f13.net

They just announced the next beta weekend. Keep your old chars.

http://www.arena.net/blog/announcing-the-next-guild-wars-2-beta-weekend (http://www.arena.net/blog/announcing-the-next-guild-wars-2-beta-weekend)

Nice timing for me since I get back from an extended trip for work on the 8th.  I suppose I'll keep plugging away on my Charr ranger, he should be able to hit the dungeon before the weekend ends if I don't dink around too much.

Nice, been itching to get my hands back on this.

Bah... I'll be traveling that weekend.

I won't be on til about 3pm PDT for invites.

Things to remember:
Hit 'g' to get the guild menu.
Anybody should be able to invite.
You don't automatically represent a guild when you make an alt, so you have to go in to the guild menu and hit represent.

This is based on the last beta.  Hopefully, it'll be updated and little less cumbersome.

I would like to try this out. But I did not get a beta key before so I doubt I will get one this time.

Here's hoping my patcher issues are fixed and I can actually play without hitting corrupt files constantly!

These weekends are for people that have pre-ordered the game. So yea... unlikely you will get a key unless you purchase the game.

I got a key through Massively as advertised on the GW2 Facebook page. Oddly enough it said I had pre-ordered the game after I entered it yet did not ask for any CC information. So, I guess we'll see what's what. I am hoping that's just the generic text you see. Anyway, I'm wondering what my thoughts are going to be. I am expecting great game play but a boring ass world or in other worlds the exact opposite of the Secret World.

It's a good game. No empty world here TBH. Just non-grindy fairly balanced fun without having to worry about lives-in-basement grinderKid1008 with his elite DIKU equipment one shotting you.

I'm not proclaiming it roboticus jesusitus or anything, but of all the MMO-like games launched since WoW, it will be the first to have the real potential to compete with it.  After seeing what Blizzard has become since 2008, I think Anet is poised to claim their throne.  Over time, not simply when GW2 launches. 

I think people are just into the "different" of GW2.  The game just didn't grab my attention in any significant way during the first beta weekend.
I plan on trying again, but I don't know if anything will change my impression of the game so far.  

This is coming from someone on the outside who has not followed the game in any depth.

Saying the game is going to compete with WoW is probably not too likely. The mass crowd, the "leet" types chasing their next purple or server first aren't likely to leave WoW for GW2. However it's the first MMO in a while that's tried to do something new and may carve out it's own niche, especially at the more casual end of the player curve.

So yeah, I'm into the difference. It's been too long since we've had a MMO that isn't fatally flawed or WoW re-skinned.

It's not going to be everything to everyone and there are still reasons to play other games.  Maybe even other MMOs.  The important thing to me is that it is a good game in its own right.  I never found myself thinking, "X did this so much better" or "I wish it had this feature from X".

It's a nice upgrade from GW1 and I enjoy that it is very accommodating of my highly unfocused and DIKU unfriendly style of play, I don't see it as a serious competitor with WoW but it will definitely have an impact on the market.  I hope it makes big enough money hats for the devs that we get a few more MMOs that aren't just WoW in xxx or WoW with story or just WoW with different art.

Well of course not. X was a shitty game in its own right and had no redeeming qualities outside of the short name.  :why_so_serious:

I enjoyed the third one though.

So I decided to get a jump on the download drama I had last time. Opened up a new client installation instance, BOOM download failed after 200m. Repeatedly happened.

Wandered around the internets, found someone who said it was probably a firewall issue (nope.jpg) but said at the end if you're really bored, try this other akamai IP in your host file. I'm now at 11G without failure. Dear akamai: Fix whatever shit is between your distribution node and comcast.

I have Comcast and there was no issue with my download. 

same, I just patched the client from the last beta though.

I had no issue with comcast, I had issues with comcast + a very specific akamai edge server. If I static a different one, it's fine. I could barely play the first beta weekend because I had to download eight separate clients to be able to have some copies without corrupt data for specific models :(

There's another huge issue that the gw2 client lacks gw1's validate function, too.

ANet's bloggers have ruined this BWE:

http://www.arena.net/blog/were-ready-for-this-weekends-beta

Do not taunt the happy fun fates, ANet!

(on a more content oriented note: I suspect we're going to see the preorder system revamp in the next few weeks, Amazon is supposedly handing out BWE keys to preorders as well as prepurchases now)

There's a new blog (http://www.arena.net/blog/the-big-beta-weekend-preview) about the upcoming beta weekend.

Key points:

• Explorable mode Catacombs (35+)
• New map, Gendarran Fields (25-35)
• Mystic Forge - trade in unwanted items for random rewards
• Expanded WvW - there's now a "mini-dungeon" below the central map to fight in. They've also added skill challenges, DEs, jumping puzzles etc to the WvW maps
• Automated PvP tournaments - 8 teams, 3 rounds, single elimination. Plus a new PvP rewards structure
• Improved combat feel - better timing, enhanced sounds
• Chat - Chat bubbles, map chat and revamped local chat
• Keybinding - New interface and we can now use modifier keys  :awesome_for_real:
• UI Improvements - Resizable minimap, dodge meter merged with health meter
• New skill tiers - Elites and Utility skills are now arranged into 3 seperate tiers. Getting a certain amount of skills in one tier will unlock the next
• Gem Store - redesigned interface and new items added

The only one that gives me pause is the new skill tiers but I'll reserve judgement until I see it in action.

 :Love_Letters:

Skill tiers seem odd, I'll be curious to see it.

The WvW dungeon is kind of a test run of an idea as I understand it: no mobs, just traps and the idea is multiple groups enter, one group gets to the treasure at the end over the corpses of their enemies. Not really a DF-alike at the moment for DAOC fans.

I'm hesitant on the pve stuff being added to wvw areas. But amused that I will soon see videos of a zerg fail jumping puzzles.

Apparently they've added a 'visceral' feel to combat, possibly in response to TERA. 

The new patch is up, by the way. So if you have a slow connection or just some time, pre-patch. It's a few gigs of shit.

I'm curious about the visceral combat as well.

You can only get in this by pre-ordering yes? I was wondering if there was a referral system or something.

No referrals, there are some giveaways going on in some places.

One of the forums I go to has this Gamespot link (http://www.gamespot.com/users/JodyR/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25985420) where they are giving away things. May be able to search around elsewhere for stuff of this sort.

No pre ordering, pre buying.  Unless something's changed.

Prebuying meaning money goes out the door?

That's too rich for my blood.

Yeah they charge you for the full game already.

I imagine "visceral" just means tying the animations together better. The last beta did feel a little "floaty" and like you were just sort of waving your weapon at the foe.

When I preordered the CE from gamestop they only charged me a small portion.

Chat bubbles could be nice.

There is pre-purchase and there is pre-order.  The Pre-purchase is done through their website.

Hey i just pre-ordered GW2, got the key , started downloading client but it keeps crashing, is there any  way to fix it?- As I dont seem to be able to see forums aside of new section

here is an error
*--> Crash <--*
Assertion: compressedBytes <= outputBytes
File: ..\..\..\Services\Compress\CmpApi.cpp(111)
App: Gw2.exe
Pid: 5392

Sounds like kildorn's issue on the previous page.

So I tired clean reinstall and damn me it now crashes instantly. It must be their server  side issue. So I just completely fckd myself with uninstall because I had 14 GB already downloaded (took whole day and night)

That sounds different, mine just started downloading and would simply say Download Failed every few hundred megs.

I heard one report that the initial client requires admin rights for no reason (right click/run as administrator), then once it updates the client it should run without admin rights happily.

Just in case though, here's my host file entry to bypass my shit edge server:

24.244.18.19 AssetCDN.101.ArenaNetworks.com

edit: seeing elsewhere that it's crashing for everyone as of tonight. I'd suggest waiting a day and redownloading gw2.exe

I'm getting the same error message.  Hopefully they fix it by the time I get home from work tomorrow so I can get it ready for Friday.

Edit: This seems to have fixed my problem.  http://guildwars2necromancer.com/news/fix-for-guild-wars-2-client-update-error/

Mucho thanks .that fixed it. so hopefully it will download by tomorrow night

Do we need to be on a specific server to join the guild?

I believe we're on Fort Aspenwood

Are you allowed to discuss the game and/or post pics?

Yes, no NDA for beta weekends.

Who do we pester for an invite?

NDA-free for the weekends.

This is one of those things where I really want to do it, but I'm debating if it's worth committing the cash.

