Guild Wars 2

[Ingmar]

Hey, I have an idea, let's have a THIS SUCKS / NO THIS SUCKS / NO YOU / NO YOU argument for a couple pages, that will really be great.

[schild]

Hey, I have an idea, let's have a THIS SUCKS / NO THIS SUCKS / NO YOU / NO YOU argument for a couple pages, that will really be great.

NO U

[Malakili]

Hey, I have an idea, let's have a THIS SUCKS / NO THIS SUCKS / NO YOU / NO YOU argument for a couple pages, that will really be great.

NO U

NO ME


oh crap, i screwed it up.

[EWSpider]

I was just making a point with no intention of defending my opinion.

[Kageru]

I could see there being a small number of people who think the PvP in Guild wars gives it a unique strength. No idea, no knowledge and little interest. But I'd have to imagine it's pretty much played out at this point. Can it really compete with even WoW?

I can say with more certainly the PvE is dull and unexciting. The narrow skillbar and skills with so many conditionals might be thrilling in PvP but make PvE repetitive. The way they use lots of invisible walls (can't go up, down even small slopes, across water unless they let you and can get stuck on all sorts of objects) to turn a map into a maze, the instanced and so far very dull world and the limited mobs make it a chore. The aggro mechanics as well are just bizarre with the best way to avoid aggro (yes, I'm the healer) seems to be to trail the party and do as little as you can, and 90% of the time I'm healing a bot anyway. Like all games with freely picked skills the game is prone to silly combinations (like the monk being an awesome tank if you exploit the mechanics of a single skill) and a lot of other skills that are useless either entirely or outside of some combo involving cards you won't have until you're done with PvE anyway.

But hey, since I'm actually spending the time to play it, I'd love to hear about the hidden strengths of guild wars.

[Lantyssa]

For lots of specifics it might be best to take this to the Guild Wars board.  How far in are you (last outpost reached is fine) and which campaigns do you have access to?

[Kageru]

You might be right, but perhaps it will also reflect what gets brought forward for GW2.

I own prophecies from way back where I got to level 14 before getting bored. This playthrough I'm level 11 and 4 missions in (Nolani academy?) because it seems we spent too much time doing side missions. I'm loath to invest more into the game when I'm not actually enjoying it that much, and besides it'll be obsoleted soon by GW2. We duo warrior/monk and take the warrior + least annoying remaining henchman.

[Lantyssa]

Even though it's been said, I really need to emphasize this:  Prophecies starts out really fucking slowly.  (The cursing is to add extra emphasis.)

The plot, at least to me, doesn't open up until you're either done with Ascalon or even until Kryta.  Prophecies feels incredibly long compared to the others.  They learned from it, learned a lot you would see in the other campaigns, but it doesn't really help since you're playing the first.

I got boosted through to Lion's Arch and further, then went and dabbled in the other campaigns.  It wasn't until I had nearly beaten Prophecies that I took a character through the begining and was really able to appreciate it.  It's far too slow as an initial introduction.  If you can find a cheap copy of Nightfall somewhere, I really recommend you try that, either with new characters or by getting your duo to Lion's Arch and sailing over to Kamadan.  The difference in pacing is night and day.

[KallDrexx]

Eww, multiple servers?

One of the things i liked about GW1 was there was only one server, and that allowed me not to have to worry about where I played because I knew different groups of people.  That sucks...

[pxib]

That was a symptom of their instanced structure. Once the world goes persistant, things get hazy.

To an extent, the instancing provided GW with a problem mostly gone from most recent games: crowds of monsters that actually block the path of a soloer. In an instance, you can't wait around for somebody else to pass through and kill them. You can't tag along with another group without explictly joining them back in town. Plus, since everybody who's been there before can just teleport past, they have no reason to group up and help you along. They'd just be wasting time.

This led to a whole economy of "runners". I ran the route from Ascalon to Lion's Arch, to and through the Sanctum Cay mission and in a circuit to the major locations of the Crystal Desert as my Mo/R just for fun, and to show people that a monk could do it. Much more popular was the (quite challenging) run from Beacon's Perch to Droknar's Forge, skipping an enormous chunk of the game to get to the location of the endgame armor merchants. That such intermediate routes existed leads me to believe this was at least partially intended by ArenaNet.

Though they kept producing routes for such skipping later, there were very few runners in Factions and Nightfall. Their 1-20 portions were considerably smaller, better written, more tightly plotted, and full of optional quests. The market for skipping them dried right up.

[KallDrexx]

Wait what?  Maybe it's been too long since I played but I remember runners being an effect of the teleportation/base system (and lazyness) rather than "getting stuck".  Most people would pay runners because they wanted it to be easy for their alts to have access to teleport to all the common base camps without having to do it themselves.  This worked because the instance system made it so once one person left a zone the whole party did afaik.  It had nothing to do with getting physically stuck from monsters, and I remember running past monsters many times and don't remember many areas where they actually blocked your view.

In fact, the more I think about instancing the more it makes me sad that GW2 won't have any.  They were able to do PvE and PvP things that aren't really possible in a persistent world, and while most people here probably think the story was crap, Guild Wars was the best MMO to implement a story and interesting PvE elements because of instancing.  It also allowed me not to have to deal with retards and assholes most of the time.

