post it in case someone tried and wasn't successful. I should have known better given the 'quality' of the community.

There's explorable areas off of Lion's Arena, MrHat and I ran around in one before he rerolled.  Need to be careful when fighting out there, since mobs group up and one monster that looks like he's alone might have a buddy that runs a good distance to join him.   Oh.. and don't rez anyone when they're in the middle of some mobs, it's an in-place rez.

I've got to agree on the spell effects.  Some of them are pretty nifty, like the Elementalist's Mele ward, or rain of fire but most of them are pretty lackluster.  I have a lightning bolt spell that does a single glowing vertical line as it's effect. No forks or anything cool.  The Ball lightning spell tosses a glowing sphere about the size of a baseball.  I think my default wand attack was more visible.

It's hard to get out of the MMO mindset on a few things.  Henchman completly boggled my mind for a bit, as I was leery of using them, expecting some huge penalty for not sucking it up and dying on my own.  Similarly the fact that I'm able to regen power during a fight and I don't have to be as damned conservative with it as I'm used to being.

In all I could see paying the $50 for this game and enjoying it for a month (About the attention span games get around here).  I couldn't "get into" the community and I know it'd be hell on me mentaly trying to.  Definatly a game you'd want to play with people you know.

I agree, Merusk.  This would be a great game for a group of friends.  Something to satisfy our PvP needs in this mostly PvPless MMOG world (at least the lack of PvP in any decent game).  Take a chunk of time to build up some good PvP characters and then meet every now and then for some good fun.  With no fee, there is no nagging sense that you MUST play to get your money's worth, or cancel.  If you play with a group of friends, the only time you need to pay attention to the 'community' is when you're killing them.  You'd get more longevity out of the game this way, too, I think.

Lady Le Douche - Elementalist/Mez

I love this client, it's so lightweight!

Technical -- Ran very smoothly for me, just had one 5-minute patch where I disconnected while zoning, and could not get back in for a couple of tries.  Only a few minor lag patches.  One time I accidentally dragged my window when my cat jumped on the keyboard, which caused some really funky issues, but I won't blame that on the client.

PvE -- Yes it's hard to get out of the MMO mindset, but I'm finding it a nice experience for casual play.  Get home, play a mission with the wife for 30 minutes, get some phat loot and log off for dinner.  Nobody will get addicted to this game for the PvE, but the missions are fairly fun as a team.

PvP -- I tried a few classes.  Warror/monk did so-so, I kept having to chase people who sprinted in circles.  Elementalist/monk got utterly destroyed, maybe I just don't understand how to play it.  Then I tried Mesmer/Elementalist, and OMG it was fun.  Right before I logged off, my team was undefeated for at least 15 times straight.  Mesmer/monk, mesmer/ele, warrior/monk, and warrior/ele.  I'm not bragging, I just think we somehow hit on a winning combination, and we had a couple of smart players.  Anyway, the fun of PvP seems to be experimenting with different class/skill combinations.  

Overall -- Agreed, this is a great pickup for $50 with no fee, and will be fun with friends.  I also had a good time meeting new people in the arena, added a few to my friend list.  With such rapid team turnover, you get plenty of opportunities to see who plays well with you.  This game seems to hit the magic "fun vs. addiction" spot for me.  I enjoy playing it, but I feel no special urge to call in sick.

Oh yeah, my main toon is Boarax Scrub, thus far.

Played for 3 hours during the one hour I had. *whoops*

I like the game.  I will be buying the game.  I will have fun with the game.

That is all.

Well, on the technical side, it runs great in high-def (720p), so it looks very nice on my system. However, a lot of interface elements are tiny and pushed to the borders of the screen and the interface windows are HUGE, though I didn't look for any customization controls for them.

But it's nice to see a game that natively supports HD, there aren't many that don't require .ini tweaking.

I need to make a grief monk. Join groups for instances then leave 30 seconds later. Had that happen about 3 times last night.

Errr - Kifu Furiously Warrior/Necro (I'm not sure my vision of a shadowknight works)

I couldn't find an interface that would let me change the chat window.  Hitting the "Go away" button makes it so that only the last 10-15 seconds of chat show up in a smaller area without a border.  When I'm outside of the cities I'm doing this. The downside is that since it only shows for a short while you're likely to miss any tells, which is also why I advocated sending messages instead of tells/whispers.

I had to disable bloom. I was so damn shiny it hurt my eyes.  No contrast/brightness settings in the game either.  Since my system seems to like to render games darker than applications I usually have to up the gamma so I can see anything.  Instead, I'm having to adjust my monitor, which is a source of some frustration to me.

One aspect of the game I've liked has been trying variations of my skill sets between missions -- and especially between pvp fights in the arena. Gave me a chance to see very quickly whether I liked using a given skill.

Hints for getting new skills:

- talk to Firstwatcher Sergio in Lion's Arch to pickup new skills; each new skill you but costs 1 more gold than the previous

- more skills are available from Capt Greywind in a village north of Lion's Arch -- to get there, head out into the explorable area of North Kyrta and head toward the beaches, then veer westward. He also sells the signet capture rings that lets you capture skills from boss creatures.