Am i completely crazy or does this look crappier than last time?

What is up with this downloader?  It's going fast enough but for some reason it's eating up my cpu a bit.   Pretty annoying as I wanted to play some Skyrim while waiting.

If you're desperate you could always pre-order on amazon, get code, cancel.  :/

Explain?

It just doesn't look as good as i remember.

Don't you have to pre-PURCHASE, paying in full? Or did Amazon bend the rules?

No, Amazon doesn't charge your card on any order including pre-orders until they ship.

The graphics settings had all reverted to very low settings when I logged back in, but upping them all to high quality made a huge difference.

Also have to say - even though they have said they have a long way to go with optimisation, the game runs hugely better this weekend - very noticeably so.

Well I played it a bit. Tried a thief and a warrior. With both I ended up with firearms. Pistol for the thief. Rifle for the warrior. My quick impressions:

Pros:
Beautiful graphics
Good combat
Decent voice acting

Cons:
The animations in the cutscenes are very, very stiff and my guy never looked at who he was talking to.
"Quests" They were a bit repetitive right off the bat. Kill bandits, water/feed/scavenge something else. As I feared the "world" side of the game is its biggest weakness. Also, while the events were fun and chaotic I imagine they'll be dead and abandoned a month or two after it launches.
Bugs. Nothing major but on my thief his storyline quest got utterly stuck and stopped advancing even though I did what I was told. I won't knock the game too much on this since it IS a beta.

The events become a lot mroe complex. Even in the Norn starting area there was a 5 stage one where you beat off some goblin things, destroy their tower, stop them uilding a tower, invade their caves and then kill their leaders. in the human starting area there was an outpost that got overrun by centaurs - you either get to quest in it killing centaurs, or if you're good enough you retake the village and then other options open up.

(and the bloody centaurs keep trying to take it back).

The initial stuff is quite repetitive and very simple, but they very quickly seem to open up. The individual storylines are also a lot of fun - I just did a mission where I had to flirt / charm my way at a dinner party to gather evidence against a corrupt offiicial. Always pleasant to be doing something that doesn't involve combat once in a while.

I've been having a blast, and being able to do the story quests has really helped my leveling curve out (though it still seems a bit off)

Sadly, the servers have just decided to lag to death across the board :(

edit: lol, this was posted on the forums, and promptly all the servers died:

World Population Limit Increase

Hey all,
Good news for you. We’ve been evaluating world population limits and we were able to raise them some. Most worlds that were previously full are not full now.

So far its been very...underwhelming.  I have to play some more but I'm very unimpressed with what I've seen, esp. considering all the rabid fanboy hype its received.

How do you know you're not missing any quests if there isn't at "!" above NPC heads?  Do I have to interact with every NPC in a zone?

I like the game, but I'm seeing too many instances of "Play to build numbers" in its base design, especially in WvW. WvW reminds me of Planetside.

Playing in a guild / large group of people seems to be the best way to play given the importance of influence and its percentage gain on the experience. I imagine the largest guild will be a Chinese gold farmer. :)

All the outfits and characters are gorgeous, though.

Escorts have a circle/starburst icon nearby on the map. Events are orange circles when you're vaguely near them. Heart quests are hearts on the map (empty for things you haven't done, filled for karma vendor status)

Exploration bonuses are HUGE. I finally finished off every item on the first zone map, and got a bunch of transmute items for gear remodeling, and 3 random greens as well as cash and xp. The general idea is Keep Wandering.

Um, there aren't direct quests?

Each heart on the map indicates an area where you can build karma by doing basic questing things such as killing mobs, picking items up, rescuing people etc. they are your basic 'go to' points on the mpap for levelling. Scouts should hi-light you to the location of hearts nearbye.

Events happen as you explore, and can have very minor or big effects on an area depending upon the event and the number of chains. (I.e. can be a simple 'kill invaders' event, or a 4 stage 'Assualt the base' event where at the end the enemy village will be replaced with an allied base.

The are no direct 'quests' as such other than your personal storyline. You don't need to be speaking to anyone to get 'quests', becausethey don't exists in that fashion in the game.

I launched an event to save prisoners in a nearby bay in Kessex Hills by talking to a named NPC that was walking around deeper inland. I think events are always happening but there are relevant NPCs nearby outside its area of influence that can make you aware of it.

Like, plauged villagers in Shaemoor -- talk to them, "Why are you sick?", boom, world event a half zone away put on my quest log.

Edit: Fort Aspenwood's been full and continues to be full. Is there cross-server guilds?

NPCs can tell you something is going on, but if you walk over to the area during the event it's just happening for you to hang out.

And yes, guilds are both cross-server and you can be in N number of guilds at any time.

Started a Human Thief yesterday. The new user experience leaves a lot to be desired.  Took about an hour of flailing around blindly before I stopped feeling completely clueless.

Once I crossed that hurdle, though, I had a blast playing.

I tried playing it a couple times so far this weekend.   Huge let down.   I don't know if it's the lack of quests or what but I feel completely aimless on how to level.   I liked leveling via rift events in RIFT though so I feel like something else is missing here.   

The class system is a pretty big let down too.   I guess my only real beef there though is that pure class rangers suck in guild wars.

I'm sure there will be a contingent of people that simply don't like the game for a variety of reasons, but if you're confused on what to do, just stop and explore the interface and world.  It's okay to not feel directed in a game all the time.  It's a really organic experience and in my opinion the future of online RPGs. 

Regarding the new user experience, I agree that its a bit jarring.  Once you get used to it, you never need to learn it again.  I'd rather they concentrate on endgame and content than the new user xp.

I've no problem with it being open ended or whatever.   That's great for explorers.   My explorer stat is trumped by my power gamer stat though so if they want me to explore they better just give me a damn button to press for XP while I'm doing it.

Just go to the hearts and participate in events as you come across them?

I do think they could be better at telling people that,  but you will always have hearts on the map to visit, and that's how you level up. They are basically small quest hubs, with the random events providing the meat and gravy of the meal.

What's your issue with the class system BTW?

If you 100% a zone exploration, you get a significant chunk of xp and a chest.

I just don't know, though, dude. I'm sympathetic to the "I don't understand" to a point. I've even submitted extensive feedback to the effect that it needs to start out handholding people pretty hardcore, since a lot of MMO assumptions are turned on their head. But I'm starting to run out of patience for that. It makes me fucking *sad* when people basically say, "I miss my kill 20 boars quests with big exclamation points." Really fucking depressed.

Perhaps you need to spend less time worrying about how other people have fun.

nah

That's not the problem for me.  I definitely enjoyed the whole dynamic event idea in RIFT.    Here it feels extremely lackluster.    The hearts though (which are not dynamic right?) feel like something even worse than quest grind.

Make sure you talk to the guy who is the heart. Some of them have added events/spice over the normal go and do things dynamic. But, again, that's not really the meat of the game.

For instance, I *finally* got to do the swamp monster in the swamps in the human lands. It's an epic event which cranks up involving portals to the Underworld spilling monsters, culminating in a GIANT (I can't emphasis that word enough) spectre spawning from the swamps to be fought by a large group of people.

Now, the boss could have been beefed up a bit* but it was fucking awesome. And with the better messaging from the combo fields, the tactics really shined. He was huge and everyone there was freaking out because it was at the end of this big lead up and he had awesome graphics and sounds effects....

I've found most people have had a moment, not necessarily immediately, where they go, "Ohhhhhhhhh, yeah, this is rad." I had a friend who was bitching at me about how dumb the game was for a solid afternoon until, out of the blue, after hours of this, he said he understood and loved it. And maybe it never comes; I'll totally grant this won't be for everyone (my bitching is mostly reserved for people going DUUURRR I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS GAME DURRRR). I worry about the achievers in those middle levels where the only thing to do is play the game while getting very lateral power increases. But hang on and see if that moment comes where you suddenly go "THIS is what I want my MMO to be".



*This weirdly stands in direct contrast to most of the big bosses, who are slightly to severely overtuned. I'm looking at you, giant in Nagelberg or whatever it's called just north of The Wall.

I can figure out the game.  It's retarded that the game is fucking ass boring till you figure it out but whatever.   This isn't my first MMO.   My confusions right now:

1)  Events giving me ass XP.
2)  WvWvW giving me ass XP.
3)  Events only giving me money?  WTF how do I get phat lewts? 
4)  Why is there not a big fucking "Join Group" button ala RIFT?
5)  How do you dodge when there's nothing apparent to dodge?

