Guild Wars 2

[Ingmar]

I don't really find houses which presumably don't belong to me being unenterable to feel "fake" in an MMO. At least, not usually. GW settlements generally do feel faker because you *never* go inside a building in the entire game practically.

[Azuredream]

I definitely prefer compact cities like Sanctum in Rift. Whether or not it feels "fake" doesn't even enter the equation, immersion and MMOs are oil and water.

[Furiously]

There is a line between walking for ten minutes for no reason and having everything in a menu.  Aion didn't work Eq2 was pretty close to good and wow felt a bit forced.

[Sky]

EQ2 Qeynos was pretty decent imo. Most things in the smaller hub areas to give it flavor for the different races, but fast travel to facilitate movement to the other end of the city quickly for the unique structures/locations.

[Mnemon]

Given a choice, I *always* try to opt for the RP servers.  They're by no means perfect, but I have found them to be much better than regular servers.

I have some friends who do the same thing. Their thinking is the RP tag keeps a lot of the especially dumb, stupid and troll-obsessed players away, because that crowd assumes everybody on the server is speaking like Shakespeare or something.

[Velorath]

Beta in the second half of the year.  Also it sounds like it won't be launching this year.

The Guild Wars 2 beta will begin in the second half of 2011, NCsoft has announced.

During a conference call, chief financial officer Jaeho Lee also heavily hinted at a 2012 release for the game.

"Starting from year 2012, we believe substantial growth will be driven by new blockbuster titles like [Blade & Soul] and Guild Wars 2," announced Lee to investors.

"Also, Guild Wars 2 will go into beta testing stage in the second half of this year," he added.

[Stormwaltz]

Seventh class: the engineer. I get to shoot elves in the face! (And, apparently, annoy cartoonish rat-guys to death.)

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/05/19/guild-wars-2s-explosive-seventh-class-the-engineer/

[Sky]

Seventh class: the engineer.

[Morfiend]

Seventh class: the engineer. I get to shoot elves in the face! (And, apparently, annoy cartoonish rat-guys to death.)

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/05/19/guild-wars-2s-explosive-seventh-class-the-engineer/

Offical page link.

Looks like there is one more class to go. Any guesses? The silhouette looks like a slim female. I'm thinking a Nature Magic User like a Druid.

[DLRiley]

Seventh class: the engineer. I get to shoot elves in the face! (And, apparently, annoy cartoonish rat-guys to death.)

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/05/19/guild-wars-2s-explosive-seventh-class-the-engineer/

And this is why Global Agenda fails. How the bloody fuck those arena net does a better job of ripping off valve than "tf2 with lazer swords?".

I think I just came.

Oh they better add mesmers. This wouldn't be guildwars without the high minded mindfucker class.

[Morfiend]

Oh they better add mesmers. This wouldn't be guildwars without the high minded mindfucker class.

Ahh yes, I forgot about the Mesmers. It would probably have to be that wouldnt it.

[Hawkbit]

The environment of the Glue Shot video looks utterly amazing.  This is not the same time that Guild Wars 1 was set in, that's for sure.

[Soln]

bad ass

[Tmon]

I was looking forward to the game but now I'm hooked, landed, gutted and fileted. 

[Azuredream]

Adding to the chorus I'm really looking forward to the game. The video was great. I don't think it's for sure that the last profession has to be mesmers though.

[Lantyssa]

The people who watch for every tidbit have narrowed it down to pretty much being a Mesmer.  Maybe a variation on it, but probably keeping some of their flavor.

[Fordel]

The profile picture looks like a Norn lady to me.

[pxib]

She interrupts your plan, steals your mind, and then turns into a bear.

[Ingmar]

The 'original' classes that are missing are mesmer and monk. Not sure which one is really more likely, since they don't have to make the monk a heal-centered thing.

[Lantyssa]

The Guardian is a Monk/Paragon hybrid.  We also know the last profession is a scholar of some type.