- if you want to try out skills from other professions, or even your own, go to the charm vendor in Lions Arch near the outfitter -- they're cheap to buy


Hints for getting gold

- buy a salvage kit, or expert salvage kit from the outfitter; use it to deconstruct loot you don't need; use the deconstructed stuff to buy upgrades to weapons and armor (most armor upgrades have level 17+ req, though), or sell the components to the crafting component vendor in bundles of 10 -- I sold 10 iron ingots for 70+ gold -- the price seemed to go up over time, almost as though the NPC payed more for stuff in higher demand -- the wood planks I had kept dropping in value (guessing no one is buying those)


Chat interface notes
- yeah it could stand improvement
- you can double-click a friends name or guild members name in the Friends or Guild members window and it will initiate a tell or send in the chat window
- you can double-click on the names of people in the chat window and it does the same thing

Heh. I feel this way about PvE games too!

I had fun last night. Wish we could start n00b characters to get a better feel for character development, but OTOH, these will be easy to max out for PvP.

Saw, liked.

I will hopefully be able to convert a group of friends who still spend multiple hours a week trying to complete some stupid green set of Armor of Uselessness on Nightmare in D2.

The skill-mix strategizing seems like a plus.  There are many necro skills that involve sacrificing life, for example, and another skill that does something purty when someone else in your party sacrifices life.  Necro c-c-c-combooo.  Also, mixing curse/enchantment effects and immediate effects requires a little tacticamification.  The experienced teams are going to pwn.  It'll be interesting to see if the system gets sufficiently raped by whining bitches on the bulletin boards until all skills are equally useless.

Henchmen rule.  They're very sefless about loot, they shut up, and they don't suddenly stop and stare blankly at the countryside when I need some healing.

The PvE balance seems to need some work.  Running around with my 4 most bosom henchmen for many hours never resulted in a single battle that brought anyone below half life.  I daresay it got boring.  Then we went to the tomb and it took about 4 seconds before all of our eyesockets were packed with ghoul-peen.  Maybe there was some semi-challenging in-between area that it takes 5 hours to run to.

I have thoughts of being a primary crafter in this game, just because it seems unlikely to draw the crafting-type, thus resulting in market cornering, and it's incredibly perverse to try to be a crafter in such an instanced game.

"The writer's use of imagery is masterful..."

I think the tombs would be more challenging with a group of live players than bots -- if other Bat Country-Clubbers are up for wearing their guild bibs into the tombs tonight...

[guild tabards look like they are meant to keep players from getting pasta -- or maybe ghoul-peen -- on their shirts]

I did that first part where he opens a portal w/ just some bots.  Once to portal opens it's PvP vs. another group who opened the portal.  I lost.

Doh, it looks like guilds just got reset ... hopefully they'll come back.

Edit: they're back! yay!

The henchmen are pretty good.  I'm playing a necro/warrior, and with a bunch of reanimated dead things, me and the henchpeople kick ass.

The game runs quite fast on my wife's Celeron system with a GF5200 PCI card.  Amazing.

The music sounds like Lineage II.

I like it.

Dace Harkane

Ranger / Necro

(ATM)

EDIT:  That is, if I can ever get in.  0% connecting, and holding.

EDIT EDIT:  Wow, totally unplayable.  My char just twitches when I try tyo get him to move.  After about 5 minutes I made it to Jax.  Now I can't move and I can't get him to talk.  Anyone else getting this?

They announced at around 7:30 EST that one of their ISPs would be doing some emergency maintainence starting at 8:00 and it might affect everyone's connection. I didn't lose conn until around 8:30, so it looks like they might have started late.  Still can't connect though, so I'm done for a while tonight.

hey guys, since no one has brought it up yet, I'd like to go into a bit more detail about the Tombs of the Primeval Kings. It is pretty much "the" place to go for PvP combat. It is 8v8 arranged teams, so you pick all of your partners beforehand. Group up with your friends, grab a few random people or henchmen as you may prefer to fill out the group, and head in.

The first part is where you get attacked by ghouls. You have to protect the Ghostly hero while he opens the door. This is basically a preliminary/warmup/weedout mission, usually lasts 2-4 minutes. The purpose is basically to weed out any totally crap groups so they don't prove to be a total waste of time when the PvP starts. After the first mission, you play against other teams of players. The mission types range from team deathmatch, capture the flag, king of the hill, and various hybridizations. Sometimes there will be quirks such as having a NPC priest that will rez your whole party at 2 minute intervals. As you progress further, the game will match you up against other teams with similar winnings.

You gain Fame when you win, and the amount of fame gained doubles with each consecutive win. First win = 1 fame, second win = 2 fame, 3rd = 4 fame, etc. If I remember properly from E3, at 25 fame you gain another skill point, can't remember what the rewards were after that.

My guild and I made it to something like 12 consecutive wins last night before we got knocked out. It really is a lot of fun, and in my opinion is the probably going to be the best part of this preview event. If you have a formal guild, then there is some sort of system established for special guild vs guild matches which I believe are a bit more complex than the stuff in the Tomb of Primeval Kings, but I haven't tried it yet. If all goes well, I'll give it a shot tonight.