The amount of time it took to get to just level 3 doesn't make any sense.   I can get all my weapon abilities instantly but I'm supposed to grind for hours and hours before I get my first class ability?

I understand what they are trying to do, but this game isn't grabbing me at all.  I played for 3 hours today with my buddy, who is constantly pestering me to play, and it came down to the fact that I'd rather go play swtor and do pvp.

I really think it's a world thing more then anything else.  I am going to dub it Rift syndrome.

Tried WvWvW for the first time.  Had trouble finding battles.  I saw single people running around, and one of them went with me to a place on the map that showed "under attack."  Nothing there. 

The quest events and pve are really fun but I haven't had the "aha" moment with pvp yet.

There's no join group button because there's no reason to have one. XP isn't divided, it's just handed out to anyone who tags things. There's no group buffs or heals, it just happens to people near the target. In WvW, there IS a join group button on commanders where you are added to their chat channel however.

I can understand the lack of direction (though I'm fuzzy on the events giving low XP. It takes a few events to level? A mob kill for example is 8 xp, and the event they're involved in is ~650. Hell, fully exploring Divinity's Reach is about a level of solid discovery xp.

I'm not that fond of the new utility tiering system, just because I think they tiered things completely randomly and it has nothing to do with complexity or learning curve at all.

I do find dodging to be 90% useless, though. A lot of mobs will do wind ups you need to dodge out of (and are very obvious about it), but since you only have the endurance to dodge twice you're pretty much going to eat most attacks. Also, the level difference modifier on damage is WAY too high. A +2 mob will pretty much two shot your ass.

As an engineer with Rifle, I find dodge to be insanely useful. I find that I can kite just about any mob in the game by using netshot and my knockback with dodge to keep distance permanently. Look at dodge as 2 of your "outs" to avoid an attack. I think most classes have a disable, knockdown, interrupt, or other kind of escape. You should be able to weave dodges into whatever other tricks your class has to avoid a whole lot of whatever a monster is going to throw at you.

Could someone invite me to the guild? Lorekeep.7248.

I love the Engineer with the rifle for single mobs, but zergs need pistols with their AOE hits... however Engineer has an advantage in weapon kits allowing far more utility.

Closer to like 6 events to level at level THREE.   I understand that they are pursuing the idea that levels shouldn't take longer later on.   With 80 levels though they need to be flying by.    I switched to elementalist though and it's far far far better.   I'm confused as to why elementalists get like a bazillion "weapon" abilities to play with and rangers only get 5 but whatever.

Hopefully not; entire industry simply switching the model from WoW approach to another one just means a different playerbase subset gets their itch scratched, and everyone keeps bitching about these games all playing the same.

I'm not seeing the six events at to level at level 3 at all. Like, AT ALL.

There's also a big button which says dodge on it. Or double tap. See, this is where I start getting frustrated, because the information is way more there than it was in the previous BWE and it's getting better all the time. To dodge: DODGE BUTTON. Or map it. Then there's a flashing tutorial hint message which says double tap to dodge. At some point, if not knowing how to dodge is ruining the game, some of that has to be on the player.

You misread.  I was talking about there being nothing to dodge really so far.   My age at level 3 with my second char was 3 hours.   Call that whatever you want but it's too long.   You're just fanboing hardcore at this point.   The slow xp was turning off a lot of people in general chat.   It's a legitimate complaint.   Maybe it gets better later somehow but for the first 5 levels it's too long.

The camera and movement in this game is pretty damn terrible.  Fixably so, since some idiot put actual time and effort into adding features that make the game worse.  Why the fuck does the camera move in toward my character when I turn the camera while running, for instance?  Whatever clever shit you think you're doing, camera and controls guy, stop it.

Camera's garbage and they need to go ahead and turn on the ability to zoom the fuck out, because the default is WAY too close. I think we did camera once. And also no option to turn off camera snapping.

He might be a fan, but you've an axe to grind over this game for some reason.  If lvl 3 took you 3 hours, then you are the problem, not the game.

I'm guessing a lot of the limitations are for sieges weapon usage.

It usually only takes me the farm, the skales, the dam, and the orchard to do 3-4. Not counting any event pops.

As for the weapons: for whatever reason they lock the logic away at level 7. Elementalists get 4 weapon "sets" via attunement. Everyone else gets to have a hot-swap button with no cooldown that lets you use two weapon sets at a time. This means while an elementalist who goes dagger/dagger has limited range during an encounter, a mesmer who is sword/sword can instantly switch to staff if the fight turns into a ranged encounter. Rangers are intended to use something short range and something long range (ranger melee is really REALLY good, and I do think the bow skills are boring atm)

Did you make a Norn by chance?  I noticed my second toon, which was a Norn, felt like it took a lot longer to get going than my first Human character.

 I found that on most servers www is dead,   I was actually lucky to find one with huge ass epic battle raging whole day.

 It was pretty fun but there are many things which needs major fixing:

- there is no tools for coordination whatsoever. So  its all big clusterfucking zerg running around. you cant even tell where your allies are , unless you are with them already. The only hint is the crossed swords, but that doesnt help to do anyting but mass for zerg
- taking gates take crapload of time (and thats with siege equipment). Amount of time spent staring at gate HP is insane. Might as well call it "Gate Wars"
- melee has no place in www. get a ranged weapon or get out. Though it seems every(?) class has at least one
- towers have only one entrance. You cant help or reinforce defence if its already sieged
- its kinda huge money sink. well maybe not on later levels but  i ended up with not enough copper to afford travel, let alone training. I came in as level 7 with 20 silver. Got out as lvl 15 with 8 coppers and broken armor.

Re dodging - a lot of times you don't even need to use the actual dodge ability to avoid big_nasty_telegraphed_attack_01; their animations are so long you can simply do a quick 90 with your mouse and run forward to avoid it. Strafing can also work, but strafe speed is slower than forward running speed. Backpedaling is a bad idea if you're trying to run away from something... just as in any other mmo, really!

There've been a lot of little improvements like the hearts that pop up when someone uses your field to create a combo, and being able to finally deposit all craft-related loot to the shared bank... those tiny totems and stuff were driving my crazy before. My beef is mostly with tuning: f'rex a group of level 15 ice elementals wandered over from a high-level area, attacked a level 9 outpost once and basically cleared it out, then camped the waypoint. The combats in the personal storyline are also wildly uneven - the one in the norn story where you become a wolf to fight a boss was freaking tedious.

PVP is still a strong point. I had a 3-hour wvw session yesterday that was really intense and fun with several back-and-forths over enemy keeps, attacking and defending, zerging and small-group fighting. I never played daoc, so this kind of thing is still pretty new to me. Structured pvp is still good, and has none of the fucking stupid gear-related issues of other games (why hello there, new 85 with 0 resilience! How would you like to get 2-shot today?). Anyway, I still really like this game; it's more fun in beta than swtor ever was after launch (opinions! oh noes!).

What drove me nuts today was animation locking on some chain attacks (the melee chains mostly on the ranger) which attack so fast you need to use the auto cast for them, but also root you in place a lot and keep you from dodging (and the last attack in the chain has a leap to target built into it, so you run out of the wind up attack and leap right back into it)

Ya rangers sucked in EQ1 too. Oddly that doesn't seem to be the case in GW2 though.

Maybe it's that I am trying different classes and everyone else is higher level or it's the server I moved to or maybe it's the additional servers or maybe people aren't playing as much, but the world seems very empty. Not 75% of last time or 50% of last time, but as in deserted and I rarely see anyone else.

That means fewer people are triggering events and when I trigger the event, it's solo. And frankly, it's not nearly as much fun or really fun at all. The events do scale and I'm able to complete them, so one point over War, but doing it alone, it seemed very generic and dull. 11111121111112111112111112

I think I saw that... the second part of the first norn zone? The ice elementals are summoned by an event, and you need to kill 3 shaman to end it, but the ice elementals stick around, spawn in too large a number and then proceed to kill the NPC's in the building. Died a couple of times when I got close myself because they chain aggro.

I saw the little tan hearts, they were combo usage? I had no idea what they were since they showed up when things were hectic. Noticed also they extended the range of crafting items you can bank and am forever thankful. They could also do with a button that does it for all of them at once though. Likewise achievement chests showing up directly on your screen was golden, I assume I missed some last session.

