Guild Wars 2

[Sky]

Wow, that looks really slick. I hope Hartsman is taking note of the visuals and mechanics. You might not be able to compete with WoW, but Rift will have to stand out between GW2 and SWTOR.

[Soln]

both GW2 and SWTOR will have a lot rails -- if Rifts is more open, as it seems to be promising, it could be Ok.

[Ingmar]

GW2 necromancer seems more or less the same as GW1 necromancer to me - pets, lifedrain, areas npcs don't want to stand in. Which is not a problem of course.

[Sky]

both GW2 and SWTOR will have a lot rails -- if Rifts is more open, as it seems to be promising, it could be Ok.

Good point, I'm a graphics and story whore, so I'm pre-biased.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm not sure if I enjoyed that so much because of the abilities, or because of the editing of the video. I will go ahead and assume the camera will not jump around like that.

To be fair, while the art animation and sounds were top notch, looked rather standard.

[Modern Angel]

The corpse explosion animations on the little risen gribblies was really awesome.

[jakonovski]

Overall, this iteration of the mmorpg cycle is sounding pretty damn good. Then again you can't get much worse than AoC/WAR.

[Sky]

Sure you can. Each had very strong points and could've been great games with a bit of tweaking. You can't beat Tortuga for a beginning mmo experience imo.

[jakonovski]

Sure you can. Each had very strong points and could've been great games with a bit of tweaking. You can't beat Tortuga for a beginning mmo experience imo.

Well sure, with enough ifs anything's possible. Tortuga was ok but made the rest even worse by comparison.

[Sky]

My point was many games don't even have Tortuga.

[SnakeCharmer]

PotBS does.

[Mrbloodworth]

Guild Wars 2: Wartower Spotlight GC 2010

AKA: 50 min of unedited hunter class game play.

[Zzulo]

I like that

A lot

[Soln]

I just love Germans:" As you know, we have recorded way too much footage..."  Unedited, uncommeted.   

This looks terrific.  Mr.BW and the GDR +1

[HaemishM]

I absolutely LOVE the art design of this game, the cinematics especially. That illustrative watercolor feeling to everything, including the menus is just fantastic.

[Soln]

11mins in and they show the best dye UI I've ever seen.  Gone are the days of having to craft dyes.  You can customize your toon from the start.

[HaemishM]

Yeah, I saw that dye UI and was totally sold. I have seen nothing whatsoever from Guild Wars 2 to make me doubt in the slightest that I will buy this thing day 1 if I have the money.

[Sky]

I absolutely LOVE the art design of this game, the cinematics especially. That illustrative watercolor feeling to everything, including the menus is just fantastic.

BUT IT DOESNT LOOK LIKE WOW, ITSA GONNA FAAAAIL!

Srsly, the character creator art, the madlibs creation story... I only did a bit of GW in beta, but I don't see why I shouldn't be interested in this, production values are cranked pretty high. Love the art style.

Why did I ever click on this thread. How am I ever going to play three mmo next year? That's just silly. I don't even like mmo.

[tmp]

11mins in and they show the best dye UI I've ever seen.  Gone are the days of having to craft dyes.  You can customize your toon from the start.

Isn't that presuming all these colours will be actually available to the player from the start, as opposed to say, being unlocked for the preview event so the dye system can be showed off, but still being something you acquire item-by-item in actual game? Just like these l.45-50 characters they get to check out in the latter part of the video.

I like the visuals and the camera being closer to the character seems to help it too, but beyond that for all the claims how they're doing something unlike any other MMO it's still the "stand in a spot and whack perpetually respawning foozles till your eyes bleed", very much like expected. With public quests now, it seems.

[Ashamanchill]

I know this has been said before, this point, with the game devs saying all the right things, and it looking as good as it does, it almost seems too good. Like, when you buy the game and install it it, it just has a big picture of the lead designer pointing out of the screen with a 'GOTCHYA!' caption.

Or we've all just been left jaded by too much junk mmos, that's a possibility as well.