I put in quite a bit of time on this game in E3, and I've already dropped way too many hours on this event already, but at least I've got a pretty large working knowledge of the game. If anyone has questions, feel free to ask.

Can you explain skill charms and how they work?

Is there any advantage to taking a ton of skills when you can only use 8 at a time? Or does that # go up eventually?

What in the bloody hell is a cesta? I can't find a definition anywhere that doesn't include jai alai!

ok - skill charms are basically "temporary" skills. you buy/find a skillcharm, and when activate it, you gain that skill as an additional 9th slot for 24 hours.
After 24hrs, the skill will disappear and be gone forever.

however, you can find an item called a skill ring as loot from a boss. what a skill ring does is allow you to consume a skill charm, and permanently learn the skill that was contained in the charm.

the advantage to taking more skills is that you can swap them out before battles so that you have some flexibility, so you don't have to play the exact same character every time. Maybe when you're playing with one set of friends, you want skills X, Y, and Z because they are particular synergistic with the skills of your friends but are otherwise too conditional to use with a random group. It's all about letting you change your character to best fit with your group.

As for only being able to use 8 at a time, it is a balance decision. It is basically the great equalizer between high and low levels. You might be at max level, but you can't bring all 75 skills with you to a fight and totally wtfpwn some poor level 15 guy. There is a limit to the number of skills you can have in your "library", but it raises as you level. It doesn't really matter for this event though because new chars are level15 and the cap is 20.

I'll go ahead and toss in some information on skills in general. In addition to using a skillring/skillcharm method I described above, there are two other ways to learn a skill. You can talk to a trainer NPC, such as Firstwatch Sergio in Lion's Arch. The NPC has a fixed list of abilities you can learn from him, and they get incrementally more expensive as you buy more skills from him.

In case you didn't know, there is a different NPC skill trainer with a completely different list of skills than Sergio. You can find him in the coastal outpost in the free-form exploration zone (I think it is called North Khyto Province), basically you just run north to the coast once you enter the zone. You'll need to kill mobs as you go by, otherwise you'll aggro far too much if you try to run straight through. As you get near the beach, look to the west and you'll see the settlement. The captain there is the trainer.

You'll also see that the captain sells Capture Signets, which are the other way to gain skills. Basically, you put the capture signet on your skillbar, and wait until a boss (named) NPC uses a skill that you want to capture. Activate your signet ring, and it will begin capturing the last skill used by the boss. It takes 2-3 seconds, and a progress bar will be displayed on the screen so you can make sure that you're capturing the desired skill. If it's the wrong skill, just move and it will cancel the process. Once it's finished, the capture signet will be permanently replaced with the captured skill and you now permanently have the spell.

You can tell what profession a boss NPC is by the aura around him. Yellow is warrior, different shades of green are necro and ranger, blue is monk, and purple is mesmer.

See, once in awhile I trump up a game that isn't utter crap.

Meh, I was trumping it up so long before you that I'm pretty sure no one noticed you. But ya know - call them as you see them. Yes, I'm tooting my own horn. It feels good.

I think it's clever of them to let people have very restricted access. 2-3 days with a very narrow level range, good way to let people appreciate the shiny without being able to test the depth.

I'm playing as Azhriaz Vanashta - Necro/Mesmer

Fun so far, but this is coming off of soemone who was way to addicted to Diablo 2.  From what I've seen so far, it's enough to warrant purchasing for me.  Woo.

Already in a small guild with friends from real life, but will be happy to team up with any of you if you drop me a line.  I'm usually on in the early morning hours.

I'm on as Xilren Twinson War/Elem.  Currently at lvl 17 but not overly thrilled with the skill sets a hammer user can pick up (visited both skill trainers).  Nice to see the missions getting a little harder though.  The third one has wiped out my group 3 different times.  The centaur like warrior immediately target healers so my npc monk keeps getting owned.

Peformance has been generally good, coupla huge lag spikes and fell through a bridge to get stuck in geometry once, but nothing major.

With no monthly fee, there no reason not to pick this up.

I sent Rasix a message for the BC hookup.

Xilren

One of their 5 million autopatchs fixed the sound/battle lag I was having.

Does anyone know if the random 4v4s are balanced for levels, or just numbers?  I have a suspicion that I'm not really helping with my 15 R/Mo with crap gear.

Would have been nice to play, but the graphics on my system are seriously fucked up. I can create a character, but once I enter the game the screen can't refresh, and if I try to move it looks like an abstract painting getting smeared all over the screen. I've monkeyed with all the graphics settings, including refresh rates and resolution, and nothing seems to fix it. And I am certainly NOT going to sift through the vomit-inducing Vault boards to see if there is a solution.

So ... 2 observations from what I was able to get to work:

1) Character creation is quick and easy, and the avatars are pretty decent looking. Here's hoping they add some creature races in later patches.

2) The chick in the loading splash screen looks a lot like Winona Ryder.

I had the exact same problem as you Ardent.  I rolled my nvidia drivers back to 56.72, and now the game is running absolutely perfectly.

Blood Rosette - 15 Elementalist/Mesmer

And uh, long time no see.

You're still alive?!

Thanks! I'll give that a shot.

See, I knew posting here would be the most productive solution.

OK -- have seriously played until it feels like my eyes are bleeding -- in a good way.