Pretty much confirmed Norn Guardian, Human rifle warrior and Sylvari necromancer (though the class still doesn't feel very coherent to me) as what I'll be playing come live so quite happy to pretty much stop and wait at this point.

Man, some classes get royally shafted on their class abilities.  Steal blows, rangers get a damn pet bar, while elementalists and mesmers rock.  Warriors at least do some good burst and I haven't tried necros yet.  Thieves overall are extremely underwhelming, stealth might as well not exist and their damage is pathetic.

I tried a necro and felt they were really underwhelming both in feel and in power.

The elementalist was great, but the costume is just one step too far for me and goes into offensive.

In GW2 Rangers have some really fun weapon skills, and with some levels are a blast to play.

Necro's class mechanic is the ability to absorb life-force (green globes) from player death and change into an alternate form with new skills and a new health bar. It's currently more or less killing the class because the builds that focus only on boosting that mechanic are dominant and a lot of other interesting abilities need to be toned down in light of how powerful it is. Though that's also partly because pets are supposedly a bit AI bugged atm.

Steal does blow. The guardian gets three built in sigils which works okay and looks cool.

I would be very surprised if the thief and necro mechanics are not substantially re-worked before launch.

The necro mechanic is so strong because you can pop it at 1% life and have a nearly full second health bar for people to have to run through. And by the time you pop out of it your cooldowns are ready again.

It's hilarious how crazy hard to kill a dagger necro is.

I'm necro for life. Love the class and heavy condition damage builds in PvP are hilarious.

I really dig elementalist... it's crazy versatile, I can go between heavy damage and support on a whim. Necro didn't really click for me - the pets weren't that interesting and I didn't like the death shroud mechanic in pve (it was amusing to go into 1v3s in pvp and live, though). Mesmer is a bit button-heavy for my tastes, but it's growing on me now.

Engineer feels... weak? I don't know. Haven't messed with melee classes much since I want to play ranged (I'm in the EU my guild will be playing on US servers)

Yeah, Elementalist is pretty sweet. It's just unlocking all those weapon skills because of the four elements. Ugh...

Played a bit today, pretty nifty game. Seemed to level pretty slow until I decided to go kill lowbie mobs to work up a couple weapon sets and see which ones I liked on my mesmer. Pretty slick class, dual swords really tears it up and staff gets a bit silly with ranged. Necro was ok, but he bugged at the end of hte newbie cinematic and I haven't revisted him. Guardian was kinda meh, but he was my first run so had no clue what to do. Liked the thief quite a bit, actually, but it does need a bit of tweaking.

Wish the UI scaling was a bit more robust, the difference between small and very large is not all that significant. We kept having to get up and move closer to the tv to read quest objectives. That text needs to be at least scalable to the large chat box font size. Guild represent is a great feature.

Kinda sucks I got stuck on another server, too. Hope we can sort that out at launch.

Man leveling is slow in this game. I mean takes about 5 hours to reach lvl 10  .And this thing has 80 levels? I  rememebr I was level 20 in one night in Rift. And it only had 50 lvls

The leveling is supposed to stay the same throughout the game rather than start fast then slow down at the high levels, in theory 5 hours to 10 should mean 40 hours to 80 which is fast.

From ArenaNet blog (http://www.arena.net/blog/progression-and-leveling-in-guild-wars-2):

(http://www.arena.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/UpdatedLevelCurve-600x414.jpg)

Doing WvWvW also gave massive XP boosts, from what I saw. I leveled from 15-17 rather quickly as a result of fighting and base capturing.

When the game launches you will be able to play on any server at any time just by "guesting" on that server. The only thing that you won't be able to do is World PvP - for that you are always stuck with your home server.

Well you will be able to transfer home servers for a fee. There's a one week cooldown on it and you won't be able to participate in WvW until the current matchup ends iirc.

I assume you still won't be able to play on a server if it's full, which will probably be quite common at launch. Unless they're fixing all that with their overflow thingamajig.

EDIT:

I reaally want to love my engineer and some things about the class are so right (love the style, the feel of the guns), but versatility is exactly what it lacks imo.
The whole idea behind it is switching weapon-packs on the fly as I understand, like an elementalist switches attunement.
It's just that where as an elementalist it adds so much variety and synergy between skills, as an engineer it was just annoying. There's a few nice skills in some packs, but none of them are comparable to a normal weapon.

In the end I found spamming mines, throwing down a turret and switching to my pistol to work quite well in almost any situation (spamming mines is like kiting god-mode in PvE really), just a bit boring.
Maybe it needs some more crazy gogo gadgets or something (those rocket boots are good fun  :grin:).

This is huge, and Anet needs to scream this from the rafters.  If things get to feeling slow in the world, maybe you've slightly underpowered for where you are.  I know I completed all the heart content in the Norn area that was ~lvl 10, and the next hearts were lvl 15.  So I just hopped into WvWvW for a night and levelled that way. 

ANet needs to clarify if area hopping (going from the human starter to the charr starter) is the intended way to level, or if the xp curve is just wrong right now. Downleveling makes area hopping fun(and I swear I get drops for my real level, I get a ton of upgrades from level 3-4 mobs), but if it's the intended method of leveling they need to guide players into doing it and how to do it.

Likewise you can wander through early maps, perhaps gathering crafting resources, and join in again on events. With the down-levelling there's some challenge and you get XP and drops. I spent most of the weekend gaming with my partner and as a result my level 11 guardian is now level 15 without having left the first barbarian zone.

Since each character gets a global completion bar to fill, and there's skill gains to be had, I assume Anet expects the PvE fans to go and experience other race zones.

Level 10 Thief, level 10 Engineer, level 3 Elementalist, level 4ish Necro, and a level 22 Guardian.

The Thief, and Engineer were fun enough in PvE, though the Engineer felt a bit weak.  I didn't care much for the Thief, or the Engineer, in WvWvW.  I chalk that up to being only level 10, and not having any traits, or all my skills.

It took me roughly 12 hours or so to get the Guardian to level 22.  Almost all my exp came from completing Tasks, and collecting PoIs, Waypoints, and Skill Challenges.  I did like that when you did the random events, in most cases they also acted to progress whatever Task was in the area.  I collected all of the PoIs and Waypoints for the three main cities, and Lion's Gate.  I cleared the Human, and Char starting zones.   I would have completed the Norn one as well, but one of the Skill Challenges was bugged.  Now that I know my way around those areas, I imagine I could shave a few hours off by not having to wander around aimlessly.

Before the servers went down, I decided to head out with the Guardian and do some WvWvW.  I'm not sure what happened, but apparently my server, Gates of Madness, took over the entire map.   I guess the other two servers gave up, or something.  They were out in force on Friday/Saturday, and I had a good time taking, and defending things, even if I was stuck shooting at other players with a bow on my Thief. 

I made a random thief after not really digging engineers.. and it's crazy fun and really strong. Holy shit. Cluster Bomb may be my new favorite skill ever.

I agree with engineers. Too many static gadgets that just didn't feel powerful enough even in concert. Though some of the higher level tools, like the heal gun, show a potentially more interesting approach (lots of special purpose weapons).

The static issue also bites guardians a bit. Lots of really really small radius ground effects in a game that's very mobile just doesn't work so well.

Rogue gains massive appeal from everything being so stylish, and I believe the DPS is top notch, but the steal mechanic is unwieldy.

I dont really care much for pve but they got the public quests done right.  You always welcome other players presence , never fight for tagging mobs, dynamic events are more "dynamic".   They do change the world in more ways than rift did. They do need make next step and stop resetting those quests every 5 minutes though

As of rest of the game (my first BWE):

- combat lacks fluidity. Too many skills root you in place for channeling even as a weapon user ( thief ,warrior) .Too much jumping around but it  feels choppy -  I dont know its  due to lag, frame rate, animations or what  but it doesnt have fluid feel. Even rift had more fluid combat. WoW ironically still ages ahead.
- graphics is  kinda meh. - rift at times looks better
- exploration - places are interesting enough to see once. But again there is nothing particularly breathtaking to see. i must give them credit for varied environments though and attention to details
- class customization is awesome .A lot of option
- www needs work .A  lot of work. It is controlless clusterfucking zerg right now. It will get old very fast
- structured pvp is kinda meh. - I mean combat is not fluid enough for this to be enjoyable first place imho. Then there is issue of disbalanced teams and  very few maps



Overall I am kinda dissapointed. I expected GW2  to have awesome combat and pvp.- which is not the case . I hope they make major improvement for release, otherwise I just dont see why would I play it for any  considerable amount of time. I probably will level to 80 once for sure (the explorer part of me) ,but  pvp doesnt look good to enough to stick longer :(

I think it will depend a lot on how much/long a keep can stand fully upgraded with no one guarding it.  Always annoyed me in planetside to go to sleep and wake up to a completely different map.