[DLRiley]

The Guardian is a Monk/Paragon hybrid.  We also know the last profession is a scholar of some type.

Its actually more deverish/paragon hybrid really.

[DLRiley]

The Guardian is a Monk/Paragon hybrid.  We also know the last profession is a scholar of some type.

Its actually more deverish/paragon hybrid really.

Its most defiantly not a monk considering how much pains they went to design around not having a "healer" profession. I don't think by the looks of things that this will be a "caster" friendly game. Twitch gameplay never favored caster professions that rely on cooldowns and limited resources. I see the ele being mostly unused since most of its damage can be dodged and the utility in the aoe skills maybe better designed for mobs and not players. Compared to the necro who is a force of nature in a constantly changing and moving battlefield, damage output aside, the necro doesn't need to hit anything to have his presence known. The mesmer being a champion heavily reliant on the "select your target" gameplay may be at a huge disadvantage like the ele, in a world where most of its spells come with the chance of being avoided.

A pvp mesmer could either lock down multiple targets or facerape one target -the monk- which was important because the monk was the centerpiece to any team and his fall literally brought down the whole team shortly after. There was never a need to pain train the enemy healer like in other mmo's when one mesmer can render him useless in 60 seconds. Without a "center piece" class, i wonder how the pvp vision of the mesmer will evolve.

[Lantyssa]

Monks also had Protection and Smiting lines.

[Fordel]

The Prot line for a monk was just another heal line.

[DLRiley]

The Prot line for a monk was just another heal line.

Not really.

[Zetor]

A prot monk was kind of a wow disc priest with a much larger variety of damage prevention skills, iirc... it still had plenty of heals that were considered baseline (zealous benediction, all the 'remove condition/hex and heal x' spells... heck reversal of fortune is basically a spammable heal if you aren't using it against a spike).

[Fordel]

The Disc Priest is just another healer. Just because your spells aren't literal health restoration spells, doesn't mean it isn't a healer in terms of role.

[Sjofn]

If there are no mesmers, there will be NO SJOFN. 

[Furiously]

They have shown enough interesting classes unless they screw things up I will so be there.

[DLRiley]

The Disc Priest is just another healer. Just because your spells aren't literal health restoration spells, doesn't mean it isn't a healer in terms of role.

Just because "red bars go up" doesn't make the prot monks and healing monks the same regardless of your experience with wow. For example one is used in pvp and the other never say the light of day in pvp before gwen was released. You can make red bars go up all day in guild wars, your team will drop like flies regardless. The question isn't raw damage vs raw healing like in most mmo's, its spike damage vs pressure. The healing line was pure reactionary while the prot line played to its highest potential had a pre-cognition element to it. One brought you back to full the other prevented you from dieing and did no more.

Yes you could call them healers but the concept is too different just to slap the "healer" label and move on, especially when the playstyle demands more than what typically is associated with "healers". To note monks are not called healers outside of pve.

[Ingmar]

And nothing you just said changes the fact that it is a healing role.

[DLRiley]

In about the same way that self healing is a healing role or party buffs are.

[Lantyssa]

Given the number of skills, it's possible to play a Monk like a CoH Defender where you focus less on healing and more on mitigation, buffing, or debuffing.  That's what the Guardian is.  Being a healer isn't an option, at all, in GW2.

[pxib]

My favorite PvP monk build was my least theoretically effective. It was the (now altered) elite that absorbed a fixed amount and then expired and some enchantments that decreased the amount of damage each hit did against the enchanted player (plus some hex and condition removal to prevent drain teams). It didn't heal well enough to keep anybody alive against a long term concerted attack, the cooldowns were too long... but uniformly people would see all those zeros come flying out of the head of the person I was protecting and they'd switch targets.

The process took just long enough to let me restart it on somebody else. I just had to predict who the first target would be.

[Mrbloodworth]

And this is why Global Agenda fails

What? Its not even comparable.