Am about level 19.5 or so. The mission in the Bloodstone Fen has a tough final fight. Pick them off bit by bit and you can get through it.

Biggest difficulty I've seen has been crafting damn near anything. Not in the crafting but in the acquisition of the base materials. Wheeling and dealing can be fun but not amid nauseating spam. I don't mind having to work for materials; and I don't even mind farming for stuff -- but supposedly "common" materials -- cloth -- are insanely rare. It's far easier to make linen -- a supposedly rare item -- than cloth. Also, some kind of trivial loot code must kick in at higher levels -- can't replay lower level missions and expect to get much in the way of drops. I solo'd the whole Wilds mission with 4 henchmen and still came up short on stuff. Oh well. At least I finally got to make a "Rogues Attire" armor suit that would look cool if it weren't for the guild bib.

Made my best deals in the Farmers Market -- a hidden crafter station/area you find by exploring in the western part of North Kryta. Got wiped in the Cursed Lands -- nasty undead in an exploration area west of the Farmer's Market -- and haven't been back.

Would really like to try the Tombs with a guild group -- looks like it would be great fun.

--Sob

We did that and managed to get Hablion alone, he then proceeded to wipe the floor with my party a few times.

On loot drops: My experience is they you get all the loot doing solo missions with henchmen, a ton more drops when you have a 6 man real player team. Missions where I was used to chests dropping 1 or 0 loot with a henchman team suddenly dropped 3 items with a full 6 man real player group. Same with bosses. After the first couple of hours when the game opened Thursday I never once saw a yellow rare drop with the henchmen group, but did when I had a real player group, so it looks like they tune drops to the presence of real players.

I agree the aquisition of crafting items and even good weapons seems a bit harsh at the moment. It sucks seeing stacks of 8 hides drop and be assigned to another player in your party too when you dont see one hide drop in 3 missions.

Actually it just splits it up the way it would in a 6 man PC group.

In a six man PC group you get 1 out of every 6 drops.  But you get to see all these items drop.  In a henchmen group, the drop rate is 1/6 of normal, but you get all the items.  It balances out.  I did a little solo'ing w/out henchmen and every kill dropped an item.

-Hat

I think the items may still drop in a henchmen group. The henchmen pick them up and wear them. For example I believe in one group the warrior henchmen changed his helmet.

They also just patched in 8v8 PVP and the PVP kills give you exp.

Mmmmm.  What about items for winning around? To the victor go the spoils?

Also, I wonder what kind of prizes(decorations) you get for guild battles.

Did some of the tombs pvp earlier today, and had a blast.  As was said, it's 8 player teams now, with experience per kill.  And you also gain 1 fame point per win.  Make sure you get an 8 player group before going in.  DON'T rely on henchmen.  Possibly one monk if you are really desperate.

I was playing with my level 18 (19 now from the experience)  Necro/Mesmer.

I have Dominate maxed out at 12, and Blood (I think) at 10.  Yes, I realize 6 out of my 8 skills are in my secondary, very anti-spellcaster.  I normally have a few other necro skills (like level 13 bone horrors), and another curse or so.  But specializing so I can max my attributes is very useful:

Chaos Storm: 10 second AoE DoT, each second does 7 points of damage.  Each time it hits someoen casting a spell, they lose 14 energy.

Diversion:  Next skill target casts takes an extra 56 seconds before they can cast it again.

Backfire: For the next 10 seconds, any time target casts a spell, they take 70 damage.  I LOVE this one.  Especially for healers.

Shatter Hex: Remove a hex from target ally, any enemies near them take 70 damage.  Problem is it's hard to tell who's hexed outside of their life bar sometimes changing color.

Shatter Enchantment: Remove an enchantment from foe, if they had one, they take 50 damage.  Same issue as Shatter Hex with not being able to see who has what.  Elementalists pretty reliably have one up, and rangers that don't seem to be taking damage as well.

Shadow of Fear: Target based AoE - Slow attack speed for 22 seconds

Life Siphon: Target gains -3 health regen for 20 something seconds, you gain +3.  Fun when you cast on multiple people.

Energy Burn: Target Enemy loses 10 energy, and takes 4 damage for each point of energy (Instant 40 damage, and 10 mana burn)

You start out in a PvM area where you get jumped by level 20 and higher mobs.  I haven't had a team wipe out here yet.  The idea behind this, is if you can't survive these mobs, you shouldn't be playing PvP.  And helps makes for semi-decent battles where one team doesn't insta-nuke the other.

You are on a platform, and have to keep your ghost warrior alive.  He's level 28, so fairly durable.  You get attacked on multiple sides by level 20 ghouls with no real special abilities.  Then a little after by some higher level mobs like archers/mages/or these shadow beast things that look really freakin cool.  There's also huge level 28 guardian things around the perimeter.  They don't attack you on their own, but you can run out and attack them if you are quick, and they usually drop good/rare loot it seems.  I've also had one moron pull 3 of them and wipe the whole party except one, and then the timer ended and we won luckily.

Basically, you just need to survive the couple waves they throw at you, and then you automatically move into the PvP area.