I noticed I would do damage to stuff a lot in WvW and not get credit when it died which is still a bit annoying.

Played the thief a bit more and switched to shortbow for AE'ing enemy groups and it worked a lot better. Actually ended up using pistols for single targets and shortbow for groups. I'm pretty sure it's not the robot jesus of games, but I'm enjoying it.

-I thought the graphics in gw2 look nice (some pics I took in this bwe http://imgur.com/a/diMie#6 (http://imgur.com/a/diMie#6), the ability to take hd screenshots is nice).
-The animations were ok once you put em on high (the default is low).
-WvWvW is a bit directionless in beta but there was someone with the commander (a "title" you buy which makes the player visible on the map at long ranges) on at saturday who managed to lead a bunch of other players which meant atleast some tactics. Siege weapons also work really well against a mindless zerg...

It's over already? thought we had till like noon.

I only saw one fully upgraded tower, and it took a while to beat on (but only had two defenders). The directionless zerg wasn't my experience, but I do think the participation rates in WvW are an issue right now due to insufficient data to properly match servers.

The rooting in place skills thing is new, and I think it has to do with the designer trying to do too much for too many people this BWE. They said they made combat feel more solid/weighty, but it seems that was mostly having some skills toss the player around/root the player on their own.

My main complaints are that low cooldown swiftness buffs make anyone not using them feel godawful slow, the engine does NOT deal with 300 players in your general area properly at all (lot of pop in, pets load about twice as fast as players do. Terrifble for keep sieges), some classes like Engineers need .. something. Leveling curve is still way off, but I don't think it was on the hit list for this weekend. City layout is a bit stupid (charr zone has a bank next to the crafters, everyone else.. doesn't.) Ranger bow skill seem really boring (see thief or warrior bow skills for "more options than just Shoot Arrow") compared to their melee options. Underwater combat is done really really well.. but lame to unlock the skills since you so rarely actually do it.

I enjoyed the hell out of it, and found the shortbow + sword/pistol thief to be crazy fun. I'll try and post some screenshots later of me randomly running around the world.

edit: oh, and the official beta forums are like all game forums: holy shit bad and crazy wrong. Every class thinks they're underpowered and useless while every other class is overpowered (except engineers, which are universally just bad right now, minus the hilarious might/mine build)

My overall feeling was pretty much "meh". Honestly with the buzz this game has I expected alot more and was truly surprised how it felt. I couldn't even be bothered to play it very much as I got bored fairly quickly. In alot of ways it still reminds me of GW1 as far as feel. It just lacks that certain something that grabs me and makes me want to keep on logging in.

I found some sizable wvwvw yesterday and I agree that it is a bit of a clusterzerg.  Hopefully when the game goes live we'll see more coordinated groups and sheer numbers become less important. 

The battle was about 3:1 in favor of the other side.  They were pretty much beating us back to the starting point.  Someone asked, "why do some of you have the outmanned buff and I don't?" with replies of "lol you do."  To me it didn't seem like it was having any effect, if we did have the buff.  And then I was struck with the chilling memory of tenacity in Wintergrasp. 

I'm just wondering how big of a factor server populations and wvwvw participation numbers will have on zone control.  If the steps they take to deal with it are ineffective, people will give up.

And a random peeve:  No character portrait.  Sure, I can see my health and energy, and I don't necessarily need to see my picture, but I'd like to see my name on the screen somewhere.  Am I missing it, or is it possible to change the settings?

I feel like GW2 tries a  lot of really innovative stuff. - I mean their class and skill design imho are brilliant. The public quests is very welcome evolutionary step too. But on the other hand they kinda failing incorporating some of those into cohesive fun gameplay. Ranged vs Melee is a huge disbalance in WvWvW right now which I feel they not even gonna address ( have everyone use range weapons - puff problem solved!) . WvWvW itself is nothing but a copy of DAOC RvR (flawed one too) - this is not gonna fly today.

The innovative class and skills system imho is poorly balanced and held back by technical aspects (combat is not fluid enough -  I dont know why exactly ,  maybe because of lag ,etc, but it needs tons more polish). GW2 also has a lot of old  baggage - they seem to have tried copy wow at some point with all this influence gear, pointless crafting,  achievements and dailies. I mean its there but doesnt really enhance experience, its like "others  do it ,so we gotta have it too"

Imho if they focus on the 2 biggest "end games" - sPvP (and consequently actual combat) and WvWvW and get them right this could be a smashing hit. But as of now I dont feel like it will be. Especially WvWvW - its lacks any features designed for long term play.


When I first laid my hands on WoW I knew it would be a smashing gigantic hit ( and I was  a bitter old MMO vet at that point) - because they got the core systems right. Class design and combat were amazing,  it fit into very polished diku model  with quest based leveling .

Later on  MMO come with one or 2 relatively fresh and well working systems while dropping the ball on everything else (excluding blatant clones like Rift - which have nothing fresh, but dont drop ball either) . GW2 sadly feels like one of those games

I agree WvWvW needs some sort of stickyness.

-This BWE was definitely showing less fluid combat than BWE1 (I felt that the thief was most effected by this as their combat last BWE was very fluid)
-Lots of nerfs, mostly overdone too (thief again, some builds could still destroy other players but outside of 2 builds it wasn't really a threat as a class). Still lots of bugs (illusionary duelist, for instance, was doing an incredible amount of damage due to a bug in their cooldown trait causing them to have like 100% haste or something like that, resulting in kiling people in about 3-5seconds).
-I liked the pvp currency gear, though like most things in this game, it needs better documentation. To buy rank 1 boxes was fine, but to use the rank 2 vendor you needed to accumulate 15k valor/honor/whatever it was called, this seems to be split between characters and account unlocked when you achieve it. Though, when I started this weekend, my thief had about 10k+ stored from last weekend, and my guard had about 6k+, but it didn't count for some reason. Meanwhile, I was pvp rank 4 (so only accumulated about 6k more currency) or so when I had enough to start using the rank 2 vendor, this needs some documentation quick. Along with documentation, the rewards for reaching new pvp ranks need to be done better. I ended up at like pvp rank 9 or 10 or something, and each rank kept giving me tier 1 boxes while I was using the level 2 vendor. It's not that big of a deal since there was a lot I didn't have from tier 1, but just felt wierd and out of place

Most of my weekend was spent in sPVP ona guardian, thief, and warrior. The rundown is mostly my opinion of the current state of classes in sPVP as I'll keep [most] suggestions out of it for now:

I felt exactly the same way.  I can't put my finger on it, but the game just didn't grab me at all and certainly didn't live up to the hype.  Its good as B2P, but it wouldn't be worth a sub as a P2P and I can't see myself spending any money on it other the cost of the game itself.  Overall, it was a somewhat disappointing experience.

I saw a lot of thieves bitching about fluidity and speed, but I didn't personally feel it. The main drawback to sword/pistol was just that it's murder move (3 deals an absurd amount of damage) roots you in place like hundred blades does. It requires some level of help locking things down in order to actually land the full channel though.

I honestly felt the thief was the strongest class I played (of ranger, elementalist, necro, mesmer, thief), and the only speed complaint I could fathom was that I lacked a spammable swiftness buff.

edit: this is coming from me though, and I'm loving the design of the entire game in general. They pretty much stole my MMO Diary and made it.

If you use shortbow you are faster than someone with swiftness.  The teleport makes you crazy fast.  Also take the 10% run speed signet.

They get the runspeed later than other classes (it's tier 1 for necros and rangers, for example), it's mostly just a running around WvW thing: who has easy access to low cooldown swiftness is very apparent.

At higher levels they're perfectly fast due to shortbows/signet/runspeed traits. I just see a lot of complaints that the thief is "slow" now.

Got to 8 with my mesmer, didn't really have a ton of time to play but I really enjoyed it. As one of the resident casuals, I see a lot of appeal in the game. Which probably makes me 'wrong' in this crowd of mmo hating experts  :why_so_serious: It was nice to plonk around finding events, though as someone mentioned I can see that being an issue because events are so much better with more people and definitely meh solo. Also, things like the bandit cave can get a bit rough solo due to respawn, but maybe that's me being a newb and not knowing the tricks.