[Fordel]

What makes you think GW2 won't have any instancing?

[KallDrexx]

Well ok I phrased that badly.  It will probably have some instancing but they always make it sound like the majority of the game is persistent, which gets rid of the main reasons I really enjoyed the PvE in GW as opposed to every other MMO.

[Modern Angel]

They're not mutually exclusive. Cities/hubs as quick zone lines, outside persistent with players milling around. The whole teleporting thing is almost a core feature of GW. I would be surprised if they removed it entirely.

[Yegolev]

I kinda got lost in the GW info, do we know what GW2 is going to do as far as persistence?  I am imagining a DDO style persistence.

Anyway, my main concern is that PvE in GW2 will be less fun than PvE in GW.

[schild]

Anyway, my main concern is that PvE in GW2 will be less fun than PvE in GW.

That would be quite the feat.

[Nebu]

PvE in GW wasn't unfun so much as it was pointless beyond being a catch-em-all chore.  There were some encounters that I enjoyed.  Ok, enjoyed when my henchmen weren't being complete idiots.  

Then again, I have a much higher tolerance threshold than Schild when it comes to MMO's and grind. 

[tazelbain]

Anyway, my main concern is that PvE in GW2 will be less fun than PvE in GW.

That would be quite the feat.

You rag on all PvE.  Which game has the good PvE?

[Nebu]

You rag on all PvE.  Which game has the good PvE?

insert_AAA_console_title_here

[Yegolev]

Demon's Souls comment inc....

Anyway, I liked the GW PvE well enough but that's because I'm a collect-em-all whore.  I won't be getting GW2 solely for the PvP.

[Ingmar]

PVE is pretty fun in Nightfall I think. Better stories, less 'wander 3 feet farther and more devourers pop out of the ground'.

[Lantyssa]

Yeah, you get Mandragores instead.

[Ingmar]

Well, to an extent. The cross country travel isn't nearly so tedious though, and the game also rewards you better for the random kill-on-the-way-to-the-quest packs via the wandering priests giving you faction and bonus xp and such.

I think maybe the actual single biggest mistake in Prophecies was the setup of the very first zone you hit post-Searing. It is so completely crowded with aggro, half of which you can't see coming, that it takes forever just to slog your way across it, not to mention it is so ugly compared to where you just were. I think it creates a very bad first impression of the "real" game for a lot of people.

[Lantyssa]

It does.  As I said, it took me playing through most of the game, and a good portion of GWEN, before coming back and appreciating it.

I'm loving Nightfall.  Up to 82% explored and cruisin' about in my worms.

[schild]

Anyway, my main concern is that PvE in GW2 will be less fun than PvE in GW.

That would be quite the feat.

You rag on all PvE.  Which game has the good PvE?

Conan was the closest to good melee. The best in MMOGs, for sure.

Ranged? Easy. Fallen Earth, point-click-kill.

[DLRiley]

Isn't it more like point-click-several rounds later kill? Monsters don't circle strafe in conan that's why its fun.

[Yegolev]

How long is a round?

[Der Helm]

Isn't it more like point-click-several rounds later kill? Monsters don't circle strafe in conan that's why its fun.

It took me a while to understand that the mobs in Fallen Earth are not rubberbanding due to lag, but are trying to dodge my rifle shots.

Dodging cockroaches drive me crazy, though 

[PalmTrees]

How long is a round?

He didn't mean round as a unit of time, like in D&D, he meant rounds as in number of bullets. If you're being literal-minded you could've interpreted schild's point-click-kill as as everything being 1 shot kills.

[schild]

DL was being a troll. Yeg was being "huuuuularious," he's actually playing the game.

[Yegolev]

Those motherfuckers teleport.  Not often, but they do.  Had one do so last night versus my pistols.

Also, if I could reload the crossbow faster, I'd say two rounds.  As it is, I shoot a bolt into them and if it is a good hit, I then beat them to death with a board.  Using the air pistols (yeah, I wield two pistols) that I crafted, I can drop a scavenger with ten rounds if I hit them in the face a lot, plus a nice pistol whip to the noggin if they rush me.  Those pistols suck, I'm going to work on my ballistics and make some better guns.

[schild]

We have enough people doing ballistics that you can just request a type of gun + level and have it within a day for the most part, especially if we can get you a list of needed resources.

[BitWarrior]

Arena Net recently published a new video, titled "The Races of Tyria", which show off some in-game scenes of the new races, their homelands, plus the voice acting. The number of cliches hit reached new heights and caused me to squirm with a little embarrassment on their behalf, but I still hope they manage to pull it off well.

Video is available at the official site.

[Draegan]

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/

[Stormwaltz]

Arena Net recently published a new video, titled "The Races of Tyria", which show off some in-game scenes of the new races, their homelands, plus the voice acting. The number of cliches hit reached new heights and caused me to squirm with a little embarrassment on their behalf, but I still hope they manage to pull it off well.

I'm totally going to be a giant wolf guy with a rifle. Especially if my VO is from Wrex (Steven Blum).

Also, nerdbait: Felicia Day is the little furry girl with the giant robot.