The PvP arenas are all different in multiple ways.  Some have two teams of 8, some have 3, some have 4 (I think).  A few other things that are in some missions:

A priest with a rez circle - every team will get a priest that mass resses the party.  Kill the opposing team's priest to stop it.

A flag - grab your flag and bring it to a stand to get a morale boost.  Sometimes it will be a lightning thingy instead.  Where once you activate it, it hits any opposing player for damage periodically while they are near it.  For example, a warrior was chasing me that I had whittled down.  I ran to the flag outpost with him right on my ass, turned around and casted Energy burn for 40 damage, and then the lightning hit him right after.  He fell over dead with his axe in the air. :)

We had one oriental looking 2 team arena, it was a small flat rectangular one where you could see the whole thing at once.  It had doors you could throw up on either side of the perimeter to block the opposing party.  Died here when some morons let them get by and kill our priest.

The huge 4 way team battles were a blast (I think it was 4 teams at least, maybe they only go to 3).  But the maps are huge, with a lot of opportunity for maneuvering and flanking.  Will definitely be interesting if Ranger get a decent sneaking ability.  Just make sure you stick with your team and use the mini map and use control-click to call targets.  Good thing about this is if you get a bad team, you can just grab a different mix and jump back in.  And eventually you always seem to hit a good mix, and last multiple battles.

So, got a few fame points myself, and having fun ganking koreans with names I can't type.

Nice write up Azh.

I didn't know you could Ctrl-Click things to call them out -- that's great. Also didn't know about soloing w/o henchmen to get drops.

If anyone likes exploration/hunting instead of missions or PvP, here are names of the areas linked to the mission gathering areas:

Wild Lands > Sage Lands (from here you can go east to Majesty's Rest -- be warned -- Bone Dragons and a shit load of undead are in this area)

Bloodstone Fen > Silverwood (from Silverwood you can go south into Ettins Back or east into Mamnoon Lagoon)

Game off.

What a fucking fun game.  Haven't had this much fun with pvp in a game since quake 1 (I wonder if that invalidates my opinion here?  oh well).

This is a must-buy.  Hell I'd buy GW in its current condition.  Another 3 months and they have true gold.  

Good to learn about the way henchman drops work.  I was wondering how some of the teams in the Tomb were decked out in full steel armor.  Of course, I suspect some of them are guild teams from Alpha.  I was hunting for materials solo with 3 henchmen, and it was just a wee bit slow.

Can't wait for the next event, for pre-order folks.

I too was pretty amazed how stable it was even in its current barely-out-of-alpha stage.  If they don't seriously screw it up, they have a winner on their hands.

I guess what's mostly coming is content? If there is one thing the game is weak on, that's what it is.  Not that they need a lot given how PvP-centric it is, but the more content, the longer the game will not seem stale.

As for content, I found plenty for 3 days, but yes I expect that's what they are adding.  I wandered a lot in the "explorable areas" and found a lot of zones, including the Farmer's Market oasis with advanced crafters.  There were some interesting undead zones with very tough battles, including one where I got wiped in a full group of level 18-20 players.

I don't know if anybody has done a map of all the explorable areas, but they are pretty cool, and I'm hoping there are other such areas still in construction.  To the N of Lion's Gate, I did find one non-functioning zone line that kicked me out of the game, which I presume is one of the unfinished areas.  I personally saw about 15 mission and explorable zones, and I hope they have at least double that total for February.

I played mostly pvp the entire time and found some ridiculously good spells for my me/mo.  I was pretty split betwen domination, healing, protection, inspiration, and fast casting.

1) Mark of Protection (elite):  This is the best spell in the game that I saw.  If the other group doesn't have break enchantments its pretty much a 10 second full heal.  Every hit up to 20-something damage for a 10 second period of time heals the person getting hit instead of damaging.  Absolutely hilarious to watch 4 tanks beat on someone and their health jump to full in 4 seconds.

2) Orison of Healing:  The old standby, with this and mark I was the main healer for most of my groups.

3) Pacify:  17 seconds, they can't attack unless they are damaged.  Very useful when that annoying tank gets on you and won't go away.  Annoying because party members often break it.

4) Energy Burn:  As stated above.

5) Chaos Storm

6) Backfire

7) Energy Tap:  This is a huge spell for me.  Every 20 seconds drain 12 mana from someone?  Groovy.  Lets me get off that mark of protection or chaos storm when im low on mana.

8) Rez


There were arenas with 4 teams and 6 teams as far as I could tell.  Ending up on top of one of those games is a great feeling =).

Oh, BTW, Diversion is brutal...very brutal.

That backfire spell is DEADLY.  My mesmer had tons of fun with it, backfire ->conjure phantasm (mean dot that makes your health bar purple) -->energy burn (target loses 40hps and 10 energy) on a monk and they are dead in less than 5 seconds.

Yeah Backfire is pure evil.  It also seems to work well in PvE missions, where many of the boss monsters are casters.  Pop Backfire on them when they try to heal up at low health, and bam they're dead.  Admittedly most PvE fights don't require much brainpower, but hey it's nice to have tricks for the rare tough ones.