Finally unlocking the weapon switching was so huge. I finally centered mostly on sword+pistol as my main and sceptre + pistol for ranged stuff. Also a big win on style points, character creation was pretty decent though humans leaned a bit japanamation-influenced for my tastes which limited the more western flavored choices. But I really dig my human mesmer's look and will probably roll with this dude for release. Having 4 stylish brothers rocking purple pimp clothes was awesome.


Enjoyed more Nolan North VO, even if I totally replaced it in my head with Sam Jackson.

There is a swiftness on dodge trait that coupled with the endurance return on dodge trait means almost perma swiftness.  You are relying on traits instead of skills though which limits your build.  I used an immobilize and haste before hitting someone with a couple pistol whips and switching to dagger/dagger to finish them off with a heartskeer +dmg bonus signet.  With the 100% crit and 30% extra damage on weapon swap sigils that combo was basically a kill on damn near anyone.  As far as mobility goes swiftness + caltrops on dodge = uncatchable.

Re: level progression, and not figuring out where to go

You should be paying attention to those NPCs with the telescopes above their head.  You're directly to talk to one of those guys at your first thing out of the tutorial area.  They essentially uncover a portion of the map and show you hearts.  This just tells you where you should be going in a general sense.  Then follow your green story quests as it tosses you in the general direction.

While playing just experience the world, do hearts (only can do them once each) and find events as they take place and do them.

W3 experience is tricky.  You actually get a lot by defending keeps etc.  There are also some great videos/screens of cool things going on there.  But it is difficult to just jump in and see where the hot spots are.

Class balance is in shambles.  Mesmers are awful and are pretty much broken.

Huh, really? i thought they were the most effective of the classes i put some real time in.

Really?  What classes did you play and did you do PVP or PVE or both?  Mesmer was one of the least played classes I saw.  Their whole clone/phanstasm mechanism is broken.

Mesmer, thief, ranger and engineer.  All of them for several hours in battlegrounds.  I used the clones mostly as misdirection.

The Ranger is the most damaging class out of all of those if you use a greatsword or sword/dagger.  I'm surprised you didn't enjoy playing one.  Maybe you didn't stumble upon a good ranger build.  Thief is crazy good against cloth classes too.

Oh ranger was fun i just thought the mesmer was more effective.  It might have been that my ranger builds sucked or that the level of competition in the battlegrounds made the illusions a lot more effective than they should be, but i did pretty damn well and had a ton of fun with the mesmer.

I went longbow with my ranger and, once you tack on the extra range from going Marksmanship, you're like an easily ignored battering ram. The range is so long, and the damage greater the further away you are, that I was wrecking shit without being touched. I loaded up on spirits and healing spring with my skills. Ended up being awesome.

Also, mesmers are fucking insane in PvP.

Class wise I tried Ranger, Warrior and Thief in sPvP. And  a lot of thief in WvWvW. Warrior was probably most  OP thing in bwe2 with evicserate focused build (10k damages every 8 seconds).  Thief has very fun kit but very up UP even with either of his 2 semi-viable build (crit stabber and condition focused bleeder) .Ranger was kind okish,  I think he is better in www than in spvp

Think about www is that you pretty much using ranged only weapons and warrior has pretty strong single target rifle skills. But his aoe is lacking. Thief imho has better option despite having really only one skill  (shortbow clustershot)


Really though all those class balance things will probably change ten times over by the time of release. The most worry for me in the balance department is melee/range issue. In sPvP its ok. but in pve and www melee is just a useless gimmick, which is really dissapointing if you like playing melee

Thing is, I think the game NOW is comparable (maybe even a little better) than what we generally expect with a MMO release. Which shouldn't be read as anything but an indictment of the MMO industry. But, given that, they've got a ton of time to do the class balance thing before release.

At this point, as an MMO fan, having a game that isn't an obvious clone or flawed by design is enough of a novelty :(

Ya sadly npc mobs seem to ignore the clones so the misdirection is of little use for pve. I played one all day sunday and found the skills to be very blah. Even spamming clones and exploding them with the wand 1 move didn't produce much dps compared to my ranger who does serious damage. If you thought the mesmer was better than a ranger I think you missed a lot of the ranger features. A ranger with a longbow is pretty much a murder machine.

Pretty much how I found it. I think the mesmer and the necromancer are supposed to play off the conditions system but it just doesn't feel powerful, coherent or that much fun IMO.

Didn't really find that to be true, though I did only get to level 8. I mostly used sword/pistol, swapping to sceptre/pistol for ranged and to get the block ability. I would send in sword3 clone to open, send in pistol4 clone on a second target, then pistol5 on everyone. Then I'd sword3 again to blink into melee and position so sword2 hacked at everyone. Then just watch to re-apply the sword3 and pistol4 clones, and sword1/2 as needed, also watch for opportunities to f1-3 my clones. Pretty basic but really tore stuff up pretty good in pve. Only thing I missed was the thief ability (pistol, maybe) to duck back to gain range, they could add that to pistol4 so it behaved liked sword3 (swap places as a secondary effect).

Mobs don't ignore clones as much as the clones tend to not stand in melee range and try to be the bigger target. Proximity is threat for most mobs (some don't care and will "stick" to a target they pick early on).

My main issue with the clones and shatters is that this beta illusions were mostly dealing 0 damage (aside from the bugged duelist), and shatter was still buggy (clones would rush in and seemingly cast a short spell to detonate. During the cast, things would move out of the way)

Yeah, I did notice that and mostly didn't use it because of that.

FWIW in the previous beta the mesmer boss in the charr ash questline (saboteur ducco) was a royal pain to take down because both of my NPC helpers would just focus on his illusions.

Mesmers in general are a massive pita to fight in pvp, up there with thieves. Extra fun points if you get them down and want to land a finisher on them.  :why_so_serious:

I have to take back what I said about Mesmers.  Apparently folks found a sweet spot in a build that makes it really good.  However that's only one build though.  Essentially a condition build that gives you near perma regen and bleeds based off of the pistol phantasm.  I'll have to try it out next go around.

Don't use pistol phantasm builds from this BWE as anything more than a theme idea: there was a broken trait giving them over 100% haste and turning the phantasm into the highest damage skill around.

There are some really strong degen builds for mesmers though, they're pretty damned awesome. Every non duelist build this weekend sucked because they broke illusions for the weekend.

Probably my fault!  :grin:

Also, as a reminder, I'm never talking about pvp unless I specifically mention it. Because I don't like math in my gaming :) When I say effective, I usually mean 'fun' not 'faceroll', though the two aren't mutually exclusive.

As a person who mainly PvP's I do the same thing.  I play what is fun for me and not fotm.

This is why I originally said Mesmers were broken and it appears people found a bug.  I did see a crazy warrior video somewhere that had warriors that stacked might killing everyone in like 2 seconds.

The autocrit on next hit and 30% extra dmg on next hit on weapon swap sigils were also a big part of those insane burst builds.

There's a Warrior build which can hit 100% crit at level 20.

That was just.. warriors. They have 2-3 skills that will one shot people, and a few immobilizes that prevent you from getting out of it. Think Mesmer sword #2 style damage, tripled. It's a little crazy. Hundred blades is crazy if people sit still for it's duration. Their adrenal skills also do absolutely hilarious damage (BWE1's warrior builds were things that build adrenaline, followed by a 1h sword swich because it's adrenal hit like a truck)

Actually, I have a bunch of complaints with a few abilities doing craploads more damage than their other options. Sword/Pistol thief has a 3 that does crazy damage, Axe necro #2 is the same. They seem to be channeled but do 4-5x the damage the other melee sets do for the same class.

Yeah, I've heard Axes stacking power for necros is ridiculous. 

Ya those guys seem to provide some distraction but the clones from scepter 1.2 are useless. They do no damage and exploding them does unnoticable damage either.

Well clone shatter damage is pretty decent at level 2 or 3 as a noob but slowly gets worse as you level.  If I had to level a mesmer right now, I'd most likely use Sword/Torch, Sword/Pistol or Staff.  Some combinations of those three.

I put scepter as the alt loadout simply because I needed something ranged for events with a bunch of people where I was having a tough time beating the zerg to the mob before it died. The sword3 swap ability was too slow, he'd take a second too long to close for me to then swap. But yeah, the clones were useless, saw a ton of 0 0 0 0 happening.