[Lantyssa]

I like the visuals and the camera being closer to the character seems to help it too, but beyond that for all the claims how they're doing something unlike any other MMO it's still the "stand in a spot and whack perpetually respawning foozles till your eyes bleed", very much like expected. With public quests now, it seems.

The same area, maybe.  You do know you can dodge attacks, yes?

[birdsguts]

I like the visuals and the camera being closer to the character seems to help it too, but beyond that for all the claims how they're doing something unlike any other MMO it's still the "stand in a spot and whack perpetually respawning foozles till your eyes bleed", very much like expected. With public quests now, it seems.

The biggest thing to me that could differentiate it is the "feel"... and that's something you can't really see in a gameplay vid.
I agree that seeing this footage does in some ways "worry" me, but it doesn't seem that the "pilot" in these vids is really "plumbing the depths" of what a character can do. Not to mention alot of the gameplay seems to be geared towards using group combos.... another thing you can't really get a feel for in a video.

If you watch the hour vid though... you can see a bit of the overall "flow" design.
... at least in the "intro event".
Looks pretty smart if you ask me. I think it deserves a weee bit more than someone just calling it a "Public Quest".
Maybe not a whole lot more..... at least not yet... but we'll see.


edit: chopped out useless rambling.... must... edit... self... better....

[tmp]

The same area, maybe.  You do know you can dodge attacks, yes?

I saw the guy at the controls jumping around few times, yes. There seemed to be zero need for that in the actual game though. Standing still and mashing attack key worked for him 98% of the time. The remaining 2% he used a self-heal to go from half health back to full while the mobs were whacking on him.

[Zzulo]

That enormous dragon boss fight at the end of that video is pretty amazing. It looks very frantic and the screen is filled with all kinds of interesting stuff.

[jakonovski]

Also let's not forget that this game is just a one time purchase of 50 monetary units, no monthly fees. The visuals alone are worth that price.

plz don't add monthly fees now that I've become your white knight arena.net   

[eldaec]

The UI in that demo looks so much better than it will be when they add unnecessary clutter to make it feel more like WoW.

[Fordel]

I doubt the UI will change much at all.

[KallDrexx]

I love the map open and close effects.  That game as a whole looks sexy.

[Zzulo]

Two high def videos (1080p) of some gameplay with a lot of commentary. It's also played by a dev and not some random player. Check them out (full screen), the quality is excellent.  

You get to see the city, some different PQ's and just random bits and pieces of the world as well as that huge purple dragon at the end as well. The city looks really gorgeous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE5ZE4SebTk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STsjcWT4XSA

The more I see the more I am falling for their marketing  

[Engels]

Similar coverage to the German link provided by Bloodworth. Better quality, tho.

I don't like the feeling of becoming interested in a fantasy MMO. It makes me feel naked and vulnerable. Someone hold me.

[Murgos]

I'm pretty impressed.

I couldn't get into GW 1 but this looks much more streamlined and attractive.  The game looks really solid, stable and fleshed out for this point in their development, I guess that's what you get when you have an A team that's been around the block a few times.

[Modern Angel]

The world in Guild Wars was awesome and I actually liked the lore. HOWEVER, the story for the games (all of them) was pretty terrible. Perhaps counter-intuitive but the base world is gorgeous, interesting and well-realized. It's easy to plug stuff into, assuming it turns out to be good.

I think it's also important to remember that this thing has been in the works for a long time, before GWEN if I had to guess. They seem to have realized pretty early on that the GW they created was never going to be the GW they wanted. A shift was obvious pretty early on.

[Riggswolfe]

So, is there a character creation video out? I'm intriqued by some of what I read and it sounds like GW2 is really going for story in the game.

[Modern Angel]

Watch the first six minutes or so of that German video. Customization for appearance looks limited for now but everything else seems good. It's like a choose your own adventure, 20 questions style. Pick a god, obvious. Pick some formative experience from your childhood, not so obvious and awesome that it's in.

[tmp]

So, is there a character creation video out? I'm intriqued by some of what I read and it sounds like GW2 is really going for story in the game.

The videos shown so far had a note on character creation screen that customization is yet to come, so probably too early for that.