This must have been what one ranger (forgot secondary) I was fighting in PvP had up.  As a few of my skills are DOTs the usually do 10 something damage a second.  His life would abrely go down, and when it did, it would pop right back up.  I eventually cast shatter enchantment, and his life promptly dropped down to half or so (as I'm guessing my other stuff kicked in at that point when he tried to heal). :D

The PVP is a blast. Some bastard kept casting Edge of Extinction in a few of the games we had, causing neither side to win. What EoE does is that every time anyone dies, everyone takes like 25 damage or some such within a certain range. VERY nasty.

I found that my Warrior/Ranger combo wasn't working like I wanted it to. I ended up not using the bow very much at all, because it just slowed me down. May want to go Warrior/Monk or something else when I get into beta.

Warrior/monk is nice for PVE and seemingly good for PVP (didn't PVP with that char).  You can get rid of cripple/blind/poison and deep wound rather easily, which are great when you've got a monk who's already got too much to do.   Plus, there's some nice buffs or other utility heals that you can utilize to increase your survivability.

My impressions (short version):

Graphics:

Good, passable, didn't kill my computer.  Not enough character options.  I really hope by release they have more than one race or appearance type for the characters or more customization options. Everyone looked the fucking same.

Interface:

Clunky.  Buttons are too big and the chat mechanism SUCKS.  A lot of it was non-intuitive.  Targetting at times was difficult.

Combat:

Fast paced and fun.  The PVP was a blast and the PVE was also pretty fun.  Hooray for a game that made non-retarded AI for henchmen.

Reminded me a lot of Diablo but without some of the gross imbalances and the need to wade through 10000 monsters on your screen at the same time.

Missions were for the most part well done and towards the end very challenging in parts.  Keeping your monk bitch alive can be a chore. Explorable areas need a denser monster population.

Didn't get to play PVP much, but it was fast paced almost to the point that I felt lost out there. I'm not going to be able to play a healer type in this one I don't think, not offensive enough for me.  Should be great fun, but I hope it's just not going to be 8 man teams.  I'd like the option for smaller groups.  

Loot/Crafting:

I liked the relatively low power differential between weapons.  This should allow PVP to be less of "who has the massively brutal king's sword of haste".   I liked how loot got dispersed within a party although sometimes it felt like the random number generator broke at times.  Really, it should just use a rotating loot order.

This crafting system is somewhat cool, but it's going to be a PITA for a heavily gear influenced class.

Gripes and crap I never figured out:

How the hell do you customize your armor?  I know the stuff you start off with is, but how do you accomplish this?

How do you get weapon upgrades?

Why don't they allow for waypoints to the different settlements? Running to that one guy north of LA was a chore after the first time.

Henchmen eat up too much of the drops when you play alone.  I feel like I get more loot when I'm in a full group.

Can they please make the crafting experience a little less catassy? This is really going to blow for meleers and unless you really like spending a lot of time gathering components.  If you're forced to deal with this from level 1.. it could get ugly.  

How the hell are they going to balance this economy unless they start us out at level 1 and go from there?  Stuff right now doesn't drop a lot of gold + worth while loot. So, how bad is this going to seem just starting out? Or is the entire dropped loot enconomy a constant scale throughout? How are they going to adjust skill buying if you've been buying since level 1?

The cutscene writing is terrible. And they're long too.  I hope the creative person there is busy writing AI scripts or something, because I shudder if it's their fulltime job. I think I wrote better fiction in 2nd grade.

Overall:

This is a game I will buy as long as it stays off the crimson road of catass.  It's fun, it's casual, it's decent looking, and it doesn't kill my computer.  It's something that I wouldn't feel the need to play 24/7.

It's got some sore spots (crafting/interface), but it's a beta and it's stuff they should be able to work through and fix.  

Instant gratification of my impulses without the compulsory MMORPG genre bullshit.  HOO-RAY.

I fucking hate EoE, its just ridiculous.

Crafting definitely was way too much catass for my tastes, so I avoided it and it didn't seem to affect (is it affect or effect in this case?) me too poorly in PvP at least.  I wasn't a melee class however so that might be why.  The combat interface doesn't bother me at all, I just clicked the box to disable mouse movement and often used keys to target instead of the mouse.  The chat interface is weird.  They need a reply key desperately.

Unclicking mouse movement would have helped me a lot.  I never bothered to see if I could do that....

Hmm..

I could not get into the game.  I tried a variety of class combos and just nada.  The advent of the npc hirelings was nice, some of the quests were okay, but it just felt lacking.  I was not a big fan of dungeon seige and it felt a lot like dungeon seige, so that could easily have been the issue.

I hated dungeon siege and didn't find Guild Wars to be particular similar to it at all, but again, I played 75% of the time in PvP.

One thing I found that you might not know about. Go to your Guild Hall, once you get invited to a guild. That is apparently a place where you can set up guild vs. guild fights (instead of random PVP matches). I think you can either have specific challenges set up or you can have make matchups. I don't know if this is 8v8, or open battles or what. But it does bode well.

I didn't realize you could take off mouse click movement. That would have helped me a lot in PVP. I also had a LOT of lag last night around 9-10 pm CST.

My wife fell in love with the game. It's got the trader's economy she loved from EQ (with crafting materials), it's fun, and the PVE is decent too. She got to level 19, and was in a mission fighting the bigass level 24 dragon (which looked cool as hell).