If you really want ranged, use either the staff or greatsword, much better that the sceptre imo at low levels.

Yes of course but the discussion is about the usefulness of clones and supporting your impressions that the mesmer was overall kind of weak and ineffectual.

No pistol AE or pistol clone with those. But for release, who knows? We'll have to see what is what at that point.

True but the berserker clone is pretty nasty. I was alternating berserker and necro clones for dmg mostly.

I'm just not feeling the love for GW2.  I'm trying to decide if it has something to do with the design of the game, the fact that I'm burned out on diku clones, or both.  Perhaps if I let it be for a while it will feel fresh when it releases ... in 2014.

I enjoy it well enough, but I suspect I will play it to max level and then probably drop out. It doesn't seem to have an "end game" other than WvWvW and I'm not feeling like that's going to hold me. I think Eve's meaningful pvp has ruined me for things like RVR that reset automagically. Also, really, I miss the class interdependency gameplay--it doesn't have to be a hardline trinity, but right now it's just a DPS zerg. I think CoX did a good job and providing that feeling of interdependency without a hardline trinity. I don't get the feeling there's much point here to support skills.

There are some 'serious' support skills that can turn a battle around on their own, like the mesmer time warp / null field, the guardian bubbles, etc. Even on my low-level elementalist, the 'healing rain' skill (long-duration healing + regen in a wide area + acts as a water field for skill combos) and to a smaller extent the 'geyser' skill (shorter-duration small-radius version of healing rain, but instant and shorter cooldown) made a huge difference in people getting away safely vs. dying on the spot both against pve event bosses and in wvw keep-defending against a zerg.

I'm pretty interested in it. I've liked what I've been reading for a while now, and my beta exposure was pretty positive. On the downside, I'm not a huge fan of pvp but otoh I'm open to it if it's fun for casual players to contribute and get something out of. Also, I'm pretty tired of generic fantasy settings, though at least it's not straight Tolkein and it's artistically strong which is pretty important to me.

Mostly it boils down to the fact that the combat seems pretty fun and fluid and f2p really would work well for me.

But the lack of some 'traditional' (read: WoW) mmo design is very appealing to me, since I don't like WoW and I feel the worst parts of TOR were where they aped its design, thus shooting past my niche. Should be interesting to see how my casual leanings mesh with GW2. It's the only mmo other than PS2 I have the least bit of interest in.

Heh you hate WOW design but you played TOR.   :oh_i_see:

I have to disagree. I will say it doesn't feel like it's powerful when you look at regens healing for 100-200hp/s while you see crits of 10k, but boons like protection and small regens really do go a long way. I can't even count the number of times I was given feedback of how severely different of an experience it was for some people (random pugs mostly) playing near my guardian compared to some other support players (even gaurdians). Which is why I think it's more about support is just tougher to accel at than dps, but definitely has a point. Support, I think, also has more room for build variance in being successful this BWE as there were a couple of nerfs and a couple of bugs that were pigeon holing some dps.


Remember, he plays MMOs incorrectly :why_so_serious:

As I said, where it aped the design is where I disliked it the most. I don't mind the straight diku framework for the underpinnings, hotbar tab target combat is ok imo. It's more the 'endgame' stuff and using the AH instead of an EQ2 broker, etc. My gripes about TOR are on record here. I still think it's a good game despite that, because there's a ton of content for casual players interested in story. And I was even a fan of the group stuff, they just implemented it in a way that discourages casual grouping. Unfortunately I won't be around for the LFD tools due to, well, you know.

On topic, I think the support stuff and class interplay has some legs to it. Having mostly done the mesmer (assuming it works properly at release!), he has some conditionals on both sides that might play into a necro duo nicely. I imagine a lot of synergy will come out as people get more time with the game and grouping.

After 2 BWE's in which I played quite a bit, I still feel like I'm just scratching the surface with combos and that's really where the class play/support can come into it's own I think.

Healing rain for instance: decent skill on it's own, but have an engineer blow a few bombs/mines in there and you've got a bunch of 100%-chance healing combos going off on a lot of people.

Combo fields tend to be very short in duration though (10 seconds seems to be about the max, with a lot around 2-4 seconds) and often quite small, so it takes a lot of coordination to get some real mileage out of it. It's practically impossible without voice-chat imo.
Coordination is the magic word for WvW as well; looks like it can be great fun with all the tactical objectives, but most of what I've seen so far is PuG zerging and camping.

All of that gives the game depth I suppose, but isn't exactly casual.
The best bits of the gameplay seem to take a real effort to get at, I'm not sure I want to invest in an MMO that much any more.

To get the most out of combos will take some investment, I think to a point that it will be what separates the player base competetively if they're trying to use combos as much as possible. Just memorizing the combo list (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo#Combos) will be a task, but knowing a couple combos that your class can perform on your own, or keeping in mind what class you're playing near and what combos they may start or finish does go a long way without much investment. It wasn't an issue keeping up area retaliation by myself on a guardian, or using smoke fields from thieves (since thieves using Smoke Screen was more common this time around for some reason I'm not sure of).

Combos are also why I was surprised to not see very many staff using support specced elems since their staffs can set up fire/ice/water/lightning combos AND set them off on their own. Improved direct healing, swiftness, can chill enemies, etc all without help of others.

Sky's SW fanboism knows no bounds :)

Oh ya Sky, it's possible that the dmgless clones are bugged. The tooltip, according to the skill builder site http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en says nothing about the clone's ether bolt being 0 damage. The class would be a whole lot more interesting it those clones cast full damage ether bolts.

The tooltip says "Shoot out a third bolt, summon a clone that casts ether bolt" That doesn't read like the clone is supposed to be a gimp to me.

Skillchains in FFXI I absolutely loved. Not so much for the graphics or the big dmg numbers, but because it sync'd the team together as a unit. I like hearing about this type of stuff.  :awesome_for_real:

In the first beta weekend clones did minimal damage. It wasn't much, I'm talking single-digits at lower levels, but it was *something*. I read that they boosted the clones hitpoints this time around (although I didn't notice them having much more survivability tbh) so I guess they took away their damage to compensate? They also majorly nerfed Mind Wrack (the damaging Shatter) damage. I tried playing my Mesmer for a bit last weekend (it was my most played character in BWE1) but it felt really anemic compared to the previous version. I know that Mesmer is the most recent profession and in need of the most adjustment, I just really hope they can find a way to make it work.

In regards to Ether Bolt specifically, that skill used to apply confusion (both the Mesmer and clone version) but it was removed before BWE1 as it was deemed too easy to build confusion stacks. I don't think they gave it anything in return to compensate so it feels a bit lackluster now.

I think you are missing the possibilities somewhat. With a game that finally implements level / reward scaling into the design "end game" becomes a much more flexible concept. They could easily (though I don't say they will) add exploration, story or collection content to existing or new zones and expand the PvE gameplay without "end game" being an issue at all.

That said what I expect is there'll be achievements and unlocks a PvE player can work toward, and they'll be fairly grindy, because that's what they did in GW1 from my understanding. I don't think they have some magic answer to what a casual players end-game is, or how you can play a game for hundreds of hours and still find fresh new things to do, but this is the best framework for that to be possible, especially since there won't be a raiding end-game sucking all the attention.

Crafting looks like quite a project in itself... I only messed with it a little but it looks like mastering a craft is not trivial. It also supposedly generates enough XP that it would get you to level 60 by itself if you had unlimited materials.

They lowered Illusion damage and buffed Phantasm damage. Sadly, the equation they used for it wound up reducing low level illusion damage to absolutely nothing and thus making low level mesmers feel like they are missing something. Mind Wrack suffered from worse than usual pathing issues that I saw, and the new damage display pointed out how little it was per illusion destroyed. A 3 stack of illusions in the middle of a pack was still a decent nuke.. but nothing to write home about compared to an Elementalist dropping any of their low cooldown AEs on the same pack for less effort.

Illusions really just need to find a good role in the game, imo. I'd prefer them to be a smaller part of mesmer play, just because with them dying when your target dies I feel like concentrating power in the mesmer itself gives you far more flexibility in general combat. That said, I'd love to mess around with a support mesmer build that concentrated on the illusion traits that turn them into passive group buffers on summon.