I played one of the guild battles. It was 8v8 castle vs. castle assault. Kill the enemy lord. It also had flags and morale capture points. You needed a thief npc to open the enemy gate and there were npc guards at castles.

----

I couldn't figure out what I was doing with my warrior/ranger either. In the E3 preview I did warrior/elemental and that seemed much better. This time I started out with hammer only until maybe lvl 19 or so then switched to sword and finally bow+sword/shield+pet. The ranger gets all kinds of buff skills for the pet (like 10 lifesteal, +110 health, 5 base dmg reduct, 33% faster attack, 34% armor piece) and the buffs lasts 30-120 seconds depending on the buff.

I also used the shout skills the warrior gets. One does AE +20 armor for 10 secs and the other I was using was AE + runspeed for 10 seconds. Last two skills I used were troll ungent and healing sig. The troll ungent heals 8 per sec for 10 secs and healing sig is instant +70 heal. That template seemed to work well in PvP and suck in PvE (does little dmg but major buffs for friends).

With the above I seemed to be able to assure a win in 2 out of 3 random 8v8 PVP. Buff my pet at the start and then rush through the center attacking healers and spell casters with the bow, sucking up their damage, and using the shouts. The TAB key cycles targets and SPACE key attacks the target. I kept switching targets to freak the casters out. The pet was a pretty crappy dmg dealer but it sucked up dmg and distracted them at the same time.

The sword in the sword/shield combo had flaming effect plus crappy dmg and the shield was +15 armor. I'd have 2-3 guys beating on me and sometimes lasted until after my whole team had been wiped or we routed them and won.

I leveled from 20 to 21 on Sunday doing that in PVP only. I tried out a mesmer/warrior on Sunday as well but even using that backfire spell etc. I didn't seem to be doing too well. I don't think I'm cut out to be a spell caster.

I started off with a Ranger/Mesmer but it wasn't aggressive enough for me. The ranger part was fun but I had a hard time utilizing my Mesmer skills affectively. Granted, I only got to level 17 and mostly PvPed, so I didn't capture any of the cooler mesmer skills.

I ended up playing a Warrior/Necro which was a load of fun. Aggressive enough and allowed me to Syphon enemies for my own health regen and also Bleed them with my sword skills. Tended to have problems with the other warriors that had the nicer armor and weapons, but only when I was stuck by myself.

All in all, I had a blast and can't wait for the next world preview event!

Playing a Mesmer/Elem in PvP was tough -- without good healer support I'm toast. Biggest problem was that even in 8v8 at the tombs -- which became 4 groups of 8 a after we won the first battle -- with no player combo coordination I found it hard to be effective. I wound up taking more elementalist skills just to dish out damage.

I love Backfire, and I captured a skill called Empathy which, for 10 seconds, causes 10 points of damage each time an opponent "attacks". Casting Backlash and Empathy on the same opponent means they take damage whether they cast spells or attack, which was a nice combo.

My favorite up-close melee spell is Lava Font -- does tons of dot in close AE and is fast to cast and recharge.

Necros are a little too weak for a primary class.  Thier class trait, regening mana based on the number of corpses around you, really isn't that great.    

I found my necro/mesmer a bit weak in PvP.  You're basically all support, no damage.  One or the other is alright, but together, you're just not well rounded enough.  The second an archer decides he wants you dead, there's nothing you can do unless someone draws the archers attention or you get a healer spamming you.   I ended up taking a few elementalist skills just to be more usefull in groups.

I think part of the problem in the combo is you need to be extremely calculating, stay back, raise minions when possible, and assist your melee's with debuffs.   Unfortunately, because of the terrain, it's often really hard to see your allies, and that "hit T to attack what I'm attacking" crap doesn't seem to work.  You  really need to be able to select an allies name, and auto-assist them if you try to attack them directly.  Also, most matches were over way too fast, in which you really don't get a chance to shine at all.  Some of this was due to playing in pick-up groups, but who knows how much that would change later.

They need to work on some things though.

1) You need to be able to customize the gui more
2) Chat needs a major overhall.  Need to use/support typical mmorpg chat switches, and you need to be able to capture the damage you do/take to screen.
3) Remove being kicked from the tomb if you lose.  Doing the 3 minute entry test everytime your team takes a lose was annoying.
4) Loot distribution was horrible.  I'd see people get 10+ drops, and I'd usually end up only getting 3-4.
5) Crafting felt too grindy.  
6) Big disparity between average weapon drops, and great weapons.  Too wide.  I think it needs to be a bit lower.
7) Alot of skills need better descriptions, and you should be able to see the cool down/cast time/mana consumption for skills when you're looking at them at charm crafters.

The necros little death minions you get from corpses seem to cast corpse explosion. Made me a more potent soloer. At least I assume they were casting corpse explosion - as they were exploding and killing. Also, necro minions don't take lewt. Which is awesome.

At the tail of the preview I got a Monk/Necro mix in PvE to level 16. I really liked the possible combos between these classes -- use blood magic (Dark Pact) drain your own life to cause dmg then use a small heal to restore the life -- both spell recharge fast and have minor energy costs.

The Retribution enchantment is also a great henchman/friend buff.

But I found myself missing two elementalist glyphs I used a lot with my Mes/Elem: Lesser Energy (next spell takes 15 less energy to cast) and Glyph of Renewal (next spell recharges in half the normal time).  Lesser Energy really helped me cast high cost spells when my energy was low.

Side note, I have a feeling a number of the animations for spells were placeholders. For example, Meteor was just plain non-existant -- a yellow flash down on someone's head doesn't look like a meteor to me.

Looking forward to playing again this weekend.

Bone Horrors?  I never saw any one mine, or that of other people cast corpse explosion.

Maybe Bone Fiends do, but I didn't capture any elite spells (wish I did, since those fiends are alot tougher than horrors).

Wha-Wha-What?

Pre-Order people get a private weekend (the first weekend of each month) until the second week of february when it's released.

Do the ranger pets require you to capture an animal? Or does "Charm Animal" really just summon a pet? The name of the spell led me to believe it was a PVE only spell, and thus worthless in PVP, so I never got it.

RTFM, I know, blow me. I have questions. You have answers.

You had to find an animal to charm and level him up, after that it followed you everywhere as long as you had the charm animal skill equiped.  That is until people figured out they could charm other peoples pets in pvp and stole your lvl 20 lynx :P

ROFL -- never saw that happen but just the thought of it strikes me as wickedly funny. Makes me like this game all the more.

LOL. Luckily no one figured that out against me yet.

I'm really interested in the 9th slot for the temp 24 hour skill charm. You could use it for all kinds of things like the pet charm skill or one of the fire area effects, or the necro minion spell with any character combo. Or two pets (that's speculation of coarse)?

Necro minions and a pet at the same time? Plus 4 henchment? Could really get your own army going on there.

I'm not sure where this idea came up but there is no 9th slot. What you get is a skill in your skill list that you can use for 24 hours -- but you drag it into your usual slot bar of 8 skills.

I took a monk healing skill for use with my mesmer/elem; while it was nice to try out the healing skill from a different profession, the downside was it prevented me from taking any other special non-class skills such as Resurrection Signet.

Perhaps the charm that lets you temp learn skills from your own profession creates a 9th slot? I tend to doubt it -- the 8 slot limitation is one of the ways I find this game balances out those who may play a lot (and therefore have 150 skills to choose from) and those who play only casually (and thus only have 50 skills) -- yet the number of skills, and time played to get them, does not override skillful play by the player with fewer skills to choose from.

Someone mentioned it here on the forum so it could be a myth.

I never got around to testing the charm necklaces? Is that what you used got the healing charm? Did you try the basic and the advanced necklace?

Edit: Here are 114 screenshots (http://www.fileradio.com/gw3/) I took during this preview.

The more expensive/advanced necklace lets you have a temp skill from another class -- that's what I used for the healing skill. Of course, I think you're limited to whatever charms other players have crafted and sold to the vendor, or to charms made by friends/guildmates or others willing to craft them for you.

I didn't try the basic necklace because there were no mesmer/elem skills I really wanted to try that I didn't have already. It's a very useful tool though for testing out class/profession skills without having to spend money or skill points to train them or to capture it with a signet of capture.

This game really does a great job of giving so many options for getting and testing skills:

- train in a skill (costs increasing amount of gold and costs skill points, which are limited in number)
- capture a skill in a signet of capture (costs fixed amount of gold, but you have to time your capture to when a boss you've targetted is using it -- if you're sly enough, sometimes you can target a boss without engaging in combat and catch it casting something on themselves as it wanders around).
- temp learn a skill from any profession or your own profession -- small cost and no permanent loss of skill points
- permanently learn a skill of your own profession from a skill charm by using a skill ring for your profession -- free cost and no skill point drain but limited availability since these rings only drop from bosses

Guild is still up and running.  Message "Rasix The Cruel" or "Rasix Mifune" to get in.

For warriors, Swords are teh own. I found I was doing a lot more damage with a sword than axe. It might have been the upped damage on weapons, but I think I really just liked the attack that allows me to cripple and bleed opponents. Stops those damn rangers/caster types just hitting and running. Also discovered charm animal. Not a bad little pet to have.

I found the PvE so mind numbingly boring that I couldnt even be bothered trying PvP, it would be nice to actually run into other players while Im zoning..
I just dont think its in my genetic makeup to enjoy MMORPGs. Oh well.

If you didn't try PvP then you missed the whole point of the game.

Your PvE stuff is instanced - you aren't going to see other players unless you invite them into your group. The purpose of PvE is two-fold:

a) learn how to play your character
b) level and/or gain skill/equipment for your character

These are in support of the overall PvP gameplay.

If you play again you should make sure you group with people to do missions (perferrably people you know, like us) and you should at least _try_ pvp. If you don't like PvP after a few games then there is something wrong with you and we don't want you playing anyways. ;)

I know PVE is instanced , I hated it so much I couldnt get around to PVPing.

Is there another preview event on this weekend maybe I'll give it a shot.

The next beta weekend is in December, but you have to have preordered the game to play (unless someone gives you their "friend can play for one weekend key"). I'm not sure if they are planning another preview weekend, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did have one closer to launch.