This applies to so many things for me and my small group of friends playing GW2 right now. We had an alright weekend with BWE2, but pretty much all of us came away a *little* disappointed with  different aspects. Once we got together and talked about it afterwards, almost all of us said something along the lines of "I never thought of it that way". One friend loved Scenarios - I hated them, but after a lengthy discussion it really seemed I was going into them with the wrong mindset. We argued about WvW and how it's nothing but a zergfest, when there is little things a smaller group can do, but players for a large part haven't realized the possibilities yet. Little things like disrupting a supply train can make a big difference when you're knocking down walls of a large keep.

GW2 isn't quite the beautiful unique snowflake it wants to be, but there IS a ton of little things that does make playing it different. Going into it with a typical MMO mindset will get you to miss what they are doing. The whole game is 'end game'. You can do pretty much whatever you want, other than higher level PvE, whenever you want.

I was pretty frothy for SWtOR and I barely managed to make it through 3 months of it - so I'm trying to keep my enthusiasm in check, but I really like a lot of things they are doing.

Well we'll find out. I'm definitely playing. It's just a vague feeling that there may be some things lacking, not the kind of reaction I had to SWTOR of "are they serious? this is a joke!"

I will say, I am skeptical of the combo thing. Every game these either seem to be written off as too complicated or they don't scale with increasing damage from equipment and they don't get used.

There's no scaling to talk of in GW. Some of the fields are iffy (poison in particular: too easy to apply with actual skills to care about using fields to do it), but Burning Blind and Stealth are all things that are just awesome to apply with combos.

The main thing to remember with scaling is that there is no ilvl gap at the end game. You don't have level 80, level 81, level 82 gear and have scaling issues with shit that worked at 80 but not 82 gear. It's just level 80, and they intend the gameplay and unique looking alternate equipment to create the sticky value (all of this assuming they stick to the current design goals, and using GW1 as proof they have a history of using this design focus)

I think it's an awesome way to always know the balance levels, but I think it doesn't "stick" with people who really like the constant carrot of new shiny power increasing gear. Personally, I was a huge fan of the fact that I could be fully kitted out really quickly in GW1, and only had to go case after cooler looking armor with the same stats.

edit: honestly, most of this seems more a design limitation: they've chosen a very specific target market, and their version of an endgame/progression path will probably not appeal to everyone.

Trying to appeal to everyone hasn't worked so well for post-wow mmo.

It ended up not working so well for WoW, either.

Oh? You think other MMO makers wouldn't sell their children for WoW's current subscriber base? Let's try to keep a little perspective here.

Of course they would, but no one has been able to duplicate WoW, and based on what I read about some of the changes to WoW I sometimes think that Blizzard doesn't really understand how they did it.  You can say a lot about GW2 but WoW in Tyria is not one of them.

On the subject of leveling speed from couple pages ago, there's video discussing it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g36woC3LJ8Y). Not exactly in-depth but it does list the options and some info (like crafting) was rather interesting.

That video is like 23m long.  Damn.  I'll pass.

It's basically pointing out  Anet's has failed to make it clear to players that their game works differently than others. A long, tedious point by point argument that would have worked better in text but what can you do.

That was a horrible video, I lasted 5 minutes but he was still saying what he was going to talk about instead of talking about it.  Also worst Canuck accent EVAR.

If GW2 is grindy, I won't be bothering.

It's probably as grindy as you want it to be.

It hasn't been grindy for me up to low teens. Indeed it's pretty much unique in that I rarely look at my level or care and just about everything you do in game generates xp.

I think he's basically talking to the people focused on power-grinding through the beta process. Not that I made it all the way through the video.

Treasure map drops that put an X in the world somewhere and start an event when you dig it up? A flag (http://www.gw2db.com/data/items/20597-explorers-challenge-flag) (data-mined only I believe)  that drops and gives points based on how far you plant it from all other flags? With the level limiting mechanic they can continue to make the world richer and not worry about it being obsoleted by out-leveling so all sorts of things become possible.

Pretty much.  He's mostly referring to the people bitching on various forums that A-net needs to boost xp from the Renown Hearts because that's all that they did, and now they're only level 11, and for whatever reason they don't feel they should have to do anything else to level a character.

Basically, he took 23 minutes to say, "This game might not be for you".

That video is missing that a number of the leveling speed complaints have to do with ONE of the starter zones, which is undertuned for XP. Queensland will dump you out at level 13 or so, given that you do every bit of map completion and a number of the chain XP events. It's.. a fucking beta.

His point is valid, though.  Complaining that questing through an area doesn't get you all of the levels to go to the next area is ignoring the pretty big pile of alternate experience avenues available.  Someone who doesn't want to just beat on fifty rabid rats to get their ding is perfectly welcome to mine up some rocks, or build something, or just wander around, and they'll get the experience that way.

The game really rewards people who take their nose off the grindstone and look around for a minute.  There have been several times in the beta weekends where I'd look around, see something, think, "Huh, that looks cool," and wander over to investigate.  In the process I've triggered several dynamic events, gotten some nice things, and discovered neat hidden features of the world.  It's very possibly the ultimate casual experience from all of my time in MMORPGs; the game strongly encourages wandering and dabbling.

Ok that sounds great then

That's why it's such a good game for me.  I'm easily distracted, but there is always something new to find.

Same here, I like being able to just dink around with what I find interesting at any given time.

The zone should still be fixed. As much as I like to dick around with things, I could get crafting up to the next tier and still be short 3 levels in queensland. It's was a broken zone so far in both BWEs, XP comparison wise.

That said, I recall from pre BWE2 that they hadn't done a bunch of fixes yet, and we were mostly testing to make sure the servers didn't croak anymore.

This. I only played one day of the beta, but I didn't feel like I was necessarily playing an mmo, just running around doing stuff as I felt like it. Having my buddy over and rocking the pimp horde (my afro illusions) helped. I did have a few issues playing non-optimally (something I love), but the mesmers are apparently a bit broken, so I'll continue to play incorrectly!

The only portion of queensland that is missing a lot of content is around level 6 and 7.  If you can get over that hump with events, then you should be on track to hit 14/15 by the end.  The issue is that your experience may vary if events aren't triggering as much.

Edit:  There is like one level 7 heart and one level 6 heart and there isn't much realestate with mobs of that level that could trigger those events (right smack dab in the middle of the map).  However there is a ton of space for levels 10-15 (whole right side and bottom portion of the map).

Anyone who wants to play a boring human deserves the slog. ;D

Speak for yourself! You just can't handle 3rd Street style, baby.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3667682/Mesmer.jpg)

Ya that's what happened to my human character. around L7 I was looking around for where to go next and the next heart was like L10 or 11. If you just keep going on you end up fighting L13-15 mobs at about L11 or so. I guess I just had real bad luck on events starting.

Because of the way downleveling works  it was easy to just hop over to the Nord area and do a few levels there but I was really hoping to avoid that as I'm thinking 5 races/5 starting areas for release equals no repeats. As to any accussations of not exploring I have the completion awards for all 3 starter zones on various of my chars.

I got the impression a lot of people were missing events as well 'cause they didn't quite catch on to the fact they're tiered.
So for instance I help this supercute Asura chase down his moa birds (pygmee moa birds  :heart:) with some other random, but as the Asura starts talking about how he wants to sell 'em in the next town, the other guy just runs off.

I stick around listening to the munchkin's jabber and lo and behold an event starts where I have to guard him and his birds on route to town.

Stuff like that is what makes the world feel more alive to me than practically any other MMO I've ever played (as well as overlevelling me constantly), but I guess most people are confused by the fact most NPC's don't just open up 'HUGE text box > click yes to continue' or go into a 3 minute cutscene to advance the story (and your xp).

I agree, but I also think it would be useful if it was more obvious that the quest would continue.

It's a change of mind-set from "ticking off a task-list" to "what's happening here?"

Frankly I'm perfectly happy with those who run off or speed through content missing it and having to grind out the difference. It's training. Though that sort of person will probably be downloading a "optimised event sequence" walk-through from the web anyway, so don't really need in-game hints.

On a more serious note the second event should announce itself on the map and on the task bar with the current mechanics, though I'm not certain what the range is. I'd think that would be enough. The person who has wandered off will see there is an event nearby to play and quickly realise it's a continuation.

Well the thing is, some events take some time to start after a previous one is finished.  People just don't like to stand around waiting and want to get back to playing.  Also, some events don't have a continued part too.  So, sometimes you wait around and are rewarded with a second part, sometimes you wait around and get nothing.

It would make sense if the quest progress box stayed open on the upper right if the event was morphing into another one.

I kind of like the impatient mmogtard penalty.